Due to the severe impairments in intra- and interpersonal interaction and communication, dementia will be hypothesized as a social disorder. Despite the increasing societal relevance of dementia this aspect is surprisingly under-researched in phenomenological philosophy. First, the symptomatic disturbance of the dynamic relationship between orientation, language and memory in Alzheimer’s Dementia (AD) is analyzed with the tools of a phenomenological psychopathology in terms of a lifeworld account. Due to the severe impairments of AD, two therapeutic strategies are discussed: first, the (...) situation-specific strategy, which examines communication resources in the here and now in the face-to-face situation; second, the context-specific strategy, which examines whether habitūs can soften the disruption of contextual knowledge by making it accessible as a resource of meaning that informs and thus orients the here and now. The guiding question of this enquiry is how AD changes the social experience in intra- and interpersonal terms. (shrink)

In Consequentialism Reconsidered, Carlson strives to find a plausible formulation of the structural part of consequentialism. Key notions are analyzed, such as outcomes, alternatives and performability. Carlson argues that consequentialism should be understood as a maximizing rather than a satisficing theory, and as temporally neutral rather than future oriented. He also shows that certain moral theories cannot be reformulated as consequentialist theories. The relevant alternatives for an agent in a situation are taken to comprise all actions that they can perform (...) in the situation. The defense of this idea necessitates certain modifications to the standard consequentialist criteria of obligatoriness, rightness and wrongness. The problem of whether agents should adapt their actions to their own future actions is also addressed. Further, a conditional analysis of performability is suggested, and it is argued that particular actions should in this connection be regarded as `abstract' rather than `concrete'. The final chapter sketches a consequentialist theory for collective agents. (shrink)

The differences between critics and proponents of enhancement technologies are easily overblown. Both sides of this debate share the moral ideal of being “authentic” to oneself. They differ in how they prefer to understand authenticity, but even this difference is not as stark as it sometimes seems.

In this paper, I explore the prospects for risk-based arguments in favour of anti-natalism, which explain the wrongness of procreation in terms of wrongful risk-imposition on the resultant child. After considering and rejecting two risk-based arguments from the existing literature - David Benatar's and Matti Häyry's - I propose a more promising version that focuses on the lack of appropriate justification for imposing the risks of existence, namely, one that refers to the essential interests of the child on whom those (...) risks are imposed. The paper proceeds in four parts. In Part 2, I set the stage for my discussion by clarifying the basic structure of risk-based arguments and identifying some of their important features. In Parts 3-5, I consider three distinct risk-based arguments for anti-natalism and argue that only the third, justificatory argument has the potential to be successful. (shrink)

Is it wrong to bring new children into existence when there are so many existing children in need of parental care? Several philosophers have defended the view that prospective parents have a pro tanto​ duty to adopt rather than procreate as a means of fulfilling their interest in parenting. The most prominent argument for this view in the existing literature is the rescue-based argument, which derives an individual duty to adopt rather than procreate from a more general duty to rescue (...) or assist those in need. In this paper, I critically examine the rescue-based argument and explain why it fails. First, I argue that we do not necessarily have a duty to rescue in cases that resemble the global orphan crisis, where one’s intervention is merely sufficient to prevent serious harm to a potential victim. Second, I argue that even if we had such a duty, it would not necessarily generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate given the significant financial, emotional, and agency-related costs of adoption, particularly in current, non-ideal conditions. The upshot of these arguments is that the rescue-based argument can only generate a duty to adopt rather than procreate with respect to a relatively small constituency of orphaned children, many of whom are likely to be adopted anyway by willing volunteers. In the vast majority of cases, then, the rescue-based argument does not entail that it is wrong to create new children when there are already existing children in need of parental care. (shrink)

Beginning with the assumptions that genetic technology will make possible the enhancement of some significant human capacities and that our society will have self-evident reasons to pursue such enhancements, this essay suggests less evident reasons to proceed with extreme caution. The essay asks: Will we, in our attempts to enhance humans by reducing their subjection to chance and change, inadvertently impoverish them? It explores how technologies aimed at enhancement might affect the good that is our experience of some forms of (...) the beautiful and the excellent, the good that is relationships of care, and the good that is diversity across the life span. In the end, it speculates about the fundamental philosophical difference that underlies the disagreement between those who would tend to embrace a project to enhance human capacities and those who would tend to criticize such a project. (shrink)

