In this paper, I argue against Millian Descriptivism: that is, the view that, although sentences that contain names express singular propositions, when they use those sentences speakers communicate descriptive propositions. More precisely, I argue that Millian Descriptivism fares no better (or worse) than Fregean Descriptivism: that is, the view that sentences express descriptive propositions. This is bad news for Millian Descriptivists who think that Fregean Descriptivism is dead.

Biomedical science suffered a loss of trust during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Why? One reason is a crisis fueled by confusion over the epistemology of science. Attacks on biomedical expertise rest on a mistaken view of what the justification is for crediting scientific information. The ideas that science is characterized by universal agreement and that any evolution or change of beliefs about facts and theories undermines trustworthiness in science are simply false. Biomedical science is trustworthy precisely because it is fallible, admits (...) error, adjusts to new information, and, most importantly, is practical. Successful diagnosis and cure demarcate the boundaries of warranted knowledge. The other reason is sociological. As the pandemic made all too clear, the loss of faith in scientific experts was due to the failure of most of them to engage in regular public dialogue, reflecting a failure to recognize the obligation that science has to bolster trust in its work and findings by concerted public engagement. (shrink)

In my dissertation (UCLA 2002), I argue that, by appropriating Fregean resources, Millians can solve the problems that empty names pose. As a result, the debate between Millians and Fregeans should be understood, not as a debate about whether there are senses, but rather as a debate about where there are senses.

There are competing ethical concerns when it comes to designing any clinical research study. Clinical trials of possible treatments for Ebola virus are no exception. If anything, the competing ethical concerns are exacerbated in trying to find answers to a deadly, rapidly spreading, infectious disease. The primary goal of current research is to identify experimental therapies that can cure Ebola or cure it with reasonable probability in infected individuals. Pursuit of that goal must be methodologically sound, practical and consistent with (...) prevailing norms governing human subjects research. Some maintain that only randomized controlled trials with a placebo or standard-of-care arm can meet these conditions. We maintain that there are alternative trial designs that can do so as well and that sometimes these are preferable to RCTs. (shrink)

In “On the Nature of Logical Judgment” (published 1893) and A New Law of Thought and Its Logical Bearings (published 1911), E. E. Constance Jones developed a view on which we can think and talk about the round-square. On her view, the round-square has a kind of existence; otherwise, sentences about it wouldn’t be meaningful. But it doesn’t exist in space, since it’s both round and square, and nothing in space is both. Although it has a kind of existence in (...) what she calls “a Region of Supposition,” we can truly say that it “doesn’t exist,” if what we mean is that it doesn’t exist in space. It plays a role in reasoning, since we need to be able to reason about it to conclude that it doesn’t exist in space. And, although the round-square is both round and square, the Law of Contradiction needn’t be violated, provided that it’s understood in light of Jones’s distinction between two kinds of negation. (shrink)

Surveys are odd tools. The facts they reveal are often said to speak for themselves but it isn’t always obvious what to make of their findings. While this might not initially seem so with respect t...

In ‘Truth, Relativism, and Serial Fiction’, Andrew McGonigal presents new data that a theory of truth in fiction should account for, and argues that the data is best accounted for by his relativist view. I argue against McGonigal’s relativist view and in favour of a more metaphysical view. The key feature of this view is that it is one on which the content of a work of fiction can change over time. Along the way I also argue against Ross Cameron’s (...) contextualist view. (shrink)

This target article discusses the verbal working memory system used in sentence comprehension. We review the concept of working memory as a short-duration system in which small amounts of information are simultaneously stored and manipulated in the service of accomplishing a task. We summarize the argument that syntactic processing in sentence comprehension requires such a storage and computational system. We then ask whether the working memory system used in syntactic processing is the same as that used in verbally mediated tasks (...) that involve conscious controlled processing. Evidence is brought to bear from various sources: the relationship between individual differences in working memory and individual differences in the efficiency of syntactic processing; the effect of concurrent verbal memory load on syntactic processing; and syntactic processing in patients with poor short-term memory, patients with poor working memory, and patients with aphasia. Experimental results from these normal subjects and patients with various brain lesions converge on the conclusion that there is a specialization in the verbal working memory system for assigning the syntactic structure of a sentence and using that structure in determining sentence meaning that is separate from the working memory system underlying the use of sentence meaning to accomplish other functions. We present a theory of the divisions of the verbal working memory system and suggestions regarding its neural basis. (shrink)

The movement to try to close the ever-widening gap between demand and supply of organs has recently arrived at the prison gate. While there is enthusiasm for using executed prisoners as sources of organs, there are both practical barriers and moral concerns that make it unlikely that proposals to use prisoners will or should gain traction. Prisoners are generally not healthy enough to be a safe source of organs, execution makes the procurement of viable organs difficult, and organ donation post-execution (...) ties the medical profession too closely to the act of execution. (shrink)

Of all the five senses losing sight is the one that individuals fear the most. Worldwide blindness has afflicted tens of millions of people each year. Historically, this has inspired researchers an...

