I demonstrate that Bell's theorem is based on circular reasoning and thus a fundamentally flawed argument. It unjustifiably assumes the additivity of expectation values for dispersion-free states of contextual hidden variable theories for non-commuting observables involved in Bell-test experiments, which is tautologous to assuming the bounds of ±2 on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values. Its premises thus assume in a different guise the bounds of ±2 it sets out to prove. Once this oversight is ameliorated from Bell's argument by (...) identifying the impediment that leads to it and local realism is implemented correctly, the bounds on the Bell-CHSH sum of expectation values work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2, thereby mitigating the conclusion of Bell's theorem. Consequently, what is ruled out by any of the Bell-test experiments is not local realism but the linear additivity of expectation values, which does not hold for non-commuting observables in any hidden variable theories to begin with. I also identify similar oversight in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating its claim of having found an inconsistency in the premisses of the argument by EPR for completing quantum mechanics. Conceptually, the oversight in both Bell's theorem and its GHZ variant traces back to the oversight in von Neumann's theorem against hidden variable theories identified by Grete Hermann in the 1930s. (shrink)

Many different methodological approaches have been proposed to infer the presence of consciousness in non-human systems. In this paper, a version of the theory-heavy approach is defended. Theory-heavy approaches rely heavily on considerations from theories of consciousness to make inferences about non-human consciousness. Recently, the theory-heavy approach has been critiqued in the form of Birch's (Noûs, 56(1): 133-153, 2022) dilemma of demandingness and Shevlin's (Mind & Language, 36(2): 297-314, 2021) specificity problem. However, both challenges implicitly assume an inapt characterization of (...) the theory-heavy approach. I argue that an alternative characterization of the approach, what I call a credence-based theory-heavy approach, avoids these challenges. Theorists can generate interpretations of their theory, at different levels of generality, and operationalize these into theory-informed markers. These theory-informed are assigned a likelihood and are used to assess the probability that a target system is conscious. In providing this characterization, and mapping out the possible ways in which a credence-based theory-heavy approach can be fleshed out, the aim is to situate the theory-heavy approach as a more compelling approach than it is currently being perceived as. Our attention, then, needs to towards remaining challenges such as the consensus problem and the problem of calibrating the likelihoods associated with theory-informed markers. I also explore methodological pluralism and assess how the credence-based theory-heavy approach can benefit from other methodological approaches. (shrink)

Since the cognitive revolution, psychologists have developed formal theories of cognition by thinking about the mind as a computer. However, this metaphor is typically applied to individual minds. Humans rarely think alone; compared to other animals, humans are curiously dependent on stores of culturally transmitted skills and knowledge, and we are particularly good at collaborating with others. Rather than picturing the human mind as an isolated computer, we can imagine each mind as a node in a vast distributed system. Viewing (...) human cognition through the lens of distributed systems motivates new questions about how humans share computation, when it makes sense to do so, and how we can build institutions to facilitate collaboration. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to examine the transposition of scientific and technical concepts into the political sphere, particularly with regards to the management of political skids and missteps in the digital age. The Internet and cybernetics era has profoundly transformed political affairs; this network of barely fifty years old continues to challenge established powers. Even more remarkably, the pioneers of the Internet probably didn’t realize it in their laboratories: Internet has succeeded in disrupting the established order. This study (...) will examine the dominant representations of political crises in their expressions and manifestations within cyberspace. At a time when public spaces are being redefined by digital mediation, it is essential to critically analyze the emergence of the new forms of discourse and communication that disrupt and overturn certain socio-political inertias. (shrink)

Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. However, because evolution is an algorithmic process that transcends the substrate in which it occurs, evolution’s creativity is not limited to nature. Indeed, many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories routinely reveal (...) creativity by evolution in these digital worlds, but they rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. Instead they are often treated as mere obstacles to be overcome, rather than results that warrant study in their own right. The stories themselves are traded among researchers through oral tradition, but that mode of information transmission is inefficient and prone to error and outright loss. Moreover, the fact that these stories tend to be shared only among practitioners means that many natural scientists do not realize how interesting and lifelike digital organisms are and how natural their evolution can be. To our knowledge, no collection of such anecdotes has been published before. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of researchers in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have provided first-hand accounts of such cases. It thus serves as a written, fact-checked collection of scientifically important and even entertaining stories. In doing so we also present here substantial evidence that the existence and importance of evolutionary surprises extends beyond the natural world, and may indeed be a universal property of all complex evolving systems. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an agent-based model for studying the impact of 'myside bias' on the argumentative dynamics in scientific communities. Recent insights in cognitive science suggest that scientific reasoning is influenced by `myside bias'. This bias manifests as a tendency to prioritize the search and generation of arguments that support one's views rather than arguments that undermine them. Additionally, individuals tend to apply more critical scrutiny to opposing stances than to their own. Although myside bias may pull individual (...) scientists away from the truth, its effects on communities of reasoners remain unclear. The aim of our model is two-fold: first, to study the argumentative dynamics generated by myside bias, and second, to explore which mechanisms may act as a mitigating factor against its pernicious effects. Our results indicate that biased communities are epistemically less successful than non-biased ones, and that they also tend to be less polarized than non-biased ones. Moreover, we find that two socio-epistemic mechanisms help communities to mitigate the effect of the bias: the presence of a common filter on weak arguments, which can be interpreted as shared beliefs, and an equal distribution of agents for each alternative at the beginning. (shrink)

Organizational deviance represents a costly behavior to many organizations. While some precursors to deviance have been identified, we hope to add to our predictive capabilities. Utilizing social cognitive theory and psychological contract theory as explanatory concepts, we explore the role of moral disengagement and turnover intentions, testing our hypotheses using two samples: a sample of 44 nurses from a hospital system in the Southwestern United States (Study 1), and a sample of 52 working adults collected from an online survey system (...) (Study 2). Results strongly supported our hypotheses in both samples, indicating that the self-regulatory deactivation inherent in moral disengagement led to increased organizational deviance; effects that were much more pronounced when turnover intentions were high. Our findings support the increased role of cognition in determining behavior when environmental pressures stemming from the psychological contract have been altered, leading to a number of theoretical and practical implications, particularly in industries with high turnover rates. (shrink)

The early 20th century philosophy withstood what is known as “linguistic turn”, a concept espoused by Gustav Bergmann in his review of Peter’s Strawson’s Individuals in 1960, under the name of analytic philosophy. This turn was quite panoramic, fastening on all aspects of language such as the nature of language, the nature of meaning, the nature of reference, semantic theory, linguistic phenomena, varieties of speech act, the epistemology and metaphysics of language, not forgetting the theory of truth, the relation between (...) language and reality, and must especially the logical analysis of this one. This turn greatly captured the interest of a huge number of philosophers, logicians and mathematicians amongst which the Austrian Philosopher and Logician Ludwig Wittgenstein. The question of the relationship between language and reality is one of his fundamental concerns. Language to him is essentially descriptive, isomorphic to the world. In fact, it is the ultimate reality. This work therefore seeks to examine the bond that exists between these notions. With that being said, the Wittgensteinian conception of language as correlative to reality, is it perfectly consistent when we know that language has a dimension other than reality? (shrink)

I point out a sign mistake in the GHZ variant of Bell's theorem, invalidating the GHZ's claim that the premisses of the EPR argument are inconsistent for systems of more than two particles in entangled quantum states.

Background Studies have shown that medical students and residents believe that their ethics preparation has been inadequate for handling ethical conflicts. The objective of this study was to determine the self-perceived comfort level of medical students and residents in confronting clinical ethics issues. Methods Clinical medical students and residents at the University of Maryland School of Medicine completed a web-based survey between September 2009 and February 2010. The survey consisted of a demographic section, questions regarding the respondents’ sense of comfort (...) in handling a variety of clinical ethics issues, and a set of knowledge-type questions in ethics. Results Survey respondents included 129 medical students (response rate of 40.7%) and 207 residents (response rate of 52.7%). There were only a few clinical ethics issues with which more than 70% of the respondents felt comfortable in addressing. Only a slight majority (60.8%) felt prepared, in general, to handle clinical situations involving ethics issues, and only 44.1% and 53.2% agreed that medical school and residency training, respectively, helped prepare them to handle such issues. Prior ethics training was not associated with these responses, but there was an association between the level of training (medical students vs residents) and the comfort level with many of the clinical ethics issues. Conclusions Medical educators should include ethics educational methods within the context of real-time exposure to medical ethics dilemmas experienced by physicians-in-training. (shrink)

