"This is a remarkable book: wide-ranging, resonant, and well-written; it is also reflective and personable, warm and engaging." —Philosophy and Literature "With this book Caputo takes his place firmly as the foremost American, continental post-modernist... " —International Philosophical Quarterly "One cannot but be impressed by the scope of Radical Hermeneutics." —Man and World "Caputo’s study is stunning in its scope and scholarship." —Robert E. Lauder, St. John’s University, The Thomist For John D. Caputo, hermeneutics means radical thinking without transcendental (...) justification: attending to the ruptures and irregularities in existence before the metaphysics of presence has a chance to smooth them over. Radical Hermeneutics forges a closer collaboration between hermeneutics and deconstruction than has previously been attempted. (shrink)

Progressions of iterated reflection principles can be used as a tool for the ordinal analysis of formal systems. We discuss various notions of proof-theoretic ordinals and compare the information obtained by means of the reflection principles with the results obtained by the more usual proof-theoretic techniques. In some cases we obtain sharper results, e.g., we define proof-theoretic ordinals relevant to logical complexity Π1 0 and, similarly, for any class Π n 0 . We provide a more general version of (...) the fine structure relationships for iterated reflection principles (due to U. Schmerl [25]). This allows us, in a uniform manner, to analyze main fragments of arithmetic axiomatized by restricted forms of induction, including IΣ n , IΣ n − , IΠ n − and their combinations. We also obtain new conservation results relating the hierarchies of uniform and local reflection principles. In particular, we show that (for a sufficiently broad class of theories T) the uniform Σ1-reflection principle for T is Σ2-conservative over the corresponding local reflection principle. This bears some corollaries on the hierarchies of restricted induction schemata in arithmetic and provides a key tool for our generalization of Schmerl's theorem. (shrink)

An extended argument that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. -/- Evolving Enactivism argues that cognitive phenomena—perceiving, imagining, remembering—can be best explained in terms of an interface between contentless and content-involving forms of cognition. Building on their earlier book Radicalizing Enactivism, which proposes that there can be forms of cognition without content, Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin demonstrate the unique explanatory advantages of recognizing that only some forms (...) of cognition have content while others—the most elementary ones—do not. They offer an account of the mind in duplex terms, proposing a complex vision of mentality in which these basic contentless forms of cognition interact with content-involving ones. -/- Hutto and Myin argue that the most basic forms of cognition do not, contrary to a currently popular account of cognition, involve picking up and processing information that is then used, reused, stored, and represented in the brain. Rather, basic cognition is contentless—fundamentally interactive, dynamic, and relational. In advancing the case for a radically enactive account of cognition, Hutto and Myin propose crucial adjustments to our concept of cognition and offer theoretical support for their revolutionary rethinking, emphasizing its capacity to explain basic minds in naturalistic terms. They demonstrate the explanatory power of the duplex vision of cognition, showing how it offers powerful means for understanding quintessential cognitive phenomena without introducing scientifically intractable mysteries into the mix. (shrink)

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” (...) or “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas. (shrink)

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations are drawn (...) by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

The ultimate challenge for psychology as a human science inheres in accessing the experience of the other. In general, the field of psychology has perpetuated the epistemological dualism of distinguishing between the realm accessible by external perception and the realm accessible by inner perception, and hence between the subjective and the objective , regarding the "first person" perspective as a legitimate means of access only to one's own private experience, while insisting that all others' experience must be observed from (...) a neutral "third person" perspective. By reflecting on his participant-observational encounters with the animal other of the Bonobo, the author attempts to demonstrate in this paper the possibility of a third approach between the antinomy of methodological subjectivism and methodological objectivism as a way out of the dilemmas posed by epistemological dualism. The alternative proposed is the "second person" framework of observation, which, by invoking empathic seeing as its means of accessing the private space of the other and creating the space of the "in between", allows for intersubjective engagement in an experiential gestalt consisting of "myself and the other", and offers the possibility of testing one's ‘own' experience of an intersubjective moment in dialogue with the other. In so far as it infers the focusing of consciousness on embodied experience and expression, and the synthesis of receptive and proprioceptive consciousness in "experiaction" , the "second person" perspective restores inner reality to the realm of the observable, and thus reclaims observation as the method of psychology, and behaviour as its subject matter. The notion of empathy and intuition as a reliable and valid mode of access to the psychological life of others is substantiated theoretically with reference to inter alia Husserl's concepts of "coupling" and "co-constitution", Merleau-Ponty's notions of "inter-corporeality" or "carnal intersubjectivity" and of "the intertwining and the chiasm" of the "Ineinander" as constitutive of the "flesh of the world", Laing's postulation of the possibility of "interexperience", and the sense of union with the object of perception implied by Scheler's term "Einsfühlung" as the essence of intersubjective encounter. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. (...) Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process—such as adaptation by means of natural selection—depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process. (shrink)

