_Anthropic Bias_ explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought (...) experiments and paradoxes: the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ; evolutionary theory ; the problem of time's arrow ; quantum physics ; game-theory problems with imperfect recall ; even traffic analysis. _Anthropic Bias_ argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox. (shrink)

The Argument from Fine-Tuning, a relatively new version of the Design Argument, has given rise to an objection, based on what is known as the An­thropic Principle. It is alleged that the argument is fallacious in that it involves an observation selection effect—that given the existence of intelligent living observers, the observation that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is not surprising. Many find this objection puzzling, or at least easily refutable. My main contribution (...) to the discussion is to offer an analysis of what is wrong (and what is right) in the objection. (shrink)

Complexity and life as we know it depend crucially on the laws and constants of nature as well as the boundary conditions, which seem at least partly “fine-tuned.” That deserves an explanation: Why are they the way they are? This essay discusses and systematizes the main options for answering these foundational questions. Fine-tuning might just be an illusion, or a result of irreducible chance, or nonexistent because nature could not have been otherwise (which might be shown within a fundamental theory (...) if some constants or laws could be reduced to boundary conditions or boundary conditions to laws), or it might be a product of selection: either observational selection (weak anthropic principle) within a vast multiverse of many different realizations of physical parameters, or a kind of cosmological natural selection making the measured parameter values quite likely within a multiverse of many different values, or even a teleological or intentional selection or a coevolutionary development, depending on a more or less goal-directed participatory contribution of life and intelligence. In contrast to observational selection, which is not predictive, an observer-independent selection mechanism must generate unequal reproduction rates of universes, a peaked probability distribution, or another kind of differential frequency, resulting in a stronger explanatory power. The hypothesis of Cosmological Artificial Selection (CAS) even suggests that our universe may be a vast computer simulation or could have been created and transcended by one. If so, this would be a far-reaching answer – within a naturalistic framework! – of fundamental questions such as: Why did the big bang and fine-tunings occur, what is the role of intelligence in the universe, and how can it escape cosmic doomsday? This essay critically discusses some of the premises and implications of CAS and related problems, both with the proposal itself and its possible physical realization: Does CAS deserve to be considered as a convincing explanation of cosmic fine-tuning? Is life incidental, or does CAS revalue it? And are life and intelligence ultimately doomed, or might CAS rescue them? (shrink)

In a series of articles and in a recent book, What Darwin Got Wrong, Jerry Fodor has objected to Darwin’s principle of natural selection on the grounds that it assumes nature has intentions.1 Despite the near universal rejection of Fodor’s argument by biologists and philosophers of biology (myself included),2 I now believe he was almost right. I will show this through a historical examination of a principle that Darwin thought as important as natural selection, his (...) class='Hi'>principle of divergence. The principle was designed to explain a phenomenon obvious to any observer of nature, namely, that animals and plants form a hierarchy of clusters. Theodosius Dobzhansky made this the motivating observation of his great synthesizing work, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937): “the living world is not a single array of individuals in which any two variants are connected by a series of intergrades, but an array of more or less distinctly separate arrays, intermediates between which are absent or at least rare. . . Small.. (shrink)

Carter’s anthropic principle reminds us that intelligent life can find itself only in life-permitting times, places or universes. The principle concerns a possible observational selection effect, not a designing deity. It has no special concern with humans, nor does it say that intelligent life is inevitable and common. Barrow and Tipler, who discuss all this, are not biologically ignorant. As argued in "Universes" (Leslie, 1989) they may well be right in thinking that "fine tuning" of force strengths (...) and particle masses, without which life would be impossible, proves the reality of God or else of multiple universes plus observational selection. (shrink)

Selection within the educational domain breeds a special kind of suspicion. Whether it is the absence of transparency in the selection procedure, the observable outcomes of the selection, or the criteria of selection itself, there is much to corroborate the suspicion many have that selection in practice is unfair. And certainly as it concerns primary and secondary education, the principle of educational equity requires that children not have their educational experiences or opportunities determined by (...) their postcode, their ethnic status, first language, or family wealth. Indeed educational opportunities determined by unearned advantage or disadvantage offend against basic notions of fairness. But are public schools even permitted to select their students, and if so, how can selection procedures used by schools be best structured to achieve equitable ends? In this article we delineate, describe, and defend what we believe are the essential features of selection and also why we need to pay equal attention to both the outcomes and the processes leading to those outcomes. Provided the selection is motivated and guided by the right reasons, as well as appropriately monitored, we argue that selection can be equity promoting. (shrink)

Summary In several places Popper describes a little experiment in which an audience is given the non-specific command ‚Observe!‘ He draws a number of conclusions from this experiment, in particular that observation takes place in the presence of theoretical problems, questions, hypotheses or points of view. The paper argues that while Popper's experiment is instructive, it hardly supports the strong conclusions he draws about the theory-dominance of observation in science. In particular, it is argued that talk of principles of (...) class='Hi'>selection which guide us to relevant observations, rather than the host of irrelevant observations of the naive inductivist, is misleading. Rather, it is the goals, aims, motives or interests of an observer that guide observation and these need not always involve a theoretical component. (shrink)

