Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by epistemic (...) trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (shrink)

The lasting effects of the debate over canon-formation during the 1980s affected the whole field of Humanities, which became increasingly engaged in interrogating the origin and function of the Western canon. In philosophy, a great deal of criticism was, as a result, directed at the traditional narrative of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century philosophies—a critique informed by postcolonialism as well as feminist historiography. D. F. Norton, L. Loeb and many others1 attempted to demonstrate the weaknesses of the tripartite division between rationalism, empiricism and (...) critical philosophy.2 As time went on, symptoms of dissatisfaction with what has... (shrink)

Background: Undergraduate nursing students have been documented to experience ethical distress during their clinical training and felt poorly supported in discussing the ethical issues they encountered. Research aims: This study was aimed at exploring nursing students’ perceived opportunity to discuss ethical issues that emerged during their clinical learning experience and associated factors. Research design: An Italian national cross-sectional study design was performed in 2015–2016. Participants were invited to answer a questionnaire composed of four sections regarding: (1) socio-demographic data, (2) previous (...) clinical learning experiences, (3) current clinical learning experience quality and outcomes, and (4) the opportunity to discuss ethical issues with nurses in the last clinical learning experience (from 0 – ‘never’ to 3 – ‘very much’). Participants and research context: Participants were 9607 undergraduate nursing students who were attending 95 different three-year Italian baccalaureate nursing programmes, located at 27 universities in 15 Italian regions. Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with the Human Subject Research Ethics Committee guidelines after the research protocol was approved by an ethics committee. Findings: Overall, 4707 (49%) perceived to have discussed ethical issues ‘much’ or ‘very much’; among the remaining, 3683 (38.3%) and 1217 (12.7%) students reported the perception of having discussed, respectively, ‘enough’ or ‘never’ ethical issues emerged in the clinical practice. At the multivariate logistic regression analysis explaining 38.1% of the overall variance, the factors promoting ethical discussion were mainly set at the clinical learning environment levels (i.e. increased learning opportunities, self-directed learning, safety and nursing care quality, quality of the tutorial strategies, competences learned and supervision by a clinical nurse). In contrast, being male was associated with a perception of less opportunity to discuss ethical issues. Conclusion: Nursing faculties should assess the clinical environment prerequisites of the settings as a context of student experience before deciding on their accreditation. Moreover, the nursing faculty and nurse managers should also enhance competence with regard to discussing ethical issues with students among clinical nurses by identifying factors that hinder this learning opportunity in daily practice. (shrink)

An outstanding reference source to the full span of Murdoch's work, comprising 37 specially commissioned chapters written by an international team of leading scholars. This is the first volume to do justice to the incredibly rich and wide-ranging nature of her work. Divided into five parts, the volume covers the following areas: -/- - A guide to Murdoch's key philosophical texts, including The Sovereignty of Good and Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. - Core themes and concepts in Murdoch's philosophy, (...) such as love, moral vision, and attention. - Murdoch's engagement with the history of philosophy, including Plato, Kant, Hegel, Simone Weil, and Wittgenstein. - Interdisciplinary connections with art, literature, and religion, including Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. - Murdoch and contemporary philosophical debates, including feminism, virtue ethics, and metaethics. - The application of Murdoch’s thought to applied ethics, including animal ethics, psychiatric ethics, and the environment. -/- Although recent years have seen a blossoming of interest in Murdoch’s philosophy, The Murdochian Mind is the first volume to do justice to the incredibly rich and wide-ranging nature of her work. As such it will be of great interest to students of philosophy, especially ethics and aesthetics, as well as those in related disciplines such as literature, religion, and gender studies. (shrink)