While it is philosophically contested whether nonlinguistic animals can have conceptual capabilities, it is also philosophically contested whether one can even empirically test for such capabilities. I draw from Sellars’ work on psychological nominalism to develop an empirically tractable means of distinguishing between tasks that require conceptual capabilities and those that do not. Tasks that require conceptual capabilities are those that require awareness of abstract relations, whereas tasks that can be solved merely through Sellarsian picturing do not. I argue that (...) relational matching-to-sample tasks cannot be solved through picturing and therefore require awareness of the abstract relations of same and different. Crows and amazons have both been able to succeed at relational matching-to-sample tasks; therefore, there are at least some nonlinguistic animals that have conceptual capabilities. Finally, I consider the objection that one cannot attribute conceptual capabilities without also attributing knowledge, and Sellarsian conditions for knowledge are beyond the capabilities of any nonlinguistic animal. In response, I argue that Sellarsian conditions for knowledge only require an implicit grasp of the is/looks distinction and empirical work with chimpanzees on their understanding of the appearance/reality distinction demonstrates that they can meet this standard. Therefore, language is not necessary for meeting Sellarsian conditions for knowledge. (shrink)

I challenge a cornerstone of the Gettier debate: that a proposed analysis of the concept of knowledge is inadequate unless it entails that people don’t know in Gettier cases. I do so from the perspective of Carnap’s methodology of explication. It turns out that the Gettier problem per se is not a fatal problem for any account of knowledge, thus understood. It all depends on how the account fares regarding other putative counter examples and the further Carnapian desiderata of exactness, (...) fruitfulness and simplicity. Carnap proposed his methodology more than a decade before Gettier’s seminal paper appeared, making the present solution to the problem a candidate for being the least ad hoc proposal on the market, one whose independent standing cannot be questioned, among solutions that depart from the usual method of revising a theory of knowledge in the light of counterexamples. As an illustration of the method at work, I reconstruct reliabilism as an attempt to provide an explication of the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

A measure of coherence is said to be truth conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher likelihood of truth. Recent impossibility results strongly indicate that there are no (non-trivial) probabilistic coherence measures that are truth conducive. Indeed, this holds even if truth conduciveness is understood in a weak ceteris paribus sense (Bovens & Hartmann, 2003, Bayesian epistemology. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Olsson, 2005, Against coherence: Truth probability and justification. Oxford: (...) Oxford University Press). This raises the problem of how coherence could nonetheless be an epistemically important property. Our proposal is that coherence may be linked in a certain way to reliability. We define a measure of coherence to be reliability conducive if and only if a higher degree of coherence (as measured) results in a higher probability that the information sources are reliable. Restricting ourselves to the most basic case, we investigate which coherence measures in the literature are reliability conducive. It turns out that, while a number of measures fail to be reliability conducive, except possibly in a trivial and uninteresting sense, Shogenji’s measure and several measures generated by Douven and Meijs’s recipe are notable exceptions to this rule. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 7, Page 688-695, September 2021.

Why do corporations and wealthy philanthropists fund the human sciences? Examining the history of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), a private research institute founded in the early 1980s, this article shows that funders can find as much value in the social worlds of the sciences they sponsor as in their ideas. SFI became increasingly dependent on funding from corporations and libertarian business leaders in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, its intellectual work came to focus on the underlying (...) principles of adaptation, innovation, and decentralized coordination supposedly at work in ‘complex systems’ from biological ecosystems to markets and firms. This research cast the ideas of the libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek into a new scientific idiom. SFI also became a space where figures in business, media, academia, and politics could come to learn to see the world in a particular way—to acquire the subjectivity of what I call ‘the Santa Fe Institute libertarian’. At SFI, visitors did not simply learn the principles of neo-Hayekian complex system science. They came to see themselves as agents of social evolution, providing the spark that the free-market system needed to produce new technologies and new solutions to social problems without top-down political direction. For the Institute's corporate and libertarian financiers, SFI was not just a space where intellectuals described the world in favored ideological terms, but a space where elite actors became committed to the project of making a new political-economic order. (shrink)

