Charles Darwin and C. Lloyd Morgan forward two influential principles of cognitive ethological inference that yield conflicting results about the extent of continuity in the cognitive traits of humans and other animals. While these principles have been interpreted as reflecting commitments to different senses of parsimony, in fact, both principles result from the same vera causa inferential strategy, according to which “We ought to admit no more causes of natural things, than such as are both true and sufficient to explain (...) their appearances”. Instead, the conflict stems from Darwin’s and Morgan’s views about the true causes of human psychology. Darwin holds a thoroughly Humean philosophy of the human mind, from which he infers significant continuity between human and animal minds. In contrast, Morgan argues that Humean cognitive mechanisms cannot account for a class of uniquely human behaviors, and therefore, he concludes that there is a significant discontinuity between human and animal cognition. This historical debate is informative for current controversies in comparative psychology. (shrink)

I analyze two recent parsimony arguments that have been offered to break the current impasse in the chimpanzee mindreading controversy, the ‘logical problem’ argument from Povinelli, Penn, and Vonk, and Sober's attempt to apply model selection criteria in support of the mindreading hypothesis. I argue that Sober's approach fails to adequately rebut the ‘logical problem’. However, applying model selection criteria to chimpanzees' own mental models of behavior does yield a response to the ‘logical problem’ and reveals an adaptive advantage of (...) mindreading models and a potential solution to a paradox raised by Whiten. (shrink)

Technologies for mitigating and adapting to climate change are inherently political. Their development, diffusion and deployment will have uneven impacts within and across national borders. Bringing the governance of climate technologies under democratic control is imperative but impeded by the global scale of governance and its polycentric nature. This article draws on innovative theorising in the deliberative democracy tradition to map possibilities for global democratic governance of climate technologies. It is argued that this domain is not beyond the reach of (...) democracy. Civil society has a unique and expanded role to play in generating democratic legitimacy by fostering public deliberation; translating and transmitting concepts, ideas and messages; and promoting and facilitating deliberative accountability. (shrink)

In South Africa, disability grant allocation has been under review and tensions are evident in government rhetoric stressing welfare provision on the one hand, and encouraging on the other. This ambiguity is traced down to the level of grant negotiations between doctors and in a psychiatry clinic in Khayelitsha. Here embodies the distress associated with harsh circumstances and is deemed by supplicants as sufficient to secure a grant. The paper illustrates how national discourses influence the presentation and experience of suffering (...) and the way in which doctors mediate diagnoses. The implications of local understandings of for expectations of the post-apartheid state are explored. (shrink)

German philosophers and political thinkers of the last century – Jaspers, Arendt and Strauss prominent among them – express shared frustration with the modern situation and candid assessments of its dangers. Jaspers reflects on the atomic age and the modern dissolution of values; Arendt criticizes the bureaucratic machinery of modern society as anti-political; and Strauss expresses distrust of modern logics of science and history as tending towards historical forgetfulness. In this paper, I examine the formative effects of these tendencies in (...) relation to emotional and epistemic considerations of identity and the social and cultural relations which frame them. I argue that, in their audacity to engage with modern crisis in global terms, Jaspers, Arendt and Strauss provide thoughtful perspectives on a thoughtless age, perspectives not only German but germane. (shrink)

Several major breakthroughs in the history of physics have been prompted not by new empirical data but by thought experiments. James Robert Brown and John Norton have developed accounts of how thought experiments can yield such advances. Brown argues that knowledge gained via thought experiments demands a Platonic explanation; thought experiments for Brown are a window into the Platonic realm of the laws of nature. Norton argues that thought experiments are just cleverly disguised inductive or deductive arguments, so no new (...) account of their epistemology is needed. In this paper, I argue that although we do not need to invoke any Platonic insight to explain thought experimentation, Norton’s eliminativist account fails to capture the unique epistemological importance of thought experiments qua thought experiments. I then present my own account, according to which thought experiments are a particular type of inductive inference that is uniquely suited to generate new breakthroughs. (shrink)

Peter Dews explores some of the most urgent problems confronting contemporary European thought: the status of the subject, the ethical dimensions of Critical ...

