This study investigates the role of language in cross‐sector collaboration between mental health hospitals and municipalities, focusing on the challenges of maintaining continuity of care and integrating patient‐centered approaches. Using Fairclough's framework for critical discourse analysis, we examined focus group interviews with 21 healthcare professionals, including nurses, social workers, and psychiatrists, to identify key themes and patterns in how cross‐sector collaboration is discussed. The analysis revealed a dominant medicalized discourse in hospital settings, which often emphasized structured care processes like treatment (...) plans and medication management, overshadowing more flexible, patient‐centered approaches common in community‐based services. Power dynamics were evident, with hospital professionals frequently positioned as active agents, while patients and community‐based workers were portrayed in more passive roles. Although efforts to involve patients in decision‐making were noted, these were often controlled by professionals, reflecting a mediated approach to patient empowerment. The findings highlight the cultural and structural divides between hospital and community services and suggest the need for improved communication strategies, integrated care pathways, and a shift toward more inclusive, patient‐centered care models. Addressing these discursive barriers is crucial for achieving more effective, integrated, and patient‐centered care, ultimately improving outcomes for patients. (shrink)

Should public opinion determine--or even influence--sentencing policy and practice? Should the punishment of criminal offenders reflect what the public regards as appropriate? These deceptively simple questions conceal complex theoretical and methodological challenges to the administration of punishment. In the West, politicians have often answered these questions in the affirmative; penal reforms have been justified with direct reference to the attitudes of the public. This is why the contention that politicians should bridge the gap between the public and criminal justice practice (...) has widespread resonance. Criminal law scholars, for their part, have often been more reluctant to accept public input in penal practice, and some have even held that the idea of consulting public opinion constitutes a populist approach to punishment. The purpose of this book is to examine the moral significance of public opinion for penal theory and practice. For the first time in a single volume the editors, Jesper Ryberg and Julian V. Roberts, have assembled a number of respected criminologists, philosophers, and legal theorists to address the various aspects of why and how public opinion should be reflected in the way the criminal justice system deals with criminals. The chapters address the myriad complexities surrounding this issue by first weighing the justifications for incorporating public views into punishment practices and then considering the various ways this might be achieved through juries, prosecutors, restorative justice programs, and other means. (shrink)

Semantic externalism is the view that the meanings of referring terms, and the contents of beliefs that are expressed by those terms, are not fully determined by factors internal to the speaker but are instead bound up with the environment. The debate about semantic externalism is one of the most important but difficult topics in philosophy of mind and language, and has consequences for our understanding of the role of social institutions and the physical environment in constituting language and the (...) mind. In this long-needed book, Jesper Kallestrup provides an invaluable map of the problem. Beginning with a thorough introduction to the theories of descriptivism and referentialism and the work of Frege and Kripke, Kallestrup moves on to analyse Putnam’s Twin Earth argument, Burge’s arthritis argument and Davidson’s Swampman argument. He also discusses how semantic externalism is at the heart of important topics such as indexical thoughts, epistemological skepticism, self-knowledge, and mental causation. Including chapter summaries, a glossary of terms, and an annotated guide to further reading, _Semantic Externalism_ an ideal guide for students studying philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility and philosophical moral theories. The objective is to determine which moral theories form the basis for CSR policies. Are they based on ethical egoism, libertarianism, utilitarianism or some kind of common-sense morality? In order to address this issue, I conducted an empirical investigation examining the relation between moral theories and CSR policies, in companies engaged in CSR. Based on the empirical data I collected, I start by suggesting some normative (...) arguments used by the respondents. Secondly, I suggest that these moral arguments implicitly rely on some specific moral principles, which I characterise. Thirdly, on the basis of these moral principles, I suggest the moral theories upon which the CSR policies are built. Previous empirical studies examining the relation between philosophical moral theories and the ethical content of business activities have mainly concentrated on the ethical decision-making of managers. Some of the most prominent investigations in that regard propose that managers mainly act in accordance with utilitarian moral theory, 166–175; Premeaux, S. and W. Mony: 1993, Journal of Business Ethics12, 349–357; Premeaux, S.: 2004, Journal of Business Ethics52, 269–278). I conclude that CSR policies are not based on utilitarian thinking, but instead, on some kind of common-sense morality. The ethical foundation of companies engaged in CSR, thus, does not mirror the ethical foundation of managers. (shrink)