This chapter considers the present account to be a sufficient response to the generality problem as an objection that specifically targets reliabilism. It identifies the main challenge for reliabilism in relation to the typing of belief‐forming processes. The chapter focuses on insights in cognitive science in a way that should make this response attractive to practitioners of naturalized epistemology, including Goldman himself. The most stimulating part of Conee and Feldman's attack can charitably be viewed as targeting the notion that the (...) reliabilist concepts of knowledge and justification are sufficiently similar to their folk counterparts. The chapter focuses for simplicity on the reliabilist theory of justification (RJ) and on Conee and Feldman's criticism as targeting the faithfulness of RJ with regard to everyday concept of justification. For the purposes of neutralizing Conee and Feldman's central challenge it was sufficient to give a purely descriptive account of how people type belief‐forming processes. (shrink)

The main trust of this article unfolds around the impasse of democratic politics today, marked by the fading belief in the presumably superior architecture of liberal democratic institutions to nurture emancipation on the one hand, and the seemingly inexorable rise of a variety of populist political movements on the other. The first part of the article focuses on the lure of autocratic populism. The second part considers how transforming neoliberal governance arrangements pioneered post-truth autocratic politics/policies in articulation with the imposition (...) of market rule and, in doing so, cleared the way for contemporary illiberal populisms. The third part considers the institutional configuration through which the democratic has been fundamentally transformed over the past few decades in the direction of a post-democratic constellation. The article concludes by arguing for the need to re-script emancipation as a process of political subjectivation unfolding trough a political act. (shrink)

The increasing strategic importance of environmental, social and ethical issues as well as related performance measures has spurred interest in corporate sustainability performance measurement and management systems. This paper focuses on the balanced scorecard, a performance measurement and management system aiming at balancing financial and non-financial as well as short and long-term measures. Modifications to the original BSC which explicitly consider environmental, social or ethical issues are often referred to as sustainability balanced scorecards. There is much scholarly discussion about SBSC (...) architecture and how it can be designed to relate performance dimensions, strategic objectives and the logical links among these elements. To synthesise the widely scattered research findings and publications on the SBSC, we conducted a thematic analysis based on a systematic literature review containing 69 relevant articles spanning a period of two decades. We found that sustainability-oriented modifications of the BSC architecture are motivated by instrumental, social/political or normative theoretical perspectives. Moreover, these modifications can be mapped with a typology of generic SBSC architectures. The first dimension of the typology describes the hierarchy between performance perspectives and strategic objectives and how it is related to the organisational value system. The second dimension describes how sustainability-related strategic objectives are integrated into SBSC performance perspectives and how this is related to corporate sustainability strategy. This study contributes to the development of the emerging SBSC literature and practice and, more generally, to research on corporate sustainability performance measurement and management. We conclude with a research agenda and implications for management. (shrink)

We develop a constructive version of nonstandard analysis, extending Bishop's constructive analysis with infinitesimal methods. A full transfer principle and a strong idealisation principle are obtained by using a sheaf-theoretic construction due to I. Moerdijk. The construction is, in a precise sense, a reduced power with variable filter structure. We avoid the nonconstructive standard part map by the use of nonstandard hulls. This leads to an infinitesimal analysis which includes nonconstructive theorems such as the Heine-Borel theorem, the Cauchy-Peano existence theorem (...) for ordinary differential equations and the exact intermediate-value theorem, while it at the same time provides constructive results for concrete statements. A nonstandard measure theory which is considerably simpler than that of Bishop and Cheng is developed within this context. (shrink)

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is an organization which seeks to identify the causes of human cancer. Per agent, such as betel quid or Human Papillomaviruses, they review the available evidence deriving from epidemiological studies, animal experiments and information about mechanisms (and other data). The evidence of the different groups is combined such that an overall assessment of the carcinogenicity of the agent in question is obtained. In this paper, we critically review the IARC’s carcinogenicity evaluations. First (...) we show that serious objections can be raised against their criteria and procedures – more specifically regarding the role of mechanistic knowledge in establishing causal claims. Our arguments are based on the problem of confounders, of the assessment of the temporal stability of carcinogenic relations, and of the extrapolation from animal experiments. Then we address a very important question, viz. how we should treat the carcinogenicity evaluations that were based on the current procedures. After showing that this question is important, we argue that an overall dismissal of the current evaluations would be too radical. Instead, we argue in favour of a stepwise re-evaluation of the current findings. (shrink)

Sheaf semantics is developed within a constructive and predicative framework, Martin‐Löf's type theory. We prove strong completeness of many sorted, first order intuitionistic logic with respect to this semantics, by using sites of provably functional relations.