The digital revolution has generated huge changes in the world of work, with relevant implications for the Human Resources Management function. New challenges arise in facing digital work, digital employees, and digital management, such that the connection between new technologies and HRM is now described as electronic HRM. Challenges and connection entail the possibility to review the notion of HRM itself, examining new research perspectives and lines of interpretation following a Critical Management Studies approach, thus developing a more contextualized view (...) in conceiving HRM, a more expansive consideration of stakeholders, and a longer-term perspective in approaching the results of digital transformation and HRM outcomes. The article analyzes a specific organizational case, involving a multinational enterprise, and explores how the case study enhances the understanding of HRM as a social practice embedded in specific situated contexts. Such a conception enables the engagement of multiple rationalities, related to both internal and external stakeholders, overcoming a “mere antiperformance stance” and achieving forms of reconstructive reflexivity concerning the interconnection between the digital age, HRM, and the innovative generation of social value through an authentic corporate responsibility. (shrink)

The exact nature of the relation between science and Scripture in the thought of Francis Bacon is a well-studied but controversial field. In this paper, it is shown that Bacon, though convinced that there exists no enmity between the book of God's wisdom and the book of God's power, usually tries to separate knowledge acquired by reason from knowledge acquired by faith. In his exposition of the principle of the conservation of matter, however, Bacon seems to find himself constrained to (...) invoke Scriptural truths in a manner that he usually disapproves of. In order to establish this principle, which is so essential to his overall scientific program, he appeals both to the Bible and Greek mythology in a way that points to certain conceptual tensions within his natural philosophy. (shrink)

The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has gained significant popularity in recent years across borders due to the increased investigation and penalties under the law. The following case is a real-life case that highlights the main provisions of the FCPA. Using cases in teaching an auditing or ethics course is much needed to develop students’ professional judgment, critical and analytical thinking skills and communication skills. Presently, there are a few cases that address the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and its effect (...) on financial reporting and auditor responsibilities about illegal acts. The Armor Holdings case is interesting and information is publicly available regarding the circumstances that describe the bribery act, lack of whistle-blower protection, the tone at the top, and the accounting treatment. In addition, the increase in actions brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission under the FCPA since 2010 heightens the relevance of this case and underscores the need for students to learn the skills necessary to ensure compliance with FCPA and related key regulations such as the Sarbanes Oxley and the Dodd Frank Act. Therefore, cases like this one provide a rich tool to navigate topics and enforce students’ learning of client’s illegal actions and their consequences. These skills are invaluable in practice. (shrink)

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are being investigated as an access pathway to communication for individuals with physical disabilities, as the technology obviates the need for voluntary motor control. However, to date, minimal research has investigated the use of BCIs for children. Traditional BCI communication paradigms may be suboptimal given that children with physical disabilities may face delays in cognitive development and acquisition of literacy skills. Instead, in this study we explored emotional state as an alternative access pathway to communication. We developed (...) a pediatric BCI to identify positive and negative emotional states from changes in hemodynamic activity of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). To train and test the BCI, 10 neurotypical children aged 8–14 underwent a series of emotion-induction trials over four experimental sessions (one offline, three online) while their brain activity was measured with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Visual neurofeedback was used to assist participants in regulating their emotional states and modulating their hemodynamic activity in response to the affective stimuli. Child-specific linear discriminant classifiers were trained on cumulatively available data from previous sessions and adaptively updated throughout each session. Average online valence classification exceeded chance across participants by the last two online sessions (with 7 and 8 of the 10 participants performing better than chance, respectively, in Sessions 3 and 4). There was a small significant positive correlation with online BCI performance and age, suggesting older participants were more successful at regulating their emotional state and/or brain activity. Variability was seen across participants in regards to BCI performance, hemodynamic response, and discriminatory features and channels. Retrospective offline analyses yielded accuracies comparable to those reported in adult affective BCI studies using fNIRS. Affective fNIRS-BCIs appear to be feasible for school-aged children, but to further gauge the practical potential of this type of BCI, replication with more training sessions, larger sample sizes, and end-users with disabilities is necessary. (shrink)

