""This is an excellent source of ideas on using the media to enrich science teaching and engage pupils.

The results of artistic experimentation with data sets from the natural sciences differ considerably with respect to quality and consistency. The British artist duo Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) counts among those setting the standard. In its animations and videos, it explores, in an equally multifaceted and concise manner, how scientists affect our world-view with their respective pictorial languages and visualization strategies. Especially in domains that elude our natural sense of space and time, the researchers’ representations are (...) inevitably creative. Semiconductor combines everyday experiences and complex imaging techniques in manifold ways. Thus, they offer unseen and sometimes unorthodox interpretations of a world in constant flux while retaining a high degree of complexity in their subtly crafted works. Semiconductor’s works provide opportunities for reflection on the extensive procedures in the sciences on various levels and in doing so they create poetic pieces that shift and recombine in various ways. With these means, sensualized data – like sounds and images – take on a strong role in their time-based works. As operative entities they not only represent but they seem to act. (shrink)

How the various things that are said to have meaning—purpose, natural signs, linguistic signs, perceptions, and thoughts—are related to one another.

At the start of Convention (1969) Lewis says that it is "a platitude that language is ruled by convention" and that he proposes to give us "an analysis of convention in its full generality, including tacit convention not created by agreement." Almost no clause, however, of Lewis's analysis has withstood the barrage of counter examples over the years,1 and a glance at the big dictionary suggests why, for there are a dozen different senses listed there. Left unfettered, convention wanders freely (...) from conventional wisdom through conventional medicine, conventions of art and "conventions of morality" to conventions of bidding in bridge.2 Surely it is unwise to try to fell these all with a single stone. Lewis's original goal, however, pursued further in (Lewis 1975), was to describe the conventionality of language, and this may be a more reasonable target. (shrink)

One of the virtues of the biosemantic view of language is the clarity and simplicity of its description of the general nature of nonrepresentational linguistic constructions. It doesn't follow, however, that it is obvious on this view how these functions should be described individually. After an explanation of the biosemantic approach, initial suggestions are made for analyses of a variety of nonrepresentational constructions that have traditionally been considered problematic. Included are “not”, “is” (of identity), “exists”, “means”, “but”, “if … then”, (...) “possibly” and “true.”. (shrink)

This is a response to Christie, Brusse, et al., ‘Are biological traits explained by their “selected effect” functions?’ The interest of their paper is that it draws our attention to those cases in which changes in a population that are brought about by natural selection in turn bring about changes in the environment that alter the selectionist pressures that were responsible for the original changes. Much of the paper, however, is an argument that the notion of a ‘proper function’ introduced (...) in my Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (LTOBC), exhibits deep misunderstandings about the actual workings of natural selection. Very little that they say about ‘proper functions’ and related notions from LTOBC is correct, however. I will not list the errors but I will try to make my uses of ‘proper function’ and certain related terms clearer. (shrink)

“Teleosemantics and Pushmi-Pullyu Representations” (call it “TP-PR,” this journal 2014 79.3, 545–566) argues that core teleosemantics, particularly as defined in Millikan (Language, thought and other biological categories, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1984, J Philos 86(6):281–297, 1989, White queen psychology and other essays for Alice, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1993, Philosophical perspectives, Ridgeview Publishing, Alascadero, 1996, Varieties of meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004–2008), seems to imply that all descriptive representations are at the same time directive and that directives are at the same time (...) descriptive, hence that all representations are pushmi-pullyu representations. A pushmi-pullyu representation is at once indicative and imperative, telling both what the case is and what to do about it. The usefulness at all of the notion of a pushmi-pullyu representation is then questioned. I have recently found several new papers, dissertations, discussions, in which TP-PR is treated as definitive. However, the conclusions of TP-PR rest on misunderstandings of my position, so although the date is late, clarification seems still to be in order. I will indicate a few significant corrections that need to be made to TP-PR’s description of my position (originally called “biosemantics”) and explain central features of biosemantics that are omitted in TP-PR’s description of basic teleosemantics and which are incompatible with the main argument and conclusions of TP-PR. I will try to clarify and explain the value of the notion of a pushmi-pullyu representation. (shrink)

