Free Speech in the Balance is the first comprehensive study of proportional analysis in free speech theory. This book challenges the US Supreme Court's categorical approach and explains the importance of understanding the breadth of concerns arising from regulations directly and indirectly impacting expression. The author provides in-depth analysis of some of the important social and political principles governing topics of vital concern, including campaign financing, university speech codes, secondary school rules, incitement, and threats. This book should be read by (...) students and scholars of free speech theory and anyone interested in learning more about the history of existing law, the issues of current importance, and trends in expressive significance. (shrink)

This dissertation is about prejudice. In particular, it examines the theoretical and ethical questions raised by research on implicit social biases. Social biases are termed "implicit" when they are not reported, though they lie just beneath the surface of consciousness. Such biases are easy to adopt but very difficult to introspect and control. Despite this difficulty, I argue that we are personally responsible for our biases and obligated to overcome them if they can bring harm to ourselves or to others. (...) My dissertation addresses the terms of their removal. It is grounded in a comprehensive examination of empirical research and, as such, is a contribution to social psychology. Although implicit social biases significantly influence our judgment and action, they are not reducible to beliefs or desires. Rather, they constitute a class of their own. Understanding their particular character is vital to determining how to replace them with more preferable habits of mind. I argue for a model of interpersonal fluency, a kind of ethical expertise that requires transforming our underlying dispositions of thought, feeling, and action. (shrink)

Laws of nature take center stage in philosophy of science. Laws are usually believed to stand in a tight conceptual relation to many important key concepts such as causation, explanation, confirmation, determinism, counterfactuals etc. Traditionally, philosophers of science have focused on physical laws, which were taken to be at least true, universal statements that support counterfactual claims. But, although this claim about laws might be true with respect to physics, laws in the special sciences (such as biology, psychology, economics etc.) (...) appear to have—maybe not surprisingly—different features than the laws of physics. Special science laws—for instance, the economic law “Under the condition of perfect competition, an increase of demand of a commodity leads to an increase of price, given that the quantity of the supplied commodity remains constant” and, in biology, Mendel's Laws—are usually taken to “have exceptions”, to be “non-universal” or “to be ceteris paribus laws”. How and whether the laws of physics and the laws of the special sciences differ is one of the crucial questions motivating the debate on ceteris paribus laws. Another major, controversial question concerns the determination of the precise meaning of “ceteris paribus”. Philosophers have attempted to explicate the meaning of ceteris paribus clauses in different ways. The question of meaning is connected to the problem of empirical content, i.e., the question whether ceteris paribus laws have non-trivial and empirically testable content. Since many philosophers have argued that ceteris paribus laws lack empirically testable content, this problem constitutes a major challenge to a theory of ceteris paribus laws. (shrink)

An account, based principally on Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society, of his concept of enlightened governance, and of the relation between that concept and his concept of human nature.

I articulate a functional characterisation of the concept of evidence, according to which evidence is that which allows us to make inferences that extend our knowledge. This entails Williamson's equation of knowledge with evidence.