Drug resistant epilepsy is one of the most complex, multifactorial and polygenic neurological syndrome. Besides its dynamicity and variability, it still provides us with a model to study brain-behavior relationship, giving cues on the anatomy and functional representation of brain function. Given that onset zone of focal epileptic seizures often affects different anatomical areas, cortical but limited to one hemisphere, this condition also let us study the functional differences of the left and right cerebral hemispheres. One lateralized function in the (...) human brain is emotional prosody, and it can be a useful ictal sign offering hints on the location of the epileptogenic zone. Besides its importance for effective communication, prosody is not considered an eloquent domain, making resective surgery on its neural correlates feasible. We performed an Electronic databases search (Medline and PsychINFO) from inception to July 2017 for studies about prosody in epilepsy. The search terms included “epilepsy,” “seizure,” “emotional prosody,” and “vocal affect.” This review focus on emotional prosody processing in epilepsy as it can give hints regarding plastic functional changes following seizures (preoperatively), resection (post operatively), and also as an ictal sign enabling the assessment of dynamic brain networks. Moreover, it is argued that such reorganization can help to preserve the expression and reception of emotional prosody as a central skill to develop appropriate social interactions. (shrink)

Introduction:Healthcare workers facing the threatening COVID-19 can experience severe difficulties. Despite the need to evaluate both the psychological distress and positive protective resources, brief and reliable assessment tools are lacking.Aim:Study 1 aimed at developing a new assessment tool to measure psychological distress and esteem in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 2 aimed to explore and compare the psychological reactions of healthcare workers of the COVID-19 and the non-COVID-19 wards.Methods:In Study 1, psychologists created 25 items based on their clinical (...) experience. A preliminary qualitative evaluation selected the best 15 items for the new tool assessing the COVID-19 psychological impact with 2 scales: psychological distress and esteem. The CPI-HP was administered to 110 healthcare professionals to study its psychometric properties and the internal structure with exploratory graph analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 compared two groups of healthcare professionals of the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 departments.Results:In Study 1, the CPI-HP showed satisfying psychometric properties, and the two-factor structure was confirmed with good fit indices. In Study 2, the two groups of healthcare workers showed comparable levels of psychological distress and resilient coping, but the COVID-19 group displayed significantly higher esteem and appreciation of the experience.Discussion:All operators showed high psychological distress during the emergency, but the COVID-19 group reported higher resources, probably due to stronger group cohesion and greater esteem, perceived meaning, and own work value.Conclusion:Assessing the psychological distress and resources of healthcare professionals with specific tools is important. Psychological interventions should promote their psychological health. (shrink)

The relevance of preschool children's understanding of nature, its elements, how it affects the behavior of human beings and how human being influences it, it helps to the identification of the necessary elements for the design of programs that have a significant impact in the development of environmental identity and the implementation of environmental education in the school curriculum in Mexico, in order to achieve the derivation of attitudes to preserve the environment from an early age. Under this logic, the (...) objective of the present study was to identify the components of the concept Nature, from drawings made by preschool children in a desert environment, this through a visual discursive analysis. It was made by 118 preschool students, whose ages range between 5 and 6 years; enrolled in four different schools in Hermosillo, Mexico, three located in the urban area and one on the coast of the State of Sonora. Participants were asked to draw the first thought that came to their minds when they heard the word nature. As a result, it was obtained with the representations of the images, that all the drawings present categories such as plants, animals, water bodies, celestial bodies, abiotic factors, natural locations, locations made by man and others. Finally, it was discovered that the analyzes showed a generalized idea of what nature represents by including elements of known flora and fauna, however, they did not capture elements of the desert region in which they live. (shrink)

