In this paper we discuss three different kinds of disagreement that have been, or could reasonably be, characterized as deep disagreements. Principle level disagreements are disagreements over the truth of epistemic principles. Sub-principle level deep disagreements are disagreements over how to assign content to schematic norms. Finally, framework-level disagreements are holistic disagreements over meaning not truth, that is over how to understand networks of epistemic concepts and the beliefs those concepts compose. Within the context of each of these kinds of (...) disagreement it is not possible for the parties to the dispute to rationally persuade one another through only offering epistemic reasons for their conflicting points of view. However, in spite of the inability to rationally persuade, we explore how it may nevertheless be possible to rationally navigate each of these varieties of deep disagreement. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to Marcello Di Bello’s criticisms of the ‘normic account’ of the criminal standard of proof. In so doing, I further elaborate on what the normic account predicts about certain significant legal categories of evidence, including DNA and fingerprint evidence and eyewitness identifications.

The principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium states implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. In personal, social, and economic exchange, as studied in two-person games, cooperation exceeds the prediction of traditional game theory. This book relates these two findings to field studies and applications and integrates them with the main themes of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the thoughts of F. (...) A. Hayek. (shrink)

In human conscious experience, many features are present in combination: objects are presented through the senses, information from different sensory modalities is integrated, events are marked wit...

Birch, Ginsburg, and Jablonka suggest that Unlimited Associative Learning is a “transition marker” in the evolutionary process that produced consciousness, and organizes research by tying together a range of “hallmarks” of consciousness. I argue that the features they recognize as “hallmarks” are indeed important in the evolution of consciousness, but UAL may have a more limited role.

The scandals of the 1980s, extending into the 1990s, came as a profound shock to Australians and New Zealanders. Both countries have prided themselves – somewhat smugly and naively – on being open, fair and honest societies. So it was very disillusioning to see both corruption and gross dereliction of duty exposed in virtually every sphere of public life. Perhaps the most positive outcome, however, amidst an almost daily diet of amazing revelations, has been the ability of the system – (...) and especially the judiciary and the media – to expose and deal with corruption even at the highest level.Following an extensive survey and literature review, it is clear that there is now widespread awareness of the need for reform in many areas of public administration, corporate governance and professional behaviour. However, a continuing cause for concern is the lack of leadership in identifying and addressing complex ethical dilemmas, particularly in the areas of conflict of interest and disclosure. (shrink)

Following the International Women's Year in 1975, a group of men and women met every month for a year at the home of psychoanalyst Edith Weigert to reflect on what was then called the "psychology of women." Recently, a few members of that original group, joined by several others, began a seminar on gender and psychoanalysis with the goal of reexamining old and new writings infeminism, psychoanalysis, and related fields. The nine essays in this book are a result of those (...) discussions. Written by distinguished and varied contributors, they explore the complex relationship between feminism and psychoanalysis and address broader questions of gender. Psychiatry and the Humanities, Volume 14. (shrink)

As artificial intelligence becomes ubiquitous, it will be increasingly involved in novel, morally significant situations. Thus, understanding what it means for a machine to be morally responsible is important for machine ethics. Any method for ascribing moral responsibility to AI must be intelligible and intuitive to the humans who interact with it. We argue that the appropriate approach is to determine how AIs might fare on a standard account of human moral responsibility: a Strawsonian account. We make no claim that (...) our Strawsonian approach is either the only one worthy of consideration or the obviously correct approach, but we think it is preferable to trying to marry fundamentally different ideas of moral responsibility into a single cohesive account. Under a Strawsonian framework, people are morally responsible when they are appropriately subject to a particular set of attitudes—reactive attitudes—and determine under what conditions it might be appropriate to subject machines to this same set of attitudes. Although the Strawsonian account traditionally applies to individual humans, it is plausible that entities that are not individual humans but possess these attitudes are candidates for moral responsibility under a Strawsonian framework. We conclude that weak AI is never morally responsible, while a strong AI with the right emotional capacities may be morally responsible. (shrink)

