The phenomenon of interactive human kinds, namely kinds of people that undergo change in reaction to being studied or theorised about, matters not only for the reliability of scientific claims, but also for its wider, sometimes harmful effects at the group or societal level, such as contributing to negative stigmas or reinforcing existing inequalities. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of interactivity and argues that scientists studying interactive human kinds are responsible for foreseeing harmful effects of their research and (...) for devising ways of mitigating them. (shrink)

A common ethical code for everybody involved in health care is desirable, but there are important limitations to the role such a code could play. In order to understand these limitations the approach to ethics using principles and their application to medicine is discussed, and in particular the implications of their being prima facie. The expectation of what an ethical code can do changes depending on how ethical properties in general are understood. The difficulties encountered when ethical values are applied (...) reactively to an objective world can be avoided by seeing them as a more integral part of our understanding of the world. It is concluded that an ethical code can establish important values and describe a common ethical context for health care but is of limited use in solving new and complex ethical problems. (shrink)

Cognitive reflection is recognized as an important skill, which is necessary for making advantageous decisions. Even though gender differences in the Cognitive Reflection test appear to be robust across multiple studies, little research has examined the source of the gender gap in performance. In Study 1, we tested the invariance of the scale across genders. In Study 2, we investigated the role of math anxiety, mathematical reasoning, and gender in CRT performance. The results attested the measurement equivalence of the Cognitive (...) Reflection Test – Long, when administered to male and female students. Additionally, the results of the mediation analysis showed an indirect effect of gender on CRT-L performance through mathematical reasoning and math anxiety. The direct effect of gender was no longer statistically significant after accounting for the other variables. The current findings suggest that cognitive reflection is affected by numerical skills and related feelings. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that successful evidence-based policy should rely on two kinds of evidence: statistical and mechanistic. The former is held to be evidence that a policy brings about the desired outcome, and the latter concerns how it does so. Although agreeing with the spirit of this proposal, we argue that the underlying conception of mechanistic evidence as evidence that is different in kind from correlational, difference-making or statistical evidence, does not correctly capture the role that information about (...) mechanisms should play in evidence-based policy. We offer an alternative account of mechanistic evidence as information concerning the causal pathway connecting the policy intervention to its outcome. Not only can this be analyzed as evidence of difference-making, it is also to be found at any level and is obtainable by a broad range of methods, both experimental and observational. Using behavioral policy as an illustration, we draw the implications of this revised understanding of mechanistic evidence for debates concerning policy extrapolation, evidence hierarchies, and evidence integration. (shrink)

The provision of standardized hearing aids is now considered to be a crucial part of the UK National Health Service. Yet this is only explicable through reference to the career of a woman who has, until now, been entirely forgotten. Dr Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge (1901–1940) was an authoritative figure in a variety of fields: medicine, physiology, otology and the construction of scientific apparatus. The astounding breadth of her professional qualifications allowed her to combine features of these fields and, later (...) in her career, to position herself as a specialist to shape the discipline of audiometry. Rather than framing Kerridge in the classic ‘heroic-woman’ narrative, in this article we draw out the complexities of her career by focusing on her pursuit of standardization of hearing tests. Collaboration afforded her the necessary networks to explore the intricacies of accuracy in the measurement of hearing acuity, but her influence was enhanced by her ownership of Britain's first Western Electric (pure-tone) audiometer, which she placed in a specially designed and unique ‘silence room’. The room became the centre of Kerridge's hearing aid clinic that, for the first time, allowed people to access free and impartial advice on hearing aid prescription. In becoming the guardian expert and advocate of the audiometer, Kerridge achieved an objectively quantified approach to hearing loss that eventually made the latter an object of technocratic intervention. (shrink)

This paper defends Musical Stage Theory as a novel account of the ontology of musical works. Its main claim is that a musical work is a performance. The significance of this argument is twofold. First, it demonstrates the availability of an alternative, and ontologically tenable, view to well-established positions in the current debate on musical metaphysics. Second, it shows how the revisionary approach of Musical Stage Theory actually provides a better account of the ontological status of musical works.