Michael Potter presents a comprehensive new philosophical introduction to set theory. Anyone wishing to work on the logical foundations of mathematics must understand set theory, which lies at its heart. Potter offers a thorough account of cardinal and ordinal arithmetic, and the various axiom candidates. He discusses in detail the project of set-theoretic reduction, which aims to interpret the rest of mathematics in terms of set theory. The key question here is how to deal with the paradoxes that bedevil set (...) theory. Potter offers a strikingly simple version of the most widely accepted response to the paradoxes, which classifies sets by means of a hierarchy of levels. What makes the book unique is that it interweaves a careful presentation of the technical material with a penetrating philosophical critique. Potter does not merely expound the theory dogmatically but at every stage discusses in detail the reasons that can be offered for believing it to be true. Set Theory and its Philosophy is a key text for philosophy, mathematical logic, and computer science. (shrink)

The detrimental effect of the public recital on the quality of epic production in the first century is a stock theme both in ancient and in modern literary criticism. While previous studies on the epic recital emphasize its negative effects, or aim at its reconstruction as social reality, I focus on its conflicting representations by the ancients themselves and the lessons that we can learn from them. The voices of critics and defenders reveal anxieties about who controls the prestigious high (...) genre of epic and about the construction of gender and social status through epic's public performance. Critics of the recitatio such as Horace, Persius, Petronius and Juvenal represent it as an informal and popular event that panders to public taste and incurs infamy. These critics charge that the epic recital has an effeminizing effect both on the recitator and on his audience, a charge traditionally advanced against orators and actors. Because the epic recital in Rome lacks a performative context similar to the rhapsodic performances in Greece, its public image mirrors that of other public performances . The main point of divergence is the presence of the book, the symbol of permanent fame, which casts upon the recital the shadow of an evanescent entertainment. Defenders see the recital as instrumental to the maintenance of literature's value in society. This means that well into the first century there were those who felt nostalgia for the epic recital as a bulwark of male aristocratic values and who wanted to reclaim its prestige. Both Statius as a poet, who performed regularly at Domitian's court, and Suetonius, who acted as Hadrian's ab epistulis some twenty years after Statius' death, defend the waning reputation of the contemporary epic recital in an effort to reclaim it as a prestigious component of imperial literary culture. While critics unanimously negate the recital's role in the achievement of poetic fame in favor of the book, Suetonius chooses anecdotal evidence about the early performances by grammarians grammarians that show the important role of the recital in forging poetic fame. The emperor and the members of the new aristocracy whom Statius explicitly names as the target audience of his epic recitals have a stake in reclaiming for imperial culture an institution that went back to the second century B.C.E. and carried the prestige of an aristocratic event. (shrink)

Anthropologists have provided rich field descriptions of the norms and conventions governing behavior and interactions in small-scale societies. Here, we add a further dimension to this work by presenting hypothetical moral dilemmas involving harm, to a small-scale, agrarian Mayan population, with the specific goal of exploring the hypothesis that certain moral principles apply universally. We presented Mayan participants with moral dilemmas translated into their native language, Tseltal. Paralleling several studies carried out with educated subjects living in large-scale, developed nations, the (...) Mayan participants judged harms caused as the means to a greater good as more forbidden than harms caused as a side-effect (i.e., side-effect bias). However, unlike these other populations living in large-scale societies, as well as a more educated and less rural Mayan comparison group, the target rural Mayan participants did not judge actions causing harm as worse than omissions (i.e., omission bias). A series of probes targeting the action-omission distinction suggest that the absence of an omission bias among the rural Mayan participants was not due to difficulties comprehending the dilemmas, using the judgment scale, or in attributing a greater causal role for actions over omissions. Thus, while the moral distinction between means and side-effect may be more universal, the moral distinction between actions and omission appears to be open to greater cross-cultural variation. We discuss these results in light of issues concerning the role of biological constraints and cultural variation in moral decision-making, as well as the limitations of such experimental, cross-cultural research. (shrink)

Investigates the resolution of contradictions and ambiguous derogations in a code, by means of the imposition of partial orderings. Although formulated as a study in the logic of norms, it provided the initial ideas for work on the logic of theory (or belief) change, developed by the authors in a series of papers by the authors and Peter Gardenfors beginning in 1985.

