What makes for a good education? What does one need to count as well-educated? Knowledge, to be sure. But knowledge is easily forgotten, and today's knowledge may be obsolete tomorrow. Skills, particularly in critical thinking, are crucial as well. But absent the right motivation, graduates may fail to put their skills to good use. In this book, Nathan King argues that intellectual virtues-traits like curiosity, intellectual humility, honesty, intellectual courage, and open-mindedness-are central to any education worthy of the name. (...) Further, such virtues are crucial to our functioning well in everyday life, in areas as diverse as personal relationships, responsible citizenship, civil discourse, and personal success. Our struggles in these areas often result from a failure to think virtuously. Drawing upon recent work in philosophy and psychology, King paints a portrait of virtuous intellectual character-and of the vices such a character opposes. Filled with examples and applications, this book introduces readers to the intellectual virtues: what they are, why they matter, and how we can grow in them. (shrink)

A key question has been underexplored in the literature on conscientious objection: if a physician is required to perform ‘medical activities,’ what is a medical activity? This paper explores the question by employing a teleological evaluation of medicine and examining the analogy of military conscripts, commonly cited in the conscientious objection debate. It argues that physicians (and other healthcare professionals) can only be expected to perform and support medical acts – acts directed towards their patients’ health. That is, physicians cannot (...) be forced to provide or support services that are not medical in nature, even if such activities support other socially desirable pursuits. This does not necessarily mean that medical professionals cannot or should not provide non-medical services, but only that they are under no obligation to provide them. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218.

Philosophers have traditionally addressed the issue of scientific unification in terms of theoretical reduction. Reductive models, however, cannot explain the occurrence of unification in areas of science where successful reductions are hard to find. The goal of this essay is to analyse a concrete example of integration in biology—the developmental synthesis—and to generalize it into a model of scientific unification, according to which two fields are in the process of being unified when they become explanatorily relevant to each other. I (...) conclude by suggesting that this methodological conception of unity, which is independent of the debate on the metaphysical foundations of science, is closely connected to the notion of interdisciplinarity. 1 Introduction2 Some Troubles with Theory Reduction3 Interfield and Mechanistic Unification4 Foundations of the Developmental Synthesis5 Explanatory Relevance6 Concluding Remarks. (shrink)

Twenty-first-century philosophy has been drawn into a false opposition between speculation and critique. Nathan Brown shows that the key to overcoming this antinomy is a re-engagement with the relation between rationalism and empiricism. If Kant’s transcendental philosophy attempted to displace the opposing priorities of those orientations, any speculative critique of Kant will have to re-open and consider anew the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience. Rationalist Empiricism shows that the capacity of reason and experience to extend and yet (...) delimit each other has always been at the core of philosophy and science. Coordinating their discrepant powers, Brown argues, is what enables speculation to move forward in concert with critique. Sweeping across ancient, modern, and contemporary philosophy, as well as political theory, science, and art, Brown engages with such major thinkers as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, Bachelard, Althusser, Badiou, and Meillassoux. He also shows how the concepts he develops illuminate recent projects in the science of measurement and experimental digital photography. With conceptual originality and argumentative precision, Rationalist Empiricism reconfigures the history and the future of philosophy, politics, and aesthetics. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses one of the most prominent inferential strategies currently employed in cognitive neuropsychology, namely, reverse inference. Simply put, this is the practice of inferring, in the context of experimental tasks, the engagement of cognitive processes from locations or patterns of neural activation. This technique is notoriously controversial because, critics argue, it presupposes the problematic assumption that neural areas are functionally selective. We proceed as follows. We begin by introducing the basic structure of traditional “location-based” reverse inference (...) and discuss the influential lack of selectivity objection. Next, we rehearse various ways of responding to this challenge and provide some reasons for cautious optimism. The second part of the essay presents a more recent development: “pattern-decoding reverse inference”. This inferential strategy, we maintain, provides an even more convincing response to the lack of selectivity charge. Due to this and other methodological advantages, it is now a prominent component in the toolbox of cognitive neuropsychology. Finally, we conclude by drawing some implications for philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

In this paper, I present an interpretation of the use of constructions in both the problems and theorems of Elements I–VI, in light of the concept of given as developed in the Data, that makes a distinction between the way that constructions are used in problems, problem-constructions, and the way that they are used in theorems and in the proofs of problems, proof-constructions. I begin by showing that the general structure of a problem is slightly different from that stated by (...) Proclus in his commentary on the Elements. I then give a reading of all five postulates, Elem. I.post.1–5, in terms of the concept of given. This is followed by a detailed exhibition of the syntax of problem-constructions, which shows that these are not practical instructions for using a straightedge and compass, but rather demonstrations of the existence of an effective procedure for introducing geometric objects, which procedure is reducible to operations of the postulates but not directly stated in terms of the postulates. Finally, I argue that theorems and the proofs of problems employ a wider range of constructive and semi- and non-constructive assumptions that those made possible by problems. (shrink)

In the Principles of Philosophy the first positive claim that Descartes makes after he has established his skeptical starting point is not the claim of the cogito. It is, rather, the claim that “we possess a free will.”.