We discuss the important, but greatly under-researched, topic of the social aspects of human wayfinding during navigation. Wayfinding represents the planning and decision-making component of navigation and is arguably among the most common, real-world domains of both individual and group-level decision making. We highlight the myriad ways that wayfinding by people is not a solitary psychological process but is influenced by the actions of other people, even by their mere presence. We also present a novel and comprehensive framework for classifying (...) wayfinding in complex environments that incorporates the influence of other people. This classification builds upon the premises of previous wayfinding taxonomies and is further structured into four parts based upon (1) the nature of the interaction between the actors and (2) the time frame in which the interaction takes place. We highlight gaps in our current understanding of social wayfinding and outline future research opportunities. (shrink)

: Following a long process of revision, a new version of the Declaration of Helsinki was approved by the World Medical Association in 2000. Two provisions of the Declaration address ongoing international controversies regarding research sponsored by industrialized countries and conducted in developing countries. Despite the issuance of the final version of the Declaration, opponents remain locked in debate. Moreover, the Declaration remained silent on other prominent controversies concerning international research. An analysis of these current controversies reveals reasons why they (...) are not likely to be readily resolved, despite apparent agreement by opponents on overarching ethical principles. (shrink)

The recent Minnesota case of In re Emergency Guardianship of Albert Barnes illustrates an emerging class of cases where a dispute between a family proxy and a hospital over “medical futility” requires legal resolution. The case was further complicated by the patient’s spouse who fraudulently claimed to be the patient’s designated health care proxy and who misrepresented the patient’s previously expressed treatment preferences. Barnes demonstrates the degree of significant administrative and institutional support to the health care team, ethics consultants, and (...) futility committees that is required when a futility dispute escalates to the need for judicial resolution. An institutional futility policy, especially one that is endorsed by other regional medical centers and organizations, is an important foundation for a hospital that seeks judicial support in a dispute over medical futility in end of life care. (shrink)

There is considerable confusion regarding the ethical appropriateness of using incentives in research with human subjects. Previous work on determining whether incentives are unethical considers them as a form of undue influence or coercive offer. We understand the ethical issue of undue influence as an issue, not of coercion, but of corruption of judgment. By doing so we find that, for the most part, the use of incentives to recruit and retain research subjects is innocuous. But there are some instances (...) where it is not. Specifically, incentives become problematic when conjoined with the following factors, singly or in combination with one another: where the subject is in a dependency relationship with the researcher, where the risks are particularly high, where the research is degrading, where the participant will only consent if the incentive is relatively large because the participant's aversion to the study is strong, and where the aversion is a principled one. The factors we have identified and the kinds of judgments they require differ substantially from those considered crucial in most previous discussions of the ethics of employing incentives in research with human subjects. (shrink)

Why does #RepealedThe8th matter for feminist legal studies? The answers seem obvious in one sense. Feminism has long constituted itself through the struggle for sexual and reproductive justice, and Irish feminism has contributed a significant ‘legal win’ with the landslide vote of approval for lifting abortion restrictions in the referendum on the 25th May 2018. That win comes at a global moment when populist legal engagement is doing significant damage in countries that regard themselves as world leaders, and beyond. #RepealedThe8th (...) offers Ireland, and the world, the actuality that the popular vote, and everything that contributes to it, could be something else. Repeal shows how legal tools like the vote may be made into an expression of care for reproductive lives. This expression is important in recognizing pregnant people as knowing agents who are best placed to decide, and in seeking to do justice to those who contribute to everyday reproductive life. But repeal, like the many who brought it into being, has multiple meanings. #RepealedThe8th matters because it is a moving process of socio-legal translation, which draws on a collective energy, ‘repeal energy’, to turn the travesty that was the Eighth Amendment and all it represents into a search for the rest of reproductive life. In opening up the meaning of the vote, much like feminists elsewhere have opened up the meaning of the strike, Irish feminists have turned public mourning over past mistreatment into a series of reproductive connections. This is not a strategy that can be rolled out. Figuring out #RepealedThe8th will take many tellings. Rather we need to give repeal, and repealers, room to breathe and rest. We need to feel our way through repeal’s production of legal change so that this success is not reduced to some generic transferable set of legal instructions. I begin by reflecting on repeal as a process of feminist socio-legal translation, which shows us how legal change comes about through the motivation of collective joy, the mourning of damaged and lost lives, the sharing of legal knowledge, and the claiming of the rest of reproductive life. (shrink)