Darwin in Russian Thought represents the first comprehensive and systematic study of Charles Darwin's influence on Russian thought from the early 1860s to the October Revolution. While concentrating on the role of Darwin's theory in the development of Russian science and philosophy, Vucinich also explores the dominant ideological and sociological interpretations of evolutionary thought, providing a deft analysis of the views held by the leaders of Russian nihilism, populism, anarchism, and marxism. Darwin's thinking profoundly influenced intellectual discourse in Russia: it (...) effected the emergence of "theoretical theology," a modern effort to provide theological responses to the revolutionary changes in the natural sciences, contributed to the evolution of a modern scientific community, and spurred the rapidly growing concern with the epistemological and ethical foundations of science in general. Scholarly battles were waged among the critics of Darwin--Karl von Baer, Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii and Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinskii, and others--and the defenders of the faith. Vucinich is able to delineate the distinctive national characteristics of Russian Darwinism: the strong influence of Lamarckian thought, the delayed recognition of the contributions of genetics, the near-universal rejection of Social Darwinism, the early anticipation of the triumph of "evolutionary synthesis," and the heavy concentration on the social and moral aspects of evolutionary thought. Vividly argued and rich in detail, Darwin in Russian Thought provides a unique glimpse into the Russian psyche. Darwin in Russian Thought represents the first comprehensive and systematic study of Charles Darwin's influence on Russian thought from the early 1860s to the October Revolution. While concentrating on the role of Darwin's theory in the development of Russian science and philosophy, Vucinich also explores the dominant ideological and sociological interpretations of evolutionary thought, providing a deft analysis of the views held by the leaders of Russian nihilism, populism, anarchism, and marxism. Darwin's thinking profoundly influenced intellectual discourse in Russia: it effected the emergence of "theoretical theology," a modern effort to provide theological responses to the revolutionary changes in the natural sciences, contributed to the evolution of a modern scientific community, and spurred the rapidly growing concern with the epistemological and ethical foundations of science in general. Scholarly battles were waged among the critics of Darwin--Karl von Baer, Nikolai Iakovlevich Danilevskii and Sergei Ivanovich Korzhinskii, and others--and the defenders of the faith. Vucinich is able to delineate the distinctive national characteristics of Russian Darwinism: the strong influence of Lamarckian thought, the delayed recognition of the contributions of genetics, the near-universal rejection of Social Darwinism, the early anticipation of the triumph of "evolutionary synthesis," and the heavy concentration on the social and moral aspects of evolutionary thought. Vividly argued and rich in detail, Darwin in Russian Thought provides a unique glimpse into the Russian psyche. (shrink)

Conventional understanding and research regarding prognostic understanding too often focuses on transmission of information. However, merely overcoming barriers to patient understanding may not be sufficient. In this article the authors provide a more nuanced understanding of prognostic awareness, using oncological care as an overarching example, and discuss factors that may lead to prognostic discordance between physicians and patients. We summarize the current literature and research and present a model developed by the authors to characterize barriers to prognostic awareness. Ultimately, multiple (...) influences on prognostic understanding may impede acceptance by patients even when adequate transfer of information takes place. Physicians should improve how they transmit prognostic information, as this information may be processed in different ways. A model of misunderstandings in awareness, ranging from patient understanding to patient belief, may be useful to guide future discussions. Future decision-making studies should consider these many variables so that interventions may be created to address all aspects of the prognostic disclosure process. (shrink)

Book Review: P.P. Tolochko. Ukraine between Russia and the West: Historical and Nonfiction Essays. Saint Petersburg: Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018. - 592 pp. ISBN 978-5-7621-0973-4This author discusses the problem of scientific objectivity and reviews a book written by the medievalist-historian P.P. Tolochko, full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, honorable director of the NASU Institute of Archaeology. The book was published by the Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences in the (...) autumn of 2018. The book presents a collection of articles and reports devoted to processes in Ukraine and, first of all, in Ukrainian historical science, which, at the moment, is experiencing an era of serious reformation of its interpretative models. The author of the book shows that these models are being reformed to suit the requirements of the new ideology, with an obvious disregard for the conduct of objective scientific research. In this regard, the problem of objectivity of scientific research becomes the subject of this review because the requirement of objectivity can be viewed not only as a methodological requirement but also as a moral and political position, opposing the rigor of scientific research to the impact of ideological, political and moral systems and judgments. It is concluded that in this sense the position of P.P. Tolochko can be considered as the act of profound ethical choice. (shrink)

There is a growing body of literature on whether or not online hate speech, or cyberhate, might be special compared to offline hate speech. This article aims to both critique and augment that literature by emphasising a distinctive feature of the Internet and of cyberhate that, unlike other features, such as ease of access, size of audience, and anonymity, is often overlooked: namely, instantaneousness. This article also asks whether there is anything special about online (as compared to offline) hate speech (...) that might warrant governments and intergovernmental organisations contracting out, so to speak, the responsibility for tackling online hate speech to the very Internet companies which provide the websites and services that hate speakers utilise. (shrink)

