Social studies of interdisciplinary science investigate how scientific collaborations approach complex challenges that require multiple disciplinary perspectives. In order for collaborators to meet these complex challenges, interdisciplinary collaborations must develop and maintain integrative capacity, understood as the ability to anticipate and weigh tradeoffs in the employment of different disciplinary approaches. Here we provide an account of how one group of interdisciplinary fog scientists intentionally catalyzed integrative capacity. Through conversation, collaborators negotiated their commitments regarding the ontology of fog systems and the (...) methodologies appropriate to studying fog systems, thereby enhancing capabilities which we take to constitute integrative capacity. On the ontological front, collaborators negotiated their commitments by setting boundaries to and within the system, layering different subsystems, focusing on key intersections of these subsystems, and agreeing on goals that would direct further investigation. On the methodological front, collaborators sequenced various methods, anchored methods at different scales, validated one method with another, standardized the outputs of related methods, and coordinated methods to fit a common model. By observing the process and form of collaborator conversations, this case study demonstrates that social studies of science can bring into critical focus how interdisciplinary collaborators work toward an integrated conceptualization of study systems. (shrink)

What kind of evidence will lead people to revise their moral beliefs? Moral beliefs are often strongly held convictions, and existing research has shown that morality is rooted in emotion and socialization rather than deliberative reasoning. In addition, more general issues—such as confirmation bias—further impede coherent belief revision. Here, we explored a unique means for inducing belief revision. In two experiments, participants considered a moral dilemma in which an overwhelming majority of people judged that it was inappropriate to take action (...) to maximize utility. Their judgments contradicted a utilitarian principle they otherwise strongly endorsed. Exposure to this scenario led participants to revise their belief in the utilitarian principle, and this revision persisted over several hours. This method provides a new avenue for inducing belief revision. (shrink)

Recent work by Keyser in applied epistemology of experiment has focused on the iterative ‘production’ of knowledge: knowledge stabilizes within a given physical context and it is iteratively tested within that context to meet standards of reliability. This implies that in a given physical context (e.g., laboratory), the inferences, methods/techniques, and physical products form coherence relations with one another. We apply this epistemological stabilization account to the martial arts in order to argue that the context of stabilization dictates the training (...) methods, techniques, and even the philosophical concepts of a given martial arts system. We describe key elements of stabilization pertaining to rules, training methodology, warrior philosophy, and spectator/media tropes. The account of stabilization requires a case study that shows how a dynamic system is stabilized. We describe the stabilization of modern mixed martial arts by tracking it on a time scale, but also in different contexts (e.g., Pancrase, Pride, UFC). (shrink)

Much work in the philosophy of religion has been devoted to exploring the virtue of faith. Very little of it, however, has done so from the perspective of Christian worship and liturgical practice. In this essay, I explore the virtue of faith, articulated in a traditionally Catholic manner, as it is practiced, engaged, and deepened through participation in the Eucharist. I begin by emphasizing both the cognitive and the volitional dimensions of a robust conception of the virtue of faith and (...) then show how devout Eucharistic practice confirms and strengthens them, affording believers a unique opportunity to deepen their belief and concretely strengthen their trust in God. I conclude by noting how a Eucharistic approach to faith can avoid a common criticism—that faith is exceedingly passive—and also help us to understand why faith and religious practice can so easily become stagnant. (shrink)

Objective: To map the tone of local and global economic information transmitted in news and non-news TV programming during economic recovery, and to resolve a conflict in the literature between research where a negative trend in economic news was identified and studies which concluded that economic news reflects actual economic circumstances. Method: A content analysis of 140 hours of prime-time programming aired by commercial networks and public broadcasting in Israel during one month. Results: Local news reflects fairly accurately current trends (...) in the stock exchange while still maintaining a general tendency to employ a negative tone more frequently than a positive tone, even during economic recovery. Global economic news is more positive in tone than local economic news. References to the economy in the news are more positive and frequent than references to the economy in non-news programming. The tone of economic news in public broadcasting is more negative than the tone of economic news aired on commercial stations. Conclusions: The existence of a negative bias in economic news depends on the reported event. While News about the stock exchange is not biased, less concrete news is negatively biased. (shrink)