Part I Introduction -/- Passion at a Distance (Don Howard) -/- Part II Philosophy, Methodology and History -/- Balancing Necessity and Fallibilism: Charles Sanders Peirce on the Status of Mathematics and its Intersection with the Inquiry into Nature (Ronald Anderson) -/- Newton’s Methodology (William Harper) -/- Whitehead’s Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics (QM): A Tribute to Abner Shimony (Shimon Malin) -/- Bohr and the Photon (John Stachel) -/- Part III Bell’s Theorem and Nonlocality A. Theory -/- Extending the Concept of an (...) “Element of Reality” to Work with Inefficient Detectors (Daniel M. Greenberger) -/- A General Proof of Nonlocality without Inequalities for Bipartite States (GianCarlo Ghirardi and Luca Marinatto) -/- On the Separability of Physical Systems (Jon P. Jarrett) -/- Bell Inequalities: Many Questions, a Few Answers (Nicolas Gisin) -/- B. Experiment -/- Do Experimental Violations of Bell Inequalities Require a Nonlocal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? II: Analysis a la Bell (Edward S. Fry, Xinmei Qu, and Marlan O. Scully) -/- The Physics of 2 = 1 + 1 (Yanhua Shih) -/- Part IV Probability, Uncertainty, and Stochastic Modifications of Quantum Mechanics -/- Interpretations of Probability in Quantum Mechanics: A Case of “Experimental Metaphysics” (Geoffrey Hellman) -/- “No Information Without Disturbance”: Quantum Limitations of Measurement (Paul Busch) -/- How Stands Collapse II (Philip Pearle) -/- Is There a Relation Between the Breakdown of the Superposition Principle and an Indeterminacy in the Structure of the Einsteinian Space-Time? (Andor Frenkel) -/- Indistinguishability or Stochastic Dependence? (D. Costantini and U. Garibaldi) -/- Part V Relativity -/- Plane Geometry in Spacetime (N. David Mermin) -/- The Transient nows (Steven F. Savitt) -/- Quantum in Gravity? (Michael Horne) -/- A Proposed Test of the Local Causality of Spacetime (Adrian Kent) -/- Quantum Gravity Computers: On the Theory of Computation with Indefinite Causal Structure (Lucien Hardy) -/- “Definability,” “Conventionality,” and Simultaneity in Einstein–Minkowski Space-Time (Howard Stein) -/- Part VI Concluding Words -/- Bistro Banter: A Dialogue with Abner Shimony and Lee Smolin -/- Unfinished Work: A Bequest (Abner Shimony) -/- Bibliography of Abner Shimony. (shrink)

Many of the problems studied in cognitive science are inductive problems, requiring people to evaluate hypotheses in the light of data. The key to solving these problems successfully is having the right inductive biases—assumptions about the world that make it possible to choose between hypotheses that are equally consistent with the observed data. This article explores a novel experimental method for identifying the biases that guide human inductive inferences. The idea behind this method is simple: This article uses the responses (...) produced by a participant on one trial to generate the stimuli that either they or another participant will see on the next. A formal analysis of this “iterated learning” procedure, based on the assumption that the learners are Bayesian agents, predicts that it should reveal the inductive biases of these learners, as expressed in a prior probability distribution over hypotheses. This article presents a series of experiments using stimuli based on a well-studied set of category structures, demonstrating that iterated learning can be used to reveal the inductive biases of human learners. (shrink)

The doctrine of the moral equality of combatants holds that combatants on either side of a war have equal moral status, even if one side is fighting a just war while the other is not. This chapter examines arguments that have been offered for and against this doctrine, including the collectivist position famously articulated by Walzer and McMahan’s influential individualist critique. We also explore collectivist positions that have rejected the moral equality doctrine and arguments that some individualists have offered in (...) its favor. We defend a non-categorical version of the moral equality doctrine, according to which combatants on either side of a just war sometimes (but not always) have equal moral status. On our view, some degree of culpability is necessary for liability, and non-culpable combatants may therefore sometimes remain non-liable even when they fight for an unjust cause. (shrink)

