Titles and abstracts for the Pitt-London Workshop in the Philosophy of Biology and Neuroscience: September 2001.

Reading the signs of the times against a background of cultural-civilization and global financial-ecological conflicts, the book explores a "new cosmology" influenced by Teilhard de Chardin. It upholds evolution as a co-creative artistic-mystical process in contrast to modern secularist-determinist perspectives. It links a global spirituality to a global ethics.

This paper first explores a number of themes in the psychological system developed by the Austrian-American psychologist, Egon Brunswik, focusing on those that had a formative influence on Social Judgement Theory. We show that while perception was a recurring ground for Brunswik's empirical and theoretical work, his psychology was a psychology of cognition in the broadest sense. Next, two major themes in Social Judgement Theory functionalism and probabilism are described, and the elegant formulation known as Brunswik's Lens Model is introduced. (...) Some methodological and theoretical implications of these themes are presented. The paper concludes with Hammond's Cognitive Continuum Theory (CCT), which is a theory describing modes of cognition and how those modes are influenced by task characteristics. (shrink)

Drawing from a rich mix of survey data, interviews, and access to internal meetings, Brian Doherty and Timothy Doyle show how FoEI has developed a distinctive environmentalism, which allows for the differences in context between regions and across the North-South divide.

Externalism with regard to mental content says that in order to have certain types of intentional mental states (e.g. beliefs), it is necessary to be related to the environment in the right way.

BackgroundBiobanks are considered to be key infrastructures for research development and have generated a lot of debate about their ethical, legal and social implications. While the focus has been on human genomic research, rapid advances in human microbiome research further complicate the debate.DiscussionWe draw on two cystic fibrosis biobanks in Toronto, Canada, to illustrate our points. The biobanks have been established to facilitate sample and data sharing for research into the link between disease progression and microbial dynamics in the lungs (...) of pediatric and adult patients. We begin by providing an overview of some of the ELSI associated with human microbiome research, particularly on the implications for the broader society. We then discuss ethical considerations regarding the identifiability of samples biobanked for human microbiome research, and examine the issue of return of results and incidental findings. We argue that, for the purposes of research ethics oversight, human microbiome research samples should be treated with the same privacy considerations as human tissues samples. We also suggest that returning individual microbiome-related findings could provide a powerful clinical tool for care management, but highlight the need for a more grounded understanding of contextual factors that may be unique to human microbiome research.ConclusionsWe revisit the ELSI of biobanking and consider the impact that human microbiome research might have. Our discussion focuses on identifiability of human microbiome research samples, and return of research results and incidental findings for clinical management. (shrink)

Public participation is increasingly an aspect of policy development in many areas, and the governance of biomedical research is no exception. There are good reasons for this: biomedical research relies on public funding; it relies on biological samples and information from large numbers of patients and healthy individuals; and the outcomes of biomedical research are dramatically and irrevocably changing our society. There is thus arguably a democratic imperative for including public values in strategic decisions about the governance of biomedical research. (...) However, it is not immediately clear how this might best be achieved. While different approaches have been proposed and trialled, we focus here on the use of public deliberation as a mechanism to develop input for policy on biomedical research. We begin by explaining the rationale for conducting public deliberation in biomedical research. We focus, in particular, on the ELS (ethical, legal, social) aspects of human tissue biobanking. The last few years have seen the development of methods for conducting public deliberation on these issues in several jurisdictions, for the purpose of incorporating lay public voices in biobanking policy. We explain the theoretical foundation underlying the notion of deliberation, and outline the main lessons and capacities that have been developed in the area of conducting public deliberation on biobanks. We next provide an analysis of the theoretical and practical challenges that we feel still need to be addressed for the use of public deliberation to guide ethical norms and governance of biomedical research. We examine the issues of: (i) linking the outcomes of deliberation to tangible action; (ii) the mandate under which a deliberation is conducted; (iii) the relative weight that should be accorded to a public deliberative forum vs other relevant voices; (iv) evaluating the quality of deliberation; and (5) the problem of scalability of minipublics. (shrink)