In this paper I intend to classify the modes of temporality and to place History within the Sciences of Spirit according to Edith Stein's thought. Its specific treatment refers temporality and History to lays of the person (body, psyche, spirit). While the passives associations of immanent time correspond to corporal and psychic levels of the person, the historical succession is made possible by the intentions which derive from the spirit. And thus as history consists of a unity not reducible to (...) conscious intentions, so the person is also a unity not entirely transparent to itself. (shrink)

Although The Origin of Species contained just a single visual illustration, Charles Darwin's other books, from his monograph on barnacles in the early 1850s to his volume on earthworms in 1881, were copiously illustrated by well-known artists and engravers. In this 2006 book, Jonathan Smith explains how Darwin managed to illustrate the unillustratable - his theories of natural selection - by manipulating and modifying the visual conventions of natural history, using images to support the claims made in his texts. (...) Moreover, Smith looks outward to analyse the relationships between Darwin's illustrations and Victorian visual culture, especially the late-Victorian debates about aesthetics, and shows how Darwin's evolutionary explanation of beauty, based on his observations of colour and the visual in nature, were a direct challenge to the aesthetics of John Ruskin. The many illustrations reproduced here enhance this fascinating study of a little known aspect of Darwin's lasting influence on literature, art and culture. (shrink)

One of the central debates in current analytic philosophy of time is whether time consists only of relations of simultaneity, earlier and later (B-relations), or whether it also consists of properties of futurity, presentness and pastness (A-properties). If time consists only of B-relations, then all temporal determinations are permanent; if at anyone time it is the case that birth is later than Homer's birth, then it is ever after the case that Dante's birth is later than Homer's. The temporal position (...) of Dante's birth vis a vis Homer's is permanently fixed. Moreover, if B-relations are the only temporal determinations possessed by events, then each event, regardless of when it occurs, is equally as real as each other event. Each event sustains B-relations to other events, and thus in respect of its temporal determinations is ontologically undistinguished from each other event. Why should Dante's birth be "more real" than Homer's just because it is later than it? But if time also consists of A-properties, then some events are ontologically distinguished by virtue of their temporal determinations; the events that are or exist in the tensed sense, the events that possess the A-property of present- ness, have a reality not possessed by other events. All other events are no longer (are past) or are not yet (are future), and in this respect are deprived of the being, the presentness, possessed by the events that are. The A-properties possessed by events are impermanent temporal determinations; if an event possesses a certain A-property at one time, then there is another time at which the event will not have that A-property but some other A-property instead. First an event is future, then it is present, and finally it is past. This shows that the issue between the defenders of the B-theory and the defenders of the A-theory is of fundamental ontological importance. But analytic philosophers discuss this issue ,almost exclusively in terms of the language we use to describe the temporal determinations of events. They engage in what Quine calls "semantic ascent", i.e., redirecting their concern from the "things themselves" to the words we use to describe things. Defenders of the A-theory argue that tensed sentences and their tokens, sentences containing tensed copulas like "is", "was" and "will be" and adverbs like "now" and "at present", are untranslatable or unanalyzable into tenseless sentences about B- related events, and therefore that the tensed copulas and ad- verbs refer to A-properties of events. Defenders of the B-theory argue that tensed sentences or their tokens are translatable or analyzable into tenseless sentences about B-related events, and hence that the tensed sentences or tokens refer only to B-related events. While this semantic ascent is not without its advantages, it seems to me that additional light can be thrown on this subject if it is approached from a nonlinguistic phenomenological perspective. This approach is all the more needed since this particular issue in the philosophy of time has not been explicitly addressed by any of the practitioners of "phenomenology" (in the wide sense), such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty .Indeed, phenomenologists have generally seemed to be unaware of the debate between the A-theorists and B-theorists. This issue has been a concern exclusively of analytic philosophers (with the exception perhaps of the early 20th century British Idealist John McTaggart.) In this paper, I will point to a number of phenomenological facts that are pertinent to the debate. These facts all favor the A-theory. I shall make the case that the basic phenomenological truths about time simply cannot be accounted for by the B-theory . (shrink)

In his critique of the therapeutic, Taylor argues that therapy fails to engage with the ethical and spiritual significance of human suffering. Therapy’s denial of ethics is representative of a wide...

