A proper understanding of Millikan

Ruth Millikan’s teleological theory of mental content is complex and often misunderstood. This paper motivates and clarifies some of the complexities of the theory, and shows that paying careful attention to its details yields answers to a number of common objections to teleological theories, in particular, the problem of novel mental states, the problem of functionally false beliefs, and problems about indeterminacy or multiplicity of function

The phony peach virus

Cover title.Includes bibliographical references

Inoculation studies of the ring spot virus complex in sweet cherry.

This bulletin reports on Department of Horticulture Research Project No. 68, 'Stone Fruit Virus'--P. [2]."Part of a Ph. D. thesis submitted to the Graduate School while the author was a member of the Botany Department"--P. [3].Digitized 2007 AES.Includes bibliographical references (pages 22-23)

A history of plant pathology

June 1988.Title from JPEG cover page (University of Missouri Digital Library, viewed Mar. 25, 2010)

The evolution and development of visual perspective taking

I outline three conceptions of seeing that a creature might possess: ‘the headlamp conception,’ which involves an understanding of the causal connections between gazing at an object, certain mental states, and behavior; ‘the stage lights conception,’ which involves an understanding of the selective nature of visual attention; and seeing-as. I argue that infants and various nonhumans possess the headlamp conception. There is also evidence that chimpanzees and 3-year-old children have some grasp of seeing-as. However, due to a dearth of studies, there is no evidence that infants or nonhumans possess the stage lights conception of seeing. I outline the kinds of experiments that are needed, and what we stand to learn about the evolution and development of perspective taking

Space shuttle: Aerodynamic characteristics of the NASA-MSC S-4 orbiter in cruise and landing

Low speed wind tunnel test to define space shuttle model cruise and landing aerodynamic characteristic

Cosmic-ray energies and their bearing on the photon and neutron hypotheses

ON NOVEMBER 20, 1931, in a lecture before a large audience gathered at the Institut Poincaré in Paris, there were presented the first direct measurements taken by Carl D. Anderson of the energies of cosmic-ray tracks made with an apparatus capable of measuring, by the method of magnetic deflectibility in air, energies of the order of magnitude to be expected in cosmic-ray photon-encounters with electrons and nuclei, namely, from 27×10^(6) volts up to at least 500×10^(6) volts. These same photographs were also shown on November 23rd at a physical seminar at the Cavendish Laboratories. Cambridge, England. The eleven cosmic-ray-track photographs shown and discussed on these occasions1 brought to light a certain number of new and important facts presented essentially as listed below in both of these lectures, and these facts have now been checked by three times as many successful exposures

Beyond persons: extending the personal / subpersonal distinction to non-rational animals and artificial agents

The distinction between personal level explanations and subpersonal ones has been subject to much debate in philosophy. We understand it as one between explanations that focus on an agent’s interaction with its environment, and explanations that focus on the physical or computational enabling conditions of such an interaction. The distinction, understood this way, is necessary for a complete account of any agent, rational or not, biological or artificial. In particular, we review some recent research in Artificial Life that pretends to do completely without the distinction, while using agent-centered concepts all the way. It is argued that the rejection of agent level explanations in favour of mechanistic ones is due to an unmotivated need to choose among representationalism and eliminativism. The dilemma is a false one if the possibility of a radical form of externalism is considered

Cognitive Computation sans Representation

The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) holds that cognitive processes are essentially computational, and hence computation provides the scientific key to explaining mentality. The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) holds that representational content is the key feature in distinguishing mental from non-mental systems. I argue that there is a deep incompatibility between these two theoretical frameworks, and that the acceptance of CTM provides strong grounds for rejecting RTM. The focal point of the incompatibility is the fact that representational content is extrinsic to formal procedures as such, and the intended interpretation of syntax makes no difference to the execution of an algorithm. So the unique 'content' postulated by RTM is superfluous to the formal procedures of CTM. And once these procedures are implemented in a physical mechanism, it is exclusively the causal properties of the physical mechanism that are responsible for all aspects of the system's behaviour. So once again, postulated content is rendered superfluous. To the extent that semantic content may appear to play a role in behaviour, it must be syntactically encoded within the system, and just as in a standard computational artefact, so too with the human mind/brain - it's pure syntax all the way down to the level of physical implementation. Hence 'content' is at most a convenient meta-level gloss, projected from the outside by human theorists, which itself can play no role in cognitive processing

Casting Light Upon The Great Endarkenment

While the Enlightenment promoted thinking for oneself independent of religious authority, the ‘Endarkenment’ (Millgram 2015) concerns deference to a new authority: the specialist, a hyperspecializer. Non-specialists need to defer to such authorities as they are unable to understand their reasoning. Millgram describes how humans are capable of being serial hyperspecializers, able to move from one specialism to another. We support the basic thrust of Millgram’s position, and seek to articulate how the core idea is deployed in very different ways in relation to extremely different philosophical areas. We attend to the issue of the degree of isolation of different specialists and we urge greater emphasis on parallel hyperspecialization, which describes how different specialisms can be embodied in one person at one time