The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

This paper is taken from a long section of the _Tattva-cintā-maṇi_ by Gaṅgeśa that is devoted to proving the existence of—to use an inadequate word—“God” in a somewhat minimalist sense. The _īśvara_, the “Lord,” is for Gaṅgeśa, following Nyāya predecessors, a divine agent, a self, responsible for much, not all, of the order in the world. Unseen Force, _adṛṣṭa_, which is in effect _karman_ made by human action, is also a powerful agent as well as things’ intrinsic natures. Moreover, (...) ordinary selves, atoms, ether, and universals are uncreated. But the _īśvara_ brings about just desert in reincarnation in actualizing Unseen Force, and is responsible for a broad swathe of what some see as accidental arrangements as well as the forming of the macro elements from eternal, naturally _dis_joined atoms. Thus the cosmos in its general existence and structure is viewed in Nyāya as the work of the Lord. Gaṅgeśa’s argument runs: Earth and the like [_a_ (_pakṣa_) = earth and the like (_kṣity-ādi_)] have a conscious agent as a cause [S (_sādhya_) = having an agential cause (_sakartṛkatva_) (S_a_)], _since_ they are effects [H (_sādhana_) = being an effect [(_kāryatva_) (H_a_)], like a pot [_b_ (_dṛṣṭānta_) = a pot (H_b_,S_b_)]. And so the _vyāpti_ rule is: [H → S (_vyāpti_)] Whatever is an effect has an agential cause. For earth and the like, it is reasoned that only an omniscient _īśvara_ could be that cause. The argument was a target of Buddhists who pointed to counterexamples such as growing grass. Growing grass exhibits the prover property, being-an-effect, but not the property to be proved, having-an-agential-cause. The long section is dominated by Gaṅgeśa’s rebutting this and other potential defeaters, in particular, the _upādhi_, having-a-living-body (God does not have a living body but all the agential causes with which we are familiar do), along with a counterinference (_sat-pratipakṣa_), I_a_ & (x)(Ix → ¬Sx), where I = not-produced-by-an-agent-with-a-body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reply to Vaidya, Guhe, and Williams on the Bloomsbury Translation of the Tattva-cintā-maṇi of GaṅgeśaStephen Phillips (bio)More or less happy with the reviews, I would like mainly, in response, to identify advances made in the study of Gaṅgeśa. Anand Vaidya articulates a clearer overview of Gaṅgeśa's theory of knowledge; Eberhard Guhe shows a better way to render the notion of vyāpti, "pervasion," which is central in the theory of (...) inference as a knowledge source; and Michael Williams, too, shows need for improvement on that score as well as for elaboration of matters taken up by classical commentators that are given short shrift in my running comments. For example, whereas long discussions are provoked by Gaṅgeśa's definition of "knowledge," pramā, major points in the purvapakṣa in the section on proving the existence of an īśvara, a "Lord," seem, as Williams says, "threadbare."Vaidya, following Burge (2003), introduces a distinction between entitlement and justification: entitlement is the kind of unreflective epistemic warrant delivered by Gaṅgeśa's pramāṇa, "knowledge sources," working automatically in our everyday lives, whereas justification requires self-conscious certification, prāmāṇya-jñapti. Thereby splitting the horns of a dilemma posed by internalist accounts of knowledge in opposition to externalist ones, Burge and Vaidya are able to incorporate the most [End Page 519] attractive features of each approach. The entitlement/justification distinction cashes out, I may add, to Vaidya's elucidation, Nyāya's deeply held doctrine of parataḥ-prāmāṇya, "certification by another," against the view of "intrinsic certification," svataḥ-prāmāṇya, of Prabhākara and others. As Williams notes, Prābhākara positions, for which Gaṅgeśa sometimes shows sympathy, may have led him to presume that an anubhava—"awareness" or "presentational experience" in my translation, "fresh news" in Matilal's snappy rendering—is an episode of knowledge, pramā, "unless one knows otherwise," bādhakam vinā.On reflection, one sees that such a presentation (it could be perceptual, inferential, analogical, or testimonial) has been produced by a pramāṇa, or, in abnormal cases, not, and so by a "pramāṇa-pretender," a pramāṇaābhāsa, as in seeing a mirage. Again, an anubhava is not just any old cognition or "thought" (pace Das 2021, p. 162); it is defined as nonrecollective. Unlike a deliverance of a genuine pramāṇa, some instances may, on examination, prove to be a-pramā, "non-knowledge," but are, nevertheless, at the animal level, sufficient to provoke and guide action that would not be unhesitating were there doubt in any way. A thirsty Maya, in Vaidya's example, would naturally move in the direction of the water she "sees." But she would hesitate were she to learn from her friend about the unreliability of water-perception in the current circumstances. At the reflective level, where she is unsure whether the anubhava she apperceives is pramā or apramā, her action, including speech (implying assertability), is altered.So far so good in Vaidya's reconstruction. But Gaṅgeśa does not himself pronounce on the question of whether, after learning about the defeater, Maya would still be entitled to her perceptual belief that there is water in the distance. In the volumes under review, I assumed that she would not be "justified" and indeed that she would no longer have the belief (if we may speak about "beliefs"). The defeater grasped at the reflective level would mean not only that she could not certify the perceptual deliverance but also that there would be no knowledge. Clearly, she can't certify it, and thus, as Vaidya reasons, loses the right to assert. But maybe he's correct that, according to Gaṅgeśa's sensibilities, she does not lose the perceptual knowledge. She would remain entitled to her belief.Personally, I think this is wrong, but Vaidya's understanding does have the merit of explaining why some later Naiyāyikas apparently took absurd positions on epistemic luck (Bhattacharya 1996, p. ix). I think that Maya would lose her entitlement, too, but what if, after being informed of the unreliability of water-perception... (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a preliminary attempt to better understand the concept of legitimacy in stakeholder theory. The normative component of stakeholder theory plays a central role in the concept of legitimacy. Though the elaboration of legitimacy contained herein applies generally to all “normative cores” this paper relies on Phillips’s principle of stakeholder fairness and therefore begins with a brief description of this work. This is followed by a discussion of the importance of legitimacy to stakeholder theory as well as the (...) general ambiguity of the term. A distinction is then drawn between normative and derivative legitimacy. Reference to this distinction helps distinguish between a relationship with the organization based on direct moral obligation and one based on the power to help or harm the organization. It is concluded that stakeholders who retain the ability to affect the organization arelegitimate(derivatively), but that this legitimacy is derived from the moral obligation owed other (normative) stakeholders and that the two sorts of legitimacy are importantly different from one another. An example of the normative/derivative distinction at work in managerial decision making is elaborated upon and managerial and research implications are then suggested. (shrink)

