We describe a general problem solving mechanism that is especially suited for performing a particular form of abductive inference, or best-explanation finding. A problem solver embodying this mechanism synthesizes composite hypotheses. It does so by by combining hypothesis parts as a means to the satisfaction of explanatory goals. In this way it is able to arrive at complex, integrated conclusions which are not pre-stored.The intent is to present a computationally-feasible, task-specific problem solver for a particular information processing task which is (...) nevertheless of very great generality. The task is that of synthesizing coherent composite explanatory hypotheses based upon a prestored, and possibly vast collection of hypothesis-generating “concepts”. The authors’ claim is nothing less than to have shown, in a new sense, and surpassing all other work in this area, how it is computationally possible for an agent to come to “know”, based upon the evidence of the case. (shrink)

Red-2 is a computer program for red-cell antibody identification, a piece of "normal science". Abstracting from Red-2, a general problem solving mechanism is described that is especially suited for performing a form of abductive inference or best explanation finding. A problem solver embodying this mechanism synthesizes composite hypotheses by combining hypothesis parts. This is a common task of intelligence, and a component of scientific reasoning. The work addresses the question, 'How is science possible?' by showing how a simple but powerful (...) form of hypothesis synthesis is computationally feasible. (shrink)

© 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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.2 (2003) 172-176 [Access article in PDF] The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Ross Wolin. Series ed. Thomas W. Benson. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Pp. xviii + 256. $34.95, cloth. Ross Wolin's The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke offers its readers an interesting mix of intellectual history and conceptual explication, along with an element of biography, which Wolin performs (...) in an effort to trace the movements of Burke's thought as it developed over time within particular socio-political circumstances. The book is divided into three parts, each corresponding to Wolin's three-part division of Burke's intellectual [End Page 172] career. Part I, "Towards a Better Life through Art, Criticism and Politics," begins with a chapter on Burke's formation as a critic in the bohemian, avant-garde culture of post-World War I Greenwich Village. Wolin offers an account of how the dynamics of this social milieu prompted Burke to incorporate politics into his already established aesthetic interests, and of this fusion's manifestation in left-leaning periodicals of the time. While some might be tempted to see this first chapter as having limited value in comparison to Jack Selzer's richly detailed Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village : Conversing with the Moderns, 1915-1931, it should be noted that Wolin does a fine job of helping his readers—in chapter one and those which follow—to understand explicitly how specific contexts shaped Burke's ideas and his rhetoric (something that Selzer's book does not do). Wolin is particularly adept at showing how, for Burke, there is an inextricable link between aesthetics, rhetoric, politics, and social life in general. This aesthetic-rhetorical connection to politics and life, argues Wolin, is key to understanding all of Burke's work. According to Wolin, equally important is how this connection informed the essays that comprised Burke's Counter-Statement, which Wolin sees as the seed from which all of Burke's theoretical and critical writings grew. For Wolin, to understand Burke one must understand Counter-Statement, and understand it within the historical circumstances that prompted and shaped its concepts and their rhetorical presentation.Chapter two is thus devoted to a discussion of the significance of Counter-Statement within Burke's oeuvre. It is in Counter-Statement, Wolin contends, that one can discern not only the fundaments of Burke's later work but also the "Critics Credo" that organized Burke's rhetorical efforts from Permanence and Change to The Rhetoric of Religion. Wolin's attempt to demonstrate the operation of this credo in all of Burke's books as an organizing principle pushes the limits of credulity at times, but readers should not let this obscure the insight Wolin offers us into Burke's responses to and interventions in early twentieth-century intellectual culture. Chapters three, four, and five comprise Part II of Wolin's book, "The Tactics of Conflict and Cooperation," which discusses in succession the three books that followed Counter-Statement chronologically: Permanence and Change, Attitudes Towards History, and The Philosophy of Literary Form. In these chapters, Wolin makes numerous interesting and novel points about Burke's thought. In the chapter on Permanence and Change, for example, Wolin highlights the conception of ethics implicit in that work, one that has its roots in poetics (particularly tragedy) and which refuses "to supplant traditional [End Page 173] ethics with another system [that is] equally fixed" (77). Although he does not state this, implicit in Wolin's reading is the suggestion that within Burke's work lies an alternative to the neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics and Habermasian universal pragmatics so many rhetorical scholars seem to embrace when theorizing a rhetorical ethics. (A "dramatistic" ethics of discourse and public life is, I think, an untapped potential of Burke's work.) Part III, "The Tactics of Motivation," offers similarly insightful and contextualized readings of A Grammar of Motives, A Rhetoric of Motives, The Rhetoric of Religion, and Language as Symbolic Action. Particularly interesting is Wolin's discussion in chapter seven of the importance of style... (shrink)