The idea of an unchanging human nature has always had a special place in Western philosophical thought. Far from being uncontested, this idea has received criticism from different traditions of thought, which have seen it even as an obstacle to the understanding of ourselves. Now it appears in the shape of a renewed naturalism and the opposing forces are the same as in the past. This volume shows some lines of the current debate about human nature: the revival of Herodotus (...) and Protagoras's humanistic relativism and tolerance; Darwinian ethics; the critical relationship between neo-Aristotelian and neo-Kantian moral theories and the results of empirical science; the assumption about the existence of a “moral mind” based on an innate moral grammar; the multicultural political debate which considers the idea of human nature as a product and a tool of Western hegemony; and, finally, the reflection on sex and gender in the theory of difference and on the idea of "living" nature in the contemporary biopolitics. (shrink)

The notion of welfare has historically been related to the notion of satisfying individual preferences or wants. This point of view was proposed by Bentham in the eighteen century. Following Bentham, welfare is thought to depend on satisfaction of those preferences. We shall try to show how this no..

This work promotes the thesis that humans are naturally transhuman. In order to achieve this, we present in the first two sections some examples of technological devices assembled to human beings, and we critically review the assumptions and dichotomies on which the idea of human enhancement is based according to the ordinary transhumanist vision. Thirdly, we present the thesis of the Extended Mind to support our intuition. Fourthly, we dismantle the most relevant philosophical dichotomies that structure the transhumanist position. Finally, (...) we recapitulate the reasons why we should wake up from the transhumanist dream. (shrink)

The winds of change sweeping across our globalised world have inspired a wide range of studies, new research paradigms, and new concepts that seek to characterise their nature and effects, the chal...

The literature focussing on digital platforms as intraorganisational intermediaries underlines a key shortcoming of this model that has not been addressed by the literatures on digital social movements, advocacy, and activism. This limitation is related to the fact that platform-based organisations usually exploit widespread representations of digital technologies as tools for democratisation, but then offer low-quality internal democracy. This has implications for these organisations’ internal and external legitimacy, which are vital for mobilising and engaging supporters and the general public. This (...) article proposes an historical and processual study of the hybrid organisation Momentum, with the aim of exploring the organisational implications of the cyber-democratising discourse and its impact on the internal legitimacy of platform-based organisations. (shrink)

This edited volume presents an overview of cutting-edge research areas within digital ethics as defined by the Digital Ethics Lab of the University of Oxford. It identifies new challenges and opportunities of influence in setting the research agenda in the field. The yearbook presents research on the following topics: conceptual metaphor theory, cybersecurity governance, cyber conflicts, anthropomorphism in AI, digital technologies for mental healthcare, data ethics in the asylum process, AI’s legitimacy and democratic deficit, digital afterlife industry, automatic prayer bots, (...) foresight analysis and the future of AI. This volume appeals to students, researchers and professionals. (shrink)

Connecting Virtues examines the significant advances within the fast-growing field of virtue theory and shows how research has contributed to the current debates in moral philosophy, epistemology, and political philosophy. It includes groundbreaking chapters offering original solutions to long-standing issues, such as the plausibility of different lists of virtues, the relationship between virtues and the vices that oppose them, and the connection between moral and intellectual virtues. In addition, the volume offers insights into cutting-edge areas of application of the topic (...) of virtue, such as the role of intellectual virtues in an age of neuromedia, virtuous dispositions related to social epistemology, and the value of some neglected virtues for political philosophy. The book breaks down barriers between different philosophical perspectives on the study of the virtues—both to highlight the interplay and overlap among virtues pertaining to different philosophical areas, and to stress the peculiarity of specific virtues within their own fields. It is a unique and insightful collection of essays composed by some of the leading philosophers working on the topic. (shrink)

In recent years, the conjunction of far-right agendas with those of the anti-vax movement has spread disbelief in science and turned the reinforcement of individualism into a way to erode the social fabric. In this text, by means of a review of specialized literature, we propose to discuss the strengthening of vaccine citizenship, a phenomenon that involves not only the construction of citizenship but also trust in scientific knowledge. Two are the axes of our analysis: a) civic education to address (...) vaccine hesitancy and refusal, and b) the importance of cooperation between Citizenship Education and Scientific Education for the development of critical thinking and the ability to assess the effects of scientific knowledge on society. To identify studies that have investigated the social nature of vaccination-related decisions and practices and those that have identified ways in which educational processes have been able to strengthen vaccine citizenship, we used bibliographic and documentary research as methodological strategies. As final recommendations, we suggest that the praxis involved in vaccine citizenship requires Citizenship Education for its realization to demand scientific literacy, just as Scientific Education requires scientific knowledge’s commitment to global citizenship so that it can be transformed into practice and action in the real world. (shrink)