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

Changes in healthcare financing increasingly rely upon patient cost-sharing to control escalating healthcare expenditures. These changes raise new challenges for physicians that are different from those that arose either under managed care or traditional indemnity insurance. Historically, there have been two distinct bases for arguing that physicians should not consider costs in their clinical decisions—an “aspirational ethic” that exhorts physicians to treat all patients the same regardless of their ability to pay, and an “agency ethic” that calls on physicians to (...) be trustworthy advisors to their patients. In the setting of greater patient cost-sharing, physicians' aspiration and agency roles increasingly conflict. Satisfactorily navigating the new terrain of consumer-driven healthcare requires physicians to consider these two roles and how they can best be reconciled so as to maximize quality of care while respecting the heterogeneity of patients' financial resources and willingness to pay. (shrink)

Mea culpa. In 1981 the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, of which I was the Executive Director, recommended to the President and Congress that all federal departments and agencies that conduct or support human subjects research adopt “as a common core” the HHS regulations, “while permitting additions needed by any department or agency that are not inconsistent with these core provisions.” The commission believed—rightly, I still think—that having uniformity would ease (...) administration, reduce regulatory burdens, simplify oversight, and make research more efficient. Yet our naïve expectation the task could be accomplished in 180 days meant that we failed to anticipate that if it took much longer—namely, the 10 years that passed before the Common Rule was issued—federal officials would thereafter be reluctant to change the regulations and that when they tried to do so twenty years later, with the issuance of the ANPRM in 2011, they would propose comprehensive revisions. I argue that was the wrong conclusion to draw from the difficulties in issuing the first Common Rule, and that the process of producing the new “final rule” on January 19, 2017—during which many of the proposed changes were either dumped or promulgated without being adequately vetted—reinforces the conclusion that a more incremental process, with ongoing involvement of the public through an advisory body like the President's Commission, would be a much better way to proceed. (shrink)

What is honor? Has its meaning changed since ancient times? Is it an outmoded notion? Does it still have the power to direct our behavior? In this provocative book Alexander Welsh considers the history and meaning of honor and dismisses the idea that we live in a post-honor culture. He notes that we have words other than _honor_, such as _respect_, _self-respect_, and personal _identity_, that show we do indeed care deeply about honor. Honor, he argues, is a continuing (...) process of respect that motivates or constrains members of a peer group. Honor’s dictates function as moral imperatives. Surprisingly, little systematic study of the history of honor in Western culture has been attempted. Offering a welcome remedy, Welsh provides a genealogy of approaches to the subject, mining some of the most influential texts of the Western tradition. He rereads with fascinating results the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Shakespeare, Mandeville, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Kant, Adam Smith, and others. With a sharp focus on the intersection of honor and ethics in both literature and philosophy, Welsh invites new and constructive debate on a topic of vital interest. (shrink)

We show that many principles of first-order arithmetic, previously only known to lie strictly between [Formula: see text]-induction and [Formula: see text]-induction, are equivalent to the well-foundedness of [Formula: see text]. Among these principles are the iteration of partial functions of Hájek and Paris, the bounded monotone enumerations principle by Chong, Slaman, and Yang, the relativized Paris–Harrington principle for pairs, and the totality of the relativized Ackermann–Péter function. With this we show that the well-foundedness of [Formula: see text] is a (...) far more widespread than usually suspected. Further, we investigate the [Formula: see text]-iterated version of the bounded monotone iterations principle, and show that it is equivalent to the well-foundedness of the -height [Formula: see text]-tower [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

This paper argues that if creatures are to have significant free will, then God's essential omni-benevolence and essential omnipotence cannot logically preclude Him from creating a world containing a moral evil. The paper maintains that this traditional conclusion does not need to rest on reliance on subjunctive conditionals of free will. It can be grounded in several independent ways based on premises that many will accept.

