In cognitive science, there is a tacit norm that phenomena such as cultural variation or synaesthesia are worthy examples of cognitive diversity that contribute to a better understanding of cognition, but that other forms of cognitive diversity (e.g., autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/ADHD, and dyslexia) are primarily interesting only as examples of deficit, dysfunction, or impairment. This status quo is dehumanizing and holds back much-needed research. In contrast, the neurodiversity paradigm argues that such experiences are not necessarily deficits but rather (...) are natural reflections of biodiversity. Here, we propose that neurodiversity is an important topic for future research in cognitive science. We discuss why cognitive science has thus far failed to engage with neurodiversity, why this gap presents both ethical and scientific challenges for the field, and, crucially, why cognitive science will produce better theories of human cognition if the field engages with neurodiversity in the same way that it values other forms of cognitive diversity. Doing so will not only empower marginalized researchers but will also present an opportunity for cognitive science to benefit from the unique contributions of neurodivergent researchers and communities. (shrink)

The rule of rescue describes the moral impulse to save identifiable lives in immediate danger at any expense. Think of the extremes taken to rescue a small child who has fallen down a well, a woman pinned beneath the rubble of an earthquake, or a submarine crew trapped on the ocean floor. No effort is deemed too great. Yet should this same moral instinct to rescue, regardless of cost, be applied in the emergency room, the hospital, or the community clinic? (...) -/- In health care, the desire to save lives at any cost must be reconciled with the reality of resource scarcity. As one example, the estimated cost for prophylactic Factor VIII to treat one patient with hemophilia for one year is $300,000. Costs of this magnitude have been accepted by public and private insurers in the developed world, even though, in principle, these sums could provide greater overall health benefit if allocated to pay for the unmet health care needs of many other patients. Looking forward, however, broad application of the rule of rescue will be increasingly untenable. But the moral instinct will remain: the desire to help those weakest among us, especially when their small numbers allow us to see them as unique individuals. What, then, is the ethical framework that can guide coverage and reimbursement decisions for orphan drugs into the future? (shrink)

Two recent articles in this journal – one by Morris, the other by Pfleegor & Rosenberg – have revived the philosophical discussion of the ethics of deception in sport which had largely laid dormant since the 1973 publication of Pearson’s ‘Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics’. Morris and Pfleegor & Rosenberg both share with Pearson the view that ethical deceptive sport acts are those that relate to sport-specific skills. However, whereas Pearson ultimately grounds this view in the agreement she (...) takes to obtain amongst sport participants, both recent treatments overlook this fundamental aspect of her account and offer alternative justifications for that view. I argue, though, that in both cases the arguments offered are incomplete precisely because they require an appeal to the agreement amongst participants that lies at the foundation of Pearson’s account. On all three treatments, I argue, what ultimately determines an action’s ethical status is not its relation to sport-specific skills, but its conformit... (shrink)

Background: Dignity is a multidimensional construct that includes perception, knowledge, and emotions related to competence or respect. Attitudes to aging are a comprehensive personal view of the experience of aging over the course of life, which can be influenced by various factors, such as the levels of health and self-sufficiency and social, psychological, or demographic factors. Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes to aging of home-dwelling and inpatient older adults, and whether dignity and other selected (...) factors belong among the predictors influencing attitudes to aging in these two different groups of older adults. Research design: Cross-sectional study using a set of questionnaires: Patient Dignity Inventory, Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire, and Barthel Index. Pearson and Spearman correlation analyses and multivariable linear regression were used for statistical processing. Participants and research context: 233 inpatients and 237 home-dwelling older adults participated in the research in two regions of the Czech Republic. Ethical considerations: Institutional Review Board approval was received from the authors’ university. Findings: The inpatients had more negative attitudes to aging (M = 74.9±10.9; P <0.0001). The predictors of their attitudes to aging were gender and dignity. Women ( β = −2.969, P = 0.045) and inpatients with poor dignity ratings ( β = −0.332, P <0.0001) had more negative attitudes to aging. The predictors for home-dwelling older adults were education, living arrangement, and dignity. More negative attitudes to aging were found in older adults with lower levels of education ( β = 2.716, P = 0.007) who lived alone ( β = 2.163, P = 0.046) and rated their dignity as low ( β = −0.325, P <0.0001). Discussion and Conclusions: The results of this study add to the understanding that a sense of dignity is an important predictor of attitudes to aging for both home-dwelling older adults and inpatients. (shrink)

