Consciousness, the Unconscious and Mathematical Modeling of Thinking
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An Example of Sharing Information Expressed with Vague Terms
Talking about Forests: an Example of Sharing Information Expressed with Vague Terms Luc´ıa Gomez´ Alvarez´ a, Brandon Bennett a and Adam Richard-Bollans a a University of Leeds, The United Kingdom Abstract. Most natural language terms do not have precise universally agreed defi- nitions that fix their meanings. Even when conversation participants share the same vocabulary and agree on taxonomic relationships (such as subsumption and mutual exclusivity, which might be encoded in an ontology), they may differ greatly in the specific semantics they give to the terms. We illustrate this with the example of ‘forest’, for which the problematic arising of the assignation of different meanings is repeatedly reported in the literature. This is especially the case in the context of an unprecedented scale of publicly available geographic data, where information and databases, even when tagged to ontologies, may present a substantial semantic variation, which challenges interoperability and knowledge exchange. Our research addresses the issue of conceptual vagueness in ontology by pro- viding a framework based on supervaluation semantics that explicitly represents the semantic variability of a concept as a set of admissible precise interpretations. Moreover, we describe the tools that support the conceptual negotiation between an agent and the system, and the specification and reasoning within standpoints. Keywords. concept negotiation, supervaluation, standpoint, forest, GIS, vagueness 1. Introduction Since the shift in philosophy of language from logical positivism to behaviourism and pragmatism, it is widely accepted that most natural language terms do not have precise universally agreed definitions that fix their meanings. Even when conversation partici- pants share the same vocabulary and agree on taxonomic relationships (such as subsump- tion and mutual exclusivity, which might be encoded in an ontology), they may differ greatly in the specific semantics they give to the terms in a particular situation. -
Jonah N. Schupbach: Curriculum Vitae
Jonah N. Schupbach Department of Philosophy, University of Utah [email protected] 402 CTIHB, 215 S. Central Campus Drive jonahschupbach.com Salt Lake City, Utah 84112 (801) 585-5810 Areas of Specialization Areas of Competence Epistemology (including Formal Epistemology) Philosophy of Religion Logic Metaphysics Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Cognitive Science Appointments University of Utah Associate Professor (tenure granted 2017), Department of Philosophy, 2017–present. Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, 2011–2017. Tilburg University Visiting Fellow, Tilburg Center for Logic & Philosophy of Science (TiLPS), September 2008– June 2009. Education Ph.D. History & Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 2011. Dissertation: Studies in the Logic of Explanatory Power (defended June 14, 2011). Co-directors: John Earman (Pittsburgh, HPS), Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh, HPS). M.A. Philosophy, Western Michigan University, 2006. M.A. Philosophy of Religion, Denver Seminary, 2004. B.S.E. Industrial Engineering, University of Iowa, 2001. Jonah N. Schupbach,Curriculum Vitae 2 Publications Books Conjunctive Explanations: The Nature, Epistemology, and Psychology of Explanatory Multiplicity. New York: Routledge (to appear in Routledge’s Studies in the Philosophy of Science series). Co-edited with David H. Glass. Bayesianism and Scientific Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (to appear in Cambridge’s Elements in the Philosophy of Science series). Book Chapters “William Paley,” in Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion. Malden, MA: Wiley (forthcoming). “Inference to the Best Explanation, Cleaned Up and Made Respectable,” in Kevin McCain and Ted Poston (eds.), Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2017): 39-61. -
Between Foundation and Convention
NCCU Philosophical Journal Vol.10 (July 2003), pp.35-74 ©Department of Philosophy, National Chengchi University Between Foundation and Convention: Carnap’s Evolution between Schlick and Neurath in the Vienna Circle Jeu-Jenq Yuann Tunghai University Abstract For long the foundationalist image of logical positivism has been considered a matter of course. And it is basically accepted that R. Carnap has a great deal to do with this traditional image. Recent researches reveal that this image is not entirely true; Carnap can be deemed as a conventionalist also when some key conceptions are understood from a different point of view. Indeed, by examining some Carnap’s works, we are urged to realize that his view of science is somehow situated somewhere between foundationalism and conventionalism. We argue in this paper that Carnap’s weaving situation can be comprehended by taking into account the discussions taking place in the Vienna Circle and notably the debates among R. 36 NCCU Philosopical Journal Vol.10 Carnap, M. Schlick, and O. Neurath. We intend to make it explicit that Carnap’s stance was first in line with that of Schlick’s foundationalism and then moved to a more conventionalist one under the influence of Neurath. By this argument, we intend to demonstrate the following two points: 1) Discussions in the Vienna Circle were far from unanimous; 2) Carnap’s stance containing ‘an ethical attitude of tolerance’ proceeded mainly under Neurath’s influence. Key Words: Foundationalism, Conventionalism, R. Carnap, M. Schlick, O. Neurath * Received April 06, 2003; accepted July 16, 2003 Proofreaders: Bing-Jie Li Between Foundation and Convention 37 1. -
