Despite the recent discovery that thalidomide causes limb defects by targeting highly angiogenic, immature blood vessels, several challenges still remain and new ones have arisen. These include understanding the drug's species specificity, determining molecular target(s) in the endothelial cell, shedding light on the molecular basis of phocomelia and producing a form of the drug that is clinically effective without having side effects. Now that the trigger of thalidomide‐induced teratogenesis has been uncovered, a framework is proposed, incorporating and uniting previous models (...) of thalidomide action, explaining how thalidomide causes not just limb defects, but also all the other defects it induces. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis is the claim that mental states extend beyond the skulls of the agents whose states they are. This seemingly obscure and bizarre claim has far-reaching implications for neuroethics, I argue. In the first half of this article, I sketch the extended mind thesis and defend it against criticisms. In the second half, I turn to its neuroethical implications. I argue that the extended mind thesis entails the falsity of the claim that interventions into the brain are (...) especially problematic just because they are internal interventions, but that many objections to such interventions rely, at least in part, on this claim. Further, I argue that the thesis alters the focus of neuroethics, away from the question of whether we ought to allow interventions into the mind, and toward the question of which interventions we ought to allow and under what conditions. The extended mind thesis dramatically expands the scope of neuroethics: because interventions into the environment of agents can count as interventions into their minds, decisions concerning such interventions become questions for neuroethics. (shrink)

What is morality? In Practical Expressivism, I argue that morality is a purely natural interpersonal co-ordination device, whereby human beings express their attitudes in order to influence the attitudes and actions of others. -/- The ultimate goal of these expressions is to find acceptable ways of living together. This 'expressivist' model for understanding morality faces well-known challenges concerning 'saving the appearances' of morality, because morality presents itself to us as a practice of objective discovery, not pure expression. -/- This book (...) demonstrates how a properly developed expressivist view can overcome this objection, by showing that even if moral practice is fundamentally expressive, it can still come to possess those features that make it appear objective (features such as talk and thought of moral disagreement, truth and belief, and the applicability of logical notions to moral sentences). The key to this development is to emphasise the unique and intricate practical role that morality plays in our lives. Practical expressivism is also practical in the further sense that it provides repeatable patterns that expressivists can deploy in coming to understand the apparently objective features of morality. (shrink)

The Continuum Hypothesis featured top of Hilbert's list of 23 problems in 1900. Today, we still consider the question, with various programmes pulling in different directions. This conceptual diversity raises a puzzle: In what sense do we disagree when we talk about it? A standard assumption takes it that the content of our thought about classes and the Continuum Hypothesis has not changed. Assuming a moderate view of how content is determined, I reject this assumption but also argue that whilst (...) the Continuum Hypothesis can have different content for different agents, it can also be determinate for certain programmes. In particular, I suggest that there is a fault line between those who think there are uncountable sets and recent countabilist programmes. (shrink)

We are constantly called upon to evaluate the evidential weight of testimony, and to balance its deliverances against our own independent thinking. ‘Intellectual autonomy’ is the virtue that is supposed to be displayed by those who engage in cognition in this domain well. I argue that this is at best a misleading label for the virtue, because virtuous cognition in this domain consists in thinking with others, and intelligently responding to testimony. I argue that the existing label supports an excessively (...) individualistic conception of good thinking, both within and outside philosophy. I propose replacing ‘intellectual autonomy’ with ‘intellectual interdependence’, which properly emphasises the depth of our reliance on one another, without suggesting we ought ever to be epistemically servile. (shrink)

The widespread conviction that we are living in a post-truth era rests on two claims: that a large number of people believe things that are clearly false, and that their believing these things reflects a lack of respect for truth. In reality, however, fewer people believe clearly false things than surveys or social media suggest. In particular, relatively few people believe things that are widely held to be bizarre. Moreover, accepting false beliefs does not reflect a lack of respect for (...) truth. Almost everyone’s beliefs are explained by rationally warranted trust in some sources rather than others. This allows us to explain why people have false beliefs. (shrink)

Neil Tennant presents an original logical system with unusual philosophical, proof-theoretic, metalogical, computational, and revision-theoretic virtues. Core Logic is the first system that ensures both relevance and adequacy for the formalization of all mathematical and scientific reasoning.