Theology and the University in Nineteenth-Century Germany examines the dual transformation of institutions and ideas that led to the emergence of theology as science, the paradigmatic project of modern theology associated with Friedrich Schleiermacher. Beginning with earlier educational reforms across central Europe and especially following the upheavals of the Napoleonic period, an impressive list of provocateurs, iconoclasts, and guardians of the old faith all confronted the nature of the university, the organization of knowledge, and the unity of theology's various parts, (...) quandaries which together bore the collective name of 'theological encyclopedia'. Schleiermacher's remarkably influential programme pioneered the structure and content of the theological curriculum and laid the groundwork for theology's historicization. Zachary Purvis offers a comprehensive investigation of Schleiermacher's programme through the era's two predominant schools: speculative theology and mediating theology. Purvis highlights that the endeavour ultimately collapsed in the context of Wilhelmine Germany and the Weimar Republic, beset by the rise of religious studies, radical disciplinary specialization, a crisis of historicism, and the attacks of dialectical theology. In short, the project represented university theology par excellence. Engaging in detail with these developments, Purvis weaves the story of modern university theology into the broader tapestry of German and European intellectual culture, with periodic comparisons to other national contexts. In doing so, he Purvis presents a substantially new way to understand the relationship between theology and the university, both in nineteenth-century Germany and, indeed, beyond. (shrink)

Although mind-wandering occupies up to half of our waking thoughts, it is seldom discussed in philosophy. My paper brings these neglected thoughts into focus. I propose that mind-wandering is unguided attention. Guidance in my sense concerns how attention is monitored and regulated as it unfolds over time. Roughly speaking, someone’s attention is guided if she would feel pulled back, were she distracted from her current focus. Because our wandering thoughts drift unchecked from topic to topic, they are unguided. One motivation (...) for my theory is what I call the “Puzzle of the Purposeful Wanderer”. On the one hand, mind-wandering seems essentially purposeless; almost by definition, it contrasts with goal-directed cognition. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that our minds frequently wander to our goals. My solution to the puzzle is this: mind-wandering is purposeless in one way—it is unguided—but purposeful in another—it is frequently caused, and thus motivated, by our goals. Another motivation for my theory is to distinguish mind-wandering from two antithetical forms of cognition: absorption and rumination. Surprisingly, previous theories cannot capture these distinctions. I can: on my view, absorption and rumination are guided, whereas mind-wandering is not. My paper has four parts. Section 1 spells out the puzzle. Sections 2 and 3 explicate two extant views of mind-wandering—the first held by most cognitive scientists, the second by Thomas Metzinger. Section 4 uses the limitations of these theories to motivate my own: mind-wandering is unguided attention. (shrink)

This essay will address the question for what good or purpose is evil. First, an examination of the use-mention distinction between evil and “evil” produces two distinct questions: what good is the presence of evil in the world, and what good is the concept of evil as part of our ethical vocabulary describing human interaction. By severing all logically necessary connections between evil and greater goods, we discover that the answer to the first question—what good is evil in the world—is (...) none whatsoever. Evil deeds leave an enduring and destructive impact on people’s lives. Attempts to justify this ruination belittle the torment that sufferers of evil sustain. Because there is no normative vindication of evil’s existence, recognizing it as an indelible fact of human interaction proves to be crucial to understanding elemental features of the moral community and one’s role within it. Hence, the answer to the second question—what good is the concept of evil—is that it is of the utmost importance. Insofar as evil is a perpetual element of human interaction, being aware of this very fact—that is, understanding the concept of evil—is central to comprehending one’s moral agency, to appropriately reacting to others in the moral community, and to possibly inhibiting future incidents of evil. (shrink)

A large body of research has indicated international students in the United States and abroad experience difficulties understanding what academic integrity is and how to avoid academic misconduct, 159–172 2011; Brown & Howell, 2001; Gullifer and Tyson Studies in Higher Education, 39, 1202-1218 2014). While most studies focus on academic misconduct and academic corruption in research ethics, 339-358 2014), this study analyzes the length, English-language readability, and translation of academic integrity policies of 453 four-year U.S. institutions of higher education. Findings (...) indicate average academic integrity policies are over 2000 words long, are written above the 16th-grade reading level, and are very rarely translated into a language other than English. In addition, no institutions published their academic integrity policies in full on their institutional international student website, possibly rendering the policy difficult to locate on the institution’s website for international students. Implications for research, policy, and practice are addressed. (shrink)

In numerous studies, experimental economists have documented the fact that people tend to propose that divisible goods be divided equally. It has often been proposed, most notably by the sociobiologists, that this tendency may have a biological basis, and might be the product of evolution and natural selection. ;My dissertation addresses methodological and philosophical problems that arise in the course of establishing this naturalistic claim. Specifically, the focus of this dissertation is on the project of using evolutionary game theory to (...) model the emergence of behavioral norms in a population. ;Chapter 1 briefly surveys the experimental economics literature that supports the existence of such behavioral propensities, and gives an overview of the dissertation. Chapter 2 introduces the fundamental concepts of game theory and evolutionary game theory. Chapter 3 argues that certain robustness failures may be overcome if group selection mechanisms are incorporated into the evolutionary models. Chapter 5 defends Peter Railton's causal theory of explanation, and argues that it best accommodates the dynamical models of evolutionary game theory. Chapter 6 addresses the question of whether a descriptive account of the origins of our moral intuitions is relevant to the normative project of identifying our moral obligations, and critiques arguments by Peter Singer and Peter Unger that our moral intuitions lack justification. (shrink)