It is sometimes said that our age is an age of relativism. For example, Paul Tillich has expressed his “uneasiness about the victory of relativism in all realms of thought and life today.” Karl Popper tells us that “the main philosophical malady of our time is an intellectual and moral relativism, the latter being at least in part based on the former.” What Popper refers to as “intellectual relativism” consists in part in a doctrine about truth which is sometimes expressed (...) as “There is no such thing as absolute truth.” At other times it is expressed by saying “truth is relative.”. (shrink)

Psychologism in logic holds that logic is a branch of psychology. This view has been vigorously defended by John Stuart Mill and by a number of German philosophers of logic, notably Erdmann. Its chief critics have been Husserl and Frege and, to a lesser extent, Russell. Husserl set forth a profound and detailed critique of psychologism in Logical Investigations. This paper examines this critique. First, I explain why the psychologistic theory is attractive. Then I show that Husserl's critique is not (...) convincing, partly because he does not take the theory in its most plausible form and partly because he ignores certain important distinctions (for example, between what a statement is about and what it is true in virtue of). Then I raise two new objections to the psychologistic theory. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the psychologistic theory remains an important and serious position from which we can learn much about the status of logic. (shrink)

Using Brehm's (1999) intensity of emotion paradigm, we investigated whether basic positive or negative affect operates like a motivational state. We focused on one of the most basic affects, the sensory affect experienced when eating food. Participants tasted a delicious chocolate truffle (Study 1) or some bitter chocolate (Study 2) and were exposed to either a weak, moderately strong, or a very strong reason for feeling an opposing-valence affect or to no reason. In line with the predictions, the affect that (...) participants reported in response to chocolate functioned like a motivational state as its intensity was a cubic function of the importance of the reason for feeling an opposing affect. We discussed the implications of these findings for the conceptualisation of affect and consider several applications for food advertising and consumer rating research. (shrink)

This paper first explains why the charge of self-refutation against extreme relativism is so important and then defends extreme relativism against two of the most recent and most sophisticated accusations of self-refutation. It is shown that these accusations seem plausible only because they illicitly employ principles appropriate only to absolute truth; hence these accusations are unsound. One central topic of discussion in the paper is the relation between "a believes that p" and "p is true for a".