Written for his brother Benedictine monks around 1077, Anselm's Proslogion is perhaps the best-known partially-read book of the Middle Ages. Many readers are familiar only with Anselm's well-known argument for God's existence in Chapters 2-4, which is often called the "ontological argument," a misleading appellation coined centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In this argument Anselm begins with the thought of "something than which nothing greater is able to be thought," and subsequently he leads the reader to see that such a (...) reality necessarily exists and cannot be thought not to be. This argument - which is, to be sure, crucial to the work constitutes - but a small portion of the whole. Preceding it is a profound but oft-overlooked opening chapter in which Anselm contemplates his all-too-human condition and disposes the reader to receive aptly his argument for God's existence in the next three chapters. And following this argument are 20 chapters in which Anselm artfully unfolds the depth and breadth of God's true existence as that than which nothing greater is able to be thought, showing God to be (among other things) able-to-sense, pity-hearted, just, good, and uncircumscribed. Indeed, if the reader is willing to give himself over to the work as whole, he will be compelled, under Anselm's deft guidance, to "endeavor to straighten up his mind toward contemplating God," which is how Anselm describes his own role in the work in his prefatory remarks. This edition provides a faithful yet readable English rendering of the whole Proslogion, the objections raised to Anselm's argument by his contemporary Gaunilo, and Anselm's replies to those objections. (After responding to Gaunilo, Anselm himself requested that these objections and replies be included in subsequent editions of the Proslogion.) This edition also includes an introduction that contextualizes the Proslogion within the monastic, pre-Scholastic age in which it first made its appearance. In addition, by means of notes and commentary, this edition articulates how to contextualize Anselm's famous argument in the Proslogion as a whole and in light of his replies to Gaunilo, how to appreciate the artistry whereby Anselm knit the Proslogion together into a coherent and concise unity, and how the work may be taught effectively to interested students. These features set this affordable English edition of the Proslogion apart from those currently available, which too often fail to capture accurately the beauty of Anselm's prose, which often treat the work through the lens of either later Scholasticism or contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, and which take little note of the craftsmanship whereby Anselm constructed this masterfully integrated work that is remembered too often for too few of its 24 chapters. Matthew Walz has taught in the interdisciplinary program at Thomas Aquinas College in California, and since 2008 he has been a professor in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas. (shrink)

It is demonstrated that neither the arguments leading to inconsistencies in the description of quantum-mechanical measurement nor those “explaining” the process of measurement by means of thermodynamical statistics are valid. Instead, it is argued that the probability interpretation is compatible with an objective interpretation of the wave function.

Can we legitimately speak of ethicsexperts? Recent literature in philosophy and medical ethics addresses this important question but does not offer a satisfactory answer. Part of the problem is the absence of an examination of what it means to be an expert in general. I therefore begin by reviewing my analysis of expertise which appeared earlier in this journal. We speak of two kinds of experts: persons whose expertise is in virtue of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (...) (performative expertise). Applying this analysis to the domain of ethics, I argue that we may speak of ethical expertise in three epistemic senses: a) expertise indescriptive ethics, b) expertise inmetaethics, c) expertise innormative ethics, and in a performative sense: d) expertise inliving a good life. I conclude with a brief description of some social roles of ethics experts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIs offering hazard pay ethically permissible when the pay premium is the only reason that a dangerous job is accepted? Robert C. Hughes argues that it is not. Central to his argument is the claim that in such cases, workers intend the foreseeable risks of harm as a means to the pay premium. Herein I question the plausibility of this claim and then develop a conception of the concept of means sufficient to make it plausible. By so doing, (...) I provide support for Hughes’s stringent position. (shrink)

Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from representationalism toward pure, empirical functionalism fails to provide a substantive “mark of the cognitive” and is bereft of other adequate means for (...) individuating cognitive activity. It also argues that giving proper attention to the way the folk use their psychological concepts requires questioning the legitimacy of commonsense functionalism. In place of extended functionalism—empirical or commonsensical—we promote the fortunes of extensive enactivism, clarifying in which ways it is distinct from notions of extended mind and distributed cognition. (shrink)

The idea that there could be spatially extended mereological simples has recently been defended by a number of metaphysicians (Markosian 1998, 2004; Simons 2004; Parsons (2000) also takes the idea seriously). Peter Simons (2004) goes further, arguing not only that spatially extended mereological simples (henceforth just extended simples) are possible, but that it is more plausible that our world is composed of such simples, than that it is composed of either point-sized simples, or of atomless gunk. The difficulty for these (...) views lies in explaining why it is that the various sub-volumes of space occupied by such simples, are not occupied by proper parts of those simples. Intuitively at least, many of us find compelling the idea that spatially extended objects have proper parts at every sub-volume of the region they occupy. It seems that the defender of extended simples must reject a seemingly plausible claim, what Simons calls the geometric correspondence principle (GCP): that any (spatially) extended object has parts that correspond to the parts of the region that it occupies (Simons 2004: 371). We disagree. We think that GCP is a plausible principle. We also think it is plausible that our world is composed of extended simples. We reconcile these two notions by two means. On the one hand we pay closer attention to the physics of our world. On the other hand, we consider what happens when our concept of something—in this case space—contains elements not all of which are realized in anything, but instead key components are realized in different features of the world. (shrink)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not (...) reducible to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

According to the underdetermination thesis, all evidence necessarily underdetermines any scientific theory. Thus it is often argued that our agreement on the content of mature scientific theories must be due to social and other factors. Drawing on a long standing tradition of criticism, I shall argue that the underdetermination thesis is little more than speculation based on an impoverished account of induction. A more careful look at accounts of induction does not support an assured underdetermination or the holism usually associated (...) with it. I also urge that the display of observationally equivalent theories is a self-defeating strategy for supporting the underdetermination thesis. The very fact that observational equivalence can be demonstrated by arguments brief enough to be included in a journal article means that we cannot preclude the possibility that the theories are merely variant formulations of the same theory. (shrink)