Crispin Wright is widely recognised as one of the most important and influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This volume is a collective exploration of the major themes of his work in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and philosophy of mathematics. It comprises specially written chapters by a group of internationally renowned thinkers, as well as four substantial responses from Wright. In these thematically organized replies, Wright summarizes his life's work and responds to the contributory essays collected (...) in this book. In bringing together such scholarship, the present volume testifies to both the enormous interest in Wright's thought and the continued relevance of Wright's seminal contributions in analytic philosophy for present-day debates. (shrink)

The subtraction argument aims to show that there is an empty world, in the sense of a possible world with no concrete objects. The argument has been endorsed by several philosophers. I show that there are currently two versions of the argument around, and that only one of them is valid. I then sketch the main problem for the valid version of the argument.

ObjectiveIn this study we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether motor imagery of handwriting and circle drawing activates a similar handwriting network as writing and drawing itself.MethodsEighteen healthy right-handed participants wrote the German word “Wellen” and drew continuously circles in a sitting and lying position to capture kinematic handwriting parameters such as velocity, pressure and regularity of hand movements. Afterward, they performed the same tasks during fMRI in a MI and an executed condition.ResultsThe kinematic analysis revealed a general (...) correlation of handwriting parameters during sitting and lying except of pen pressure during drawing. Writing compared to imagined writing was accompanied by an increased activity of the ipsilateral cerebellum and the contralateral sensorimotor cortex. Executed compared to imagined drawing revealed elevated activity of a fronto–parieto-temporal network. By contrasting writing and drawing directly, executed writing induced an enhanced activation of the left somatosensory and premotor area. The comparison of the MI of these tasks revealed a higher involvement of occipital activation during imagined writing.ConclusionThe kinematic results pointed to a high comparability of writing in a vertical and horizontal position. Overall, we observed highly overlapping cortical activity except of a higher involvement of motor control areas during motor execution. The sparse difference between writing and drawing can be explained by highly automatized writing in healthy individuals. (shrink)

I respond to Vaidman’s recent criticisms of my paper “A New Problem for Quantum Mechanics”.

Ronald Dworkin's work on equality has shaped debates in the field of distributive justice for nearly three decades. In this book Alexander Brown attempts to provide a critique but also a defence of that work, and to extend equality of resources globally.

The article analyzes the main parameters of the modern world development, its architectonics and the most important development trends. Modern communications and principles of interaction of various social systems are also considered. As a result, the most significant cultural-cum-civilizational systems are distinguished – the West, China, the Islamic world and Russia, which represent four global trends or four vectors of power that fundamentally affect the current state and prospects of world development. It is emphasized that the West and China have (...) a global strategy, provided by objective circumstances. The Islamic world and Russia occupy an important geopolitical position and also have a special status in the global world. (shrink)

After having held through much of his career the view that our senses and our intellect falsify the world, Nietzsche published in Twilight of the Idols the claim that the senses do not lie at all. A preparation for this apparent change of mind has often been seen in BGE 15, where Nietzsche seems to recommend “sensualism,” at least for scientists working on the physiology of the senses. I try to characterize in some detail what “sensualism” means by drawing on (...) contemporary discussions and suggest a clarifying reading of the argument in BGE 15. Nietzsche’s attitude towards sensualism, however, is ambivalent. It is a suitable view to hold for scientists engaged in accomplishing “coarse tasks.” But there is a nobler way of doing science, exemplified by Copernicus and Boscovich who “triumphed over the senses.” I explicate this more nuanced attitude towards sensualism and suggest that the senses do not lie insofar as they show us change, that is, temporal relations between events, while they do lie about the events themselves. This happens to be a view that the eminent physiologist of the senses, Helmholtz, had arrived at in 1867. (shrink)

Gegenwartig sind wir Zeugen einer tief greifenden Sinn- als Vertrauenskrise, die sich weitlaufig im Wirtschafts-, Finanz-, Umwelt- und Bildungssektor bemerkbar macht.