It is argued that there is a role for the representational conception of vision, and that this is compatible with the task-level account advocated by Pessoa et al. However, the role of representations must be understood independently of our conscious experience of vision.

Innovative practice involves medical interventions that deviate from standard practice in significant ways. For many patients, innovative practice offers the best chance of successful treatment. Because little is known about most innovative treatments, clinicians who engage in innovative practice might consider including extra procedures, such as scans or blood draws, to gather information about the innovation. Such information-gathering interventions can yield valuable information for modifying the innovation to benefit future patients and for designing scientific studies of the innovation. However, existing (...) guidelines do not say when or whether it is appropriate to add potentially risky information-gathering interventions for these purposes. As a result, clinicians may assume that information-gathering interventions are ethically inappropriate and should not be used in innovative practice. This assumption can lead to seriously negative consequences, such as increasing the likelihood that harmful or ineffective innovations will be adopted and creating new barriers to the development of genuinely beneficial treatments. We argue that health care institutions need to promote the responsible use of information-gathering interventions as an adjunct to innovative practice, and that these interventions are not clinical research and should not be subject to research oversight. (shrink)

Gathers the pre-Sand Country Almanac writings of Aldo Leopold, showing that he was not born an ecologist, but evolved over time through experimentation and thought.

The Search for the Legacy of the USPHS Syphilis Study at Tuskegee is a collection of essays from experts in a variety of fields seeking to redefine the legacy of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The essayists place the legacy of the study within the evolution of racial and ethnic relations in the United States. Contributors include two leading historians on the study, two former United States Surgeons General, and other prominent scholars from a wide range of fields.

This paper is concerned with the application of science to a practical activity. The story begins in the late eighteenth century, a period of agricultural innovation, with various authors urging that definite chemical knowledge should replace rule of thumb in the application of fertilisers. In the work of Archibald Cochrane, ninth Earl of Dundonald, we find this exhortation beginning to give way to descriptions of actual chemical experiments, and interpretations of equilibria in the soil. But it is only with (...) Davy's Agricultural chemistry of 1813 that we get clear descriptions of soil analyses that could be undertaken by a farmer, accompanied with a certain amount of biochemical information on the growth of plants. Davy's recommendations were essentially conservative; he provided support for the best practices already being recommended by innovators. His book is interesting too, for the light it casts upon his more theoretical writings. (shrink)

Earl Conee has argued that the metaphysics of personal identity is irrelevant to the morality of abortion. He claims that doing all the substantial work in abortion arguments are moral principles and they garner no support from rival metaphysics theories. Conee argues that not only can both immaterialist and materialist theories of the self posit our origins at fertilization, but positing such a beginning doesn’t even have any significant impact on the permissibility of abortion. We argue that this thesis (...) is wrong on both accounts. We do so, in part, by relying on a hylomorphic rather than a Cartesian conception of the soul. There are good reasons for believing such a soul theory can favor an earlier origin than the leading materialist accounts. We also show that the theological metaphysics of hylomorphism provide greater support for a pro-life position than the Cartesian position Conee discusses. However, we argue that even on a materialistic account of personal identity, metaphysics has substantial bearing upon the morality of early abortions. (shrink)

Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is a milestone of twentieth-century physics. We sketch the history that led to the formulation of the principle, and we recall the objections of Grete Hermann and Niels Bohr. Then we explain that there are in fact two uncertainty principles. One was published by Heisenberg in the Zeitschrift für Physik of March 1927 and subsequently targeted by Bohr and Hermann. The other one was introduced by Earle Kennard in the same journal a couple of months later. While (...) Kennard’s principle remains untarnished, the principle of Heisenberg has recently been criticized in a way that is very different from the objections by Bohr and Hermann: there are reasons to believe that Heisenberg’s formula is not valid. Experimental results seem to support this claim. -/- . (shrink)

How certain is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle? Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is at the heart of the orthodox or Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. We first sketch the history that led up to the formulation of the principle. Then we recall that there are in fact two uncertainty principles, both dating from 1927, one by Werner Heisenberg and one by Earle Kennard. Finally, we explain that recent work in physics gives reason to believe that the principle of Heisenberg is invalid, while that (...) of Kennard still stands. (shrink)