When health budgets are insufficient to provide care for all, allocating resources to treat a person with a rare and expensive disorder entails that we cannot treat at least one person with a more common, less expensive disorder. Since any allocation scheme will entail such trade‐offs, how should prudent policy‐makers, concerned about justice and fairness, allocate their community's health resources? In their article in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Emily Largent and Steven Pearson frame this problem (...) as a conflict between the “rule of rescue” and utilitarian allocation schemes that try to maximize the benefits produced by a given budget. In his article, Norman Daniels discusses the related problem of the “identified victim bias.” I doubt that the problem of crafting an equitable health policy regarding orphan diseases maps onto either of these factors in a way that sheds light on the key moral issues. (shrink)

Although Darwin insisted that human intelligence could be fully explained by the theory of evolution, the codiscoverer of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, claimed that abstract intelligence was of no use to ancestral humans and could only be explained by intelligent design. Wallace’s apparent paradox can be dissolved with two hypotheses about human cognition. One is that intelligence is an adaptation to a knowledge-using, socially interdependent lifestyle, the “cognitive niche.” This embraces the ability to overcome the evolutionary fixed defenses of (...) plants and animals by applications of reasoning, including weapons, traps, coordinated driving of game, and detoxification of plants. Such reasoning exploits intuitive theories about different aspects of the world, such as objects, forces, paths, places, states, substances, and other people’s beliefs and desires. The theory explains many zoologically unusual traits in Homo sapiens, including our complex toolkit, wide range of habitats and diets, extended childhoods and long lives, hypersociality, complex mating, division into cultures, and language (which multiplies the benefit of knowledge because know-how is useful not only for its practical benefits but as a trade good with others, enhancing the evolution.. (shrink)

In this original work, Steven DeLay, using a wide breadth of philosophical sources, articulates a view of selfhood which emphasizes humanity’s ineluctable experience before-God.

The young women had survived the car crash, after a fashion. In the five months since parts of her brain had been crushed, she could open her eyes but didn't respond to sights, sounds or jabs. In the jargon of neurology, she was judged to be in a persistent vegetative state. In crueler everyday language, she was a vegetable.

In this paper I argue against Brandom's two-ply theory of action. For Brandom, action is the result of an agent acknowledging a practical commitment and then causally responding to that commitment by acting. Action is social because the content of the commitment upon which one acts is socially conferred in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On my proposal, instead of seeing action as the coupling of a rational capacity to acknowledge commitments and a non-rational capacity to reliably (...) respond to these commitments, we should see action as the coupling, or potential coupling, of a capacity to reason practically and a capacity to act on habits and bodily skills. In putting forward this alternative model of action, I aim to replace Brandom's rationalist brand of Pragmatism with a more classical kind, one that will let us see action as social not only at the level of reasons but also at the level of bodily habits and skills. (shrink)

Decision making is the physician's major activity. Every day, in doctors' offices throughout the world, patients describe their symptoms and com plaints while doctors perform examinations, order tests, and, on the basis of these data, decide what is wrong and what should be done. Although the process may appear routine-even to the physicians in volved-each step in the sequence requires skilled clinical judgment. Physicians must decide: which symptoms are important, whether any laboratory tests should be done, how the various items (...) of clinical data should be combined, and, finally, which of several treatments (including doing nothing) is indicated. Although much of the information used in clinical decision making is objective, the physician's values (a belief that pain relief is more important than potential addiction to pain-killing drugs, for example) and subjectivity are as much a part of the clinical process as the objective findings of laboratory tests. In recent years, both physicians and psychologists have come to realize that patient management decisions are not only subjective but also prob abilistic (although this is not always acknowledged overtly). When doc tors argue that an operation is fairly safe because it has a mortality rate of only 1 %, they are at least implicitly admitting that the outcome of their decision is based on probability. (shrink)

