The book Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, aims to explain how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of ...

Evolutionary theory predicts that humans should avoid incest because of the negative effects incest has on individual reproduction: production of defective offspring. Selection for the avoidance of close-kin mating has apparently resulted in a psychological mechanism that promotes voluntary incest avoidance. Most human societies are thought to have rules regulating incest. If incest is avoided, why are social rules constructed to regulate it? This target article suggests that incest rules do not exist primarily to regulate close-kin mating but to regulate (...) inbreeding between more distant kin and sexual relations between affinal relatives. Three evolutionary hypotheses about cousin marriage and affinal kin mating follow from this suggestion: Rules regulating mating between affinal kin are means of paternity protection. Cousin marriage is regulated because, if it occurs, it can concentrate wealth and power within families to the detriment of the powerful positions of rulers in stratified societies and the relatively equal social statuses of most men in egalitarian societies. Tests using the comparative method on a worldwide sample of 129 societies supported the three hypotheses. Two alternative anthropological hypotheses failed to be supported. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of model-based reasoning in the interplay between theory and experiment in the context of biomedical engineering research laboratories, where problem solving involves using physical models. These "model systems" are sites of experimentation where in vitro models are used to screen, control, and simulate specific aspects of in vivo phenomena. As with all models, simulation devices are idealized representations, but they are also systems themselves, possessing engineering constraints. Drawing on research in contemporary cognitive science that construes (...) cognition as occurring in a complex distributed system comprising people and artifacts, I argue that reasoning with model systems is a constraint satisfaction process involving co-construction, manipulation, and revision of mental and physical models. (shrink)

Do neurosurgical procedures ever result in the patient prior to the procedure not being identical with the individual who wakes up postsurgery in the hospital bed? We address this question by offering an analysis of the persistence of persons that emphasizes narrative, rather than numerical, identity. We argue that a narrative analysis carries the advantage of highlighting what matters to patients in their ordinary lives, explaining the varying degrees of persistence of personal identity, and enhancing our understanding of patients' experiences. (...) We illustrate these points in cases involving temporal lobectomy for treatment of refractory epilepsy and deep brain stimulation for refractory Parkinson's disease. (shrink)

Epistemic trustworthiness is defined as a complex character state that supervenes on a relation between first- and second-order beliefs, including beliefs about others as epistemic agents. In contexts shaped by unjust power relations, its second-order components create a mutually supporting link between a deficiency in epistemic character and unjust epistemic exclusion on the basis of group membership. In this way, a deficiency in the virtue of epistemic trustworthiness plays into social/epistemic interactions that perpetuate social injustice. Overcoming that deficiency and, along (...) with it, normalized practices of epistemic exclusion, requires developing a self-critical perspective on the partial, socially-located character of one's perspective and the consequent epistemic value of inclusiveness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 58-77 [Access article in PDF] The Ethics of Care and the Private Woodwind Lesson Nancy Nourse Jeremy's family was getting ready for the concert. It wasn't that he was tired of watching his father conduct. He loved his father and he loved the concerts. But people were always asking Jeremy the same question and that question didn't seem to have an (...) answer....They weren't even inside the concert hall before the doorman smiled at Jeremy and asked, "Well, young man, do you think you'll be a conductor like your father?" 1Children like Jeremy, situated in the world of established music-making, are routinely subjected to stereotypical expectations, often not seen for who they are themselves, but for the qualities of their situatedness. Jeremy, as a result, found himself continually bombarded with this question which spokein fortissimo tones that the inquirer was impressed by the stature of his maestro father, but really did not seem to care to see the young boy as a person in his own right. The dreaded question, that he so frequently faced, festered in him, shouting of his own lack of personhood in its flagrant assumptions. But what voice did he have? After the concert: a lady in a long gown and a huge strand of pearls came in next [backstage]...."So this is your little son," she cried. Jeremy blushed as she kissed the top of his head and squeezed his face so that he looked like a fish. "Tell me, young man, are you going to be a conductor like your father?" 2Of course stories such as Jeremy's in which individuals suffer because others have not been truly caring, are not unique to the world of music. Such thoughtless pleasantries are nothing more than symptoms of the widespread absence of knowing and care experienced in day-to-day living. While Patricia Benner and Suzanne Gordon suggest that there are few people who would wish to be perceived as uncaring persons, there are often spoken platitudes about care, especially about large institutions, that seemshallow and meaningless. 3 Take, for example, a hospital whose slogan claims [End Page 58] it is caring, but is only really interested in research or profit, or the doctor who quadruple books patients for appointments all the while insisting that he really does care about his patients. The obstacles to true understanding about care include the view that care is merely a sentiment that need be expressed, but not the thoughtful planning out of means to create ample opportunities to enact deeds of caring. 4 In day-to-day situations of modern living with big corporations, governments, and institutions, there may be individuals who claim to care, but there are no features in these organizations' blueprints that ensure and take responsibility for providing care. Care must extend beyond sentiment into action.In the name of superior curriculum and specialist teachers and programs,tiny rural schools were abandoned and students were moved into bigger and bigger schools. As schools and educational institutions have greatly increased in size over the past century, teachers have found it more and more difficult to connect to the larger and larger number of students found on their class rosters. Beyond their class lists how can teachers really be responsible for the sea of faces for whom they cannot even supply names? In The Students are Watching, Theodore and Nancy Sizer ask: Do [current] conditions in the school allow each student to be known well?...Anonymity is the curse of good teaching and inevitably contributes to corner-cutting. If no one knows the students in a high school, it is easy for them to drift through. 5Benner and Gordon cite the shop program in a vocational school as an ideal setting in which teachers have the opportunity to develop caring relationships with their students since the settings are informal, class time is significantly extended, and the teachers work with the same students over several years. 6 Special education teachers as well usually... (shrink)