This paper promotes the view that our childhood engagement with narratives of a certain kind is the basis of sophisticated folk psychological abilities —i.e. it is through such socially scaffolded means that folk psychological skills are normally acquired and fostered. Undeniably, we often use our folk psychological apparatus in speculating about why another may have acted on a particular occasion, but this is at best a peripheral and parasitic use. Our primary understanding and skill in folk psychology derives from (...) and has its primary application in special kinds of second-personal engagements. (shrink)

© 2011 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Results on the observational indistinguishability of spacetimes demonstrate the impossibility of determining by deductive inference which is our spacetime, no matter how extensive a portion of the spacetime is observed. These results do not illustrate an underdetermination of theory by evidence, since they make no decision between competing theories and they make little contact with the inductive considerations that must ground such a decision. Rather, these results express a variety of indeterminism (...) in which a specification of the observable past always fails to fix the remainder of a spacetime. This form of indeterminism is more troubling than the familiar indeterminism of quantum theory. The inductive inferences that can discriminate among the different spacetime extensions of the observed past are here called "opaque," which means that we cannot readily see the warrant that lies behind them. (shrink)

Digital personal data is increasingly framed as the basis of contemporary economies, representing an important new asset class. Control over these data assets seems to explain the emergence and dominance of so-called “Big Tech” firms, consisting of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google/alphabet, and Facebook. These US-based firms are some of the largest in the world by market capitalization, a position that they retain despite growing policy and public condemnation—or “techlash”—of their market power based on their monopolistic control of personal data. We (...) analyse the transformation of personal data into an asset in order to explore how personal data is accounted for, governed, and valued by Big Tech firms and other political-economic actors. However, our findings show that Big Tech firms turn “users” and “user engagement” into assets through the performative measurement, governance, and valuation of user metrics, rather than extending ownership and control rights over personal data per se. We conceptualize this strategy as a form of “techcraft” to center attention on the means and mechanisms that Big Tech firms deploy to make users and user data measurable and legible as future revenue streams. (shrink)

The practice of paleontology has an aesthetic as well as an epistemic dimension. Paleontology has distinctively aesthetic aims, such as cultivating sense of place and developing a better aesthetic appreciation of fossils. Scientific cognitivists in environmental aesthetics argue that scientific knowledge deepens and enhances our appreciation of nature. Drawing on that tradition, this Element argues that knowledge of something's history makes a difference to how we engage with it aesthetically. This means that investigation of the deep past can contribute (...) to aesthetic aims. Aesthetic engagement with fossils and landscapes is also crucial to explaining paleontology's epistemic successes. (shrink)

The best extant statement of the epistemic regress problem makes assumptions that are too strong. An improved version assumes only that that reasons require support, that no proposition is supported only by endless regresses of reasons, and that some proposition is supported. These assumptions are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. Attempts to explain support by means of unconceptualized sensations, contextually immunized propositions, endless regresses, and holistic coherence all require either additional reasons or an external condition on support that is (...) arbitrary from the believer's own point of view. (shrink)

Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include: A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected. Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring. Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural creator. Even after creationist viewpoints were rejected by most biologists there remained various grounds for concern about the (...) role of teleology in biology, including whether such terms are: 1. vitalistic (positing some special "life-force"); 2. requiring backwards causation (because future outcomes explain present traits); 3. incompatible with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2); 4. mentalistic (attributing the action of mind where there is none); 5. empirically untestable (for all the above reasons). Opinions divide over whether Darwin's theory of evolution provides a means of eliminating teleology from biology, or whether it provides a naturalistic account of the role of teleological notions in the science. Many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology believe that teleological notions are a distinctive and ineliminable feature of biological explanations but that it is possible to provide a naturalistic account of their role that avoids the concerns above. Terminological issues sometimes serve to obscure some widely-accepted distinctions. (shrink)

If the human race comes to an end relatively shortly, then we have been born at a fairly typical time in the history of humanity; if trillions of people eventually exist, then we have been born in the first surprisingly tiny fraction of all people. According to the 'doomsday argument' of Carter, Leslie, Gott and Nielsen, this means that the chance of a disaster which would obliterate humanity is much larger than usually thought. But treating possible observers in the (...) same way as those who actually exist avoids this conclusion: our existence is more likely in a race which is long-lived, and this cancels out the doomsday argument, so that the chance of a disaster is only what one would ordinarily estimate. (shrink)

This paper claims that the standard characterization of the motivational role of belief should be supplemented. Beliefs do not only, jointly with desires, cause and rationalize actions that will satisfy the desires, if the beliefs are true; beliefs are also the practical ground of other cognitive attitudes, like imagining, which means beliefs determine whether and when one acts with those other attitudes as the cognitive inputs into choices and practical reasoning. In addition to arguing for this thesis, I take (...) issue with Velleman's argument that belief and imagining cannot be distinguished on the basis of motivational role. (shrink)

