This paper argues that contemporary theories of consciousness fail to adequately recognize the importance of subjectivity and meaning. A comparative analysis is conducted examining the major tenets of Logopsychism—consciousness, subjectivity, and meaning—against a range of materialist and non-materialist models of consciousness, evaluated along the axes of ontology and epistemology. I demonstrate that the teleological function of consciousness is the ascription of meaning to lived experience. This teleology represents the overlooked third axis in evaluating theories of consciousness. Finally, I will show (...) that logopsychism is uniquely situated as a supplemental theory of consciousness that reintroduces the importance of meaning across all ontological models. (shrink)

Logopsychism is introduced as an ontologically neutral theory of consciousness that posits its primary function as the ascription of subjective meaning. It shifts the discussion from what consciousness is to what consciousness is for. Its framework is built upon four axioms: (1) the universe is a source of infinite meaning potential; (2) consciousness is the structure through which meaning is ascribed to all events; (3) subjectivity interprets this meaning into potential lived experience; and (4) consciousness either accepts this interpretation or (...) recursively layers new meaning until an acceptable condition is reached. Meaning can be layered and mapped on a three-dimensional plane along the axes of depth, breadth, and time. Logopsychism is presented as a supplemental theory that can be integrated into any account that recognizes meaning and subjectivity as integral to first-person experience. (shrink)

Proponents of the extended mind have suggested that phenomenal transparency may be important to the way we evaluate putative cases of cognitive extension. In particular, it has been suggested that in order for a bio-external resource to count as part of the machinery of the mind, it must qualify as a form of transparent equipment or transparent technology. The present paper challenges this claim. It also challenges the idea that phenomenological properties can be used to settle disputes regarding the constitutional (...) status of bio-external resources in episodes of extended cognizing. Rather than regard phenomenal transparency as a criterion for cognitive extension, we suggest that transparency is a feature of situations that support the ascription of certain cognitive/mental dispositional properties to both ourselves and others. By directing attention to the forces and factors that motivate disposition ascriptions, we arrive at a clearer picture of the role of transparency in arguments for extended cognition and the extended mind. As it turns out, transparency is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognitive extension, but this does not mean that it is entirely irrelevant to our understanding of the circumstances in which episodes of extended cognizing are apt to arise. (shrink)

Proponents of the extended mind insist that human states and cognitive processes can, at times, include non-biological resources that lie external to the bodily boundaries. In the present chapter, we apply this idea to large language models (LLMs), suggesting that some LLMs exist as extended cognitive (or computational) systems. We focus in particular on LLMs that exploit retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) techniques and online computational tools, proposing that these systems constitute extended architectures whose capabilities are realized, in part, by external structures. (...) Drawing on parallels with classic cases of human cognitive extension, we argue that extended LLMs raise important philosophical questions concerning the nature and limits of artificial intelligence. We also draw attention to the role of language in supporting the emergence of extended systems. LLMs, it is suggested, are particularly well placed to benefit from their immersion in an online ecology that is home to a sizable chunk of human symbolic and technological culture. (shrink)

How does microbiota research impact our understanding of biological individuality? We summarize the interdisciplinary summer school on "Microbiota, Symbiosis and Individuality: Conceptual and Philosophical Issues" (July 2019), which was supported by a European Research Council starting grant project "Immunity, DEvelopment, and the Microbiota" (IDEM). The summer school centered around interdisciplinary group work on four facets of microbiota research: holobionts, individuality, causation, and human health. The conceptual discussion of cutting-edge empirical research provided new insights into microbiota and highlights the value of (...) incorporating into meetings experts from other disciplines, such as philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgment of permissibility and wrongness are relatively scarce. Across 4 experiments (N = 1,438), we show that people judge that some behaviors can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgments track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgments of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not (...) permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways. (shrink)

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is often conceived as a self-contained system whose generality derives from increasingly powerful internal architectures. This paper challenges that assumption by developing an alternative, extended conception of AGI inspired by theories of active externalism and the extended mind. On this view, general intelligence is grounded not primarily in internal computation, but in a system’s capacity to construct and exploit extended mechanisms that incorporate environmental resources into its cognitive routines. We illustrate this idea with reference to the (...) capabilities of large language models (LLMs), focusing on linguistic self-stimulation, tool use, and the creation of ad hoc computational tools. Across all these cases, language plays a peculiarly important role in enabling LLMs to leverage extended mechanisms that augment their cognitive and computational performances. (shrink)