This paper attempts to situate Thomas Aquinas with respect to philosophical discussions of the nature of metaphorical language. I consider Aquinas’s comments in the Summa Theologiae on Scriptural metaphor and allegory in the light of two theses in current discussions of metaphor: the substitution thesis and the dual-meaning thesis. I compare Aquinas’s view to those of Aristotle and Donald Davidson. The substitution thesis asserts that figurative expressions can be replaced by semantically equivalent literal expressions. The dual-meaning thesis asserts that, in (...) addition to a literal meaning (or sense), metaphorical language possesses another meaning, viz. a figurative one. I claim that Aquinas’s view is complex. He affirms the dual-meaning thesis with regard to Scriptural allegory. Yet he rejects the dual-meaning thesis and affirms the substitution thesis with regard to predicates ascribed metaphorically to God. (shrink)

This article analyses a footnote to the third version of the ‘Work of Art’ essay in which Walter Benjamin presents an account of ‘a certain oscillation’ between ‘cult value’ and ‘exhibition value’ as typical of the reception of all works of art. Benjamin's example in that footnote is the Sistine Madonna, a painting by Raphael in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie that has played an important part in German aesthetics since Winckelmann. Benjamin's footnote on the Sistine Madonna, along with his critique of (...) Hegel's aesthetics in that context, demand to be understood in relation to his remarks on Dada elsewhere in the artwork essay, and to his claim that technological reproducibility leads to the ‘actualization’ of the original reproduced. In that connection, the article concludes with an analysis of Kurt Schwitters's 1921 montage picture Knave Child Madonna with Horse. (shrink)

Safer sex campaigns for heterosexuals have sometimes targeted women in particular to take responsibility for condom use. In this article, the authors question some of the assumptions underlying this strategy, for instance, the assumptions of women's relatively unproblematic relationship with condoms and women's control over condom use. The authors interviewed 14 women about their experiences and views of condoms and of heterosexual relationships more broadly. Using a feminist poststructuralist form of discourse analysis, they examine their accounts in relation to gendered (...) discourses of desire and a coital imperative. They argue that an appreciation of these kinds of discursive influences is important for understanding the complex ways in which women are constrained and enabled to employ condoms for safer heterosex. (shrink)

Focus Philosophical Library's edition of Plato's _Republic _is an English translation of one of the most intellectually important works in Western philosophy and political theory. It includes an extensive introduction, an extensive afterword "Imitation" by John White, a chapter-by-chapter outline of principal speakers and summary of the content, Stephanus numbers, boldface type to indicate the entrance of a new speaker into the discussion, footnotes, and glossary of key terms with cross-references for the text. This dialogue includes Socrates and others discussing (...) the definition of justice, the theory of forms, and the immortality of the soul. Plato uses numerous dialogues between Socrates and various characters in Athens to discuss the nature of government, including the nature of justice, the happiness of the just and the unjust man, the nature of rule in the ideal city-state, and other matters essential to understanding classical philosophy such as the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, poetry, and the role of the philosopher in society. FPL books are distinguished by their commitment to faithful, clear, and consistent translations of texts and the rich world part and parcel of those texts. (shrink)

