The question whether two things can be in the same place at the same time is an ambiguous one. At least three distinct questions could be meant: Can two things simpliciter be in the same place at the same time? Can two things of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? Can two substances of the same kind be in the same place at the same time? The answers to these questions vary. In what follows, (...) all three will be discussed in the light both of recent and of classic earlier examinations of the matter. The following theses will be defended. (shrink)

The combination of ethnographic and cognitive neuroscience research provides considerable insight into the origin and symbolism of Native Californian rock art. Although made by different social groups for different purposes in various parts of the state, the ethnographic record demonstrates that the art depicts the mental imagery and somatic hallucinations of trance, taken to represent supernatural experiences. When this art is viewed from a cognitive neuroscience perspective, it suggests that the shamanistic state of consciousness was far from primarily "ecstatic," instead (...) often involving the generation of unpleasant emotions; and that biochemical changes during trance necessitated the making of rock art if the memory of these supernatural experiences was to be preserved. (shrink)

abstract This paper re‐examines some well‐known and commonly accepted arguments for the non‐individuality of the embryo, due mainly to the work of John Harris. The first concerns the alleged non‐differentiation of the embryoblast from the trophoblast. The second concerns monozygotic twinning and the relevance of the primitive streak. The third concerns the totipotency of the cells of the early embryo. I argue that on a proper analysis of both the empirical facts of embryological development, and the metaphysical importance or otherwise (...) of those facts, all three arguments are found wanting. None of them establishes that the embryo is not an individual human being from the moment of conception. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to increase interest in Cicero’s “De Officiis” as both a textbook and resource for developing curricula at the secondary and post-secondary level. The paper begins by tracing the extensive influence that the work has had in ethics, political philosophy, literature, and education before proceeding to an explanation for why its influence has waned since the nineteenth century. Next, the paper contends that “De Officiis” addresses some of the most relevant and pressing questions in ethics. (...) Finally, the paper provides suggestions on how the work can be used in the classroom. (shrink)

Unsupervised learning algorithms are widely used for many important statistical tasks with numerous applications in science and industry. Yet despite their prevalence, they have attracted remarkably little philosophical scrutiny to date. This stands in stark contrast to supervised and reinforcement learning algorithms, which have been widely studied and critically evaluated, often with an emphasis on ethical concerns. In this article, I analyze three canonical unsupervised learning problems: clustering, abstraction, and generative modeling. I argue that these methods raise unique epistemological and (...) ontological questions, providing data-driven tools for discovering natural kinds and distinguishing essence from contingency. This analysis goes some way toward filling the lacuna in contemporary philosophical discourse on unsupervised learning, as well as bringing conceptual unity to a heterogeneous field more often described by what it isnot(i.e., supervised or reinforcement learning) than by what itis. I submit that unsupervised learning is not just a legitimate subject of philosophical inquiry but perhaps the most fundamental branch of all AI. However, an uncritical overreliance on unsupervised methods poses major epistemic and ethical risks. I conclude by advocating for a pragmatic, error-statistical approach that embraces the opportunities and mitigates the challenges posed by this powerful class of algorithms. (shrink)

We propose a formal framework for interpretable machine learning. Combining elements from statistical learning, causal interventionism, and decision theory, we design an idealised explanation game in which players collaborate to find the best explanation for a given algorithmic prediction. Through an iterative procedure of questions and answers, the players establish a three-dimensional Pareto frontier that describes the optimal trade-offs between explanatory accuracy, simplicity, and relevance. Multiple rounds are played at different levels of abstraction, allowing the players to explore overlapping causal (...) patterns of variable granularity and scope. We characterise the conditions under which such a game is almost surely guaranteed to converge on a optimal explanation surface in polynomial time, and highlight obstacles that will tend to prevent the players from advancing beyond certain explanatory thresholds. The game serves a descriptive and a normative function, establishing a conceptual space in which to analyse and compare existing proposals, as well as design new and improved solutions. (shrink)

The first book-length treatment in English of Habermas’s theory of social evolution and progress.