RESUMEN Existe una línea temática moderna que vincula el trabajo sobre las fuentes clásicas del 3er conde de Shaftesbury con el mosaico filosófico que más tarde desarrollará Johann Georg Hamann: se trata del "proyecto socrático", que aparece en el primero bajo la idea de unas Chartae socraticae y será motivación para que Hamann recoja el testigo en sus Memorabilia socratica. Se rastrea las raíces shaftesburianas del Sócrates de Hamann -surgidas de su lectura y traducción de juventud: Sensus communis y Carta (...) sobre el entusiasmo- para delimitar. ABSTRACT There is a modern thematic line that links the work on classical sources of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury with the philosophical mosaic that Johann Georg Hamann would develop later: it is the "Socratic project", that appears under the idea of Chartae socraticae in the former and will be the motivation for Hamann to take up the witness in his Memorabilia socratica. It traces the Shaftesburian roots of Hamann's Socrates that emerged from his youthful reading and translation of Sensus communis and A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm to delineate in both the role of humour and style for a good philosophical life. (shrink)

Introduction: "I chose therefore my party & am a whigg": the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury as political icons / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Part I. The First Earl of Shaftesbury -- Whig wit: Andrew Marvell and the Earls of Shaftesbury / Nigel Smith, Princeton University -- Trade for peace: a complete account of the First Earl of Shaftesbury: interest in Carolina's Indian trade / Andrew Agha, University of South Carolina, Columbia -- John Locke and the reputation (...) of the First Earl of Shaftesbury / Mark Goldie, University of Cambridge -- Part II. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury in his time -- Shaftesbury, an early voice of the radical enlightenment / Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University -- Shaftesbury and Locke: a tale of three letters / Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "An equal commonwealth": Lord Ashley and the republican project of the late 1690s / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Party politics in characteristicks / Jacob Sider Jost, Dickinson College, Carlisle -- Psychological and political balances: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's reading of James Harrington / Laurent Jaffro -- (Re)defining the commonwealth: Shaftesbury's concept of political freedom / Angela Taraborrelli, St. John's University of Rome -- Shaftesbury's non-secular cosmopolitanism / David Alvarez, DePauw University, Greencastle -- Taste, the people and the public according to the Third Earl of Shaftesbury / Lawrence E. Klein, University of Cambridge -- Part III. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: afterlife -- Art, morality and choice: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and John Molesworth / William Molesworth, Dublin -- "Moral painting, by way of dialogue": Shaftesbury in the cry / Rebecca Anne Barr, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "Virtue pointing to her rugged mountain": Shaftesbury in America / James Pratt, University of Toronto -- Radicalizing sympathy: William Godwin's reading of Shaftesbury / Roman A. Barton, Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin. (shrink)

David Earl Over is a leading cognitive scientist and, with his firm grounding in philosophical logic, he also exerts a powerful influence on the psychology of reasoning. He is responsible for not only a large body of empirical work and accompanying theory, but for advancing a major shift in thinking about reasoning, commonly known as the 'new paradigm' in the psychology of human reasoning. Over's signature mix of philosophical logic and experimental psychology has inspired generations of researchers, psychologists, (...) and philosophers alike over more than a quarter of a century. The chapters in this volume, written by a leading group of contributors including a number who helped shape the psychology of reasoning as we know it today, each take their starting point from the key themes of Over's ground-breaking work. The essays in this collection explore a wide range of central topics--such as rationality, bias, dual processes, and dual systems--as well as contemporary psychological and philosophical theories of conditionals. It concludes with an engaging new chapter, authored by David Over himself, which details and analyses the new paradigm psychology of reasoning. This book is therefore important reading for scholars, researchers, and advanced students in psychology, philosophy, and the cognitive sciences, including those who are not familiar with Over's thought already. (shrink)

The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury drew on the naturalism of Locke to open up a naturalistic reading of experience conceived as a matter of reality revealing pattern perception that was lost to view in the impact of subsequent idealist readings of Locke's epistemology offered by Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). This essay recovers and explicates Shaftesbury's alternative to idealist conceptions of pattern making.

David Armstrong's book is a contribution to the philosophical discussion about possible worlds. Taking Wittgenstein's Tractatus as his point of departure, Professor Armstrong argues that nonactual possibilities and possible worlds are recombinations of actually existing elements, and as such are useful fictions. There is an extended criticism of the alternative-possible-worlds approach championed by the American philosopher David Lewis. This major work will be read with interest by a wide range of philosophers.

