An astonishing volume and diversity of evidence is available for many hypotheses in the biomedical and social sciences. Some of this evidence—usually from randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—is amalgamated by meta-analysis. Despite the ongoing debate regarding whether or not RCTs are the ‘gold-standard’ of evidence, it is usually meta-analysis which is considered the best source of evidence: meta-analysis is thought by many to be the platinum standard of evidence. However, I argue that meta-analysis falls far short of that standard. Different meta-analyses (...) of the same evidence can reach contradictory conclusions. Meta-analysis fails to provide objective grounds for intersubjective assessments of hypotheses because numerous decisions must be made when performing a meta-analysis which allow wide latitude for subjective idiosyncrasies to influence its outcome. I end by suggesting that an older tradition of evidence in medicine—the plurality of reasoning strategies appealed to by the epidemiologist Sir Bradford Hill—is a superior strategy for assessing a large volume and diversity of evidence. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...) argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. 1 Introduction2 Biological Population, Broad and Narrow3 Difficulties with Narrow Biological Population Conditions3.1 Against the genealogical condition3.2 Against the conspecificity condition3.3 Against the proximity condition3.4 Against the typology condition4 Causal Connectivity5 Massively Multidimensional Population Constructs6 Population Uniqueness and Natural Selection6.1 Statisticalism and its discontents6.2 Price at what price?7 Conclusion. (shrink)

I defend a radical interpretation of biological populations—what I call population pluralism—which holds that there are many ways that a particular grouping of individuals can be related such that the grouping satisfies the conditions necessary for those individuals to evolve together. More constraining accounts of biological populations face empirical counter-examples and conceptual difficulties. One of the most intuitive and frequently employed conditions, causal connectivity—itself beset with numerous difficulties—is best construed by considering the relevant causal relations as ‘thick’ causal concepts. I (...) argue that the fine-grained causal relations that could constitute membership in a biological population are huge in number and many are manifested by degree, and thus we can construe population membership as being defined by massively multidimensional constructs, the differences between which are largely arbitrary. I end by showing that positions in two recent debates in theoretical biology depend on a view of biological populations at odds with the pluralism defended here. (shrink)

Some of a person's mental states have the power to represent real and imagined states of affairs: they have semantic properties. What Minds Can Do has two goals: to find a naturalistic or non-semantic basis for the representational powers of a person's mind, and to show that these semantic properties are involved in the causal explanation of the person's behaviour. In the process, this 1997 book addresses issues that are central to much contemporary philosophical debate. It will be of interest (...) to a wide range of readers in philosophy of mind and of language, cognitive science, and psychology. (shrink)

Currently, the most popular views about how to update de se or self-locating beliefs entail the one-third solution to the Sleeping Beauty problem.2 Another widely held view is that an agent‘s credences should be countably additive.3 In what follows, I will argue that there is a deep tension between these two positions. For the assumptions that underlie the one-third solution to the Sleeping Beauty problem entail a more general principle, which I call the Generalized Thirder Principle, and there are situations (...) in which the latter principle and the principle of Countable Additivity cannot be jointly satisfied. The most plausible response to this tension, I argue, is to accept both of these principles, and to maintain that when an agent cannot satisfy them both, she is faced with a rational dilemma. (shrink)

Harms of medical interventions are systematically underestimated in clinical research. Numerous factors—conceptual, methodological, and social—contribute to this underestimation. I articulate the depth of such underestimation by describing these factors at the various stages of clinical research. Before any evidence is gathered, the ways harms are operationalized in clinical research contributes to their underestimation. Medical interventions are first tested in phase 1 ‘first in human’ trials, but evidence from these trials is rarely published, despite the fact that such trials provide the (...) foundation for assessing the harm profile of medical interventions. If a medical intervention is deemed safe in a phase 1 trial, it is tested in larger phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. One way to think about the problem of underestimating harms is in terms of the statistical ‘power’ of a clinical trial—the ability of a trial to detect a difference of a certain effect size between the experimental group and the control group. Power is normally thought to be pertinent to detecting benefits of medical interventions. It is important, though, to distinguish between the ability of a trial to detect benefits and the ability of a trial to detect harms. I refer to the former as power-B and the latter as power-H. I identify several factors that maximize power-B by sacrificing powerH in phase 3 clinical trials. If a medical intervention is approved for general use, it is evaluated by phase 4 post-market surveillance. Phase 4 surveillance of harms further contributes to underestimating the harm profile of medical interventions. At every stage of clinical research the hunt for harms is shrouded in secrecy, which further contributes to the underestimation of the harm profiles of medical interventions. (shrink)

The essential nature of science is revealed in an amplification of the relation between the arts and science.

