Despite their centrality and importance to both science and philosophy, relatively little has been written about thought experiments. This volume brings together a series of extremely interesting studies of the history, mechanics, and applications of this important intellectual resource. A distinguished list of philosophers and scientists consider the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines, and argue that an examination of thought experimentation goes to the heart of both science and philosophy.

Attitudes toward sow husbandry differ between citizens and conventional pig farmers. Research showed that moral values could only predict the judgment of people in case of culling healthy animals in the course of a disease epidemic to a certain extent. Therefore, we hypothesized that attitudes of citizens and pig farmers cannot be predicted one-on-one by moral values. Furthermore, we were interested in getting insight in whether moral values can be useful in bridging the gap between attitudes toward sow husbandry of (...) citizens and pig farmers. Based on a questionnaire, it was found that pig farmers and citizens, when considered as one group, shared the valuation of most moral values. However, when studying the four clusters of citizens with different attitudes toward sow husbandry, determined in a previous study, a variation in valuation of the moral values between the clusters of citizens and farmers came to the fore. This means that moral values are interpreted differently by groups of people when forming attitudes toward sow husbandry. The results of our study give an indication of which moral values are weighed differently between clusters of citizens and pig farmers. This information can be useful in future research on attitudes toward animal husbandry in order to understand why attitudes differ between groups of people. Besides, our results can be useful for the pig sector and citizens to learn to understand each other’s attitudes. With this understanding it is possible to invest in a husbandry system that can build on societal support. (shrink)

This clinical vignette stems from French research into sedative practices and their influence on bereavement in spouses of cancer patients. We worked with hospital departments to recruit participants. They were offered a questionnaire and were invited to a research interview. This led us to explore the various issues that palliative care providers may face, including their relationship with the patient’s loved ones, questions about bereavement, and how best to support the bereaved. Feelings of bereavement are difficult to put into words, (...) and there is often concern that talking about it may increase the suffering of the person concerned. The question we raise in this case study is whether fears about talking about bereavement come from the bereaved person or from the caregiver. In other words, for whom is talking about bereavement more painful? This point relates to two ethical challenges in our study: first, we seek to better understand the relationship between spouses of cancer patients and healthcare providers, starting with how to narrate the experience of grief. The second question relates to the ethics of research and specifically the possibility of including patients and family members in the research process. (shrink)

This article re-examines the distinction between the libertarian approach and the egalitarian approach to the regulation of campaign finance. The conventional approach (as exemplified by the work of Owen Fiss and Ronald Dworkin) is to reconcile the competing values of liberty and equality. By contrast, this article advances the normative claim that democracies should seek to incorporate both the libertarian and the egalitarian approaches within constitutional law. I argue that instead of emphasizing one value over the other, the ideal position (...) is one that simultaneously recognizes the values of liberty and equality despite the irreconcilable tension between them. Rather than choosing one value over the other, or reconciling these values by redefining them, I claim that it is vital to maintain the tension between liberty and equality by instantiating the conflict in law. Democracy is better served when the law contains an explicit tension between these foundational values.After setting forth this normative framework, I then apply it to the campaign finance decisions of the Supreme Courts of the United States and Canada, respectively. I make two main claims. First, I argue that although the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is usually presented as a binary choice, the laws of a given jurisdiction often simultaneously display both libertarian and egalitarian characteristics. For this reason, I claim that the libertarian/egalitarian distinction is better conceived of as a “libertarian-egalitarian spectrum.” Second, I argue that in recent years, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada, respectively, have privileged one value—liberty or equality—at the expense of the other. The U.S. Supreme Court has over-emphasized the value of liberty (most notably in itsCitizens Uniteddecision), with the result that political equality is markedly undermined. By the same token, the Supreme Court of Canada’s commitment to equality has become too one-sided in recent cases (HarperandBryan), with the result that there are significant impairments to free speech liberties. I argue that both of these approaches are detrimental to democratic participation and governance. Finally, this article offers a preliminary proposal for how courts and legislatures can allow for the conflict between liberty and equality to be instantiated in law. (shrink)

