Is attention both necessary and sufficient for consciousness? Call this central question of this treatise, “Q.” We commonly have the experience of consciously paying attention to something, but is it possible to be conscious of something you are not attending to, or to attend to something of which you are not conscious? Where might we find examples of these? This treatise is a quest to find an answer to Q in two parts. Part I reviews the foundations upon which the (...) discourse on Q is built. Different inputs to Q produce different answers. After consideration of the many ways “attention” and “consciousness” have been defined, I settle upon phenomenal consciousness and Executive Attention (defined as a suite of strategies for structuring cognition for further processing implemented by the executive of working memory) as the most interesting inputs to Q, and the ones on which Part II focuses. Attention without consciousness seems relatively easy to establish empirically, but consciousness without attention is much harder. The putative candidates all seem to have major problems, but I build a strong abductive case for the hitherto ignored case of foveal phenomenal overflow. We consciously see far more detail in our foveal fields than we can Executively Attend, although there is a serious obstacle to our ever confirming that empirically—identifying conscious content relies on Executive Attentional report. Triangulating the capacity limitations of attention, consciousness, and working memory strengthens this case for consciousness without attention, and suggests that cognition must work something like my “Witches’ Hat Model,” on which content can become conscious outside of Executive Attention or working memory. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of my arguments for the discourse on Q, and for other discourses such as the ontologies of attention and consciousness, theories of consciousness, some other cognitive concepts, and ethical considerations in humans, animals, and machines. A conclusive answer to Q continues to elude us. It may perhaps be an ultimately insoluble conundrum. But it is the very essence of humanity to seek an answer, and in so doing, to improve our understanding of our own nature: “The proper study of mankind is man.”1. (shrink)

We continue the investigation, initiated in Salibra et al. (Found Sci, 2020), of Boolean-like algebras of dimension n (nBA\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n\textrm{BA}$$\end{document}s), algebras having n constants e1,⋯,en\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf e_1,\dots,\mathsf e_n$$\end{document}, and an (n+1)\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$(n+1)$$\end{document}-ary operation q (a “generalised if-then-else”) that induces a decomposition of the algebra into n factors through the so-called n-central elements. Varieties of nBA\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} (...) \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n\textrm{BA}$$\end{document}s share many remarkable properties with the variety of Boolean algebras and with primal varieties. Putting to good use the concept of a central element, we extend the Boolean power construction to that of a semiring power and we prove two representation theorems: (i) Any pure nBA\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$n\textrm{BA}$$\end{document} is isomorphic to the algebra of n-central elements of a Boolean vector space; (ii) Any member of a variety of nBAs with one generator is isomorphic to a Boolean power of this generator. This yields a new proof of Foster’s theorem on primal varieties. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:FINALITY AND INTELLIGIBILITY IN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ANTONIO MORENO, O.P. Graduate Theological Union Berkeley, California I N SCIENCE AND philosophy the final cause has always..,been controversial. To biologists the problem is complicated, but many believe that it is impossible fo give a complete description of the phenomenon of life without taking into oonsideration the teleological aspect of it. Thus Rensch: A special feature of all living organisms is the (...) fact that biological processes in general appear to be: 'meaningful.' They are not only appropriate to the immediate conditions, but also seem to be directed to some purpose which in individual development is only achievE:d at a relatively late stage and after many modications of form.1 Simpson's approach to this problem is shaped by the conviction that biology should attempt to answer all the questions, one of whioh is the reason for a living being's activity: "Here, ' What for '-the dreadful teleological question-not only is legitimate but also must eventually be asked about every vital phenomenon." 2 To understand how finality is realized in biology, let us first turn briefly to the nature of the final cause. The Nature of the Final CaU8e Aristotle deals with causes in the seeond book of his Physics: It is through the causes that scientific conclusions about mobile heings are demonstrated. Movement is intelligible when we discover the causes that produce it. Among the 1B. Rensch, Biophilosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 107. 2 G. Simpson, Th,is Vi.ew of Life (New York: Ifarcourt, 1964),.pp. 104-108. l ANTONIO MORENO, O.P. causes, the first and most important is the final cause, which is defined as "that for the sake of which a thing is done." 3 The final cause is the motive or reason which impels the agent to operate. Motion is the vehicle by whioh the goal is attained and, consequently, the other causes exercise their causality in dependence on the final cause. Hence, Aquinas says: " The final cause is called the cause of causes, because it is the cause of the causality of all the causes. For it is the cause of the efficient ca:usality; and the efficient cause is the cause of the causality of both the matter and the form.".j, The final cause directs, inclines, and attracts; impelled by this attraction, the efficient pushes and exercises its action. Aquinas asserts that those who reject the final cause destroy the intelligibility of science, inasmuch as they suppress the motive or first reason which justifies motion. The final cause is not the cause that executes the adion, for this is the agent's function, the efficient cause. The final cause is the reason why the agent acts. Therefore, the efficient cause presupposes the final: "The end is not the cause unless it moves the agent to act. If there is no action the final cause does not exist." 5 It is interesting to note that many biologists believe that the existence of finality destroys causality, when actually the opposite is true. For example, Simpson says: " The finalist was often the man who made a liberal use of ignaV'a ratio,... when you failed to explain a, thing by the ordinary process of causality, you could ' explain ' it 1by reference to some purpose of nature." 6 A simple desirn or attraction is not a cause unless it is fol3 Aristotle, Ph&sias (Trans. W. D. Ross) Book II, 3, 194b34. (Oxford, 1962). 4 Thomas Aquinas, In V Metaph., Iect. 3, n. 782. Of. Summa Theol., I, q. 105, a.5. 5 Thomas Aquinas, On the Power of God, trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1952), q.5, a. l. 6 G. Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 274. FINALITY IN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION 3 lowed by the activity of the agent. The desire to attain the goal is called the " intention " of the action, even when the goal is not achieved, as happens in many of our actions. Failure does not destroy finality; inactivity does. For that which is first in the intention is the last to be achieved as the effect. The intention does not... (shrink)