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jack W. Meiland INTERPRETATION AS A COGNITIVE DISCIPLINE Interpretation is the fundamental method of the humanities. The humanist is concerned first to understand what a text, a speech, a work of art, means; and interpretation has this understanding as its goal. All of the other activities and aims of the humanist depend on interpretation. One cannot properly appreciate a work of art until one grasps what it means. (...) Nor can one appropriately evaluate it until this condition is met. Moreover, the importance of interpretation reaches far beyond the humanities into everyday life, where we interpret what we hear and read in order to grasp meanings. Its importance reaches into the sciences: the social sciences where one must interpret this individual behavior and that institutional practice, and the natural sciences where one must interpret the results of one's experiments. Because interpretation is of such fundamental and pervasive importance in our lives, it is urgent for us to understand what interpretation is and what it should aim at. In this article, I investigate the activity of interpretation by focusing on the interpretation of literary texts and by beginning with the views of E. D. Hirsch, Jr. Eleven years ago, Hirsch published Validity in Interpretation, a book which delves into the nature of interpretation in great detail.1 Richard Palmer has said that Hirsch's book is "the first full-dress treatise in general hermeneutics written in English," and continues, "In the years to come, it will undoubtedly take its place among the significant American works on the theory of interpretation. In a systematic and carefully argued presentation, the book challenges some of the most cherished assumptions that have guided literary interpretation for some four decades."2 1 think that Palmer's prediction has been fulfilled. Hirsch's book remains a decade later one of the very few systematic American works in this field,3 and it has been widely read, much used in university courses, and has significantly influenced thought on its subject. Validity in Interpretation presents a carefully worked-out position buttressed by philosophically-informed 23 24Philosophy and Literature and systematic argumentation in a way which reveals the fundamental questions at issue. Although there have been scattered criticisms of Hirsch's views,4 in my opinion there has not so far appeared the kind of searching critique which this book deserves in view of its attempt to deal with these issues so seriously and at such a fundamental level and in view of the influence which the book has had. The necessity for a critique is now reinforced by the recent publication of another book by Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation, more than half of which is devoted to a further explication and defense of these same views.5 In undertaking to reply to Hirsch's position, I hope not only to cast doubt on that position but also, and mainly, to provide better foundations for the view which I hold. It is one of the great merits of Hirsch's work that it facilitates that constructive effort by attacking the issues at such a basic level, enabling us to come to grips with them immediately. In what follows, I will describe Hirsch's view, make clear what kind of position he holds, and defend his view against criticisms which I consider misguided. Then we will be in a position to assess his contentions and to defend an alternative theory. Hirsch's view is, briefly, that the interpretation of a literary work should aim at re-creating (or, as he sometimes puts it, "re-cognizing") the meaning which the author of that work intended the work to have. He opposes all views which ignore authorial meaning; views which hold that the meaning of a work may change through the ages, so that the work may have one meaning at one time and another meaning at another time; views which hold that the work may have meaning in virtue of its relation to the interpreter's interests, to the needs and problems of the interpreter's times or the spirit of his age, or in fact to anything except the author's intended meaning.6 The first point that must be... (shrink)

This paper first explains why the charge of self-refutation against extreme relativism is so important and then defends extreme relativism against two of the most recent and most sophisticated accusations of self-refutation. It is shown that these accusations seem plausible only because they illicitly employ principles appropriate only to absolute truth; hence these accusations are unsound. One central topic of discussion in the paper is the relation between "a believes that p" and "p is true for a".

In his valuable book [3], Israel Scheffler presents an extended critique of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science. Scheffler argues against Kuhn's “main thesis,” namely that “... paradigm change in science is not generally subject to deliberation and critical assessment”. Scheffler does recognize, though, that there are important elements of Kuhn's view that themselves seem to conflict with this “main thesis.” For these elements seem to make possible deliberation, critical assessment, and objectivity in the discussion of scientific paradigms. So it appears (...) from Scheffler's critique that Kuhn's position is inconsistent. The puzzle is compounded by Kuhn's admission—indeed, insistence—that his book does contain “a preliminary codification of good reasons for theory choice. These are... reasons of exactly the kind standard in philosophy of science: accuracy, scope, simplicity, fruitfulness, and the like”. In his recent reply to Kuhn, Scheffler quotes this passage from Kuhn and says: “If these reasons are not... to be construed as utterly free of all constraints or themselves paradigm-dependent, then they allow the comparison of rival paradigms and make paradigm debates intelligible. Such intelligibility is, however, at odds with Kuhn's statement that the proponents of competing paradigms ‘will inevitably talk through each other’”. In this interchange between Scheffler and Kuhn, one gets the impression of people, if not paradigms, talking “through each other.” I think that this nonmeeting of minds is due to interpreting Kuhn as an opponent of objectivity when in fact he is not an opponent but a proponent. It is this misinterpretation which produces the apparent inconsistency in Kuhn's position. In this paper I suggest a way of understanding Kuhn which resolves this apparent inconsistency in his work and might help to focus discussion on the real issue between Kuhn and many of his critics. This suggestion has the crucial consequence of shifting the focus from objectivity to the real issue, namely truth. (shrink)

Despite seemingly ambiguous writings, Beard is a relativist. Beard states that if historical conceptions are relative, then relativity is relative; this is not a rejection of relativism. As times change, doctrines become outmoded. Beard's times were right for relativism, so he was a relativist, despite his knowledge of its eventual demise. Relativism cannot provide the historian with a frame of reference to interpret the "totality of history." He must choose a comprehensive and informed frame. Beard seems to indicate that historians (...) can forecast the future; yet, this contradicts his rejection of absolute historical truths. He is not discussing forecasting future events, but forecasting future frames of reference. (shrink)