One way to solve the epistemic regress problem would be to show that we can acquire justification by means of an infinite regress. This is infinitism. This view has not been popular, but Peter Klein has developed a sophisticated version of infinitism according to which all justified beliefs depend upon an infinite regress of reasons. Klein's argument for infinitism is unpersuasive, but he successfully responds to the most compelling extant objections to the view. A key component of his position (...) is his claim that an infinite regress is necessary, but not sufficient, for justified belief. This enables infinitism to avoid a number of otherwise compelling objections. However, it commits infinitism to the existence of an additional feature of reasons that is necessary and, together with the regress condition, sufficient for justified belief. The trouble with infinitism is that any such condition could account for the connection between justification and truth only by undermining the rationale for the regress condition itself. (shrink)

The Argument from Inductive Risk (AIR) is taken to show that values are inevitably involved in making judgements or forming beliefs. After reviewing this conclusion, I pose cases which are prima facie counterexamples: the unreflective application of conventions, use of black-boxed instruments, reliance on opaque algorithms, and unskilled observation reports. These cases are counterexamples to the AIR posed in ethical terms as a matter of personal values. Nevertheless, it need not be understood in those terms. The values which load a (...) theory choice may be those of institutions or past actors. This means that the challenge of responsibly handling inductive risk is not merely an ethical issue, but is also social, political, and historical. (shrink)

When it originated in the late 19th century, psychometrics was a field with both a scientific and a social mission: psychometrics provided new methods for research into individual differences, and at the same time, these psychometric instruments were considered a means to create a new social order. In contrast, contemporary psychometrics - due to its highly technical nature and its limited involvement in substantive psychological research - has created the impression of being a value-free discipline. In this article, we (...) develop a contrasting characterization of contemporary psychometrics as a value-laden discipline. We expose four such values: that individual differences are quantitative (rather than qualitative), that measurement should be objective in a specific sense, that test items should be fair, and that utility of a model is more important than its truth. Our goal is not to criticize psychometrics for employing these values, but rather to bring them into the open and to show that these values are not inevitable and are in need of systematic evaluation. (shrink)

The psychedelic psilocybin has shown promise both as treatment for psychiatric conditions and as a means of improving well-being in healthy individuals. In some jurisdictions (e.g., Oregon, USA), psilocybin use for both purposes is or will soon be allowed and yet, public attitudes toward this shift are understudied. We asked a nationally representative sample of 795 US Americans to evaluate the moral status of psilocybin use in an appropriately licensed setting for either treatment of a psychiatric condition or well-being (...) enhancement. Showing strong bipartisan support, participants rated the individual’s decision as morally positive in both contexts. These results can inform effective policy-making decisions around supervised psilocybin use, given robust public attitudes as elicited in the context of an innovative regulatory model. We did not explore attitudes to psilocybin use in unsupervised or non-licensed community or social settings. (shrink)

John McDowell rejects the idea that non-conceptual content can rationally justify empirical claims—a task for which it is ill-fitted by its non-conceptual nature. This paper considers three possible objections to his views: he cannot distinguish empty conception from the perceptual experience of an object; perceptual discrimination outstrips the capacity of concepts to keep pace; and experience of the empirical world is more extensive than the conceptual focusing within it. While endorsing McDowell’s rejection of what he means by non-conceptual content, (...) and appreciating his insight into the experiential synthesis of intuition and conception (in particular, its role in grasping objects), I will argue that Edmund Husserl presents an even more comprehensive account of perceptual experience that explains how we experience the contribution of receptivity and sensibility and how they cooperate in perceptual discrimination. Further, it reveals “horizons”—a unique kind of contents, surplus content (rather than independent non-conceptual content)—beyond the synthesis of intuitive and conceptual contents through which objects are grasped. Such horizons play a constitutive role, making experience with its conceptual dimensions and justificatory potential possible; they in no way function like a bare given that is to fulfill some independent justificatory role. Whereas McDowell focuses on how experience does not take place in isolation from the exercise of conceptual capacities, Husserl complements his view by situating experience in a more encompassing whole and by elucidating the surplus-horizons that exceed the conceptual content of experience; play an inseparable, constitutive role within it; and indicate the limits of conceptual comprehension. (shrink)

From Dawn till Dusk embraces the conceptual challenges often associated with Bioethics by taking the reader on a journey that embodies the circle of life and what it means to be human. The beginning and the end of life have always been an impossible riddle to humans. Bioethics does not aspire to unveil utter truths regarding the purpose of our existence; on the contrary, its task is to settle controversial issues that arise within this finite, very fragile and vulnerable (...) life, yet a life we still have to live. This book discusses thorny ethical issues that transcend time and are related to the dawn and the dusk of life: abortion and infanticide, genetic engineering, human reproductive cloning, the fear of death, rational suicide, and the right to die. The book's highest aspiration, though, is to both provide the reader with an opportunity to see the world from different perspectives and to showcase the irresistible charms of bioethical debates. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that an operational organism concept can help to overcome the structural deficiency of mathematical models in biology. In our opinion, the structural deficiency of mathematical models lies mainly in our inability to identify functionally relevant biological characters in biological systems, and not so much in a lack of adequate mathematical representations of biological processes. We argue that the problem of character identification in biological systems is linked to the question of a properly formulated organism concept. (...) Lastly, we demonstrate how a decomposition of an organism into independent characters in the context of a specific biological process--such as adaptation by means of natural selection--depends on the dynamical properties and invariance conditions of the equations that describe this process. (shrink)