According to conciliatory views about peer disagreement, both peers must accord their disagreeing peer some weight, and move towards him. Non‐conciliatory views allow one peer, the one who responded correctly to the evidence, to remain steadfast. In this paper, I consider the suggestion that it may be rational for both disagreeing peers to hold steadfastly to their opinion. To this end, I contend with arguments adduced against the permissiveness the supposition involves, and identify some ways in which different responses for (...) different agents to the evidence might be reasonable. (shrink)

The commitment to evidence-based practice in clinical psychology requires scientific investigation of the effects of treatment and mechanisms of change. Empirical evidence suggests that mindfulness-based treatments provide clinically meaningful improvement for people suffering from many important problems, including depression, anxiety, pain, and stress. However, the processes of change that produce these beneficial outcomes are not entirely clear. Central questions include whether mindfulness training leads to increases in the general tendency to respond mindfully to the experiences of daily life, and if (...) so, whether these changes are responsible for the improvements in mental health that are often observed. Answering these questions requires methods for assessing mindfulness. Several tools for this purpose are now available and early evidence suggests that they are useful and informative, despite shortcomings that require additional work. This paper summarizes the rationale for mindfulness questionnaires, the methods used to construct them, and research findings on their utility. Challenges related to maintaining consistency with Buddhist conceptions of mindfulness while applying psychological research methods to the study of its assessment are discussed. (shrink)

When asked to contribute to this lecture series, my first thought was to talk about philosophy of biology, a new and increasingly influential field in philosophy, surely destined to have great impact in the coming years. But when a preliminary schedule for the series was circulated, I noticed that no one was speaking on language. Given the hegemony of philosophy of language at mid-century, after ‘the linguistic turn’, this seemed to require comment. How did philosophy of language achieve such status (...) at mid-century, and why is it losing it now? Has the Anglo-American tradition really begun to put the philosophy of language in better perspective? I hope so. Indeed, I will end with suggestions for how to keep it more securely in its proper place. (shrink)

In two curiously neglected papers, David Lewis claims to reduce to absurdity the supposition (commonly labeled DAB) that (some) desires are belief-like. My aim in this paper is to explain the significance of this claim and rebut the proof.

Summary Popular science journalism flourished in the 1860s in England, with many new journals being projected. The time was ripe, Victorian men of science believed, for an ?organ of science? to provide a means of communication between specialties, and between men of science and the public. New formats were tried as new purposes emerged. Popular science journalism became less recreational and educational. Editorial commentary and reviewing the progress of science became more important. The analysis here emphasizes those aspects of popular (...) science which have been identified by Frank Turner as ?public science? and by Thomas Gieryn as ?boundary-work?. The religious, intellectual, and utilitarian values claimed for science by editors and contributors in their tasks of persuading the public to support science and of distinguishing science from what they often called ?applied science? are discussed. These values are shown to vary among editors and, for the editors examined here, Shirley Hibberd, Henry Slack, James Samuelson, William Crookes, and Henry Lawson, to differ significantly from those of T. H. Huxley, John Tyndall, and Norman Lockyer, on whom much study of the popularization of science in the 1860s has focused. (shrink)

