Christiansen & Chater (C&C) suggest that language is itself an evolutionary system, and that natural languages to be easy to learn and process. The tight economy of the world's case-marking systems lends support to this hypothesis. Only two major case systems occur, cross-linguistically, and noun phrases are seldom overtly case-marked wherever zero-marking would be functionally practical.

Does language dominance modulate knowledge of case marking in Hindi-speaking bilinguals? Hindi is a split ergative language with a rich morphological case system. Subjects of transitive perfective predicates are marked with ergative case (-ne). Human specific direct objects, indirect objects, and dative subjects are marked with the particle -ko. We compared knowledge of case marking in Hindi-English bilinguals with different dominance patterns: 23 balanced bilinguals and two groups of bilinguals with Hindi as their weaker (...) language: 24 L2 learners of Hindi with age of acquisition (AoA) of Hindi in adulthood and 26 Hindi heritage speakers with AoA of Hindi since birth) in oral production and acceptability judgments. The balanced bilinguals outperformed the English-dominant bilinguals; the L2 learners and the heritage speakers, who showed similar lower command of the Hindi case marking system, with the exception of –ko marking as a function of specificity with direct objects. We consider how dominant language transfer, age of acquisition of Hindi, and input factors may explain the acquisition and knowledge of morphology in Hindi as the weaker language. (shrink)

Recent work in experimental philosophy has shown that people are more likely to attribute intentionality, knowledge, and other psychological properties to someone who causes a bad side effect than to someone who causes a good one. We argue that all of these asymmetries can be explained in terms of a single underlying asymmetry involving belief attribution because the belief that one’s action would result in a certain side effect is a necessary component of each of the psychological attitudes in question. (...) We argue further that this belief-attribution asymmetry is rational because it mirrors a belief-formation asymmetry, and that thebelief-formation asymmetry is also rational because it is more useful to form some beliefs than others. (shrink)

It is increasingly recognized that as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful and pervasive in society and creates risks and ethical issues that cross borders, a global approach is needed for the governance of these risks. But why, exactly, do we need this and what does that mean? In this Open Forum paper, author argues for global governance of AI for moral reasons but also outlines the governance challenges that this project raises.

J. L. Schellenberg has constructed major arguments for atheism based on divine hiddenness in two separate works. This paper reviews these arguments and highlights how they are grounded in reflections on perfect divine love. However, Schellenberg also defends what he calls the ‘subject mode’ of religious scepticism. I argue that if one accepts Schellenberg's scepticism, then the foundation of his divine-hiddenness arguments is undermined by calling into question some of his conclusions regarding perfect divine love. In other words, if his (...) scepticism is correct, then Schellenberg's case for atheism cannot stand. Finally, I demonstrate how my argument avoids the many defences that Schellenberg has employed thus far in defending these particular atheistic arguments. (shrink)

In the post-Apartheid era South Africa’s universities have faced serious questions about the quality of their student learning in the face of near impossible challenges. The University of Cape Town, widely seen as the country’s leading higher education institution, has shown remarkable resilience, however, in the range of initiatives it has launched to support and enhance student learning. These initiatives, designed with a common purpose, are of course intended to work together so that their effects might be compounded and realized (...) in enhanced student learning outcomes. Drawing substantially on the power of compounding (which is itself redolent of the claim made by complexity theory that relations and emergence are crucial concepts), complexity theory offers unique insights into how and why things change – and also into how and why things remain largely the same or inexorably grind towards failure. The networked initiatives undertaken by the University of Cape Town constitute a case of learning refurbishment that is also well explained and understood in terms of complexity theory. This paper draws on concepts from complexity theory both to understand how learning might be enhanced in higher education institutions in severely straitened circumstances and to offer insights for education leaders and policy-makers in this domain. (shrink)

While a great deal has been written on Plato's Lysis in philosophy and philology journals over the last thirty years, nothing has been published on Lysis in the major Anglo-American philosophy of education journals during that time. Nevertheless, this dialogue deserves attention from educators. In this essay, Mark Jonas argues that Lysis can serve as a model for educators who want to move their students beyond mere aporia, but also do not want to dictate answers to students. Although the dialogue (...) ends in Socrates's affirmation of aporia, his affirmation is actually meant to persuade his interlocutors to reflect on an epiphany they had previously experienced. In what follows, Jonas offers a close reading of relevant passages of Lysis, demonstrating the way that Socrates leads his interlocutors to an epiphany without forcing his answers upon them. (shrink)