Human beings, even very young infants, and members of several other species, exhibit remarkable capacities for attending to and engaging with others. These basic capacities have been the subject of intense research in developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind over the last several decades. Appropriately characterizing the exact level and nature of these abilities and what lies at their basis continues to prove a tricky business. The contributions to this special issue investigate whether and to (...) what extent the exercise of such capacities count as, or are best explained by, a genuine understanding of minds, where such understanding depends on the creatures in question possessing capacities for attributing a range of mental states and their contents in systematic ways. The question that takes center stage is: Do the capacities for attending to and engaging with others in question involve mindreading or is this achieved by other means? In this editorial we will review the state of the debate between mindreading and alternative accounts of social cognition. The issue is organized as follows: the first two papers review the experimental literature on mindreading in primates (Bermúdez) and children (Low & Wang), and the kinds of arguments made for mindreading and alternative accounts of social cognition. The next set of papers (Hedger & Fabricius, Lurz & Krachun, Zawidzki, and de Bruin et al.) further critique the existing experimental data and defend various mindreading and non-mindreading accounts. The final set of papers address further issues raised by phenomenological (Jacob, Zahavi), enactive (Michael), and embodied (Spaulding) accounts of social cognition. (shrink)

The importance of communities in strengthening the ethics of international collaborative research is increasingly highlighted, but there has been much debate about the meaning of the term ‘community’ and its specific normative contribution. We argue that ‘community’ is a contingent concept that plays an important normative role in research through the existence of morally significant interplay between notions of community and individuality. We draw on experience of community engagement in rural Kenya to illustrate two aspects of this interplay: (i) that (...) taking individual informed consent seriously involves understanding and addressing the influence of communities in which individuals’ lives are embedded; (ii) that individual participation can generate risks and benefits for communities as part of the wider implications of research. We further argue that the contingent nature of a community means that defining boundaries is generally a normative process itself, with ethical implications. Community engagement supports the enactment of normative roles; building mutual understanding and trust between researchers and community members have been important goals in Kilifi, requiring a broad range of approaches. Ethical dilemmas are continuously generated as part of these engagement activities, including the risks of perverse outcomes related to existing social relations in communities and conditions of ‘half knowing’ intrinsic to processes of developing new understandings. (shrink)

Drawing on conceptual tools from philosophical bioethics, economics, and materialist feminism, we advocate viewing transnational commercial surrogacy as labor and consider what it means to compensate women for this work. We find two distinct but interrelated concerns emerge in our discussion of wages for surrogates: how to value and compensate for social reproduction, and how to establish a fair wage for surrogates. We explore limitations of minimum wage policy in addressing the undervaluation of biological and emotional labor in the (...) transnational commercial surrogacy industry. We argue that subsidization is a superior method of addressing at least one cause of undervaluation. (shrink)

How we narrate our lives can affect us, for good or ill. Our narrative practices make an undeniable difference to our psychosocial well-being. All so-called "talking cures" – including traditional psychoanalytic and psychodynamic approaches to therapy and newer techniques – are motivated by this insight about the power of personal narratives. All therapies of the discursive ilk make use of narratives, in one way or another, as a means of enabling individuals to frame, or reframe, and to manage their (...) life circumstances in richer or new ways.Narrative Therapy, an important sub-class of talking therapies, breaks faith with more traditional psychodynamic approaches in adopting a... (shrink)