This editorial explains the themes of the forthcoming FLaK seminar and how those themes draw on the collective and individual contributions of the articles, interviews and commentaries presented in this issue. At FLaK, we propose to think with others about the kind of ‘kitchen table’ that FLS might provide into the future. How might feminist legal studies—the approach and the journal—best use its food, equipment, techniques, time, space, mood, energy and commitment? How shall FLS scholars and associates make the most (...) of what we have in a room that can sometimes be confining and confusing, yet also exciting and sustaining? How do others engage with the processes and products of our kitchen table? In considering these issues and more, we propose to draw reflexively on feminist legacies of praxis, internationalism and openness, as we stock up and critically reflect on decolonizing techniques, legal know-how, protest and publishing practices. (shrink)

“Intentionality,” as introduced to modern philosophy by Brentano, denotes the property that distinguishes the mental from all other things. As such, intentionality has been related to purposiveness. I suggest, however, that there are many kinds of purposes that are not mental nor derived from anything mental, such as the purpose of one’s stomach to digest food or the purpose of one’s protective eye blink reflex to keep out the sand. These purposes help us to understand intentionality in a naturalistic way. (...) The naturalist challenge here is to show, first, that natural purposiveness can explain the intentionality of explicitly represented purposes, hence that it is associated with “aboutness” (as in Brentano’s usage). Second, it needs to show how the same kind of analysis can also be used to naturalize intentionality in cases where facts are represented rather than purposes or ends. (shrink)

In _The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus,_ Eric Voegelin places the rise of the race idea in the context of the development of modern philosophy. The history of the race idea, according to Voegelin, begins with the postChristian orientation toward a natural system of living forms. In the late seventeenth century, philosophy set about a new task--to oppose the devaluation of man's physical nature. By the middle of the eighteenth century the effort of philosophy was to (...) place man, with his variety of physical manifestations throughout the world, within a systemic order of nature. Voegelin perceives the problem of race as the epitome of the difficulties presented by this new theoretical approach. Part I covers the development of race theories from the English naturalist John Ray to Blumenbach and Kant. Voegelin, anticipating fairly recent genetic insights, explains that human beings must be seen as one speciesdifferent races must not be interpreted as emerging from separate species. In Part II, Voegelin discusses the evolution of the concepts of the body, the organism, and the person. The finite image of the person as a body-mind unit in which body is equal to mind in value provides the basis for Carl Gustav Carus' theory of race, the first significant racial ideology, in Voegelin's estimation. Voegelin's complex analysis levels a scathing critique at Nazi pretensions. He writes: "Compared to its classical form, the current condition of race theory is one of decay.... [T]hese men, with no eyes for the brilliance of the German spirit, want to interfere in human relations and ultimately presume to explicate the German nation to us and to the world--an undertaking with evil consequences.... [The] great thinkers of the past would have been orrified at somebody finding in himself all the traits of the Nordic race with the help of a book on anthropology and then imagining himself to be somebody special who does not have to do anything else. "Let us now take a look at contemporary race theory--we will see an image of destruction.... It is a nightmare to think that we should recognize the people whom we follow and whom we allow to come near us not by their looks, their words, and their gestures, but by their cranial index." Ultimately, Voegelin dismisses any attempt to reduce the human being--his existence, appearance, or actionsto a lower level: "Man as mind-body and historical substance cannot be 1explained' by an element that is less than man himself.". (shrink)

This paper is an empirical critique of causal accounts of scientific explanation. Drawing on explanations which rely on nonlinear dynamical modeling, I argue that the requirement of causal relevance is both too strong and too weak to be constitutive of scientific explanation. In addition, causal accounts obscure how the process of mathematical modeling produces explanatory information. I advance three arguments for the inadequacy of causal accounts. First, I argue that explanatorily relevant information is not always information about causes, even in (...) cases where the explanandum has an identifiable causal history. Second, I argue that treating theoretical explanations as reductions from general causal laws does not accurately describe the types of "top-down" explanations typical of dynamical modeling. Finally, I argue that causal/mechanical accounts of explanation are intrinsically vulnerable to the irrelevance problem. (shrink)

I highlight and amplify three central points that McKay & Dennett (M&D) make about the origin of failures to perform biologically proper functions. I question whether even positive illusions meet criteria for evolved misbelief.