Is Bayesian decision theory a panacea for many of the problems in epistemology and the philosophy of science, or is it philosophical snake-oil? For years a debate had been waged amongst specialists regarding the import and legitimacy of this body of theory. Mark Kaplan had written the first accessible and non-technical book to address this controversy. Introducing a new variant on Bayesian decision theory the author offers a compelling case that, while no panacea, decision theory does in fact have (...) the most profound consequences for the way in which philosophers think about inquiry, criticism and rational belief. The new variant on Bayesian theory is presented in such a way that a non-specialist will be able to understand it. The book also offers new solutions to some classic paradoxes. It focuses on the intuitive motivations of the Bayesian approach to epistemology and addresses the philosophical worries to which it has given rise. (shrink)

Resource-rational approaches offer much promise for understanding human cognition, especially if they can reach beyond the confines of individual minds. Language allows people to transcend individual resource limitations by augmenting computation and enabling distributed cognition. Interactive language use, an environment where social rational agents routinely deal with resource constraints together, offers a natural laboratory to test resource-rationality in the wild.

This chapter discusses the issue of choosing the best computer model for simulating a real-world phenomenon through the process of validating the model’s output against the historical, real-worldData data. Four families of techniques are discussed that are used in the context of validation. One is based on the comparisonComparison of statistical summaries of the historical dataData and the model output. The second is used where the models and dataData are stochastic, and distributions of variables must be compared, and a metricMetric (...) is used to measure their closeness. After exploring the desirable properties of such a measure, the paper compares the third and fourth methods of measuring closeness ofPattern patterns, using an example from strategic market competition. The techniques can, however, be used for validating computer models in any domain. (shrink)

SummaryJohn Herschel was the leading British natural philosopher of the nineteenth century, widely known and regarded for his work in philosophy, optics and chemistry as well as his important research and popular publications on astronomy. To date, however, there exists no extended treatment of his astronomical career. This paper, part of a larger study exploring Herschel's contributions to astronomy, examines his work in the context of positional astronomy, the dominant form of astronomical practice throughout his lifetime. Herschel, who did not (...) himself practice positional astronomy and who was known for his non-meridional observations of specific stellar objects, was nonetheless a strong advocate for positional astronomy—but for very different reasons than the terrestrial applications to which it was most often put. For Herschel, the star catalogues of positional astronomy were the necessary observational foundation upon which information about the stars as physical objects could be constructed. Positional astronomy practiced in the great national observatories was not about navigation or timekeeping; it was a way to standardize stellar observations and make them useful data for constructing theories of the stars themselves. For Herschel, the seeds of the new astronomy emerged from the practices of the old. (shrink)

This paper uses chronic beryllium disease as a case study to explore some of the challenges for decision-making and some of the problems for obtaining meaningful informed consent when the interpretation of screening results is complicated by their probabilistic nature and is clouded by empirical uncertainty. Although avoidance of further beryllium exposure might seem prudent for any individual whose test results suggest heightened disease risk, we will argue that such a clinical precautionary approach is likely to be a mistake. (...) Instead, advice on the interpretation of screening results must focus not on risk per se, but on avoidable risk, and must be carefully tailored to the individual. These points are of importance for individual decision-making, for informed consent, and for occupational health. (shrink)

In June 1995, a campaign by Greenpeace forced the multinational oil company Shell to cancel its planned disposal of a redundant oil installation in the Atlantic. The Brent Spar incident attracted massive publicity and was influential in changing government policy on marine disposal of waste. During and following their campaign, Greenpeace were criticised as emotive and irrational by Shell and academic scientists. This paper looks at the arguments used during the debate, using literature, interviews and questionnaires. We investigate the use (...) of key environmental words and phrases and ask what is meant by rationality in this context. We discuss some of the lessons that should be learnt from the incident by policy makers and scientists. (shrink)

This paper provides a series of reflections on making the case to senior leaders for the introduction of clinical ethics support services within a UK hospital Trust at a time when clinical ethics committees are dwindling in the UK. The paper provides key considerations for those building a case for clinical ethics support within hospitals by drawing upon published academic literature, and key reports from governmental and professional bodies. We also include extracts from documents relating to, and annual (...) reports of, existing clinical ethics support within UK hospitals, as well as extracts from our own proposal submitted to the Trust Board. We aim for this paper to support other ethicists and/or health care staff contemplating introducing clinical ethics support into hospitals, to facilitate the process of making the case for clinical ethics support, and to contribute to the key debates in the literature around clinical ethics support. We conclude that there is a real need for investment in clinical ethics in the UK in order to build the evidence base required to support the wider introduction of clinical ethics support into UK hospitals. Furthermore, our perceptions of the purpose of, and perceived needs met through, clinical ethics support needs to shift to one of hospitals investing in their staff. Finally, we raise concerns over the optional nature of clinical ethics support available to practitioners within UK hospitals. (shrink)