This essay argues that despite of the feminist critique of Merleau-Ponty his phenomenology can be positively appropriated to the theory of sexual difference. It focuses on three issues: the first one is closely linked to the Phenomenology of Perception and introduces a concept of "difference as differentiation". The second one is concerned with the intersubjective dimension of sexuality and will be called a "sexual syncretism". Finally, I’m referring to Merleau-Ponty's notion of "chiasm" in his late work The Visible and the (...) Invisible in order to apply it to the theory of sexual difference. At this point, the difference between sexual beings will be conceptualized as "chiasmatic intertwining". In doing so, I hope to show that Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology is a helpful resource for philosophical research that is mainly concerned with the questions of sexuality and sexual difference. (shrink)

These words were written by ethicist Jonathan Glover in his paper “Future People, Disability and Screening” in 1992. Whereas screening and choosing for a disability remained a theoretical possibility 16 years ago, it has now become reality. In 2006, Susannah Baruch and colleagues at John Hopkins University published a survey of 190 American preimplantation genetic diagnosis clinics, and found that 3% reported having the intentional use of PGD “to select an embryo for the presence of a disability.” Even before, in (...) 2002, a controversy was generated by the case of Candace A. McCullough and Sharon M. Duchesneau, a lesbian and deaf couple from Maryland who set out to have a deaf child by intentionally soliciting a deaf sperm donor. (shrink)

Exposición realizada por Silvia Hernández, Doctora en Ciencias Sociales, en la segunda ronda del ciclo de conversaciones “Crítica a la Epidemiología Política. Prácticas y racionalidad neoliberales en tiempos de pandemia”, organizado por el equipo editorial de la Revista de Filosofía Otrosiglo, enero 2021. Disponible en Youtube, canal Revista Otrosiglo. _Palabras Clave: _Pandemia – Ideología – Neoliberalismo – Covid19.

Shannon Sullivan's critique of Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception is based on the argument that, due to his concept of the “anonymous body,” his theory of intersubjectivity omits the particularities of bodies, such as gender. I argue that Merleau-Ponty's “anonymous body” is not in fact “neutral” as Sullivan suggests, and moreover that he does not ignore differences but rather provides us with the idea of difference as a process of differentiation. Additionally, I argue that Sullivan's concept of “hypothetical construction,” which is (...) introduced as an alternative to Merleau-Ponty, turns out to be a conscious construction, not reflecting upon its very conditions. Thus, Sullivan's account fails by presupposing what in fact needs to be explained: the particularities. (shrink)

The Scottish Enlightenment shaped a new conception of history as a gradual and universal progress from savagery to civil society. Whereas women emancipated themselves from the yoke of male-masters, men in turn acquired polite manners and became civilized. Such a conception, however, presents problematic questions: why were the Americans still savage? Why was it that the Europeans only had completed all the stages of the historic process? Could modern societies escape the destiny of earlier empires and avoid decadence? Was there (...) a limit beyond which women's influence might result in dehumanization? The Scottish Enlightenment's legacy for modernity emerges here as a two-faced Janus, an unresolved tension between universalism and hierarchy, progress and the limits of progress. (shrink)