The issue of communicated accountability is particularly important in Faith-Based Charity Organisations as the donated funds and use of those funds are often meant to fulfil religious obligations for the well-being of society. Integrating Stewart’s (1984) ladder of accountability with the Statement of Recommended Practice guidance for charities, this paper examines communicated accountability practices of Muslim and Christian Charity Organisations in England and Wales. Our content analysis results indicate communicated accountability to be generally limited, focusing on providing basic descriptive information (...) rather than judgement-based information. Our interviews with trustees and preparers of Trustee Annual Reports in Muslim Charity Organisations identified the reasons being due to high donor trust and consequently weak demand by stakeholders for the latter type of information, as well as internal organisational issues related to the organisational structure and culture, lack of internal professional expertise and high accountability cost. (shrink)

The concept of downward causation is frequently used in an explanatory capacity in biology to account for certain regularities and processes. Some philosophers, however, argue that downward causation is metaphysically incoherent, providing three main objections. Underlying these objections is the assumption that entities are connected by compositional hierarchies of levels of organization. In this paper, I introduce the notions of weak and strong compositional relations using examples from evolutionary developmental biology. I argue that downward causation becomes unproblematic if we use (...) features of interventionist theories of causation to explain the causal relations between levels. I show that an interventionist account of downward causation successfully responds to the three central objections to downward causation in the philosophical literature and I clarify the explanatory usefulness of the concept in biology. As such, this paper provides an epistemic solution to demystify downward causation in the context of scientific practice. The solution proposed is compatible with how biologists seem to use a concept of downward causation fruitfully in their work. (shrink)

O conceito tardio de plano de imanência na filosofia de Gilles Deleuze diz respeito não apenas à recusa de um segundo mundo transcendente, mas também de um campo transcendental organizado sob a determinação recíproca entre sujeito universal e forma geral de objeto. A construção desse conceito passa, portanto, pela crítica do fundamento transcendental kantiano desenvolvida por Deleuze através de um resgate original do empirismo de Hume. A discussão gira em torno do estatuto da subjetividade: segundo a crítica empírica, o sujeito (...) não pode ser entendido como um pressuposto a _priori_, mas deve, sim, ser compreendido como um produto _a_ _posteriori_ cuja emergência remete, em última instância, a um princípio de repetição. Assim, buscando compreender a amplitude da noção de imanência na filosofia deleuziana, analisamos a leitura do filósofo francês a respeito do problema do fundamento transcendental, sobretudo em _Empirismo e Subjetividade_. Por fim, indicamos brevemente de que maneira o conjunto dessa problemática reaparece em _Diferença e Repetição_. (shrink)

How kids play in virtual worlds, how it matters for their offline lives, and what this means for designing educational opportunities.

El trabajo identifica las fuentes teológicas patrísticas de la cosmología ambiental en el cristianismo ortodoxo manejadas en el pensamiento de Bartolomé, patriarca ecuménico de Constantinopla. El enfoque investigativo se enmarca en un proceso de análisis discursivo de carácter hermenéutico-interpretativo. Se observa que el despliegue de fuentes patrísticas usadas por el patriarca le permite construir profundos sentidos ambientales anclados en una visión cristiana que presenta canales de expresión desde una narrativa simbólica de corte religiosa, orientada a proporcionar soluciones a la crisis (...) planetaria que vive la humanidad contemporánea. (shrink)

Mobile technologies such as tablets, iPads, laptops, netbooks as well as mobile phones with internet connectivity and recording features present new challenges to the academy. In the age of convergence and with the encoding of several features into mobile telephony, private spaces of the classroom can be reconfigured through the mediation of technologies. In most cases, existing rules and regulations of higher education institutions do not comprehensively address these challenges. The introduction of new technologies into the classroom has been often (...) framed historically as vital and relevant for a progressive academic society or as part of a national imperative to transform the ways in which the authors access and engage with knowledge. This paper surveys British universities to examine how they govern the phenomenon of recording content through mobile technologies. The results reveal a pervasive use of mobile devices in UK universities and clear divergences in approaches to enacting mobile device-specific policies to govern the usage of these technologies. (shrink)