There is considerable correspondence between theories and models used in biology and the social sciences. One type of model that is in use in both biology and the social sciences is the fitness landscape model. The properties of the fitness landscape model have been applied rather freely in the social domain. This is partly due to the versatility of the model, but it is also due to the difficulties of transferring a model to another domain. We will demonstrate that in (...) order to transfer the biological fitness landscape model to the social science it needs to be substantially modified. We argue that the syntactic structure of the model can remain unaltered, whilst the semantic dimension requires considerable modification in order to fit the specific phenomena in the social sciences. We will first discuss the origin as well as the basic properties of the model. Subsequently, we will demonstrate the considerations and modifications pertaining to such a transfer by showing how and why we altered the model to analyse collective decision-making processes. We will demonstrate that the properties of the target domain allow for a transfer of the syntactic structure but don’t tolerate the semantic transfer. (shrink)

In case-marking languages with nominative-accusative alignment the subject of a sentence is usually marked by nominative case. In some of these languages, however, the subject of a number of verbs is either consistently or alternately marked by another, non-nominative case. Such non-canonical case marking has often been approached in the linguistic literature as a phenomenon at the interface between syntax and semantics. Yet the predictions of this kind of approach seem more probabilistic than regular. (...) This paper offers a new perspective to analyse the phenomenon, which encompasses the role of information structure in case marking. Drawing onSilverstein’s (1976)theory of differential subject marking andDalrymple & Nikolaeva’s (2011)approach to differential object marking, it is argued that non-canonically case-marked subjects can be better analysed as instances of either non-topical subjects or subjects lacking one or more semantic features typical of topicality. The approach outlined in the paper is tested on a number of constructions in Russian and Lithuanian. It is shown how, in both languages, the analysed instances of non-canonically case-marked subjects exhibit a complex interplay among grammatical, semantic and discourse-pragmatic factors. (shrink)

Hume argues that we succumb to the vice of prejudice when we fail to correct negative generalizations about social groups in the face of counter-evidence. We are blameworthy for these biases, moreover, even if they are unavoidable. Hume’s theory of doxastic responsibility entails that his own racial prejudices are deserving of condemnation. In contrast, contemporary vice epistemologists are more inclined to absolve agents of culpability for prejudices beyond their control.

An influential approach to engineering ethics is based on codes of ethics and the application of moral principles by individual practitioners. However, to better understand the ethical problems of complex technological systems and the moral reasoning involved in such contexts, we need other tools as well. In this article, we consider the role of imagination and develop a concept of distributed responsibility in order to capture a broader range of human abilities and dimensions of moral responsibility. We show that in (...) the case of Snorre A, a near-disaster with an oil and gas production installation, imagination played a crucial and morally relevant role in how the crew coped with the crisis. For example, we discuss the role of scenarios and images in the moral reasoning and discussion of the platform crew in coping with the crisis. Moreover, we argue that responsibility for increased system vulnerability, turning an undesired event into a near-disaster, should not be ascribed exclusively, for example to individual engineers alone, but should be understood as distributed between various actors, levels and times. We conclude that both managers and engineers need imagination to transcend their disciplinary perspectives in order to improve the robustness of their organisations and to be better prepared for crisis situations. We recommend that education and training programmes should be transformed accordingly. (shrink)

YouTube has been implicated in the transformation of users into extremists and conspiracy theorists. The alleged mechanism for this radicalizing process is YouTube’s recommender system, which is optimized to amplify and promote clips that users are likely to watch through to the end. YouTube optimizes for watch-through for economic reasons: people who watch a video through to the end are likely to then watch the next recommended video as well, which means that more advertisements can be served to them. This (...) is a seemingly innocuous design choice, but it has a troubling side-effect. Critics of YouTube have alleged that the recommender system tends to recommend extremist content and conspiracy theories, as such videos are especially likely to capture and keep users’ attention. To date, the problem of radicalization via the YouTube recommender system has been a matter of speculation. The current study represents the first systematic, pre-registered attempt to establish whether and to what extent the recommender system tends to promote such content. We begin by contextualizing our study in the framework of technological seduction. Next, we explain our methodology. After that, we present our results, which are consistent with the radicalization hypothesis. Finally, we discuss our findings, as well as directions for future research and recommendations for users, industry, and policy-makers. (shrink)