The rise of technologies that can inexpensively sequence entire genomes means that researchers and clinicians have access to ever vaster stores of genomic data, some of which could be of great use to research participants or patients, and most of which, at least for today, will be of little, uncertain, or no use. Those facts are essential features of a new ethical territory we are now entering with genetics research. As we explore that territory, we should try to be as (...) clear as possible about the issues at hand. Clarity about the ethical issues that delineate this new territory requires that we be wary about too hastily importing into it concepts from the old territory. We want to suggest a way in which the term “incidental findings” can impede our ability to see clearly some of the most important issues we face. To show how that term can sometimes obscure more than it illuminates, we focus on how it is being deployed in the context of research. Although it may have been useful, when considering older forms of genetic research, to speak about researchers stumbling across clinically significant findings, and although that way of speaking has certainly not yet become wholly obsolete, it is ever less appropriate as the technology becomes ever more powerful. (shrink)

Knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. Many authors contend, however, that reliabilism is incompatible with this item of common sense. If a belief is true, adding that it was reliably produced doesn't seem to make it more valuable. The value of reliability is swamped by the value of truth. In Goldman and Olsson (2009), two independent solutions to the problem were suggested. According to the conditional probability solution, reliabilist knowledge is more valuable in virtue of being a stronger (...) indicator than mere true belief of future true belief. This article defends this solution against some objections. (shrink)

Background: Metaphors are often used within the context of ethics and healthcare but have hardly been explored in relation to moral reasoning. Objective: To describe a central set of metaphors in one case and to explore their contribution to moral reasoning. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 parents of a child suffering from the neurodegenerative disease CLN3. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and metaphors were analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and discussed about their analyses until they reached consensus. Ethical (...) considerations: Participants gave oral and written consent and their confidentiality and anonymity were respected. Findings: A central set of metaphors referred to the semantic field of the hands and arms and consisted of two central metaphors that existed in a dialectical relationship: grasping versus letting go. Participants used these metaphors to describe their child’s experiences, who had to “let go” of abilities, while “clinging” to structures and the relationship with their parent(s). They also used it to describe their own experiences: participants tried to “grab” the good moments with their child and had to “let go” of their child when (s)he approached death. Participants, in addition, “held” onto caring for their child while being confronted with the necessity to “let go” of this care, leaving it to professional caregivers. Discussion: The ethical analysis of the findings shows that thinking in terms of the dialectical relationship between “grasping” and “letting go” helps professional caregivers to critically think about images of good care for children with CLN3. It also helps them to bear witness to the vulnerable, dependent, and embodied nature of the moral self of children with CLN3 and their parents. Conclusion: Metaphorical reasoning may support the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in moral reasoning. Future studies should further explore the contribution of metaphorical reasoning to moral reasoning in other cases. (shrink)

We interpret intuitionistic theories of (iterated) strictly positive inductive definitions (s.p.-ID i′ s) into Martin-Löf's type theory. The main purpose being to obtain lower bounds of the proof-theoretic strength of type theories furnished with means for transfinite induction (W-type, Aczel's set of iterative sets or recursion on (type) universes). Thes.p.-ID i′ s are essentially the wellknownID i -theories, studied in ordinal analysis of fragments of second order arithmetic, but the set variable in the operator form is restricted to occur only (...) strictly positively. The modelling is done by constructivizing continuity notions for set operators at higher number classes and proving that strictly positive set operators are continuous in this sense. The existence of least fixed points, or more accurately, least sets closed under the operator, then easily follows. (shrink)

In 1982, the President's Commission produced its report on human gene therapy. One of that report's recommendations was to expand the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee to the National Institutes of Health to include a subcommittee on human gene therapy. In 1984, the Human Gene Therapy Subcommittee was established, and in 1989 it produced a document—“Points to Consider for Protocols for the Transfer of Recombinant DNA into Human Subjects”—that stated the RAC's position on what sorts of protocols it would approve.In assessing (...) the impact of the President's Commission report, Alexander Capron wrote,[t]he line [the report] drew between somatic cell and germ-line therapies has shaped subsequent discussions and policy formulation. Its conclusion … that somatic cell therapy resembles medical treatment is the basic premise of the RAC subcommittee's “Points to Consider,” while the Commission's view that ethical as well as technical barriers preclude present attempts to alter germ cells continues to be generally accepted by scientists and nonscientists alike. (shrink)

Discussions of information produced by genetics research are often guided by two mistaken theoretical moves. Enthusiasts tell us not to worry because genetic tinkering can alter only our body, never our soul; worriers suggest that discovering links between our behavior and our different bodies threatens important democratic ideas like moral equality. If we understand the body and soul to be inseparable and equality to be undiminished by difference, we can begin to take seriously the information produced by genetics research.