Public engagement is one of the fundamental pillars of the European programme for research and innovation _Horizon 2020_. The programme encourages engagement that not only fosters science education and dissemination, but also promotes two-way dialogues between scientists and the public at various stages of research. Establishing such dialogues between different groups of societal actors is seen as crucial in order to attain epistemic as well as social desiderata at the intersection between science and society. However, whether these dialogues can actually (...) help attaining these desiderata is far from obvious. This paper discusses some of the costs, risks, and benefits of dialogical public engagement practices, and proposes a strategy to analyse these argumentative practices based on a three-tiered model of epistemic exchange. As a case study, we discuss the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy, arguably a result of suboptimal public engagement, and show how the proposed model can shed new light on the problem. (shrink)

Can art, religion, or philosophy afford ineffable insights? If so, what are they? The idea of ineffability has puzzled philosophers from Laozi to Wittgenstein. In Ineffability and its Metaphysics: The Unspeakable in Art, Religion and Philosophy, Silvia Jonas examines different ways of thinking about what ineffable insights might involve metaphysically, and shows which of these are in fact incoherent. Jonas discusses the concepts of ineffable properties and objects, ineffable propositions, ineffable content, and ineffable knowledge, examining the metaphysical pitfalls involved (...) in these concepts. Ultimately, she defends the idea that ineffable insights as found in aesthetic, religious, and philosophical contexts are best understood in terms of self-acquaintance, a particular kind of non-propositional knowledge. Ineffability as a philosophical topic is as old as the history of philosophy itself, but contributions to the exploration of ineffability have been sparse. The theory developed by Jonas makes the concept tangible and usable in many different philosophical contexts. (shrink)

This article presents the first, systematic analysis of the ethical challenges posed by recommender systems through a literature review. The article identifies six areas of concern, and maps them onto a proposed taxonomy of different kinds of ethical impact. The analysis uncovers a gap in the literature: currently user-centred approaches do not consider the interests of a variety of other stakeholders—as opposed to just the receivers of a recommendation—in assessing the ethical impacts of a recommender system.

Trotz großer Verbesserungen in der Versorgung von Menschen mit Typ-1-Diabetes (MmT1D) werden auch bei hoher Motivation und hohem Wissensstand der T1D-Grundlagen und -Therapie die angestrebten Blutglukose-Werte häufig nicht erreicht. Daher hat sich aus der Gruppe der MmT1D und ihrer Angehörigen eine Gemeinschaft zusammengefunden, die auf Basis kommerzieller Technologien sogenannte Open-Source-Closed-Loop-Systeme (OSCLS) entwickelt, welche eine automatisierte Insulinabgabe ermöglichen. OSCLS haben das Potenzial, das Management der Erkrankung zu erleichtern und normnähere Blutglukose-Werte zu erzielen. Die OSCLS sind jedoch weder offiziell geprüfte noch zugelassene (...) Systeme. Aus dem Blickwinkel der Technikfolgenabschätzung untersucht die vorliegende Arbeit mittels leitfadengestützter qualitativer Interviews mit Nutzenden und Fachkräften vorrangig, warum sich die Nutzenden der OSCLS für die Systeme entscheiden und wie sich diese auf das Leben der Nutzenden sowie auf das Gesundheitswesen auswirken. Zudem ordnet diese Arbeit die OSCLS-Bewegung in vergleichbare aktivistische Bewegungen in Medizin und Gesundheit ein sowie in den Kontext der derzeit immer stärker werdenden Bewegung der Patient Innovation. Die Autorin Silvia Woll war als Geisteswissenschaftlerin seit 2015 als Mitarbeiterin am Institut für Technikfolgenabschätzung und Systemanalyse (ITAS) im Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) tätig. Ihre inhaltlichen Schwerpunkte umfassten dabei Technologien für Gesundheit und Ernährung, Technikethik und partizipative Verfahren wie die Citizen Science. (shrink)