In this work, we conduct a narrative review of pressing equity and justice issues within global modelled scenarios and propose a new research agenda to strengthen their consideration in future model developments and applications. We begin by introducing a typology of equity and justice limitations in climate mitigation scenarios, distinguishing among structural, methodological, and epistemological issues that shape what integrated assessment models (IAMs) can reveal at policy-relevant scales. Reflecting on these concerns, we develop a research agenda that describes new avenues (...) of work and draws together distinct emerging initiatives, ranging from incremental improvements to structural reforms and alternative participatory approaches. Drawing on reflexive insights from integrated assessment practitioners, this agenda prioritizes embedding equity principles directly into scenario design through differentiated effort sharing and finance flows, developing new frameworks that incorporate sufficiency and demand transformations while protecting decent living, and establishing genuine co-production with underrepresented communities beyond mere consultation. Underlying this research agenda is a recognition that modeling communities must engage more critically with the implicit assumptions in scenario and model design and use that have equity and justice implications. Achieving equitable climate futures will require transformative actions that integrate diverse justice concerns, advance sustainable development, and confront systemic inequities across both human and ecological dimensions. Although models will never capture all these aspects, these can be significantly enhanced to support more informed discussion and practical application. Our contribution proposes a way forward to achieving this goal. [Open access]. (shrink)

Loyalty is considered central to people’s moral life, yet little is known about how people think about what it means to be loyal. We used a prototype approach to understand how loyalty is represented in Colombia and the United States and how these representations mediate attributions of loyalty and moral judgments of loyalty violations. Across 7 studies (N = 1,984), we found cross-cultural similarities in the associative meaning of loyalty (Study 1) but found differences in the centrality of features associated (...) with loyalty (Study 2) and the latent structure of loyalty representations (Study 3). Colombians represent loyalty in terms of more general moral characteristics, while US participants represent loyalty in terms of interpersonal commitment, both in contrast with current approaches to loyalty. By comparing representations of loyalty and honesty, we establish that difference in loyalty conceptualizations reflect a different way of thinking about loyalty rather than morality more generally (Study 4). Further, Colombians attributed greater loyalty to individuals with general moral characteristics compared to participants from the United States sample (Study 5) and were more likely to classify non-loyal values as loyalty-related (Study 6). While the centrality of prototypical features predicts categorizing norm violations as loyalty-related, differences in prototypical structure account for differences in the severity of moral judgment for such violations (Study 7), which suggests that loyalty representations have similar functions even though these representations differ in structural characteristics. (shrink)

The current COVID-19 pandemic and the previous SARS/MERS outbreaks of 2003 and 2012 have resulted in a series of major global public health crises. We argue that in the interest of developing effective and safe vaccines and drugs and to better understand coronaviruses and associated disease mechenisms it is necessary to integrate the large and exponentially growing body of heterogeneous coronavirus data. Ontologies play an important role in standard-based knowledge and data representation, integration, sharing, and analysis. Accordingly, we initiated the (...) development of the community-based Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology in early 2020. -/- As an Open Biomedical Ontology (OBO) library ontology, CIDO is open source and interoperable with other existing OBO ontologies. CIDO is aligned with the Basic Formal Ontology and Viral Infectious Disease Ontology. CIDO has imported terms from over 30 OBO ontologies. For example, CIDO imports all SARS-CoV-2 protein terms from the Protein Ontology, COVID-19-related phenotype terms from the Human Phenotype Ontology, and over 100 COVID-19 terms for vaccines (both authorized and in clinical trial) from the Vaccine Ontology. CIDO systematically represents variants of SARS-CoV-2 viruses and over 300 amino acid substitutions therein, along with over 300 diagnostic kits and methods. CIDO also describes hundreds of host-coronavirus protein-protein interactions (PPIs) and the drugs that target proteins in these PPIs. CIDO has been used to model COVID-19 related phenomena in areas such as epidemiology. The scope of CIDO was evaluated by visual analysis supported by a summarization network method. CIDO has been used in various applications such as term standardization, inference, natural language processing (NLP) and clinical data integration. We have applied the amino acid variant knowledge present in CIDO to analyze differences between SARS-CoV-2 Delta and Omicron variants. CIDO's integrative host-coronavirus PPIs and drug-target knowledge has also been used to support drug repurposing for COVID-19 treatment. -/- CIDO represents entities and relations in the domain of coronavirus diseases with a special focus on COVID-19. It supports shared knowledge representation, data and metadata standardization and integration, and has been used in a range of applications. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Zeynep Tufekci’s capacities approach to social movements, which explains the strength of social movements in terms of their capacities. Tufekci emphasises that the capacities of contemporary social movements largely depend upon their uses of new digital technologies, and of social media in particular. We show that Tufekci’s approach has important implications for the structure of social movements, whether and what obligations they can have, and for how these obligations distribute to their members. In exploring (...) these implications, we develop a tripartite taxonomy of social movements. Each type of social movement in the taxonomy corresponds to a different type of group: social campaigns, social struggles, and social agitations. We show that all three types of social movement can bear obligations in virtue of their capacities. Finally, we argue that a surprising upshot of the obligations of social movements is that members of oppressed groups can have obligations to resist their own oppression in virtue of being members of social movements. (shrink)