The Quantum Epoché
Accepted Manuscript The quantum epoché Paavo Pylkkänen PII: S0079-6107(15)00127-3 DOI: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2015.08.014 Reference: JPBM 1064 To appear in: Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology Please cite this article as: Pylkkänen, P., The quantum epoché, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology (2015), doi: 10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2015.08.014. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT The quantum epoché Paavo Pylkkänen Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies & the Academy of Finland Center of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (TINT), P.O. Box 24, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland. and Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, School of Biosciences, University of Skövde, P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skövde, Sweden [email protected] Abstract. The theme of phenomenology and quantum physics is here tackled by examining some basic interpretational issues in quantum physics. One key issue in quantum theory from the very beginning has been whether it is possible to provide a quantum ontology of particles in motion in the same way as in classical physics, or whether we are restricted to stay within a more limited view of quantum systems, in terms of complementary but mutually exclusiveMANUSCRIPT phenomena. -
On the Interpretation of the Quantum Wave Function
On the interpretation of the quantum wave function Master's thesis Physics and Astronomy Radboud University Nijmegen Supervisors: Prof. R.H.P. Kleiss and H.C. Donker Second corrector: Assoc. Prof. F. Filthaut Han van der Pluijm August 26, 2016 Contents Introduction 3 1 The wave function and its relation to the real world: Ontic and epistemic interpretations of the wave function 5 1.1 Classical states . .6 1.2 A classical particle in phase space . .7 1.3 Example of an incomplete ontic state . 10 1.4 Quantum states . 11 1.4.1 Epistemic and ontic states in quantum theory . 12 2 Ontological models and the PBR no-go theorem 14 2.1 Ontological models . 15 2.2 The structure of PBR's no-go theorem . 16 2.3 Assumptions . 17 2.3.1 Mathematical equivalents . 18 2.4 The proof . 19 3 Spekkens Toy Theory 23 3.1 The knowledge balance principle . 24 3.2 Spekkens' Toy Bit . 26 3.3 Multiple bits . 31 3.4 Parallels with quantum theory . 33 3.4.1 Convex combinations . 33 3.4.2 Coherent superpositions . 34 3.4.3 Interference . 35 4 Mach-Zehnder interferometer in Spekkens toy theory 36 4.1 Setup of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer . 36 4.2 Quantum behaviour . 38 4.3 States of the MZI in Spekkens' toy theory . 41 4.4 Future prospects . 44 5 Conclusion and discussion 45 Bibliography 47 1 Preface The reason I choose to study physics was twofold. On the one hand I was looking for a challenge and on the other hand I wanted to under- stand the world truly. -
Pilot-Wave Theory, Bohmian Metaphysics, and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics Lecture 6 Calculating Things with Quantum Trajectories
Pilot-wave theory, Bohmian metaphysics, and the foundations of quantum mechanics Lecture 6 Calculating things with quantum trajectories Mike Towler TCM Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/∼mdt26 and www.vallico.net/tti/tti.html [email protected] – Typeset by FoilTEX – 1 Acknowledgements The material in this lecture is to a large extent a summary of publications by Peter Holland, R.E. Wyatt, D.A. Deckert, R. Tumulka, D.J. Tannor, D. Bohm, B.J. Hiley, I.P. Christov and J.D. Watson. Other sources used and many other interesting papers are listed on the course web page: www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/∼mdt26/pilot waves.html MDT – Typeset by FoilTEX – 2 On anticlimaxes.. Up to now we have enjoyed ourselves freewheeling through the highs and lows of fundamental quantum and relativistic physics whilst slagging off Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Wheeler, Oppenheimer, Born, Feynman and other physics heroes (last week we even disagreed with Einstein - an attitude that since the dawn of the 20th century has been the ultimate sign of gibbering insanity). All tremendous fun. This week - we shall learn about finite differencing and least squares fitting..! Cough. “Dr. Towler, please. You’re not allowed to use the sprinkler system to keep the audience awake.” – Typeset by FoilTEX – 3 QM computations with trajectories Computing the wavefunction from trajectories: particle and wave pictures in quantum mechanics and their relation P. Holland (2004) “The notion that the concept of a continuous material orbit is incompatible with a full wave theory of microphysical systems was central to the genesis of wave mechanics. -
In Press at Cognition. This File Is a Pre-Print and May Contain Errors Or Omissions Not Present in the Final Published Version