Research on the capacity to understand others' minds has tended to focus on representations ofbeliefs,which are widely taken to be among the most central and basic theory of mind representations. Representations ofknowledge, by contrast, have received comparatively little attention and have often been understood as depending on prior representations of belief. After all, how could one represent someone as knowing something if one does not even represent them as believing it? Drawing on a wide range of methods across cognitive science, (...) we ask whether belief or knowledge is the more basic kind of representation. The evidence indicates that nonhuman primates attribute knowledge but not belief, that knowledge representations arise earlier in human development than belief representations, that the capacity to represent knowledge may remain intact in patient populations even when belief representation is disrupted, that knowledge (but not belief) attributions are likely automatic, and that explicit knowledge attributions are made more quickly than equivalent belief attributions. Critically, the theory of mind representations uncovered by these various methods exhibits a set of signature features clearly indicative of knowledge: they are not modality-specific, they are factive, they are not just true belief, and they allow for representations of egocentric ignorance. We argue that these signature features elucidate the primary function of knowledge representation: facilitating learning from others about the external world. This suggests a new way of understanding theory of mind – one that is focused on understanding others' minds in relation to the actual world, rather than independent from it. (shrink)

Leading philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task are certain methodological assumptions about what enquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Le;vy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result exposes confusion, but (...) also gives logical space to religious belief without advocating personal acceptance of that belief, and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the contemplative task of doing conceptual justice to the world. Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation extends in important ways D. Z. Phillips' seminal 1976 book Religion Without Explanation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and theology. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over which jobs we get, whether we're granted loans, what information we're exposed to online, and so on. Algorithms can, and often do, wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has gone largely neglected. I investigate three questions about algorithmic neutrality: What is it? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module. Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this (...) belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking. (shrink)

