Towards a Semantics Based on the Notion of Justification

Suppose we want to take seriously the neoverificationist idea that an intuitionistic theory of meaning can be generalized in such a way as to be applicable not only to mathematical but also to empirical sentences. The paper explores some consequences of this attitude and takes some steps towards the realization of this program. The general idea is to develop a meaning theory, and consequently a formal semantics, based on the idea that knowing the meaning of a sentence is tantamount to having a criterion for establishing what is a justification for it. Section 1 motivates a requirement of epistemic transparency imposed onto justifications conceived as mental states. In Section 2, the formal notion of justification for an atomic formula is defined, in terms of the notion of cognitive state. In Section 3, the definition is extended to logically complex formulas. In Section 4, the notion of truth-ground is introduced and is used to give a definition of logical validity.     

Normative roles,conceptual variance,and ardent realism about normativity

ABSTRACT

In Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund considers a “variance thesis” about our most fundamental (and seemingly most “authoritative”) normative concepts. This thesis raises the threat of an alarming symmetry between different sets of normative concepts. If this symmetry holds, it would be incompatible with “ardent realism” about normativity. Eklund argues that the ardent realist should appeal to the idea of “referential normativity” in response to this challenge. I argue that, even if Eklund is right in his core arguments on this front, many other important challenges for ardent realism remain that also stem from the issues about possible variance in normative concepts that he considers. Following this, I introduce further issues about conceptual variance. These are issues that arise within the context of the framework that Eklund proposes the ardent realist use to confront the variance theses he considers. In particular, the issues concern what normative role as such is, as well as, relatedly, which roles associated with a concept (or predicate) get to count as part of its normative role. The upshot is that issues about conceptual variance in normative domains might be even more challenging for the ardent realist to deal with than Eklund argues.     

Emotions beyond brain and body

The emerging consensus in the philosophy of cognition is that cognition is situated, i.e., dependent upon or co-constituted by the body, the environment, and/or the embodied interaction with it. But what about emotions? If the brain alone cannot do much thinking, can the brain alone do some emoting? If not, what else is needed? Do (some) emotions (sometimes) cross an individual's boundary? If so, what kinds of supra-individual systems can be bearers of affective states, and why? And does that make emotions “embedded” or “extended” in the sense cognition is said to be embedded and extended? Section 2 shows why it is important to understand in which sense body, environment, and our embodied interaction with the world contribute to our affective life. Section 3 introduces some key concepts of the debate about situated cognition. Section 4 draws attention to an important disanalogy between cognition and emotion with regard to the role of the body. Section 5 shows under which conditions a contribution by the environment results in non-trivial cases of “embedded” emotions. Section 6 is concerned with affective phenomena that seem to cross the organismic boundaries of an individual, in particular with the idea that emotions are “extended” or “distributed.”     

The paradox of the universal triangle: Concepts,language, and prototypes

For over 300 years, the humble triangle has served as the paradigmatic example of the problem of abstraction. How can we have the idea of a general triangle even though every experience with triangles is with specific ones? Classical cognitive science seemed to provide an answer in symbolic representation. With its easily enumerated necessary and sufficient conditions, the triangle would appear to be an ideal candidate for being represented in a symbolic form. I show that it is not. Across a variety of tasks—drawing, speeded recognition, unspeeded visual judgments, and inference—representations of triangles appear to be graded and context dependent. I show that using the category name “triangle” activates a more prototypical representation than using an arguably coextensive cue, “three-sided polygon”. For example, when asked to draw “triangles” people draw more typical triangles than when asked to draw “three-sided polygons”. Altogether, the results support the view that (even formal) concepts have a graded and flexible structure, which takes on a more prototypical and stable form when activated by category labels.     

语义表征具身理论:情绪在概念表征中的作用

概念如何被表征是认知科学的热点问题,其中抽象概念如何表征是当前具身认知最具争议性的话题之一。与前期概念隐喻理论(强调意象图式)和知觉符号理论(强调情境内省信息)的观点不同,语义表征具身理论强调情绪经验信息在抽象概念表征和加工中的作用。具体而言,具体概念的表征主要来自感觉运动信息,而抽象概念的表征主要来自情绪经验信息和语言信息。研究证明,抽象概念的高情绪经验信息能够促进词汇的加工,且这一促进作用受词汇情绪效价的调节。未来研究应进一步考虑影响情绪经验信息发挥作用的因素,比如语言信息的丰富性、情绪唤醒或个体的情绪状态等。     

The social concept of disease

In the discussion of such social questions as “how should alcoholics be treated by society?” and “what kind of people are responsible in the face of the law?”, is “disease” a value-free or value-laden notion, a natural or a normative one? It seems, for example, that by the utterance ‘alcoholism should be classified as a disease’ we mean something like the following: the condition called alcoholism is similar in morally relevant respects to conditions that we uncontroversially label diseases, and therefore we have a moral obligation to consider alcoholism a disease. So there are grounds to think that, in the discussion of social questions, our concept of disease is strongly value-laden. However, it does not follow that the medical concept of disease is likewise value-laden. In this paper I distinguish between the medical and social concepts of disease, arguing that the naturalist-normativist debate is concerned with the former, but not the latter. Therefore, we need not settle the naturalist-normativist debate in order to conclude that the social concept of disease is value-laden.     