Here we present what we believe is a novel account of what languages are, along with an axiomatically rich representation of languages and language-related data that is based on this account. We propose an account of languages as aggregates of dispositions distributed across aggregates of persons, and in doing so we address linguistic competences and the processes that realize them. This paves the way for representing additional types of language-related entities. Like demographic data of other sorts, data about languages may (...) be of use to researchers in a number of areas, including biomedical research. Data on the languages used in clinical encounters are typically included in medical records, and capture an important factor in patient-provider interactions. Like many types of patient and demographic data, data on a person’s preferred and primary languages are organized in different ways by different systems. This can be a barrier to data integration. We believe that a robust framework for representing language in general and preferred and primary language in particular – which has been lacking in ontologies thus far – can promote more successful integration of language-related data from disparate data sources. (shrink)

A significant amount of punishment that happens in society is state punishment, that is, third-party punishment carried out by an organized political community in response to a rule violation. We argue that a complete psychology of punishment must consider state punishment as a distinct form. State punishment is a unique type of punishment because it is a special case of third-party punishment, pre-specified to occur after the violation of official rules and policies, carried out by people acting on behalf of (...) a nation or government. State punishment, especially as compared to interpersonal punishment, is regarded as a legitimate form of violence, which communicates not just disapproval but information about procedures and power. Moreover, state punishment is made possible by state rules, which, unlike norms, are formalized, can be fully articulated and are perfectly transmissible across generations. We end the paper with implications for the psychology of punishment more broadly and future directions for better understanding the unique psychology of state punishment. (shrink)

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has sanctioned languages for ontology formulation, of which the most important is the Web Ontology Language (OWL). These have spawned in their turn powerful open-source software for developing and reasoning with ontologies and for querying data stores aligned to ontologies. Unfortunately, the resultant popularity of semantic technology has itself led to a situation where ontologies are now being created in heterogeneous, uncoordinated ways, thereby leading to a new problem of semantic stovepipes, and thus to (...) a new failure of data integration and reuse. The best practices here described counteract this tendency by providing a set of principles and rules to lead to the development of ontologies in a consistent, non-redundant fashion. (shrink)

Background: Efforts to better understand and improve letters of recommendation (LORs) in the resident selection process have identified unwritten rules and hidden practices that may limit their effectiveness. The objective of our study is to explore these unwritten rules and hidden practices more fully in one Canadian academic medical community. -/- Methods: We conducted semi-structured, discourse-based interviews with 18 faculty members from the departments of Internal Medicine and Psychiatry at the University of Manitoba, Canada. Interviews were guided by sample LORs (...) and were focused on experiences with either writing or reading LORs. We analyzed interviews using key concepts from genre theory and Aristotle’s appeals to ethos, logos, and pathos. -/- Results: Participants described how the practices surrounding LORs are guided by unwritten rules. These practices contributed to writers’ use of visible strategies and textual silence to establish credibility, build a strong case, and appeal to readers. Readers rely on similar strategies, but not always as intended by the writers. -/- Conclusions: The unwritten rules of one academic community can impede a nationally-facilitated resident selection process. Our findings highlight how critiques and potential improvements to LORs could benefit from considering the use of visible and invisible rhetorical strategies in specific contexts. (shrink)

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

The translational research community, in general, and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) community, in particular, share the vision of repurposing EHRs for research that will improve the quality of clinical practice. Many members of these communities are also aware that electronic health records (EHRs) suffer limitations of data becoming poorly structured, biased, and unusable out of original context. This creates obstacles to the continuity of care, utility, quality improvement, and translational research. Analogous limitations to sharing objective data in (...) other areas of the natural sciences have been successfully overcome by developing and using common ontologies. This White Paper presents the authors’ rationale for the use of ontologies with computable semantics for the improvement of clinical data quality and EHR usability formulated for researchers with a stake in clinical and translational science and who are advocates for the use of information technology in medicine but at the same time are concerned by current major shortfalls. This White Paper outlines pitfalls, opportunities, and solutions and recommends increased investment in research and development of ontologies with computable semantics for a new generation of EHRs. (shrink)

[Andrew Williams] It is difficult for prioritarians to explain the degree to which justice requires redress for misfortune in a way that avoids imposing unreasonably high costs on more advantaged individuals whilst also economising on intuitionist appeals to judgment. An appeal to hypothetical insurance may be able to solve the problems of cost and judgment more successfully, and can also be defended from critics who claim that resource egalitarianism is best understood to favour the ex post elimination of envy over (...) individual endowments. /// [Michael Otsuka] Inequality is intrinsically bad when and because it is unfair. It follows that the ideal of equality is not necessarily realised by a distribution of resources which is envy-free prior to the resolution of risks against which people have an equal opportunity to insure. Even if the upshot of such an ex ante envyfree distribution is just, it is not necessarily fair. (shrink)

Fitouchi et al. claim that seemingly victimless pleasures and nonproductive activities are moralized because they alter self-control. Their account predicts that: (1) victimless excesses are negatively moralized because they diminish self-control, and (2) restrained behaviors are positively moralized because they enhance self-control. Several examples run contrary to these predictions and call into question the general relationship between self-control and cooperation.

