Philosophical Distinctions Research Articles

Semantic Annotation, Indexing, and Retrieval

The Semantic Web realization depends on the availability of a critical mass of metadata for the web content, associated with the respective formal knowledge about the world. We claim that the Semantic Web, at its current stage of development, is in a state of a critically need of metadata generation and usage schemata that are specific, well-defined and easy to understand. This paper introduces our vision for a holistic architecture for semantic annotation, indexing, and retrieval of documents with regard to extensive semantic repositories. A system (called KIM), implementing this concept, is presented in brief and it is used for the purposes of evaluation and demonstration. A particular schema for semantic annotation with respect to real-world entities is proposed. The underlying philosophy is that a practical semantic annotation is impossible without some particular knowledge modelling commitments. Our understanding is that a system for such semantic annotation should be based upon a simple model of real-world entity classes, complemented with extensive instance knowledge. To ensure the efficiency, ease of sharing, and reusability of the metadata, we introduce an upper-level ontology (of about 250 classes and 100 properties), which starts with some basic philosophical distinctions and then goes down to the most common entity types (people, companies, cities, etc.). Thus it encodes many of the domain-independent commonsense concepts and allows straightforward domain specific extensions. On the basis of the ontology, a large-scale knowledge base of entity descriptions is bootstrapped, and further extended and maintained. Currently, the knowledge bases usually scales between 105 and 106 descriptions. Finally, this paper presents a semantically enhanced information extraction system, which provides automatic semantic annotation with references to classes in the ontology and to instances. The system has been running over a continuously growing document collection (currently about 0.5 million news articles), so it has been under constant testing and evaluation for some time now. On the basis of these semantic annotations, we perform semantic based indexing and retrieval where users can mix traditional IR (information retrieval) queries and ontology-based ones. We argue that such large-scale, fully automatic methods are essential for the transformation of the current largely textual web into a semantic web.

What was Frege Trying to Prove? A Response to Jeshion

Frege set out to identify the foundations of arithmetic. The project he envisioned required the construction of gapless proofs of the basic truths of arithmetic from laws of logic and definitions. But why did he look for the foundations of arithmetic in logic? Why was he not content to take, as foundational axioms of arithmetic, its basic truths for example, that every natural number has a unique successor? In the 1970S and 1980S, Paul Benacerraf, Philip Kitcher, and I offered accounts of Frege's motivation that were designed to answer these questions.l We all took Frege at his word when he said, in section 3 of Foundations, that his inquiry was prompted by his desire to determine whether the truths of arithmetic are analytic or synthetic, a priori or a posteriori. But we offered three competing interpretations of these distinctions. Kitcher and I both argued that they had important ties to a philosophical tradition.2 Benacerraf, in contrast, argued that these apparently philosophical distinctions, as reinterpreted by Frege, belonged to a mathematical rather than a philosophical tradition. In 'Frege's Notions of Self Evidence', Robin Jeshion argues that all three of us have gone wrong. The problem, according to Jeshion, is that we have either ignored or misinterpreted Frege's appeals to self-evidence. A correct account of his motivation, she argues, is to be found by looking at these appeals. This account requires no reference to the analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions. For these 'specifically philosophical notions of section 3', she claims, do not often appear later in his writings (Jeshion 2001, p. 938).3

Evolvability, Dispositions, and Intrinsicality

In this paper I examine a dispositional property that has been receiving increased attention in biology, evolvability. First, I identify three compatible but distinct investigative approaches, distinguish two interpretations of evolvability, and treat the difference between dispositions of individuals versus populations. Second, I explore the relevance of philosophical distinctions about dispositions for evolvability, isolating the assumption that dispositions are intrinsically located. I conclude that some instances of evolvability cannot be understood as purely intrinsic to populations and suggest alternative strategies for resolving this difficulty.