Varro's De lingua Latina is a treasure trove of information. Of the originally twenty-five books, six have come down to us more or less complete. Among these, Books 5–7 give us many hundreds of etymologies, and Books 8–10 discuss the question whether Latin morphology is regular or not. What Varro rarely comments on is sociolinguistic variation. The sociolinguistic comments in Varro's work can almost be counted on one hand. For instance, in 5.162 Varro remarks that cenaculum, from cena ‘dinner’, (...) class='Hi'>means ‘attic’ in Roman Latin, but that the original meaning was, as one might expect, ‘dining-room’, a meaning preserved in the non-Roman dialects of Latium, Falerii and Corduba in Spain; the meaning also lives on in religious uses in Lanuvium. In 7.96, Varro tells us that some words are pronounced with -ae- by some, but with -ē- by others. We know that non-Roman varieties of Latin monophthongized -ae- earlier than the Roman dialect did. Varro mentions pairs like scaena / scēna ‘stage’, a loan from Greek σκηνή, which shows that -ae- is hypercorrect here. Interestingly, only in one such pair is the variant with -ē- ascribed to country people, in the name Maesius / Mēsius, and this is indeed the only pair where the diphthong -ae- is original rather than the result of hypercorrection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume on the Idea of Existence1 Phillip D. Cummins One, the primary, aim of this paper is to understand an argument Hume employed to defend his contention that there is no special or distinctidea ofexistence. This contention he expressedvariouslyin the following passage: The idea ofexistence, then, is the very same with the idea of what we conceive tobe existent. To reflect on any thing simply, and to reflect on (...) it as existent, are nothing different from each other. That idea, when conjoin'd with the idea of any object, makes no addition to it. Whatever we conceive, we conceive to be existent. Any idea we please to form is the idea ofa being; and the idea of a being is any idea we please to form.2 My secondary aim is to understand what the quoted claim amounts to as a characterization of the idea of existence. I am among those who have serious difficulty understanding what precisely Hume is here claiming. Specifically, I am not sure how, if at all, his position on the idea ofexistence fits with other elements ofhis theory ofthought.3 For example, earlier in the Treatise, in "OfAbstract Ideas," Hume argued that under suitable conditions of habituation and linguistic competence, a single simple4 idea could be the idea ofboth a particular object, a line drawn on a particular sheet ofpaper, and a type ofobject, line in general (T 20-24). Further, on the basis of appropriate comparisons, a single simple idea can also be the idea oftwo different quaUties, purple and extended, for example (T 24-25, 34). The former claim is the positive component ofHume's account ofabstract thinking; the latter is the positive component of his position on distinctions of reason. Hume goes out ofhis way to distinguish his position on the idea of existence from his position on distinctions of reason (T 67). As for how it differs, ifat all, from his position on abstract ideas, a matter by no means obvious, Hume says nothing at all. His silence does not preclude speculation on the subject—on the contrary, it makes such speculation unavoidable—but it does give special importance to his brief and puzzhng proof that there is no special or distinct idea of existence. Volume XVII Number 1 61 PHILLIP D. CUMMINS I. Hume's Argument In making his case that we have no distinct idea of existence Hume first insists that we have an idea of existence, appealing to what he regards as an undeniable matter of psychological fact. He writes, There is no impression nor idea ofany kind, ofwhich we have anyconsciousness or memory, thatis not conceiVd as existent; and 'tis evident, that from this consciousness the most perfect idea and assurance ofbeing is deriv'd. (T 66) The argument seems to comprise the following propositions: attending to consciousness and memory reveals that all the perceptions we experience or remember are believed to exist; one cannot beUeve in the existence of something unless one has an idea of existence; therefore, there is an idea ofexistence (being) which in some way is derived from consciousness and memory. Hume next formulates what he calls a dilemma. From hence we may form a dilemma, the most clear and conclusive that can be imagin'd, viz. that since we never remember any idea or impression without attributing existence toit, the idea ofexistence must eitherbe deriv'd from a distinct impression, conjoin'd with every perception or object ofour thought, or must be the very same with the idea of the perception or object. (T 66) The alternatives seem clear: either, in believing in the past existence of, say, a blue spot once seen, one has two ideas, one of the blue spot and a different one of existence, or one has only one idea, which somehow is both the idea of the spot and the idea ofexistence. What is not immediately obvious is why Hume speaks ofa dilemma. From the supposed psychological fact (we never remember any idea or impression without attributing existence to it) and its corollary (we have an idea ofexistence) Hume develops a disjunction (either the idea ofexistence is derived from a distinct impression conjoined with every perception, or... (shrink)

Eliminative reasoning is a method that has been employed in many significant episodes in the history of science. It has also been advocated by some philosophers as an important means for justifying well-established scientific theories. Arguments for how eliminative reasoning is able to do so, however, have generally relied on a too narrow conception of evidence, and have therefore tended to lapse into merely heuristic or pragmatic justifications for their conclusions. This paper shows how a broader conception of evidence (...) not only can supply the needed justification but also illuminates the methodological significance of eliminative reasoning in a variety of contexts. (shrink)

In this paper I engage interdisciplinary conversation on inaction as the dominant response to climate change, and develop an analysis of the specific phenomenon of complacency through a critical-feminist lens. I suggest that Chris Cuomo's discussion of the “insufficiency” problem and Susan Sherwin's call for a “public ethics” jointly point toward particularly promising harm-reduction strategies. I draw upon and extend their work by arguing that extant philosophical accounts of complacency are inadequate to the task of sorting out what it (...) class='Hi'>means to be complacent on climate change. I offer a sketch for an alternative account, which I take to be a start in the direction of mapping out a diverse array of “motivational vices” that need to be named, grappled with, and remedied. (shrink)

Svätopluk Štúr is a strong critic of strands of German thought that emphasize the will to power as an organizing principle of human society. Štúr is particularly critical of Nietzsche’s vitalism, which Štúr believes culminated in national socialism and the destruction of the Second World War. This paper describes and examines Štúr’s criticism of a number of German thinkers and focuses especially on Štúr’s criticism of Nietzsche. Štúr criticizes Nietzsche’s emphasis on life over knowledge. Štúr offers a different philosophy of (...) life grounded in the dignity of human beings and the social consequences of ideas and actions. This paper concludes by examining what Štúr means by dignity in terms of a moral agent and as opposed to Nietzsche’s emphasis on vitalism. (shrink)