Berry’s Paradox, like Russell’s Paradox, is a ‘paradox’ in name only. It differs from genuine logico-semantic paradoxes such as the Liar Paradox, Grelling’s Paradox, the Postcard Paradox, Yablo’s Paradox, the Knower Paradox, Prior’s Intensional Paradoxes, and their ilk. These latter arise from semantic closure. Their genuine paradoxicality manifests itself as the non-normalizability of the formal proofs or disproofs associated with them. The Russell, the Berry, and the Burali-Forti ‘paradoxes’, by contrast, simply reveal the straightforward inconsistency of their respective existential claims—that (...) the Russell set exists; that the Berry number exists; and that the ordinal of the well-ordering of all ordinals exists. The disproofs of these existential claims are in free logic and are in normal form. They show that certain complex singular terms do not—indeed, cannot—denote. All this counsels reconsideration of Ramsey’s famous division of paradoxes and contradictions into his Group A and Group B. The proof-theoretic criterion of genuine paradoxicality formally explicates an informal and occasionally confused notion. The criterion should be allowed to reform our intuitions about what makes for genuine paradoxicality, as opposed to straightforward (albeit surprising) inconsistency. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is an important distinction between the notion of consciousness as it is applied to creatures and, on the other hand, the notion of consciousness as it applies to mental states. McBride has recently argued in this journal that whilst there may be a grammatical distinction between state consciousness and creature consciousness, there is no parallel ontological distinction. It is argued here that whilst state consciousness and creature consciousness are indeed related, they are distinct properties. (...) Conscious creatures can have, at one time, both conscious and unconscious mental states. This raises the question of what distinguishes the conscious from unconscious mental states of a subject: a question about what state consciousness consists in. Whilst the state/creature distinction may not be of use in explaining every aspect of a subject's consciousness, it does provide a key part of the explanandum for theories of consciousness and mind. The state/creature consciousness distinction is a real one and should not be dropped from our psychological taxonomy. (shrink)

I argue that Frank Jackson's knowledge argument cannot succeed in showing that qualia are epiphenomenal. The reason for this is that there is, given the structure of the argument, an irreconcilable tension between his support for the claim that qualia are non-physical and his conclusion that they are epiphenomenal. The source of the tension is that his argument for the non-physical character of qualia is plausible only on the assumption that they have causal efficacy, while his argument for the epiphenomenal (...) character of qualia is plausible only on the assumption that they are non-physical. Since these two arguments cannot be combined coherently, the most Jackson's argument can establish is that qualia are non-physical. (shrink)

We furnish a core-logical development of the Gödel numbering framework that allows metamathematicians to attain limitative results about arithmetical truth without incorporating a genuine truth predicate into the language in a way that would lead to semantic closure. We show how Tarski’s celebrated theorem on the arithmetical undefinability of arithmetical truth can be established using only core logic in both the object language and the metalanguage. We do so at a high level of abstraction, by augmenting the usual first-order language (...) of arithmetic with a primitive predicate Tr and then showing how it cannot be a truth predicate for the augmented language. McGee established an important result about consistent theories that are in the language of arithmetic augmented by such a “truth predicate” Tr and that use Gödel numbering to refer to expressions of the augmented language. Given the nature of his sought result, he was forced to use classical reasoning at the meta level. He did so, however, on the additional and tacit presupposition that the arithmetical theories in question (in the object language) would be closed under classical logic. That left open the dialectical possibility that a constructivist (or intuitionist) could claim not to be discomfited by the results, even if they were to “give a pass” on the unavoidably classical reasoning at the meta level. In this study we “constructivize” McGee’s result, by presuming only core logic for the object language. This shows that the perplexity induced by McGee’s result will confront the constructivist (or intuitionist) as well. (shrink)

This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.

This study examines how the Gödel phenomena are to be treated in core logic. We show in formal detail how one can use core logic in the metalanguage to prove Gödel’s incompleteness theorems for arithmetic even when classical logic is used for logical closure in the object language.

This study explores perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) in the higher education workplace through innovative use of fiction writing workshops. Twenty-three participants took part in three workshops, imagining the application of AI assistants and chatbots to their roles. Key themes were identified, including perceived benefits and challenges of AI implementation, interface design implications, and factors influencing task delegation to AI. Participants envisioned AI primarily as a tool to enhance task efficiency rather than fundamentally transform job roles. This research contributes insights (...) into the desires and concerns of educational users regarding AI adoption, highlighting potential barriers such as value alignment. (shrink)

Mind Lumen (a non-profit) is an ethics-focused education, research, and policy advocacy organization. We also create tools to make ethics observable, measurable, and auditable.As a neurodivergent I...