How to Psychoanalyze a Robot: Unconscious Cognition and the Evolution of Intentionality 1

According to a common philosophical distinction, the `original' intentionality, or `aboutness' possessed by our thoughts, beliefs and desires, is categorically different from the `derived' intentionality manifested in some of our artifacts –- our words, books and pictures, for example. Those making the distinction claim that the intentionality of our artifacts is `parasitic' on the `genuine' intentionality to be found in members of the former class of things. In Kinds of Minds: Toward an Understanding of Consciousness, Daniel Dennett criticizes that claim and the distinction it rests on, and seeks to show that ``metaphysically original intentionality'' is illusory by working out the implications he sees in the practical possibility of a certain type of robot, i.e., one that generates `utterances' which are `inscrutable to the robot's designers' so that we, and they, must consult the robot to discover the meaning of its utterances. I argue that the implications Dennett finds are erroneous, regardless of whether such a robot is possible, and therefore that the real existence of metaphysically original intentionality has not been undermined by the possibility of the robot Dennett describes.

Flow Versus Life Satisfaction: A Projective Use of Cartoons to Illustrate the Difference Between the Evaluation Approach and the Intrinsic Motivation Approach to Subjective Quality of Life

In this paper, differences between life satisfaction and intrinsic motivation (flow) are addressed. Theories are presented on evaluation, flow and openness to experience. Data from a Norwegian panel study are analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. Young adults (n = 264) participated in a projective study with cartoon frames showing Donald Duck in challenging situations. Measures of satisfaction with life and the personality trait of openness to experience were added to the analysis. Subjects scoring high on openness rated Donald Duck's feelings as positive. A slightly opposing tendency was found for persons scoring high on satisfaction with life. The results are discussed with reference to the philosophical distinction between hedonism and eudaemonia.

In vivo genetics of anaesthetic action

In vivo genetics of anaesthetic action

Over-valued ideas: a conceptual analysis

Over-valued ideas are truly a neglected area of psychopathology with few experimental studies published. There is a different emphasis in the USA and Europe regarding their definition. For authors in the USA an over-valued idea has become shorthand for ‘poor insight’ in the middle of a continuum of obsessional doubts to delusional certainty. Compared to negative thoughts, obsessions and delusions, they are often more resistant to any treatment. A better understanding of over-valued ideas is required if advances are to be made in therapy and for the development of appropriate measures to evaluate the efficacy of novel treatments. A cognitive behavioural model of over-valued ideas is presented which draws upon the philosophical distinction between beliefs and values. It is argued that over-valued ideas are associated with idealised values, which have developed into such an over-riding importance, that they totally define the ‘self’ or identity of the individual. Idealised values are also characterised by the rigidity with which they are held. Such patients are unable to adapt to different circumstances and ignore the consequences of acting on their value. This analysis leads to a discussion of predictions that can be tested and various strategies that can be used in cognitive behaviour therapy.

Performing Feeling Without Fear

Performing Feeling Without Fear

Cultural Bias and Liberal Neutrality

Liberals often view religion chiefly as "a problem" for democratic discourse in modern pluralistic societies and propose an allegedly neutral solution in the form of philosophical distinctions between "the right" and "the good" or populist invocations of a "right to choose." Drawing on cultural theory and ethnographic research among activists in the Oregon debates over the legalization of physician-assisted suicide, I demonstrate that liberal "neutrality" harbors its own cultural bias, flattens the complexity of public debates, and undermines liberalism's own commitments to equality. I conclude that the praiseworthy liberal goal of impartiality in policy decisions would best be met not by the inaccessible norm of neutrality but by a norm of inclusivity, which intentionally solicits multiple cultural perspectives.

Challenging Collective Religious/Social Beliefs About Sex, Marriage, and Family

Some religious thinkers and organizations commonly back up their conclusions about sexual morality with myths that are not supported by history or by the majority of Americans. The word myth, as used here, is defined by Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary as “an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically and is used to justify a social institution,” such as a sexual value system. Using an established philosophical distinction between sexual values derived from a fixed worldview (cosmology or Weltanschauung) and from a process worldview, the history of sexuality in the Judaic and Christian traditions, and current sociological data, the author challenges the validity of five myths associated with what is commonly proclaimed as “traditional American religious values.” These beliefs focus on the moral unacceptability of premarital sexual relationships; divorce and remarriage; alternatives to sexually exclusive marriage; abortion, Mifepristone (RU 486), and embryonic stem-cell research; ...

UK strategies for palliative care.