The idea that perceptual and cognitive systems must incorporate knowledge about the structure of the environment has become a central dogma of cognitive theory. In a Bayesian context, this idea is often realized in terms of “tuning the prior”—widely assumed to mean adjusting prior probabilities so that they match the frequencies of events in the world. This kind of “ecological” tuning has often been held up as an ideal of inference, in fact defining an “ideal observer.” But widespread as this (...) viewpoint is, it directly contradicts Bayesian philosophy of probability, which views probabilities as degrees of belief rather than relative frequencies, and explicitly denies that they are objective characteristics of the world. Moreover, tuning the prior to observed environmental frequencies is subject to overfitting, meaning in this context overtuning to the environment, which leads (ironically) to poor performance in future encounters with the same environment. Whenever there is uncertainty about the environment—which there almost always is—an agent's prior should be biased away from ecological relative frequencies and toward simpler and more entropic priors. (shrink)

According to a traditional view, perceptual experiences are composites of distinct sensory and cognitive components. This dual-component theory has many benefits; in particular, it purports to offer a way forward in the debate over what kinds of properties perceptual experiences represent. On this kind of view, the issue reduces to the questions of what the sensory and cognitive components respectively represent. Here, I focus on the former topic. I propose a theory of the contents of the sensory aspects of perceptual (...) experience that provides clear criteria for identifying what kinds of properties they represent. (shrink)

Millstein argues against conceptual pluralism with respect to the definition of “population,” and proposes her own definition of the term. I challenge both Millstein’s negative arguments against conceptual pluralism and her positive proposal for a singular definition of population. The concept of population, I argue, does not refer to a natural kind; popula tions are constructs of biologists variably defined by contexts of inquiry.

The National Academy of Science's 1956 study on the Biological Effects of Atomic Radiation was designed to provide an objective analysis to assess conflicting statements by leading geneticists and by officials in the Atomic Energy Commission. Largely because of its status as a detached, non-governmental evaluation by eminent scientists, no studies have had a broader impact on the development of biological thinking in regard to nuclear policies. This paper demonstrates that despite the first BEAR study's reputation as an objective and (...) independent study, it was the product of careful negotiation between Academy scientists, the Atomic Energy Commission, and Britain's Medical Research Council. This paper also reveals the fragility of the consensus that produced the Academy's report, the range of political uses of the report, and the subsequent disaffection of the scientists who took part in it. (shrink)

A consequence relation \ is monotonic iff for premise sets \ and conclusion \, if \, \, then \; and non-monotonic if this fails in some instance. More plainly, a consequence relation is monotonic when whatever is entailed by a premise set remains entailed by any of its supersets. From the High Middle Ages through the Early Modern period, consequence in theology is assumed to be monotonic. Concomitantly, to the degree the argument formulated by Anselm at Proslogion 2–4 is taken (...) up by later commentators, it is accepted or rejected in accordance with a monotonic notion of consequence. Examining Anselm’s use of parallelism in the Proslogion, I show Anselm embeds his famous argument in Proslogion 2–4 in a non-monotonic context. The results here presented challenge some deeply ingrained ideas governing the historiography of the long twelfth century, particularly concerning how the theology of the later eleventh through the twelfth century relates to the scholasticism of the thirteenth. (shrink)

As a result of workplace clean air regulations and strict guidelines imposed by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in 1993, most hospitals in the United States are now virtually smoke free. Although evidence suggests that these restrictions both cause smoking employees to consume fewer cigarettes per day and induce some employees to quit smoking entirely, the policies have also driven many healthcare providers—including physicians—onto the public sidewalks for their cigarette breaks. Patients entering many hospitals pass white-coated medical (...) students and residents puffing away at the curbside. (shrink)

Virtue-based moral cognitivism holds that at least some of the value of some art consists in conveying knowledge about the nature of virtue and vice. We explore here a challenge to this view, which extends the so-called situationist challenge to virtue ethics. Evidence from social psychology indicates that individuals’ behavior is often susceptible to trivial and normatively irrelevant situational influences. This evidence not only challenges approaches to ethics that emphasize the role of virtue but also undermines versions of moral cognitivism, (...) because the value of art cannot consist in teaching us about traits that do not exist. We thus recommend a new account of the cognitive value of art: art teaches how context and character interact to produce action. (shrink)