The nature of attention is one of the oldest and most central problems in psychology. A huge amount of research has been produced on this subject in the last half century, especially on attention in the visual modality, but a general explanation has remained elusive. Many still view attention research as a field that is fundamentally fragmented. This book takes a different perspective and presents a unified theory of visual attention: the TVA model. The TVA model explains the many aspects (...) of visual attention by just two mechanisms for selection of information: filtering and pigeonholing. These mechanisms are described in a set of simple equations, which allow TVA to mathematically model a large number of classical results in the attention literature. The theory explains psychological and neuroscientific findings by the same equations; TVA is a complete theory of visual attention, linking mind and brain. Aimed at advanced students and professional researchers, Principles of Visual Attention contains a detailed review of the most important research done on attention in vision, spanning cognitive psychology, brain imaging, patient studies, and recordings from single cells in the visual cortex. The book explains the TVA model and shows how it accounts for attentional effects observed across all the research areas described. Principles of Visual Attention offers a uniquely integrated view on a central topic in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 38.2 (2004) 53-66 [Access article in PDF] Art Selection, or the Preservation of Artworks in the Struggle for Art Christopher Perricone The argument of George C. Williams's book Adaptation and Natural Selection is against what biologists call the group selectionist view — that individuals will act on behalf of their species, or at least on behalf of the group to which they (...) belong.1 Williams showed, and now most biologists agree, "no creature could ever evolve the ability to help its species at the expense of itself. Only when the two interests coincided would it act selflessly."2 According to Matt Ridley, Williams is one of the towering figures in contemporary biology. Williams helps us to understand better what natural selection is and consequently helps us to understand better our place in the world. Williams claims that when we are dealing with life, "we are forced to invoke natural selection to achieve a complete explanation of an observed system."3 Physics and chemistry alone are not sufficient to explain life. Williams gives the example of a falling apple. If one has to explain the trajectory of the apple, the principles of mechanics are sufficient for providing an adequate explanation of the phenomenon. If, however, we were asked how the apple acquired its various properties, and why it has these properties instead of others, we would need the theory of natural selection, at least by implication. Only thus could we explain why the apple has a waterproof wax on the outside...why it contains dormant embryos....We would find that an impressive list of structural details and processes of the apple can be understood as elements of a design for an efficient role in the propagation of the tree from which it came."4Of course, a little over a hundred years before Williams published his book, Charles Darwin published Origin of Species, in which natural selection is the linchpin of his theory of evolution. Natural selection for Darwin not only helped to explain the competitive climate of the living world but its luscious fecundity as well. Natural selection works like this: Let's say you [End Page 53] have a population of large beaked and small beaked birds. The environment in which the birds live provides them with an abundant and nutritious supply of both large and small seeds. Typically the small beaked birds eat the small seeds. The large beaked birds are capable of eating both small and large seeds. However, a blight occurs killing off all the small seed producing trees causing the food supply of the small beaked birds to diminish to virtually nil. Given that the small beaked birds are unable to feed on the continued supply of large seeds, they are selected out or eliminated from that environment: either they must seek out another environment, or they die. The large beaked birds, however, are in this case more adaptable to the environment because they can eat large seeds, survive, and pass on their largebeaked traits to the next generation. Darwin characterizes this process as "the struggle for life." He says: Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from what ever cause proceeding, if they be in any way profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relation to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. The offspring, also, will thus have a better chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.5Darwin sums up his discussion of natural selection by saying that the idea explains... (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the concept of complexity. I show that the principle of natural selection as acting on complexity gives a solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly contradictory notion of generally increasing complexity and the observation that most species don’t follow such a trend. I suggest the process of evolution to be illustrated by means of a schematic diagram of complexity versus time, interpreted as a form of the Tree of Life. The suggested model (...) implies that complexity is cumulatively increasing, giving evolution a direction, an arrow of time, thus also implying that the latest emerging species will be the one with the highest level of complexity. Since the human species is the last species evolved in the evolutionary process seen at large, this means that we are the species with the highest complexity. The model implies that the human species constitutes an integral part of organic evolution, yet rendering us the exclusive status as the species of the highest complexity. (shrink)

AimsThis study aimed to investigate barriers in the observation of professional ethics during clinical care from a nursing viewpoint. Also, it examined the association between these barriers and nurse demographic variables.MethodsA descriptive-analytic design was carried out on 207 nurses working in selected hospitals within an urban area of Iran in 2019. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire containing 33 questions that measured barriers to observation of professional ethics. The questionnaire measures three domains of management, environment and individual care.ResultsIn the (...) management dimension, the most important barrier preventing observation of professional ethics was the shortage of personnel. For the environmental dimension, biological changes due to working on the nightshift, and for the individual care dimension, a lack of time were the most important barriers preventing observation of clinical ethics. Findings additionally highlighted a significantly inverse association between barriers to observing professional ethics and the male gender, participating in the ethics workshop and high work-level experiences.ConclusionsIt is suggested that nursing managers in hospitals correct and remove obstacles with careful planning and emphasis on principles and standards of care including environmental and managerial factors and training professional ethics to nurses. (shrink)

The central role played by Darwin's analogy between selection under domestication and that under nature has been adequately appreciated, but I have indicated how important the domesticated organisms also were to other elements of Darwin's theory of evolution-his recognition of “the constant principle of change,” for instance, of the imperfection of adaptation, and of the extent of variation in nature. The further development of his theory and its presentation to the public likewise hinged on frequent reference to domesticates.We (...) have seen that Darwin's reliance on the analogy between domesticated varieties and wild species was a bold and original step, in light of contemporary views on the nature of domesticates. However, as Darwin undoubtedly foresaw, his reliance on the analogy created difficulties as well as solving problems, and these began with his Malthusian codiscoverer of the principle of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace's paper “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” presented to the Linnean Scoiety along with the first public unveiling of Darwin's theory, states: We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature.62Much has been made of the similarity of views of Darwin and Wallace, but this quotation surely reveals how utterly different their views were on what to Darwin was an important matter. Several critics of the Origin saw Darwin's reliance on the domesticates as his Achilles heel. As Young has pointed out, Samuel Wilberforce included the following passage in his attack on the Origin: Nor must we pass over unnoticed the transference of the argument from the domesticated to the untamed animals. Assuming that man as the selector can do much in a limited time, Mr. Darwin argues that Nature, a more powerful, a more continuous power, working over vastly extended ranges of time, can do more. But why should Nature, so uniform and persistent in all her operations, tend in this instance to change? Why should she become a selector of varieties?63Another critic, Fleeming Jenkin, found the analogy a weakness in Darwin's theory because of the limited extent of variation in any one direction in domestic animals and plants.64 We have already seen that Darwin had confided a similar view to his notebook thirty years earlier, but changed his mind as a result of his profound study of domesticates. De Beer's reference to “an English country gentleman's knowledge of domestic plants and animals and their breeding”65 fails totally to recognize the originality and depth of Darwin's knowledge of domesticates.Why did Darwin, against the currents of his time, rely so heavily on mankind's experience with domesticated organisms to shape his theory about species in nature? On reason is that only with domesticates was an approach that came close to experimental verification possible. Darwin fully realized the inadequacies of the experiment, as is emphasized by his repeated contrasting of selection under nature and selection by man. Yet the extensive experience and data of plant and animal breeders offered the only reliable base against which Darwin could continually challenge his views. As he wrote in the introduction to Variation, with domestication, “man ... may be said to have been trying an experiment on a gigantic scale.”66 Given Darwin's high opinion of the quantitative work of Malthus and Quetelet (as emphasized by Schweber),67 and his unremitting efforts to secure data by which to test his theories, it was inevitable that he should attach high significance to domesticated varieties. John Tyndall, in his Belfast address of 1874, said: “The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, not in experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought.”68 Darwin would have agreed with the latter thought, but I think he would have challenged the preceding one on the grounds that long experience with domesticated varieties did provide an element of experimental demonstration. It gave him confidence in his theory, and he used his vast knowledge of artificial selection boldly and creatively. (shrink)