Thomas d’Aquin défend, contre saint Augustin, la thèse selon laquelle l’homme peut enseigner sa propre science à quelqu’un d’autre. Sa théorie sur l’enseignement de la science est développée dans la Somme de théologie, I, q. 117, a. 1 et dans les Questions disputées sur la vérité, q. 11, a. 1. À la lumière de cette doctrine, la présente étude explique pourquoi saint Thomas admet la thèse aristotélicienne du livre I de la Métaphysique selon laquelle la marque distinctive de la science (...) est qu’elle peut être enseignée. On soutient que, selon Thomas, la science peut être enseignée, d’une part, à cause de son caractère dérivatif et, d’autre part, parce qu’elle est fondée sur des principes vrais, évidents et certains. (shrink)

Andres Bonifacio is a household name in the history of the Philippines.His name has been included into many discussion and controversies revolvingover his identity as the Father of the Revolution and being the founder ofKataastaasang, Kagalanggalangag Katipunan . His poems serve as legaciesthat can unlock what kind of person is Andres. Through his poems, he expressedreflections about the situation of the Indios during the time of colonization andthe rage of the revolution. This descriptive study analyzed four selected poemsof Andres Bonifacio (...) and sought to find a new insight into the poems through a Neo-Marxist perspective using a Neo-Marxist lens, specifically the theory of cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci. Based on the content analysis of hispoems, it was found out that Bonifacio was affected by the false consciousnesspropagated by the colonizers during the Spanish settlement in the country. Italso answered the question whether Bonifacio is a patriotic man or a nationalistichero. Keywords: Literature, revolution, neo-marxism, poems, Andres Bonifacio, descriptiveresearch, Philippines. (shrink)

Born in Granada, April 30, 1901, Antonio De Luna was educated in the universities of Granada and of Madrid, continued his studies at Freiburg in Bresgovia, Paris, and Oxford and received the doctorate in law from Bologna. At the age of 27 he was appointed to the chair of natural law at the University of La Laguna in the Canary Isles, and from there went on to Salamanca and Granada. In 1932 he obtained the chair of international public law (...) of the Faculty of Law of the University of Madrid. At this time he began a period of intense professional activity: He was Secretary of the Federation of Spanish Associations of International Studies (1932–1936), founder and director of the Institute of International and Economic Studies (1932–1936), and Secretary of the Juridical Assessory Commission of the Spanish Republic (1931–1934). After the interruption of the Civil War, Luna, with a sense of continuity, resumed his essential tasks. (shrink)