In chapter 6 of An Essay on Free Will Peter van Inwagen presents an influential argument that we are justified in believing we are free. He does so by claiming that the determinist’s objection to the argument for the belief in freedom fails in the exact same way that the skeptic’s argument fails to prove that none of our empirical beliefs are justified. I show that this strategy to defend the belief in freedom fails due to a disanalogy. The failure (...) of his attempted defense raises the question whether there are any other arguments available to him for his target conclusion. I answer this question affirmatively by presenting an interesting argument for belief in freedom that van Inwagen gestures toward without ever explicitly formulating. Namely, that “If you deliberate about what to do while believing you’re not free, then you have inconsistent beliefs.” Alongside this conclusion, van Inwagen suggests that (1) inconsistency is an epistemic defect and (2) it is implausible that some truth is such that your simply believing it would make epistemically defective your engaging in so basic an activity as deliberation. In this way, the above conclusion plays an important role in van Inwagen’s overall argument for the thesis that we should (epistemically speaking) believe in free will. Finally, I show that this argument fares no better than the other. (shrink)

When confronting the unexplained, it is helpful to consider it from many different points of view. In an essay published in 2004, entitled "Sensors, Filters, and the Source of Reality," Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne of Princeton University's PEAR laboratory proposed that consciousness constructs its reality by ordering the information it derives from the external world through an array of physiological, psychological, and cultural filters. This thesis has now been considered by nineteen distinguished scholars who here present their commentaries from (...) a broad spectrum of professional and personal perspectives. Drawn from such diverse backgrounds as art, Buddhism, evolutionary biology, fantasy, out-of-body experiences, philosophy, physics, psychology, semiotics, and systems engineering, among others, these contributions offer an assortment of unique and fascinating glimpses of how our experiences and their styles of representation are reflected through these filters of consciousness. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have disputed the nature of “artistic value” for over six decades, bringing much needed clarity and rigor to a subject discussed with fashionable obscurity in other disciplines. This essay frames debates between analytic philosophers on artistic value and suggests new directions for future research. In particular, the problem of “intrinsic value” is considered, that is, whether a work’s value derives from its experienced properties, as a work of art, or from cultural trends outside the work’s properties. It is (...) argued that neurobiological research helps resolve perceived differences between a work’s intrinsic and extrinsic values. A work can be both rewarding and punishing on its own, “intrinsic” merit—as a percipient, real thing in the world evoking predictable kinds of emotion—and with respect to ever shifting, “extrinsic” cultural norms. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entstehung und die Wirkung von Luther an unsere Zeit, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneiders vielgelesenes Buch der Auszüge, als Fallstudie darüber, wie moderne wissenschaftliche Theologen und Herausgeber Luther gelesen, kommentiert und anderen Lesern vorgestellt haben: in diesem Beispiel als Rationalist. Das Buch war umstritten. Der Beitrag befasst sich auch mit zwei konkurrierenden Auswahlen von Luthers Schriften, die von den konservativeren Protestanten Friedrich Perthes und Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent sowie den ultramontanen Katholiken Nikolaus Weis und Andreas Räß als Antwort (...) verfasst wurden. Es deutet darauf hin, dass eine stärkere Berücksichtigung solcher Zusammenstellungen und der Arbeitsmethoden der Compiler selbst – als Teil der kritischen Geschichte der Wissenschaft – sowohl unser Verständnis des tatsächlichen Einsatzes der Reformer und ihrer breiten Rezeption durch verschiedene Leser bereichern als auch neues Licht werfen wird über die Polemik des frühen neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. This article examines the creation and impact of Luther for Our Time, Karl Gottlieb Bretschneider’s much-read book of excerpts, as a case study of how modern scientific theologians and editors read, annotated, and introduced Luther to other readers: in this instance as a rationalist. The book was controversial. The article also looks at two competing selections of Luther’s texts prepared in response by the more conservative Protestants Friedrich Perthes and Hans Lorenz Andreas Vent and the ultramontane Catholics Nikolaus Weis and Andreas Räß. It suggests that greater consideration of such compilations and the working methods of the compilers themselves – part of the critical history of scholarship – will both enrich our understanding of the actual use of reformers and their broad reception by various readers, as well as shed new light on the polemics of the early nineteenth century. (shrink)