This paper takes a philosophical look at how the views of Gilbert Ryle and Kwasi Wiredu can be used to resolving the mind-body problem located in Rene Descartes’ philosophy. The common sense account of the mind-body theory was first systematically carried out by Descartes. To him, mind and body do not only exist, they also interact. Through his notion of clear and distinct ideas, Descartes infers the existence of the mind as a thinking substance. Unlike the mind, whose character is (...) thought, the body for Descartes is an extended thing. He insists that the point of interaction is the pineal grand, which God has worked out from the point of creation. Today, the view that body and mind interact has generated some controversies. Ryle argues that Descartes has made a category mistake by interpreting mind as a distinct substance. For Wiredu, in Akan thought system, mind does not go to constitute a person. Thus Ryle and Wiredu tend toward materialism when they argue that the source of consciousness is the brain, rather than the mind. This paper explores the claims of these philosophers: Descartes, Ryle and Wiredu. I stress that Ryle and Wiredu’s views do not resolve the Cartesian problem. The paper concludes that unless the problem of the source of consciousness is tackled, the mind-body problem cannot be adequately resolved. (shrink)

"In the closing chapters of Ezekiel, a great Temple is described, one reminiscent of Solomon's but in fact like none ever built. From that Temple, a river flows through the land, with healing in its wake; within the Temple dwells the divine Glory, depicted here alone in Ezekiel as coming to rest, never again to be removed. All of these features of Ezekiel's grand vision are embedded in the core of Jewish and Christian devotional and mystical practice. Yet no less (...) intriguing for the exegete is the legislation promulgated in this elaborate vision report. Here is found the only body of law in the Hebrew Scriptures not placed in the mouth of Moses. Laws regarding sacrifices and festivals, the conduct of the prince, the nature of the priesthood, and the division of the land all center upon the Temple, which is the one common reference for this rich, multifaceted material." From Chapter 1: The Unity and Theme of the Temple Vision. (shrink)

Thirty years after the publication of Dominique Janicaud’s criticism of what he termed the “theological turn” of phenomenology in France, what is the state of the debate? This paper addresses that question, by examining the phenomenology of revelation in Marion, Lacoste, and others, in turn replying to various arguments that have been advanced against the theological turn and on behalf of methodological atheism. Not only is revelation a viable topic of phenomenological analysis, the attempts to formulate a methodologically atheist phenomenology (...) fail. (shrink)

The promise of language in the depths of hell: Primo Levi's Canto of Ulysses and Inferno -- The difference between difference and otherness: Il milione of Marco Polo and Calvino's Le città invisibili -- Traces of the Confucian/Mencian other: ethical moments in Sima Qian's Records of the historian -- War and the Hellenic splendor of knowing: Euripides, Hölderlin, Celan -- The saying, the said, and the betrayal of mercy in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice -- Nom de dieu, quelle race: the (...) saying, the said, and the betrayal of charity in Mongo Beti's Le pauvre Christ de Bomba -- Transcendent divinity and human responsibility in Mahfouz: "zaabalawi" and children of our alley -- That you might have my witness in your poem: Valéry, the symbolist tradition, and Edgar Bowers' later blank verse. (shrink)

DOES SLAVERY EXIST BY NATURE as some throughout history have been taken to believe? Or is slavery merely conventional, sanctioned by the opinions and practices of diverse communities? Is it a punishment for sinfulness or proscribed by the natural law? Can one sell oneself into slavery as the result of a free exchange, or is slavery prohibited by virtue of the natural rights of the individual? Is slavery a necessary moment in the struggle of human beings to attain mutual recognition (...) and respect? Or have modern institutions like the market economy and the state created new and potentially more ominous forms of oppression? (shrink)