By whatever general principles and mechanisms animal behavior is governed, human behavior control rides piggyback on top of the same or very similar mechanisms. We have reflexes. We can be conditioned. The movements that make up our smaller actions are mostly caught up in perception-action cycles following perceived Gibsonian affordances. Still, without doubt there are levels of behavior control that are peculiar to humans. Following Aristotle, tradition has it that what is added in humans is rationality ("rational soul"). Rationality, however, (...) can be and has been characterized in many different ways. I am going to speculate about two different kinds of cognitive capacities that we humans seem to have, each of which is at least akin to rationality as Aristotle described it. The first I believe we share with many other animals, the second perhaps with none. Since this session of the conference on rational animals has been designated a "brainstorming" session, I will take philosopher's license, presenting no more than the softest sort of intuitive evidence for these ideas. (shrink)

Citizenship and its education is again gaining importance in many countries. This paper uses England as its primary example to develop a Habermasian perspective on this issue. The statutory requirements for citizenship education in England imply that significant attention be given to the moral and social development of the learner over time, to the active engagement of the learner in community and to the knowledge skills and understanding necessary for political action. This paper sets out a theoretical framework that offers (...) a perspective on learning suitable for these far-reaching aims. We argue that schools need to shift from the currently dominant discourse of accountability to incorporate a discourse of care in order to make room for an effective and appropriate pedagogy for citizenship. Habermas’s social theory gives us a theoretical framework that properly locates schools within the lifeworld as part of civil society. Schools should therefore attend to hermeneutical and emancipatory concerns, not only to strategic interests. We put these in the context of Habermas’s social theory to paint an alternative vision learning for citizenship education which is based in developing the dispositions, values and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning with a view to developing ongoing communicative action. (shrink)

In this paper I offer solutions to two problems which our moral practice engenders for expressivism, the meta-ethical doctrine according to which ethical statements aren't propositional, susceptible of truth and falsity, but, rather, express the speaker's non-cognitive attitudes. First, the expressivist must show that arguments which are valid when interpreted propositionally are valid when construed expressivistically, and vice versa. The second difficulty is the Frege-Geach problem. Moral arguments employ atomic sentences, negations, disjunctions, etc., and, by expressivist lights, the meaning of (...) a moral sentence depends on the attitude that it expresses. Since one's attitude varies as one asserts a claim, or negates it, or cites it as a disjunct, etc., the meaning of the relevant phrase changes as well, so the argument equivocates. (Formal proofs are provided in appendices to the paper.). (shrink)

The goal of this article is to explore how a social justice framework can help illuminate the role that consent should play in health and science policy. In the first section, we set the stage for our inquiry with the important case of Henrietta Lacks. Without her knowledge or consent, or that of her family, Mrs. Lacks’s cells gave rise to an enormous advance in biomedical science—the first immortal human cell line, or HeLa cells.

Response to Emily A. Largent, Franklin G. Miller and Steven Joffe, A Prescription for Ethical Learning, Hastings Center Report, 43, s1, (S28-S29), (2013).

Like the National Commission and the President's Commission, the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was formed to carry out specific ethical tasks. Yet the committee also had an “openness” mission, a charge to investigate allegations that the U.S. government secretly exposed Americans to environmental releases of radiation. Eighteen months later—and after sixteen public meetings, more than 200 interviews, and the review of about 400,000 documents—the committee delivered a 925‐page report to the president.