Our lives are dominated by technology. We live with and through the achievements of technology. What is true of the rest of life is of course true of medicine. Many of us owe our existence and our continued vigour to some achievement of medical technology. And what is true in a major way of general medicine is to a significant degree true of psychiatry. Prozac has long since arrived, and in its wake an ever-growing armamentarium of new psychotropics; beyond that, (...) neuroscience promises ever more technological advances for the field. -/- However, the effect of technology on the field of psychiatry remains highly ambiguous. On the one hand there are the achievements, both in the science and practice of psychiatry; on the other hand technology's influence on the field threatens its identity as a humanistic practice. In this ambiguity psychiatry is not unique - major thinkers have for a long time been highly ambivalent and concerned about the technological order that now defines modern society. For the future, the danger is that the psychiatrically real becomes that which can be seen, the symptom, and especially that which can be measured. Disorders and treatments might become reduced to what can be defined by diagnostic criteria and what can be mapped out on a scale. -/- This book exams how technology has come to influence and drive psychiatry forward, and considers at just what cost these developments have been made. It includes a range of stimulating and thought-provoking chapters from a range of psychiatrists and philosophers. (shrink)

In a presidential speech to philosophers, J. R. Jones addressed the question, 'How do I know who I am?' But how do we know who he was? Different audiences will give different answers. Those who know only his philosophical writings in English will give one kind answer, while those who knew him as an inspirational speaker and leader in the fight to preserve and sustain the Welsh language and its culture, and as a troubler of theological waters, will give a (...) very different answer. As someone who knew him in both contexts, Dewi Z. Phillips argues that there are deep connections between J. R. Jones's major preoccupations with the identity of the self the identity of a nation, and the identity of God. This book will introduce new readers to J. R. Jones's work, and will also introduce his different audiences to each other. (shrink)

Errol Lord offers a new account of the nature of rationality: what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons, and dispels doubts about whether we ought to be rational.

Aristotle claims that in some extenuating circumstances, the correct response to the wrongdoer is sungnōmē rather than blame. Sungnōmē has a wide spectrum of meanings that include aspects of sympathy, pity, fellow-feeling, pardon, and excuse, but the dominant interpretation among scholars takes Aristotle’s meaning to correspond most closely to forgiveness. Thus, it is commonly held that the virtuous Aristotelian agent ought to forgive wrongdoers in specific extenuating circumstances. Against the more popular forgiveness interpretation, I begin by defending a positive account (...) of sungnōmē as the correct judgment that a wrongdoer deserves excuse since she was not blameworthy. I then argue that since sungnōmē is merited on the grounds of fairness, this shows that both the forgiveness interpretation and a third, alternative interpretation of sungnōmē as sympathy mischaracterize both the justification for sungnōmē and its nature. Moreover, I argue that Aristotle not only lacks an account of forgiveness but in fact, that his account of blame is incompatible with forgiveness altogether. (shrink)

Eavesdropping judgments (judgments about truth, retraction, and consistency across contexts) about epistemic modals have been used in recent years to argue for a radical thesis: that truth is assessment-relative. We argue that judgments for 'I think that p' pattern in strikingly similar ways to judgments for 'Might p' and 'Probably p'. We argue for this by replicating three major experiments involving the latter and adding a condition with the form 'I think that p', showing that subjects respond in the same (...) way to 'thinks' as to modals. This poses a serious challenge to relativist treatments of the modal judgments, since a relativist treatment of the corresponding 'thinks' judgments is totally implausible, so if a unified account of the phenomena is to be found, it cannot be a relativist one. We briefly sketch how a unified account might look. (shrink)

This chapter pursues an understanding of what Cicero thought 'Italic' philosophy to be, and proceeds to develop a broader account of how Cicero's version compares with the surviving textual evidence and testimonia from the Hellenistic period of the philosophy of the 'Italic' philosophers, including the Lucanians 'Ocellus', 'Eccelus', and 'Aresas/Aesara', and the Rudian Ennius. Special focus is placed on their theories of cosmology, psychology, and law. Collocation of 'Italic' with 'Pythagorean' philosophy of this era aids in building a more comprehensive (...) view of what Hellenistic Pythagoreanism may have looked like. Uploaded here is the pre-publication version; please email me for the printed version. (shrink)