Structuralism about mathematical objects and structuralist accounts of physical computation both face indeterminacy objections. For the former, the problem arises for cases such as the complex roots i and \, for which a automorphism can be defined, thus establishing the structural identity of these importantly distinct mathematical objects. In the case of the latter, the problem arises for logical duals such as AND and OR, which have invertible structural profiles :369–400, 2001). This makes their physical implementations indeterminate, in the sense (...) that their structural profiles alone cannot establish whether a given physical component is an AND-gate or an OR-gate. Doherty has recently shown both problems to be analogous, and has argued that computational structuralism is threatened with the absurd conclusion that computational digits might be indiscernible, such that, if structural properties are all that we have to go on, the binary digit 0 must be treated as identical to the binary digit 1. However, we think that a solution to the indiscernibility problem for mathematical structuralists, drawing on the work of David Hilbert, can be adapted for the analogous problem in the computational case, thereby rescuing the structuralist approach to physical computation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Shagrir and Sprevak explore the apparent necessity of representation for the individuation of digits in computational systems.1 1 I will first offer a response to Sprevak’s argument that does not mention Shagrir’s original formulation, which was more complex. I then extend my initial response to cover Shagrir’s argument, thus demonstrating that it is possible to individuate digits in non-representational computing mechanisms. I also consider the implications that the non-representational individuation of digits would have for the broader theory of computing (...) mechanisms. 1 The Received View: No Computation without Representation 2 Computing Mechanisms and Functional Individuation 3 Against Computational Externalism 4 Implications for the Mechanistic Account. (shrink)

"He completed the assignment in two phases: The photographs made during the first phase capture the natural ruggedness of the terrain and establish its relationship to the developed neighboring enclaves. Those made during the second phase not only record the actual construction process but also reveal Deal's personal perspective on the qualities of light and the creation of form. Represented in this book as a selection from the resulting portfolio, Topos, a Greek word meaning place, site, position, and occasion - (...) Deal's artistic legacy to the Gerry Center."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

Generally, public opinion is measured via polls or survey instruments, with a majority of responses in a particular direction taken to indicate the presence of a given ‘public opinion’. However, discursive psychological and related scholarship has shown that the ontological status of both individual opinion and public opinion is highly suspect. In the first part of this article I draw on this body of work to demonstrate that there is currently no meaningful theoretical foundation for the construct of public opinion (...) as it is typically measured in surveys, polls, or focus groups. I then argue that there is a particular sense in which the construct of public opinion does make sense. In deliberative democratic forums participants engage in dialogue with the aim of coming to collective positions on particular issues. Here I draw on examples of deliberative democratic forums conducted on the social and ethical implications of science and technology. Conversation between participants in deliberative democratic forums is ideally characterized by individuals becoming informed about the issues being discussed, respectful interactions between participants, individuals being open to changing their positions, and a convergence towards collective positions in the interest of formulating civic solutions. The end-product of deliberation on a given issue might thus be termed a deliberative public opinion. ‘Deliberative public opinion’ is neither a cognitive nor an aggregate construct, but rather a socio-historical product. Criteria for its legitimacy rely on the inclusiveness of diversity of perspectives and the degree to which collective positions are defensible to a larger society. (shrink)

Automating Humanity is the shocking and eye-opening new manifesto from international award-winning designer Joe Toscano that unravels and lays bare the power agendas of the world's greatest tech titans in plain language, and delivers a fair warning to policymakers, civilians, and industry professionals alike: we need a strategy for the future, and we need it now. Automating Humanity is an insider's perspective on everything Big Tech doesn't want the public to know--or think about--from the addictions installed on a global scale (...) to the profits being driven by fake news and disinformation, to the way they're manipulating the world for profit and using our data to train systems that will automate jobs at an explosive, unprecedented scale. Toscano provides a critique of modern regulation, including parts of the new European Union's General Data Proctection Regulation (GDPR) suggesting how we can create proactive, adaptable regulation that satisfies both the needs of consumer safety and commercial success in the international economy. The content touches on everything from technology, economics, and public policy to psychology, history, and ethics, and is written in a way that is accessible to everyone from the average reader to the technical expert. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to begin developing a version of Gualtiero Piccinini’s mechanistic account of computation that does not need to appeal to any notion of proper (or teleological) functions. The motivation for doing so is a general concern about the role played by proper functions in Piccinini’s account, which will be evaluated in the first part of the paper. I will then propose a potential alternative approach, where computing mechanisms are understood in terms of Carl Craver’s perspectival (...) account of mechanistic functions. According to this approach, the mechanistic function of ‘performing a computation’ can only be attributed relative to an explanatory perspective, but such attributions are nonetheless constrained by the underlying physical structure of the system in question, thus avoiding unlimited pancomputationalism. If successful, this approach would carry with it fewer controversial assumptions than Piccinini’s original account, which requires a robust understanding of proper functions. Insofar as there are outstanding concerns about the status of proper functions, this approach would therefore be more generally acceptable. (shrink)