This paper discusses health policy and systems research in complex and rapidly changing contexts. It focuses on ethical issues at stake for researchers working with government policy makers to provide evidence to inform major health systems change at scale, particularly when the dynamic nature of the context and ongoing challenges to the health system can result in unpredictable outcomes. We focus on situations where ‘country ownership’ of HSR is relatively well established and where there is significant involvement of local researchers (...) and close ties and relationships with policy makers are often present. We frame our discussion around two country case studies with which we are familiar, namely China and South Africa and discuss the implications for conducting ‘embedded’ research. We suggest that reflexivity is an important concept for health system researchers who need to think carefully about positionality and their normative stance and to use such reflection to ensure that they can negotiate to retain autonomy, whilst also contributing evidence for health system change. A research process informed by the notion of reflexive practice and iterative learning will require a longitudinal review at key points in the research timeline. Such review should include the convening of a deliberative process and should involve a range of stakeholders, including those most likely to be affected by the intended and unintended consequences of change. (shrink)

The theory-theory of human uniqueness posits that the capacity to theorize, in a way strongly analogous to theorizing in scientific practice, was a key innovation in the hominid lineage and was responsible for many of our unique cognitive traits. One of the central arguments that its proponents have used to support the claim that animals are not theorists, the logical problem, bears strong similarities to Hempel's theoretician's dilemma, which purports to show that theories are unnecessary. This similarity threatens to undermine (...) both the claim that theorizing serves a unique, adaptive role in human cognition and our ability to test for the presence of theories. I examine two historical responses to the theoretician's dilemma and argue that they open up strategies for experimentally testing for theoretical ability in other animals. (shrink)

Children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) are at risk for neurocognitive sequelae, including impaired attention functioning. The specific nature of the cognitive deficit varies; current literature underscores early age of diabetes diagnosis and increased disease duration as primary risk factors for this neurocognitive decline. Forty-three children with T1DM were evaluated for Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptomatology using the MOXO continuous performance test (MOXO-CPT) performed during a routine outpatient evaluation. The study cohort demonstrated a significant decline in all four (...) domains of attention functioning. The effect was most pronounced with early age at T1DM diagnosis, a longer disease duration and with poorer glycemic control (represented by higher HbA1c values). With increased disease duration (of 5 plus years), acute hyperglycemia was associated with inattention in the real-time setting. These findings highlight the need for routine screening of neurocognitive function in children with T1DM so that early intervention can be employed during this crucial period of cognitive development. (shrink)

Background Previous research on informed consent for research in psychiatric patients has centered on disorders that affect comprehension and appreciation of risks. Little has been written about consent to research in those subjects with Borderline Personality Disorder, a prevalent and disabling condition. Discussion Despite apparently intact cognition and comprehension of risks, a borderline subject may deliberately choose self-harm in order to fulfill abnormal psychological needs, or due to suicidality. Alternatively, such a subject may refuse enrollment due to transference or the (...) desire to harm him or herself. Such phenomena could be precipitated or prevented by the interpersonal dynamics of the informed consent encounter. Summary Caution should be exercised in obtaining informed consent for research from subjects with Borderline Personality Disorder. A literature review and recommendations for future research are discussed. (shrink)

The profession of psychology is one of many entities affected by the current economic recession. The question of what to do when clients cannot pay agreed-upon charges will need to be answered. Ethical issues related to setting the fee for psychotherapy, insurance coverage, abandonment, pro bono psychotherapy, and lack of resources are addressed in light of the 2002 American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct and other relevant literature. The impact of the Mental Health Parity Act (...) on the financial complexities that professionals in psychology now face is also discussed. Several recommendations are made for psychologists, calling them to be proactive in their communities, to be advocates for their clients, and to critically evaluate their financial practices. (shrink)

I evaluate the plausibility of explanatory elitism, the view that a good scientific explanation of an outcome will show that it was highly probable. I consider an argument from Michael Strevens that elitism is the only view that can account for the historical acceptance of probabilistic theories in physics. I argue that biology provides better test cases for evaluating elitism and conclude that theories in that domain were favored in virtue of conferring correct, and not necessarily high, probabilities on outcomes.

The probability that the fitter of two alleles will increase in frequency in a population goes up as the product of N (the effective population size) and s (the selection coefficient) increases. Discovering the distribution of values for this product across different alleles in different populations is a very important biological task. However, biologists often use the product Ns to define a different concept; they say that drift “dominates” selection or that drift is “stronger than” selection when Ns is much (...) smaller than some threshold quantity (e.g., ½) and that the reverse is true when Ns is much larger than that threshold. We argue that the question of whether drift dominates selection for a single allele in a single population makes no sense. Selection and drift are causes of evolution, but there is no fact of the matter as to which cause is stronger in the evolution of any given allele. (shrink)

A central task of developmental psychology and philosophy of science is to show how humans learn radically new concepts. Famously, Fodor has argued that such learning is impossible if concepts have definitional structure and all learning is hypothesis testing. We present several learning processes that can generate novel concepts. They yield transformations of the fundamental feature space, generating new similarity structures which can underlie conceptual change. This framework provides a tractable, empiricist-friendly account that unifies and shores up various strands of (...) the neo-Quinean approach to conceptual development. (shrink)