Future robots should have common sense about the world in order to handle the problems they will encounter. A large part of this commonsense knowledge must be naive physics knowledge, since carrying out even the simplest everyday chores requires familiarity with physics laws. But how should one start codifying this knowledge? What kind of skills should be elicited from the experts (each and every one of us)? This paper will attempt to provide some hints by studying the mental models of (...) force and motion. (shrink)

Objective: A deep understanding of the relationship between a scarce drug's dose and clinical response is necessary to appropriately distribute a supply-constrained drug along these lines. Summary of key data: The vast majority of drug development and repurposing during the COVID-19 pandemic – an event that has made clear the ever-present scarcity in healthcare systems –has been ignorant of scarcity and dose optimisation's ability to help address it. Conclusions: Future pandemic clinical trials systems should obtain dose optimisation data, as these (...) appear necessary to enable appropriate scarce resource allocation according to societal values. (shrink)

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of literary (...) text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

Background: -/- One influential view is that vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with a proneness to experience negative emotions in general. In contrast, blame attribution theories emphasise the importance of blaming oneself rather than others for negative events. Our previous exploratory study provided support for the attributional hypothesis that patients with remitted MDD show no overall bias towards negative emotions, but a selective bias towards emotions entailing self-blame relative to emotions that entail blaming others. More specifically, we (...) found a decreased proneness for contempt/disgust towards others relative to oneself (i.e. self-contempt bias). Here, we report a definitive test of the competing general negative versus specific attributional bias theories of MDD. Methods: -/- We compared a medication-free remitted MDD (n = 101) and a control group (n = 70) with no family or personal history of MDD on a previously validated experimental test of moral emotions. The task measures proneness to specific emotions associated with different types of self-blame (guilt, shame, self-contempt/disgust, self-indignation/anger) and blame of others (other-indignation/anger, other-contempt/disgust) whilst controlling for the intensity of unpleasantness. Results: -/- We confirmed the hypothesis that patients with MDD exhibit an increased self-contempt bias with a reduction in contempt/disgust towards others. Furthermore, they also showed a decreased proneness for indignation/anger towards others. Conclusions: -/- This corroborates the prediction that vulnerability to MDD is associated with an imbalance of specific self- and other-blaming emotions rather than a general increase in negative emotions. This has important implications for neurocognitive models and calls for novel focussed interventions to rebalance blame in MDD. (shrink)

Importance: Patients with remitted major depressive disorder (MDD) were previously found to display abnormal functional magnetic resonance imaging connectivity (fMRI) between the right superior anterior temporal lobe (RSATL) and the subgenual cingulate cortex and adjacent septal region (SCSR) when experiencing self-blaming emotions relative to emotions related to blaming others (eg, "indignation or anger toward others"). This finding provided the first neural signature of biases toward overgeneralized self-blaming emotions (eg, "feeling guilty for everything"), known to have a key role in cognitive (...) vulnerability to MDD. It is unknown whether this neural signature predicts risk of recurrence, a crucial step in establishing its potential as a prognostic biomarker, which is urgently needed for stratification into pathophysiologically more homogeneous subgroups and for novel treatments. -/- Objective: To use fMRI in remitted MDD at baseline to test the hypothesis that RSATL-SCSR connectivity for self-blaming relative to other-blaming emotions predicts subsequent recurrence of depressive episodes. -/- Design, setting, and participants: A prospective cohort study from June 16, 2011, to October 10, 2014, in a clinical research facility completed by 75 psychotropic medication-free patients with remitted MDD and no relevant comorbidity. In total, 31 remained in stable remission, and 25 developed a recurring episode over the 14 months of clinical follow-up and were included in the primary analysis. Thirty-nine control participants with no personal or family history of MDD were recruited for further comparison. -/- Main outcomes and measures: Between-group difference (recurring vs stable MDD) in RSATL connectivity, with an a priori SCSR region of interest for self-blaming vs other-blaming emotions. -/- Results: We corroborated our hypothesis that during the experience of self-blaming vs other-blaming emotions, RSATL-SCSR connectivity predicted risk of subsequent recurrence. The recurring MDD group showed higher connectivity than the stable MDD group (familywise error-corrected P < .05 over the a priori SCSR region of interest) and the control group. In addition, the recurring MDD group also exhibited RSATL hyperconnectivity with the right ventral putamen and claustrum and the temporoparietal junction. Together, these regions predicted recurrence with 75% accuracy. -/- Conclusions and relevance: To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide a robust demonstration of an fMRI signature of recurrence risk in remitted MDD. Additional studies are needed for its further optimization and validation as a prognostic biomarker. (shrink)