Shaping the Normative Landscape is an investigation of the value of obligations and of rights, of forgiveness, of consent and refusal, of promise and request. David Owens shows that these are all instruments by which we exercise control over our normative environment.

Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition.Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of the (...) criterion, helps to disentangle epistemic and ethical evaluations, and illuminates the relationship between epistemic evaluations of beliefs and the evaluation of the methods used to form beliefs. These issues are all addressed in the essays presented here. External world skepticism poses the classic problem for an epistemological theory. The final essay in this volume argues that evidentialism is uniquely well qualified to make sense of skepticism and to respond to its challenge.Evidentialism is a version of epistemic internalism. Recent epistemology has included many attacks on internalism and has seen the development of numerous externalist theories. The essays included here respond to those attacks and raise objections to externalist theories, especially the principal rival, reliabilism. Internalism generally has been criticized for having unacceptable deontological implications, for failing to connect epistemic justification to truth, and for failing to provide an adequate account of what makes basic beliefs justified. Each of these charges is answered in these essays. The collection includes two previously unpublished essays and new afterwords to five of the reprinted essays; it will be the definitive resource on evidentialism for all epistemologists. (shrink)

One of our most distinguished intellectual historians gives us a brilliant revisionist history. The Roads to Modernity reclaims the Enlightenment–an extraordinary time bursting with new ideas about the human condition in the realms of politics, society, and religion–from historians who have downgraded its importance and from scholars who have given preeminence to the Enlightenment in France over concurrent movements in England and America. Contrasting the Enlightenments in the three nations, Gertrude Himmelfarb demonstrates the primacy of the British and the wisdom (...) and foresight of thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Thomas Paine, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Edward Gibbon, and Edmund Burke, who established its unique character and historic importance. It is this Enlightenment, she argues, that created a moral and social philosophy–humane, compassionate, and realistic–that still resonates strongly today, in America perhaps even more so than in Europe. This is an illuminating contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, the book challenges longstanding teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests. The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts (...) and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures, namely the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Staël. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hölderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others. This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic. (shrink)

The Key Themes in Ancient Philosophy series provides concise books, written by major scholars and accessible to non-specialists, on important themes in ancient philosophy that remain of philosophical interest today. In this volume Professor Wolfsdorf undertakes the first exploration of ancient Greek philosophical conceptions of pleasure in relation to contemporary conceptions. He provides broad coverage of the ancient material, from pre-Platonic to Old Stoic treatments; and, in the contemporary period, from World War II to the present. Examination of the nature (...) of pleasure in ancient philosophy largely occurred within ethical contexts but in the contemporary period has, to a greater extent, been pursued within philosophy of mind and psychology. This divergence reflects the dominant philosophical preoccupations of the times. But Professor Wolfsdorf argues that the various treatments are complementary. Indeed, the Greeks' examinations of pleasure were incisive and their debates vigorous, and their results have enduring value for contemporary discussion. (shrink)

Evidence suggests that psychedelics bring about their therapeutic outcomes in part through the subjective or qualitative effects they engender and how the individual interprets the resulting experiences. However, psychedelics are contraindicated for individuals who have been diagnosed with certain mental illnesses, on the grounds that these subjective effects may be disturbing or otherwise counter-therapeutic. Substantial resources are therefore currently being devoted to creating psychedelic substances that produce many of the same biological changes as psychedelics, but without their characteristic subjective effects. (...) In this article, we consider ethical issues arising from the prospect of such potential “nonsubjective” psychedelics. We are broadly supportive of efforts to produce such substances for both scientific and clinical reasons. However, we argue that such nonsubjective psychedelics should be reserved for those special cases in which the subjective effects of psychedelics are specifically contraindicated, whereas classic psychedelics that affect subjective experience should be considered the default and standard of care. After reviewing evidence regarding the subjective effects of psychedelics, we raise a number of ethical concerns around the prospect of withholding such typically positive, meaningful, and therapeutic experiences from most patients. (shrink)

This essay examines the relation between philosophical questions concerning personal identity and character development in Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s philosophy. Shaftesbury combines a metaphysical account of personal identity with a normative approach to character development. By contrasting Shaftesbury’s and Hume’s views on these issues, I examine whether character development presupposes specific metaphysical views about personal identity, and in particular whether it presupposes the continued existence of a substance, as Shaftesbury assumes. I show that Hume’s philosophy offers at least two alternatives. Moreover, (...) I consider whether and how Hume’s philosophy leaves scope for character development and how he departs from Shaftesbury’s normative project of self-formation. (shrink)

Guided by the work of William Alston, Jonathan Adler and Michael Levin propose a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism. In some respects their proposal improves on those we have discussed. We argue that the problem remains unsolved.