Palliative and supportive care differ in philosophy from curative strategies in focusing primarily on the consequences of a disease rather than its cause or specific cure. Approaches are therefore necessarily holistic, pragmatic and multidisciplinary and there is almost no philosophical distinction between palliation and support. The approach therefore complements oncological or antiviral treatments; it does not substitute for or replace them.

Is It Sick to Want to Live to 100? The Popular Culture of Health and Longevity

Is It Sick to Want to Live to 100? The Popular Culture of Health and Longevity

Causal Inference from Series of Events

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest, both in statistics and in the social sciences, in time-dependent models as a vehicle for the causal interpretation of series of events. The Humean and empiricist tradition in the philosophy of science uses the constant temporal order of cause and effect as a decisive delimitation of causal processes from mere coincidences. To mimic the philosophical distinction, series of events are modelled as dynamic stochastic processes and the precedence of cause over effect is expressed through conditional expectations given the history of the process and the history of the causes. A main technical tool in this development is the concept of conditional independence. In this article we examine some difficulties in the application of the approach within empirical social research. Specifically, the role of probabilistic concepts of causality and of conditional independence, the nature of events that reasonably qualify as causes or effects, and the time order used in empirical research are considered

Against an uncritical sense of adaptiveness

The “adaptive toolbox” model of the mind is much too uncritical, even as a model of bounded rationality. There is no place for a “meta-rationality” that questions the shape of the decision-making environments themselves. Thus, using the ABC Group's “fast and frugal heuristics,” one could justify all sorts of conformist behavior as rational. Telling in this regard is their appeal to the philosophical distinction between coherence and correspondence theories of truth.

Thinking against theory

This essay argues that the reason for the remoteness experienced by the majority of International Relations (IR) practitioners is that IR theory took a wrong turn in the 1960s, during the so‐called second Great Debate, by opting for a narrowly conceived scientific approach to the subject and allowing relations between potentially complementary approaches to develop into an intellectual Cold War. In response, the essay elaborates on an old philosophical distinction between practical and theoretic reason, which parallels the distinction drawn in the second Great Debate between traditional or historical approaches on the one side, and scientific or systemic approaches on the other. Commenting on the articles in CRIA's special section IR Theory in Practice: Entirely Academic?, the essay concludes that, strictly speaking, there ought perhaps to be no International Relations theory at all, and urges IR thinking instead.

What can performance tell us about learning? Explicating a troubled concept

The notion of “performance7rdquo; has a central place in the contemporary discourse of learning and competence. The notion is used to translate abstract ideas and ideals of lifelong learning, organizational learning, learning society, etc., into practical measures. Changes in performance provide the identifiable measures that learning has taken place, evidence of enhanced competency/capability. Different versions of the learning and competency/capability agenda may place different emphases upon the extent to which such performance changes may be predetermined or are essentially emergent, but the assumption remains that performance provides the basis for attribution that learning has (or has not) taken place. This article takes issue with the conventional notion of “performance” as unequivocally observable. Drawing upon traditional philosophical distinctions between behaviour and action, and interpretative, constructionist, situational, and relational traditions within the social sciences, the nature of performance is subjected to theoretical analysis. It is argued that performance cannot be taken as transparent evidence of learning. Rather the attribution of performance is itself the outcome of situated acts of interpretation, essentially contestable and negotiated, subject to reinterpretation and renegotiation. The key social processes by which such interpretation is accomplished will be shown to implicate issues of identity (and identity formation) and social practice (and its discursive production). The potential fruitfulness of the identity-practice model will be illustrated by applying it to the issue of graduate “employability”, in order to address problems with the conventional “skills” approach.

The person in secular and in Orthodox-Catholic bioethics.

The following demarcates the sens of the human person in Orthodox-Catholic bioethics from the family of senses proper to secular bioethics and philosophy. The radically different sources of knowledge about the senses proper to each discipline suggest that the importation of philosophical and secular psychological distinctions and analyses into true Christianity's concern with the human person, is fundamentally misguided. This suggestion is confirmed by examination of the articles of Crosby, Glannon, Hoswepian, and Meador and Shuman.