It's a sort of moebus strip argument. Rather than circularly assuming what it should prove, it assumes one of the things Fodor says he has disproved. It assumes that the extensions of those concepts thought by some to be recognitional are in fact controlled by stereotypes. Why do I say that? Because Fodor assumes that what makes an instance of a concept a "good instance" is that it is an average instance, that it sports the properties statistically most commonly found (...) among instances of that concept. But that the "good instances" are always the common instances is remotely plausible only if we take concepts to be organized by stereotypes. True, a goldfish is not an average or stereotypical fish (SSis that true?) and the nursing profession is not average for a male and maleness is not average for a nurse. But there is surely is nothing borderline about the fishiness of a goldfish nor, typically, about the maleness of a male nurse or the petness of a pet fish. Notice also that good examples of some kinds of things are very hard to find, for example, good examples of the fallacy of accent, and good examples of wild children, and (nowadays) good examples of scurvy are hard to find. If good instances had to be instances that were average, including in respects having nothing to do with the point of the category being defined, and if recognitional concepts had to recognize by attending to average properties, then I suppose the recognitional ability defining the concept "sphere" would have to include the ability to tell whether a thing bounces! (shrink)

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have become a topic of public and scientific attention. ACEs denote a range of negative experiences in early life, from sexual abuse to emotional neglect, that are thought to impact health over the life course. The term was coined in the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, an epidemiological study that surveyed 17,421 adults about ACEs and correlated the responses with participants’ current health records. Shortly after the study was published in 1998, the US CDC deemed ACEs an important (...) public health target; however, it is only recently that ACEs feature prominently in scientific and public discourses. We contend that this rise in popularity is linked to the adoption of epigenetic explanations for how ACEs affect health. Based on a literature analysis, we trace the evolution of explanatory frameworks for ACEs—from coping behaviors to allostatic load to epigenetics—and analyze how each of these explanations not only reconsiders the mechanisms by which ACEs affect health, but also who should be held responsible for addressing ACEs and how. Epigenetics provides distinctly different discursive possibilities than previous frameworks: firstly, it offers one distinct molecular mechanism for how ACEs work, lending “molecular credibility” to epidemiological findings; secondly, it raises the possibility of reversing the negative effects of ACEs on the biological level. This epigenetic articulation makes ACEs attractive for new actors in science and society. Particularly, it facilitates novel interdisciplinary collaborations and attracts actors in health advocacy who are interested in non-deterministic readings of ACEs that counteract stigma and support positive health interventions and healing. (shrink)

There are very few philosophical issues which are so intimately associated with one single philosopher as is the problem of induction with Hume. This paper argues against this received opinion. It shows that Hume was neither the first to think induction problematic, nor the originator of the argument he adduced in support of the (sceptical) position. It then explains his (more modest) contribution. Its primary concern, however, is not historical. By considering Hume’s contribution to the problem of induction, it is (...) argued, we can come to a better understanding of this recalcitrant problem. (shrink)

This paper analyses the topic of representation since the point of view of ethnomethodology and sociology of scientific knowledge. It starts out by discussing the “standard image of representation” and the constructivist proposition of that image. Then, a case of study is presented to suggest how practices for collecting and analyzing forensic evidence in criminal law, can contribute to understand representational adequacy. The aim of this paper is to think differently about representantion considering how it is produced, managed and deconstructed. (...) Since this point of view, the propositions is to consider representation not only as a problematic epistemological concept but also as a practical accomplishment in specific epistemic cultures. (shrink)

A seemingly plausible application of Bayesian decision-theoretic reasoning to determine one's rational degrees of belief yields a paradoxical conclusion: one ought to jettison one's intermediate credences in favour of more extreme (opinionated) ones. I discuss various attempts to solve the paradox, those involving the acceptance of the paradoxical conclusion, and those which attempt to block its derivation.