This paper presents new results from a detailed study of the structure of autocatalytic sets. We show how autocatalytic sets can be decomposed into smaller autocatalytic subsets, and how these subsets can be identified and classified. We then argue how this has important consequences for the evolvability, enablement, and emergence of autocatalytic sets. We end with some speculation on how all this might lead to a generalized theory of autocatalytic sets, which could possibly be applied to entire ecologies or even (...) economies. (shrink)

We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world's scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement (...) to consider, and a standard five point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement 'Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus'. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields. (shrink)

The relationship between memory and imagination has long intrigued philosophers. One focus of recent debate in this area has been the question whether memory and imagination differ in kind or merely in degree, with discontinuists holding that remembering indeed differs in kind from imagining, while continuists hold that even successful remembering differs from imagining only in degree. Another recent focus has been the need to approach memory and imagination from a broadly normative perspective, in an attempt to explain what it (...) is for remembering and imagining to succeed or fail. The goal of this special issue, which builds on an online workshop organized in 2022 by the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at the National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University and the Centre for Philosophy of Memory at the Université Grenoble Alpes, is to explore memory, imagination, and the relation between them from this normative perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore the issue of the elimination of sports, or elements of sports, that present a high risk of brain injury. In particular, we critically examine two elements of Angelo Corlett’s and Pam Sailors’ arguments for the prohibition of football and Nicholas Dixon’s claim for the reformation of boxing to eliminate blows to the head based on the empirical assumption of an essential or causal connection between brain injuries incurred in football and the development of a degenerative (...) brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy ; and John Stuart Mill’s rejection of consensual domination. We present four arguments to contest the validity of Corlett, Dixon’s and Sailor’s positions. Specifically, we argue that certain autonomy-based arguments undermine paternalist arguments for reform; the nature of the goods people pursue in their lives might justify their foregoing future autonomy; Mill’s argument against consensual domination draws on ambiguous and arbitrary distinctions; the lack of consensus and empirical evidence regarding CTE arising from brain injuries in sport underdetermines calls for reform. We conclude that these proposals for reforming or eliminating sports with high risks of brain injuries are not well founded. (shrink)

As commonly understood, professional ethics consists of shared duties and episodic dilemmas--the responsibilities incumbent on all members of specific professions joined together with the dilemmas that arise when these responsibilities conflict. Martin challenges this "consensus paradigm" as he rethinks professional ethics to include personal commitments and ideals, of which many are not mandatory. Using specific examples from a wide range of professions, including medicine, law, high school teaching, journalism, engineering, and ministry, he explores how personal commitments motivate, guide, and give (...) meaning to work. (shrink)

By any reasonable reckoning, Gottlob Frege's ‘On Sense and Reference’ is one of the more important philosophical papers of all time. Although Frege briefly discusses the sense-reference distinction in an earlier work, it is through ‘Sense and Reference’ that most philosophers have become familiar with it. And the distinction so thoroughly permeates contemporary philosophy of language and mind that it is almost impossible to imagine these subjects without it.The distinction between the sense and the referent of a name is introduced (...) in the second paragraph of ‘Sense and Reference.’. (shrink)

The dead donor rule justifies current practice in organ procurement for transplantation and states that organ donors must be dead prior to donation. The majority of organ donors are diagnosed as having suffered brain death and hence are declared dead by neurological criteria. However, a significant amount of unrest in both the philosophical and the medical literature has surfaced since this practice began forty years ago. I argue that, first, declaring death by neurological criteria is both unreliable and unjustified but (...) further, the ethical principles which themselves justify the dead donor rule are better served by abandoning that rule and instead allowing individuals who have suffered severe and irreversible brain damage to become organ donors, even though they are not yet dead and even though the removal of their organs would be the proximal cause of death. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists make many different, seemingly incompatible parsimony claims in support of competing models of cognition in nonhuman animals. This variety of parsimony claims is problematic. Firstly, it is difficult to justify each specific variety. This problem is especially salient for Morgan's Canon, perhaps the most important variety of parsimony claimed. Secondly, there is no systematic way of adjudicating between particular claims when they conflict. I argue for a view of parsimony in comparative psychology that solves these problems, based (...) on Sober's view that parsimony claims are claims that one model is more plausible given background theory. (shrink)

(2009). Sports Rules, Their Spirit and the Oldest Knockout Competition of Them All. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1-2. doi: 10.1080/17511320902752300.

