God-Pantocrator and God-Coordinator: The Status of a Miracle in the Scientific Revolution

Scientists and philosophers of the 17th century, with all the novelty of their ideas, at the same time were in no hurry to reject the concept of a miracle, although many of them, such as I. Newton, rejected the understanding of a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature, its “ordinary course”. On the whole, with regard to the Christian concept of the miracle in the natural philosophy of the early modern period, a very uncertain situation developed. On the one hand, in the era of the Scientific Revolution, there was a clear tendency to explain extraordinary phenomena by the action of natural causes, which in theology found its meaningful expression in the Protestant concept of the cessation of miracles (cessatio miraculorum) in post-apostolic times, and in philosophy (more precisely, in the philosophico-theological literature), especially in the teachings of B. Pascal, R. Descartes, B. Spinoza, D. Hume and other authors, in an effort to build a rational theology in which the status of a miracle turned out to be very uncertain. On the other hand, the difficulties that arose in science after I. Newton's discovery of the law of universal gravitation and associated with the problem of actio in distans, forced researchers to resort to theological concepts and images in natural-philosophical reasoning, in particular, to refer to the concept of a miracle. The latter circumstance required the development of a new understanding of miracles, namely the concept of “coincidence miracles”, which made it possible to preserve the apologetic functions of miracles and at the same time to neutralize the philosophical and theological criticism of the concept of miracle by B. Spinoza and D. Hume. My aim in this article is to demonstrate that the relationship between theological and scientific (more precisely, natural-philosophical) problems is by no means reduced to the use of theological concepts in the process of the formation of classical science in the mode of general reasoning by analogy or as general ideological statements. Theological concepts turned out to be included in the natural-philosophical discourse on a par with purely physical arguments, and, on the contrary, theological thought had to somehow react to natural-philosophical discoveries, which ultimately led to a mutual adjustment of both natural-philosophical and theological concepts.

A Description Logic for Analogical Reasoning

Ontologies formalise how the concepts from a given domain are interrelated. Despite their clear potential as a backbone for explainable AI, existing ontologies tend to be highly incomplete, which acts as a significant barrier to their more widespread adoption. To mitigate this issue, we present a mechanism to infer plausible missing knowledge, which relies on reasoning by analogy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that studies analogical reasoning within the setting of description logic ontologies. After showing that the standard formalisation of analogical proportion has important limitations in this setting, we introduce an alternative semantics based on bijective mappings between sets of features. We then analyse the properties of analogies under the proposed semantics, and show among others how it enables two plausible inference patterns: rule translation and rule extrapolation.

Podstawowe aspekty wykładni prawa w chińskim porządku prawnym

Basic aspects of legal interpretation in the Chinese legal order Chinese legal culture was shaped in a different way than Western legal culture, these differences have a significant impact on the rule of law, fundamental rights and democracy in contemporary China. Legal interpretation is one of the formal sources of law in China. The authority to interpret legislation is usually characterized as a legislative rather than a judicial function. The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the State Council and the Supreme People’s Court have a special role in interpretive activities. Chinese legal interpretation includes semantic rules, the cultural and linguistic context of law, basic constitutional principles, the hierarchy of sources of law and reasoning by analogy.

Justifying Particular Reasoning in a Legal Context

Particular reasoning is arguably the most common type of legal reasoning. Neil MacCormick proposed that, in a legal context, justifiable particular reasoning has to be universalizable. This paper aims to: (1) investigate MacCormick’s thesis; (2) explain how a particular can ever be universal by drawing inspiration from Scott Brewer’s formula on reasoning by analogy; (3) further comprehend MacCormick’s thesis by considering some of the arguments advanced by its opponents; (4) use the ‘pilot-judgement procedure’ developed by the European Court of Human Rights as an example to illustrate the relevance of the universalizable particular thesis in today’s legal practices.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test: Relationship with Neurocognition and Facial Emotion Recognition in Non-Clinical Youths