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have been recent (...) suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reveals David Hilbert’s position in the philosophy of mathematics, circa 1900, to be a form of non-eliminative structuralism, predating his formalism. I argue that Hilbert withstands the pressing objections put to him by Frege in the course of the Frege-Hilbert controversy in virtue of this early structuralist approach. To demonstrate that this historical position deserves contemporary attention I show that Hilbertian structuralism avoids a recent wave of objections against non-eliminative structuralists to the effect that they cannot distinguish (...) between structurally identical but importantly distinct mathematical objects, such as the complex roots of $-1$. (shrink)

La publication de la première traduction française de The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) de Samuel Butler, en 2009, suscite un nouvel examen du livre et de sa thèse volontairement provocatrice : l’Odyssée aurait été écrite par une jeune femme. Les préfaces aux éditions anglaises de 1967 et 2004 soulignent la justesse des interprétations de Samuel Butler relatives au style et au ton du poème, ainsi que sa manière de revendiquer son propre positionnement critique – ceci bien avant que la (...) démarche soit théorisée par les études académiques modernes. En ce qui concerne la place fondamentale accordée aux personnages féminins et à leurs points de vue dans l’épopée, l’article propose ici une alternative à la thèse insolite de Butler, rejetée par presque tous les spécialistes, en faisant état des recherches actuelles qui s’intéressent à la réception du poème, à la mixité de l’auditoire et à l’existence de traditions poétiques orales spécifiquement féminines. (shrink)

Quite honestly, it is not easy to see what all the fuss is about. Sir Julian Huxley was clearly impressed. “A landmark in modern thought which we cannot afford to pass by” wrote John Stewart Collis in the Sunday Times, and the following week Arnold Toynbee in the Observer wrote: “This is a great book. If it is eclipsed by anything, it is by the spirit of the author, which shines through it”. The French reaction to the original text was (...) at least equally enthusiastic. André Rousseaux in Figaro Littéraire says: “Not since the 12th. Century has there been such a satisfying exposition of the perfect understanding between the material world and that of Christ Incarnate”. One wonders how much of the enthusiasm is due to the fact that Father Teilhard was not allowed to publish his philosophical thought in his own lifetime. The facts of his life are well known. Born in 1881, he joined the Jesuits in 1899 and was ordained. in 1912. Prehistory, geology, palaeontology, anthropology, were his chief intellectual interests, and he took his doctorate in the Sorbonne in 1922. He became professor of geology in the Institut Catholique in Paris and in 1923 went with Pére Licent S.J. to China on a palaeontological mission. The detail is given by Sir Julian in the introduction, in the course of which he pays Père Teilhard many felicitous tributes, notably that he was “a dedicated Christian priest.” On his return to France, Sir Julian tells us, “some of the ideas which he had expressed in his lectures about original sin and its relation to evolution, were regarded as unorthodox by his religious superiors, and he was forbidden to continue teaching.” He spent the next twenty years mostly in China with occasional scientific visits to India, Burma, Java, Abyssinia and the United States. The work under review was all but finished in Peking in 1938-1940. (shrink)

I show that the indeterminacy problem for computational structuralists is in fact far more problematic than even the harshest critic of structuralism has realised; it is not a bullet which can be bitten by structuralists as previously thought. Roughly, this is because the structural indeterminacy of logic-gates such as AND/OR is caused by the structural identity of the binary computational digits 0/1 themselves. I provide a proof that pure computational structuralism is untenable because structural indeterminacy entails absurd consequences - namely, (...) that there is only one binary computational digit. I conclude that accounting for individuation is a more important desiderata for a theory of computation than even that of triviality. -/- . (shrink)