The origins of the ‘ incommensurability problem’ and its central aspect, the ‘ meaning variance thesis’ are traced to the successive collapse of several distinctions maintained by the standard empiricist account of meaning in scientific theories. The crucial distinction is that between a conceptual structure and a theory. The ‘thesis’ and the ‘problem’ follow from critiques of this distinction by Duhem, Quine and Feyerabend. It is maintained that, rather than revealing the ‘problem’, the arguments leading to it simply show the (...) inadequacy of the reductionist theory of meaning. The genuine remaining problem is that of the development of a new theory of meaning in science. (shrink)

While few soldiers may have read the works of Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius, it is undoubtedly true that the ancient philosophy known as Stoicism guides the actions of many in the military. Soldiers and seamen learn early in their training “to suck it up,” to endure, to put aside their feelings and to get on with the mission. This book explores what the Stoic philosophy actually is, the role it plays in the character of the military (both ancient and modern), (...) and its powerful value as a philosophy of life. Marshalling anecdotes from military history—ranging from ancient Greek wars to World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq—the book illuminates the military mind and uses it as a window on the virtues of the Stoic philosophy, which are far richer and more interesting than our popularized notions. The book explores the deep, lasting value that Stoicism can yield, in issues of military leadership and character; in the Stoic conception of anger and its control (does a warrior need anger to go to battle?); and in Stoic thinking about fear and resilience, grief and mourning, and the value of camaraderie and brotherhood. The book concludes by recommending a moderate Stoicism, where the task for the individual, both civilian and military, youth and adult, is to temper control with forgiveness, and warrior drive and achievement with humility and humor. (shrink)

Is age discrimination ethically objectionable? One puzzle is that we sometimes assume that the target of both age discrimination and ageism must be older people, yet in poorer nations, older people are generally shown more respect. This article explores the ethical question. It looks first at ethical arguments favoring age discrimination toward younger people in low‐income, less industrialized countries of the global South, using sub‐Saharan Africa as an illustration. It contrasts these with arguments favoring age discrimination toward older people in (...) high‐income, more industrialized countries of the global North, particularly the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, it considers what role, if any, differences in life expectancy, infant and child mortality, and prospects for healthy lives should play in the moral embrace of a particular view by a community. It argues that there can be reasons to favor different types of discrimination in different parts of the world. (shrink)