In considering the nature of properties four controversial decisions must be made. (1) Are properties universals or tropes? (2) Are properties attributes of particulars, or are particulars just bundles of properties? (3) Are properties categorical (qualitative) in nature, or are they powers? (4) If a property attaches to a particular, is this predication contingent, or is it necessary? These choices seem to be in a great degree independent of each other. The author indicates his own choices.

O evidencialismo é, primordialmente, uma tese sobre a justificação epistêmica e, secundariamente, uma tese sobre o conhecimento. Sustenta que a justificação epistêmica é superveniente da evidência. As versões do evidencialismo diferem quanto ao que conta como evidência, quanto ao que seja possuir algo como evidência e quanto ao que um dado corpo de evidência apóia. A tese secundária é a de que o apoio evidencial é necessário ao conhecimento. O evidencialismo ajuda a formular as questões epistemológicas de uma forma que (...) é ótima para que se perceba o núcleo dos problemas. Oferece soluções, sem mascarar as dificuldades. Nós fornecemos ilustração disso através da consideração dos problemas da justificação a priori e do ceticismo. O evidencialismo também oferece a base para que se compreenda uma grande variedade de fatos e conceitos epistemológicos. Nós fornecemos ilustração disso, mostrando que o evidencialismo pode explicar como a justificação pode ser anulada, como as atitudes distintas da crença podem ser objeto de avaliação e como a própria prática da filosofia é epistemicamente valiosa. PALAVRAS-CHAVE – Evidencialismo. Evidência. Justificação. Conhecimento. A priori. Ceticismo. ABSTRACT Evidentialism is primarily a thesis about epistemic justification and secondarily a thesis about knowledge. It holds that epistemic justification supervenes on evidence. Versions of evidentialism differ about what counts as evidence, what it is to have something as evidence, and what a particular body of evidence supports. The secondary thesis is that evidential support is necessary for knowledge. Evidentialism helps to frame epistemological issues in a way that is optimal for seeing the heart of the problems. It offers solutions without disguising the difficulties. We illustrate this by considering the problems of a priori justification and skepticism. Evidentialism also provides the basis for understanding a variety of epistemological facts and concepts. We illustrate this by showing that evidentialism can explain how justification can be defeated, how attitudes other than belief can be the object of evaluation, and how the practice of philosophy itself is epistemically valuable. KEY WORDS – Evidentialism. Evidence. Justification. Knowledge. A priori. Skepticism. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on sentimentalism – the view that morality is based on sentiment – in particular, the sentiment of sympathy. Sentimentalism was historically articulated in opposition to two positions: Hobbesian egoism, in which morality is based on self-interest; and Moral Rationalism, which held that morality is based on reason alone. The Sentimentalists challenged both views, arguing that there is more to what motivates human beings than simple self-interest and that reason alone is insufficient to motivate our actions, including our (...) moral actions. The philosophies of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith are considered. The discussion then turns to sympathy, moral realism, moral virtue, and psychological realism. (shrink)

Offering a unique and wide-ranging examination of the theory of knowledge, the new edition of this comprehensive collection deftly blends readings from the foremost classical sources with the work of important contemporary philosophical thinkers. Human Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Approaches, 3/e, offers philosophical examinations of epistemology from ancient Greek and Roman philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus); medieval philosophy (Augustine, Aquinas); early modern philosophy (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Kant); classical pragmatism and Anglo-American empiricism (James, Russell, Ayer, Lewis, Carnap, Quine, (...) Rorty); and other influential Anglo-American philosophers (Chisholm, Kripke, Moore, Wittgenstein, Strawson, Putnam). Organized chronologically and thematically, Human Knowledge, 3/e, features exceptionally broad coverage and nontechnical selections that are easily accessible to students. An ideal text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology, it is enhanced by the editors' substantial general introduction, section overviews, and up-to-date bibliographies. The third edition offers expanded selections on contemporary epistemology and adds selections by Thomas Reid, Richard Rorty, David B. Annis, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, Ernest Sosa, Barry Stroud, and Louise M. Antony. Human Knowledge, 3/e, offers an unparalleled introduction to our ancient struggle to understand our own intellectual experience. (shrink)