We present probabilistic approaches to check the validity of selected connexive principles within the setting of coherence. Connexive logics emerged from the intuition that conditionals of the form If ∼A, then A, should not hold, since the conditional’s antecedent ∼A contradicts its consequent A. Our approach covers this intuition by observing that for an event A the only coherent probability assessment on the conditional event A|~A is p(A|~A)=0 . Moreover, connexive logics aim to capture the intuition that conditionals should express (...) some “connection” between the antecedent and the consequent or, in terms of inferences, validity should require some connection between the premise set and the conclusion. This intuition is covered by a number of principles, a selection of which we analyze in our contribution. We present two approaches to connexivity within coherence-based probability logic. Specifically, we analyze connections between antecedents and consequents firstly, in terms of probabilistic constraints on conditional events (in the sense of defaults, or negated defaults) and secondly, in terms of constraints on compounds of conditionals and iterated conditionals. After developing different notions of negations and notions of validity, we analyze the following connexive principles within both approaches: Aristotle’s Theses, Aristotle’s Second Thesis, Abelard’s First Principle and selected versions of Boethius’ Theses. We conclude by remarking that coherence-based probability logic offers a rich language to investigate the validity of various connexive principles. (shrink)

Across the world people in different societies structure their family relationships in many different ways. These relationships become encoded in their languages as kinship terminology, a word set that maps variably onto a vast genealogical grid of kinship categories, each of which could in principle vary independently. But the observed diversity of kinship terminology is considerably smaller than the enormous theoretical design space. For the past century anthropologists have captured this variation in typological schemes with only a small number (...) of model system types. Whether those types exhibit the internal co-selection of parts implicit in their use is an outstanding question, as is the sufficiency of typologies in capturing variation as a whole. We interrogate the coherence of classic kinship typologies using modern statistical approaches and systematic data from a new database, Kinbank. We first survey the canonical types and their assumed patterns of internal and external co-selection, then present two data-driven approaches to assess internal coherence. Our first analysis reveals that across parents’ and ego’s generation, typology has limited predictive value: knowing the system in one generation does not reliably predict the other. Though we detect limited co-selection between generations, “disharmonic” systems are equally common. Second, we represent structural diversity with a novel multidimensional approach we term kinship space. This approach reveals, for ego’s generation, some broad patterning consistent with the canonical typology, but diversity is considerably higher than classical typologies suggest. Our results strongly challenge the descriptive adequacy of the set of canonical kinship types. (shrink)

When Charles Darwin published his theory in 1859 the biological community gave very different receptions to the idea of evolution and to the theory of natural selection. Evolution was accepted as widely and rapidly as natural selection was rejected. Most biologists were ready to accept that evolution had occurred, but not that natural selection was its cause. They preferred other explanations of evolution, such as theories of big directed variation, or admitted that they did not know its (...) cause. Darwin himself never maintained that natural selection was the sole cause of evolution. He thought of it as one among several causes, and did not specify how much evolution had occurred by the natural selection of fortuitous variations, and how much by other factors such as the inherited effects of use and disuse. However, Darwin did maintain that natural selection was in principle capable of explaining all the observed properties of organisms. He did not think that there were some characteristics that were particularly likely to have evolved by natural selection, and other kinds that were not. Against this, many of this critics thought that there were characteristics that natural selection was particularly powerless to explain. Thus it could not account for characteristics that were detrimental, or those that seemed useless (such as species differences), or those that were of too little importance for natural selection to have favoured them. There were also characteristics of such complexity that it was unimaginable that natural selection could have built them up in tiny stages from fortuitous, undirected variants. The present essay will be concerned with just one, the last mentioned, of these kinds of characteristics. (shrink)

My dissertation philosophically analyzes experiments in evolutionary biology, an area of science where experimental approaches have tended to supplement, rather than supercede more traditional approaches, such as field observations. I conduct the analysis on the basis of three case studies of famous episodes in the history of selection experiments: H. B. D. Kettlewell's investigations of industrial melanism in the Peppered Moth, Biston betularia; two of Th. Dobzhansky's studies of adaptive radiation in the fruit fly, Drosophila pseudoobscura; and M. Wade's (...) studies of group selection in the flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum. The case studies analyze the arguments and evidence these investigators used to identify the respective roles of experiments and other forms of inquiry in their investigations. I discuss three philosophical issues. ;First, the analysis considers whether these selection experiments fit models of experimentation developed in the context of micro-and high energy physics by Allan Franklin and Peter Galison . My analysis documents that the methods used in the case studies can be accommodated on both Franklin and Galison's views. I conclude the case studies do not support claims regarding the relative autonomy of biology. ;Second, the analysis documents a number of important roles for life history data acquired by strictly observational means in the process of experimentation, from identification of research problems and development of experimental designs to interpretation of results. Divorced from this context experiments in biology make no sense. Thus, in principle, experimental approaches cannot replace more traditional methods. ;Third, the analysis examines a superficial tension between the use of experiments, which I characterize by the presence of artificial intervention, and the stated goal of most investigations in evolutionary biology, that of understanding how systems behave in the absence of intervention. Experiments involve trade-offs between the control one has over the circumstances of the study and how informative the study is with regard to questions of interest to biologists regarding specific, actual systems in nature. Experimental simulations of natural phenomena in other historical sciences involve similar trade-offs, but there are reasons for believing this tension is more prominent in biology. (shrink)