In “Consensus, Clinical Decision Making, and Unsettled Cases,” David M. Adams and William J. Winslade make multiple references to both editions of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation in their discussion of two assumptions that are supposed to be at the heart of the facilitated consensus model’s inability to handle unsettled cases; that is, that:1. Consultants “should maintain a kind of moral impartiality or neutrality throughout the process,” “explicitly condemn[ing] anything resembling a (...) substantive ‘ethics’ recommendation,” and2. “What counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible.”Herein, I argue that neither of these assumptions is required by ASBH’s ethics facilitation approach. I then conclude by suggesting that, despite their fundamentally mistaken interpretation of the ASBH approach—perhaps even because of it—Adams and Winslade have made two important contributions to the ethics consultation literature. (shrink)

This essay argues that a military's reserve force occupies an important and overlooked ethical position. It shows that, among other things, reservists pose special challenges to virtue ethics accounts of military personnel, an understanding of the relationship between a government and its military, as well as standard questions about jus in bello.

Take the following principle (or schema) as the focus of the ensuing discussion (“P” and “Q” are placeholders for propositions): 1 (Closure) If one knows P and competently deduces Q from P, thereby coming to believe Q, while retaining one's knowledge that P, one comes to know that Q. My strategy in outline: first, I want to set out Fred Dretske's classic challenge to (Closure) – a challenge which began in 1970–1971. Then I want to consider a specific, recent counter‐challenge (...) to Dretske's challenge to (Closure) mounted by John Hawthorne, and to defend Dretske's challenge from Hawthorne's counter‐challenge. Doing this is not to invalidate (Closure). In this regard my conclusions are modest: Dretske's challenge to (Closure) is – or, better: can be made – sophisticated and, so far, unmet. (shrink)

This paper explores some implications of the idea that religious thoughts can enter into the sensory appearances of things. I begin by clarifying this idea, using some examples drawn from Roger Scruton's discussion of the phenomenology of architectural experience. Then I consider the bearing of the idea on the case for religious belief in pragmatic and epistemic terms. More exactly, I explore how the idea of an internal relation between religious thought and the sensory appearances of things can be (...) used (1) to state William James's case in 'The will to believe' with new nuance, and (2) to set out an epistemic case for religious belief whose central claims seem quite commonly to weigh with believers, but which has not been much discussed by philosophers. (shrink)

The speech act of bragging has never been subjected to conceptual analysis until now. We argue that a speaker brags just in case she makes an utterance that is an assertion and is intended to impress the addressee with something about the speaker via the belief produced by the speaker's assertion. We conclude by discussing why it is especially difficult to cancel a brag by prefacing it with, ‘I'm not trying to impress you, but…’ and connect this discussion with (...) Moore's paradox and the recent neologism ‘humblebrag’. (shrink)

Offers managers new tools to deal with the tough problems businesses face today. Reveals how analyzing the ethical dimensions of problems actually offers competitive advantages. Offers illustrative case examples from internally recognized companies showing that high ethics and high profits go hand in hand--and identifies the factors responsible for these companies' success.

In addition to the standard ellipsis process known as VP-ellipsis, another ellipsis process, known as pseudo-gapping, was first brought to the fore-front in the 1970’s by Sag (1976) and N. Levin (1986). This process elides subparts of a VP, as in (1): (1) Although I don’t like steak, I do___pizza. Developing ideas of K.S. Jayaseelan (Jayaseelan (1990)), Howard Lasnik has developed an analysis in which pseudo-gapping, which, in some instances, looks as though it is simply deleting a verb, is in (...) fact deletion of a verb phrase, so that pseudo-gapping is really a probe into the structure of the verb phrase. I will examine pseudo-gapping in detail, and will show that it truly is a gold mine of insight into a number of fundamental issues in syntax. More concretely, I will demonstrate that a careful, detailed analysis of this process will bear on the derivational level at which Principle A of the binding theory applies, as well as the amount of explicit encoding within syntactic representations of informational structure, particularly focus. The paper will also re-assess Lasnik’s conclusion that pseudo-gapping provides evidence for Larson’s (1988) V-raising to a higher empty V position, a case of head movement, and will show that the movement involved is actually a case of remnant movement, or XP-movement. (shrink)

Corporations have increasingly turned to voluntary, multi-stakeholder governance programs to monitor workers’ rights and standards in global supply chains. This article argues that the emphasis of these programs varies significantly depending on stakeholder involvement and issue areas under examination. Corporate-influenced programs are more likely to emphasize detection of violations of minimal standards in the areas of wages, hours, and occupational safety and health because focusing on these issues provides corporations with legitimacy and reduces the risks of uncertainty created by activist (...) campaigns. In contrast, these programs are less likely to emphasize workers’ rights to form democratic and independent unions, bargain, and strike because these rights are perceived as lessening managerial control without providing firms with significant reputational value. This argument is explored by coding 805 factory audits of the Fair Labor Association between 2002 and 2010, followed by case studies of Russell Athletic in Honduras, Apple in China, and worker rights monitoring in Vietnam. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be (...) recognized as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