Epistemic anti-individualism is the view that positive epistemic statuses fail to supervene on internal, physical or mental, properties of individuals. Intellectual humility is a central intellectual virtue in the pursuit of such statuses. After some introductory remarks, this paper provides an argument for epistemic anti-individualism with respect to a virtue-theoretic account of testimonial knowledge. An outline of a dual-aspect account of intellectual humility is then offered. The paper proceeds to argue that insofar as testimonial knowledge is concerned, this stripe of (...) epistemic anti-individualism leads to a particular account of intellectual humility. (shrink)

This study takes its point of departure in an oft‐voiced critique that the French philosopher Michel Foucault gives discourse priority over practice, thereby being deterministic and leaving little space for the individual to act as an agent. Based on an interpretation of the latter part of Foucault's oeuvre, we argue against this critique and provide a methodological discussion of the perception that Foucault's method constitutes, primarily, discourse analysis. We argue that it is possible to overcome this critique of Foucault's work (...) by the application of methodological tools adapted from Foucault's later writings and his diagnosis of his own work as studies of forms of problematization. To shed light on the possibilities that this approach offers to the researcher, we present a reading of aspects of Foucault's work, with a focus on his notion of forms of problematization. Furthermore, we elaborate on concepts from his so‐called genealogical period, namely ‘the dispositive’, strategy and tactics. Our interpretation is supported by examples from a study of the emergence of Danish nursing education, which is based on an analytical framework that we developed in the light of an interpretation of aspects of Foucault's work. (shrink)

Morten Frederiksen explores Carl Gustav Jung's elusive notion of synchronicity from a transrational perspective and relates synchronicity to the transpersonality of the "All-One". This is done by expanding the content and meaning of Wolfgang Dietrich's layers of Elicitive Conflict Mapping (ECM) through re-relating them to Ken Wilber's model of the structures of consciousness; with synchronicity as the literal connecting principle. The result, then, is an expanded notion of the transrational peace philosophy which includes Wilber's model of stages shorn of (...) its evolutionary slant and fathoms synchronicity in its theoretical outlook and practical application. Contents A Transrational Approach to Peace Studies through processing the Topic of Synchronicity Jungian Psychology and his Concept of Synchronicity Transrational Peace Philosophy and Consciousness Development Seven different Structures of Consciousness Consequences of Synchronicity for a transrational-oriented Peace Philosophy and Practice Target Groups Lecturers and Students of Psychology, Peace Students and Conflict Transformation Researchers Practitioners in the Field of Elicitive Conflict Transformation About the Author Morten Frederiksen is a Peace Researcher from the MA Program in Peace, Security, Development and International Conflict Transformation at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and Coordinator of the Danish Development Aid Agency "U-landsforeningen Svalerne". (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Neuroplasticity is a core feature of the brain throughout the entire life of the individual. And when injury to the adult brain destroys part of the circuitry mediating behaviour and/or conscious experience, neuroplasticity is required to bring about the highest possible degree of post-traumatic functional recovery. But is the brain able to recreate the lost circuitry? Scrutiny of the impressive plasticity seen during development and in the adult brain reveals many similarities -- but also some crucial differences. And studies of (...) the mechanisms of functional recovery demonstrate that even an apparently 'full recovery' of the surface phenomena of behaviour and/or conscious representations is accomplished without a recreation of the lost circuitry. Instead, the post-traumatic process utilizes mechanisms, which have evolved to mediate problem solving in the intact brain. The newly developed REF model suggests how such dynamic reorganizations occur in the intact and injured brain. (shrink)