ABSTRACT The destruction of the environment is a matter for moral concern and cannot be halted in the long term by appeals to human utility. However, the inadequacy and naïvety of humanist styles of ethical argument become apparent when attempts are made to extend them to environmental issues. They usually abstract certain supposed features of natural objects, e.g. sentience, and reify these as essential characteristics which operate to carry or ground ethical values. These arguments necessarily lead to the exclusion of (...) objects which are, in fact, ethically valued or entail an unacceptably expansive egalitarianism. Such egalitarianism is often followed by a return to human‐centred prejudices opposed to the originally stated aims of ‘biocentric’ethicists like Taylor. Similarly, those physical and ecological holisms which rely not upon shared ‘natural’features, but upon sharing in nature itself cannot solve this dilemma as they are incapable of explaining differential ethical values. The attempt to place boundaries on moral considerability should be abandoned in favour of an ethical pluralism which places emphasis on the context of valuations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Berlin and Strauss shared surprisingly compatible views about four matters of great importance. The first is the need for political philosophy, which Berlin traced to value pluralism and Strauss to the inherent incompleteness and contestability of our knowledge of politics, due to its comprehensive nature. Second, Berlin and Strauss each opposed social-scientific positivism: Berlin, because it contradicts human freedom and responsibility; Strauss, because it depends on an untenable and nihilistic distinction between facts and values. Third, both philosophers wished to (...) place, in the ground currently occupied by positivist political science, the study of statecraft, embodied in such figures as Churchill and FDR. Finally, Berlin and Strauss agreed on what characterizes such statesmen: an intuitive, pretheoretical practical judgment of political particulars. (shrink)

Following some years of declining health, Professor Maurice Crosland passed away on 30 August 2020 at the age of eighty-nine. Author of four influential scholarly monographs, Maurice played major roles in the British Society for the History of Science during the 1960s and 1970s as an active Member of Council, Honorary Editor of the British Journal for the History of Science and Honorary President of the society. His academic career began in 1963 with his appointment to a lectureship in the (...) History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. In 1974 the by-then Reader in History of Science secured a £100,000 Nuffield Foundation Grant with which to establish, for the first time, a dedicated history-of-science group at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Appointed Professor of the History of Science and Director of the Unit for the History, Philosophy and Social Relations of Science, his objectives during the five-year Nuffield-funded period were to focus on promoting the research activities of the new group, build up much-needed library resources in a university which was barely ten years old, and effect a transition to a research and teaching Unit that would offer modules to undergraduates in each of the three principal faculties. His own research centred on French science during and after the Napoleonic period, with particular emphasis on the history of chemistry and the formal institutions and informal networks of Parisian science. In 1984 his work was recognized with the American Chemical Society's award of the Dexter Prize, a rare achievement for a British scholar. (shrink)

Integrated developmental and elemental information in teeth provide a unique framework for documenting breastfeeding histories, physiological disruptions, and neurotoxicant exposure in humans and our primate relatives, including ancient hominins. Here we detail our method for detecting the consumption of mothers’ milk and exploring health history through the use of laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS) mapping of sectioned nonhuman primate teeth. Calcium‐normalized barium and lead concentrations in tooth enamel and dentine may reflect milk and formula consumption with minimal modification during (...) subsequent tooth mineralization, particularly in dentine. However, skeletal resorption during severe illness, and bioavailable metals in nonmilk foods, can complicate interpretations of nursing behavior. We show that explorations of the patterning of multiple elements may aid in the distinction of these important etiologies. Targeted studies of skeletal chemistry, gastrointestinal maturation, and the dietary bioavailability of metals are needed to optimize these unique records of human health and behavior. (shrink)