Drawing on themes important in moral and political philosophy, much of the scholarship on the constitutional law of privacy in the United States distinguishes between privacy understood as a person's control over information and privacy understood as a person's ability to make autonomous decisions. For example, Katz v. United States established the framework for analyzing whether police activity constituted a “search” subject to the Fourth Amendment's requirement that the police either obtain a warrant before conducting a search or otherwise act (...) reasonably. The defendant was a professional gambler who knew enough about police techniques to use a public telephone to make his business calls. Police agents attached a listening device to the outside of the phone booth, and sought to use the recordings against the defendant. The Supreme Court agreed with the defendant that the Fourth Amendment had been violated. Justice John Marshall Harlan's influential concurring opinion asserted that a person's privacy, in the sense of control over information, depended on two factors: “that a person have exhibited an actual expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” Fourth Amendment cases like Katz involve informational control; they define the circumstances under which the government may acquire information from or about a person without first obtaining the person's agreement. In contrast, cases like Griswold v. Connecticut, which barred the state from making it a criminal offense to use contraceptives, and Roe v. Wade, which restricted the state's power to prohibit or regulate abortions, used the language of privacy rights to protect a much broader interest in autonomous decision-making. Seeing these cases and related ones through lenseees provided by moral and political philosophy, scholars have attempted to describe what a morally sound constitutional law of privacy would be, and the broadest sense, dworkinian. That is, they seek to provide an account of privacy with two characteristics: it is broadly consistent with the relevant constitutional decisions, and it is the most morally attractive account possible that satisfies the requirement of consistency with the decisions. (shrink)

The spectre of the repugnant conclusion and the search for a population axiology that avoids it has endured as a focus of population ethics. This is in part because the repugnant conclusion is often interpreted as a defining problem for totalism, while the implications of averagism and related views are taken to illustrate the theoretical cost of avoiding the repugnant conclusion. However, we show that this interpretation cannot be sustained unless one focuses only on a special case of the (...) repugnant conclusion: namely, the subset of instances of the repugnant conclusion where there is no portion of the population unaffected by the choice between population outcomes (as in Derek Parfit’s original illustration). To avoid an inappropriate focus on only this proper subset of instances of the repugnant conclusion, we formulate a general characterization of the repugnant conclusion. We then prove formally that all leading welfarist axiologies imply this conclusion, including averagism and Ng’s Theory X0 , including probabilistic and ‘very repugnant’ variants that involve the addition of negative lives. We then prove that the full range of axiologies considered by population ethics each imply an extended version of the repugnant conclusion, including axiologies that are incomplete, intransitive, rank-dependent, person-affecting, and/or pluralist. The upshot is that the repugnant conclusion does not ultimately tell against any approach to axiology, and the methodological requirement to avoid the repugnant conclusion should be dropped from population axiology. (shrink)

Historically associated with military service, conscientious objection has become a significant phenomenon in health care. Mark Wicclair offers a comprehensive ethical analysis of conscientious objection in three representative health care professions: medicine, nursing and pharmacy. He critically examines two extreme positions: the 'incompatibility thesis', that it is contrary to the professional obligations of practitioners to refuse provision of any service within the scope of their professional competence; and 'conscience absolutism', that they should be exempted from performing any action contrary to (...) their conscience. He argues for a compromise approach that accommodates conscience-based refusals within the limits of specified ethical constraints. He also explores conscientious objection by students in each of the three professions, discusses conscience protection legislation and conscience-based refusals by pharmacies and hospitals, and analyzes several cases. His book is a valuable resource for scholars, professionals, trainees, students, and anyone interested in this increasingly important aspect of health care. (shrink)

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Wittgenstein, despite his official 'mathematical nonrevisionism', slips into attempting to refute Gödel's theorem. Actually, Wittgenstein could have used Gödel's theorem to good effect, to support his view that proof, and even truth, are 'family resemblance' concepts. The reason that Wittgenstein did not see all this is that Gödel's theorem had become an icon of mathematical realism, and he was blinded by his own ideology. The essay is a reply to Juliet Floyd's work on Gödel: (...) what she says Wittgenstein said, I say he should have said, but didn't (couldn't). (shrink)