Objective The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) is a common measure of the Theory of Mind. Previous studies found a correlation between RMET performance and neurocognition, especially reasoning by analogy; however, the nature of this relationship remains unclear. Additionally, neurocognition was shown to play a significant role in facial emotion recognition. This study is planned to examine the nature of relationship between neurocognition and RMET performance, as well as the mediating role of facial emotion recognition.Methods One hundred fifty non-clinical youths performed the RMET. Reasoning by analogy was tested by Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) and facial emotion recognition was assessed by the Korean Facial Expressions of Emotion (KOFEE) test. The percentile bootstrap method was used to calculate the parameters of the mediating effects of facial emotion recognition on the relationship between SPM and RMET scores.Results SPM scores and KOFEE scores were both statistically significant predictors of RMET scores. KOFEE scores were found to partially mediate the impact of SPM scores on RMET scores.Conclusion These findings suggested that facial emotion recognition partially mediated the relationship between reasoning by analogy and social cognition. This study highlights the need for further research for individuals with serious mental illnesses.

Nondeductive Argumentation and the Art of Chinese Philosophy

This chapter discusses nondeductive argumentation in classical Chinese philosophy. There are three kinds: paradox, analogy, and appeal to example. Many of the paradoxes of the so-called disputers can be made to seem veridical, or at least veridical in spirit, if interpreted sympathetically. In addition, reasoning by analogy was a crucial mode of deliberation in traditional China. It was one of the hallmarks of Chinese jurisprudence and also figures prominently in early Chinese poetics. Finally, appeals to example are nearly ubiquitous in ancient Chinese philosophy (the most prominent text not to resort to them is Laozi), and this chapter divides the technique into a number of subtypes.

Making Automation Explicable: A Challenge for Philosophy of Technology

This article argues for an expanded conception of automation's 'explicability'. When it comes to topics as topical and shot through with multifarious anxieties as automation, it is, I argue, insufficient to rely on a conception of explicability as 'explanation' or 'simplification'. Instead, automation is the kind of topic that is challenging us to develop a more dynamic conception of explicability as explication. By this, I mean that automation is challenging us to develop epistemic strategies that are better capable of implicating people and their anxieties about automation in the topic, and, counterintuitively, of complicating how the topic is interfaced with. The article comprises an introduction followed by four main parts. While the introduction provides general context, each of the four subsequent parts seeks to demonstrate how diverse epistemic strategies might have a role to play in developing the process just described. Together, the parts are intended to build a cumulative case. This does not mean that the strategies they discuss are intended to be definitive, however – other strategies for making automation explicable may be possible and more desirable. Part one historicises automation as a concept. It does this through a focus on a famous passage from Descartes' Second Meditation, where he asks the reader to imagine automata glimpsed through a window. The aim here is to rehearse the presuppositions of a familiar 'modernist' epistemological model, and to outline how a contemporary understanding of automation as a wicked socio-economic problem challenges it. Parts two and three are then framed through concepts emerging from recent psychology: 'automation bias' and 'automation complacency'. The aim here is to consider recent developments in philosophy of technology in terms of these concepts, and to dramatically explicate key presuppositions at stake in the form of reasoning by analogy implied. While part two explicates an analogy between automation bias in philosophical engagements with technologies that involve a 'transcendental' tendency to reify automation, part three explicates an analogy between automation complacency and an opposed 'empirical turn' tendency in philosophy of technology to privilege nuanced description of case studies. Part four then conclude by arguing that anxieties concerning automation might usefully be redirected towards a different sense of the scope and purpose of philosophy of technology today: not as a movement to be 'turned' in one direction at the expense of others ('empirical' vs 'transcendental', for instance) but as a multidimensional 'problem space' to be explicated in many different directions at once. Through reference to Kierkegaard and Simondon, I show how different approaches to exemplification, indirection and indeterminacy can be consistent with this, and with the approach to explicability recommended above.