This book focuses on the nature and importance of harm by providing a sustained defense of the counterfactual comparative account, in particular by extending the account to allow for a certain kind of plural or collective harm. According to the counterfactual comparative account, an event harms a person provided that she would have been better off had it not occurred. On the account defended in this book, there are cases in which some events harm a given individual even though none (...) of them by itself harms the individual. This account aims to solve the most serious problem facing the counterfactual comparative account, a problem involving cases of preemption. In such cases, an intuitively harmful event does not make the victim worse off, since if it had not occurred, another event would have had a similar adverse influence on the victim’s well-being. The book also contains discussion of various competing accounts of harm, and it replies to other challenges to the counterfactual comparative account. It argues, moreover, that an action that would harm a person does not thereby have a strong moral reason against it; if there is a strong moral reason against a harmful act, the reason is due primarily to some of the act’s other features. (shrink)

Abstractabstract:In his Pragmatism lectures, William James argued that philosophers' temperaments partially determine the theories that they find satisfying, and that their influence explains persistent disagreement within the history of philosophy. Crucially, James was not only making a descriptive claim, but also a normative one: temperaments, he thought, could play a legitimate epistemic role in our philosophical inquiries. This paper aims to evaluate and defend this normative claim.There are three problems for James's view: (1) that allowing temperaments to play a role (...) within inquiry replaces philosophical disagreement with psychological difference; (2) that including temperaments would allow arbitrary elements to influence the outcome of inquiry; and (3) that such a view assumes an implausible metaphysical picture. Through clarifying the nature of temperaments, and what counts as a satisfactory philosophical theory on a pragmatist account, this paper presents an interpretation of James's metaphilosophical claims that can provide satisfactory responses to these problems. (shrink)

An agent’s efforts of will have long been at the centre of Robert Kane’s influential account of libertarian free will. For several decades it has been a crucial part of his theory that there is a symmetry to these efforts. That is, Kane has long maintained that an agent engaged in an undetermined choice makes a simultaneous and sustained effort to choose and to choose otherwise. In a recent paper Kane abandons this symmetry. I outline and evaluate this change in (...) Kane’s theory. I begin by explaining how Kane’s theory has changed from a symmetric to an asymmetric account of undetermined free choices. I then explore the philosophical benefits of adopting an asymmetric account by considering its implications for the explanatory luck objection, the phenomenological objection, and the objection that engaging in dual efforts of will involves an unacceptable form of irrationality. Finally, I argue that despite these benefits, Kane’s asymmetric model opens the door to a more pervasive worry about luck and it gives up something most libertarians want: the unconditional ability to choose otherwise. Given these points, I conclude the cost of abandoning the symmetric account of efforts of will is excessively high. (shrink)

Contrary to certain rumours, the mind-body problem is alive and well. So argues Joseph Levine in Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness . The main argument is simple enough. Considerations of causal efficacy require us to accept that subjective experiential, or 'phenomenal', properties are realized in basic non-mental, probably physical properties. But no amount of knowledge of those physical properties will allow us conclusively to deduce facts about the existence and nature of phenomenal properties. This failure of deducibility constitutes an (...) explanatory problem - an explanatory gap - but does not imply the existence of immaterial mental properties. Levine introduced this notion of the explanatory gap almost two decades ago. Purple Haze allows Levine to situate the explanatory gap in a broader philosophical context. He engages with those who hold that the explanatory gap is best understood as implying anti-materialist metaphysical conclusions. But he also seeks to distance himself from contemporary naturalistic philosophical theorizing about consciousness by arguing that reductive and eliminative theories of consciousness all fail. Levine's work is best seen as an attempt to firmly establish a definite status for the mind-body problem, i.e. that the mind-body problem is a real, substantive epistemological problem but emphatically not a metaphysical one. Because Levine's work is tightly focused upon contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy of mind, there is little discussion of the broader conceptual background to the mind-body problem. My aim here is to place Levine's work in a broader conceptual context. In particular, I focus on the relationship between consciousness and intentionality in the belief that doing so will allow us better to understand and evaluate Levine's arguments and their place in contemporary theorizing about mentality and consciousness. (shrink)

Before "real" and "artificial" became the two most prominent classifications of Christmas trees, an entirely different type captured the minds of those Americans who celebrated the holiday—the community Christmas tree. Created in the Progressive Era, it was both a conservation effort and a project to further public culture. Its supporters hoped that by having this one tree only, instead of a tree for every household, communities could help reduce the harvest pressure on the nation's dwindling forests. Advocates also thought that (...) by planting a community tree in a public place, it would help establish a more inclusive culture in an age of immigration. While many were planted in town squares, they ultimately did not replace the household tree. Midcentury tree farms made Christmas trees readily available to household consumers and, consequently, conservationist worries about overlogging faded. So, too, did the interest in public space as the middle class increasingly embraced suburbia. By the 1970s, however, the farmed tree was being challenged by the plastic tree, setting up a consumer decision between "real" and "artificial" trees that still exists today. This current framing, however, ignores the possibility of a tree set in public space—and of addressing environmental and social concerns together. (shrink)