The success of a few theories in statistical thermodynamics can be correlated with their selectivity to reality. These are the theories of Boltzmann, Gibbs, end Einstein. The starting point is Carnot’s theory, which defines implicitly the general selection of reality relevant to thermodynamics. The three other theories share this selection, but specify it further in detail. Each of them separates a few main aspects within the scope of the implicit thermodynamic reality. Their success grounds on that selection. (...) Those aspects can be represented by corresponding oppositions. These are: macroscopic – microscopic; elements – states; relational – non-relational; and observable – theoretical. They can be interpreted as axes of independent qualities constituting a common qualitative reference frame shared by those theories. Each of them can be situated in this reference frame occupying a different place. This reference frame can be interpreted as an additional selection of reality within Carnot’s initial selection describable as macroscopic and both observable and theoretical. The deduced reference frame refers implicitly to many scientific theories independent of their subject therefore defining a general and common space or subspace for scientific theories (not for all). The immediate conclusion is: The examples of a few statistical thermodynamic theories demonstrate that the concept of “reality” is changed or generalized, or even exemplified (i.e. “de-generalized”) from a theory to another. Still a few more general suggestions referring the scientific realism debate can be added: One can admit that reality in scientific theories is some partially shared common qualitative space or subspace describable by relevant oppositions and rather independent of their subject quite different in general. Many or maybe all theories can be situated in that space of reality, which should develop adding new dimensions in it for still newer and newer theories. Its division of independent subspaces can represent the many-realities conception. The subject of a theory determines some relevant subspace of reality. This represents a selection within reality, relevant to the theory in question. The success of that theory correlates essentially with the selection within reality, relevant to its subject. (shrink)

Although perceptual grouping has been widely studied, its mechanisms remain poorly understood. We propose a neural model of grouping that, through top-down control of its circuits, implements a grouping strategy involving both a connection strategy (which elements to connect) and a selection strategy (that defines spatiotemporal properties of a selection signal to segment target elements and facilitate identification). We apply the model to a letter discrimination task that investigated relationships among uniform connectedness and the grouping principles of proximity (...) and shape similarity. Participants reported whether small circles formed a global letter E or H, and these circles could be connected by a line or be embedded in a matrix of squares. In the model, a good grouping strategy for this task consists of a connection strategy that connects circles but not squares for all conditions and a selection strategy that uses a selection signal of varying size, depending on whether squares were present. Consistent with empirical results, which were verified in two replication studies, model performance is worse with distractor squares, and line connectors improve performance only in the condition with squares. Rather than relying on abstract grouping principles, we show how the empirical results can be explained in terms of observers implementing a task-dependent grouping strategy that promotes overall performance. (shrink)

“Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence” is a slogan that is popular among scientists and nonscientists alike. This article assesses its truth by using a probabilistic tool, the Law of Likelihood. Qualitative questions (“Is E evidence about H ?”) and quantitative questions (“How much evidence does E provide about H ?”) are both considered. The article discusses the example of fossil intermediates. If finding a fossil that is phenotypically intermediate between two extant species provides evidence that those species have (...) a common ancestor, does failing to find such a fossil constitute evidence that there was no common ancestor? Or should the failure merely be chalked up to the imperfection of the fossil record? The transitivity of the evidence relation in simple causal chains provides a broader context, which leads to discussion of the fine-tuning argument, the anthropic principle, and observation selection effects. (shrink)

Living labs are interdisciplinary and participatory initiatives aimed at bringing research closer to practice by involving stakeholders in all stages of research. Living labs align with the principles of participatory research methods as well as recent insights about how participatory ways of generating knowledge help to change practices in concrete settings with respect to specific problems. The participatory, open, and discussion‐oriented nature of living labs could be ideally suited to accompany ethical reflection and changes ensuing from reflection. To our knowledge, (...) living labs have not been explicitly trialed and reported in ethics literature. In this discussion paper, we report and discuss four initial issues that marked the process of setting up a living lab in ethics: (1) determining the goals and expected outcomes of an ethics living lab; (2) establishing operational procedures; (3) selecting communities and defining pilot projects; and (4) adopting a lens to tackle emerging questions and challenges. We explain these four issues and present the paths taken based on the novel and specific orientation, that is, living ethics, at the basis of this project. In alignment with living ethics and É‐LABO, we approach challenges as learning opportunities to ask not only “how” questions but also “why” questions. We hope that this discussion paper informed by our experience helps to clarify the theoretical, methodological, and practical approaches necessary to successfully adopt and employ living labs in ethics. (shrink)

Summary The object of this study is to analyse certain aspects of the debate between David Brewster and William Whewell concerning the probability of extra-terrestrial life, in order to illustrate the nature, constitution and condition of natural theology in the decades immediately preceding the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's Origin of species. The argument is directed against a stylised picture of natural theology which has been drawn from a backward projection of the Darwinian antithesis between natural selection and (...) certain forms of the design argument. Contrary to the popular image of natural theology as an essentially static, autonomous and monolithic set of presuppositions about the existence of design in nature, the paper underlines the existence of a fundamental divergence of strategies within natural theology, a divergence that, in the case of Brewster and Whewell, can be correlated with the religious cultures to which they most closely belonged. The fact that, in the plurality of worlds debate, their respective positions became mutually exclusive suggests that the fragmented and disordered state of natural theology, only too apparent before the Darwinian impact, was occasioned as much by the ulterior problem of rationalising the excessive space of the astronomers and the excessive time of the geologists as it was by any principle of the uniformity of nature in the biological sphere. The argument is substantiated with particular reference to the breakdown in communication as Brewster and Whewell developed conflicting strategies to expose the ?development hypothesis? that had appeared in Vestiges. Their altercation also reveals a certain conflict of status concerning the conclusions of astronomy and geology which, in turn, suggests that tensions between the physical and life sciences were not peculiar to the period following the publication of Darwin's theory. (shrink)

This contribution analyses the scientific and political meaning of the concept of ‘population’ within Thomas Robert Malthus’ thought. It is here argued that by encapsulating ‘population’ in a scientific principle, the author not only aimed at contrasting radical and revolutionary theories of his time; he was also looking for a renovation of the role principles hold in scientific reasoning. He considered this crucial for delineating a plausible science for such an elusive political object as society. Through an examination of (...) key passages of Malthus’ theoretical production – his critique of previous definitions of ‘population’, his reassessment of the natural history of society, and the use of selected metaphors to explain his political thought – it is possible to observe how the author attempted to naturalize society and the inequalities arising from its historical laws. As shown in the conclusions, Malthus’ scientific and political effort was directed towards questioning possibilities to reduce the history of social relations to a path of rational progress, which is consistent with the way he re-conceptualized ‘population’ as regarding the fate of the people and their chances to transform the future in the plausible outcome of their political action in the present. (shrink)