In Sri Lanka’s armed conflict, gender, sexuality, and sex work are intermeshed with militarized nationalism. Militarization entrenches gender performances and heteronormative schemes while enabling women to transgress these—whether as combatants or as sex workers. Familiarly, in this nationalist encounter, women are expected to safeguard culture, notably through proper dress and sexual conduct. Sexualactivity that challenges containment arouses anxiety because loyalty to military groupor communal boundary can be compromised. Drawing on three examples—adress codecall by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam women’s (...) wing, consequences for a woman alleged to be a sex worker, and the public stripping of an alleged suicide bomber at a military checkpoint—this article explores how gendered behaviors and sexualities marked as culture are constructed and controlled in the interests of militarized, nationalist projects; how women can be both agents and objects of these controls; and the implications for women who refuse to comply. (shrink)

A lo largo de la historia, las relaciones de la poesía con las otras bellas artes han sido objeto de numerosos estudios basados principalmente en criterios de comparación. El lenguaje poético, trasciende las fronteras de la literatura y se convierte en un elemento clave para determinar si la obra es arte. La forma, la percepción y la ejecución de la performance, que en sus orígenes estaba ligada al acto representativo basado en el texto, como medio artístico de expresión en el (...) contexto latinoamericano se convierte en una herramienta de denuncia en las movilizaciones sociales relativas a la defensa de los derechos humanos. El máximo exponente del arte performance en Guatemala, Regina José Galindo (nacida en 1974), comenzó su trayectoria desde el ámbito de la poesía. Sus acciones performativas establecen conexiones formales y funcionales con el lenguaje poético, creando metáforas a través del sujeto, el objeto y la acción, que sirven como catalizador del mensaje a transmitir y que provocan otro tipo de recepción, que va más allá de los límites habituales que se circunscriben a ambas disciplinas. Las metáforas performativas de la artista, además de cuestionar la posición social de la mujer, logran que el observador, a través de la identificación, alcance la plenitud de la experiencia emancipatoria. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s–80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

Building on Wittgenstein’s ideas, I defend a brand of pluralism that associates words with conceptual families and appeals to this notion in the course of philosophical problem solving. I argue that certain problems that the received view of conceptual engineering (‘improvement by replacement’) faces can be more easily overcome if we adopt a pluralist perspective. I show that the proposed approach can circumvent the problem of topic discontinuity, whilst also avoiding the threat of trivialisation, since it can easily accommodate both (...) coarse-grained and fine-grained topics. Finally, I argue that my variant of pluralism is compatible with de novo conceptual engineering insofar as it allows that the paradigm associated with a word may shift overtime thus creating an opportunity for new candidate members to join a conceptual family. (shrink)

To what extent can philosophical thought experiments reveal norms? Some ethicists have argued that certain thought experiments reveal that people draw a morally significant distinction between "doing" and "allowing". I examine one such thought experiment in detail and argue that the intuitions it elicits can be explained by "prospect theory", a psychological theory about the way people reason. The extent to which such alternative explanations of the results of thought experiments in philosophy are generally available is an empirical question.

Citizenship status is meant to be secure, that is, inviolable. Recently, however, several democratic states have adopted or are considering adopting laws that allow them the power to revoke citizenship. This claimed right forces us to consider whether citizenship can be treated as a “conditional” status, in particular whether it can be treated as conditional on the right sort of behavior. Those who defend such a view argue that citizenship is a privilege rather than a right, and thus in principle (...) is revocable. Participating in a foreign state's military, treason, spying, or committing acts that otherwise threaten the national security of one's state may all warrant revocation. This article assesses the justifications given for the claimed power to revoke citizenship in democratic states and concludes that, ultimately, such a power is incompatible with democracy.I begin with a brief account of the claims given by contemporary democratic states for the “right to revoke.” Democratic citizenship is today commonly understood to beegalitarian, that is, it protects an equal basic package of rights for all citizens; and to be “the highest and most secure legal status,” that is, it is meant to be secure from unilateral withdrawal by the state. Formally, many democratic states have revocation laws on the books, but most of these have long been in disuse. Although I argue in this article that all revocation laws are inconsistent with democratic citizenship, I focus on the recent surge in proposed and implemented revocation laws, which are justified as essential to protecting national security.In the second section I outline three reasons to object to revocation laws. First, revocation laws discriminate between citizens based on their citizenship status. Second, since they single out those who are eligible for revocation, they apply unequal penalties for the same crime. Third, they are inadequately justified, in general, but also particularly to those who may be subject to them, because they are not adequately connected to the policy goal they are said to fulfill. I conclude with some brief observations concerning the ways in which revocation permits states to abrogate their shared responsibility for protecting the global community from dangerous individuals. (shrink)