This paper describes differences in two perspectives on the idea of virtue as a theoretical foundation for positive organizational ethics (POE). The virtue ethics perspective is grounded in the philosophical tradition, has classical roots, and focuses attention on virtue as a property of character. The positive social science perspective is a recent movement (e.g., positive psychology and positive organizational scholarship) that has implications for POE. The positive social science movement operationalizes virtue through an empirical lens that emphasizes virtuous behaviors. From (...) a virtue ethics perspective, a behaviorally based account of virtue is a weak theory of virtue. Observations are suggested for integrating the two perspectives. First, virtue should always be understood as an excellence and is often an optimal point between extreme dysfunctions on continuum of potential states. Second, an empirical exploration of virtue needs to account for character and context. Finally, the properties of organization-level virtue need to be further specified and explored. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

This paper defends partiality as an inherent, essential part of ethical decision-making. First, the concept of charity as a kind of universal benevolence is spelled out, drawing on key ideas from classical religious thinking. I then argue that any justification of partiality must appeal to the good first, rather than rights. There follows a justification of partiality via an argument from the idea of control over the good. The next section seeks to harmonize partialistic preference with universal charity, explaining the (...) concept of love of neighbour. There follows an outline of the key principles required for setting out an order of charity based on different kinds of special relationship. While not all of this theistically driven approach to the order of charity translates easily into secular moral thought, enough does to suggest that the view defended is at the least worthy of consideration and not to be dismissed lightly. At best, it has much in it that is commendable to secular common sense. (shrink)

Accounting educators are being called on to provide a greater emphasis on ethics education. This paper examines three important issues concerning ethics education in accounting. First, the question of whether ethics can indeed be taught is examined. Next, several innovative approaches are presented which have been used by accounting educators to integrate ethics into the classroom. Finally, results of a survey of students concerning their perspectives of ethical issues in accounting education, the accounting profession, and society at large are presented (...) and discussed. Survey results reveal that students consider a lack of ethics damaging to the accounting profession and society. Results also indicate that accounting students are seeking ethical and moral direction. (shrink)

(1999). Critical hermeneutics and American legal interpretation:A search for the meaning of new york times v. sullivan. Angelaki: Vol. 4, Judging the law, pp. 173-188.

This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the work and thought of the highly influential twentieth-century critic and theorist Walter Benjamin. The volume provides examinations of the different aspects of Benjamin's work that have had a significant effect on contemporary critical and historical thought. Topics discussed by experts in the field include Benjamin's relation to the avant-garde movements of his time, the form of the work of art, his theories on language and mimesis, modernity, his relation to Brecht and the (...) Frankfurt School, his significance and relevance to modern cultural studies, his formative interpretation of Romanticism, and his autobiographical writings. The volume is aimed at readers who may be coming to Benjamin for the first time or who have some knowledge of Benjamin but would like to know more about the issues and concepts central to his work. Additional material includes a guide to further reading and a chronology. (shrink)

Necessity and sufficiency are the building blocks of all successful explanations. Yet despite their importance, these notions have been conceptually underdeveloped and inconsistently applied in explainable artificial intelligence, a fast-growing research area that is so far lacking in firm theoretical foundations. In this article, an expanded version of a paper originally presented at the 37th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, we attempt to fill this gap. Building on work in logic, probability, and causality, we establish the central role of (...) necessity and sufficiency in XAI, unifying seemingly disparate methods in a single formal framework. We propose a novel formulation of these concepts, and demonstrate its advantages over leading alternatives. We present a sound and complete algorithm for computing explanatory factors with respect to a given context and set of agentive preferences, allowing users to identify necessary and sufficient conditions for desired outcomes at minimal cost. Experiments on real and simulated data confirm our method’s competitive performance against state of the art XAI tools on a diverse array of tasks. (shrink)

An inadequate grasp of the role of imagination has vitiated understanding of human cognition in western thinking. Extending a project initiated with George Lakoff in _Metaphors we Live By_ (1980), Mark Johnson's book _The Body in the Mind_ (1987) offers the claim that all thinking originates in bodily experience. A range of schemata formed during our early experience manipulating a physical world of surfaces, distances, and forces, lays the foundation of later, more abstract modes of thought. In presenting his argument, (...) Johnson lays special stress on the qualities and dynamics of the image schemata, the (generally unnoticed) metaphoricity of the transformations underlying abstract thought, and the new significance that should be attributed to the imagination, which is the general term Johnson wishes to claim for the mental processes he expounds. In this paper I draw attention to the importance of Johnson's insights for understanding literary response. In particular, I will show how a typical procedure of literary texts involves bringing to awareness image schemata of the kind that Johnson describes. At the same time, several problems in Johnson's account which limit its usefulness will also be examined: an undue reliance upon the spatial properties of schemata; a conflation of dead with live or poetic metaphors; and a neglect of other bodily influences on thought, especially kinaesthetic and affective aspects. These problems, for example, limit the usefulness of Johnson's attempt to build on Kant's theory of imagination. In comparison with Coleridge, who also attempted to build on Kant, Johnson is unable to overcome the formalism of Kant's theory. Coleridge's account of imagination, I will suggest, provides a better foundation for examining the bodily basis of meaning, while remaining compatible with Johnson's intentions and his more valuable insights. (shrink)

In this essay I reconsider Lacan’s theory of the signifier in relation to the late concept lalangue and blackness. The article is intended as a summary of the arguments put forward in the author’s Lacan Noir (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).