Neil Gascoigne provides the first comprehensive introduction Richard Rorty's work. He demonstrates to the general reader and to the student of philosophy alike how the radical views on truth, objectivity and rationality expressed in Rorty's widely-read essays on contemporary culture and politics derive from his earliest work in the philosophy of mind and language. He avoids the partisanship that characterizes much discussion of Rorty's work whilst providing a critical account of some of the dominant concerns of contemporary thought. Beginning (...) with Rorty's early work on concept-change in the philosophy of mind, the book traces his increasing hostility to the idea that philosophy is cognitively privileged with respect to other disciplines. After the publication of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, this led to a new emphasis on preserving the moral and political inheritance of the enlightenment by detaching it from the traditional search for rational foundations. This emerging project led Rorty to champion 'ironic' thinkers like Foucault and Derrida, and to his attempt to update the liberalism of J. S. Mill by offering a non-universalistic account of the individual's need to balance their own private interests against their commitments to others. By returning him to his philosophical roots, Gascoigne shows why Rorty's pragmatism is of continuing relevance to anyone interested in ongoing debates about the nature and limits of philosophy, and the implications these debates have for our understanding of what role the intellectual might play in contemporary life. This book serves as both an excellent introduction to Rorty's work and an innovative critique which contributes to ongoing debates in the field. (shrink)

As pervasive as the use of the Internet has become in the United States, a huge percentage of the world’s population has yet to ever use a telephone. It seems ironic, then, that there is a concerted effort on the part of industrialized nations to first hook up their traditionally disadvantaged citizens to the Internet and second, to hook up citizens of developing nations. This paper addresses the universal access phenomenon by considering the growth of the Internet in terms of (...) Leaver and Taker users—idioms usually associated with a culture’s interactions with its environment. Leaver cultures interact with their environment in a sustainable manner while Taker cultures produce more than they need and impose their ways upon others. The Internet is explored as a community of users, which in its current state is dominated by Takers. However, realizing the need for a more heterogeneous Internet community, this paper explores incentives for Leaver cultures to assimilate online and methods of improving interface designs to be more intuitive to Leaver communities. It is hoped that a tragedy of the commons of Internet resources can be avoided as more Leavers participate in the sustainment of the Internet as a valuable tool for all communities. (shrink)

The philosopher Jerry Fodor was a key figure alongside Noam Chomsky in the revolution that led to the renaissance of the cognitive sciences from around 1960. This chapter describes key difference between Chomsky and Fodor. It focuses on Chomsky's and Fodor's conceptions of modularity. The chapter discusses two ways of understanding Chomsky's proposal, in particular how it claims an underlying faculty is related to processing and performance. Chomsky is largely agnostic on this question; the commitments of his programme are to (...) be found elsewhere. The most persuasive evidence for Fodorian modules, as for Chomskyan faculties, comes from dissociations. The chapter also reviews the evidential foundation of all versions of modularity: double dissociation (impairments of one or more mental abilities caused by accidents or other pathology which leave other abilities intact). (shrink)

I provide an examination and comparison of modal theories for underwriting different non-modal theories of sets. I argue that there is a respect in which the `standard' modal theory for set construction---on which sets are formed via the successive individuation of powersets---raises a significant challenge for some recently proposed `countabilist' modal theories (i.e. ones that imply that every set is countable). I examine how the countabilist can respond to this issue via the use of regularity axioms and raise some questions (...) about this approach. I argue that by comparing them with the `standard' uncountabilist theory, a new approach that brings in arbitrariness rather than the strict controls of forcing is desirable. (shrink)

This collection of essays, published to coincide with Tony Honore's sixty-fifth birthday, focuses on the areas where Honore's thought has made the most significant contribution: Roman law and jurisprudence. Included are essays by P.S. Atiyah, Zenon Bankowski, John Bell, Peter Birks, John W. Cairs, Hugh Collins, David Daube, W. M. Gordon, J. W. Harris Nicola Lacey, A. D. E. Lewis, Detlef Liebs, G. D. MacCormack, Neil MacCormick, G. Maher, Pieter Norr, Alan Rodger, and Peter Stein.