This volume explores the work and thought of Edith Stein (1891-1942). It discusses in detail, and from new perspectives, the traditional areas of her thinking, including her ideas about women/feminism, theology, and metaphysics. In addition, it introduces readers to new and/or understudied areas of her thought, including her views on history, and her social and political philosophy. The guiding thread that connects all the essays in this book is the emphasis on new approaches and novel applications of her philosophy. The (...) contributions both extend the interdisciplinary implications of Stein's thinking for our contemporary world and apply her insights to questions of theatre, public history and biographical representation, education, politics, autism, theological debates, feminism, sexuality studies and literature. The volume brings together for the first time leading scholars in five language-groups, including English, German, Italian, French and Spanish-speaking authors, thereby reflecting an international and cosmopolitan approach to Stein studies. (shrink)

In this paper we extend the usual notion of model (asa structure) to the more general notion of CauchySequence of Structures in a similar way as rationalsare extending to real numbers by means of Cauchysequences of rationals. We show that the structurespace St is dense in thecomplete space CSt of Cauchysequences of structures and that CSt is compact in the (topo)logicalsense.

Linking the process of rational decision making to emotions, an award-winning scientist who has done extensive research with brain-damaged patients notes the dependence of thought processes on feelings and the body's survival-oriented regulators. 50,000 first printing.

Collection of studies on a leading moral philosopher and his work, or dedicated to him.

The publication of this book is an event in the making. All over the world scientists, psychologists, and philosophers are waiting to read Antonio Damasio's new theory of the nature of consciousness and the construction of the self. A renowned and revered scientist and clinician, Damasio has spent decades following amnesiacs down hospital corridors, waiting for comatose patients to awaken, and devising ingenious research using PET scans to piece together the great puzzle of consciousness. In his bestselling Descartes' Error, (...) Damasio revealed the critical importance of emotion in the making of reason. Building on this foundation, he now shows how consciousness is created. Consciousness is the feeling of what happens-our mind noticing the body's reaction to the world and responding to that experience. Without our bodies there can be no consciousness, which is at heart a mechanism for survival that engages body, emotion, and mind in the glorious spiral of human life. A hymn to the possibilities of human existence, a magnificent work of ingenious science, a gorgeously written book, The Feeling of What Happens is already being hailed as a classic. (shrink)

Columbia University Press's multivolume _Prison Notebooks_ is the only complete critical edition of Antonio Gramsci's seminal writings in English. Based on the authoritative Italian edition of Gramsci's work, _Quaderni del Carcere_, this comprehensive translation presents the intellectual as he ought to be read and understood, with critical notes that clarify Gramsci's history, culture, and sources; an index of names; and a contextualization of the thinker's ideas against his earlier writings and letters. This set includes notebooks 1 through 8 with (...) all attendant notes and materials and is an indispensible resource for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

An enquiry into plant consciousness requires, on the one hand, taking into account recent experiments in plant biology and, on the other hand, refining the theoretical framework of behaviour and the various degrees of cognition. The main goal of this contribution is to advance such a framework by comparing classical animal and human cognition approaches with the theories of minimal cognition. This leads us to interpret more carefully the various plant activities and to highlight the limits of classical theories of (...) zoocentric cognition. In particular, the article shows that the notions of cognition and consciousness are often abusively confused, and with that of behaviour. Once this ambiguity is removed, it is possible to better distinguish several meanings of consciousness and to evaluate their relevance to plant activities. (shrink)

O presente artigo aborda a ontologia de A. Sérgio, numa dupla vertente expositiva e crítica. Num primeiro momento enunciam-se os temas, o método e os critérios da abordagem, enquadrando a interpretação no próprio horizonte aberto pelo pensamento sergiano. Num segundo momento descobre-se a arquitectura do mundo tacitamente proposto pela sua gnosiologia e pela sua epistemologia idealistas, perspectivando-a como implícita "ontologia ideal". Num terceiro momento opera-se a análise crítica desta ontologia, segundo o duplo critério da consistência e da universalidade, retirando algumas (...) conclusões de âmbito genérico /// Le présente article aborde l'ontologie de A. Sérgio sous le double aspect d'exposition et de critique. En un premier moment on enoncerá le thème, la méthode et les critères de cette analyse, en insérant l'interprétation dans l'horizon même ouvert par la pensée de Sérgio. En un second moment, on découvre l'architectonique du monde tacitement proposé par sa gnoséologie et par son épistémologie idéalistes, en la montrant sous l'angle d'une ontologie "idéale" implicite. En un troisième moment, on passe a l'analyse critique de cette ontologie selon le double critère de la consistance et de l'universalité, pour tirer enfin quelques conclusions de caractère général /// This article begins with an indication of how the ontology of A. Sérgio may be approached. A description of its "ideal ontology" is then proposed on the basis of his idealist epistemology. Finally, a critical analysis of this ontology is attempted in order to evaluate its consistency and universality. (shrink)