This is the second of David Pears's acclaimed two‐volume work on the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy, covering the Philosophical Investigations and other writings from 1929 onwards. Though more selective in its coverage than the first volume (it deals mainly with Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology and the ego, the possibility of a private language and rule‐following), the book reveals with great clarity the style, method, and content of Wittgenstein's later thought. While this volume is independently comprehensible, Pears remains largely within (...) the structural framework of the first volume and uncovers thereby the general overall configuration and internal organization of Wittgenstein's thought. (shrink)

Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter treats several immensely important and understudied topics—public ignorance of economics, political ideology, and their connection to policy error—from an orthodox economic perspective whose applicability to these topics is overwhelmingly disproven by the available evidence. Moreover, Caplan adds to the traditional and largely irrelevant orthodox economic notion of rational public ignorance the claim that when voters favor counterproductive economic policies, they do so deliberately, i.e., knowingly. This leads him to assume (without any evidence) (...) that “emotion or ideology” explain mass economic error. Straightforward, unchosen mass ignorance of economic principles—neither “rational” nor “irrational,” but simply mistaken—is a more coherent explanation for economic error, and it is backed up by the vast body of public‐opinion research. (shrink)

Because of the problems associated with ecological concepts, generalizations, and proposed general theories, applied ecology may require a new "logic" of explanation characterized neither by the traditional accounts of confirmation nor by the logic of discovery. Building on the works of Grunbaum, Kuhn, and Wittgenstein, we use detailed descriptions from research on conserving the Northern Spotted Owl, a case typical of problem solving in applied ecology, to (1) characterize the method of case studies; (2) survey its strengths; (3) summarize and (...) respond to its shortcomings; and (4) investigate and defend its underlying "logic". (shrink)

A Society of the Friends of Difference would have to include Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Saussure, Freud, Adorno, Heidegger, Levinas, Deleuze, and Lyotard among its most prominent members.

Novalis. Kant Studies (1797). Introduced, translated from the German, by David W. Wood. In: Philosophical Forum 32 (2001): 323-338.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued its first approval of an oral contraceptive medication for access without a clinician’s prescription. One might expect this will lead to fewer people seeking to terminate unplanned pregnancies, including in states that imposed severe restrictions on abortion care following the Supreme Court’s reversal on abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Despite the clear potential health benefits, increased accessibility of oral contraceptives offers no real solution to ongoing threats to patients’ (...) reproductive health and moral rights created by post-Dobbs abortion restrictions. To secure their patients’ reproductive health and well-being, clinicians must work to maximize the benefits of OTC oral contraceptives without relenting in their advocacy for safe and accessible abortion care. (shrink)

Examination of a comprehensive database of political knowledge, constructed from pooled 1988 and 1992 National Election Studies, refutes criticisms that haue sometimes been lodged against standard tests that seem to reveal profound levels of public ignorance. Although most people know something about politics, the typical citizen is poorly informed, and only a small group is very knowledgeable about politics. Differentiating people according to their perceptions of the most important national problem does not reveal pockets of well‐informed “issue publics” among the (...) electorate. The NES data also show that knowledge makes a difference in how people feel about government spending for social‐welfare programs, and in how well citizens were able to connect their partisanship and ideological proclivities to their votes in the 2000 presidential election. (shrink)

This paper examines the contents of the sixth paragraph of the “Tyrrell Memoir”. This paragraph makes some strong, critical claims about both Locke’s “obsession” with the London physician Thomas Sydenham, and his purported dismissive attitude towards another physician, Richard Lower. In the paragraph, Tyrrell sides with the First Earl of Shaftesbury’s mocking attitude towards the triumvirate Locke, his close friend David Thomas, and Sydenham, and relates some extraordinary and hitherto unknown anecdotes. Tyrrell’s claims are assessed in relation to (...) what we know about the relations between these four men and in relation to the current state of Sydenham historiography. (shrink)

This article examines a particular debate between Eamonn Callan and William Galston concerning the need for a civic education which counters the divisive pull of pluralism by uniting the citizenry in patriotic allegiance to a single national identity.