The class of points in a set-presented formal topology is a set, if all points are maximal. To prove this constructively a strengthening of the dependent choice principle to infinite well-founded trees is used.

All disciplines can count on a noble founder, and the representation of this founder as an authority is key in order to construe a discipline's identity. This book sheds light on how Plato and other authorities were represented in one of the most long-lasting traditions of all time. It leads the reader through exegesis and polemics, recovery of the past and construction of a philosophical identity. From Xenocrates to Proclus, from the sceptical shift to the re-establishment of dogmatism, from the (...) Mosaic of the Philosophers to the Neoplatonist Commentaries, the construction of authority emerges as a way of access to the core of the Platonist tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual (...) Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

The ethics of hope has often been understood as a conflict between duties: do not lie versus do not destroy hope. However, such a way of framing the ethics of hope may easily place healthcare professionals at the side of realism and patients at the side of hope. That leaves unexamined relational dimensions of hope. The objective of this study was to describe a relational ethics of hope based on the perspectives of palliative care patients, their family members and their (...) healthcare professionals. A qualitative longitudinal method based on narrative theories was used. Semi-structured interviews on hope were conducted with twenty-nine palliative care patients, nineteen friends or family members, and fifty-two healthcare professionals, which were recorded and transcribed. Data on hope were thematically analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and did member checking with participants. When participants spoke about hope, they referred to power and empowerment, like the powerful bonding of hope between patients and physicians. They also associated hope with the loss of hope and suffering. Several participating healthcare professionals tried to balance both sides, which involved acknowledgment of hope and suffering. Hope and power were reflected in the ethical concept of empowerment, whereas suffering and the loss of hope were reflected in the ethical concept of compassion. Empowerment and compassion can be balanced in solicitude. In conclusion, a relational ethics of hope requires solicitude, in which healthcare professionals are able to weigh empowerment and compassion within particular relationships. (shrink)

Stuart White argues that egalitarians need a diverse toolkit of policy proposals in order to move closer to a just economic system. In particular he argues that a policy of Basic Capital grants should be included in this toolkit along with a variety of other more familiar instruments such as unconditional Basic Income, welfare state services and income supports, and support for worker cooperatives. The various policies in the egalitarian toolkit, however, have implications for issues other than contributing to a (...) more just economic system. In particular, they have implications for the long term stability, transformation, or even transcendence, of capitalism as an economic system. In this article I will argue that unconditional Basic Income has a greater potential to erode capitalism than does Basic Capital. While both of these policies in the egalitarian toolkit may make the economic system statically more just, over time Basic Capital grants are likely to strengthen capitalism as the core structure of the economic system, whereas unconditional Basic Income has the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism. As part of a long-term project of human emancipation, therefore, unconditional Basic Income should have priority over Basic Capital. (shrink)

For over a century, scientists have sought to see through the protective shield of the human skull and into the living brain. Today, an array of technologies allows researchers and clinicians to create astonishingly detailed images of our brain's structure as well as colorful depictions of the electrical and physiological changes that occur within it when we see, hear, think and feel. These technologies—and the images they generate—are an increasingly important tool in medicine and science.Given the role that neuroimaging technologies (...) now play in biomedical research, both neuroscientists and nonexperts should aim to be as clear as possible about how neuroimages are made and what they can—and cannot—tell us. Add to this that neuroimages have begun to be used in courtrooms at both the determination of guilt and sentencing stages, that they are being employed by marketers to refine advertisements and develop new products, that they are being sold to consumers for the diagnosis of mental disorders and for the detection of lies, and that they are being employed in arguments about the nature (or absence) of powerful concepts like free will and personhood, and the need for citizens to have a basic understanding of how this technology works and what it can and cannot tell us becomes even more pressing. (shrink)