The typical approach to decoding speech from the brain (using brain-machine interfaces) is to decode low-level linguistic units (e.g. phonemes, syllables) from motor articulation areas (e.g. Premotor cortex) with the aim of assembling these low-level units into higher-level discourse. We propose that brain-to-speech decoding may benefit from adopting a functional view of language, which conceives of language as an instrumental tool for interacting with others' intentions in order to fulfil one's own intentions. This functional view of language motivates adopting usability (...) (i.e. the decoder's usefulness as a tool for achieving goals), in addition to decoding accuracy, as a criterion for assessing decoder performance. Decoders may achieve gains in usability by incorporating data about communicative situations and speaker intentions in order to generate and fill in speech act templates. We suggest that this intention-oriented, template-based, and functionally inspired view of brain-to-speech decoding may facilitate efforts to achieve naturalistic speech decoding. (shrink)

The author analyses the theology of Saint Maximus the Confessor and its interpretation in modern theology. The great work of Hans Urs von Balthasar “The Cosmic Liturgy” began a new theological focus on the profoundness of Saint Maximus synthesis which was continued by several scholars: Policarp Sherwood, J. M. Gariguess, J. C. Larchet, Andrew Louth etc. The author analyses especially the work “Theologie de l’agonie du Christ” belonging to François-Marie Lethel (Paris, 1979). In a critical approach to this work he (...) finds major misinterpretations and established several erroneous trends in the Maximian studies. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Ned Block argues that the higher-order (HO) approach to explaining consciousness is ‘defunct’ because a prominent objection (the ‘misrepresentation objection’) exposes the view as ‘incoherent’. What’s more, a response to this objection that I’ve offered elsewhere (Weisberg 2010) fails because it ‘amounts to abusing the notion of what-it’s-like-ness’ (xxx).1 In this response, I wish to plead guilty as charged. Indeed, I will continue herein to abuse Block’s notion of what-it’s-like-ness. After doing so, I will argue that the HO approach accounts (...) for the sense of what-it’s-like-ness that matters in a theory of consciousness. I will also argue that the only incoherence present in the HO theory is that generated by embracing Block’s controversial notion of what-it’s-like-ness, something no theorist of any stripe ought to do. Block is famous for (among other things) having introduced the notion of ‘phenomenal consciousness’ into contemporary philosophy of mind (Block 1995). This term is widely employed in the philosophical literature and it even appears in the empirical literature. But wide-speared usage has brought about divergent interpretations of the term. We can distinguish a ‘moderate’ and a ‘zealous’ reading of ‘phenomenal consciousness’. On the moderate reading, ‘phenomenal consciousness’ just means ‘experience’. Many people have embraced this sense of the term and use it to roughly pick out conscious experience involving sensory quality (states like conscious visual experiences or conscious pains, for example).2 On the zealous reading, however, phenomenal consciousness is held to be ‘distinct from any cognitive, intentional, or functional property’ (Block 1995: 234). That is, any explanation of phenomenal consciousness in exclusively cognitive, intentional, or functional terms will fail to capture, without remainder, what is really distinctive about phenomenal consciousness. Block, of course, is fully clear about embracing the zealous reading; indeed, his initial introduction of the notion is in those terms. The same ambiguity occurs with the much-used (and abused) idea of ‘what-it’s-like-ness’.. (shrink)

Telling a patient that the outcome of his illness is not good, or even hopeless, requires sensitivity and the ability to communicate with him in the setting of a hospital which is an unnatural environment divorced from family and friends. It is a task which must be taught and learned by doctors and nurses.

This article aims to address the metaphysical dimension of cosmological models, be they mythological, philosophical, religious or modern scientific, using multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodology. Such an approach is a novelty, both in the theological field and in the philosophical field and secular sciences, which studies the origin of man and the universe.Contribution: The originality of this article consists in introducing the concept of transcendental cosmology, which, along with spiritual cosmology can be a serious theological and philosophical reply to the Bing (...) Bang theory. (shrink)

The existential analysis -- The death of dasein -- The timeliness of dasein -- The derivation of time -- The time of being.

This article aims to address the metaphysical dimension of cosmological models, be they mythological, philosophical, religious or modern scientific, using multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary methodology. Such an approach is a novelty, both in the theological field and in the philosophical field and secular sciences, which studies the origin of man and the universe. Contribution: The originality of this article consists in introducing the concept of transcendental cosmology, which, along with spiritual cosmology can be a serious theological and philosophical reply to the (...) Bing Bang theory. (shrink)

The achievements of the textile industry in Roman Britain are often underestimated as a result of the meagreness of our available evidence. The Edict on maximum prices issued by Diocletian in A.D. 301 shows that British capes commanded high prices on the markets of the Empire, and that in the late third century A.D. British rugs were the best in the world. In view of the competition from the traditional centres of rug manufacture in the East, this is an astonishing (...) achievement. (shrink)

The received translation and interpretation of many of the technical terms current in the textile industry of the Roman Empire are inaccurate, because lexicographers have either fought shy of being precise, or have thought that they recognized in the ancient world technical processes which originated at a much later date. The evidence is often equivocal or insufficient, but may still yield details that have been overlooked. The textile expression scutulatus, to take an example, deserves more attention than Blümner has devoted (...) to it. When it refers to the appearance of a garment, Lewis and Short, s.v. scutulatus, translate ‘diamond or lozenge-shaped, checkered’. It seems worth while to attempt a more precise translation, and, if possible, to estimate the significance in context of the goods so designated. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

This paper is a review of the 18th National Ethics Conference that took place in November 2022 and was organized by the Department of Ethical Studies of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. The aim of this review is to give publicity to the event by informing of the thematic panels, the titles of the reports and the names of the researchers who participated.

If the world itself is metaphysically indeterminate in a specified respect, what follows? In this paper, we develop a theory of metaphysical indeterminacy answering this question.

G. E. Moore’s critical analysis of right action in utilitarian ethics and his consequentialist concept of right action is a starting point for a theory of moral/right action in ethics of social consequences. The terms right and wrong have different meanings in these theories. The author explores different aspects of right and wrong actions in ethics of social consequences and compares them with Moore’s ideas. He positively evaluates Moore’s contributions to the development his theory of moral/right action.