In this remarkable study, David A. J. Richards combines an interpretive history of culture and law, political philosophy, and constitutional analysis to explain the background, development, and growing impact of two of the most important and challenging human rights movements of our time, feminism and gay rights. Richards argues that both movements are extensions of rights-based dissent, rooted in antebellum abolitionist feminism that condemned both American racism and sexism. He sees the progressive role of such radical dissent as an (...) emancipated moral voice in the American constitutional tradition. He examines the role of dissident African Americans, Jews, women, and homosexuals in forging alternative visions of rights-based democracy. He also draws special attention to Walt Whitman's visionary poetry, showing how it made space for the silenced and subjugated voices of homosexuals in public and private culture. According to Richards, contemporary feminism rediscovers and elaborates this earlier tradition. And, similarly, the movement for gay rights builds upon an interpretation of abolitionist feminism developed by Whitman in his defense, both in poetry and prose, of love between men. Richards explores Whitman's impact on pro-gay advocates, including John Addington Symonds, Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, and André Gide. He also discusses other diverse writers and reformers such as Margaret Sanger, Franz Boas, Elizabeth Stanton, W. E. B. DuBois, and Adrienne Rich. Richards addresses current controversies such as the exclusion of homosexuals from the military and from the right to marriage and concludes with a powerful defense of the struggle for such constitutional rights in terms of the principles of rights-based feminism. (shrink)

Indirect speech acts—responding “I forgot to wear my watch today” to someone who asked for the time—are ubiquitous in daily conversation, but are understudied in current neurobiological models of language. To comprehend an indirect speech act like this one, listeners must not only decode the lexical-semantic content of the utterance, but also make a pragmatic, bridging inference. This inference allows listeners to derive the speaker’s true, intended meaning—in the above dialog, for example, that the speaker cannot provide the time. In (...) the present work, we address this major gap by asking non-aphasic patients with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia and brain-damaged controls with amnestic mild cognitive impairment to judge simple question-answer dialogs of the form: “Do you want some cake for dessert?” “I’m on a very strict diet right now,” and relate the results to structural and diffusion MRI. Accuracy and reaction time results demonstrate that subjects with bvFTD, but not MCI, are selectively impaired in indirect relative to direct speech act comprehension, due in part to their social and executive limitations, and performance is related to caregivers’ judgment of communication efficacy. MRI imaging associates the observed impairment in bvFTD to cortical thinning not only in traditional language-associated regions, but also in fronto-parietal regions implicated in social and executive cerebral networks. Finally, diffusion tensor imaging analyses implicate white matter tracts in both dorsal and ventral projection streams, including superior longitudinal fasciculus, frontal aslant, and uncinate fasciculus. These results have strong implications for updated neurobiological models of language, and emphasize a core, language-mediated social disorder in patients with bvFTD. (shrink)

In this Open Peer Commentary, we draw on our clinical experience to argue that instrumental paternalism carves a pathway to competent refusal of medical intervention. Whether C successfully navigat...

Proof-theoretic semantics (P-tS) is an innovative approach to grounding logical meaning in terms of proofs rather than traditional truth-conditional semantics. The point is not that one provides a proof system, but rather that one articulates meaning in terms of proofs and provability. To elucidate this paradigm shift, we commence with an introduction that contrasts the fundamental tenets of P-tS with the more prevalent model-theoretic approach to semantics. The contribution of this paper is a P-tS for a substructural logic, intuitionistic multiplicative (...) linear logic (IMLL). Specifically, we meticulously examine and refine the established P-tS for intuitionistic propositional logic. Subsequently, we present two novel and comprehensive forms of P-tS for IMLL. Notably, the semantics for IMLL in this paper embodies its resource interpretation through its number-of-uses reading (restricted to atoms). This stands in contrast to the conventional model-theoretic semantics of the logic, underscoring the value that P-tS brings to substructural logics. (shrink)

This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s _Persuasion and Rhetoric_ brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the (...) text. Within hours of completing _Persuasion and Rhetoric, _his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text he left behind has proved to be one of the most trenchant and influential studies in modern rhetoric, a work that develops Nietzschean themes and anticipates the conclusions of, among others, Martin Heidegger. Publication of the book in English is an event of great magnitude for students of Italian philosophy, rhetoric, and literature as well as the culture of Mitteleuropa. (shrink)

Personal values have long been associated with individual decision behavior. The role played by personal values in decision making within an organization is less clear. Past research has found that managers tend to respond to ethical dilemmas situationally. This study examines the relationship between personal values and the ethical dimension of decision making using Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis. The study examines personal values as they relate to five types of ethical dilemmas. We found a significant positive contribution of altruistic (...) values to ethical decision making and a significant negative contribution of self-enhancement values to ethical decision making. (shrink)