Power is classically understood as the playing out of relations between the ruler and the ruled. Political impasse is often viewed as a moment in which no clear-cut delineation of power exists, resulting in an overwhelming sense of frustration or feeling stuck in a no-win situation. The new globalised world has produced a real shift in how power works: not only has power been concentrated in the hands of very few while many millions become more oppressed by radical shortages and (...) growing costs, but we also have a new category of political subjectivity in which many find themselves neither rulers nor radically oppressed. Those who live the neither/nor of contemporary power live the new global impasse. For those of us who are stuck and compelled to wait for dominant power to break, this book uncovers possibilities in thought, imagination, and self-appropriation through oikeiosis, that is, making oneself at home in oneself, and constancy. (shrink)

In this study, we examine the nature of the relationship between ethical leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), defined as unethical behavior conducted by employees with the aim of benefiting their organization, and whether the strength of the relationship differs between subordinates experiencing high and low identification with supervisor. Based on three-wave survey data obtained from 239 public sector employees in China, we find that ethical leadership has an inverted u-shaped (curvilinear) relationship with UPB. As the level of ethical leadership (...) increases from low to moderate, UPB increases; as the level of ethical leadership increases from moderate to high, UPB decreases. Further, we find that the strength of this inverted u-curve relationship differs between subordinates with high and low identification with supervisor. That is to say, the inverted u-shaped relationship between ethical leadership and UPB was stronger when subordinates experienced high levels of identification with supervisor. The theoretical and managerial implications of our findings for understanding how to manage UPB in an organizational context are discussed. (shrink)

A collection of essays exploring the nature and experience of love, its contradictions and limits, and its material and ideal forms. Drawing from leading contemporary Continental philosophers, contributors focus on love as it relates to such phenomena as trust, abuse, grief, death, hatred, politics, and desire"--Provided by publisher.

Nietzsche tells us at the end of Beyond Good and Evil that ‘I would go so far as to venture an order of rank among philosophers according to the rank of their laughter’. Nietzsche violently dislikes those philosophers who, as he puts it, have ‘sought to bring laughter into disrepute’. He particularly singles out Thomas Hobbes for this offence, adding that Hobbes's puritanical attitude is just what you would expect from an Englishman. Nietzsche's accusation is based, as it happens, on (...) a misquotation of what Hobbes says about laughter in philosophy. But Nietzsche was undoubtedly right to point out that Hobbes — in common with most thinkers of his age — took it for granted that laughter is a subject in which philosophers need to be seriously interested. My aim in what follows will be to investigate the grounds and origins of this belief, and then to seek to explain it. (shrink)

We show how to get canonical models from in which the nonstationary ideal on ω1 is ω1 dense and there is no P-point.

In the May Fourth era of the 1910s and 1920s, Confucius' image was associated closely with the conservative political forces that were increasingly regarded by many as the cause of the challenges the newly founded Republic was facing. With respect to Confucius, Hu Shi believed that the critical attitude engendered in the May Fourth era had brought Confucius down from a high pedestal and put him on a par with the contemporaries of his time. Hu Shi's main assessment of Confucius (...) as an ancient philosopher was shown in his doctoral dissertation and the later published A History of Ancient Chinese Philosophy, both appeared in the May Fourth era. During the May Fourth era, the interest in distinguishing “historical Confucius” from “iconic Confucius” was conducive to the emergence of the National Studies Movement, led by Zhang Taiyan, Hu Shi, Liang Qichao, and others. (shrink)

Taking Chun-chieh Huang’s ruminations on the defining character of Chinese historical thinking as a starting point, this essay discusses the ways in which historical cultures and traditions are compared and contrasted and explores some new ways of thinking. It argues that cultural comparisons often constitute two-way traffic and that attempts to characterize one historical culture, such as that of China, are often made relationally and temporally. When the Chinese tradition of historiography is perceived and presented in the West, it has (...) been regarded more or less as a counterexample against which the “unique” traits of Western historical thinking are thrown into relief. Given the hegemonic influence of Western scholarship in modern times, latter-day Chinese historians also valorize the East–West dichotomy. A closer look at this dichotomy, or the characterization of both cultures, reveals that it is not only relative but also relational and temporal. When the modern Chinese appeared impressed by the rigor of Rankean critical historiography, for example, they were essentially attempting to rediscover their own cultural past, for example, the eighteenth-century tradition of evidential learning, in adapting to the changing world. Our task today, the essay contends, is to historicize the specific context within which cultural comparisons are made and to go beyond readily accepted characterizations in order to reassess certain elements in a given culture, to apply historical wisdom, and to cope with the challenges we now face. (shrink)