Why does female under- representation emerge during undergraduate education? At the University of Sydney, we surveyed students before and after their first philosophy course. We failed to find any evidence that this course disproportionately discouraged female students from continuing in philosophy relative to male students. Instead, we found evidence of an interaction effect between gender and existing attitudes about philosophy coming into tertiary education that appears at least partially responsible for this poor retention. At the first lecture, disproportionately few female (...) students intended to major. Further, at the first lecture, female students were less interested in philosophy, were less self-confident about philosophy, and were less able to imagine themselves as philosophers. Similarly, female students predicted they would feel more uncomfortable in philosophy classes than male students did. Further study with a control is warranted to determine whether this interaction effect is peculiar to philosophy, or whether it is indicative of a more general gendered trend amongst first year undergraduate students. (shrink)

Health research increasingly relies on organized collections of health data and biological samples. There are many types of sample and data collections that are used for health research, though these are collected for many purposes, not all of which are health-related. These collections exist under different jurisdictional and regulatory arrangements and include: 1) Population biobanks, cohort studies, and genome databases 2) Clinical and public health data 3) Direct-to-consumer genetic testing 4) Social media 5) Fitness trackers, health apps, and biometric data (...) sensors Population biobanks, cohort studies, and genome databases Clinical and public health data Direct-to-consumer genetic testing Social media Fitness trackers, health apps, and biometric data sensors Ethical, legal, and social challenges of such collections are well recognized, but there has been limited attention to the broader societal implications of the existence of these collections. Although health research conducted using these collections is broadly recognized as beneficent, secondary uses of these data and samples may be controversial. We examine both documented and hypothetical scenarios of secondary uses of health data and samples. In particular, we focus on the use of health data for purposes of: Forensic investigations Civil lawsuits Identification of victims of mass casualty events Denial of entry for border security and immigration Making health resource rationing decisions Facilitating human rights abuses in autocratic regimes Forensic investigations Civil lawsuits Identification of victims of mass casualty events Denial of entry for border security and immigration Making health resource rationing decisions Facilitating human rights abuses in autocratic regimes Current safeguards relating to the use of health data and samples include research ethics oversight and privacy laws. These safeguards have a strong focus on informed consent and anonymization, which are aimed at the protection of the individual research subject. They are not intended to address broader societal implications of health data and sample collections. As such, existing arrangements are insufficient to protect against subversion of health databases for non-sanctioned secondary uses, or to provide guidance for reasonable but controversial secondary uses. We are concerned that existing debate in the scholarly literature and beyond has not sufficiently recognized the secondary data uses we outline in this paper. Our main purpose, therefore, is to raise awareness of the potential for unforeseen and unintended consequences, in particular negative consequences, of the increased availability and development of health data collections for research, by providing a comprehensive review of documented and hypothetical non-health research uses of such data. (shrink)

Few fates seem worse than living without cause for hope. Yet what is it to have a cause for hope? And how is it related to having hope? Although these questions have received relatively little philosophical attention, I argue that Kant advances a rationalist account of hope that addresses them. My central thesis has two parts. First, hope is a rational attitude for Kant; certain rational conditions are needed to differentiate hope from other desiderative attitudes (such as mere wishing or (...) fantasizing). Second, these rational conditions involve causal inferences made by the hoping agent. To hope, an agent must make certain inferences about the cause of her desire and the cause of her belief that the object of her desire is possible. In short, to hope requires an agent to take herself to have a cause for hope. (shrink)