In early 2020, Sobeys—one of Canada’s largest food retailers—partnered with Infarm Indoor Vertical Farming to install hydroponic vertical farming units in their retail locations. This partnership aims to build a resilient agri-food ecosystem in the face of climate change. Infarm is one of few vertical farming start-ups to reach ‘unicorn’ status in the recent boom of venture capital-backed urban farming solutions. Working to mitigate the climate crisis is critical, but I take venture capital as the spokesperson for green technologies as (...) intuitively strange. Actor-network theory is a powerful tool for describing networks in which modern technical objects are embedded. By mapping the nodes of Infarm’s actor-network and analyzing how and by what the expertise of a ‘black-boxed’ vertical farm is negotiated, we can identify obligatory points of passage that render the epistemology of the network durable. Ultimately, Infarm’s vertical farming practice and its climate change mitigation logics are moulded by venture capital and its biopolitical epistemology of valuation—a way of thinking that conceptualizes ‘life’, biology and, therefore, the climate in terms of political economy. (shrink)

This book deals with the need to rethink the aims and methods of contemporary linguistics. Orthodox linguists' discussions of linguistic form fail to exemplify how language users become language makers. Integrationist theory is used here as a solution to this basic problem within general linguistics. The book is aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, comprising those engaged in study, teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences, including linguistics, philosophy, sociology and psychology.

This paper demonstrates how British Quakers, between 1870 and 1914, attempted to understand and debate the issue of vivisection through the lens of the Quaker peace testimony. Drawing on primary source materials, the article argues that these Friends were able to agitate for radical legislative and social change using virtue ethics as their framework. The paper further suggests that the moral parameters of the Quaker testimony for peace expanded briefly in this period to include interspecies as well as intraspecies engagement. (...) Friends accomplished this by arguing that humans could not engage in vivisection—a “moral disease” just like slavery and war—without risking individual and social virtue. Friends were able to call for radical change in society without arguing for ethical egalitarianism. Hierarchy was implicit in their virtue ethic, but this did not hinder their creation of a forward-thinking stance on human-animal relations. (shrink)

There is always a debate around consent in the context of research. Given the expansion of different approaches to qualitative research within dementia care, there is increasing consideration around consent in this context; particularly in research concerning the experiences of living with dementia and the care of persons with dementia. Specifically there is a drive to directly involve persons with dementia as they offer specific expertise concerning living with dementia. Additionally, capacity legislation strengthens the case for ensuring that persons with (...) dementia are actively enabled to make their own decisions for as long as possible. This paper discusses an approach and method that can enable more persons who are living with dementia to participate in some types of research should they want to. Currently, most researchers rely on an extension of the traditional competency-based informed consent method and/or proxy consent or assent. However, related to the development of so-called person-centred and participatory research in dementia, there are now a number of academic publications on approaches and practical methods of ‘inclusionary’ consent. This paper considers the broader contextual influences on inclusionary consent and outlines the key aspects of such approaches based on the development of one specific method for including persons with dementia in consent processes. The method is based on the premise that, for persons with a dementia, informed consent becomes increasingly redundant and consequently exclusionary to them as persons. And even where capacity is said to no longer exist, persons with dementia are often able to make choices and make known their preferences about participating in research where the consent process is made specifically dementia-sensitive. Ethics committees can facilitate researchers both by supporting them when they need to and want to include persons with dementia in gerontological research and by challenging them to ensure that participation is genuine and starts with process consent. (shrink)

Task shifting is increasingly used to address human resource shortages impacting HIV service delivery in low- and middle-income countries. By shifting basic tasks from higher- to lower-trained cadres, such as Community Health Workers, task shifting can reduce overhead costs, improve community outreach, and provide efficient scale-up of essential treatments like antiretroviral therapies. Although there is rich evidence outlining positive outcomes that CHWs bring into HIV programs, important questions remain over their place in service delivery. These challenges often reflect concerns over (...) whether CHWs can mitigate HIV through a means that does not overlook the ethical and practical constraints that undergird their work. Ethical and practical guidance thus needs to become the cornerstone of CHW deployment. This paper analyzes such challenges through the lens of Ethical Principlism. We examined papers identifying substantive and ethical challenges impacting CHWs as they provide HIV services in low- and middle-income contexts. To do this, we analyzed papers written in English and published from year 2000 or later. These articles were identified using MEDLINE, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and Google Scholar databases. In total, 465 articles were identified, 78 of which met our inclusion criteria. Article reference lists and grey literature were also examined. CHWs experience specific challenges while carrying out their duties, such as conducting emotionally- and physically-demanding tasks with often inadequate training, supervision and compensation. CHWs have also been poorly integrated into health systems, which not only impacts quality of care, but can hinder their prospects for promotion and lead to CHW disempowerment. As we argue, these challenges can be addressed if a set of ethical principles is prioritized, which specifically entail the principles of respect for persons, justice, beneficence, proportionality and cultural humility. CHWs play a crucial role in HIV service delivery, yet the ethical challenges that can accompany their work cannot be overlooked. By prioritizing ethical principles, policymakers and program implementers can better ensure that CHWs are combatting HIV through a means that does not exploit or take their critical role within service delivery for granted. (shrink)