Reproduction Technology for a New Eugenics

Eugenics acquired a bad press when the only way of determining the presence of deleterious genes was by observation of the parental phenotype, but today the store of genetic knowledge and reproductive technology is vastly greater than at any time in the past and the rate of acquisition of new knowledge and techniques for avoiding the transmission of defective genes to future generations is accelerating. The author discusses the brightening future for voluntary eugenic intervention, but warns against the dangers inherent in government regulation. Key Words: bioethics, Galtonian Revolution, eugenics, reproductive technologies, in vitro fertilization, cryogenic preservation, nuclear substitution The first century or two of the new millennium will almost certainly be a golden age for Through application of new genetic knowledge and reproductive technologies the Galtonian Revolution will come to fruition. This new revolution in the new millennium, which I call the Galtonian Revolution (Whitney, 1995; 1997a) will be more momentous for the future of mankind than was the Copernican Revolution or the Darwinian Revolution. For with the Galtonian Revolution, for the first time, the major changes will not be to ideas alone, but rather the major change will be to mankind itself. In order to briefly discuss some of the reproductive technology that will contribute to the new eugenics, I need first to define the term eugenics. So many different people with so many different agendas have appropriated this neat word, coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, that the word by itself can stand for almost anything (Whitney, 1990). Surely to some is a route to prevention rather than mere treatment of the ills of humanity. Also a path to the greatest good for the greatest number. To others is a new blasphemy, a devil-word; a term of hate and abhorrence, a term that in word associations is supposed to be linked with Hitler, Holocaust, genocide and the murder of innocents. For the purposes of today's talk the definition of eugenics is one given by Sir Francis Galton himself, In 1904 at a meeting of the Sociological Society, Sir Francis said: Eugenics is the science which deals with all influences that improve the inborn qualities of a race; also with those that develop them to the utmost advantage. It is interesting, and overlooked by many, that Galton's own definition included both nature and nurture approaches to the improvement of humanity. In that same talk Galton (1904) went on to briefly address what is meant by improvement. is meant by the syllable Eu in Eugenics, whose English equivalent is good? First of all, he explained, the goodness of a trait depended upon the balance of that trait with others in appropriate proportions, thus goodness was relative to the balance of traits in the individual and also to the make-up of the population. What was good might be much influenced by education, and the goodness or badness of traits was not an absolute, but relative to the current form of civilization. Thus Galton suggested that as much as possible we should keep morals out of the discussion and avoid absolutes, to keep out of endlessly entangling philosophical distinctions. One wishes that some of our current crop of so-called bioethicists would heed this advice. Galton suggested that although no agreement could be reached as to absolute morality, the essentials of Eugenics may be easily defined. All creatures would agree that it was better to be healthy than sick, vigorous than weak, well fitted than ill-fitted for their part in life. In short that it is better to be good rather than bad specimens of their kind, whatever that kind might be. So with men.'(Galton, 1904: 36). And so with men. As we approach the new millennium we have at our call a reproductive technology that is beyond any imagined by the early eugenicists. …

Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically (review)