According to Sosa, knowledge is apt belief, where a belief is apt when accurate because adroit. Sosa :465–475, 2010; Judgment and agency, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015) adds to his triple-A analysis of knowledge, a triple-S analysis of competence, where a complete competence combines its seat, shape and situation. Much of Sosa’s influential work assumes that epistemic agents are individuals who acquire knowledge when they hit the truth through exercising their own individual skills in appropriate shapes and situations. This paper (...) explores an extension of Sosa’s framework to a social setting in which groups constitute epistemic agents over and above their individual members. The claim is that groups can be ascribed knowledge in virtue of hitting the truth through exercising their competences in appropriate shapes and situations. While knowledge at the collective level may diverge from knowledge at the individual level, the competences of groups are nothing over and above the combined competences of their members. The ensuing view thus has implications for the debate over reduction and supervenience in collective epistemology. (shrink)

The idea of using artificial intelligence as a support system in the sentencing process has attracted increasing attention. For instance, it has been suggested that machine learning algorithms may help in curbing problems concerning inter-judge sentencing disparity. The purpose of the present article is to examine the merits of this possibility. It is argued that, insofar as the unfairness of sentencing disparity is held to reflect a retributivist view of proportionality, it is not necessarily the case that increasing inter-judge uniformity (...) in sentencing is desirable. More generally, it is shown that the idea of introducing machine learning algorithms, that produce sentencing predictions on the ground of a dataset that is built of previous sentencing decisions, faces serious problems if there exists a discrepancy between actual sentencing practice and the sentences that are ideally desirable. (shrink)

In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of a contemporary approach to cognitive psychology known as 4E cognition. According to this ‘extracranial’ view of cognition, the mind is not ensconced in the head, but dynamically intertwined with a host of different entities, social as well as technological. The purpose of the present article is to raise a concern about 4E cognition. The concern is not about whether the mind is in fact extended, but about how this condition is currently (...) portrayed in the 4E literature. It is argued that 4E scholars tend to paint an overly idealized picture of human–technology relations in which all entities are presumed to cooperate and collaborate. The article first describes the basic tenets of extended cognition and distributed cognition, two of the most thingly approaches in this new wave of cognitive psychology. It then proceeds to discuss the twin notions of cognition and representation and argues that it may be time to leave these concepts behind. Finally, it sketches out the so-called ‘dogma of harmony’ in the 4E literature and argues for the importance of making analytical room for conflictual human–technology relations. Two examples of such conflictual relations are provided: bad habits and deskilling. (shrink)

Over the past decade the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) as a means of crime prevention has reached unprecedented levels. Though critics of this development do not speak with one voice and have pointed to a number of different problems in the use of CCTV, one argument has played a dominant role in the debate, namely, that CCTV constitutes an unacceptable violation of people’s right to privacy. The purpose of this paper is to examine this argument critically. It is (...) suggested that the argument is hard to sustain. (shrink)

This book gives an analysis of Hertz's posthumously published Principles of Mechanics in its philosophical, physical and mathematical context. In a period of heated debates about the true foundation of physical sciences, Hertz's book was conceived and highly regarded as an original and rigorous foundation for a mechanistic research program. Insisting that a law-like account of nature would require hypothetical unobservables, Hertz viewed physical theories as images of the world rather than the true design behind the phenomena. This paved the (...) way for the modern conception of a model. Rejecting the concept of force as a coherent basic notion of physics he built his mechanics on hidden masses and rigid connections, and formulated it as a new differential geometric language.Recently many philosophers have studied Hertz's image theory and historians of physics have discussed his forceless mechanics. The present book shows how these aspects, as well as the hitherto overlooked mathematical aspects, form an integrated whole which is closely connected to the mechanistic world view of the time and which is a natural continuation of Hertz's earlier research on electromagnetism. Therefore it is also a case study of the strong interactions between philosophy, physics and mathematics. Moreover, the book presents an analysis of the genesis of many of the central elements of Hertz's mechanics based on his manuscripts and drafts. Hertz's research program was cut short by the advent of relativity theory but its image theory influenced many philosophers as well as some physicists and mathematicians and its geometric form had a lasting influence on advanced expositions of mechanics. (shrink)