This essay begins with a Berlin memorial to the victims of National Socialist “euthanasia” killings first unveiled in 2014. The open-air structure was the fourth such major public memorial in the German capital, having followed earlier memorials already established for Jewish victims of Nazi atrocity in 2005, German victims of homosexual persecution in 2008, and Sinti and Roma victims in 2012. Planning for the systematic persecution and extermination of at least 300,000 infants, adolescents, and adults deemed “life unworthy of life” (...) long preceded and extended beyond the 12-year Nazi period of massacre linked to other victim groups. Yet those constructing collective memory projects in Berlin appear to consider these particular victims as an afterthought, secondary to the other groups. Rather than address the commemorations themselves, this essay addresses the sequence in which they have appeared in order to demonstrate a pattern of first-victimized/last-recognized. I argue that the massacre of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others had to come into legal jurisprudence, scholarship, and public memory projects first before the murdered disabled body and its related memorialization could be legitimized as a category of violence important in and of itself. I argue further that the delay is rooted in a shared trans-Atlantic history that has failed to interrogate disability in terms of the social and cultural values that categorize and stigmatize it. Instead, the disabled body has been seen as both a physical embodiment of incapacity and a monolith that defies historicization. An examination of the broader foundation behind delayed study and representation that recognizes the intersection of racism and ableism allows us to reconfigure our analysis of violence and provides fertile ground from which to make connections to contemporary iterations still playing out in the present. (shrink)

The role of reciprocal causation in Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) is controversial. Proponents of EES argue that reciprocal causation is a key innovation, underpinning the necessity of EES. Conversely, critics of the EES maintain that Standard Evolutionary Theory (SET) adequately encompasses the concept of reciprocal causation, challenging the need for EES. This skepticism is rooted in two primary critiques. First, the mischaracterization of causal dynamics within SET by EES advocates leads to a misrepresentation of SET. Second, the oversight of how (...) SET incorporates and acknowledges instances of reciprocal causation leads to claims about the empirical inaptness of SET. As a result, the debate has reached an impasse, with limited progress towards a constructive examination of reciprocal causation’s significance to evolutionary explanations. This paper introduces the scope argument, which examines reciprocal causation through timescales and grain of explanations. This approach revitalizes the debate in two ways. First, reframing the debate in terms of scope clarifies the role of reciprocal causation by allowing research programs to specify targets of explanation. Second, the elements of scope (timescales and grain) elucidate the epistemic advantage of reciprocal causation in the respective research programs in question. (shrink)

We study some generalized notions of cohesiveness which arise naturally in connection with effective versions of Ramsey's Theorem. An infinite set A of natural numbers is n-cohesive (respectively, n-r-cohesive) if A is almost homogeneous for every computably enumerable (respectively, computable) 2-coloring of the n-element sets of natural numbers. (Thus the 1-cohesive and 1-r-cohesive sets coincide with the cohesive and r-cohesive sets, respectively.) We consider the degrees of unsolvability and arithmetical definability levels of n-cohesive and n-r-cohesive sets. For example, we show (...) that for all n ≥ 2, there exists a Δ 0 n+1 n-cohesive set. We improve this result for n = 2 by showing that there is a Π 0 2 2-cohesive set. We show that the n-cohesive and n-r-cohesive degrees together form a linear, non-collapsing hierarchy of degrees for n ≥ 2. In addition, for n ≥ 2 we characterize the jumps of n-cohesive degrees as exactly the degrees ≥ 0 (n+1) and also characterize the jumps of the n-r-cohesive degrees. (shrink)