Background: Subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC) responses to self-blaming emotion-evoking stimuli were previously found in individuals prone to self-blame with and without a history of major depressive disorder (MDD). This suggested SCC activation reflects self-blaming emotions such as guilt, which are central to models of MDD vulnerability. -/- Method: Here, we re-examined these hypotheses in an independent larger sample. A total of 109 medication-free participants (70 with remitted MDD and 39 healthy controls) underwent fMRI whilst judging self- and other-blaming emotion-evoking statements. (...) They also completed validated questionnaires of proneness to self-blaming emotions including those related to internal (autonomy) and external (sociotropy) evaluation, which were subjected to factor analysis. -/- Results: An interaction between group (remitted MDD v. Control) and condition (self- v. other-blame) was observed in the right SCC (BA24). This was due to higher SCC signal for self-blame in remitted MDD and higher other-blame-selective activation in Control participants. Across the whole sample, extracted SCC activation cluster averages for self- v. other-blame were predicted by a regression model which included the reliable components derived from our factor analysis of measures of proneness to self-blaming emotions. Interestingly, this prediction was solely driven by autonomy/self-criticism, and adaptive guilt factors, with no effect of sociotropy/dependency. -/- Conclusions: Despite confirming the prediction of SCC activation in self-blame-prone individuals and those vulnerable to MDD, our results suggest that SCC activation reflects blame irrespective of where it is directed rather than selective for self. We speculate that self-critical individuals have more extended SCC representations for blame in the context of self-agency. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

We must, therefore, make a study of mechanism; but some introduction is advisable, for cybernetics treats the subject from a new, and therefore unusual,...

Continuum physics represents states as real- or complex-valued fields and dynamics as operators on infinite-dimensional function spaces. Under an ontic interpretation, however, fundamental evolution must be semantically total: it must take every admissible state specification to a successor state specification in which all admitted magnitudes remain denoting. We make this requirement explicit using standard admissible representations, in which denotation is characterized by bounded finite-precision input dependence on state descriptions. We show that standard continuum dynamics can violate this semantic closure requirement (...) even when the underlying PDE is linear, well posed, and uniquely solvable. The obstruction is forced extensional totalization: a regional readout can require joint control over countably many individually well-behaved contributions in a way that destroys bounded input dependence and hence denotation. Because locality commits a field ontology to treating spatial restrictions on compact regions as single physical magnitudes, this failure mode cannot be avoided by appealing to pointwise readouts or sequential access. Reanalyzed in these terms, the Pour-El and Richards Theorem 2 construction for the three-dimensional wave equation provides a concrete witness: admissible finite energy initial data evolve to states whose regional field restrictions do not admit admissible names in the required function space topology. The obstruction is semantic rather than epistemic: it does not concern what can be computed or observed, but the failure of continuum evolution to preserve denotation under realist locality commitments. The conclusion is eliminative: unrestricted continuum field ontology cannot serve as the basis of a semantically closed fundamental dynamics. (shrink)

William Starr’s chapter explores a dynamic semantics for deontic “must” and “may” which is “expressivist.” The aim of the chapter is to show that the difficulties for such a semantic analysis stem largely from assumptions in truth-conditional semantics that can be relaxed. The key is to adopt a logic of actions, rather than contents, one which surprisingly yields truth-conditional semantics as a special case. Perhaps the most important feature of the analysis is that “Zoyd must share” and “It’s not (...) the case that Zoyd must share” produce entirely different kinds of effects on what’s taken for granted when they are communicated – unlike “Zoyd shared” and “It’s not the case that Zoyd shared” which both convey information. This is motivated by a general discussion of expressivism, where it is argued that the expressivist must offer a positive account of expressive communication that differs from descriptive communication. (shrink)

Since Cannon, inspired by Bernard’s discussion of the conditions required for free and independent life, introduced the term homeostasis, many have embraced it as the main theoretical principle guiding physiology and medicine. Nonetheless, critics have argued that homeostasis is too limiting and have advanced a variety of alternative concepts such as heterostasis, rheostasis, and allostasis. We argue that the critics target a much narrower understanding of homeostasis put forward by the cyberneticists and that Bernard and Cannon embraced a far broader (...) understanding that can accommodate the alternatives advanced by the critics and provide an integrated theoretical framework for physiology. (shrink)