The present article focuses on the issue of ignoring conversational partners in favor of one’s phone, or what has also become known as phubbing. Prior research has shown that this behavior is associated with a host of negative interpersonal consequences. Since phubbing by definition entails adverse effects, however, it is interesting to explore why people continue to engage in this hurtful behavior: Are they unaware that phubbing is hurtful to others? Or do they simply not care? Building on interviews with (...) students in a Danish business college, the article reveals a pronounced discrepancy in young people’s relationship to phubbing: While they emphatically denounce phubbing as both annoying and disrespectful, they readily admit to phubbing others. In other words, they often act against their own moral convictions. Importantly, participants describe this discrepancy as a result of an unintentional inclination to divert attentional engagement. On the basis of these results, the article develops the notion of digital akrasia, which can be defined as a tendency to become swept up by ones digital devices in spite of better intentions. It is proposed that this phenomenon may be the result of bad technohabits. Further implications are discussed. (shrink)

Introduction: Semiotic ScaffoldingA central idea in biosemiotic writings has been the idea of growth in semiotic freedom as a persistent trend in evolution . By semiotic freedom we mean the capacity of species or organisms to derive useful information by help of semiosis or, in other words, by processes of interpretation in the widest sense of this term. While even bacteria have a certain very limited ability to interpret cues in the medium this ability obviously becomes more developed in more (...) complex organisms, and is typically most developed in big-brained animals that are late arrivals at the evolutionary scene. The evolution of a richer semiotic capacity is of course only one among many strategies available in the evolutionary game. Yet, this particular strategy potentially ignites a self-perpetuating evolutionary dynamics, since each step taken by a species along this route potentially opens new agendas for further change:the more capable some species ar .. (shrink)

It is well known that the extensional axiom of choice implies the law of excluded middle . We here prove that the converse holds as well if we have the intensional axiom of choice ACint, which is provable in Martin-Löf's type theory, and a weak extensionality principle , which is provable in Martin-Löf's extensional type theory. In particular, EM is equivalent to ACext in extensional type theory.

The threshold from unicellularity to multicellularity has been crossed only in three major living domains in evolution with any lasting success. The hard problem was to create a multicellular self. Such a self is vulnerable to breakdown due to the unavoidable appearance of mutant anarchistic cells, and stringent semiotic scaffoldings had to emerge to prevent this. While a unicellular self may go on to live practically forever, the multicellular self most often must run through an individuation process ending in the (...) death of the individual. Due to basic differences in cells of plants, fungi and animals this individuation process poses very different challenges in the three kingdoms of plants, fungi and animals, and the solutions found to these differences are discussed. In the same time as multicellularity ushered life into the epoch of mortality it logically also led to the appearance of fertilization and thereby the need for a whole new set of elaborate semiotic scaffoldings. Multicellularity also opened the door to the formation symbiotic relations where cells with different genomes might collaborate or at least coexist inside the same body. All in all multicellularity led to an enormous diversification both of morphology space and the space of sensomotoric elaborations. New means for scaffolding of this expansion and diversification of possible life forms into functional patterns called for a corresponding growth in the space of semiotic tools and initiated a growth in semiotic freedom, that has continued to our days. (shrink)

This special issue of The Journal of Ethics is devoted to ethical considerations of the use of neuroscience in the criminal justice system. In this introduction, an overview is provided of the different topics dealt with in the volume.

There is a lack of research explicitly demonstrating the potential of applying critical realism in qualitative empirical Management and Organization Studies. If scholars are to obtain the exp...

This article presents a discussion of the presentation of utilitarianism in textbooks and research articles within the field of business ethics. My objective is twofold. First, I will demonstrate that the presentation of utilitarianism, by a substantial number of prominent business ethicists, is characterized by a lack of precision and includes faulty descriptions. In this regard, I focus on presentations of utilitarianism in relation to distributive principles and on the demanding nature of utilitarianism. Second, I will demonstrate that these imprecise (...) and faulty presentations result in a misguided critique of utilitarianism and dubious conclusions within the field of business ethics. Here, I will discuss and reject conclusions regarding utilitarianism and its relation to capitalism, theclaim that utilitarianism is not much more sophisticated than a simple majority vote and that utilitarianism is in accordance with harmful actions such as bribery and child labor. (shrink)

Should an adolescent offender be punished more leniently than an adult offender? Many theorists believe the answer to be in the affirmative. According to the diminished culpability model, adolescents are less mature than adults and, therefore, less responsible for their wrongdoings and should consequently be punished less harshly. This article concerns the first part of the model: the relation between immaturity and diminished responsibility. It is argued that this relation faces three normative challenges which do not allow for easy answers (...) and which are still widely ignored in the comprehensive discussion of the diminished culpability model. (shrink)