Marxist Historiographies is the first book to examine the ebb and flow of Marxist historiography from a global and cross-cultural perspective. Since the eighteenth century, few schools of historical thought have exerted a more lasting impact than Marxism, and this impact extends far beyond the Western world within which it is most commonly analysed. Edited by two highly respected authors in the field and taking a truly global perspective on this topic, Marxist Historiographies demonstrates clearly the breadth and depth of (...) Marxism's influence in historical writing throughout the world and is essential reading for all students of historiography. (shrink)

On the life, philosophy and theology of Averroës, 1126-1198, Arab philospher.

On human values and norms, their different kinds and theories are discussed in historical perspective.

Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state (...) policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of trangressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices. (shrink)

A serious attempt to integrate ethics in management was done by Professor Juan Antonio Pérez López (1934–1996). His thought represents a break with current scholarly thinking on these subjects. The purpose of this article is to explain some of the most significant aspects of his theories, relating basically to his recourse to ethics as what defines the characteristic behavior of human beings, considered as individuals and as members of organizations. Pérez López used the anthropological conception underlying the ethics of (...) Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas to build a solid base for that ethics, starting from the decision-making process. He then used that ethical base to point to the kind of action theory and organization theory that could most effectively assist the human development of people and organizations. (shrink)

The theory of the social responsibility of the firm oscillates between two extremes: one that reduces the firm's responsibility to the obtainment of (the greatest possible) profit for its shareholders, and another that extends the firm's responsibility to include a wide range of actors with an interest or "stake" in the firm. The stakeholder theory of the social responsibility of business is more appealing from an ethical point of view, and yet it lacks a solid foundation that would be acceptable (...) to a variety of schools of thought.In this paper I argue that the stakeholder theory could be founded on the concept of the common good. First, I explain the foundations of the theory of the common good, the concept itself, how it relates to the individual good, and its role in the firm. Following that, I explain how the theory of the common good could be applied to the stakeholder theory. Finally, I draw some conclusions. (shrink)

In this article we present an advanced version of Dual-PECCS, a cognitively-inspired knowledge representation and reasoning system aimed at extending the capabilities of artificial systems in conceptual categorization tasks. It combines different sorts of common-sense categorization (prototypical and exemplars-based categorization) with standard monotonic categorization procedures. These different types of inferential procedures are reconciled according to the tenets coming from the dual process theory of reasoning. On the other hand, from a representational perspective, the system relies on the hypothesis of conceptual (...) structures represented as heterogeneous proxytypes. Dual-PECCS has been experimentally assessed in a task of conceptual categorization where a target concept illustrated by a simple common-sense linguistic description had to be identified by resorting to a mix of categorization strategies, and its output has been compared to human responses. The obtained results suggest that our approach can be beneficial to improve the representational and reasoning conceptual capabilities of standard cognitive artificial systems, and –in addition– that it may be plausibly applied to different general computational models of cognition. The current version of the system, in fact, extends our previous work, in that Dual-PECCS is now integrated and tested into two cognitive architectures, ACT-R and CLARION, implementing different assumptions on the underlying invariant structures governing human cognition. Such integration allowed us to extend our previous evaluation. (shrink)

This exciting new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of the contemporary state of the field. The editors' introduction and forty-five essays cover feminist critical engagements with philosophy and adjacent scholarly fields, as well as feminist approaches to current debates and crises across the world. Authors cover topics ranging from the ways in which feminist philosophy attends to other systems of oppression, and the gendered, racialized, and classed assumptions embedded in philosophical concepts, to feminist perspectives on prominent subfields of philosophy. The (...) first section contains chapters that explore feminist philosophical engagement with mainstream and marginalized histories and traditions, while the second section parses feminist philosophy's contributions to with numerous philosophical subfields, for example metaphysics and bioethics. A third section explores what feminist philosophy can illuminate about crucial moral and political issues of identity, gender, the body, autonomy, prisons, among numerous others. The Handbook concludes with the field's engagement with other theories and movements, including trans studies, queer theory, critical race, theory, postcolonial theory, and decolonial theory. The volume provides a rigorous but accessible resource for students and scholars who are interested in feminist philosophy, and how feminist philosophers situate their work in relation to the philosophical mainstream and other disciplines. Above all it aims to showcase the rich diversity of subject matter, approach, and method among feminist philosophers. (shrink)