Nanomedicine has the potential to transform medical therapy and diagnosis. Its technologies predict improved drug delivery systems with site-specific treatment, precise new surgical techniques that would reduce patient trauma and treatment cause, and even cellular repair that would make age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease a thing of the past. Currently, nanomedicine products are reaching the world market with an annual growth rate of twenty-five percent. However, like any emerging new technology, along with doomsday scenarios of nanoparticles gone amuck, nanomedicine (...) raises serious ethical, moral, and social issues that may potentially limit its technological developments. In this essay, I briefly evaluate some of these issues, and argue that ethical and epistemic issues should be considered prior to research and development. By examining three crucial epistemic challenges in nanomedicine—toxicity, nanodrugs and drug delivery systems, and clinical trials—I argue that by implementing a multi-criterion decision analysis framework as outlined by Linkov, Satterstorm and Corey, these challenges can bridge the knowledge gap between R&D and the introduction of nanomedicine technologies into the market. (shrink)

Recent advances in neuroscience have paved the way to innovative applications that cognitively augment and enhance humans in a variety of contexts. This paper aims at providing a snapshot of the current state of the art and a motivated forecast of the most likely developments in the next two decades. Firstly, we survey the main neuroscience technologies for both observing and influencing brain activity, which are necessary ingredients for human cognitive augmentation. We also compare and contrast such technologies, as their (...) individual characteristics (e.g., spatio-temporal resolution, invasiveness, portability, energy requirements and cost) influence their current and future role in human cognitive augmentation. Secondly, we chart the state of the art on neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation, keeping an eye both on the applications that already exist and those that are emerging or are likely to emerge in the next two decades. Particularly, we consider applications in the areas of communication, cognitive enhancement, memory, attention monitoring/enhancement, situation awareness and complex problem solving, and we look at what fraction of the population might benefit from such technologies and at the demands they impose in terms of user training. Thirdly, we briefly review the ethical issues associated with current neuroscience technologies. These are important because they may differentially influence both present and future research on (and adoption of) neurotechnologies for human cognitive augmentation: an inferior technology with no significant ethical issues may thrive while a superior technology causing widespread ethical concerns may end up being outlawed. Finally, based on the lessons learned in our analysis, using past trends and considering other related forecasts, we attempt to forecast the most likely future developments of neuroscience technology for human cognitive augmentation and provide informed recommendations for promising future research and exploitation avenues. (shrink)

Despite the recent upsurge of interest in the investigation of creativity, the question of how to measure creativity is arguably underdiscussed. The aim of this paper is to address this gap, proposing a multidimensional account of creativity which identifies problem-solving, evaluation, and naivety as measurable features that are common among creative processes. The benefits that result from the adoption of this model are twofold: integrating discussions on creativity in various domains and offering the tools to assess creativity across systems of (...) different kinds. By situating creativity within this framework, I aim to contribute to a non-anthropocentric, more comprehensive understanding of the notion, and to debates on natural and artificial creativity. (shrink)

Background: The rapid pace of progress in medical research, the consequent need for the timely transfer of new knowledge into practice, and the increasing need for ethics support, is making the work of Ethics Committees (ECs) ever more complex and demanding. As a response, ECs in many countries exhibit large variation in number, mandate, organization and member competences. This cross-sectional study aims to give an overview of the different types of activities of Italian ECs and favour discussion at a European (...) level.Methods: A questionnaire was emailed to all Italian Ethics Committees contained in the national Registry of the Ministry of Health, enquiring whether the EC was conducting, or planning to conduct, 4 specific activities. A telephone interview was conducted to determine reasons for failure to respond.Results: Response rate was 53% (101 respondents out of 191). 20% of ECs restrict their responsibilities to research protocol review, 25% also offer ethical consultation to institutions, support on individual health care decisions and promotes educational initiatives, while the remaining 50% conduct a few of the examined activities to varying degrees. Large variation was observed across different types of hosting institutions and geographical locations.Conclusions: A common European model should be developed, defining EC functions, member selection modalities, necessary member competences, decision-making criteria and measures for work verification. In the absence of sound empirical evidence, it would be interesting to study the effectiveness and efficiency of the different existing models. (shrink)