In what follows I want to endorse and to reinforce what seems to me a pragmatic, and more specifically a Deweyan, account of the dim prospects for traditional moral theory. I want further to describe a role for moral philosophy that accepts the demise of moral theory, a role exemplified by Dewey himself in his insistence on the place of intelligence and reflection in a satisfactory life. Dewey’s insistence on intelligence and reflection in the good life gives rise to a (...) large–scale moral ideal, the ideal of the reflective life; I describe that ideal and contrast it with some others. (shrink)

Talks about American pragmatism that is a fertile soil for growth in Western religious thought.

Pragmatism and the Reflective Life explains the moral perspective embedded in the pragmatist tradition of American philosophy and offers pragmatist moral thought as an alternative to analytic moral theory. By contrasting the commitments of pragmatism with most Western philosophical traditions, this book brings into focus the inclusive idealism that informs the American intellectual tradition.

Government responses to globalisation include developing educational leaders as reformers for workforce competitiveness in the knowledge economy. Qualitative research tracked interventions involving national leadership development bodies to acculturate leaders in secondary schools and universities. Acculturating leaders as reformers was mediated through interaction with professional cultures valuing autonomy. Yet mediation supported the government's global positioning through adapting reforms and independent innovation.

Kracauer’s rehabilitation in the 1990s sidelined his Marxist framework of the middle-to-late Weimar era in favour of the then still dominant if decaying paradigms of poststructuralism and postmodernism. It was also silent on the relationship between Kant and Marxism in Kracauer’s work. This essay addresses these weaknesses by arguing that Kracauer transcoded the structure of Kant’s ‘problematic’ around reification into a Marxist framework in the middle-to-late Weimar period. The essay considers how Kracauer conceived the mass ornament as a site of (...) reification and critical pedagogy. It explores his strategies of de-reification and their overlap with Walter Benjamin and the ruptures and continuities between the radical Weimar work and his later Theory of Film. The essay argues that the Theory of Film can be better understood as a transcoding of Kant’s philosophy of the aesthetic in the third Critique into the film camera itself, although the Marxian framework of the Weimar period is now considerably attenuated. (shrink)

This review article examines Alison Young’s book, Parliamentary Sovereignty and the Human Rights Act. It focuses principally on the theoretical framework within which Young advances her many detailed arguments about the British constitution. In particular, it challenges Young’s contention that the powers of Parliament and courts can be explained by reference to an empirically determinable ‘legal fact’ (whether that ‘fact’ reflects Dicey’s theory of continuing parliamentary sovereignty or some other theory). The review article contends that there are insuperable evidential and (...) philosophical difficulties with this approach to British constitutional theory. In the light of these difficulties, it is argued that Young’s theory (and indeed any other constitutional theory) must be understood as a thoroughly normative account of the powers that Parliament and courts should have. (shrink)

Conversation analytic research has advanced understanding of the psychotherapeutic process by understanding how psychotherapy is organised over time in and through interaction between clients and therapists. This study progresses knowledge in this area by examining how psychological accounts of experience are progressively developed across a range of helping relationships. Data include: (1) approximately 30 h of psychotherapy sessions involving trainee therapists; (2) approximately 15 h of psychotherapy demonstration sessions involving expert therapists; and (3) approximately 30 h of everyday conversations involving (...) close friends or family members. This article reports an analysis of techniques that are used to bring together two experiences that were discussed separately, to proffer a candidate connection between them. This proffering of candidate connections was recurrently used in psychotherapy. If confirmed by a client, a proffered connection could be used to develop a psychological account of a client’s experiences, which could then warrant some psychological intervention. In contrast, the proffering of connections was observed in only one of the everyday conversations included in the current study, where it was used to develop psychological accounts of experience. This shows that although proffering candidate connections is an everyday interactional practice, it appears to be used with greater frequency in psychotherapy, to advance its specific institutional aims. (shrink)

Foucault’s Introduction to a translation of Ludwig Binswanger’s essay ‘Dream and Existence’ was published in late 1954. The translation was credited to Jacqueline Verdeaux, with Foucault acknowledged for the notes. Yet Verdeaux herself indicates the intensely collaborative nature of their working process and the translation. In 1958, Victor von Weizsäcker’s Der Gestaltkreis was published in French as Le Cycle de la structure, translated by Foucault and Daniel Rocher. Foucault went on to translate and introduce Immanuel Kant’s Anthropology as his secondary (...) doctoral thesis. His engagement with Kant and Binswanger’s ideas has been discussed in the literature, but his role as translator has generally been neglected. His engagement with von Weizsäcker is almost never mentioned. This article critically discusses Foucault’s role in the Binswanger and von Weizsäcker translations, comparing the German originals with the French texts, and showing how this is a useful additional element to the story of the early Foucault. (shrink)

(2003). The importance of history: A reply to Malpas. Philosophy & Geography: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 219-224.