For serious yoga practitioners curious to know the ancient origins of the art, Stephen Phillips, a professional philosopher and sanskritist with a long-standing personal practice, lays out the philosophies of action, knowledge, and devotion as well as the processes of meditation, reasoning, and self-analysis that formed the basis of yoga in ancient and classical India and continue to shape it today. In discussing yoga's fundamental commitments, Phillips explores traditional teachings of hatha yoga, karma yoga, _bhakti_ yoga, and tantra, and shows (...) how such core concepts as self-monitoring consciousness, karma, nonharmfulness, reincarnation, and the powers of consciousness relate to modern practice. He outlines values implicit in _bhakti_ yoga and the tantric yoga of beauty and art and explains the occult psychologies of _koshas_, _skandhas_, and _chakras_. His book incorporates original translations from the early Upanishads, the _Bhagavad Gita_, the _Yoga Sutra_, the _Hatha Yoga Pradipika_, and seminal tantric writings of the tenth-century Kashmiri Shaivite, Abhinava Gupta. A glossary defining more than three hundred technical terms and an extensive bibliography offer further help to nonscholars. A remarkable exploration of yoga's conceptual legacy, _Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth_ crystallizes ideas about self and reality that unite the many incarnations of yoga. (shrink)

Phillip Cary argues that Augustine invented or created the concept of self as an inner space--as space into which one can enter and in which one can find God. This concept of inwardness, says Cary, has worked its way deeply into the intellectual heritage of the West and many Western individuals have experienced themselves as inner selves. After surveying the idea of inwardness in Augustine's predecessors, Cary offers a re-examination of Augustine's own writings, making the controversial point that in (...) his early writings Augustine appears to hold that the human soul is quite literally divine. Cary goes on to contend that the crucial Book 7 of the Confessions is not a historical report of Augustine's "conversion" experience, but rather an explanation of his intellectual development over time. (shrink)

It follows from Humean principles of plenitude, I argue, that island universes are possible: physical reality might have 'absolutely isolated' parts. This makes trouble for Lewis's modal realism; but the realist has a way out. First, accept absolute actuality, which is defensible, I argue, on independent grounds. Second, revise the standard analysis of modality: modal operators are 'plural', not 'individual', quantifiers over possible worlds. This solves the problem of island universes and confers three additional benefits: an 'unqualified' principle of compossibility (...) can be accepted; the possibility of nothing can be accommodated; and the identity of indiscernible worlds can be decisively refuted. (shrink)

This volume contains eighteen papers, three with new postscripts, that were written over the past 35 years. Five of the papers have not been previously published. Together they provide a comprehensive account of modal reality—the realm of possible worlds—from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Part 1 sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism: every consistent proposition is true of some portion of reality. (...) Part 2 presents and defends a realist theory of concrete possible worlds with an absolute ontological distinction between the actual and the merely possible. Part 3 presents and defends a Humean account of modal plenitude, formulating and endorsing principles of recombination, of plenitude of possible structures, and of plenitude of alien contents. Part 4 applies the Humean account to truthmaking, mereology, spacetime, and quantities. I argue that holding fast to Humean strictures leads to views that differ in radical ways from those put forth by contemporary metaphysicians. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey what I call Lewisian approaches to modality: approaches that analyze modality in terms of concrete possible worlds and their parts. I take the following four theses to be characteristic of Lewisian approaches to modality. (1) There is no primitive modality. (2) There exists a plurality of concrete possible worlds. (3) Actuality is an indexical concept. (4) Modality de re is to be analyzed in terms of counterparts, not transworld identity. After an introductory section in which (...) I motivate analyzing modality in terms of possible worlds, I devote one section to each of these four theses. For each thesis, I take Lewis’s interpretation and defense as my starting point. I then consider and endorse alternative ways of accepting the thesis, some of which disagree substantially with Lewis’s interpretation or defense. There is more than one way to be a Lewisian about modality. (shrink)

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

Father Lord, author of Armchair Philosophy, herein offers to a wider audience some notes from a recent talk to the Philosophers in St. Louis. He believes that writing is necessary not only to express, but also really to assimilate philosophy.