This timely book by philosopher Peter Dews explores the idea of evil, one of the most problematic terms in the contemporary moral vocabulary. Surveys the intellectual debate on the nature of evil over the past two hundred years Engages with a broad range of discourses and thinkers, from Kant and the German Idealists, via Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, to Levinas and Adorno Suggests that the concept of moral evil touches on a neuralgic point in western culture Argues that, despite the widespread (...) abuse and political manipulation of the term ‘evil’, we cannot do without it Concludes that if we use the concept of evil, we must acknowledge its religious dimension. (shrink)

In modern societies entrepreneurship and innovation are widely seen as key sources of economic growth and welfare increases. Yet entrepreneurial innovation has also meant losses and hardships for some members of society: it is destructive of some stakeholders’ wellbeing even as it creates new wellbeing among other stakeholders. Both the positive benefits and negative externalities of innovation are problematic because entrepreneurs initiate new ventures before their private profitability and/or social costs can be fully recognized. In this paper we consider three (...) analytical frameworks within which these issues might be examined: pre-commitments, contractarianism, and an entrepreneurial framework. We conclude that the intersection of stakeholder theory and entrepreneurial innovation is a potentially rich arena for research. (shrink)

Consider the principle that, given two actions A and B, where A affects some number of (merely) possibly sentient individuals (e.g., shrimp) and B affects some number of clearly sentient individuals (e.g., humans), A and B are morally equivalent if their expected values are equivalent. This recently defended principle can have radical implications. This article considers alternatives to this principle that are based on two kinds of risk aversion—difference-making risk aversion and ambiguity aversion. By rejecting the symmetry between probability and (...) value, it’s possible to reach more intuitive conclusions. (shrink)

Several recent arguments by philosophers of biology have challenged the traditional view that evolutionary factors, such as drift and selection, are genuine causes of evolutionary outcomes. In the case of drift, advocates of the statistical theory argue that drift is merely the sampling error inherent in the other stochastic processes of evolution and thus denotes a mathematical, rather than causal, feature of populations. This debate has largely centered around one particular model of drift, the Wright–Fisher model, and this has contributed (...) to the plausibility of the statisticalists’ arguments. However, an examination of alternative, predictively inequivalent models shows that drift is a genuine cause that can be manipulated to change population outcomes. This case study illustrates the influence of methodological assumptions on ontological judgments, particularly the pernicious effect of focusing on a particular model at the expense of others and confusing its assumptions and idealizations for true claims about the phenomena being modeled. (shrink)

This paper is presented as a performance between the two authors who are discussing the notion of daydreaming as a transitional space between their research interests in dreams and the semantic associations of conscious thought. The first half concerns the logical, rational awake mind when applied to an understanding of daydreaming as a bridge between one state and another. It investigates the idea of the interactive interface as a parallel with the daydream where both enable a middle ground, or safe (...) space for crossing-over. The difficulty highlighted through the performative reading of the paper is to keep focus without slipping into the interstitial state of a daydream. The paper gently drifts towards the second half, which explores understanding of dreamstates and the neuroscientific models of the unconscious brain. (shrink)

The constructs of motivation (or needs, motives, etc.) to explain higher-order behavior have burgeoned in psychology. In this article, we critically evaluate such high-level motivation constructs that many researchers define as causal determinants of behavior. We identify a fundamental issue with this predominant view of motivation, which we call the black-box problem. Specifically, high-level motivation constructs have been considered as causally instigating a wide range of higher-order behavior, but this does not explain what they actually are or how behavioral tendencies (...) are generated. The black-box problem inevitably makes the construct ill-defined and jeopardizes its theoretical status. To address the problem, we discuss the importance of mental computational processes underlying motivated behavior. Critically, from this perspective, motivation is not a unitary construct that causes a wide range of higher-order behavior – it is an emergent property that people construe through the regularities of subjective experiences and behavior. The proposed perspective opens new avenues for future theoretical development, that is, the examination of how motivated behavior is realized through mental computational processes. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Notes.

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 2 Seiten: 239-266.