Traditionally, medical professionals have taken a paternalistic stance towards their patients and have relied on a traditional approach to medical ethics. In recent years, in Britain, however, a new ‘managerialism’ has developed in the National Health Service (the NHS). This stresses consumerism and greater patient choice and is changing the relationship between doctors and patients. This paper draws out the implications for patients. It describes the ethical characteristics of the two conflicting approaches and argues the need to stress again the (...) view of the patient as an individual person. (shrink)

In this essay, the author wants to put in evidence the figure of the monster into the novel Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. First of all, it is shown how the Grotesque’s category is utilized by Hugo to describe his characters. In this part, it’s clear the link between Victor Hugo’s Aesthetics and Karl Rosenkranz’s idea of Ugly. Then, it is underlined how the Ugly is one of the main themes of this book. This paper wants to show how the (...) monster is more present here than in other works by the French author. (shrink)

In some peripheral parts of Europe, prehistoric menhirs, dolmens, henges, and other megalithic constructions made such strong marks on the terrain that they became integral to the landscape. In the Middle Ages, such monuments were often used as landmarks or boundary markers and, indeed, ended up in coeval descriptions of the territory. In some instances, prehistoric monuments were Christianized to promote the conversion of “pagan” populations; in other cases, they stimulated the creation of stone artifacts - stelae, crosses, standing stones (...) - that might have been used as well as instruments of conversion. The investigation in this article revolves around analysis of the landscape of Sardinia, medieval descriptions of Sardinia’s terrain, and examination of some early medieval stone artifacts there. Parallels found in similar contexts in the British Isles are also considered. (shrink)

The Pythagorean women are a group of female philosophers who were followers of Pythagoras and are credited with authoring a series of letters and treatises. In both stages of the history of Pythagoreanism – namely, the fifth-century Pythagorean societies and the Hellenistic Pythagorean writings – the Pythagorean woman is viewed as an intellectual, a thinker, a teacher, and a philosopher. The purpose of this Element is to answer the question: what kind of philosopher is the Pythagorean woman? The traditional picture (...) of the Pythagorean female sage is that of an expert of the household. The author argues that the available evidence is more complex and conveys the idea of the Pythagorean woman as both an expert on the female sphere and a well-rounded thinker philosophising about the principles of the cosmos, human society, the immortality of the soul, numbers, and harmonics. (shrink)

According to Dicaearchus, metempsychosis was the best known among Pythagoras’ teachings. In this paper, I investigate two features of Pythagorean metempsychosis: its non-retributive character and its epistemological value. I argue that the Pythagoreans did not conceive of reincarnation as a punishment for the wicked and a reward for the virtuous, but rather as a way to gain experience, knowledge and therefore wisdom. This reading enables us to throw light on the puzzling list of Pythagoras’ past lives, which includes Aethalides son (...) of Hermes, Euphorbus the warrior, Pyrrhus the fisherman and even Alco the harlot. (shrink)