The public forum has been connected to the functioning of democracy, expressive freedom, and the media's role in society. While the public forum's legal contours have been examined, the ethical foundation of the public forum has not. Relying on archival research, this article argues that ideas about the public forum can be traced to the pragmatism of Grenville Clark, who influenced ideas about the public forum through his work on the American Bar Association's Bill of Rights Committee.

Through Narcissus' Glass Darkly presents a genealogy and critique of the ideal of conscience in modern philosophical theology, particularly in the writings of ...

The first English-language collection devoted to Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit.

Human rights discourse has been likened to a global lingua franca, and in more ways than one, the analogy seems apt. Human rights discourse is a language that is used by all yet belongs uniquely to no particular place. It crosses not only the borders between nation-states, but also the divide between national law and international law: it appears in national constitutions and international treaties alike. But is it possible to conceive of human rights as a global language or lingua (...) franca not just in a figurative or metaphorical sense, but in a literal or linguistic sense as a legal dialect defined by distinctive patterns of word choice and usage? Does there exist a global language of human rights that transcends not only national borders, but also the divide between domestic and international law? Empirical analysis suggests that the answer is yes, but this global language comes in at least two variants or dialects. New techniques for performing automated content analysis enable us to analyze the bulk of all national constitutions over the last two centuries, together with the world’s leading regional and international human rights instruments, for patterns of linguistic similarity and to evaluate how much language, if any, they share in common. Specifically, we employ a technique known as topic modeling that disassembles texts into recurring verbal patterns. The results highlight the existence of two species or dialects of rights talk—the universalist dialect and the positive-rights dialect—both of which are global in reach and rising in popularity. The universalist dialect is generic in content and draws heavily on the type of language found in international and regional human rights instruments. It appears in particularly large doses in the constitutions of transitional states, developing states, and states that have been heavily exposed to the influence of the international community. The positive-rights dialect, by contrast, is characterized by its substantive emphasis on positive rights of a social or economic variety, and by its prevalence in lengthier constitutions and constitutions from outside the common law world, especially those of the Spanish-speaking world. Both dialects of rights talk are truly transnational, in the sense that they appear simultaneously in national, regional, and international legal instruments and transcend the distinction between domestic and international law. Their existence attests to the blurring of the boundary between constitutional law and international law. (shrink)

The Dead Donor Rule holds that removing organs from a living human being without their consent is wrongful killing. The rule still prevails in most countries, and I assume it without argument in order to pose the question: is it possible to have a metaphysically correct, clinically relevant analysis of human death that makes organ donation possible? I argue that the two dominant criteria of death, brain death and circulatory death, are both empirically and metaphysically inadequate as definitions of human (...) death, and therefore of no epistemic value in themselves. I first set out a neo-Aristotelian theory of death as separation of soul (understood as organising principle) and body, which is then fleshed out as loss of organismic integrity. The brain and circulatory criteria are shown to have severe weaknesses as physiological manifestations of loss of integrity. Given the mismatch between what death is metaphysically speaking, and the dominant criteria accepted by clinicians and philosophers, it turns out that only actual bodily decomposition is a sure sign of death. In this I differ from Alan Shewmon, whose important work I discuss in detail. (shrink)

Caretaker-infant attachment is a complex but well-recognized adaptation in humans. An early instance of (or precursor to) attachment behavior is the dyadic interaction between adults and infants of 6 to 24 weeks, commonly called "babytalk." Detailed analysis of 1 minute of spontaneous babytalk with an 8-week infant shows that the poetic texture of the mother’s speech—specifically its use of metrics, phonetics, and foregrounding—helps to shape and direct the baby’s attention, as it also coordinates the partners’ emotional communication. We hypothesize that (...) the ability to respond to poetic features of language is present as early as the first few weeks of life and that this ability attunes cognitive and affective capacities in ways that provide a foundation for the skills at work in later aesthetic production and response. By linking developmental social processes with formal cognitive aspects of art, we challenge predominant views in evolutionary psychology that literary art is a superfluous byproduct of adaptive evolutionary mechanisms or primarily an ornament created by sexual selection. (shrink)