To what use can causal claims established in good studies be put? We give examples of studies from which inaccurate inferences were made about target policy situations. The usual diagnosis is that the studies in question lack external validity, which means that the same results do not hold in the target as in study. That’s a label that just repeats what we already knew. We offer a deeper analysis. Our analysis points to the need for interdisciplinarity and to the demand (...) to focus not on the study – as the expression ‘external validity’ invites you to do – but on the target. The call for interdisciplinary approaches to real life problems is common since it is widely acknowledged that what happens in the real world seldom falls under the auspices of any single research domain. Our focus is on one specific real life problem: how to use causal claims from good studies to help predict whether the policies tested will work in a new situation. Our analysis of what it takes to back up these predictions points up very specific stages in the process of prediction where we are bound to get it wrong if we do not diversify our concepts, our knowledge and our methods. We isolate two reasons inferences from study to target fail. First, policy variables do not produce results on their own; they need helping factors. The distribution of helping factors is likely to be unique or local for each study, so one cannot expect external validity to be all that common. Second, researchers often give too concrete a description of the cause in the study for it to carry over to the target.ion is necessary to get causes that travel. There is no sure-fire way to guard against these problems. But the unavailability of one perfect tool does not imply there are no second best contrivances. Two general pointers for Good Practice in policy advice follow from our diagnosis: focus on the concrete details in the target and use cross discipline heuristics that diversify background knowledge. (shrink)

Although most philosophers are not aware of it, research in cognitive development and in learning in the last decade has made considerable use of the characterizations of the nature and development of scientific knowledge proffered by philosophers of science. In a “reflexive” move, Alison Gopnik proposes philosophers of science can profit from the research of psychologists investigating cognitive development-specifically from that group of researchers who advocate the “theory theory.”.

Il saggio propone una nuova analisi della crisi capitalistica che si ricollega alla teoria dell'economista e teorico sociale Karl Polanyi, innovando la tesi di quest'ultimo del doppio movimento di mercatizzazione e protezioni sociali, fonte di lotte e conflitti, con un terzo asse: l'emancipazione e le sue proprie lotte. Le lotte per l'auto-determinazione e l'indipendenza sono qui interpretate attraverso la chiave di lettura dell'emancipazione, teorizzata come «il terzo mancante». Perciň, al doppio movimento di Polanyi subentra il «triplo movimento», che forma il (...) nucleo della riflessione teoretica e pone sotto una nuova luce la crisi capitalistica delle societÀ attuali. Ognuno dei tre termini č ambivalente e nessuno dei tre puň essere preso in considerazione senza gli altri due. (shrink)

Business and Society Review, Volume 127, Issue S1, Page 147-157, Spring 2022.

When I consider the distinction and varied accomplishments of previous speakers, I am especially sensible of the honor of being asked to give the Haskins Prize Lecture. Unlike some of my predecessors, I can offer neither significant achievements in the public or institutional sphere nor a striking or particularly unusual life history. What I do share with a number of previous speakers is the feeling that if I have been fortunate enough to have enjoyed a life of learning, that privilege (...) has owed much to chance or, more bluntly, been due more to good luck than good management. But the good luck surely included encountering teachers—and later in my career, colleagues—who inspired and helped me; I will have occasion to mention a number of them. (shrink)

The claims of the epistemological 'anarchists' have their roots in the orthodox tradition as well as in the Popperian. In particular they follow from the work of Quine. Meaning variance and incommensurability follow directly from the holistic conception of meaning in his 'network' view. Quine's efforts to evade this conclusion fail. His attempt to develop a theory-neutral notion of observation sentence is shown (1) to be inconsistent with his previous claims since it involves the tacit acceptance of the 'dogma of (...) reductionism', (2) to involve the acceptance of a questionable 'third dogma', i.e. the stimulus-response theory of behaviorist psychology, and (3) ultimately to miss the point of the anarchists. In Quinian terms, in order for observation sentences to perform the function of intertheoretical 'arbiters', what is needed is 'similarity of assent', which is not a meaningful notion on an internetwork basis. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 22, Issue 2, Page 112-122, June 2022.

