Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

This volume presents the concept of Ecoscape as spatial interrelations, or spatially patterned processes, that are constitutive of an environment_an ecosystem. Contributors investigate environmental issues concerning the human impact on geohistory, food distribution, genetically modified biota, waste management, scientific mapping, and the rethinking of human identity.

This review article examines the late agnostic New Testament scholar Maurice Casey’s criticisms of the so-called mythicist position, which argues that Jesus did not exist. Casey’s volume Jesus: Evidence and Argument or Mythicist Myths? is viewed along with Bart Ehrman’s critique of similar ideas in his text Did Jesus Exist? We will highlight important objections raised by these agnostic scholars against those in the mythicist movement, including topics such as various idiosyncrasies leading to historically deficient methods, egregiously latedating the canonical (...) Gospels, claiming inspiration from earlier mystery religions, and positing textual interpolations. (shrink)

Here we interact critically with the volume The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified by University of Wisconsin philosopher Lawrence Shapiro, who contends that even if miracles occur, proper epistemological justification is unattainable. In addition, he argues that the historical evidence for Jesus’s resurrection is deeply problematic. We engage Shapiro’s philosophical and historical arguments by raising several significant issues within his own arguments, while also briefly providing some positive reasons to think that if a (...) miracle did occur, one may be epistemologically justified in believing it. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin (1896-1940) has been called by Hannah Arendt the "greatest critic of the century." While an increasing number of Anglo-American literary critics draw upon Benjamin's writings in their own works, their colleagues in the philosophical community remain relatively unacquainted with his legacy. In the European intellectual world, by contrast, Benjamin's critical epistemological program, his philosophies of history and language, and his aesthetics have long since become part of philosophical discourse. The present collection of articles, many of (...) which were contained in earlier versions in the Winter 1983 special issue of the journal The Philosophical Forum, initiates the project of establishing Benjamin's importance to philosophy. A balance of original work by Benjamin and important commentary on his works, this volume includes the crucial chapter from Benjamin's magnum opus The Arcades Project, his "Program of the Coming Philosophy," and "Central Park," as well as essays by leading scholars (including Theodor W. Adorno, Leo Lowenthal, and Rolf Tiedemann) that treat single philosophical themes and relate his ideas to those of other thinkers such as Gadamer, Goodmann, and Rosenzweig. Gary Smith's introduction to the volume provides an extremely useful and sophisticated entrée for readers unaccustomed to the breadth of Benjamin's philosophical allusions, as well as an informative summation of the contents of the volume. This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists. (shrink)

Bringing together the best critical essays on one of the most fascinating literary figures of our time, this book immediately takes its place as a major source for Benjamin scholarship. Hannah Arendt called Walter Benjamin "the outstanding literary critic of the twentieth century" when she introduced him to English-language readers in 1968 with the selection of essays entitled Illuminations. Since then, his life and work have entered the domain of literary legend. The seventeen essays collected here cover the (...) full range of Benjamin's interests, from hashish to Goethe to the modern city. They include important critical essays by Gershom Scholem and Jürgen Habermas as well as several moving and evocative recollections of Benjamin by friends and colleagues such as Theodor Adorno and Ernst Bloch. Gary Smith served as coeditor of the seventh volume of Benjamin's Gesammelte Schriften and prepared both the German and English editions of Benjamin's Moscow Diary. (shrink)

This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists. Benjamin - philosophy, aesthetics, history.