Mechanistic interpretability (MI) aims to explain how neural networks work by uncovering their underlying causal mechanisms. As the field grows in influence, it is increasingly important to examine not just models themselves, but the assumptions, concepts and explanatory strategies implicit in MI research. We argue that mechanistic interpretability needs philosophy: not as an afterthought, but as an ongoing partner in clarifying its concepts, refining its methods, and assessing the epistemic and ethical stakes of interpreting AI systems. Taking three open problems (...) from the MI literature as examples, this position paper illustrates the value philosophy can add to MI research, and outlines a path toward deeper interdisciplinary dialogue. (shrink)

A growing chorus of AI researchers and philosophers posit internal representations in large language models (LLMs). But how do these representations relate to the kinds of mental states we routinely ascribe to our fellow humans? While some research has focused on belief- or knowledge- like states in LLMs, there has been comparatively little focus on the question of whether LLMs have intentions. I survey five properties that have been associated with intentions in the philosophical literature, and assess two candidate classes (...) of LLM representations against this set of features. The result is mixed: LLMs have representations that are intention-like in many— perhaps surprising—respects, but they differ from human intentions in important ways. (shrink)

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms (...) that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out. To operate on production mechanisms, control mechanisms need to procure information through measurement processes and evaluate possible actions. They are making decisions. In all organisms, these decisions are made by multiple different control mechanisms that are organized not hierarchically but heterarchically. In many cases, they employ internal models of features of the environment with which the organism must deal. Cognition, in the form of decision-making, is thus fundamental to living systems which must control their production mechanisms. (shrink)

We formalize a general semantic constraint on physically admissible procedures: discrete outcomes must exhibit bounded input dependence, meaning that determinate outcomes are supported by finite stability margins in the underlying state space. We prove that any such procedure can discriminate only properties corresponding to open regions of state space. Properties whose truth sets are topologically thin, having empty interior with dense complement, are operationally unresolvable under admissible physical semantics. This limitation is structural rather than computational. It arises from topological constraints (...) induced by stability at the semantic interface and applies uniformly across continuum ontologies. Stability is shown to be preserved under lawful continuous dynamics, implying that thin distinctions cannot be amplified into operational differences by finite physical evolution followed by admissible readout. Computability provides a canonical representative example. Computable and noncomputable elements form interwoven dense subsets of continuum domains, so computability is not a topological property of states but a property of representation structure. As such, it cannot be operationally extracted by bounded-input-dependent procedures. Restrictions motivated by bounded input dependence thus express ontological parsimony: they eliminate distinctions incapable of supporting stable physical discrimination. The result provides a semantic foundation for aligning ontological commitments with structurally admissible distinctions in realist physical theories. -/- . (shrink)

Basic large language models (LLMs) have no direct contact with extra-linguistic reality: their inputs, outputs and training data consist solely of text. Can they represent the world beyond that text, nevertheless? This paper considers whether LLMs represent real world domains partly thanks to structural correspondences between their internal states and those domains. I clarify the requirements for a structural correspondence to play a genuinely content-grounding role, and argue (i) that it is a live empirical possibility that text-based LLMs meet those (...) requirements with respect to real world contents, but (ii) that this requires carefully eliminating alternative, more deflationary, content assignments. (shrink)

[This download contains the table of contents and chapter 1.] This first book-length study of confabulation breaks ground in both philosophy and cognitive science.

Jeff Paris proves a generalized Dutch Book theorem. If a belief state is not a generalized probability then one faces ‘sure loss’ books of bets. In Williams I showed that Joyce’s accuracy-domination theorem applies to the same set of generalized probabilities. What is the relationship between these two results? This note shows that both results are easy corollaries of the core result that Paris appeals to in proving his dutch book theorem. We see that every point of accuracy-domination defines a (...) dutch book, but we only have a partial converse. (shrink)

A uniform theory of conditionals is one which compositionally captures the behavior of both indicative and subjunctive conditionals without positing ambiguities. This paper raises new problems for the closest thing to a uniform analysis in the literature (Stalnaker, Philosophia, 5, 269–286 (1975)) and develops a new theory which solves them. I also show that this new analysis provides an improved treatment of three phenomena (the import-export equivalence, reverse Sobel-sequences and disjunctive antecedents). While these results concern central issues in the study (...) of conditionals, broader themes in the philosophy of language and formal semantics are also engaged here. This new analysis exploits a dynamic conception of meaning where the meaning of a symbol is its potential to change an agent’s mental state (or the state of a conversation) rather than being the symbol’s content (e.g. the proposition it expresses). The analysis of conditionals is also built on the idea that the contrast between subjunctive and indicative conditionals parallels a contrast between revising and consistently extending some body of information. (shrink)