This paper endeavors to look into the physiognomical syllogism as occurring in Avicenna’s different summae and to tentatively discuss possible reasons for its select occurrence in some of them and not others, as well as possible implications of this selectiveness. These occurrences are in principle reducible to two different textual versions. Further, it will be argued that the inclusion of this syllogism might be connected with a certain nearness of the respective works to Aristotle, due to an assumed personal (...) disfavoring of this syllogism by Avicenna. However, there is also some evidence for Avicenna’s usage of the ps.-Aristotelian Physiognomics. (shrink)

Sometimes we learn what the world is like, and sometimes we learn where in the world we are. Are there any interesting differences between the two kinds of cases? The main aim of this article is to argue that learning where we are in the world brings into view the same kind of observation selection effects that operate when sampling from a population. I will first explain what observation selection effects are ( Section 1 ) and how they (...) are relevant to learning where we are in the world ( Section 2 ). I will show how measurements in the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics can be understood as learning where you are in the world via some observation selection effect ( Section 3 ). I will apply a similar argument to the Sleeping Beauty Problem ( Section 4 ) and explain what I take the significance of the analogy to be ( Section 5 ). Finally, I will defend the Restricted Principle of Indifference on which some of my arguments depend ( Section 6 ). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: * Introduction * Multiverse Explanation * Theistic Explanation * Single-Universe Naturalism * Concluding Thoughts * Note * References * Further Reading.

Recent advances in string theory and inflationary cosmology have led to a surge of interest in the possible existence of an ensemble of cosmic regions, or “universes”, among the members of which key physical parameters, such as the masses of elementary particles and the coupling constants, might assume different values. The observed values in our cosmic region are then attributed to an observer selection effect (the so-called anthropic principle). The assemblage of universes has been dubbed “the multiverse”. (...) In this paper we review the multiverse concept and the criticisms that have been advanced against it on both scientific and philosophical grounds. (shrink)

Currently, string theory represents the only advanced approach to a unification of all interactions, including gravity. In spite of the more than thirty years of its existence, the sequence of metamorphosis it ran through, and the ever more increasing number of involved physicists, until now, it did not make any empirically testable predictions. Because there are no empirical data incompatible with the quantum field theoretical standard model of elementary particle physics and with general relativity, the only motivations for string theory (...) rest in the mutual incompatibility of the standard model and of general relativity as well as in the metaphysics of the unification program of physics, aimed at a final unified theory of all interactions including gravity. But actually, it is completely unknown which physically interpretable principles could form the basis of string theory. At the moment, "string theory" is no theory at all, but rather a labyrinthic structure of mathematical procedures and intuitions which get their justification from the fact that they, at least formally, reproduce general relativity and the standard model of elementary particle physics as low energy approximations. However, there are now strong indications that string theory does not only reproduce the dynamics and symmetries of our standard model, but a plethora of different scenarios with different low energy nomologies and symmetries. String theory seems to describe not only our world, but an immense landscape of possible worlds. So far, all attempts to find a selection principle which could be motivated intratheoretically remained without success. So, recently the idea that the low energy nomology of our world, and therefore also the observable phenomenology, could be the result of an anthropic selection from a vast arena of nomologically different scenarios entered string theory. Although multiverse scenarios and anthropic selection are not only motivated by string theory, but lead also to a possible explanation for the fine tuning of the universe, they are concepts which transcend the framework defined by the epistemological and methodological rules which conventionally form the basis of physics as an empirical science. (shrink)

The reader will be a patient one indeed who has not long since raised in his mind what appear to be pertinent and pressing problems concerning the description of experimental method that has so far been given. These questions are mainly concerned with matters of omission: for example, we have said that if a lack of control is shown, then the image should be changed. But how changed? What principle or method guides the selection of a new image (...) of nature when the old is no longer permissible? Or again, we have said that “observations should be made“. But what is an observation? What principle or method guides the experimenter in deciding which of his activities are observations? (shrink)

This study provides data for a behavioral paradigm to resolve the free will issue in psychological terms. As predicted, college students selecting among many alternative responses consistently selected according to experimental set, environmental conditions, past experiences and other unknown factors. These explained and unexplained causal factors supplement one another and make varying relative contributions to different behaviors - the Principle of Behavioral Supplementarity. The more psychologically remote the causal factors, the greater proportion of unexplained ones relative to explained ones (...) - the Principle of Remote Antecedence. Both the causal categories can be conceptualized in the incompatible terms of reductionism or intentionality, depending upon the dissociated belief state of the observer - the Principle of Behavioral Complementarity. Ordinarily, on utilitarian grounds, behaviors with psychologically contiguous antecedents are best conceptualized in a reductionistic belief state, and behaviors with remote antecedents are best conceptualized in an intentional belief state. (shrink)

How should we update our beliefs when we learn new evidence? Bayesian confirmation theory provides a widely accepted and well understood answer – we should conditionalize. But this theory has a problem with self-locating beliefs, beliefs that tell you where you are in the world, as opposed to what the world is like. To see the problem, consider your current belief that it is January. You might be absolutely, 100%, sure that it is January. But you will soon believe it (...) is February. This type of belief change cannot be modelled by conditionalization. We need some new principles of belief change for this kind of case, which I call belief mutation. In part 1, I defend the Relevance-Limiting Thesis, which says that a change in a purely self-locating belief of the kind that results in belief mutation should not shift your degree of belief in a non-self-locating belief, which can only change by conditionalization. My method is to give detailed analyses of the puzzles which threaten this thesis: Duplication, Sleeping Beauty, and The Prisoner. This also requires giving my own theory of observation selection effects. In part 2, I argue that when self-locating evidence is learnt from a position of uncertainty, it should be conditionalized on in the normal way. I defend this position by applying it to various cases where such evidence is found. I defend the Halfer position in Sleeping Beauty, and I defend the Doomsday Argument and the Fine-Tuning Argument. (shrink)