What Exactly Is It All About? Puzzled Comments from a French Legal Scholar on the NBIC Convergence

The techno-scientific development has no frontier, but the legal systems still take roots in local and cultural references. French Law is built on a continental model and conveys values and preferences of the French population, including an essential role given to the State and to textual requirements. Until now, French law has been modified to cope with new and emerging technologies issues with the idea that they can be taken one after the other, on the fringes of the classic legal problems. Do the announcement of a convergence between Nanotechnologies, Biotechnologies, the sciences of Information and Cognition (NBIC) change the situation? According to “converging technologies” partisans, a lot of other deep perturbations may occur. Therefore, it could be pertinent to assess the legal implications of NBIC convergence. But trying to do so, a French legal scholar may first feel (and express) perplexity. What is the “convergence NBIC”? To answer, do we have to wonder which reality hides behind the expression or is it necessary to admit that the speeches are here more important to analyze than a hypothetical realization? Does it imply new legal questions? Do we need new methods to enlighten what is at stake? Is it a new challenge, stimulating the imagination of lawyers and legal scholars, or, on the contrary, is it a new illustration of the Economy of the promises, revealing big risks of vain (or inappropriate) intellectual and normative production? This article is dedicated to enlighten the important difficulties which mark out the road towards the answers to the legal questions raised by the “NBIC convergence”.     

The Right Wrong-Makers

Right- and wrong-making features (“moral grounds”) are widely believed to play important normative roles, e.g. in morally apt or virtuous motivation. This paper argues that moral grounds have been systematically misidentified. Canonical statements of our moral theories tend to summarize, rather than directly state, the full range of moral grounds posited by the theory. Further work is required to “unpack” a theory’s criterion of rightness and identify the features that are of ground-level moral significance. As a result, it is not actually true that maximizing value is the fundamental right-making feature even for maximizing consequentialists. Focusing on the simple example of utilitarianism, I show how careful attention to the ground level can drastically influence how we think about our moral theories.     

Does intelligence imply contradiction?

Contradiction is often seen as a defect of intelligent systems and a dangerous limitation on efficiency. In this paper we raise the question of whether, on the contrary, it could be considered a key tool in increasing intelligence in biological structures. A possible way of answering this question in a mathematical context is shown, formulating a proposition that suggests a link between intelligence and contradiction.A concrete approach is presented in the well-defined setting of cellular automata. Here we define the models of “observer”, “entity”, “environment”, “intelligence,” and “contradiction”. These definitions, which roughly correspond to the common meaning of these words, allow us to deduce a simple but strong result about these concepts in an unbiased, mathematical manner.Evidence for a real-world counterpart to the demonstrated formal link between intelligence and contradiction is provided by three computational experiments.     

人造物概念的表征：功能、意图和目的论的解释

以概念结构研究从“相似”到“解释”的理论转向为背景,评述人造物领域的“意图-历史论”（Bloom, 1996）,提出人造物概念结构中自上而下的约束是来自“使用目的”而不是“设计意图”。分析近期报告的大量实验,最后提出人造物概念表征的“基于使用的目的论”的解释模式和人造物归类的双重目标模型。     

Identity and sociocultural change: Comparing young indigenous people in Chiapas who have different sociodemographic trajectories

One of the most commonly used distinctions in cross‐cultural studies is the one between individualism and collectivism. One of the criticisms levelled at this distinction is that it fails to incorporate the differences that may exist when comparing people from a rural context with little formal education to people from the same group who live in an urban context where formal education is the norm. Bearing in mind these sociodemographic factors, we have compared the self‐concepts among 104 young indigenous people in Chiapas (Mexico), having divided them into three groups: “rural‐traditional,” “rural–urban” and “urban.” These people's self‐concepts were analysed using a task that contrasts personal self‐concept with social self‐concept and a technique in which participants draw themselves along with the things and people they consider most important to them. The results reveal significant differences between the three groups. The personal categories are given a higher value in the “urban” group while the social categories score higher in the “rural‐traditional” group. Regarding the results of the indigenous self‐portraits, from the content analysis of the drawings, 16 categories emerged. These findings are discussed in the light of Greenfield's theory of social change and human development.     

The Square Circle

This article shows that there are square circles (or equivalently, round squares) in the sense that there are mathematical objects that are at the same time both perfectly circular and perfectly square. The philosophical significance of this is discussed, especially in view of philosophy's widespread use of “square circle” as a typical example of an impossibility. In particular, the focus is on what the existence of square circles means for the possibility of conceptual analysis, and more generally what we can learn about the nature of non‐formal concepts and their use in philosophy.     

