Philosophy Research Works

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1626

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End date: 2019

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 24
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    Using AquaticHealth.net to Detect Emerging Trends in Aquatic Animal Health
    (MDPI, 2013-05-17) Lyon, Aidan; Mooney, Allan; Grossel, Geoff
    AquaticHealth.net is an open-source aquatic biosecurity intelligence application. By combining automated data collection and human analysis, AquaticHealth.net provides fast and accurate disease outbreak detection and forecasts, accompanied with nuanced explanations. The system has been online and open to the public since 1 January 2010, it has over 200 registered expert users around the world, and it typically publishes about seven daily reports and two weekly disease alerts. We document the major trends in aquatic animal health that the system has detected over these two years, and conclude with some forecasts for the future.
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    The Measurement Problem from the Perspective of an Information-Theoretic Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
    (MDPI, 2015-10-28) Bub, Jeffrey
    The aim of this paper is to consider the consequences of an information-theoretic interpretation of quantum mechanics for the measurement problem. The motivating idea of the interpretation is that the relation between quantum mechanics and the structure of information is analogous to the relation between special relativity and the structure of space-time. Insofar as quantum mechanics deals with a class of probabilistic correlations that includes correlations structurally different from classical correlations, the theory is about the structure of information: the possibilities for representing, manipulating, and communicating information in a genuinely indeterministic quantum world in which measurement outcomes are intrinsically random are different than we thought. Part of the measurement problem is deflated as a pseudo-problem on this view, and the theory has the resources to deal with the remaining part, given certain idealizations in the treatment of macrosystems.
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    On Quantum Collapse as a Basis for the Second Law of Thermodynamics
    (MDPI, 2017-03-09) Kastner, Ruth E.
    It was first suggested by David Z. Albert that the existence of a real, physical non-unitary process (i.e., “collapse”) at the quantum level would yield a complete explanation for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (i.e., the increase in entropy over time). The contribution of such a process would be to provide a physical basis for the ontological indeterminacy needed to derive the irreversible Second Law against a backdrop of otherwise reversible, deterministic physical laws. An alternative understanding of the source of this possible quantum “collapse” or non-unitarity is presented herein, in terms of the Transactional Interpretation (TI). The present model provides a specific physical justification for Boltzmann’s often-criticized assumption of molecular randomness (Stosszahlansatz), thereby changing its status from an ad hoc postulate to a theoretically grounded result, without requiring any change to the basic quantum theory. In addition, it is argued that TI provides an elegant way of reconciling, via indeterministic collapse, the time-reversible Liouville evolution with the time-irreversible evolution inherent in so-called “master equations” that specify the changes in occupation of the various possible states in terms of the transition rates between them. The present model is contrasted with the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) “spontaneous collapse” theory previously suggested for this purpose by Albert.
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    Cell maps on the human genome
    (Springer Nature, 2019-03-20) Cherniak, Christopher; Rodriguez-Esteban, Raul
    We have previously described evidence for a statistically significant, global, supra-chromosomal representation of the human body that appears to stretch over the entire genome. Here, we extend the genome mapping model, zooming down to the typical individual animal cell. Its cellular organization appears to be significantly mapped onto the human genome: Evidence is reported for a “cellunculus” — on the model of a homunculus, on the H. sapiens genome.
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    Suffering without Subjectivity
    (Springer Netherlands, 2004-11) Carruthers, Peter
    This paper argues that it is possible for suffering to occur in the absence of phenomenal consciousness − in the absence of a certain sort of experiential subjectivity, that is. (‘Phenomenal’ consciousness is the property that some mental states possess, when it is like something to undergo them, or when they have subjective feels, or possess qualia.) So even if theories of phenomenal consciousness that would withhold such consciousness from most species of non-human animal are correct, this needn’t mean that those animals don’t suffer, and aren’t appropriate objects of sympathy and concern.
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    Invertebrate Minds: A Challenge for Ethical Theory
    (Springer Netherlands, 2007) Carruthers, Peter
    This paper argues that navigating insects and spiders possess a degree of mindedness that makes them appropriate (in the sense of ‘possible’) objects of sympathy and moral concern. For the evidence suggests that many invertebrates possess a belief-desire-planning psychology that is in basic respects similar to our own. The challenge for ethical theory is find some principled way of demonstrating that individual insects do not make moral claims on us, given the widely held belief that some other ‘higher’ animals do make such claims on us.
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    Conscious Experience Versus Conscious Thought
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2006) Carruthers, Peter
    Are there different constraints on theories of conscious experience as against theories of conscious propositional thought? Is what is problematic or puzzling about each of these phenomena of the same, or of different, types? And to what extent is it plausible to think that either or both conscious experience and conscious thought involve some sort of self-reference? In pursuing these questions I shall also explore the prospects for a defensible form of eliminativism concerning conscious thinking, one that would leave the reality of conscious experience untouched. In the end, I shall argue that while there might be no such thing as conscious judging or conscious wanting, there is (or may well be) such a thing as conscious generic thinking.
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    Moderately Massive Modularity
    (Cambridge University Press, 2003) Carruthers, Peter
    This paper will sketch a model of the human mind according to which the mind’s structure is massively, but by no means wholly, modular. Modularity views in general will be motivated, elucidated, and defended, before the thesis of moderately massive modularity is explained and elaborated.
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    Consciousness: Explaining the Phenomena
    (Cambridge University Press, 2001) Carruthers, Peter
    Can phenomenal consciousness be given a reductive natural explanation? Many people argue not. They claim that there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between physical and/or intentional states and processes, on the one hand, and phenomenal consciousness, on the other. I reply that, since we have purely recognitional concepts of experience, there is indeed a sort of gap at the level of concepts; but this need not mean that the properties picked out by those concepts are inexplicable. I show how dispositionalist higher-order thought (HOT) theory can reductively explain the subjective feel of experience by deploying a form of ‘consumer semantics’. First-order perceptual contents become transformed, acquiring a dimension of subjectivity, by virtue to their availability to a mind-reading (HOT generating) consumer system.
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    The Roots of Scientific Reasoning: Infancy, Modularity, and the Art of Tracking
    (Cambridge University Press, 2002) Carruthers, Peter
    This chapter examines the extent to which there are continuities between the cognitive processes and epistemic practices engaged in by human hunter–gatherers, on the one hand, and those which are distinctive of science, on the other. It deploys anthropological evidence against any form of ‘no-continuity’ view, drawing especially on the cognitive skills involved in the art of tracking. It also argues against the ‘child-as-scientist’ accounts put forward by some developmental psychologists, which imply that scientific thinking is present in early infancy and universal amongst humans who have sufficient time and resources to devote to it. In contrast, a modularist kind of ‘continuity’ account is proposed, according to which the innately channelled architecture of human cognition provides all the materials necessary for basic forms of scientific reasoning in older children and adults, needing only the appropriate sorts of external support, social context, and background beliefs and skills in order for science to begin its advance.