This paper argues that our current best cosmological theories, according to which cosmos is very big are compatible with all possible evidence. The problem is unrelated to the Quine-Duhem underdetermination thesis. The compatibility to which this paper draws attention is much more radical: it appears as if all of our best cosmological theories are perfectly probabilistically compatible with all possible evidence and that no empirical discovery could give us any reason whatever to favor one such theory over another. This consequence (...) is absurd. In order to create an evidential link between cosmological theory and observation, a new methodological principle is needed. A candidate for such a principle is proposed, using a Bayesian framework that takes account of observation selection effects. Various applications in other scientific fields are considered. (shrink)

We conceptualize observation selection effects (OSEs) by considering how a shift from one process of observation to another affects discrimination-conduciveness, by which we mean the degree to which possible observations discriminate between hypotheses, given the observation process at work. OSEs in this sense come in degrees and are causal, where the cause is the shift in process, and the effect is a change in degree of discrimination-conduciveness. We contrast our understanding of OSEs with others that have appeared in the (...) literature. After describing conditions of adequacy that an acceptable measure of degree of discrimination-conduciveness must satisfy, we use those conditions of adequacy to evaluate several possible measures. We also discuss how the effect of shifting from one observation process to another might be measured. We apply our framework to several examples, including the ravens paradox and the phenomenon of publication bias. (shrink)

The fine-tuning argument can be used to support the Many Universe hypothesis. The Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy objection seeks to undercut the support for the Many Universe hypothesis. The objection is that although the evidence that there is life somewhere confirms Many Universes, the specific evidence that there is life in this universe does not. I will argue that the Inverse Gambler’s Fallacy is not committed by the fine-tuning argument. The key issue is the procedure by which the universe with life (...) is selected for observation. Once we take account of the procedure, we find that the support for the Many Universe hypothesis remains. (shrink)

BackgroundThe principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy are often neglected during patient care in developing countries. We assessed the degree to which doctors in Lahore adhere to these principles during outpatient consultations.Material & MethodThe study was conducted at medical out-patient departments (OPDs) of two tertiary care hospitals (one public and one private hospital) of Lahore, selected using multi-stage sampling. 93 patients were selected from each hospital. Doctors' adherence to the principles of informed consent, privacy and confidentiality was observed through (...) client flow analysis performed by trained personnel. Overall patient perception was also assessed regarding these practices and was compared with the assessment made by our data collectors.ResultsSome degree of informed consent was obtained from only 9.7% patients in the public hospital and 47.8% in the private hospital. 81.4% of patients in the public hospital and 88.4% in the private hospital were accorded at least some degree of privacy. Complete informational confidentiality was maintained only in 10.8% and 35.5% of cases in public & private hospitals respectively. Informed consent and confidentiality were better practiced in the private compared to the public hospital (two-sample t-test > 2, p value < 0.05). There was marked disparity between the patients' perspective of these ethical practices and the assessment of our trained data collectors.ConclusionObservance of medical ethics is inadequate in hospitals of Lahore. Doctors should be imparted formal training in medical ethics and national legislation on medical ethics is needed. Patients should be made aware of their rights to medical ethics. (shrink)

We describe a significant practical consequence of taking anthropic biases into account in deriving predictions for rare stochastic catastrophic events. The risks associated with catastrophes such as asteroidal/cometary impacts, supervolcanic episodes, and explosions of supernovae/gamma-ray bursts are based on their observed frequencies. As a result, the frequencies of catastrophes that destroy or are otherwise incompatible with the existence of observers are systematically underestimated. We describe the consequences of the anthropic bias for estimation of catastrophic risks, and suggest some directions for (...) future work. (shrink)

A textbook on the principles of logical reasoning and scientific method, including chapters covering topics such as argumentation, inductive and deductive reasoning, and scientific observation and experimentation. The book is intended for students of philosophy, logic, and the natural sciences. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. (...) Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The observation that humans are often irrational has become commonplace. This observation has received empirical support from various experiments performed by cognitive scientists that are supposed to show that humans systematically violate principles of probability, rules of logic, and other norms of reasoning. In response to these experiments, philosophers have made creative and appealing arguments that these experiments must be mistaken or misinterpreted because humans must be rational. I examine these arguments for human rationality and show that they fail; cognitive (...) science does play a role in assessing human rationality. ;In Chapter One, I examine three cognitive science experiments in detail and discuss what is at issue in the debate about human rationality. At issue is whether the mistakes humans make are mere mistakes or indicative of systematic divergences from norms of reasoning. Defenders of human rationality say these mistakes are not characteristic of underlying reasoning abilities but are performance errors. Because humans make performance errors, human reasoning ability cannot be read off of behavior, but rather is to be studied by exploring cognitive competence, the underlying ability to reason. ;In Chapter Two, I develop and discuss the notion of cognitive competence. I then consider and reject two arguments that human cognitive competence must match the norms of reasoning. The first argument appeals to simplicity considerations, the second to the supposed common origin of our cognitive competence and our normative standards. In Chapter Three, I turn to a related argument for a view that humans are rational that says cognitive competence is discovered in the same way norms of reasoning are justified: both projects involve reflective equilibrium using as data people's judgments about what counts as good reasoning. ;In Chapter Four, I consider an argument for human rationality that draws on the principle of charity: when translating utterances of a speaker, one should try to interpret her utterances as rational and true. ;In Chapter Five, I consider an argument for human rationality that appeals to evolution. This argument claims that natural selection will select for cognitive mechanisms that produce true beliefs, and that such "truth-tropic" mechanisms are sufficient for being rational. ;My overall conclusion is that while cognitive science does not determine what the normative principles of reasoning are, it is relevant to whether or not human cognitive competence matches these principles; whether or not humans are irrational is, thus, an empirical question. (shrink)