In light of the interrelation between motor and cognitive development and the predictive value of the former for the latter, the secular decline observed in motor coordination ability as early as preschool urges identification of interventions that may jointly impact motor and cognitive efficiency. The aim of this study was twofold. It (1) explored the outcomes of enriched physical education, centered on deliberate play and cognitively challenging variability of practice, on motor coordination and cognitive processing; (2) examined whether motor coordination (...) outcomes mediate intervention effects on children’s cognition, while controlling for moderation by lifestyle factors as outdoor play habits and weight status. Four hundred and sixty children aged 5-10 years participated in a 6-month group randomized intervention in physical education, with or without playful coordinative and cognitive enrichment. The weight status and spontaneous outdoor play habits of children (parental report of outdoor play) were evaluated at baseline. Before and after the intervention, motor developmental level (Movement Assessment Battery for Children) was evaluated in all children, who were then assessed either with a test of working memory (Random Number Generation task), or with a test of attention (from the Cognitive Assessment System, CAS). Children assigned to the ‘enriched’ intervention showed more pronounced improvements in all motor coordination assessments (manual dexterity, ball skills, static/dynamic balance). The beneficial effect on ball skills was amplified by the level of spontaneous outdoor play and weight status. Among indices of executive function and attention, only that of inhibition showed a differential effect of intervention type. Moderated mediation showed that the better outcome of the enriched physical education on ball skills mediated the better inhibition outcome, but only when the enrichment intervention was paralleled by a medium-to-high level of outdoor play. Results suggest that specifically tailored physical activity games provide a unique form of enrichment that impacts children’s cognitive development through motor coordination improvement, particularly object control skills, which are linked to children’s physical activity habits later in life. Outdoor play appears to offer the natural ground for the stimulation by designed physical activity games to take root in children’s mind. (shrink)

Current research in artificial intelligence (AI) sheds light on algorithmic bias embedded in AI systems. The underrepresentation of women in the AI design sector of the tech industry, as well as in training datasets, results in technological products that encode gender bias, reinforce stereotypes and reproduce normative notions of gender and femininity. Biased behaviour is notably reflected in anthropomorphic AI systems, such as personal intelligent assistants (PIAs) and chatbots, that are usually feminized through various design parameters, such as names, voices (...) and traits. Gendering of AI entities, however, is often reduced to the encoding of stereotypical behavioural patterns that perpetuate normative assumptions about the role of women in society. The impact of this behaviour on social life increases, as human-to-(anthropomorphic)machine interactions are mirrored in human-to-human social interactions. This article presents current critical research on AI bias, focusing on anthropomorphic systems. Moreover, it discusses the significance of women’s engagement in AI design and programming, by presenting selected case studies of contemporary female media artists and designers. Finally, it suggests that women, through their creative practice, provide feminist and critical approaches to AI design which are essential for imagining alternative, inclusive, ethic and de-biased futures for anthropomorphic AIs. (shrink)

Philosophers of the social sciences are increasingly convinced that macro-and micro-explanations are complementary. Whereas macro-explanations are broad, micro-explanations are deep. I distinguish between weak and strong complementarity: Strongly complementary explanations improve one another when integrated, weakly complementary explanations do not. To demonstrate the explanatory autonomy of different levels of explanation, explanatory pluralists mostly presuppose the weak form of complementarity. By scrutinizing the notions of explanatory depth and breadth, I argue that macro- and micro-accounts of the same phenomenon are more often (...) strongly complementary. This invites a revision of the pluralist position in which integration promotes explanatory progress. Key Words: explanatory pluralism • social science • explanatory depth • explanatory breadth • mechanism. (shrink)

Hempel never met Ramsey, but he knew his work. In his 1958 The Theoretician’s Dilemma: a study in the logic of theory construction, Hempel introduces the term Ramsey sentence, referring to Ramsey’s attempt in Theories to get rid of theoretical terms in formal accounts of scientific theories. In this paper, I draw the attention to another connection between Ramsey’s and Hempel’s works. Hempel’s Deductive-Nomological (DN) account of scientific explanation resembles very closely Ramsey’s account of a certain type of conditional sentences. (...) In the first part of the paper, by introducing a fictional story, I highlight the similarities and differences between the two. In the last part of the paper, I claim that the most relevant difference between Ramsey and Hempel can be used to offer original solutions to Hempel’s Raven Paradox. Two possibilities are presented, arguing that the second, which requires a reconsideration of the formalisation of laws, is the most promising. (shrink)

1. In the last decade, technological systems based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) architectures entered our lives at an increasingly fast pace. Virtual assistants facilitate our daily tasks, recom...