Business ethics is a topic receiving much attention in the literature. However, the term 'business ethics' is not adequately defined. Typical definitions refer to the rightness or wrongness of behavior, but not everyone agrees on what is morally right or wrong, good or bad, ethical or unethical. To complicate the problem, nearly all available definitions exist at highly abstract levels. This article focuses on contemporary definitions of business ethics by business writers and professionals and on possible areas of agreement among (...) the available definitions. Then a definition is synthesized that is broad enough to cover the field of management in a sense as full as most managers might conceive of it. (shrink)

I am a realist of a metaphysical stripe. I believe in an immense realm of "modal" and "abstract" entities, of entities that are neither part of, nor stand in any causal relation to, the actual, concrete world. For starters: I believe in possible worlds and individuals; in propositions, properties, and relations (both abundantly and sparsely conceived); in mathematical objects and structures; and in sets (or classes) of whatever I believe in. Call these sorts of entity, and the reality they comprise, (...) metaphysical. In contrast, call the actual, concrete entities, and the reality they comprise, physical. Physical and metaphysical reality together comprise all that there is. In this paper, it is not my aim to defend realism about any particular metaphysical sort of entity. Rather, I ask quite generally whether and how any brand of realism about metaphysical sorts of entity could be justified? (shrink)

Criticising judges : fair game or off-limits? -- Academics and judges -- Are the judges too powerful? -- Magna Carta and compensation culture -- Does judicial review undermine democracy? -- Liability of public authorities in negligence -- The shifting sands of statutory interpretation -- Time to call it a day : some reflections on finality and the law -- The globalisation of law -- Recent developments in commercial law conference -- The contribution of construction cases to the development of the (...) common law -- What is wrong with human rights? -- Human rights in an age of terrorism -- Religion and the law : some current problems -- The extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights : now on a firmer footing, but is it a sound one? -- Magna Carta--liberties, customs, and the free flow of trade -- Delay too often defeats justice -- Magna Carta and religion -- Runnymede -- Advocates as protectors of the rule of law -- Litigators--survive and thrive -- The Jackson reforms and civil justice -- Sharpening the public gaze : advances in open justice in England and Wales -- Threats to justice in the twenty-first century -- Halsey 10 years on---the decision revisited -- Arbitration versus litigation -- Arbitration after Brussels I reform -- School speech day -- How my classical education has affected my life -- Valedictory -- Changes in the law in the last 50 years. (shrink)

Much recent discussion of love concerns ‘the reasons for love’: whether we love for reasons and, if so, what sorts of things those reasons are. This chapter seeks to call into question some of the assumptions that have shaped this debate, in particular the assumption that love might be ‘responsive’ to reasons in something like the way that actions, beliefs, intentions and ordinary emotions are. I begin by drawing out some tensions in the existing literature on reasons for love, suggesting (...) that these arise in part because different interests expressed in the language of ‘reasons’ – the interests of explanation, justification and interpersonal understanding – pull us towards different kinds of account of reasons for love. This seems to count in favor of treating these interests separately, with different conceptions of the reasons that answer to them. This suggestion, as I explain, runs up against a certain conception of ‘responsiveness to reasons’, which I argue is implicitly assumed in many discussions of reasons for love. However, I argue that we should be skeptical about the application of this conception to love in light of the ontological differences between love and paradigm ‘reasons-responsive’ phenomena, potentially making room for the suggested methodological separation. (shrink)

I argue that we can visually perceive others as seeing agents. I start by characterizing perceptual processes as those that are causally controlled by proximal stimuli. I then distinguish between various forms of visual perspective-taking, before presenting evidence that most of them come in perceptual varieties. In doing so, I clarify and defend the view that some forms of visual perspective-taking are “automatic”—a view that has been marshalled in support of dual-process accounts of mindreading.

Darwin's art collection : the prints, drawings, and photographs Darwin collected in the 1860s and 70s -- Illustrations and illusion : strategies Darwin used in illustrating his books -- Art, experience, and observation : Darwin's knowledge of art history and use of illustration in his books -- Darwin and the passions : how passion manuals informed Darwin's research -- Photography and evolution meet : connections between photography and biology in the 1860s -- Method to their madness : how photography in (...) mental hospitals influenced Darwin -- Laughing and crying : Darwin's quest for pictures of expressive babies -- Darwin's eyes and ears : the artists who guided Darwin's search for pictures -- Darwin's art photographer : Oscar Rejlander, Darwin's favorite photographer -- Rejlander's performances : posing for Darwin's pictures -- Alice, eugenics, and the spirit world : the aftermath of Darwin's experiments. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show Kant’s importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon’s distinctions of ‘abstract’ and ‘physical’ truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of ‘varieties’ from ‘races’ in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the ‘history’ of nature [Naturgeschichte] over ‘description’ of nature (...) [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant’s confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the ‘history of nature’ and gave theoretical preference to ‘description of nature’. As a result, Kant’s successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a ‘regulative’ idea of reason. (shrink)