Copernican reasoning involves considering ourselves, in the absence of other information, to be randomly selected members of a reference class. Consider the reference class intelligent observers. If there are extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs), taking ourselves to be randomly selected intelligent observers leads to the conclusion that it is likely the Earth has a larger population size than the typical planet inhabited by intelligent life, for the same reason that a randomly selected human is likely to come from a more populous country. (...) The astrophysicist Fergus Simpson contends that this reasoning supports the claims that the typical planet inhabited by ETIs is smaller than Earth (radius about 5,000km; cf. Earth's radius = 6,371km) and that the typical ETI is significantly larger than us about 314kg, the size of an adult male grizzly bear). Simpson's applications of Copernican reasoning are novel and exciting. They should be of interest to philosophers concerned with Richard Gott's delta t argument, the N=1 problem in astrobiology, limited principles of indifference, and probabilistic epistemology in general. While we agree with Simpson about the qualitative direction of his conclusions, we take issue with his presentation of precise quantitative results because his methods (1) display bias, (2) ignore other variables contributing to population size, (3) commit an equivocation, and (4) conceal their dependence on arbitrary assumptions. (shrink)

We propose an operator constraint equation for the wavefunction of the Universe that admits genuine evolution. While the corresponding classical theory is equivalent to the canonical decomposition of General Relativity, the quantum theory contains an evolution equation distinct from standard Wheeler–DeWitt cosmology. Furthermore, the local symmetry principle—and corresponding observables—of the theory have a direct interpretation in terms of a conventional gauge theory, where the gauge symmetry group is that of spatial conformal diffeomorphisms (that preserve the spatial volume of the (...) Universe). The global evolution is in terms of an arbitrary parameter that serves only as an unobservable label for successive states of the Universe. Our proposal follows unambiguously from a suggestion of York whereby the independently specifiable initial data in the action principle of General Relativity is given by a conformal geometry and the spatial average of the York time on the spacelike hypersurfaces that bound the variation. Remarkably, such a variational principle uniquely selects the form of the constraints of the theory so that we can establish a precise notion of both symmetry and evolution in quantum gravity. (shrink)

The research reported here was the first empirical examination of strategic voting under the Sequential Voting by Veto (SVV) voting procedure, proposed by Mueller (1978). According to this procedure, a sequence of n voters must select s out of s+m alternatives (m=n=2; s>0). Hence, the number of alternatives exceeds the number of participants by one (n+1). When the ith voter casts her vote, she vetoes the alternative against which a veto has not yet been cast, and the s remaining non-vetoed (...) alternatives are elected. The SVV procedure invokes the minority principle, and it has advantages over all majoritarian procedures; this makes SVV a very desirable means for relatively small groups to make collective decisions. Felsenthal and Machover (1992) pointed out three models of voting under SVV: sincere, optimal, and canonical. The current research investigated, through laboratory experiments, which cognitive model better accounts for the voters' observed behavior and the likelihood of obtaining the optimal outcome as a function of the size of n (when s=1). The findings suggest that while voters under SVV use all three models, their choice is conditioned by group size. In the small groups (n=3), the canonical mode was a better predictor than the sincere model. In the larger groups (n=5), the sincere model was a better predictor than the canonical model. There is also evidence of players' learning during the experiment. (shrink)

Principles of procreative beneficence (PPBs) hold that parents have good reasons to select the child with the best life prospects. Sparrow (2010) claims that PPBs imply that we should select only female children, unlesswe attach normative significance to “normal” human capacities. We argue that this claim fails on both empirical and logical grounds. Empirically, Sparrow’s argument for greater female wellbeing rests on a selective reading of the evidence and the incorrect assumption that an advantage for females would persist even when (...) a serious gender imbalance is obtained. Logically, PPBs cite only pro tanto reasons and allow that the good of an individual child could be outweighed by other morally relevant considerations, such as those which take collectively suboptimal outcomes into account. There is thus no need to attach value to the “normal.”. (shrink)

Extracting predictions from cosmological theories that describe a multiverse, for what we are likely to observe in our domain, is crucial to establishing the validity of these theories. One way to extract such predictions is from theory-generated probability distributions that allow for selection effects---generally expressed in terms of assumptions about anthropic conditionalization and how typical we are. In this paper, I urge three lessons about typicality in multiverse settings. Because it is difficult to characterize our observational situation in the (...) multiverse, we cannot assume that we are typical : nor can we ignore the issue of typicality, for it has a measurable impact on predictions for our observations. There are spectra of assumptions about both conditionalization and typicality, which lead to coincident predictions for our observations, leading to problems of confirmation in multiverse cosmology. And moreover, when one has the freedom to consider competing theories of the multiverse, the assumption of typicality may not lead to the highest likelihoods for our observations. These three entwined aspects of typicality imply that positive assertions about our typicality, such as the 'principle of mediocrity', are more questionable than has been recently claimed. (shrink)

This paper explains how Kepler in his ``War onMars'' applied systems of models organized bothin a perspectival and in a stratifiedconceptual sense. With the help of thesesystems Kepler worked out successively moredeterminate models for the planetary orbits.Along the way he discovered the Keplerian lawsas consequences of the distance rule, hisleading regulative principle. The selection ofdecisive, so called privileged, observations,as well as the determinate geometrical andkinematical description of the phenomena,result from the application of this principleto the developing of models. (...) Kepler's method ofdiscovery may therefore appropriately bedesignated converse abduction. (shrink)

The permutation of basic atoms—nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and phosphorus―into the biomolecules DNA and RNA, subsequently evolved in cells and brains, defining the origin of life and intelligence, remains unexplained. Equally the origin of the genetic information and the intertwined nature of ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ involved in the evolution of bio-molecules and the cells are shrouded in mystery. This treatise aims at exploring individual and swarm behaviour patterns which potentially hint at as yet unknown biological principles. It reviews theories of (...) evolution with perspectives from the earth sciences, commencing with the earliest observed records of life. This is followed by reviews and discussion of the building blocks of life, marine and terrestrial communities, the arthropods, birds and finally humans. It is suggested that, further to the mutation/natural selection processes established by Darwin and Wallace, an understanding of the evolution of intelligence remains little understood. A directionality of evolutionary trajectories is evident, not least the purposeful thinking process of humans as well as animals. It is not clear how directional intelligence, manifested for example by the collective intelligence of arthropod colonies, has evolved from mutation/natural selection processes. Potential clues for the understanding of life and evolution are provided by Aristotle’s dictum of “the whole being greater than the sum of the parts”, Niels Bohr’s principle of quantum complementarity and George Ellis’ theory of top-down causality. Inherent in the question of the origin of life is an anthropocentric bias, related to the self-referential Anthropic Principle and theological paradigms of man’s supposed dominion over all other species. The Anthropic Principle, however, should be capable of being circumvented using the scientific falsification method, assuming universal verified constants of physics. The phenomenon of the human mastery of fire and the splitting of the atom, leading to the seventh major mass extinction of species, remains incomprehensible. (shrink)