An important yet often unacknowledged aspect of moral discourse is the phenomenon of moral impossibility, which challenges more widely accepted models of moral discussion and deliberation as a choice among possible options. Starting from observations of the new possibilities of anti immigrant attitudes and hate crimes which have been described by the press as something being “unleashed,” the paper asks what it means for something to enter or not the sphere of possibility in the moral sense, and whether it is (...) ever desirable for something to remain or be pushed back outside the realm of the morally possible. Three forms of moral impossibility are identified: the unconceived, the unthinkable, and moral incapacity. Through the discussion of a stark fictional example of moral impossibility, the paper concludes that while the category of moral impossibility cannot settle disagreement, it sheds light on some of the most fundamental aspects of moral life. (shrink)

What are the relevant values to the appraisal of research programs? This question remains hotly debated, as philosophers have recently proposed many lists of values potentially relevant to scientific appraisal. Surprisingly, despite being mentioned in many lists, little attention has been paid to fruitfulness. It is unclear how fruitfulness should be explicated, and whether it has any substantial role in scientific appraisal. In this paper, I argue we should explicate fruitfulness as the capacity to develop of research programs. Moreover, I (...) provide a novel strategy to assess and compare the fruitfulness of programs focused on their research questions and heuristics. To illustrate how this strategy would work, I will discuss a case study, namely the adaptationist program in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

Francis Bacon’s theory of matter is a controversial topic among historians. I agree with the viewpoint, which suggests that although Bacon changed his views on atomism repeatedly, he never rejected it completely (Partington, Urbach, Gemelli). I will substantiate this interpretation by paying more attention to the usually neglected allegorical works and by investigating why Bacon changed his mind on atomism in his Novum organum. I shall reconstruct Bacon’s various opinions in chronological order to establish his final evaluation of atomism and (...) his reasons for it. Given that Bacon never embraced a matter theory identical with Greek atomism, I shall here define atomism in the broadest sense, as a corpuscular matter theory that posits final and indivisible particles. Following this semantic delimitation, two successive Baconian opinions will be distinguished: the first took the atom to constitute an ontological and causative-operational principle; the second deprived the atom of this causative-operational ability, but did not touch its ontological priority. At the same time, I will investigate the question concerning the coexistence of atomism and pneumatism in Bacon’s theory, a point that has been discussed in the influential interpretations by Kargon and Rees. I shall argue that Bacon did not regard these two doctrines as incompatible. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that religious belief is epistemically equivalent to mathematical belief. Abstract beliefs don't fall under ‘naive’, evidence-based analyses of rationality. Rather, their epistemic permissibility depends, I suggest, on four criteria: predictability, applicability, consistency, and immediate acceptability of the fundamental axioms. The paper examines to what extent mathematics meets these criteria, juxtaposing the results with the case of religion. My argument is directed against a widespread view according to which belief in mathematics is clearly rationally acceptable whereas (...) belief in religion is not. The paper also aims to make some of the implications of contemporary mathematics available to philosophers working in different fields. (shrink)

It is well-established that algorithms can be instruments of injustice. It is less frequently discussed, however, how current modes of AI deployment often make the very discovery of injustice difficult, if not impossible. In this article, we focus on the effects of algorithmic profiling on epistemic agency. We show how algorithmic profiling can give rise to epistemic injustice through the depletion of epistemic resources that are needed to interpret and evaluate certain experiences. By doing so, we not only demonstrate how (...) the philosophical conceptual framework of epistemic injustice can help pinpoint potential, systematic harms from algorithmic profiling, but we also identify a novel source of hermeneutical injustice that to date has received little attention in the relevant literature: epistemic fragmentation. Epistemic fragmentation is a structural characteristic of algorithmically-mediated environments that isolate individuals, making it more difficult to develop, uptake and apply new epistemic resources. This, in turn, can impede the identification and conceptualisation of emerging harms in these environments. We trace the occurrence of hermeneutical injustice back to the fragmentation of the epistemic experiences of individuals, who are left more vulnerable by the inability to share, compare, and learn from shared experiences. (shrink)