© 2015, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.Genetic studies have identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the risk of prostate cancer. It remains unclear whether such genetic variants are associated with disease aggressiveness. The NCI-SPORE Genetics Working Group retrospectively collected clinicopathologic information and genotype data for 36 SNPs which at the time had been validated to be associated with PC risk from 25,674 cases with PC. Cases were grouped according to race, Gleason score and aggressiveness. Statistical analyses were used to compare the frequency (...) of the SNPs between different disease cohorts. After adjusting for multiple testing, only PC-risk SNP rs2735839 was significantly and inversely associated with aggressive and high-grade disease in European men. Similar associations with aggressive and high-grade disease were documented in African-American subjects. The G allele of rs2735839 was associated with disease aggressiveness even at low PSA levels in both European and African-American men. Our results provide further support that a PC-risk SNP rs2735839 near the KLK3 gene on chromosome 19q13 may be associated with aggressive and high-grade PC. Future prospectively designed, case-case GWAS are needed to identify additional SNPs associated with PC aggressiveness. (shrink)

Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of clichés. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, _The Philosophy of Improvisation_ ranges across the arts—from music to theater, dance to comedy—and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation. Gary Peters turns to many of the major thinkers within continental philosophy—including Heidegger, Nietzsche, Adorno, Kant, Benjamin, and Deleuze—offering readings of their (...) reflections on improvisation and exploring improvisational elements within their thinking. Peters’s wry, humorous style offers an antidote to the frequently overheated celebration of freedom and community that characterizes most writing on the subject. Expanding the field of what counts as improvisation, _The Philosophy of Improvisation_ will be welcomed by anyone striving to comprehend the creative process. (shrink)

The black social gospel leaders that came of age in the 1920s and '30s were long on graduate degrees, simmering anger, racial justice ambition, and lecture circuit eloquence. Most of them already assumed the social gospel when they began their careers. They came through the doors of educational achievement and ecumenical conferences, and a few became prominent by compelling the respect of audiences on both sides of the color line. Mordecai Johnson, building a black intellectual powerhouse at Howard University, epitomized (...) the black social gospel. Benjamin E. Mays, teaching under Johnson at Howard, was very much in Johnson's mold. Howard Thurman, also teaching under Johnson at Howard, for a time worked the social... (shrink)

The article is a critical examination of Joshua Hoffman’s and Gary Rosenkrantz’ approach to the traditional category of individual substance. On several places they offered an analysis of the concept of a substance in terms of some highly sophisticated notion of generic independence. Though ingenious, and even though it might be extensionally adequate, their account cannot provide an informative analysis of the concept in question, because it exhibits a peculiar kind of circularity. It is shown that one cannot establish, (...) on the basis of their analysis, that a given entity is a substance, if one does not already know that it is one in advance. The circularity of their account is examined in detail, and it is explained how it could have arisen. (shrink)

W. V. Quine is a curious case. Despite being among the most influential analytic philosophers of the 20th century, card-carrying proponents of Quinean doctrines are hard to find these days. But Quine is far from obsolete. His negative arguments are part of a positive vision for philosophy that is still powerful, attractive, and worth engaging with. Appreciating this, however, requires dodging considerable obstacles. Quine-novices thus need some guidance. And Gary Kemp's excellent Quine: An Introduction, the updated version of his (...) 2006 Guide for the Perplexed, is here to help. On just over 180 readable pages Kemp covers the historical context of Quine's work (chapters 1–2), his critique of analyticity and meaning (chapters 2–3), and the naturalisation of epistemology (chapter 4). Chapters 5–6 then deal with ontology, including abstract and mental entities. The final chapter 7 collects outstanding problems, compares Quine's approach with mainstream analytic philosophy, and discusses how Quine's linguistic behaviourism relates to Chomskyan linguistics, hinting at a reconciliation of these apparently clashing projects. (shrink)

I defend Gary Watson's Platonic Model of free agency against two arguments by counterexample, one by J. David Velleman and the other by Michael Bratman. I claim that these arguments are unconvincing for three reasons. First, they do not accurately target the Platonic Model. Second, they do not convincingly present cases of self-governed action. Third, they call attention to issues about theoretical commitments that are not fit to be settled by appeal to cases. On the basis of this discussion, (...) I draw some general lessons for the debate about which theory of self-governance is the best. (shrink)

Sarah Buss has recently argued that endorsement theories of autonomy face three problems: they conflate autonomous agency with agency simpliciter, they face a vicious regress, and they get the extension of autonomous actions wrong. I argue that one such theory, Gary Watson’s Platonic Model, is not subject to any of these problems. I conclude that Buss has not given us reason to reject the Platonic Model and that it may be compatible with her own theory of accountability.