In recent debates about the nature of non-conceptual content, the Kantian account of intuition in the first Critique has been seen as a sort of founding doctrine for both conceptualist and non-conceptualist positions. In this paper, I begin by examining recent representative versions of the Kantian conceptualist (John McDowell) and Kantian non-conceptualist (Robert Hanna) positions, and suggest that the way the debate is commonly construed by those on both sides misses a much broader and more important conception of non-conceptual content, (...) one for which resources can be found in Husserl’s later thought. Husserl’s account of the object as “transcendental clue” [Transzendentaler Leitfaden] in the context of his later genetic phenomenology suggests a less reductive account of non-conceptual aspects of experience that respects central insights of Kant’s transcendental idealism but does not reduce the role of the non-conceptual to a mere formally-determined, not-yet-conceptualized “fodder.”. (shrink)

Perhaps "perspective" is a better work than "thesis." For, as Smith unfolds it, this becomes such a large idea that it tends to generate, rather than require, lines of argument. The book as a whole is thus a speculative work in the best, and altogether too rare, sense of the word. In order to assess it, the reader cannot simply "go to his experience." He must also stand before his own ideas about experience. And if he does this in the (...) spirit of impartiality, he may directly observe the sense of Smith's perspective: that we do not understand the basis and meaning of that chain of experience which constitutes our life. Such a realization will surely involve the feelings as well as thought. To the degree it involves both, it may be a moment of that sort of doubt which prefigures what Smith terms "the religious dimension" of life. (shrink)

The New Religions was the first full-scale study of alternative spirituality in America. It remains unparalleled for the intellectual depth and seriousness with which it regards Eastern, New Age, and alternative faiths on the American landscape. Needleman’s writing and reportage are unfailingly thoughtful and incisive as he illuminates topics that other scholars failed to consider or could not fully grasp.

In this dissertation I reconstruct Wilhelm Dilthey's Critique of Historical Reason as the solution to the epistemological-ontological problems raised in the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften . It is my contention that the solutions to these problems are internally related by their devotion to the task of providing an analysis of the structure and development of the life-nexus, i.e. the I-World relationship as given in lived experience. Accordingly, I present Dilthey's structural and developmental analysis of the life-nexus as a foundation for (...) the synchronic and diachronic study of the socio-historical world. ;Part One begins with an explanation of the unifying principles of the critique by presenting a brief historical sketch of Dilthey's work and a comparison of Dilthey to Kant . Dilthey's approach is characterized in chapter two as an alternative to the phenomenological approaches of Husserl and Heidegger. The nature of the human sciences is analyzed in Part Two by distinguishing them from the natural sciences and by focusing upon the way in which the human sciences form a system . ;Part Three contains the systematic analysis of the life-nexus which is to provide the critical ground for the human sciences. Chapter five studies our most primitive awareness of the life-nexus. It is first given as an indeterminate whole and is made increasingly clearer through a process of description which brings to a focus the already given connections. Chapter six presents the structure of life as a practical I-World correlation, and chapter seven discusses the principles of the development of psychic life. Finally, structure and development are brought together in chapter eight in order to describe the nature of socio-historical systems and to discuss the way in which history can be divided into periods. (shrink)

On aborde ici la question du statut du corps et des figurations du corps politique dans la Révolution française. Il s’agirait de savoir si les révolutions démocratiques des temps modernes amorcent un processus de désincorporation du social oů, ŕ partir du régicide se défait l’hypostase du Corpus Mysticum – ou si l’on assiste ŕ une mouvement inverse de réincorporation, ŕ un simple transfert de souveraineté du corps déchu du monarque au Corps régénéré du peuple ou de la Nation. On examinera (...) ainsi, ŕ travers l’analyse des figurations du corps, la question du régicide ŕ la Terreur et les fondaments du discours et de la politique des Jacobins. (shrink)

This article responds to one of Thaddeus Metz's criticisms of the theory that the meaning of life is to fulfil a purpose assigned by God. In particular, it addresses the argument that only an atemporal God could ground meaning but that an atemporal God could not assign a purpose. In order to do this, the article first argues that Metz's criticisms misread the relevant sense of purpose. It then argues that on a more plausible reading of 'purpose', we can see (...) that it is in fact the kind of thing that an atemporal God could assign. (shrink)

In respect of the question whether mental properties, i.e. contents of mental states, are causally relevant the distinction between type and token physikalism and externalism and their consequences concerning the problems of property dualism and content epiphenomenalism are sketched. Fodor's theory - a functionalist version of token physikalism - is presented and criticized. Distinguishing between naming a causally relevant property and quantifying over it a solution to the threat of epihenomenalism is suggested, and finally Davidson's Anomalous Monism is defended.