Doctors’ strikes are legally permissible in the UK, with the situation differing in other countries. But are they morally permissible? Doug McConnell and Darren Mann have systematically attempted to dismiss the arguments for the moral impermissibility of doctors’ strikes and creatively attempted to provide further moral justification for them. Unfortunately for striking doctors, they fail to achieve this. Meanwhile, junior doctors’ strikes have continued in the UK through 2023 and have now extended into 2024. In this response, which focuses on (...) the UK situation and specifically junior doctors’ strikes in the National Health Service (NHS) in England, I will demonstrate a central problem with their arguments—namely that they underplay the harms caused by prolonged doctors’ strikes by ignoring the harms to patients with cancer. This weakens their conclusion that strikes are morally permissible in terms of the conditions and thresholds they set. I then provide a psychological critique of their justification for strikes in terms of the interests of the public. It follows that invoking the controversial concept of supererogatory action is ungrounded but also absurd when you consider time-critical cancer care. If those representing striking doctors wish to maintain a modicum of moral respectability, they should mitigate for patients with cancer and negotiate reasonably and with urgency. (shrink)

Introduction: making the invisible visible -- The nobility of the material -- Research at war -- The guilded age of research -- The doctor as whistle-blower -- New rules for the laboratory -- Bedside ethics -- The doctor as stranger -- Life through death -- Commissioning ethics -- No one to trust -- New rules for the bedside -- Epilogue: The price of success.

This paper is the introduction to Function, Selection, and Design, consisting of the following sections: 1. Introduction 2. The Philosophical Problem 3. Recent Prehistory: The "State of the Art" in the 1960s 4. Wright and Cummins 5. Millikan 6. The Core Consensus and the Peripheral Disagreements 7. Unconclusion.

For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a ). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education institutions in dealing with such misconduct. A survey of multi-national higher education faculty was conducted to explore the perceived barriers to the implementation of academic integrity processes. It asked (...) faculty how likely some hypothetical scenarios of failures of such processes were to occur in the real world of higher education institutions. 63% of our participants perceived there to be institutional and/or faculty barriers to effectively dealing with academic misconduct. Mostly, they blamed the higher education model for this which, in the interests of mass education, has come to prioritise the need for institutions to focus more on their quantity of output as corporate business enterprises than on the integrity of their output as educators. In discussing participants’ comments, about the relationship of faculty to their employing institutions, Schein and Scheins’ ( 2016 ) theory of three levels of organisational culture was used. Participants’ comments suggested that, at the deepest level of organisational culture i.e. basic underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about beliefs and values, inadequate integrity measures have tended to become normalised. Despite the often considerable, efforts of the institutions, organisational barriers were noted which mitigate against faculty behaving professionally i.e. from doing a ‘good job’ in respect of student academic misconduct. Some blame was also placed on faculty. We argue that apparent institutional inability to effectively manage the integrity process, has potentially significant consequences for wider society. We discuss ways in which this situation might be improved including a recommendation that governments regulate this aspect of the corporate social responsibility of higher education institutions as they do other aspects, requiring that it be managed effectively. (shrink)

Arthur Pap worked in analytic philosophy while maintaining a strong Kantian or neo-Kantian element throughout his career, stemming from his studying with Ernst Cassirer. I present these elements in the different periods of Pap’s works, showing him to be a consistent critic of logical empiricism, which Pap shows to be incapable of superseding the Kantian framework. Nevertheless, Pap’s work is definitely analytic philosophy, both in terms of the content and the style. According to Pap, the central topics of analytic philosophy (...) concern meaning, modality, and analysis. Pap was also influenced by pragmatism, especially in his dissertation, although he does not fully embrace it in either its classical or its Quinean form. (shrink)

Taking a social identity approach to health behaviors, this research examines whether experimentally “activating” the human identity is an effective public-health strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19. Three goals of the research include examining: whether the human identity can be situationally activated using an experimental manipulation, whether activating the human identity causally increases behavioral intentions to protect the self and others from COVID-19, and whether activating the human identity causally increases behaviors that help protect vulnerable communities from COVID-19. Across (...) two preregistered experiments, results suggest the manipulation of identification with humanity had a significant but small effect on participants’ psychological bond with all humanity, but not their concern for all humanity. However, the manipulation had no causal effect on health-related behavioral intentions or helping behaviors that reduce the spread of COVID-19. Limitations, future directions, and direct benefits of the research are discussed. (shrink)

The book examines one of the most contested topics in linguistics and cognitive science: the role of recursion in language. It offers a precise account of what recursion is, what role it should play in cognitive theories of human knowledge, and how it manifests itself in the mental representations of language and other cognitive domains.