In a recent issue of this journal, Benjamin Schnieder has presented an objection to the account of individual substance that we have developed and put to various uses in our works on metaphysics. According to Schnieder's objection, our proposal to analyse this notion of substantiality suffers from a special kind of circularity. In this paper, we give two replies to Schnieder's objection. The first is that a successful analysis is not, in fact, required to avoid the sort of circularity (...) about which Schnieder complains. The second is that our analysis does not involve the alleged circularity. (shrink)

In a recent issue of this journal, Benjamin Schnieder has presented an objection to the account of individual substance that we have developed and put to various uses in our works on metaphysics. According to Schnieder's objection, our proposal to analyse this notion of substantiality suffers from a special kind of circularity. In this paper, we give two replies to Schnieder's objection. The first is that a successful analysis is not, in fact, required to avoid the sort of circularity (...) about which Schnieder complains. The second is that our analysis does not involve the alleged circularity. (shrink)

We perceive smells as perduring complex entities within a distal array that might be conceived of as smellscapes. However, the philosophical orthodoxy of Odor Theories has been to deny that smells are perceived as having a distal location. Recent challenges have been mounted to Odor Theories’ veracity in handling the timescale of olfactory perception, how it individuates odors as a distal entities, and their claim that olfactory perception is not spatial. The paper does not aim to dispute these criticisms. Rather, (...) what will be shown is that Molecular Structure Theory, a refinement of Odor Theory, can be further developed to handle these challenges. The theory is further refined by focusing on distal perception that requires considering the perceptual object as mereologically complex persisting odor against a background scene conceived of as a smellscape. What will be offered is an expansion of Molecular Structure Theory to account for distal smell perception within natural environments. (shrink)

The first part of the essay explores the relations between the will and practical reason or judgement. The second part takes up decision in the realm of belief, i.e. deciding that such and such is so. This phenomenon raises two questions. Since we decide that as well as to, should we speak of a doxastic will? Secondly, should we regard ourselves as active in the formation of our judgements as in the formation of our intentions? The author's answer to these (...) two further questions is ‘no’ and ‘yes’, respectively: the boundaries between the active and the passive are not marked by the will. (shrink)

Capital punishment—the legally authorized killing of a criminal offender by an agent of the state for the commission of a crime—stands in special need of moral justification. This is because execution is a particularly severe punishment. Execution is different in kind from monetary and custodial penalties in an obvious way: execution causes the death of an offender. While fines and incarceration set back some of one’s interests, death eliminates the possibility of setting and pursuing ends. While fines and incarceration narrow (...) one’s routes to happiness, death eliminates its possibility. Not surprisingly, there is much debate about the moral permissibility of capital punishment. This entry maps the terrain of this debate. The first section discusses justifications of the death penalty as they appear in major theories of punishment. The second section surveys moral objections to execution that apply to most justifications. The third addresses procedural criticisms, which do not target the morality of execution so much as the justice of its implementation. (shrink)

We are immersed within an odorous sea of chemical currents that we parse into individual odors with complex structures. Odors have been posited as determined by the structural relation between the molecules that compose the chemical compounds and their interactions with the receptor site. But, naturally occurring smells are parsed from gaseous odor plumes. To give a comprehensive account of the nature of odors the chemosciences must account for these large distributed entities as well. We offer a focused review of (...) what is known about the perception of odor plumes for olfactory navigation and tracking, which we then connect to what is known about the role odorants play as properties of the plume in determining odor identity with respect to odor quality. We end by motivating our central claim that more research needs to be conducted on the role that odorants play within the odor plume in determining odor identity. (shrink)