Clinical ethics consultants are inevitably called to participate in and bear witness to emotionally challenging cases. With the move toward the professionalization of ethics consultants, the responsibility to respond to and address difficult ethical dilemmas is likely to fall to a small set of people or a single clinical ethicist. Combined with time constraints, the urgent nature of these cases, and the moral distress of clinicians and staff encountered during consultation, like other healthcare professionals such as physicians and nurses, clinical (...) ethics consultants could risk burnout. If it is true that clinical ethicists are at risk for burnout, an important strategy to avoid burnout is to develop sound self-care practices. This article reviews the goals and skills of ethics consultation and the role-specific reasons that clinical ethicists may be at risk for burnout, and argues that clinical ethicists may need to engage in self-care practices. Strategies to address burnout are reviewed and opportunities for future research are identified. (shrink)

How does our language relate to reality? This is a question that is especially pertinent in set theory, where we seem to talk of large infinite entities. Based on an analogy with the use of models in the natural sciences, we argue for a threefold correspondence between our language, models, and reality. We argue that so conceived, the existence of models can be underwritten by a weak notion of existence, where weak existence is to be understood as existing in virtue (...) of language. (shrink)

Which is worse: Doing evil or being evil? If we are free to define ourselves through our choices, as existentialism posits, then the latter is worse. This paper attempts to resolve the issue of the difference between religious (group) ethics and the ethics of a person of faith that embraces individuals with an existential understanding. In the existential view, the individual (whether the self or the other) is the primary concern, and so the issue of personal relational morality supersedes religious (...) narratives, social morality and popular ethics (White, 2002). If we think and choose, there is the possibility that we may occasionally make a mistake and do evil. However, if we do not think about our choices, and if the conventions we hold happen to be flawed in some way, then we become defined by a continual cycle of mistakes. Existentialism teaches that we become who we are in the process of making choices; therefore the difference between doing evil and being evil can be found in the small but important flow of thinking, relating and choosing. (shrink)

Following World War II, Viktor Frankl revolutionized the field of psychotherapy with the inception of logotherapy. With Logotherapy: Viktor Frankl, Life and Work, Soggie offers a compelling and comprehensive introduction to both the man and his contribution to psychotherapy. Through the examination of Frankl’s life as a boy to his days in a concentration camp and his post-war work, Soggie paints a rich portrait of Frankl and the origins of logotherapy. Complete with in-depth explanations of logotherapy’s key concepts, including dimensionalism, (...) love, responsibility, and freedom of the will, this book serves as a great complement to Frankl’s own works and a valuable resource to practitioners and therapists in training alike. (shrink)

Neuroethics has two focuses: ethical issues arising from the sciences of the mind, and the ways in which these same sciences can help us to understand normative questions. In this chapter, I pursue a question in the second kind of neuroethics, exploring how the sciences of the mind help us to understand when agents are responsible for their actions. First, I examine the case of the psychopath, and argue that the relevant data suggests that psychopaths do not act with the (...) kind of quality of will that is plausibly taken to underwrite blameworthiness. I then turn to evidence concerning how we attribute quality of will to other agents, and suggest that it predicts a disposition to overattribute a blameworthy quality of will under certain conditions. If these claims are correct, then we are apt to blame some agents, under some conditions, more than they deserve. Attention to the data can therefore enable us to better calibrate our responsibility judgments. (shrink)

This book is based upon a lecture series that took place between September 2013 and May 2014 to inaugurate the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights. It brings together some of the most influential contemporary thinkers on the theory and practice of human rights.

He also tells a very interesting personal story of his battles to get these trajectories used, and how he was able to save the Hiten spacecraft and get it to the moon. This is a great story, and he tells it very well.

"16 'On Justification and Interpretation', ARSP-Beiheft, 53, pp. 255-68." -- "17 'Authority Reasons in Legal Interpretation and Moral Reasoning', ARSP Supplementa (III), pp. 144-52." -- "18 'Two Types of Substantive Reasons: The Core of a Theory of Common-Law Justification', Cornell Law Review, 63, pp. 707-88." -- "19 'Reasonableness and Objectivity', Notre Dame Law Review, 74, pp. 1575-603.

Neil Cooper; V*—Moral Nihilism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 74, Issue 1, 1 June 1974, Pages 75–90, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/74.1.

Although David Hume never produced a single comprehensive work that encapsulated his views on politics, his various writings address a broad range of topics of relevance to political philosophy. He critiques the social contract theory of Hobbes and Locke, and he offers an alternative, evolutionary account of the origins of government. Hume sees all governments as the result of a struggle between authority and liberty, with the best of them achieving a balance between the two by implementing systems of “general (...) laws.” Hume’s cautious approach to social change may fairly be called conservative. However, he is willing to endorse efforts at gradual reform when these efforts do not threaten the stability of the society. His legacy for modern political philosophy remains contested. (shrink)