Bradley’s philosophy of history, which was mostly embodied in his first published work, The Presuppositions of Critical History, has been the subject of a number of explanatory and critical pieces, several of them in the pages of this journal. In outlining the fundamentals of his approach to historical knowledge, therefore, I can be brief. He begins, ‘There is no history which in some respects is not more or less critical’, because selection of information is essential and the historian needs (...) some principle of selection. It is clear that Bradley includes selecting information not just from primary sources but from previous historians. And, ‘if we exclude or alter or rationalise to the very smallest extent then we have criticism at once.’ The criterion, or canon of selection has to be the historian himself. This has sometimes been dismissed as dangerously relativist, but such criticism misses the point that although the actual historian is the real criterion, ‘the historian as he ought to be’ is the ideal criterion; and ‘the historian who is true to the present is the historian as he ought to be.’ It is crucial to Bradley’s position and to the development of my argument in this paper to note that it is the historian who is true to the present, not to the past, who is the historian as he ought to be. For, as Bradley explained, ‘every man’s present standpoint ought to determine his belief in respect to all past events; but to no man do I dictate what his present standpoint ought to be. Consistency is the one word that I have emphasised.’ Bradley denied a correspondence theory of truth in favour of a coherence theory. Truth had to be constructed by the knower who was not a mere passive observer of reality.. (shrink)

The article analyzes the problem of physical theory nature and its criteria in the context of several concepts of modern physics. Such physical concepts allow multiple possible universes (the last usually happens to be a random consequence of the theory). Since the study requires several universe models, which basic principles (physical laws) can vary, the two theories have become the objects of analysis: the first, which includes the concept of eternal inflation, the second – the string cosmology (the string landscape). (...) Both theories allow for a large variation of physical laws (no matter, whether these are fundamentally different physical laws or different versions of the same basic principles). The amount of dark energy (cosmological constant) has been selected as a physical law parameter, changing its value in possible universes.The analysis of the physical theories, which allow a multiplicity of universes, has shown that the standard requirements for the theory, which connect its veracity with the criteria of observability and the need for validation of our universe basic principles, are not entirely consistent. Theoretical physics is moving towards the formulization of models that become a real (in some cases, apparently irresistible) challenge for experimental verification. The article proves that such verification probably can not be required in several physical theories, since, in particular, the postulation of this kind of connection between theory and reality is no more than a manifestation of anthropocentrism. However, the theory can trace more general grounds that lie beyond the scope of human observation. (shrink)

This open access book seeks to identify the ethical spirit of European Union law, a context in which we can observe a trend towards increasing references to the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’. This aspect is all the more important because EU law is now affecting more and more areas of national law, including such sensitive ones as the patentability of human life. Especially when unethical behaviour produces legal consequences, the frequent lack of clearly defined concepts remains a challenge, particularly against (...) the background of the principle of legal certainty. This raises the question to which extent the content of these references is determined and whether it is possible to identify an ethical spirit of EU law. Answering that question, in turn, entails addressing the following questions: In references to ethics concerning EU law, can we identify references to a particular theory of practical philosophy at all; and, if so, to one or more normative ethical theories? Further, should these non-legal concepts be imported in an unaltered way, or be adapted to the legal context? This book explores the different layers of EU law, including the role of ethics in EU lawmaking and in EU case law, as well as the implementation of relevant EU directives in selected Member States. In addition to the above-mentioned normative philosophical lens, the book also analyzes the findings from the legal lens of EU integration, i.e., especially EU values, human rights and the cornerstone of human dignity. (shrink)

Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology. -/- The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the distribution of, e.g., (...) the cosmological constant on the number of observers it allows for. However, uniform probability distributions usually appealed to in such arguments are an inadequate representation of indifference, and lead to unfounded predictions. It has been argued that this inability to represent ignorance is a fundamental flaw of any inductive framework using additive measures. In the first paper, I examine how imprecise probabilities fare as an inductive framework and avoid such unwarranted inferences. In the second paper, I detail how this framework allows us to successfully avoid the conclusions of Doomsday arguments in a way no Bayesian approach that represents credal states by single credence functions could. -/- There are in the cosmology literature several kinds of arguments referring to self- locating uncertainty. In the multiverse framework, different "pocket-universes" may have different fundamental physical parameters. We don’t know if we are typical observers and if we can safely assume that the physical laws we draw from our observations hold elsewhere. The third paper examines the validity of the appeal to the "Sleeping Beauty problem" and assesses the nature and role of typicality assumptions often endorsed to handle such questions. -/- A more general issue for the use of probabilities in cosmology concerns the inadequacy of Bayesian and statistical model selection criteria in the absence of well-motivated measures for different cosmological models. The criteria for model selection commonly used tend to focus on optimizing the number of free parameters, but they can select physically implausible models. The fourth paper examines the possibility for Bayesian model selection to circumvent the lack of well-motivated priors. (shrink)

Classical mechanistic models of the mind often fail to capture the complex intricate interplay of human emotions and cognitive processes, particularly their interconnected and evolving nature. Recent advancements in quantum cognition suggest that thoughts and feelings may be influenced by principles analogous to those in quantum mechanics, such as superposition and entanglement. This paper examines the concept of emergence through destruction, a framework in which the collapse of potential emotional or cognitive states leads to the emergence of new attributes. The (...) collapse of these states can be understood as an emergent phenomenon shaped by both intention and attention. In scenarios involving multiple potential mental states—whether in decision-making, perception, or thought—conscious focus serves as a selective way that transforms a superposition of possibilities into a single, actualized experience. This process, similar to the quantum observer effect, underscores that conscious attention is not a passive observation but an active force that shapes reality. Building on Bohm’s interpretation of active information, this collapse is seen as not merely a reduction of potential states but an informational process that channels possibilities into concrete forms. As one cognitive experience materializes, others recede into the background, yet this selection process simultaneously fosters the emergence of new properties or cognitive patterns. This dynamic mirrors the quantum measurement process, where observation reduces possibilities and enables new forms of emergence. (shrink)