Why is the ethics of punishment an important academic field? The standard answer given by philosophers, legal scholars, and other theorists is that academic engagement in the ethics of punishment is justified by the importance of informing and guiding penal practice. In this article, this view is referred to as the Impact Assumption. The purpose of the article is to consider what this assumption implies for the way research within this field should be conducted. First, I argue that the way (...) research is currently being disseminated, the nature of the research itself, and the lack of interest among legislators and other decision-makers, constitute serious challenges to the satisfaction of the Impact Assumption. Second, I suggest that these challenges can be overcome, but that this will require a significant expansion and reorientation of the entire field. (shrink)

We survey concepts at the frontier of research connecting artificial, animal, and human cognition to computation and information processing—from the Turing test to Searle’s Chinese room argument, from integrated information theory to computational and algorithmic complexity. We start by arguing that passing the Turing test is a trivial computational problem and that its pragmatic difficulty sheds light on the computational nature of the human mind more than it does on the challenge of artificial intelligence. We then review our proposed algorithmic (...) information-theoretic measures for quantifying and characterizing cognition in various forms. These are capable of accounting for known biases in human behavior, thus vindicating a computational algorithmic view of cognition as first suggested by Turing, but this time rooted in the concept of algorithmic probability, which in turn is based on computational universality while being independent of computational model, and which has the virtue of being predictive and testable as a model theory of cognitive behavior. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is increasingly permeating many types of high-stake societal decision-making such as the work at the criminal courts. Various types of algorithmic tools have already been introduced into sentencing. This article concerns the use of algorithms designed to deliver sentence recommendations. More precisely, it is considered how one should determine whether one type of sentencing algorithm (e.g., a model based on machine learning) would be ethically preferable to another type of sentencing algorithm (e.g., a model based on old-fashioned programming). (...) Whether the implementation of sentencing algorithms is ethically desirable obviously depends upon various questions. For instance, some of the traditional issues that have received considerable attention are algorithmic biases and lack of transparency. However, the purpose of this article is to direct attention to a further challenge that has not yet been considered in the discussion of sentencing algorithms. That is, even if is assumed that the traditional challenges concerning biases, transparency, and cost-efficiency have all been solved or proven insubstantial, there will be a further serious challenge associated with the comparison of sentencing algorithms; namely, that we do not yet possess an ethically plausible and applicable criterion for assessing how well sentencing algorithms are performing. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that autonomous decision-making requires that the decision-maker’s desires are authentic, i.e., “genuine,” “truly her own,” “not out of character,” or similar. In this article, it is argued that a method to reliably determine the authenticity (or inauthenticity) of a desire cannot be developed. A taxonomy of characteristics displayed by different theories of authenticity is introduced and applied to evaluate such theories categorically, in contrast to the prior approach of treating them individually. The conclusion is drawn that, (...) in practice, the authenticity of desires cannot be reliably determined. It is suggested that authenticity should therefore not be employed in informed consent practices in healthcare. (shrink)

In strict opposition to the prevailing positivist conception of nature as senseless and deprived of meaning Jakob von Uexküll claimed that a certain planmässigkeit was operative in nature. This idea however might be taken to mean that organic evolution is not itself a creative process but a gradual, if majestic, unfolding of Nature's own master plan. Such an idea would threaten to restore determinism in the center of biological theory, and this would seriously contradict the vision of biosemiotics shared by (...) most of its proponents. It lies at the heart of biosemiotics and of Peircean cosmological philosophy that indeterminacy is primary, that “habit taking” or interpretation are real processes in the world, and therefore that belief in the law of necessity is unfounded. It is suggested that Uexküllian planmässigkeit is in fact reconcilable with a modern non-deterministic understanding. In a certain sense the Umwelten of animals have indeed developed in accordance to a natural planmässigkeit, but this is a plan that incessantly traps life in certain strategic choices and in the same time diversifies the dimensionality of options for dealing with these choices, i. e. “the adjacent possible” in the terms of Stuart Kauffman. (shrink)