This special report is published in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death,” a landmark document that proposed a new way to define death, with implications that advanced the field of organ transplantation. This remarkable success notwithstanding, the concept has raised lasting questions about what it means to be dead. Is death defined in terms of the biological failure of the organism (...) to maintain integrated functioning? Can death be declared on the basis of severe neurological injury even when biological functions remain intact? Is death essentially a social construct that can be defined in different ways, based on human judgment? These issues, and more, are discussed and debated in this report by leading experts in the field, many of whom have been engaged with this topic for decades. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOWGIAN BRUCE D. MARSHALL St. Olaf Oollege Northfield, Minnesota, 1JHE PURPOSE of this essay is to discuss the relation between Thomas Aquinas' account of religious and heological truth and a " posrtliberal " one sruch rus that sketched in George Lindbeck's The Nature of Doctrine. Most reviewers assume that Lindbeck's.app:voach is on this point incompatible with the mainstream of the tmdition, and Colman O'Neill, writing :in (...) The Thomist symposium on Lindbeck's book, thinks it oontradicts Aquinas in particular. This paper presents the case to the contr:ary. Afte'I." outlining O'Neill's problem, it argues thart he mis11eads Lindbeck 'and,.at greater length, that Aquinas''S views on t:ruth :are, as Lindbeck affirms, compatible with postliberal emphases. I O'Neill's basic problem with Lindbeck's: "cultural linguistic " understanding of truth is thwt Lindbeck " would clearly have us puTify [Christi.an] language by ridding it of extra-linguistic accretions-in particular the intrusion of reference to objective reality. In the end the only thing that matters is scriptural discourse verified by action." 1 Lindbeck may not intend this " purification," 2 but whatever the intention, his 1 Colman E. O'Neill, "The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional Truth," The Thomist 49 (1985), p. 422. 2 So Lindbeck writes: "The great strength of a cognitive-propositional theory of religion is that •.. it admits the possibility of [ontological] truth claims, and a crucial theological challenge to a cultural-linguistic approach is whether it also can do so." The Nature of Doctrine: Religion a,nd Theology in a, Postlibera,l Age (hereafter ND), (Philadelphia, 1984), pp. 63-4. 353 854 BRUCE D. MARSHALL view of •religious truth entails a raidical rejection of 1any claim that Christian beliefs!are onto1ogioally true, in other words, tha;t they rre£er or correspond •to reality. The reruson rllor this putative entailment lies in Lindbeck's manifest oontention (to be explained below) that truth claims in any l'eligion, including Christianity, are subject to 1a twofold criterion of coherence: they must fit wirth the wider linguistic (especially scriptural) paradigms of the 11eligion, and also with a range of practices appropriate to the belief the truth of which is being claimed. But, says O'Neill, Christian beliefs are not true because they cohere with anything, they are true (like all true propositions) "because of their reference to the real." a By introducing ;an irreducible element of coherence into his interpl'etation of Christian truth claims, Lindbeck inevitably " attaches to the ·term ' propositional truth '.a purely pra.gmatic signification," so that " a quite precise philosophical option has: been ma.de in faV'or of the moral or pragmatic definition of truth." 4 O'NeiiH'is point is that " ontological " or " propositional " truth has here been equa,ted with nothing more than the con£ormity of one's life to the patterns narrated in the!biblical story (O'Nei1l's "·scriptural dis-·oourse verified by 1action "), •such tha;t " no claims to objective truth" need be made for the story or any a.ssociated beliefs.5 Tihis, O'Neill alleges, is ·a " novel definition of ontological truth." 6 We ought to!'eject this novelty in favor of the under- •standing of Christian beliefs and their truth articulated by 'Ihomas Aquinas, whel"e it is firmly maintained against " the moral or pmgmatic definition of truth " that " propositions are true because of their I"eference ·to.the real." In order to undevstand the issues ·raised by O'Neill's criticism, it is important to bear in mind the distinction-often made but often overlooked ais well-between truth :and justis O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 430. 4 O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 429. 5 O'Neill," Propositional Truth," p. 420. 6 O'Neill, "Propositional Truth," p. 431. AQUINAS AS POSTLIBERAL THEOLOGIAN 355 fica.tion. The very isisue of what it means to say that propositions 1 are true can be distinguished from the issue of ho,w one justifies, warrants, or tests the truth of propositions. So, for example, one might maintain that in regard to propositions, "true" should be defined as "oorresponds to reality," or perhaps "fitly expresses experience," or perhaps "is... (shrink)

Coral bleaching has impacted reefs worldwide and the predictions of near‐annual bleaching from over two decades ago have now been realized. While technology currently provides the means to predict large‐scale bleaching, predicting reef‐scale and within‐reef patterns in real‐time for all reef users is limited. In 2020, heat stress across the Great Barrier Reef underpinned the region's third bleaching event in 5 years. Here we review the heterogeneous emergence of bleaching across Heron Island reef habitats and discuss the oceanographic drivers (...) that underpinned variable bleaching emergence. We do so as a case study to highlight how reef end‐user groups who engage with coral reefs in different ways require targeted guidance for how, and when, to alter their use of coral reefs in response to bleaching events. Our case study of coral bleaching emergence demonstrates how within‐reef scale nowcasting of coral bleaching could aid the development of accessible and equitable bleaching response strategies on coral reefs. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/N9Tgb8N-vN0. (shrink)