Most evidence for the role of regular inflection as a default operation comes from languages that confound the morphological properties of regular and irregular forms with their phonological characteristics. For instance, regular plurals tend to faithfully preserve the base’s phonology, whereas irregular nouns tend to alter it. The distinction between regular and irregular inflection may thus be an epiphenomenon of phonological faithfulness. In Hebrew noun inflection, however, morphological regularity and phonological faithfulness can be distinguished: Nouns whose stems change in the (...) plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix, and nouns whose stems are preserved in the plural may take either a regular or an irregular suffix. We use this dissociation to examine two hallmarks of default inflection: its lack of dependence on analogies from similar regular nouns, and its application to nonroots such as names. We show that these hallmarks of regularity may be found whether or not the plural form preserves the stem faithfully: People apply the regular suffix to novel nouns that don’t resemble existing nouns, and to names that sound like irregular nouns, regardless of whether the stem is ordinarily preserved in the plural of that family of nouns. Moreover, when they pluralize names, they do not apply the stem changes that are found in their homophonous nouns, replicating an effect found in English and German. These findings show that the distinction between regular and irregular phenomena cannot be reduced to differences in the kinds of phonological changes associated with those phenomena in English. Instead, regularity and irregularity must be distinguished in terms of the kinds of mental computations that effect them: symbolic operations versus memorized idiosyncrasies. A corollary is that complex words are not generally dichotomizable as “regular” or “irregular”; different aspects of a word may be regular or irregular depending on whether they violate the rule for that aspect and hence must be stored in memory.. (shrink)

Rooting, defined as a spectator’s demonstrative encouragement of a contestant’s effort, ideally has the morally positive aspects of benevolent concern and helpfulness but in practice strains against reasonable standards of conduct by being rude, excessively biased, exploitative, fanatical, and superstitious. Rooting may activate an atavistic, morally cogent sense of fighting for one’s group that is at odds with the universalism of civilized morality. The ‘merely play’ excuse can cut both ways, deflecting moral objections but also removing moral credit from rooting. (...) Although rooting is often not humane, humane rooting can occur and is supported by humane commentary by sports participants, broadcasters, and journalists. Humane rooting supports the premise of benevolence theories (Mengzi, Hutcheson) that morally ideal benevolence has a foothold in an innate general benevolence – seen in this area especially in benevolence toward efforts. Being partisan, excited, and demonstrative, rooters cannot perfectly embody ‘universal calm benevolence’, but they can consciously minimize the inhumane aspects of rooting and achieve a more fully prosocial satisfaction. (shrink)

Some elementary properties of tachyons are described and then it is argued that the claim that (T) Tachyons exist, is incompatible with the truth of the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). First it is argued that from T, STR, and the negation of the principle that (Pl) Effect never precedes cause, one can derive a paradoxical conclusion, one of the so-called "causal paradoxes". An obvious response is to affirm (Pl), but then it is argued that (Pl) and (T) entail that (...) STR is false. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that in order for the study of arts education to continue to advance, we must delineate the effects of particular forms of arts education, offered in certain contexts, on specific domains of children’s socioemotional development. We explain why formulating precise hypotheses about the effects of arts education on children’s socioemotional development requires a differentiated definition of each arts education program or activity in question, as well as a consideration of both the immediate and broader contexts (...) in which that program or activity occurs. We then offer the New Victory Theater’s Schools with Performing Arts Reach Kids program as an illustrative example of how these considerations allow for the refinement of hypotheses about the impact of arts education on children’s socioemotional development. (shrink)

This book takes up the philosophical task described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and F.D. Maurice as digging toward the common humanity that is the ground of value. The book is an essay in philosophy defined by time (its focal point is the nineteenth century), space (its focal point is Britain), and persons (it is concerned especially with Maurice's contribution to social theory). The first chapter explores the Victorian Age as historical context and background for Maurice's work. The second explores Coleridge's (...) thought as philosophical context and background. The third explores a range of Maurice's theological works that spans his entire career. The fourth turns, finally, as Maurice did, to the practice of adult education as the place of social transformation and, more particularly, the contested terrain where human nature and human souls are turned to work in the world as persons, not hands. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel account of what motivates internalism about justification in light of recent attempts to undermine the intuitions long thought to favour it (Srinivasan in Philos Rev 129:395–431, 2020). On the account I propose, internalist intuitions are sensitive to epistemic agency. Internalist intuitions track a desire to acknowledge the epistemic agency one has in virtue of being in a position to meet the standards one is accountable to.