Forschungsskandale und Diskussionen über Strukturprobleme der Biomedizin evozieren oft die Forderung nach mehr Verantwortung in der Forschung und der Einhaltung von Prinzipien guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis. Doch was genau ist „gute wissenschaftliche Praxis“ und wie kann die Forschungsgemeinschaft Verantwortung für die Verlässlichkeit von Forschungs- und Publikationsprozessen übernehmen? Die vorliegende Untersuchung beantwortet diese Fragen in Form einer prinzipienbasierten Forschungsethik. Durch Fallstudien über Datenfälschung in der Stammzellenforschung, Datenunterdrückung in der Influenzaforschung und die Kontamination von Zellkulturen in der Krebsforschung wird insbesondere gezeigt, dass wissenschaftliche (...) Selbstkorrektur kein notwendig eintretender Effekt der kollektiven Suche nach Erkenntnis ist. Vielmehr sind die Prävention, Identifikation und Korrektur von Fehlern in Forschungs- und Publikationsprozessen Resultate der intendierten Bemühung um epistemische Integrität im konkreten professionellen Handeln. Prinzipien der guten wissenschaftlichen Praxis - wie Ehrlichkeit, Unvoreingenommenheit, Anerkennung wissenschaftlicher Leistung und Kollegialität - müssen deswegen als handlungsleitende Regeln konkretisiert werden. (shrink)

Financial conflicts of interest in medical research foster deviations from research standards and evidentially lead to the suppression of research findings that are at odds with commercial interests of pharmaceutical companies. Questionable research practices prevent data from being created, made available, or given suitable recognition. They run counter to codified principles of responsible conduct of research, such as honesty, openness or respect for the law. Resulting in ignorance, misrepresentation and suspension of scientific self-correction, suppression of medical evidence in its various (...) forms is both a threat to the epistemic and the moral integrity of medical science. This paper discusses an example of the suppression of medical evidence in recent influenza research and develops a conceptual framework for the description and assessment of questionable research practices applied in research and publication processes to suppress evidence. (shrink)

Bell inequalities are usually derived by assuming locality and realism, and therefore violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality are usually taken to imply violations of either locality or realism, or both. But, after reviewing an oversight by Bell, in the Corollary below we derive the Bell-CHSH inequality by assuming only that Bob can measure along vectors b and b' simultaneously while Alice measures along either a or a', and likewise Alice can measure along vectors a and a' simultaneously while Bob measures (...) along either b or b', without assuming locality. The violations of the Bell-CHSH inequality therefore only mean impossibility of measuring along b and b' simultaneously. (shrink)

William Christian has selected some three hundred letters, postcards, telegrams, and journal entries which reveal much about Grant - both the troubled man and the daring thinker.

The aim of this commentary is to underpin Duffley’s notion of a stable mental content that corresponds to the literal word meaning with a computationally plausible cognitive theory. Our approach is to investigate what these stable contents could be according to the so-called Predictive Processing architecture. We argue that recent advances in cognitive science can make at least two contributions to the debate. First, they can provide some underpinning of Duffley's ideas of a stable linguistic meaning associated with the sign. (...) Second, they provide resources to understand how the semiological principle is compatible with a dynamic and flexible notion of "meaning". (shrink)

The prediction defended in this paper is that over the next fifty years we will see a return of the ancient tradition of “universal history”; but this will be a new form of universal history that is global in its practice and scientific in its spirit and methods. Until the end of the nineteenth century, universal history of some kind seems to have been present in most historiographical traditions. Then it vanished as historians became disillusioned with the search for grand (...) historical narratives and began to focus instead on getting the details right through document-based research. Today, however, there are many signs of a return to universal history. This has been made possible, at least in part, by the detailed empirical research undertaken in the last century in many different fields, and also by the creation of new methods of absolute dating that do not rely on the presence of written documents. The last part of the paper explores some of the possible consequences for historical scholarship of a return to a new, scientific form of universal history. These may include a closer integration of historical scholarship with the more historically oriented of the sciences, including cosmology, geology, and biology. Finally, the paper raises the possibility that universal history may eventually be taught in high schools, where it will provide a powerful new way of integrating knowledge from the humanities and the sciences. (shrink)