Social scientists associate agent-based simulation (ABS) models with three ideas about explanation: they provide generative explanations, they are models of mechanisms, and they implement methodological individualism. In light of a philosophical account of explanation, we show that these ideas are not necessarily related and offer an account of the explanatory import of ABS models. We also argue that their bottom-up research strategy should be distinguished from methodological individualism.

Our society is experiencing a radical transformation through photographic multimedia. The photographic gaze is the dominant mode of the daily visual relationship with reality, due to the extreme pervasiveness of photography in every field of our experience. Starting from some empirical considerations, this paper will reflect on this trend in terms of visual perception of reality in general, focusing on works of art. Since visual art is made to be perceived as an object, this field of experience is congenial to (...) examine the implications of the capillary multimedia conveyance in our perceptive dependence on photographic images. The consequences are significant both in the historical-artistic methodology and in the education of the gaze applied to art, especially for the younger generations. The transformation in progress should not, however, be interpreted in negative terms, nor as an obstacle to the understanding of the world, but as a terrain of shared experience, on which to work with more conscious instruments. (shrink)

This chapter is about women and ancient Pythagorean philosophy. Specifically, the focus is on the letters and treatises written in the Hellenistic and Imperial Age under the name of Pythagorean female authors. Scholars have primarily raised two objections against these texts: first, they are likely to be spurious and might not have been authored by women, but rather male philosophers writing under female pseudonyms. Second, these texts are not philosophical. After a brief introduction to the role of women in Pythagoreanism (...) and overview of the authorship issue, I show that, regardless of the original authors, these texts are written for women who are considered capable of reading philosophy. As such, they establish women’s philosophical potential in two ways: on the one hand, they ascribe philosophical arguments to female authors and, on the other hand, they encourage women to pursue philosophy. This makes the texts the first case of philosophical prose ascribed to Greek women and, I argue, an early example of female philosophical protreptics. (shrink)

This article examines to what extent a particular case of cross-disciplinary research in the 1930s was structured by mechanistic reasoning. For this purpose, it identifies the interfield theories that allowed biologists and chemists to use each other’s techniques and findings, and that provided the basis for the experiments performed to identify plant growth hormones and to learn more about their role in the mechanism of plant growth. In 1930, chemists and biologists in Utrecht and Pasadena began to cooperatively study plant (...) growth. I will argue that these researchers decided to join forces because they believed to rely on each other’s findings and methods to solve their research problems adequately. In the course of the cooperation, organic chemists arrived at isolating plant growth hormones by using a test method developed in plant physiology. This achievement, in turn, facilitated biologists’ investigation of the mechanism of plant growth. Researchers eventually believed to have the means to study the relation between a substance’s molecular structure and its physiological activity. The way they conceptualized the problem of identifying hormones and unraveling the mechanism of plant growth, as well as their actual research actions are compatible with the new mechanists’ account of mechanism research. The study illustrates that focusing on researchers’ mechanistic reasoning can contribute considerably to explaining the structure of cross-disciplinary research projects. (shrink)

Although he developed one of the most important modern theories of time, Bergson has often been criticised for not thinking history. Drawing on his writings from Creative Evolution to The Two Sources, I show that, on the contrary, he was trying to define history in a new way, one that would not be exhausted by the traditional opposition to the natural sciences. Bergson’s new philosophy of history, free of teleology and determinism, allows us to think the specificity of the human (...) historical dimension without erasing its articulation with natural evolution. Against the critical readings Aron and Merleau-Ponty have offered, I maintain that Bergson’s philosophy does not withdraw into an individualist spiritualism but includes the collective dimension and the history of non-human, both natural and technological, reality. (shrink)