Adoration is the second volume of the Deconstruction of Christianity, following Dis-Enclosure. The first volume attempted to demonstrate why it is necessary to open reason up not to a religious dimension but to one transcending reason as we have been accustomed to understanding it; the term "adoration" attempts to name the gesture of this dis-enclosed reason. -/- Adoration causes us to receive ignorance as truth: not a feigned ignorance, perhaps not even a "nonknowledge," nothing that would attempt to justify the (...) negative again, but the simple, naked truth that there is nothing in the place of God, because there is no place for God. The outside of the world opens us in the midst of the world, and there is no first or final place. Each one of us is at once the first and the last. Each one, each name. And our ignorance is made worse by the fact that we do not know whether we ought to name this common and singular property of all names. We must remain in this suspense, hesitating between and stammering in various possible languages, ultimately learning to speak anew. -/- In this book, Jean-Luc Nancy goes beyond his earlier historical and philosophical thought and tries to think-or at least crack open a little to thinking-a stance or bearing that might be suitable to the retreat of God that results from the self-deconstruction of Christianity. Adoration may be a manner, a style of spirit for our time, a time when the "spiritual" seems to have become so absent, so dry, so adulterated. -/- The book is a major contribution to the important strand of attempts to think a "post-secular" situation of religion. (shrink)

An adequate analysis of experiences and situations specific to women, especially mothering, requires consideration of women's difference. A focus on women's difference, however, jeopardizes feminism's claims of women's equal individualist subjectivity, and risks recuperating the inequality and oppression of women, especially the view that all women should be mothers, want to be mothers, and are most happy being mothers. This book considers how thinkers including Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Nancy Choderow and Adrienne Rich struggle to negotiate this dilemma (...) of difference in analyzing mothering, encompassing the paradoxes concerning embodiment, gender and representation they encounter. Patrice Di Quinzio shows that mothering has been and will continue to be an intractable problem for feminist theory itself, and suggests the political usefulness of an explicitly paradoxical politics of mothering. (shrink)

Scientists, either working alone or in groups, require rich cognitive, social, cultural, and material environments to accomplish their epistemic aims. There is research in the cognitive sciences that examines intelligent behavior as a function of the environment (“environmental perspectives”), which can be used to examine how scientists integrate “cognitive-cultural” resources as they create environments for problem-solving. In this paper, I advance the position that an expanded framework of distributed cognition can provide conceptual, analytical, and methodological tools to investigate how scientists (...) enhance natural cognitive capacities by creating specific kinds of environments to address their epistemic goals. In a case study of a pioneering neuroengineering lab seeking to understand learning in living networks of neurons, I examine how the researchers integrated conceptual, methodological, and material resources from engineering, neuroscience, and computational science to create different kinds of distributed problem-solving environments that enhanced their natural cognitive capacities, for instance, for reasoning, visualization, abstraction, imagination, and memory, to attain their epistemic aims. (shrink)

Developed directly with the IB, dedicated assessment support straight from the IB builds confidence, and student samples drive critical thought on constructing strong responses. The most comprehensive coverage of the core content Being Human, this course book will help learners grasp complex philosophical ideas and develop crucial thinking skills · The most comprehensive coverage of the core content Being Human, developed directly with the IB · Engage learners in the course, with excerpts from a range of philosophers spurring critical discussion (...) · Help students understand exam achievement levels and progress attainment with clear student samples · Assessment support straight from the IB cements assessment potential · Support all learning styles and simplify complex philosophical ideas using clear visuals and illustrations · Reinforce all key ideas with integrated activities helping extend and deepen understanding About the series: IB Diploma Course Books are essential resource materials designed in cooperation with the IB to provide students with extra support through their IB studies. Course Books provide advice and guidance on specific course assessment requirements, mirroring the IB philosophy and providing opportunities for critical thinking. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon ancient sources to develop a cognitivist account of emotions and indicate the sense in which they are candidates for the attribution of moral responsibility. Aristotle and the Stoics provide rich resources here, even if the Stoics themselves ultimately deny a place for ordinary emotions in the best moral life. In a selective engagement with the ancients, Kant aligns himself with the Stoic disparagement of the emotions while rejecting their cognitivist account. According to him, emotions are inclinations (...) distinct from the exercise of practical reason. But in his later moral writings, Kant urges a place for emotions in the fine and virtuous character. The chapter begins by reviewing considered intuitions about the moral significance of emotions. (shrink)