Decisions are made under uncertainty when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and one is uncertain to which the act will lead. Decisions are made under indeterminacy when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and it is indeterminate to which the act will lead. This paper develops a theory of (synchronic and diachronic) decision-making under indeterminacy that portrays the rational response to such situations as inconstant. Rational agents have to capriciously and randomly choose how to resolve (...) the indeterminacy relevant to a given choice-situation, but such capricious choices once made constrain how they will choose in the future. The account is illustrated by the case of self-interested action in situations where it is indeterminate whether you yourself will survive to benefit or suffer the consequences. The conclusion emphasizes some distinctive anti-hedging predictions of the account. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant’s theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments (...) of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

Continuum physical theories model states as real- or complex-valued fields and dynamics as linear operators on infinite dimensional spaces. Under explanatory realism, an ontic interpretation incurs two semantic commitments: (i) real-valued physical magnitudes must denote relative to the theory’s admissible state interface, and (ii) the theory must be semantically closed under its own evolution and readout rules. Denotation is interface-relative: it requires the existence of a total continuous witness on names. Equivalently, it requires bounded input dependence at each fixed finite (...) precision. Failure of bounded input dependence is captured by forced extensional totalization (FET), in which even coarse output precision cannot be stabilized by any finite prefix of a state name. We give a physics-facing construction of FET for the three dimensional wave equation with Kirchhoff point readout. We construct a countable family of smooth, compactly supported, finite-energy initial states localized on pairwise disjoint shrinking latitude belts on the Huygens sphere, and restrict the admissible domain to states containing at most one localized contingency. Each nonzero belt perturbation is normalized to contribute the same order-one amount to the readout, while the zero state contributes none. Under any non-oracular state interface satisfying a minimal locality-of-access condition, no finite prefix can rule out activation of some sufficiently deep belt. The induced point readout therefore behaves like the existential predicate ``some belt is active'', exhibits FET at the zero state, and fails to denote. Semantic closure fails: the evolution--readout pipeline yields a localized point magnitude that is non-denoting relative to the fixed state interface. The result isolates a semantic obstruction to ontic readings of continuum dynamics. It is independent of computability, predictability, or measurement feasibility, and it holds despite smooth compact support, finite energy, and classical well-posedness. (shrink)

This paper establishes a general semantic constraint on physical ontology in continuum theories under explanatory realism and finite-information access. Working in the framework of represented state spaces, we show that ontic predicates must satisfy bounded input dependence: once true, their truth must persist under sufficiently small perturbations of state. This requirement forces the extension of any ontic predicate to be open in the representation topology. As a consequence, predicates defined by exact equalities, lower-dimensional subspaces, digit-level conditions, or algorithmic properties are (...) structurally non-denoting, even though they are mathematically well defined. Ontic structure in continuum physics must therefore take the form of open stability regions, not sharp boundary conditions. The result is theory-agnostic and applies to any physical framework whose states are modeled in continuum spaces and accessed through finite procedures, including classical field theories, dynamical systems, and quantum models. The theorem clarifies the boundary between mathematical structure and ontological structure in continuum descriptions and connects denotation to operational discrimination constraints. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i (...) class='Hi'>William James”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

Computable Wavefunction Realism (CWFR) is a finite-information ontological framework for quantum theory derived from the semantic commitments of explanatory realism. Explanatory realism requires denotation stability of physical magnitudes and closure of admissible states under lawful evolution. Literal continuum ontology challenges these constraints through aggregation instability in the dynamical domain and resolution instability in the range of real-valued magnitudes. CWFR enforces semantic stability via four structural postulates: Lorentz-invariant spectral band-limitation, restriction to computable ontic states, admissible successor dynamics total on the admissible (...) domain, and restriction of physically meaningful predicates to those with open truth sets. The present paper develops the structural consequences of these constraints and establishes non-vacuity via explicit admissible successor constructions. CWFR is not proposed as a replacement for continuum quantum mechanics at the level of mathematical formalism, but as a restriction on ontological interpretation imposed by semantic stability conditions. Macroscopic structure arises from refinement geometry induced by admissible stability predicates, and probability assignments operate on locally finite refinement partitions. Extension to realistic interacting quantum field theories is identified as a programmatic direction rather than a completed result. (shrink)

Might it be that world itself, independently of what we know about it or how we represent it, is metaphysically indeterminate? This article tackles in turn a series of questions: In what sorts of cases might we posit metaphysical indeterminacy? What is it for a given case of indefiniteness to be 'metaphysical'? How does the phenomenon relate to 'ontic vagueness', the existence of 'vague objects', 'de re indeterminacy' and the like? How might the logic work? Are there reasons for postulating (...) this distinctive sort of indefiniteness? Conversely, are there reasons for denying that there is indefiniteness of this sort? (shrink)