With human language, the same utterance can have different meanings in different contexts. Nevertheless, listeners almost invariably converge upon the correct intended meaning. The classic Gricean explanation of how this is achieved posits the existence of four maxims of conversation, which speakers are assumed to follow. Armed with this knowledge, listeners are able to interpret utterances in a contextually sensible way. This account enjoys wide acceptance, but it has not gone unchallenged. Specifically, Relevance Theory offers an explicitly cognitive account of (...) utterance interpretation that presents a radical challenge to the neo‐Gricean paradigm. Evolutionary considerations are one way in which we can choose between competing theories. A simple game‐theoretic model of the evolution of communication is presented, and it is used to derive a number of basic qualities that will be satisfied by all evolved communication systems. These qualities are observed to precisely predict the foundational principles of Relevance Theory. The model thus provides biological support for that enterprise in general, and for the plausibility of the cognitive mechanisms that it describes in particular. (shrink)

From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. _Post-Secular Philosophy_ is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by modern (...) philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, _Post-Secular Philosophy_ presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking. (shrink)

Yoga is thousands of years old, but because of its current popularity, some people wrongly dismiss it as just another exercise fad made fashionable by celebrities. In fact, as author Kathy Phillips demonstrates in this large, beautifully illustrated book, yoga is a gentle but powerful means of achieving strength, flexibility, serenity, and a healthy balance between body and mind. Originating on the Indian subcontinent at the dawn of civilization, yoga is now accepted worldwide as an effective way to deal with (...) physical and emotional stress. The Spirit of Yoga is a sensible introduction for beginners, and a source of inspiration for current practitioners who would like to learn more. It explains differences among the various yoga disciplines, enabling readers to make a considered choice that best fits their needs. The author uses her experience as a yoga teacher to describe exercises and postures-also shown in color photos-that can promote physical health and body flexibility while inducing emotional tranquility. Yoga positions are suggested as effective remedies for physical ailments and for discomforts produced by everyday stress. The author's witty approach to her subject demystifies today's yoga hype while offering readers sound guidance and emphasizing the entirely real benefits they can derive from this honorable discipline. The book's foreword is by the international fashion model Christy Turlington. Hundreds of color photos and illustrations. (shrink)

In Your God Is Too Small, J. B. Phillips explains that the trouble facing many of us today is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In a world where our experience of life has grown in myriad directions, and our mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and scientific discoveries, our ideas of God have remained largely static. It is nearly impossible, Phillips argues, for an adult to (...) worship the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age, the "God-in-a-box" notion, limiting God to such inadequate conceptions as "Resident Policeman," "Grand Old Man," "Meek-and-Mild," and "Managing Director." As a result of these insufficient ideas of God, many people live with an inner dissatisfaction, without any faith at all. Your God Is Too Small explores the ways in which we can find a truly meaningful and constructive God for ourselves, big enough to account for our current experience of life and big enough to command our highest admiration and respect. (shrink)

Composition as identity, as I understand it, is a theory of the composite structure of reality. The theory’s underlying logic is irreducibly plural; its fundamental primitive is a generalized identity relation that takes either plural or singular arguments. Strong versions of the theory that incorporate a generalized version of the indiscernibility of identicals are incompatible with the framework of plural logic, and should be rejected. Weak versions of the theory that are based on the idea that composition is merely analogous (...) to identity are too weak to be interesting, lacking in metaphysical consequence. I defend a moderate version according to which composition is a kind of identity, and argue that the difference is metaphysically substantial, not merely terminological. I then consider whether the notion of generalized identity, though fundamental, can be elucidated in modal terms by reverse engineering Hume’s Dictum. Unfortunately, for realists about possible worlds, such as myself,... (shrink)