With few exceptions, the literature on withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment considers the bare fact of withdrawing or withholding to lack any ethical significance. If anything, the professional guidelines on this matter are even more uniform. However, while no small degree of progress has been made toward persuading healthcare professionals to withhold treatments that are unlikely to provide significant benefit, it is clear that a certain level of ambivalence remains with regard to withdrawing treatment. Given that the absence of clinical (...) benefit means treating patients is not only ethically questionable but also taxing on resources that could meet the needs of others, this ambivalence is troubling. Equally, the enduring ambivalence of professionals might be taken to indicate that the issue warrants further attention. In this paper, we review the academic literature on the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding medical treatment. While we are not in outright disagreement with the arguments presented, we suggest that asserting theoretical and decontextualized claims about the ethical equivalence of withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment does not fully illuminate the moral questions associated with the relevant clinical realities. We argue that what is required is a broader perspective, one rooted in an understanding that withdrawing and withholding life-saving treatment are different practices, the meanings of which are fully comprehensible only through an appreciation of their place within the practice of healthcare more generally. Such an account suggests that if one is to engage with the inappropriate protraction of life-saving treatment resulting from healthcare professionals’ disinclination to withdraw it, then the differences between these practices should be taken seriously. (shrink)

Some argue against coercive preventive measures on the grounds that they amount to cloaked forms of punishment. Others offer a qualified defence of such measures on the grounds that such measures have substantively different goals and purposes from punishment. Focusing on the case of civil preventive injunctions, I clear the ground and provide reasons for a third logical possibility: that coercive preventive measures are relevantly similar to punishment, but this does not itself give us a reason to oppose them. ‘Punishment’ (...) has a great deal of rhetorical force, and it thereby distracts us from the justificatory work that we need to do to specify proper restrictions on the state’s coercive powers. Whereas many commentators have proposed that legal theory provides grounds for challenging civil preventive orders, I argue for the opposite view. If we understand properly the function of civil preventive orders, we will endorse them at least in principle, and will come to rethink some central ideas in the grounding of the criminal justice processes. (shrink)

Nathan Salmon presents a selection of nineteen of his essays from the early 1980s to 2006, on a set of closely connected topics central to analytic philosophy. The book is divided into four thematic sections, on direct reference, apriority, belief, and the distinction between semantics and pragmatics. The volume concludes with four essays about the distinction between meaning and use, or more generally, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics.

Identifying sporting talent remains a difficult task due to the complex nature of sport. Technical skill assessments are used throughout the talent pathway to monitor athletes in an attempt to more effectively predict future performance. These assessments however, largely focus on the isolated execution of key skills devoid of any game context. When assessments are representative of match-play and applied in a setting where all four components of competition (i.e., technical, tactical, physiological and psychological) are assessed within an integrated approach, (...) prediction of talent is more likely to be successful. This article explores the current talent identification technical skill assessments, with a particular focus on Australian Football, and proposes a 5-level performance assessment model for athlete assessment. The model separates technical game skill on a continuum from Level-1 (i.e., laboratory analysis) to Level-5 (i.e., match-play). These levels, using the assumptions of the expert performance model and representative learning design theory, incorporate a step-wise progression of performance demands to more closely represent match-play conditions. The proposed model will provide researchers and practitioners with a structured framework to consider when assessing, or developing, new assessments of technical game-based skill. (shrink)

Raymond Aron and his Dialogues in an Age of Ideologies examines the thought and rhetoric of the most interesting thinker of the twentieth century of whom no one has heard. This book investigates Raymond Aron's conversations on politics during the Cold War with several of his more well-known interlocutors including Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Hayek, and Charles de Gaulle. Through exploring these dialogues on the subjects of Marxism, freedom, and nationalism, we see the prudence of Aron's politics of understanding as well (...) as the emphasis he places on and virtue he demonstrates in public discourse. Through his dialogues, Aron shows us not only how to think politically but also how to engage in constructive public debate. He stands as a model for us to emulate in our own age of ideologies. (shrink)

This essay considers the reliability and proper role of authorial intention in the interpretation of figurative language and argues that, even in cases of metaphor and irony, the meaning of a text must remain logically independent of the intent of its historical author. Irony and metaphor have been broadly considered to be the most problematic cases for the anti-intentionalist approach to interpretation. The arguments in this essay address standard intentionalist arguments and, in the end, defend a sort of hypothetical intentionalism (...) that is, in all significant respects, anti-intentionalist. (shrink)

This book argues that Hume is a radical epistemic skeptic who gives only practical reasons for retaining belief in sensory beliefs and the deliverances of reason. He advises us to take a moderate approach to the demands of philosophy, since they sometimes diverge from the demands of life.