On the most common interpretation of occasion-sensitivity what varies cross-contextually is the truth-conditional content of representations. Jerry Fodor argues that when extended to mental representation this view has some problematic consequences. In this paper I outline an approach to occasion-sensitivity which circumvents Fodor’s objections but still maintains that the aspect of thought that guides deliberation and action is occasion-sensitive. On the proposed view, what varies cross-contextually are not truth conditions but rather the conditions for accepting a representation as true relative (...) to a practical goal that is pursued on an occasion. I show that although the proposal entails an error theory this theory is not problematic since it is meant to compensate for the over-generating nature of semantic competence, namely, the fact that not all of the representation’s truth-makers are conducive to a given contextually salient goal. (shrink)

In this article, we present ideas related to three key aspects of mindfulness training: the regulation of attention via noradrenaline, the importance of working memory and its various components (particularly the central executive and episodic buffer), and the relationship of both of these to mind-wandering. These same aspects of mindfulness training are also involved in the preparation and execution of movement and implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis. We argue that by moving in a mindful way, there may be an (...) additive effect of training as the two elements of the practice (mindfulness and movement) independently, and perhaps synergistically, engage common underlying systems (the default mode network). We discuss how working with mindful movement may be one route to mindfulness training for individuals who would struggle to sit still to complete the more commonly taught mindfulness practices. Drawing on our clinical experience working with individuals with severe and enduring mental health conditions, we show the real world application of these ideas and how they can be used to help those who are suffering and for whom current treatments are still far from adequate. (shrink)

Three experiments demonstrate that biological movement facilitates young infants’ recognition of the whole human form. A body discrimination task was used in which 6-, 9-, and 12-month-old infants were habituated to typical human bodies and then shown scrambled human bodies at the test. Recovery of interest to the scrambled bodies was observed in 9- and 12-month-old infants in Experiment 1, but only when the body images were animated to move in a biologically possible way. In Experiment 2, nonbiological movement was (...) incorporated into the typical and scrambled body images, but this did not facilitate body recognition in 9- and 12-month-olds. A preferential looking paradigm was used in Experiment 3 to determine if infants had a spontaneous preference for the scrambled versus typical body stimuli when these were both animated. The results showed that 12-month-olds preferred the scrambled body stimuli, 9-month-olds preferred the typical body stimuli and the 6-month-olds showed no preference for either type of body stimuli. These findings suggest that human body recognition involves integrating form and movement, possibly in the superior temporal sulcus, from as early as 9 months of life. (shrink)

Interview of Vsevolod Khoma with Professor Tamara Yashchuk within the framework of the research program “Ukrainian Philosophy of the 60s-80s of the 20th Century” of the Student Society of Oral History of Philosophy.

In this paper I propose a partition semantics for sentences containing objective predicates that takes into account the phenomenon of occasion-sensitivity associated with so-called Travis cases. The key idea is that the set of worlds in which a sentence is true has a more complex structure as a result of different ways in which it is made true. Different ways may have different capacities to support the attainment of a contextually salient domain goal. I suggest that goal-conduciveness decides whether some (...) utterance of a sentence is accepted as true on a particular occasion at a given world. The utterance will not be accepted as true at a world which belongs to a truth-maker which is less conducive to a contextually salient goal than other truth-makers. Finally, the proposed occasion-sensitive semantics is applied to some cases of disagreement and cancellability. (shrink)

Students’ cheating is a serious problem: It undermines the chance to adequately promote, support, and evaluate them. To explain cheating behavior, research seldom focuses on perceived teachers’ characteristics. Thus, we investigate the relationship between students’ cheating behavior and an important teacher characteristic, individual reference norm orientation. We examined cheating on written exams, on homework, and in oral exams among N = 601 students in N = 31 language classes. Results from doubly manifest multi-level analyses showed that, on the classroom level, (...) cheating on written exams and on homework occurred less frequently the more the classroom of students perceived their teachers as having an IRNO. We found no further evidence for other cheating factors or student characteristics. This supports the idea that teacher characteristics are associated with some forms of students’ cheating behavior. (shrink)