How did bioethics manage to grow, flourish and ultimately do so well from a very unpromising birth in the 1970s? Many explanations have been advanced. Some ascribe the field9s growth to a puzzling, voluntary abnegation of moral authority by medicine to non-physicians. Some think bioethics survived by selling out to the biomedical establishment—public and private. This transaction involved bestowing moral approbation on all manner of biomedicine9s doings for a seat at a well-stocked funding table. Some see a sort of clever (...) intellectual bamboozlement at work wherein bioethicists pitched a moral elixir of objective expertise that the morally needy but unsophisticated in medicine and the biological sciences were eager to swallow. While each of these reasons has its defenders, I think the main reason that bioethics did well was that it did good. By using the media to move into the public arena, the field engaged the public imagination, provoked dialogue and debate, and contributed to policy changes that benefitted patients and healthcare providers. (shrink)

In "Demonstratives or Demonstrations", Marga Reimer argues that quotation marks are demonstrations and that expressions enclosed with them are demonstratives. In this paper, I argue against her view. There are two objections. The first objection is that Reimer''s view has unattractive consequences: there is more ambiguity, there are more demonstratives, and there are more English expressions than we thought. The second objection is that, unlike other ambiguous expressions, some expressions that are ambiguous on Reimer''s view can''t be disambiguated by using (...) subscripts. This suggests that, contrary to her view, those expressions aren't really ambiguous. (shrink)

Comatose survivors of cardiac arrest may die following withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy (WLST) due to poor neurologic prognosis. Family members, acting as surrogate decision makers, are frequently asked to decide whether the patient should continue to receive ongoing life-sustaining therapy such as mechanical ventilation in this context of risk of death following removal. Sometimes, physicians and family members disagree about what is in the patient's best interest, and this conflict causes distress for both families and medical personnel. This article examines (...) themes recorded in the medical records of 24 cardiac arrest patients at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) whose families chose to pursue continued life support despite physician recommendations for withdrawal. In documented conversations between patients' families and their providers, the most prominent themes included faith in miracles, the inappropriateness of "playing God," the value of more time with the patient, and differences in how providers and family members perceived the patient's status. (shrink)

Alan H, Goldman, The Moral Foundations of Professional Ethics Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1980, Pp. ix + 305.

This paper examines recovery from a narrative perspective. Narrativity theory is the view that life takes the form of a story. Human experience happens within an ongoing storyline. My aim here is not to indulge in disclosure or claim that I developed otherwise unattainable insight through the course of my illness. We will instead be looking at how the process of recovery brings on opportunities for moral understanding in the form of insights into the nature of suffering, increased sensitivity to (...) what is going around you, and appreciation of how certain things can affect the whole of life. (shrink)

Experts discuss the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of genetic testing in determining eligibility for life insurance. Insurance companies routinely use an individual's medical history and family medical history in determining eligibility for life insurance; this is part of the process of medical underwriting. Insurers have also long used genetic information, often derived from family history, in underwriting. But rapid advances in gene identification and genetic testing are changing the way we look at genetic information. Should the (...) results of genetic testing (which might identify a predisposition toward disease not related to medical history) be available to life insurance medical underwriters? Few if any life insurers currently require genetic testing, but there are no laws or regulations prohibiting its use. Genetics and Life Insurance examines the complex economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of genetic information in life insurance underwriting. The contributors are legal scholars, representatives of the life insurance industry (including an actuary and an insurance physician), a geneticist, a genetic counselor, a philosopher, and a consumer advocate. They explore all aspects of an issue that has only recently drawn the attention of policymakers and the public. The book opens with a report on the results of a public opinion poll on genetics and life insurance. Succeeding chapters present the insurer perspective, a discussion of the economics of risk selection in life insurance, background information on the process of underwriting, a scientific analysis of genetic risks and mortality rates, a philosophical discussion of fairness and genetic underwriting, the viewpoints of consumers and genetics counselors, a comparison of different international policy approaches to the issue, and a legal analysis of antitrust implications when insurers collaborate in setting standards for medical underwriting. In the final chapter the editor addresses various policy options, examining the pros and cons of each one and assessing their political feasibility. (shrink)

Health, Disease, and Illness brings together a sterling list of classic and contemporary thinkers to examine the history, state, and future of ever-changing "concepts" in medicine.