Which intermediate propositional logics can prove their own completeness? I call a logic reflexive if a second-order metatheory of arithmetic created from the logic is sufficient to prove the completeness of the original logic. Given the collection of intermediate propositional logics, I prove that the reflexive logics are exactly those that are at least as strong as testability logic, that is, intuitionistic logic plus the scheme $\neg φ ∨ \neg\neg φ. I show that this result holds regardless of whether Tarskian (...) or Kripke semantics is used in the definition of completeness. I also show that the operation of creating a second-order metatheory is injective, thereby insuring that I am actually considering each logic independently. (shrink)

Grades on assignments and tests are reliable, yet imperfect, indicators of students’ knowledge and understanding of a subject matter. Overall course grades are also often influenced by students’ complying with class procedures: e.g., if attendance and participation are required, then students who rarely attend class may get poor grades, even if they understand the course content and have done well on the assignments and tests. A variety of extra credit opportunities are often given as a way to raise grades on (...) assignments and tests and overall course grades. But there are reasons why instructors should not offer extra credit, that doing so is unjustified and unfair. Extra credit is common but is surprisingly controversial. (shrink)

|Scope: | |1. The first sentence should include the subject’s name, life span in | |parenthesis, and place and date of birth (day and month) if known (followed by | |mentioning early work on civil disobedience, perhaps) | |2. Outline key contributions to animal ethics, focusing on Animal Liberation | |and Practical Ethics | |3. Outline contributions to debates on poverty, relating this to environmental | |ethics | |4. Outline more recent work on globalization and climate change eg in One (...) World|. (shrink)

Elizabeth Harman has presented a novel view on the moral status of early fetuses that she calls the “ Actual Future Principle” : An early fetus that will become a person has some moral status. An early fetus that will die while it is still an early fetus has no moral status. This view is said to justify a "very liberal" position on abortion, that "early abortion requires no moral justification whatsoever," and show this position to be "more attractive than (...) has previously been thought." Harman concedes that the AFP "may appear to be incoherent or be plainly wrong on its face." I argue that she does not defeat this appearance: strong arguments are not given in its favor. I will undercut Harman's main argument for the AFP by showing that no defender of abortion needs to accept the AFP to reasonably retain her views. Since the AFP is not adequately defended, Harman does not provide a strong argument for her view on abortion. I will note, however, that Harman's liberal view on abortion may, in fact, imply very little about the morality of most actual abortions. (shrink)

What is the moral status of animals? What’s the moral status of fetuses? What’s the moral status of the permanently comatose? While questions like these are sometimes asked (also about ‘moral standing’), I have written a few paragraphs where I argue that the term “moral status” shouldn’t be used.

Does undercover police work inevitably wrong its targets? Or are undercover activities justified by a general security benefit? In this article I argue that people can make themselves liable to deception and manipulation. The debate on undercover policing will proceed more fruitfully if the tactic can be conceptualised along those lines, rather than as essentially ‘dirty hands’ activity, in which people are wronged in pursuit of a necessary good, or in instrumentalist terms, according to which the harms of undercover work (...) are straightforwardly overcome by its benefits. This article motivates the ‘liability view’ and describes its attractions, challenges, and implications. (shrink)

How should one define “atheism”? The first response to such a question might be: “look it up in the dictionary”. The dictionary in question is, as Rosamund Moon has cleverly put it, the “Unidentifi...

Jaynes contends that in many statistical problems a seemingly indeterminate probability distribution is made unique by the transformation group of necessarily implied invariance properties, thereby justifying the principle of indifference. To illustrate and substantiate his claims he considers Bertrand's Paradox. These assertions are here refuted and the traditional attitude is vindicated.

This essay presents a model-theoretic account of dispositional properties, according to which dispositions are not ordinary properties of real entities; dispositions capture the behavior of abstract, idealized models. This account has several payoffs. First, it saves the simple conditional analysis of dispositions. Second, it preserves the general connection between dispositions and regularities, despite the fact that some dispositions are not grounded in actual regularities. Finally, it brings together the analysis and the explanation of dispositions under a unified framework.

Ian Carter has recently argued in a series of articles that a certain form of respect, called ‘opacity respect’, gives a moral grounding to people’s equality. This type of respect involves abstaini...

As a medical ethicist, I want to explain why college vaccination requirements decidedly do not violate the core principles of medical ethics which include avoiding or lessening harms, promoting benefits, respecting people and their informed and free choices, and promoting justice and fairness. In particular, vaccine requirements do not violate the respect-related requirement to not selfishly “use” and abuse others as “means” for someone else’s benefit. Since false claims on important issues often have dire consequences, it’s important to explain why (...) medical ethics supports vaccinating college students. (shrink)

RésuméJe présente la tribune du livre sur The Limitations of the Open Mind de Jeremy Fantl. L’échange a débuté par un symposium tenu en 2023 lors du congrès de l'American Philosophical Association à Montréal ; il inclut des réponses au livre de Fantl signées par Nathan Ballantyne et Miriam Schleifer McCormick, ainsi que des réponses aux réponses par Fantl.