The Analysis of Matter is perhaps best known for marking Russell's rejection of phenomenalism and his development of a variety of Lockean representationalism–-Russell's causal theory of perception. This occupies Part 2 of the work. Part 1, which is certainly less well known, contains many observations on twentieth-century physics. Unfortunately, Russell's discussion of relativity and the foundations of physical geometry is carried out in apparent ignorance of Reichenbach's and Carnap's investigations in the same period. The issue of conventionalism in its then (...) contemporary form is simply not discussed. The only writers of the period who appear to have had any influence on Russell's conception of the philosophical issues raised by relativity were Whitehead and Eddington. Even the work of A. A. Robb fails to receive any extended discussion;1 although Robb's causal theory is certainly relevant to many of Russell's concerns, especially those voiced in Part 3, regarding the construction of points and the topology of space-time. In the case of quantum mechanics, the idiosyncrasy of Russell's selection of topics is more understandable, since the Heisenberg and Schrödinger theories were only just discovered. Nevertheless, it seems bizarre to a contemporary reader that Russell should have given such emphasis2 to G. N. Lewis's suggestion that an atom emits light only when there is another atom to receive it–-a suggestion reminiscent of Leibniz, and one to which Russell frequently returns. In short, the philosophical problems of modern physics with which Russell deals seem remote from the perspective of post-positivist philosophy of physics. (shrink)

Refinement geometry defines a directed subdivision structure over history-prefix spaces generated by admissible stability predicates. This paper analyzes the effective realizability of that structure within represented-space semantics. Stability predicates are formalized in uniformly semi-decidable witness form, yielding certified fact sets that evolve monotonically under refinement. A partitioning functional Pi maps finite-information access to a history into the corresponding directed family of refinement partitions. We prove that Pi is Type-2 computable: every finite portion of refinement structure depends on only finitely many (...) oracle interactions. Refinement asymmetry arises as a direct consequence of witness-based predicate semantics. Certified distinctions accumulate monotonically and are never revoked, establishing irreversibility at the level of refinement structure independent of dynamical assumptions. We further show that the canonical maximal partition induced by admissible predicates is computably generable through directed refinement of finite certification stages. Worlds, defined as blocks of the canonical maximal partition, therefore form a recursively enumerable set. Worldhood need not be decidable, and maximality is not finitely certifiable, yet every world arises through effective generation of finite refinement prefixes. In the effective setting, each refinement stage induces a computably presented equivalence relation on a countable domain of names, and branching corresponds to monotone contraction of indistinguishability rather than enlargement of the underlying history space. These results provide a computability-theoretic classification of refinement geometry, establishing constructive generation of maximal distinction structure under finite-information semantics and clarifying the effective consequences of stability-based refinement. (shrink)

The concept of moral wrongness, many think, has a distinctive kind of referential stability, brought out by moral twin earth cases. This article offers a new account of the source of this stability, deriving it from a metaphysics of content: “substantive” radical interpretation, and first-order normative assumptions. This story is distinguished from extant “reference magnetic” explanations of the phenomenon, and objections and replies are considered.

Inscrutability arguments threaten to reduce interpretationist metasemantic theories to absurdity. Can we find some way to block the arguments? A highly influential proposal in this regard is David Lewis’ ‘ eligibility ’ response: some theories are better than others, not because they fit the data better, but because they are framed in terms of more natural properties. The purposes of this paper are to outline the nature of the eligibility proposal, making the case that it is not ad hoc, but (...) instead flows naturally from three independently motivated elements; and to show that severe limitations afflict the proposal. In conclusion, I pick out the element of the eligibility response that is responsible for the limitations: future work in this area should therefore concentrate on amending this aspect of the overall theory. (shrink)

Recently, a version of realism has been offered to address the simplification strategies used in computational neuroscience. According to this view, computational models provide us with knowledge about the brain, but they should not be taken literally in _any_ sense, even rejecting the idea that the brain performs computations (computationalism). I acknowledge the need for considerations regarding simplification strategies in neuroscience and how they contribute to our interpretations of computational models; however, I argue that whether we should accept or reject (...) computationalism about the brain is a separate issue that can be addressed independently by a philosophical theory of physical computation. This takes seriously the idea that the brain performs computations while also taking an analogical stance toward computational models in neuroscience. I call this version of realism “Analogical Computational Realism.” Analogical Computational Realism is a realist view in virtue of being committed to computationalism while taking certain computational models to pick out real patterns that provide a how-possibly explanation without also thinking that the model is literally implemented in the brain. (shrink)