This paper examines the rise of socially responsible investment (SRI) as a sustainable finance mechanism and discusses the potential of SRI in steering the banking and financial services industry toward a more socially responsible and environmentally sound model of commerce. I argue in this paper that the potential of SRI to serve as a sustainable business mechanism to steer the global financial market toward a new ethical architecture depends on two related factors: (a) continuing institutional and social pressures forgreater corporate (...) transparency, and (b) the ability of SRI to become a viable financial instrument outside its traditional markets in emerging and developing economies. (shrink)

In their analyses of the neural correlates of discrete emotionality, Lindquist et al. do not consider the numerous drawbacks to inferring psychological processes based on currently available cognitive neurometric technology. The authors also disproportionately emphasize the relevance of neuronal activation over deactivation, which, in our opinion, limits the scope and utility of their conclusions.

In an age of constitutional revolutions and reforms, theory and practice are moving in opposite directions. As a matter of constitutional practice, human dignity has emerged in jurisdictions around the world as the organizing idea of a groundbreaking paradigm. By reconfiguring constitutional norms, institutional structures and legal doctrines, this paradigm transforms human dignity from a mere moral claim into a legal norm that persons have standing to vindicate. As a matter of constitutional theory, however, human dignity remains an enigmatic idea. (...) Some explicate its meaning in abstraction from constitutional practice, while others confine themselves to less exalted ideas. The result is a chasm that separates constitutional practice from a theory capable of justifying its innovations and guiding its operation. By expounding the connection between human dignity and the constitutional practices that justify themselves in its light, Jacob Weinrib brings the theory and practice of constitutional law back together. (shrink)

Social contract theory imagines political societies as resting on a fundamental agreement, adopted at a discrete moment in hypothetical time, that binds individual persons together into a polity and sets fundamental rules regarding that polity's structure and powers. Written constitutions, adopted at real moments in historical time, dictating governmental structures, bounding governmental powers, and entrenching individual rights, look temptingly like social contracts reified. Yet something essential is lost in this slippage between social contract theory and the practice of constitutionalism. Contractarian (...) blinders lead us to look for greater individualism, social unity, and coherence of principles than should be expected. Real constitutional orders appropriate, incorporate, and channel the histories and divisions of the societies they govern. Treating them as social contracts flattens and distorts them, making those engagements with the past or with social plurality appear anomalous and encouraging their minimization. Accordingly this article redirects attention to non-contractarian strands within constitutionalism's intellectual inheritance and lived practice. (shrink)

Iris Marion Young articulated a social connection model of responsibility to conceptualize political responsibility for structural injustice. Schiff argues that actually confronting our responsibility is problematic: the pervasiveness of structural injustice makes it difficult to acknowledge as a problem, while distances between sufferers and contributors complicate our acknowledgment of social connection. These problems are exacerbated by thoughtlessness, bad faith, and misrecognition. Narrative can facilitate the acknowledgment necessary for us to confront our political responsibility.

It is generally thought that there are certain persons to whose welfare we should give special weight. It is commonly held, for example, that we should give special weight to our own welfare. On the strongest version of this view, we should always give overriding weight to our own welfare, and so, in considering any set of alternatives, we should always prefer the one in which we fare best. Many people would reject this strong view, for two reasons. First, many (...) people would hold that impersonal reasons (such as reasons of total utility) can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. Further, many people think that reasons deriving from special personal relations can sometimes outweigh, or at least counterbalance, reasons of self-interest. We can, however, formulate a much weaker, and much more plausible, version of the self-interest view that avoids both these problems. Let’s first define a person’s kin as anyone in the person’s extended family (including himself). And let’s define a person’s kith very broadly as anyone with whom that person has ever interacted. We can now formulate the weak version of the self-interest view as follows. (shrink)

"Jacob Howland's book is an engaging, readable, and extremely suggestive addition to the literature on Plato's magnum opus." --Ancient Philosophy.

_ Source: _Volume 56, Issue 3-4, pp 292 - 319 With William of Ockham and John Buridan, Walter Burley is often listed as one of the most significant logicians of the medieval period. Nevertheless, Burley’s contributions to medieval logic have received notably less attention than those of either Ockham or Buridan. To help rectify this situation, the author here provides a comprehensive examination of Burley’s account of consequences, first recounting Burley’s enumeration, organization, and division of consequences, with particular attention to (...) the shift from natural and accidental to formal and material consequence, and then locating Burley’s contribution to the theory of consequences in the context of fourteenth-century work on the subject, detailing its relation to the earliest treatises on consequences, then to Ockham and Buridan. (shrink)