Reviewed by: Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically * Paul T. Durbin (bio) Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically. By Joseph Rouse. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. ix+282; notes, bibliography, index. $39.95 (cloth); $16.95 (paper). In the past decade or so, Joseph Rouse has become one of the most prolific and controversial philosophers within the philosophy of science community of the United States. Engaging Science is a masterly summary and exposition of his contributions and critiques of others’ contributions to the field. It is also his best presentation to date of the perspective he espouses, which he calls “cultural studies of science.” Rouse is a careful and cautious writer. Although it can be a challenge to follow the nuances of his argumentation, he can also be quite clear about the points he wishes to make. He begins this book with a summary statement of what he opposes: “For all their complexity and internal differentiation, [the] traditions [of postpositive philosophy of science] have important common themes and fundamental shared issues that mark the disputes among them” (p. 1). In a long footnote appended to this claim, Rouse lists the many authors whose work he discusses: the “inaugurators” of postpositivism, N. R. Hanson, Thomas Kuhn, Stephen Toulmin, Paul Feyerabend, and Michael Polanyi; its “developers,” Imre Lakatos, Dudley [End Page 546] Shapere, Mary Hesse, and Larry Laudan; authors whom Rouse likes but who retain “positivist affinities,” such as Arthur Fine, Nancy Cartwright, and Ian Hacking; “realists” Wilfrid Sellars, J. J. C. Smart, Grover Maxwell, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Boyd; their “antirealist” opponents Bas van Fraassen and Clark Glymour; and—here Rouse names no individual authors—“the social constructivist tradition [that] begins with the Edinburgh Strong Programme but has been substantially modified by . . . Bath relativism, ethnographic studies, discourse analysis, actor/network theory, and constitutive reflexivity” (pp. 1–2, n. 1). In short, Rouse takes on almost all the main contributors to contemporary philosophy and sociology of science—and treats them all fairly and in detail. Rouse is equally clear at the end of the book, where social constructivism as represented by Harry Collins and Steven Yearley is compared with “cultural studies” as represented best (Rouse thinks) by Donna Haraway. This is Rouse’s final paragraph: To put the difference polemically, social constructivism is antagonistic to the cultural authority claimed by the natural sciences but uncritical of scientific practices. Cultural studies reverse this stance, aiming to participate in constructing reliable and authoritative knowledge of the world by critically engaging with the sciences’ practices of making meanings. (p. 259) It is, Rouse says, with this freedom-enhancing, life-improving critical enhancement of science that he wishes to be identified, rather than with attacks on, or defenses of, the authority of science as it is currently practiced. Historians of technology impatient with finely detailed philosophical distinctions and arguments will find Rouse’s book difficult. But those willing to do the intellectual hard labor will be rewarded with a virtually encyclopedic summary of (Rouse’s slant on) recent discussions in philosophy of science—even if they end up finding Rouse’s feminism-oriented “cultural” approach unpalatable. Paul T. Durbin Dr. Durbin is professor of philosophy at the University of Delaware, where he also directs the Medical Scholars Program and is a member of the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy. He edits the Society for Philosophy and Technology’s quarterly electronic journal (http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/spt.html) and is the author of Social Responsibility in Science, Technology, and Medicine (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1992). Footnotes * Permission to reprint a review published here may be obtained only from the reviewer. Copyright © 1998 Society for the History of Technology

Further analysis of the relationship between the epidemiological and hormonal aspects of 6 human neoplasias with special emphasis on the presentation of the topological features of oncogene activation tumor suppressor gene inactivation of individual neoplasias

The purpose of this study was to test the validity of the steroid carcinogenesis hypothesis by comparatively investigating the endocrinological and epidemiological aspects of cancers of the breast, uterine cervix, endometrium, stomach, esophagus and ovary. The emphasis of this study was placed on the extraction of the information on the topological feature of oncogene activation-tumor suppressor gene inactivation for each of 6 neoplasias using the data stock of the age-adjusted incidence rates (AAIRs) of 19 neoplasias from 47 population units of the world. Our investigation was started on the basis of the recognition that the world statistics data of cancer risk should include information on the interaction of oncogene activation-tumor suppressor gene inactivation for each human neoplasia, and that the sophisticated application of statistical analysis technics may allow us to assess separately the implications of oncogene activation and tumor suppressor gene inactivation in the genesis of a given neoplasia. In designing mathematical strategies, we had in mind the premise that oncogene activation and tumor suppressor gene inactivation represent 2 distinct entities in the world of chemistry, and that they should have each their own equilibrium models with 2 distinct equilibrium points. The details of the mathematical principles and procedures are presented in the text. The results were as follows: i) There was a good agreement of results between the observed value and the expected value of thermodynamics as regards the location of the equilibrium point in both instances - a finding to support the validity of our mathematical strategies. ii) One of our mathematical strategies (the use of the original coordinates and its variant coordinates in parallel) was found to be useful for assessing separately the implication of oncogene activation (the original coordinates) and that of tumor suppressor gene inactivation (the variant coordinates). iii) The correlation study of the endocrinological data with the epidemiological data in breast cancer strongly suggests the possibility that sex steroid may play a cardinal role in the oncogene activation at the initiation step of breast carcinogenesis. iv) Evidence is available to indicate that glucocorticoid under certain circumstances may play a crucial role in the process of tumor suppressor gene inactivation at the promotion step of breast carcinogenesis. v) The philosophical distinction between the steroid carcinogenesis theory and the random mutation criminal theory of carcinogenesis is discussed in the light of recent information on chemical carcinogenesis.