In the subsequent pages, I want to develop a distinction between wanting and valuing which will enable the familiar view of freedom to make sense of the notion of an unfree action. The contention will be that, in the case of actions that are unfree, the agent is unable to get what he most wants, or values, and this inability is due to his own "motivational system." In this case the obstruction to the action that he most wants to do (...) is his own will. It is in this respect that the action is unfree: the agent is obstructed in and by the very performance of the action. (shrink)

In common law jurisdictions, legal professionals cite facts and legal principles from precedent cases to support their arguments before the court for their intended outcome in a current case. This practice stems from the doctrine of stare decisis, where cases that have similar facts should receive similar decisions with respect to the principles. It is essential for legal professionals to identify such facts and principles in precedent cases, though this is a highly time intensive task. In this paper, we present (...) studies that demonstrate that human annotators can achieve reasonable agreement on which sentences in legal judgements contain cited facts and principles. We further demonstrate that it is feasible to automatically annotate sentences containing such legal facts and principles in a supervised machine learning framework based on linguistic features, reporting per category precision and recall figures of between 0.79 and 0.89 for classifying sentences in legal judgements as cited facts, principles or neither using a Bayesian classifier, with an overall κ\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\kappa$$\end{document} of 0.72 with the human-annotated gold standard. (shrink)

In the midst of only the 6th mass extinction in the Earth's history, we must rethink how we teach evolution to prevent natural selection from being incorrectly used as a biological justification for inaction in the face of today's human‐caused mass extinction crisis. Pundits, policy makers, and the general public regularly identify the extinction of endangered species as natural selection at work, rather than attributing modern‐day extinction to the sudden catastrophic bad luck of human caused environmental change, a phenomenon distinct (...) from natural selection. In this natural selection framing, the inability of species to survive in human altered environments is the normal progression of “survival of the fittest” and conservation measures designed to protect species is human interference with natural selection. Paradoxically, this erroneous framing of extinction as the normal course of natural selection ignores humanity's exceptional role in causing today's mass extinction crisis. Our examination of this issue in U.S. college students indicates that it arises from misunderstanding the role of extinction in the history of life, leading us to recommend a greater teaching emphasis on the distinction between extinction and natural selection, and on past mass extinction events. Also see the video abstract here https://youtu.be/29VRyirMdiw. (shrink)

Nietzsche distinguished between two forces in art: Apollonian, which represents order and reason, and Dionysian, which represents chaos and energy. Economists, Ward argues, have operated for too long under the assumption that their work reflects the scientific, Apollonian principals that inform physics when they simply do not apply to economics: 'constants' in economics stand in for variables, and the core scientific principles of prediction and replication are all but ignored by economists. Ward encourages economists to reintegrate the standard rigor of (...) the scientific method into their work while embracing the fact of the shape-shifting changeability of human beings. Economists can still aspire to scientific standards, as is demonstrated by the success of biology, in which there is considerable Dionysian variability. Economists must avoid the temptation to wish away dynamic complexity and diversity and must recognize, among other things, that the desire to take risks is fundamentally human. The second half of the book takes some first steps toward creating this new Dionysian Economics. (shrink)

My concern in this paper will be to explore and develop a version of nonsocratic skepticism about weakness of will. In my view, socratism is incorrect, but like Socrates, I think that the common understanding of weakness of will raises serious problems. Contrary to socratism, it is possible for a person knowingly to act contrary to his or her better judgment. But this description does not exhaust the common view of weakness. Also implicit in this view is the belief that (...) actions which are contrary to one's better judgment are free in the sense that the agent could have done otherwise. To take seriously the possibility of acting contrary to one's better judgment is at the same time to raise problems about the distinction between weakness and compulsion. I argue that the common view, according to which the differentiating feature is that the weak are able to conform their behavior to their practical judgments, is unjustified. Instead, I have proposed that weakness of will involves the failure to develop certain normal capacities of self-control, whereas compulsion involves desires which even the possession of such capacities would not enable one to resist. (shrink)

The new edition of this highly successful text will once again provide the ideal introduction to free will. This volume brings together some of the most influential contributions to the topic of free will during the past 50 years, as well as some notable recent work.