This article challenges the current scholarly consensus that Suetonius wrote the Divus Iulius regardless of Plutarch. Closer examination of the Caesar-biographies shows which influence Plutarch has exerted by his biographic works on Suetonius and reveals that the dominant position in the classical studies is obsolete. This paper scrutinises not only clearly defined knowledge of the Quellenforschung, but illuminates also the role model of Plutarch. Before it is possible to assess the dependence of the Divus Iulius from the Καισαρ, I will (...) reopen the case of the composition dates, examine the literary circles as a space of interaction and look on Plutarch’s reception in Rome. (shrink)

In a series of recent publications, orofacial researchers have debated the question of how ‘bruxism’ should be defined for the purposes of accurate diagnosis and reliable clinical research. Following the principles of realism-based ontology, we performed an analysis of the arguments involved. This revealed that the disagreements rested primarily on inconsistent use of terms, so that issues of ontology were thus obfuscated by shortfalls in terminology. In this paper, we demonstrate how bruxism terminology can be improved by paying attention to (...) the relationships between (1) particulars and types, and (2) continuants and occurrents. (shrink)

In the last two decades we have witnessed considerable efforts directed towards making electronic healthcare records comparable and interoperable through advances in record architectures and (bio)medical terminologies and coding systems. Deep semantic issues in general, and ontology in particular, have received some interest from the research communities. However, with the exception of work on so-called ‘controlled vocabularies’, ontology has thus far played little role in work on standardization. The prime focus has been rather the rapid population of terminologies at the (...) level of fine detail. In this paper, we argue that more efforts are needed on the side of both research and standardization to ensure that the coding systems used in electronic healthcare records enjoy a semantics that is coherent with the semantics of the record. We propose realist ontology as a method to bring about this coherence by means of a robust system of top-level ontological categories. (shrink)

Despite legislation and public education, racism and sexism are alive and well. Though pre‐conceptive gender selection may enhance procreative liberty, this technology presents two disturbing questions. First, does sex selection represent underlying parental sexism? Second, by performing gender selection, do medical professionals perpetuate sexism? It will be maintained that pre‐conceptive sex selection is sexist as it reflects parental anticipation of stereotypical gender based behavior. Perhaps even more incriminating, sex selection forces parents to prefer one sex over another, to place a (...) value on gender. This emphasis on sex conflicts with societal goals which urge, and often legally require, individuals to ignore gender. We will assert that pre‐conceptive gender selection exemplifies sexism in its purest most blatant form as prior to conception, before parents can possibly know anything about their child, gender dominates the calculus of a child’s worth. We will also emphasize that physicians, by facilitating sex selection, legitimize the motivations of their patients and provide de facto support of sexism. In a similar vein, arguments against pre‐conceptive race selection will be made. (shrink)

Whether firms can be said to be moral agents and to have the capacity for moral responsibility has significant practical consequences. In most legal systems in the world, business firms are recognized as persons with the ability to own property, to maintain and defend lawsuits, and to self-organize governance structures. To recognize that these business persons can also act morally or immorally as organizations, however, would justify the imposition of other legal constraints and normative expectations on organizations. In the criminal (...) law, for example, the idea that an organized firm may itself have criminal culpability is accepted in many countries (such as the United States) but rejected in others (such as Germany). This book collects new contributions by leading business scholars in business ethics, philosophy, and related disciplines to extend our understanding of the moral responsibility of firms. (shrink)

The sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism,” which disregards talk of divine agency. In response to those who argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism, a number of philosophers have offered a pragmatic defense. The naturalism of the sciences, they argue, is provisional and defeasible: it is justified by the fact that unsuccessful theistic explanations have been superseded by successful natural ones. But this defense is inconsistent with the history of the sciences. The sciences have (...) always exhibited what we call a domain naturalism. They have never invoked divine agency, but have always focused on the causal structure of the natural world. It is not the case, therefore, that the sciences once employed theistic explanations and then abandoned them. The naturalism of the sciences is as old as science itself. (shrink)