La présente réflexion est un décryptage exploratoire du phénomène grandissant et multiforme de l’obsolescence à l’ère du tout numérique. Elle vise la compréhension du vieillissement perçu / planifié / programmé (ou non) / vécu des outils numériques, dans l’optique d’une adoption et d’une adaptation plus rationnelle de la dynamique tous azimuts de ceux-ci. Mots clés : Numérique, Désuétude, Obsolescence, Vieillissement. -/- This reflection is an exploratory deciphering of the growing and multifaceted phenomenon of obsolescence in the all-digital era. It aims (...) to understand the perceived / planned / programmed (or not) / experienced aging of digital tools, with a view to a more rational adoption and adaptation of their all-round dynamics. Keywords: Digital, Disuse, Obsolescence, Aging. (shrink)

Through the ability to preview the future, people can anticipate how best to think, feel and act in just about any setting. But exactly what factors determine the contents of prospection? Extending research on action identification and temporal construal, here we explored how action goals and temporal distance modulate the characteristics of future previews. Participants were required to imagine travelling to Egypt to climb or photograph a pyramid. Afterwards, to probe the contents of prospection, participants provided a sketch of their (...) imaginary experience. Results elucidated the impact of goal type and temporal distance on mental imagery. While a climbing goal prompted participants to draw a larger pyramid in the near than distant future, a photographic goal influenced only the compositional complexity of the sketches. These findings reveal how action goals and temporal distance shape the contents of future simulations. (shrink)

A provocative exploration of how computers are reshaping ideas about what it means to be human profiles the annual Turing Test to assess a computer's capacity for thought while analyzing related philosophical, biological and moral issues.

“Archangel” explores the consequences of Marie's over‐parenting of her daughter, Sara, through the use of a neural implant (the Archangel) that allows Marie to track (and block) Sara's experiences. In attempting to fulfill her duty to protect Sara, Marie ultimately fails morally as a parent. What is fascinating is that different schools of philosophical thought – contemporary liberal philosophy, ancient Greek Aristotelian ethics, contemporary feminist ethics of care, and contemporary Wittgensteinian ethics – all reach the same conclusion about Marie's moral (...) failure, while teasing out different strands of this failure. (shrink)

A local, deterministic, and realistic model within a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime with constant spatial curvature is presented which describes simultaneous measurements of the spins of two fermions emerging in a singlet state from the decay of a spinless boson. Exact agreement with the probabilistic predictions of quantum theory is achieved in the model without data rejection, remote contextuality, superdeterminism, or backward causation. An event-by-event numerical simulation of the model is presented, which confirms our analytical results with the accuracy of 4 in (...) 10,000 parts. (shrink)

We illustrate an explicit counterexample to Bell's theorem by constructing a pair of dichotomic variables that exactly reproduce the EPR-Bohm correlations in a manifestly local-realistic manner.

A number of his more disturbing essays are also included, such as his controversial writings on abortion. The editors' substantial introduction places the articles in the wider context of Grant's life and thought."--BOOK JACKET.

The question of observability of sign changes under 2pi rotations is considered. It is shown that in certain circumstances there are observable consequences of such sign changes in classical physics. A macroscopic experiment is proposed which could in principle detect the 4pi periodicity of rotations.

In dieser Untersuchung zum Demarkationsproblem wird auf der Grundlage eines rational rekonstruierten Konzepts von Wissenschaft ein Ansatz zur Bewertung des wissenschaftlichen Status von mutmaßlich pseudowissenschaftlichen Glaubenssystemen entwickelt. Der instrumentelle Wert des Konzepts wird durch eine Kritik des Intelligent Designs belegt.

Disney's Zootopia (2016) is a crime story about the involuntary partnership between Judy Hopps, the first rabbit police officer in the city of Zootopia, and Nick Wilde, a red fox making his living as a con artist. What makes Zootopia a utopia and the city of Judy's dreams is that it appears to be “where anyone can be anything.” Zootopia confronts people with three utopian ideals: of security and social order, of individual self‐determination and fulfillment, and of a just multispecies (...) society. Zootopia begins with the founding myth that tells the story of how the animals overcame an anything‐but‐ideal natural state, in which prey animals lived in constant fear of predators. Zootopia is too much of a metaphor for human ways of life to be a utopian human‐animal society, and too “messy” to count as a metaphoric utopia for humans. (shrink)

We show that the respective oversights in the von Neumann's general theorem against all hidden variable theories and Bell's theorem against their local-realistic counterparts are homologous. When latter oversight is rectified, the bounds on the CHSH correlator work out to be ±2√2 instead of ±2.