A sign is something that refers to something else. Signs, whether of natural or cultural origin, act by provoking a receptive system, human or nonhuman, to form an interpretant (a movement or a brain activity) that somehow relates the system to this "something else." Semiotics sees meaning as connected to the formation of interpretants. In a biosemiotic understanding living systems are basically engaged in semiotic interactions, that is, interpretative processes, and organic evolution exhibits an inherent tendency toward an increase in (...) semiotic freedom. Mammals generally are equipped with more semiotic freedom than are their reptilian ancestor species, and fishes are more semiotically sophisticated than are invertebrates. The evolutionary trend toward the production of life forms with an increasing interpretative capacity or semiotic freedom implies that the production of meaning has become an essential survival parameter in later stages of evolution. (shrink)

According to the discontinuity view we can have a (lower) pleasure which, no matter how often a certain unit of it is added to itself, cannot become greater in value than a unit of another (higher) pleasure. All recent adherents of this view seem to rely basically on the same sort of reasoning which is referred to here as the preference test. This article presents three arguments, each of which indicates that the inference from the preference test to the discontinuity (...) view is not conclusive. (shrink)

A prominent question in social epistemology concerns the epistemic profile of groups. While inflationists and deflationists agree that groups are fit to constitute knowers, they disagree about whether group knowledge is reducible to knowledge of their individual members. This paper develops and defends a weak inflationist view according to which some, but not all, group knowledge is over and above any knowledge of their members. This view sits between the deflationist view that all group knowledge is reducible to individual knowledge, (...) and the strong inflationist view that some such knowledge even fails to supervene on features of individuals. Thus, some group knowledge is irreducible, but all such knowledge is anchored in, and so doesn't float freely from, individual features. (shrink)

The hypothesis of extended cognition says that cognitive processes and mental states extend to include extra-organismic parts of the external world, provided certain conditions on cognitive integration are satisfied. Moreover, if knowledge is assumed to be a mental state, knowledge is, by a similar line of reasoning, equally extended. However, extended knowledge presents an additional challenge to do with cognitive bloat, given that knowledge is widely regarded as a distinctive cognitive achievement. This paper explores the idea that different types of (...) software systems, rather than specific external devices, may serve to extend knowledge beyond our bodily boundaries, and if so whether this new hypothesis of digitally extended knowledge leads to any untoward expansion of knowledge. (shrink)

Suppose you assert a proposition p that you falsely believe to be false with the intention to deceive your audience. The standard view has it that you lied. This paper argues against orthodoxy: deceptive lying requires that p be in actual fact false, in addition to your intention to deceive by means of untruthfully asserting that p. We proceed as follows. First, an argument is developed for such falsity condition as the non-psychological component of lying. The problem with the standard (...) view, we profess, is exactly that lying is a purely psychological relation between disbelief, assertion, and intention. Then, by scrutinising familiar cases, we revisit the alleged intuitive support for the existence of true lies. It turns out these intuitions can be explained away once we reflect on the characteristic deceptive hallmarks that are associated with the distinction between lying and botched attempts at lying. Finally, we examine the morality of lying in the light of said falsity condition. The resultant view emphasises our moral sensitivity to the practical consequences of acts of lying, while still accommodating those moral considerations that pertain exclusively to the psychological components of lying. (shrink)

Are virtual objects real? I will claim that the question sets us up for the wrong type of conclusion: Chalmers (2017) argues that a virtual calculator (like other entities) is a real calculator when it is “organizationally invariant” with its non-virtual counterpart—when it performs calculation. However, virtual reality and games are defined by the fact that they always selectively implement their source material. Even the most detailed virtual car will still have an infinite range of details which are missing (gas, (...) engines, pistons, fuel, chemical reactions, molecules, atoms). This means that even the most detailed virtual object will still have fictional aspects. Rather than argue that virtual objects are, or aren’t, real, it is preferable to think of overlaps and continuities between the fictional and the real, where even the most painstakingly detailed virtual reality implementation of a non-virtual object is still art: a human process of selection and interpretation. Virtual reality should therefore not be philosophically understood just as a technological implementation on a trajectory to perfection, but as a cultural artifact which derives its value in part from its simplification and difference from its source material. (shrink)