Three plausible views—Presentism, Truthmaking, and Independence—form an inconsistent triad. By Presentism, all being is present being. By Truthmaking, all truth supervenes on, and is explained in terms of, being. By Independence, some past truths do not supervene on, or are not explained in terms of, present being. We survey and assess some responses to this.

The field of medical rehabilitation is relatively new.... Until recently, the ethical problems of this new field were neglected. There seemed to be more pressing concerns as rehabilitation medicine struggled to establish itself, sometimes in the face of considerable skepticism or hostility. There also seemed no pressing moral questions of the kind and intensity to be encountered, say, in high-technology acute care medicine or genetic engineering.... Those in biomedical ethics could and did easily overlook the quiet, less obtrusive issues of (...) rehabilitation.... The Hastings Center set out in 1985 to rectify that situation.... To explore the issues, the Center assembled a group of practitioners in the field, Hastings Center staff members, and individuals experienced in other areas of medical ethics.... The report that follows was written by Arthur Caplan and Daniel Callahan, assisted by Dr. Janet Haas of the Moss Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia... (shrink)

If musical works are abstract objects, which cannot enter into causal relations, then how can we refer to musical works or know anything about them? Worse, how can any of our musical experiences be experiences of musical works? It would be nice to be able to sidestep these questions altogether. One way to do that would be to take musical works to be concrete objects. In this paper, we defend a theory according to which musical works are concrete objects. In (...) particular, the theory that we defend takes musical works to be fusions of performances. We defend this view from a series of objections, the first two of which are raised by Julian Dodd in a recent paper and the last of which is suggested by some comments of his in an earlier paper. (shrink)

Can a musical work be created? Some say ‘no’. But, we argue, there is no handbook of universally accepted metaphysical truths that they can use to justify their answer. Others say ‘yes’. They have to find abstract objects that can plausibly be identified with musical works, show that abstract objects of this sort can be created, and show that such abstract objects can persist. But, we argue, none of the standard views about what a musical work is allows musical works (...) both to be created and to persist. (shrink)

Patients have received experimental pharmaceuticals outside of clinical trials for decades. There are no industry-wide best practices, and many companies that have granted compassionate use, or ‘preapproval’, access to their investigational products have done so without fanfare and without divulging the process or grounds on which decisions were made. The number of compassionate use requests has increased over time. Driving the demand are new treatments for serious unmet medical needs; patient advocacy groups pressing for access to emerging treatments; internet platforms (...) enabling broad awareness of compelling cases or novel drugs and a lack of trust among some that the pharmaceutical industry and/or the FDA have patients’ best interests in mind. High-profile cases in the media have highlighted the gap between patient expectations for compassionate use and company utilisation of fair processes to adjudicate requests. With many pharmaceutical manufacturers, patient groups, healthcare providers and policy analysts unhappy with the inequities of the status quo, fairer and more ethical management of compassionate use requests was needed. This paper reports on a novel collaboration between a pharmaceutical company and an academic medical ethics department that led to the formation of the Compassionate Use Advisory Committee. Comprising medical experts, bioethicists and patient representatives, CompAC established an ethical framework for the allocation of a scarce investigational oncology agent to single patients requesting non-trial access. This is the first account of how the committee was formed and how it built an ethical framework and put it into practice. (shrink)

A quiet revolution is occurring in the field of transplantation. Traditionally, transplants have involved solid organs such as the kidney, heart and liver which are transplanted to prevent recipients from dying. Now transplants are being done of the face, hand, uterus, penis and larynx that aim at improving a recipient's quality of life. The shift away from saving lives to seeking to make them better requires a shift in the ethical thinking that has long formed the foundation of organ transplantation. (...) The addition of new forms of transplants requires doctors, patients, regulators and the public to rethink the risk and benefit ratio represented by trade-offs between saving life, extending life and risking the loss of life to achieve improvements in the quality of life. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment is a creative, careful, and mostly convincing study of the predictive accuracy of political experts. My only major complaints are that Tetlock (1) understates the predictive accuracy of experts, and (2) does too little to discourage demagogues from misinterpreting his work as a vindication of the wisdom of the average citizen. Experts have much to learn from Tetlock's epistemological audit, but there is still ample evidence that, compared to laymen, experts are very good.

British Journal of Aesthetics (forthcoming Jan. 2008).