In press at Cognition. This file is a pre-print and may contain errors or omissions not present in the final published version. Linguistic Conventionality and the Role of Epistemic Reasoning in Children’s Mutual Exclusivity Inferences Mahesh Srinivasan,1 Ruthe Foushee,1 Andrew Bartnof,1 & David Barner2 1University of California, Berkeley 2University of California, San Diego Please address correspondence to: Mahesh Srinivasan Department of Psychology University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1650 Phone: 650-823-9488 Email: [email protected] Mutual Exclusivity and Conventionality Abstract To interpret an interlocutor’s use of a novel word (e.g., “give me the papaya”), children typically exclude referents that they already have labels for (like an “apple”), and expect the word to refer to something they do not have a label for (like the papaya). The goal of the present studies was to test whether such mutual exclusivity inferences require children to reason about the words their interlocutors know and could have chosen to say: e.g., If she had wanted the “apple” she would have asked for it (since she knows the word “apple”), so she must want the papaya. Across four studies, we document that both children and adults will make mutual exclusivity inferences even when they believe that their interlocutor does not share their knowledge of relevant, alternative words, suggesting that such inferences do not require reasoning about an interlocutor’s epistemic states. Instead, our findings suggest that children’s own knowledge of an object’s label, together with their belief that this is the conventional label for the object in their language, and that this convention applies to their interlocutor, is sufficient to support their mutual exclusivity inferences. -
Exclusivity, Teleology and Hierarchy: Our Aristotelean Legacy
Know!. Org. 26(1999)No.2 65 H.A. Olson: Exclusivity, Teleology and Hierarchy: Our Aristotelean Legacy Exclusivity, Teleology and Hierarchy: Our Aristotelean Legacy Hope A. Olson School of Library & Information Studies, University of Alberta Hope A. Olson is an Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MLS from the University of Toronto. Her re search is generally in the area of subject access to information with a focus on classification. She approaches this work using feminist, poststructural and postcolonial theory. Dr. Olson teaches organization of knowledge, cataloguing and classification, and courses examining issues in femi nism and in globalization and diversity as they relate to library and information studies. Olson, H.A. (1999). Exclusivity, Teleology and Hierarchy: Our Aristotelean Legacy. Knowl· edge Organization, 26(2). 65-73. 16 refs. ABSTRACT: This paper examines Parmenides's Fragments, Plato's The Sophist, and Aristotle's Prior AnalyticsJ Parts ofAnimals and Generation ofAnimals to identify three underlying presumptions of classical logic using the method of Foucauldian discourse analysis. These three presumptions are the notion of mutually exclusive categories, teleology in the sense of linear progression toward a goal, and hierarchy both through logical division and through the dominance of some classes over others. These three presumptions are linked to classificatory thought in the western tradition. The purpose of making these connections is to investi gate the cultural specificity to western culture of widespread classificatory practice. It is a step in a larger study to examine classi fication as a cultural construction that may be systemically incompatible with other cultures and with marginalized elements of western culture. -
A Bayesian Framework for Cross-Situational Word-Learning
A Bayesian Framework for Cross-Situational Word-Learning Michael C. Frank, Noah D. Goodman, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum Department of Brain and Cognitive Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology fmcfrank, ndg, [email protected] Abstract For infants, early word learning is a chicken-and-egg problem. One way to learn a word is to observe that it co-occurs with a particular referent across different situations. Another way is to use the social context of an utterance to infer the in- tended referent of a word. Here we present a Bayesian model of cross-situational word learning, and an extension of this model that also learns which social cues are relevant to determining reference. We test our model on a small corpus of mother-infant interaction and find it performs better than competing models. Fi- nally, we show that our model accounts for experimental phenomena including mutual exclusivity, fast-mapping, and generalization from social cues. To understand the difficulty of an infant word-learner, imagine walking down the street with a friend who suddenly says “dax blicket philbin na fivy!” while at the same time wagging her elbow. If you knew any of these words you might infer from the syntax of her sentence that blicket is a novel noun, and hence the name of a novel object. At the same time, if you knew that this friend indicated her attention by wagging her elbow at objects, you might infer that she intends to refer to an object in a nearby show window. On the other hand if you already knew that “blicket” meant the object in the window, you might be able to infer these elements of syntax and social cues. -