Antonio Negri, one of the world's leading scholars on Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and his contemporary legacy, offers a straightforward explanation of the philosopher's elaborate arguments and a persuasive case for his ongoing relevance. Responding to a resurgent interest in Spinoza's thought and its potential application to contemporary global issues, Negri demonstrates the thinker's special value to politics, philosophy, and related disciplines. Negri's work is both a return to and an advancement of his initial affirmation of Spinozian thought in _The (...) Savage Anomaly_. He further defends his understanding of the philosopher as a proto-postmodernist, or a thinker who is just now, with the advent of the postmodern, becoming contemporary. Negri also connects Spinoza's theories to recent trends in political philosophy, particularly the reengagement with Carl Schmitt's "political theology," and the history of philosophy, including the argument that Spinoza belongs to a "radical enlightenment." By positioning Spinoza as a contemporary revolutionary intellectual, Negri addresses and effectively defeats twentieth-century critiques of the thinker waged by Jacques Derrida, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of (...) judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

We propose a nonmonotonic Description Logic of typicality able to account for the phenomenon of the combination of prototypical concepts. The proposed logic relies on the logic of typicality ALC + TR, whose semantics is based on the notion of rational closure, as well as on the distributed semantics of probabilistic Description Logics, and is equipped with a cognitive heuristic used by humans for concept composition. We first extend the logic of typicality ALC + TR by typicality inclusions of the (...) form p :: T(C) v D, whose intuitive meaning is that “we believe with degree p about the fact that typical Cs are Ds”. As in the distributed semantics, we define different scenarios containing only some typicality inclusions, each one having a suitable probability. We then exploit such scenarios in order to ascribe typical properties to a concept C obtained as the combination of two prototypical concepts. We also show that reasoning in the proposed Description Logic is EXPTIME-complete as for the underlying standard Description Logic ALC. (shrink)

We present a new metaphysical framework for physics that is conceptually clear, ontologically parsimonious, and empirically adequate. This framework relies on the notion of self-subsisting structure, that is, a set of fundamental physical elements whose individuation and behavior are described in purely relational terms, without any need for a background spacetime. Although the specification of the fundamental elements of the ontology depends on the particular physical domain considered---and is thus susceptible to scientific progress---, the empirically successful structural features of the (...) framework are preserved through theory change. The kinematics and dynamics of these self-subsisting structures are technically implemented using the theoretical framework of Pure Shape Dynamics, which provides a completely relational physical description of a system in terms of the intrinsic geometry of a suitably defined space called shape space. (shrink)

We defend, from a contractarian perspective, that the fair price of an insurance policy is the amount that the contracting parties agree when they are both equally uncertain about the insured event. Drawing on the approach developed by R. Sugden in _The Community of Advantage_, we answer two standard objections raised against contractarianism in the actuarial sciences: (1) people are not wise enough to assess their actuarial risks; (2) they are not rational enough to decide which insurance policy suits them (...) better. We show under which circumstances people can make fair actuarial agreements, without presupposing any objective risk or rationality benchmarks. (shrink)

Summary Robert Boyle did not subordinate chemistry to mechanical philosophy. He was in fact reluctant to explain chemical phenomena by having recourse to the mechanical properties of particles. For him chemistry provided a primary way of penetrating into nature. In his chemical works he employed corpuscles endowed with chemical properties as his explanans. Boyle's chemistry was corpuscular, rather than mechanical. As Boyle's views of seminal principles show, his corpuscular philosophy cannot be described as a purely mechanical theory of matter. Boyle's (...) classification of corpuscles allowed him to connect his corpuscular views of matter with chemistry. Boyle did not rule out the possibility of a classification of chemical substances based on their properties: his aim was to reform the received classification. (shrink)

This paper develops the very basic notions of analysis in a weak second-order theory of arithmetic BTFA whose provably total functions are the polynomial time computable functions. We formalize within BTFA the real number system and the notion of a continuous real function of a real variable. The theory BTFA is able to prove the intermediate value theorem, wherefore it follows that the system of real numbers is a real closed ordered field. In the last section of the paper, we (...) show how to interpret the theory BTFA in Robinson's theory of arithmetic Q. This fact entails that the elementary theory of the real closed ordered fields is interpretable in Q. (shrink)