euroscience of Rule-Guided Behavior brings together, for the first time, the experiments and theories that have created the new science of rules. Rules are central to human behavior, but until now the field of neuroscience lacked a synthetic approach to understanding them. How are rules learned, retrieved from memory, maintained in consciousness and implemented? How are they used to solve problems and select among actions and activities? How are the various levels of rules represented in the brain, ranging from simple (...) conditional ones if a traffic light turns red, then stop to rules and strategies of such sophistication that they defy description? And how do brain regions interact to produce rule-guided behavior? These are among the most fundamental questions facing neuroscience, but until recently there was relatively little progress in answering them. It was difficult to probe brain mechanisms in humans, and expert opinion held that animals lacked the capacity for such high-level behavior. However, rapid progress in neuroimaging technology has allowed investigators to explore brain mechanisms in humans, while increasingly sophisticated behavioral methods have revealed that animals can and do use high-level rules to control their behavior. The resulting explosion of information has led to a new science of rules, but it has also produced a plethora of overlapping ideas and terminology and a field sorely in need of synthesis. In this book, Silvia Bunge and Jonathan Wallis bring together the worlds leading cognitive and systems neuroscientists to explain the most recent research on rule-guided behavior. Their work covers a wide range of disciplines and methods, including neuropsychology, functional magnetic resonance imaging, neurophysiology, electroencephalography, neuropharmacology, near-infrared spectroscopy, and transcranial magnetic stimulation. This unprecedented synthesis is a must-read for anyone interested in how complex behavior is controlled and organized by the brain. (shrink)

How does personality influence the relationship between appraisals and emotions? Recent research suggests individual differences in appraisal structures: people may differ in an emotion's appraisal pattern. We explored individual differences in interest's appraisal structure, assessed as the within-person covariance of appraisals with interest. People viewed images of abstract visual art and provided ratings of interest and of interest's appraisals (novelty–complexity and coping potential) for each picture. A multilevel mixture model found two between-person classes that reflected distinct within-person appraisal styles. For (...) people in the larger class (68%), the novelty–complexity appraisal had a stronger effect on interest; for people in the smaller class (32%), the coping potential appraisal had a stronger effect. People in the larger class were significantly higher in appetitive traits related to novelty seeking (e.g., sensation seeking, openness to experience, and trait curiosity), suggesting that the appraisal classes have substantive meaning. We conclude by discussing the value of within-person mixture models for the study of personality and appraisal. (shrink)

The existence of fundamental moral disagreements is a central problem for moral realism and has often been contrasted with an alleged absence of disagreement in mathematics. However, mathematicians do in fact disagree on fundamental questions, for example on which set-theoretic axioms are true, and some philosophers have argued that this increases the plausibility of moral vis-à-vis mathematical realism. I argue that the analogy between mathematical and moral disagreement is not as straightforward as those arguments present it. In particular, I argue (...) that pluralist accounts of mathematics render fundamental mathematical disagreements compatible with mathematical realism in a way in which moral disagreements and moral realism are not. 11. (shrink)

Does self-awareness amplify or dampen the intensity of emotional experience? Early research argued that self-awareness makes emotional states salient, resulting in greater emotional intensity. But these studies induced a standard for emotional intensity, confounding the salience of the emotional state with the self-regulation effects of self-awareness. Three experiments suggest high self-awareness can dampen the intensity of emotional experience in the absence of this confound. In Study 1, participants were led to feel sad in the presence or absence of a mirror; (...) a standard for emotionality was or was not induced. High self-awareness amplified sadness when there was a standard for emotionality; it dampened sadness when there was no standard. Additional experiments using a self-novelty writing task (Study 2) and a mirror (Study 3) showed that self-awareness can also dampen positive affect. A fourth study found that trait private self-consciousness did not affect emotional intensity after controlling for the effects of neuroticism. The intersections of self-focused attention and emotional experience are discussed. (shrink)

Puts leading Italian thinkers into conversation with established Continental philosophers concerning the future of the nature of the human, technology, metaphysical foundations, globalization, and social and political oppression.