Consciousness as a logically consistent and prognostic model of reality

The work demonstrates that brain might reflect the external world causal relationships in the form of a logically consistent and prognostic model of reality, which shows up as consciousness. The paper analyses and solves the problem of statistical ambiguity and provides a formal model of causal relationships as probabilistic maximally specific rules. We suppose that brain makes all possible inferences from causal relationships. We prove that the suggested formal model has a property of an unambiguous inference: from consistent premises we infer a consistent conclusion. It enables a set of all inferences to form a consistent model of the perceived world. Causal relationships may create fixed points of cyclic inter-predictable properties. We consider the “natural” classification introduced by John St. Mill and demonstrate that a variety of fixed points of the objects’ attributes forms a “natural” classification of the external world. Then we consider notions of “natural” categories and causal models of categories, introduced by Eleanor Rosch and Bob Rehder and demonstrate that fixed points of causal relationships between objects attributes, which we perceive, formalize these notions. If the “natural” classification describes the objects of the external world, and “natural” concepts the perception of these objects, then the theory of integrated information, introduced by G. Tononi, describes the information processes of the brain for “natural” concepts formation that reflects the “natural” classification. We argue that integrated information provides high accuracy of the objects identification. A computer-based experiment is provided that illustrates fixed points formation for coded digits.     

有限理性的“占优启发式”和“齐当别”决策模型的作为 ——当Allais悖论杠杆撬动了期望效用理论

人们在做决策时常常要受到时间或知识的限制,有时还要受到其双重限制。关于人们是如何进行风险决策,早期有期望效用理论对其加以解释,但Allais悖论对其标准化地位提出了挑战。Simon的“有限理性”观点提出后,一些研究者开始致力于开发决策的“有限理性”模型。文章讨论并比较了无限理性的期望效用理论被Allais悖论杠杆撬动之后,有限理性的“占优启发式”和“齐当别”决策模型所能做的和所不能做的。两种模型的决策标准、计算策略以及未来研究的展望也一并作了讨论     

Prototypes of the “natural” concepts discovery

In works of Eleanor Rosch “natural” concepts was introduced that reflect a high correlated structure of features of objects of the external world. Prototypes of the “natural” concepts are clearest cases of objects that reflect this highly correlated structure. The same high correlated structure manifested in the “natural” phenotypical classification. To formalize this highly correlated structure, we define a special type of probabilistic causal relations and then probabilistic formal concepts as a cyclically connected probabilistic causal relations. Based on these definitions, we developed a method of prototypes discovery and illustrate it on the example of digits’ prototypes discovery.     

The Euthanasia Debate in Germany - What's the Fuss?

ABSTRACT Both opponents and proponents of Singer's right to speak about euthanasia have concentrated on the tenability of his claims. They have ignored the question of what legitimate grounds there are for suppressing academic discussion, and have failed to take into account the discussion of freedom of speech in recent legal theory. To do this is the aim of my paper. Section I claims that Singer's position is immoral. Section 2 turns to the question of whether it is protected by freedom of speech, irrespective of its merits. I reject two lines of defence for Singer's opponents, that they had no opportunity to present their case, and the Kantian idea of the primacy of practical reason. Section 3 turns to a defence from legal theory. It argues that Singer's views do not pose the kind of threat to other legal and moral values which would license a suspension of his freedom of expression. I conclude that it is illegitimate to silence Singer, since he does not deny the right to live of his disabled opponents, but legitimate to protest against him, since he denies that some of their lives are worth living, in disregard of their own preferences.     

How are religious concepts created? A form of cognition and its effects

Science that needs logical demonstration has failed to eliminate religious concepts. It is as if they have own validity that cannot be broken by scientific knowledge we trust the most at present. In this paper, I will attempt to establish a new cognitive theory to help explain the basis of belief in religious concepts. This form of cognition will be named simply unifying-induction or unifying-inductive cognition. As illustrations, I will consider some typical religious discourses involving concepts such as “all-in-one” or “one is everything.” It is these typically religious discourses that science has not been able to easily sweep away by its logical scientific proofs. In the end, although we perhaps cannot know if the religious beings such as gods really exist or not, we may understand these concepts are very the creation of human cognition. It also has important implications for other disciplines such as robotics, developmental psychology, cognitive archaeology, the history of science, the study of religion and so on.     

Resources,Rules, and Oppression

There is a large and growing literature on communal interpretive resources: the concepts, theories, narratives, and so on that a community draws on in interpreting its members and their world. (They’re also called “hermeneutical resources” in some places and “epistemic resources” in others.) Several recent contributions to this literature have concerned dominant and resistant interpretive resources and how they affect concrete lived interactions. In this article, I note that “using” interpretive resources—applying them to parts of the world in conversation with others—is “a rule‐governed activity”; and I propose that in oppressive systems, these rules are influenced by the rules of oppression. Section I clarifies some rules governing the use of resources. Section II draws on work by Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. and others to suggest that according to the present rules of our oppressive system, it is permissible for dominantly situated speakers to dismiss interpretive resources developed in marginalized communities. Section III appeals to Charles Mills’s work on White ignorance to propose, further, that our system’s rules make it impermissible and deserving of punishment to use resistant resources. The conclusion enumerates several further points about such rules governing the use of interpretive resources, their social effects, and some philosophical literatures.