Amid the current COVID-19 crisis, everyone has been called upon to offer assistance. What can historians contribute? One obvious approach is to draw on our knowledge of the history of epidemics and proclaim the lessons of history. But does history offer clear lessons? To make their expertise relevant, some historians assert that there are enduring patterns in how societies respond to all epidemics that can inform our experiences today. Others argue that there are informative analogies between specific past epidemics and (...) our present crisis, for instance between COVID-19 and prior outbreaks of SARS or influenza. Both strategies can be pursued, but each must be done with care. It is certainly possible to map COVID-19 onto the classic dramatic structure of an epidemic, but we cannot yet know how it will end, a failure of prognostication that constrains the advice we can offer. It is likewise possible to draw on the history of medical therapeutics and public health interventions to identify the risks we face of both underuse and overuse of our remedies, but we cannot yet judge whether our current commitment to heroic social distancing is warranted. While historians can offer insight, we must temper our contributions with humility. (shrink)

_Moral Theory_ sets out the basic system used to solve moral problems, the system that consequentialists deride as 'traditional morality'. The central concepts, principles and distinctions of traditional morality are explained and defended: rights; justice; the good; virtue; the intention/foresight distinction; the acts/omissions distinction; and, centrally, the fundamental value of human life.

We examined the efficacy of including a research intermediary (RI) during the consent process in reducing participants' perceptions of coercion to enroll in a research study. Eighty-four drug court clients being recruited into an ongoing study were randomized to receive a standard informed consent process alone (standard condition) or with an RI (intermediary condition). Before obtaining consent, RIs met with clients individually to discuss remaining concerns. Findings provided preliminary evidence that RIs reduced client perceptions that their participation might influence how (...) clinical and judicial staff view them. This suggests that using RIs may improve participant autonomy in clinical studies. (shrink)

In response to recent corporate ethical and financial disasters there has been increased pressure on business schools to improve their teaching of corporate ethics. Accreditation bodies, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), now require member institutions to develop the ethical awareness of business students, either through a dedicated subject or an integrated coverage of ethics across the curriculum. This paper describes an institutional approach to the incorporation of a comprehensive multi-disciplinary ethics framework into the business (...) curriculum. We discuss important implications for the assessment of ethics within institutional assurance practices, and address critical issues related to the support of academics whenrequired to incorporate new ethics material within their subject which may be outside their field of expertise. As an example, the successful application of the framework within the marketing discipline is presented and discussed. (shrink)

l. ln `“Time, Successive Addition. and Kn/uni Cosmological Arguments," Graham Oppy accuses supporters ofthe KCA of being committed to a strict Hnitist metaphysics. lfthis is supposed to mean that we deny continua in nature, that is quite wrong. All it means is that we deny the existence of actual intinities. ln fact, Oppy protesses not to be tackling that question but throughout his paper he suggests or implies that the KCA falls down on this score.

As an undergraduate at the University of Melbourne in the 1980s, I recall a story that used to circulate to the effect that Australian philosophers were realists (the term prefixed by the obligatory adjective "hard-headed") because we lived in a harsh, sunlit environment where no misty meadow or morning fog obscured the objective reality of a mind-independent physical universe.

Extant research suggests that supportive work–family policies promote gender equality in the workplace and in the household. Yet, evidence indicates that these policies generally have stronger effects on women’s preferences and behaviors than men’s. In this article, we draw on survey-experimental data to examine how young, unmarried men’s gender ideologies and perceptions of normative masculinity may moderate the effect of supportive work–family policy interventions on their preferences for structuring their future work and family life. Specifically, we examine whether men’s prescriptive (...) beliefs about what work–family arrangements most people ought to prefer and whether men’s descriptive beliefs about what work–family arrangements most of their male peers actually do prefer influence their responses to supportive policies. Our analysis shows that men’s responses to supportive work–family policy interventions are highly dependent upon their beliefs about what their male peers actually want, rather than on their beliefs about what others should want. Specifically, men who believe that their male peers ideally want gender-egalitarian or counternormative relationships are themselves more likely to prefer a progressive relationship structure when supportive work–family policies are in place. These findings provide novel support for sociological theories of masculinity and hold important implications for designing policies that promote gender equality in the workplace and at home. (shrink)