Mutual Exclusivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Cognition xxx (2011) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/COGNIT Mutual exclusivity in autism spectrum disorders: Testing the pragmatic hypothesis ⇑ Ashley de Marchena a, , Inge-Marie Eigsti a, Amanda Worek b, Kim Emiko Ono b, Jesse Snedeker b a Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, CT 06269, United States b Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States article info abstract Article history: While there is ample evidence that children treat words as mutually exclusive, the cogni- Received 25 November 2009 tive basis of this bias is widely debated. We focus on the distinction between pragmatic Revised 7 December 2010 and lexical constraints accounts. High-functioning children with autism spectrum disor- Accepted 20 December 2010 ders (ASD) offer a unique perspective on this debate, as they acquire substantial vocabular- Available online xxxx ies despite impoverished social-pragmatic skills. We tested children and adolescents with ASD in a paradigm examining mutual exclusivity for words and facts. Words were Keywords: interpreted contrastively more often than facts. Word performance was associated with Mutual exclusivity vocabulary size; fact performance was associated with social-communication skills. Thus Word learning Pragmatics mutual exclusivity does not appear to be driven by pragmatics, suggesting that it is either Autism a lexical constraint or a reflection of domain-general learning processes. Asperger’s syndrome Ó 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Smith, & Jones, 1988; Macnamara, 1982; Markman & Hutchinson, 1984). The experiments that followed demon- In Categorization and Naming in Children (1989), Ellen strated that young children do not learn words through Markman presented a set of questions and phenomena brute force associative learning; instead they approach that have fueled research on word learning for 20 years. -
Physics Must Evolve Beyond the Physical
Activitas Nervosa Superior https://doi.org/10.1007/s41470-019-00042-3 IDEAS AND OPINION Physics Must Evolve Beyond the Physical Deepak Chopra1 Received: 23 July 2018 /Accepted: 27 March 2019 # The Author(s) 2019 Abstract Contemporary physics finds itself pondering questions about mind and consciousness, an uncomfortable area for theorists. But historically, key figures at the founding of quantum theory assumed that reality was composed of two parts, mind and matter, which interacted with each other according to some new laws that they specified. This departure from the prior (classical- physicalist) assumption that mind was a mere side effect of brain activity was such a startling proposal that it basically split physics in two, with one camp insisting that mind will ultimately be explained via physical processes in the brain and the other camp embracing mind as innate in creation and the key to understanding reality in its completeness. Henry Stapp made important contributions toward a coherent explanation by advocating John von Neumann’s orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics. von Neumann postulated that at its basis, quantum mechanics requires both a psychological and physical component. He was left, however, with a dualist view in which the psychological and physical aspects of QM remained unresolved. In this article, the relevant issues are laid out with the aim of finding a nondual explanation that allows mind and matter to exist as features of the same universal consciousness, in the hope that the critical insights of Planck, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, von Neumann, and Stapp will be recognized and valued, with the aim of an expanded physics that goes beyond physicalist dogma. -
The Hidden- Variables Controversy in Quantum Physics
Phys Educ Vol 14, 1979 Prlnted in Great Brltaln CONTROVERSIESIN PHYSICS aggressiveness which resembles more the defence of orthodoxy of one ideology than a spirit of scientific objectivity’ (Jauch 1973, introduction). The hidden- ‘The entirely reasonable question, Are there hidden- variable theories consistent with quantum theory and variables if so whatare their characteristics?,has been unfortunately clouded by emotionalism’ (Ballentine controversy in 1970, p374). Perhaps some of the acrimonv which has surrounded this debate can be seen in the following quantum physics comment on the workof hidden-variable theorists made by Leon Rosenfeld, an eminent physicist and TREVOR J PINCH defender of the orthodoxview of quantum theory: Science Studies Centre, Universityof Bath ‘That suchirrational dogmatists shouldhurl the very accusation of irrationality and dogmatism at the defenders of the common-sense, uncommitted attitude of other scientists is the crowning paradox which gives Recent studies of controversies in science have shown a touch of comedy to a controversy so distressingly that they are not always settled by appeals to Nature pointless and untimely’ (Rosenfeld 1958, p658). alone. Social and political factors as well as scientific These are hardly the sorts of comments we would factors often combine to produce the outcome(see for expect to follow from unproblematicreadings of example Forman 1971, Collins 1975, Frankel 1976 Nature’s secrets. So what was at stake in this dispute? and Wynne 1976). The ‘truth’, it seems, emerges from To answer this question we need to go back to the whatcan be asurprisingly volatile struggle, very revolution in physics brought about by the develop- unlike the rarified atmosphere of noblesse within ment of quantum theoryin the 1920s.