Reliabilists accept the possibility of basic knowledge—knowledge that p in virtue of the reliability of some belief-producing process r without antecedent knowledge that r is reliable. Cohen (Philos Phenomenol Res 65:309–329, 2002 , Philos Phenomenol Res 70:417–430, 2005 ) and Vogel (J Philos 97:602–623, 2000 , J Philos 105:518–539, 2008 ) have argued that one can bootstrap knowledge that r is reliable from basic knowledge. This paper provides a diagnosis of epistemic bootstrapping, and then shows that recent attempts at embracing (...) bootstrapped knowledge are found wanting. Instead it is argued that such arguments are afflicted by a novel kind of generalized epistemic circularity. The ensuing view is defended against various objections, and an explanation of the source of that circularity is offered. (shrink)

A vcry important question raised by Dcrck Parfit in the part 0i` Reasons and Persons which dcals with population ethics is how t0 compare thc future outcomes 0i` those policies which differ in thc way they afTcct population growth} Such comparisons arc complicated by the fact that thcsc 0utcomcs may differ not only in thc avcragc Icvcls 0f well-being they gcncratc but also in thc identity and number 0i` thc persons who cxist.

Students often multitask with technologies such as computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones during class. Unfortunately, numerous empirical studies firmly establish a significant drop in academic performance caused by this media multitasking. In this paper it is argued that cognitive studies may have clarified the negative consequences of this activity, yet they struggle to address the processes involved in it. A cognitive characterization of attention as a mental phenomenon neglects the interaction between bodies and technologies, and it is suggested that a (...) postphenomenological understanding is necessary to account for the materiality of practice. Notions of embodied habits and technical mediation are introduced, and an example of a postphenomenological account of media multitasking is introduced. It is argued that this approach enables researchers to investigate media multitasking as it occurs in everyday educational practice. (shrink)

Traditionally, mechanistic reasoning has been assigned a negligible role in standard EBM literature, although some recent authors have argued for an upgrade. Even so, the mechanistic reasoning that has received attention has almost exclusively been positive—both in an epistemic sense of claiming that there is a mechanistic chain and in a health-related sense of there being claimed benefits for the patient. Negative mechanistic reasoning has been neglected, both in the epistemic and in the health-related sense. I distinguish three main types (...) of negative mechanistic reasoning and subsume them under a new definition of mechanistic reasoning in the context of assessing medical interventions. This definition is wider than a previous suggestion in the literature. Each negative type corresponds to a range of evidential strengths, and it is argued that there are differences with respect to typical evidential strengths. The variety of negative mechanistic reasoning should be acknowledged in EBM, and it presents a serious challenge to proponents of so-called medical hierarchies of evidence. (shrink)

According to robust virtue epistemology, knowledge is a cognitive achievement, where this means that the agent's cognitive success is because of her cognitive ability. One type of objection to robust virtue epistemology that has been put forward in the contemporary literature is that this view has problems dealing with certain kinds of testimonial knowledge, and thus that it is in tension with standard views in the epistemology of testimony. We build on this critique to argue that insofar as agents epistemically (...) depend on third-party members of their epistemic community as many social epistemologists contend, then there will be cases where two agents differ epistemically despite being virtue-theoretic duplicates. This means that robust virtue epistemology, at least insofar as it is understood along standard lines such that it endorses epistemic individualism, is also in tension with a central commitment of contemporary social epistemology. (shrink)

At the end of the 19th century Oliver Heaviside developed a formal calculus of differential operators in order to solve various physical problems. The pure mathematicians of his time would not deal with this unrigorous theory, but in the 20th century several attempts were made to rigorise Heaviside's operational calculus. These attempts can be grouped in two classes. The one leading to an explanation of the operational calculus in terms of integral transformations (Bromwich, Carson, Vander Pol, Doetsch) and the other (...) leading to an abstract algebraic formulation (Lévy, Mikusiński). Also Schwartz's creation of the theory of distributions was very much inspired by problems in the operational calculus. (shrink)

A traditional assumption in retributivist thinking is the view that an offender's desert is determined exclusively on the basis of the gravity of the crime committed. However, this assumption has r...