This paper argues that bioethics as a field should broaden its scope to include the ethics of war, focusing on war’s public health effects. The “Introduction” section describes the bioethics literature on war, which emphasizes clinical and research topics while omitting public health. The section, “War as a public health crisis” demonstrates the need for a public health ethics approach by framing war as a public health crisis. The section, “Bioethics principles for war and public health” proposes six bioethics principles (...) for war that address its public health dimensions: health justice, accountability, dignified lives, public health sustainability, nonmaleficence, and public health maximization. The section, “Justifying and applying bioethical principles” shows how these principles inform ethical analysis, including just war theory and military ethics. The section, “From principles to practice” envisions ways in which bioethicists can promote these principles in practice through research, teaching, and service. The “Conclusion” section urges bioethicists to engage with war as a public health crisis, including calling attention to war’s impact on civilians, especially women, children, and other vulnerable groups. (shrink)

African understandings of personhood are complex, with different accounts emphasizing distinct aspects of what it means to be a person. Some accounts stress excellence of character and performing well in social roles and relationships, while others focus on innate moral qualities of individuals independent of their conduct and character. This paper sheds new light on these twin aspects of personhood. It proposes a way to navigate these dual features by bringing African and Western personhood into conversation, building on the strengths (...) of each approach, and developing a new view of personhood that we call, Emergent Personhood. Section 1 introduces diverse approaches to personhood within African thought. Section 2 compares African and Western approaches. Section 3 evaluates advantages and disadvantages of each and identifies conditions that any account of personhood must meet to leverage the advantages and avoid the disadvantages identified. Section 4 introduces Emergent Personhood, which meets these conditions. Section 5 concludes that expanding the conversation about personhood across cultures enriches an ongoing conversation about what it means to be a person. (shrink)

Cicero, it would seem, has refused to die, despite a tragic and ignominious assassination in 43 B.C., and the fact that today Latin is decreasing as a language that is commonly taught. This book offers a thorough study of why Cicero and his works have continued, through the centuries, to have an enormous influence, for example, on education, literature, legal training--an influence that brings the past into the present.

As interest in comparative effectiveness research grows, questions have emerged regarding whether it is ever acceptable to alter informed consent requirements for research when patients are randomly assigned to widely-used therapies. This paper reports on interviews with Institutional Review Board members and researchers and on focus groups with patients from Geisinger and Johns Hopkins health systems. The objective was to elicit participants' views of the acceptability of four different disclosure and authorization models for low-risk pragmatic comparative effectiveness trials of widely-used (...) therapies. Results suggest that although participants valued autonomous choice, many also believed that it was acceptable to streamline information disclosure and to use an opt-out process for eligible individuals who would prefer not to participate. This provides some preliminary evidence that relevant stakeholders find alternatives to traditional informed consent acceptable for low-risk pragmatic comparative effectiveness trials of widely-used therapies as long as a sufficient amount of choice is preserved. (shrink)

(1999). Difference as an occasion for rights: A feminist rethinking of rights, liberalism, and difference. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 2, Feminism, Identity and Difference, pp. 27-55.

Growing demand for direct care workers to assist care-dependent elderly people has created an opening for migrant workers from low- income nations to sell their services to middle and high-income nations. Using Singapore as a case example, we draw on capability theory to make the case that receiving nations that import direct care workers should be held to global justice standards that protect workers’ floor level human capabilities. Specifically, we (1) show that Singapore and other receiving nations fail to protect (...) human capabilities at a threshold level required by dignity; (2) identify specific human capabilities placed at risk; and (3) recommend standards for receiving nations that support central capabilities. As populations in both developed and developing nations are rapidly aging, these concerns could not be timelier. (shrink)