What role should the state have in recognizing and regulating marriage? Until recently, liberal political theorists paid little attention to this question. Yet the challenges that the public–private boundary-crossing institution of marriage poses to liberalism are substantial. Tensions in contemporary debates suggest that these challenges remain unaddressed and thus, invite attempts to formulate a coherent and compelling model of the relationship between marriage and the liberal state. This article responds to this invitation. Marriage has long been a concern of at (...) least some liberal thinkers. Typically they focused on the dual character of marriage, or its role in producing gender inequality. While these critical insights are essential to any adequate account of marriage and the state, they are only part of the picture. To grasp the sources of confusion and silences in contemporary debates, and formulate a robust liberal model of marriage and the state, we must examine the functions — intended and effective — of public recognition of marriage. This examination highlights the relevance to the marriage-state relationship of familiar liberal approaches to negotiating the religion-state relationship. Drawing on these approaches and liberal feminist thought, I sketch a model of marriage and the state that aims to expand the area of protected freedom without sacrificing equality, fairness or marriage. Under the model I propose, marriage would be disestablished. The state would neither confer marital status, nor use 'marriage' as a category for dispersing benefits. Legitimate public welfare goals currently treated through marriage would be addressed through an intimate caregiving union status. (shrink)

La cimatheque, un centre alternatif du film, situé dans le centre du Caire a ouvert ses portes le 3 juin 2015. Elle est née d’abord du désir de jeunes cinéastes de créer une société de production indépendante. Avec la révolution le projet s’est étoffé, et la Cimathèque est devenue un lieu de rencontre, de projection, de production, de digitalisation, d’archivage, de débats à l’adresse de tous les cinéphiles. L’Égypte possède une longue tradition cinématographique, interrompue par des années de négligence, de (...) corruption et un manque d’ambition pour un art profondément aimé par la population. La question de l’archivage du patrimoine cinématographique mais aussi des productions contemporaines sur divers supports est centrale dans le projet de la Cimathèque, surtout dans une époque de déconstruction du sens de l’histoire collective. (shrink)

Narratives of street life from British Bangladeshi Muslim mothers, collected in the aftermath of the suicide bombings in London in 2005, are the focus of this article. The author examines how temporal schemas that combine the unpredictable time of racist events with a rendering of a foreseeable linear temporality of racism and of intergenerational identifications in the future provide the women with a means of living with ontological insecurity and threat. Although this reproduction of linear time can appear to exclude (...) the singularity of unknown futures, with regard to the demands of multicultural living, understanding of time can be more open and undecided. The author locates an ethicality to the mothers’ deliberations in how to live in situations marked by racism and multiculturalism in both their negotiation of temporal registers and in the sharing and interrogation of perspectives and strategies with others. Particular attention is given to the ambivalent use of temporality as an instrument of narrative agency. The discussion also considers how the methodological apparatus of the focus group is engaged with matters of intimate citizenship, conveying and participating in the production of the research problem. (shrink)

Data on patterns of marriage, differential fertility and mortality were collected from 211 Kotia women residing in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Consanguineous marriages made up just over a quarter of the total, and of these, father's sister's daughter (FSD) were more common than mother's brother's daughter (MBD). The mean inbreeding coefficient for the sample (F) was 0·0172. Women in consanguineous marriages had a lower mean number of total conceptions, live births and living offspring (net fertility) than women in (...) non[hyphen]consanguineous marriages. Significant heterogeneity was found in the means of living offspring for FSD, MBD and non-consanguineous couples, but not for conceptions and live births. (shrink)

Numerous empirical studies have been conducted to examine first-generation college students, those individuals whose parents have not attended college. Their personality characteristics, cognitive development, academic preparation, and first-year performance have all been topics of research; yet there appears to be little in the literature exploring the motivation of these individuals to seek higher education. There are even fewer studies targeting academic motivation in Hispanic students. The purpose of this study is to conduct a phenomenological examination of the desire to attend (...) college among first generation Hispanic students participating in an academic support program. One-hour taped interviews were conducted with three volunteer participants enrolled in the Student Support Services program at Sul Ross State University. Meaning units and constituents were extracted, and general structures were developed using the Descriptive Phenomenological Method . The phenomenological analysis resulted in two structures that address the effectiveness of academic outreach programming and identify the roles of self-efficacy, successful experiences in high school, a desire for improved socioeconomic status, a need to contribute to the well-being of others, a break with tradition, and the influence of respected role models in facilitating a desire for higher education in first-generation Hispanic college students. (shrink)