To improve the efficacy of business ethics courses, the article recommends closer attention be paid to the religious motivations of students, which have for too long been ignored by most business ethics theory. By disconnecting the teaching of business ethics from the motivations driving business decisions, the theory that gets taught – and published in the textbooks – more strongly represents the philosophical tools of business ethicists than the moral resources business people claim to use. Through a community-based research study (...) that immersed students in the ethical issues business people face, an argument emerges for incorporating more religious ethics into teaching business ethics as this is the kind of moral resource business people claim is most important to them. Though the interviewees attested to the importance of religion, they were rarely able to articulate how their religious beliefs shaped their moral decisions, suggesting that much work could be done in the area of helping people better learn to apply their closely held religious beliefs in the workplace. (shrink)

Cet article brosse un portrait de l’évolution du domaine de l’éthique organisationnelle au Québec et propose une classification permettant de qualifier les approches réellement utilisées en entreprise, et de discuter de la composition des programmes d’éthique organisationnelle en fonction des besoins et des contextes organisationnels. Les résultats présentés sont issus d’une étude quantitative sur la présence et la perception des pratiques et programmes d’éthique mis en place dans les organisations québécoises. Cette étude a aussi permis de démontrer qu’il existe six (...) types d’orientations des programmes d’éthique organisationnelle qui regroupent chacune diverses pratiques de gestion de l’éthique. L’approche proposée dans cet article souhaite aller au-delà de l’approche classique opposant les approches de conformité et d’intégrité en éthique organisationnelle, en misant plutôt sur la complémentarité, la synergie et la variété des différentes approches. (shrink)

One of the central issues dividing proponents of metaphysical interpretations of transcendental idealism concerns Kant’s views on the distinctness of things in themselves and appearances. Proponents of metaphysical one-object interpretations claim that things in themselves and appearances are related by some kind of one-object grounding relation, through which the grounding and grounded relata are different aspects of the same object. Proponents of metaphysical two-object interpretations, by contrast, claim that things in themselves and appearances are related by some kind of two-object (...) grounding relation, through which the grounding and grounded relata involve distinct objects. By way of investigating Kant’s overarching account of grounding, I will argue that the most plausible metaphysical interpretation of transcendental idealism is one on which we can know that there are things in themselves grounding appearances, but not which specific kind of one- or two-object grounding relation obtain between them. Our ignorance of things in themselves therefore extends to their distinctness from appearances — pace both metaphysical one-object interpretations and metaphysical two-object interpretations. (shrink)

Concussive injuries to the head and brain are relatively common in the National Football League. This is not news, since the issue has been covered in many articles in the popular press and many news specials on television. As an NFL offensive lineman for 13 years, I suffered a huge number of hits to the head — an estimated 215,000 at least. Nevertheless, I have fared better than many of the players of my era: many suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. (...) For example, some of my fellow Hall of Fame players from that era, Mike Webster, Jim Ringo, John Mackey, and Joe Perry, all suffered from CTE and all are now deceased. I count myself lucky that the main malady affecting me after those many blows to the head is a 60% hearing loss in my left ear — probably due to undiagnosed concussions and particularly to thousands of head slaps by defensive players, whose first hit after the snap was often a right-handed blow to the helmet's open hole over my left ear. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Domesticated Democracy The Principle of Consensus as a Feature of Democracy Conclusion.

First published in 1899, The School and Society describes John Dewey's experiences with his own famous Laboratory School, started in 1896. Dewey's experiments at the Labora­tory School reflected his original social and educational philosophy based on American experience and concepts of democracy, not on European education models then in vogue. This forerunner of the major works shows Dewey's per­vasive concern with the need for a rich, dynamic, and viable society. In his introduction to this volume, Joe R. Burnett states Dewey's (...) theme. Industrialization, urbanization, science, and technology have created a revolution the schools cannot ignore. Dewey carries this theme through eight chapters: The School and Social Progress; The School and the Life of the Child; Waste in Education; Three Years of the University Elementary School; The Psychology of Elementary Education; Froebel's Educa­tional Principles; The Psychology of Occupations; and the Development of Attention. (shrink)