This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both (...) philosophers share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love. (shrink)

Translation of the genetic code occurs in a cycle where ribosomes engage mRNAs, synthesize protein, and then disengage in order to repeat the process again. The final part of this process—ribosome recycling, where ribosomes dissociate from mRNAs—involves a complex molecular choreography of specific protein factors to remove the large and small subunits of the ribosome in a coordinated fashion. Errors in this process can lead to the accumulation of ribosomes at stop codons or translation of downstream open reading frames (ORFs). (...) Ribosome recycling is also critical when a ribosome stalls during the elongation phase of translation and must be rescued to allow continued translation of the mRNA. Here we discuss the molecular interactions that drive ribosome recycling, and their regulation in the cell. We also examine the consequences of inefficient recycling with regards to disease, and its functional roles in synthesis of novel peptides, regulation of gene expression, and control of mRNA‐associated proteins. Alterations in ribosome recycling efficiency have the potential to impact many cellular functions but additional work is needed to understand how this regulatory power is utilized. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

The essays in this collection represent in scholarly infrastructure to Professor Furley's major study, The Greek Cosmologists, of which volume 1 was published by the Press in 1987. They tackle the questions in ancient cosmology and the clash between the two opposing systems known as Aristotelianism and Atomism. Some essays are general reflections on the nature of the debate; others explore certain detailed questions; yet all illustrate the author's incisive approach, which cuts through irrelevancies and goes directly to the heart (...) of an issue. (shrink)

Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? In a series of ten essays David Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief, and the different forms of responsibility these forms of control generate.

It is often thought that Aristotle restricts the scope of justice to existing communities. Against prominent treatments of this problem, this paper argues that while Aristotle does indeed restrict the scope of justice, he recognizes eudaimonic reasons to cultivate co-operative and benevolent relations and to eschew manipulative and exploitative ones. His limitation of justice to existing communities thereby avoids the unsavory implications often attributed to it.

In response to a recent argument by David Bloor, I argue that denying absolutes does not necessarily lead to relativism, that one can be a fallibilist without being a relativist. At issue are the empirical natural sciences and what might be called “framework relativism”, that is, the idea that there is always a conceptual scheme or set of practices in use, and all observations are theory-laden relative to the framework. My strategy is to look at the elements that define (...) a relativist stance and show where the pragmatic fallibilist disagrees. Defending the pragmatic notion of experience will be central, given that relativists reject the idea that experience can play a role in objectively justifying belief. We can reject all absolutes and start from the premise that everything is historical, contingent, and situated. One of the lessons of pragmatism is that universal and fixed principles are not necessary for objective knowledge. (shrink)

Using the evolution of the stickleback family of subarctic fish as a touchstone, we explore the effect of new discoveries about regulatory genetics, developmental plasticity, and epigenetic inheritance on the conceptual foundations of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. Identifying the creativity of natural selection as the hallmark of the Modern Synthesis, we show that since its inception its adherents have pursued a variety of research projects that at first seemed to conflict with its principles, but were accommodated. We situate challenges coming (...) from developmental biology in a dialectic between innovation and tradition, suggesting on the basis of past episodes that even if developmental plasticity and epigenetic inheritance are aligned with its principles the Modern Synthesis will be significantly affected. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.

In a response to my recent article in this journal, Shahram Shahryari argues that I fail to present a third position between absolutism and relativism. He makes two points: first, that fallibilism is insufficient as an alternative, because it is compatible with both relativism and absolutism. The second point is that my argument that experience can lead to objective judgment without being a new absolute fails. I discuss these in turn, showing that both critiques fail and that pragmatism is a (...) genuine alternative between absolutism and relativism. (shrink)

Hypothesized relationships among reports by employees of moral distress, their perceptions of their manager’s behavioral integrity (BI), and employee reports of job satisfaction, stress, job engagement, turnover likelihood, absenteeism, work-to-family conflict, health, and life satisfaction were tested using data from the 2008 National Study of the Changing Workforce (n = 2,679). BI was positively related to job satisfaction, job engagement, health, and life satisfaction and negatively to stress, turnover likelihood, and work-to-family conflict, while moral distress was inversely related to those (...) outcomes. The magnitudes of relationships with job satisfaction, job engagement, and life satisfaction were greater with BI than with moral distress. Moral distress mediated the relationships between BI and the employee outcomes, supporting the view that employee’s perceptions of their manager’s BI might influence the employee’s behaviors as well as their attitudes. (shrink)

We prove various results connected together by the common thread of computability theory.First, we investigate a new notion of algorithmic dimension, the inescapable dimension, which lies between the effective Hausdorff and packing dimensions. We also study its generalizations, obtaining an embedding of the Turing degrees into notions of dimension.We then investigate a new notion of computability theoretic immunity that arose in the course of the previous study, that of a set of natural numbers with no co-enumerable subsets. We demonstrate how (...) this notion of $\Pi ^0_1$ -immunity is connected to other immunity notions, and construct $\Pi ^0_1$ -immune reals throughout the high/low and Ershov hierarchies. We also study those degrees that cannot compute or cannot co-enumerate a $\Pi ^0_1$ -immune set.Finally, we discuss a recently discovered truth-table reduction for transforming a Kolmogorov–Loveland random input into a Martin-Löf random output by exploiting the fact that at least one half of such a KL-random is itself ML-random. We show that there is no better algorithm relying on this fact, in the sense that there is no positive, linear, or bounded truth-table reduction which does this. We also generalize these results to the problem of outputting randomness from infinitely many inputs, only some of which are random.Abstract prepared by David J. Webb.E-mail: [email protected]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2209.05659.pdf. (shrink)