Brian Skyrms has argued that the evolution of the social contract may be explained using the tools of evolutionary game theory. I show in the first half of this paper that the evolutionary game-theoretic models are often highly sensitive to the specific processes that they are intended to simulate. This sensitivity represents an important robustness failure that complicates Skyrms's project. But I go on to make the positive proposal that we may none the less obtain robust results by simulating the (...) population structures that existed among our evolutionary ancestors. It is by extending the evolutionary models in this way that we should pursue the project of explaining the evolution of the social contract. (shrink)

According to one recently popular “flicker of freedom” style response to Frankfurt-style arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities—the “Triple O” flicker strategy—agents in Frankfurt-style cases are really or most fundamentally morally responsible for performing an action (A-ing) on their own, but not for A-ing simpliciter. This essay has two related aims. First, I offer an interpretation of the Triple O strategy which insulates it against an objection raised by Carolina Sartorio in “Flickers of Freedom and Moral Luck.” Second, I (...) argue that a sub-version of the strategy (“the inheritance view”) according to which agents in Frankfurt-style cases are derivatively responsible for A-ing simpliciter in virtue of A-ing on their own, for which they are basically responsible, is untenable. I show that “A-ing simpliciter” is not plausibly an outcome of “A-ing on one’s own” in the sense required for the transfer of responsibility. Several candidates for the generative relation via which responsibility might be transferred are canvassed, and it is found that none of these relations plausibly hold between an agent’s A-ing on his own and his A-ing simpliciter. Next, I identify the generative relation (if any) that does hold between these items and show that the direction of generation problematically conflicts with the direction of the inheritance view’s purported transfer of responsibility. (shrink)

The current research investigates how prior preferences affect causal learning. Participants were tasked with repeatedly choosing policies (e.g., increase vs. decrease border security funding) in order to maximize the economic output of an imaginary country and inferred the influence of the policies on the economy. The task was challenging and ambiguous, allowing participants to interpret the relations between the policies and the economy in multiple ways. In three studies, we found evidence of motivated reasoning despite financial incentives for accuracy. For (...) example, participants who believed that border security funding should be increased were more likely to conclude that increasing border security funding actually caused a better economy in the task. In Study 2, we hypothesized that having neutral preferences (e.g., preferring neither increased nor decreased spending on border security) would lead to more accurate assessments overall, compared to having a strong initial preference; however, we did not find evidence for such an effect. In Study 3, we tested whether providing participants with possible functional forms of the policies (e.g., the policy takes some time to work or initially has a negative influence but eventually a positive influence) would lead to a smaller influence of motivated reasoning but found little evidence for this effect. This research advances the field of causal learning by studying the role of prior preferences, and in doing so, integrates the fields of causal learning and motivated reasoning using a novel explore‐exploit task. (shrink)

Efforts from diverse disciplines, including evolutionary studies and biomechanical experiments, have yielded new insights into the genetic, signaling, and mechanical control of tooth formation and functions. Evidence from fossils and non‐model organisms has revealed that a common set of genes underlie tooth‐forming potential of epithelia, and changes in signaling environments subsequently result in specialized dentitions, maintenance of dental stem cells, and other phenotypic adaptations. In addition to chemical signaling, tissue forces generated through epithelial contraction, differential growth, and skeletal constraints act (...) in parallel to shape the tooth throughout development. Here recent advances in understanding dental development from these studies are reviewed and important gaps that can be filled through continued application of evolutionary and biomechanical approaches are discussed. (shrink)

This study tested four theoretical models of leadership with data from the ethnographic record. The first was a game-theoretical model of leadership in collective actions, in which followers prefer and reward a leader who monitors and sanctions free-riders as group size increases. The second was the dominance model, in which dominant leaders threaten followers with physical or social harm. The third, the prestige model, suggests leaders with valued skills and expertise are chosen by followers who strive to emulate them. The (...) fourth proposes that in small-scale, kin-based societies, men with high neural capital are best able to achieve and maintain positions of social influence (e.g., as headmen) and thereby often become polygynous and have more offspring than other men, which positively selects for greater neural capital. Using multiple search strategies we identified more than 1000 texts relevant to leadership in the Probability Sample of 60 cultures from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF). We operationalized the model with variables and then coded all retrieved text records on the presence or absence of evidence for each of these 24 variables. We found mixed support for the collective action model, broad support for components of the prestige leadership style and the importance of neural capital and polygyny among leaders, but more limited support for the dominance leadership style. We found little evidence, however, of emulation of, or prestige-biased learning toward, leaders. We found that improving collective actions, having expertise, providing counsel, and being respected, having high neural capital, and being polygynous are common properties of leaders, which warrants a synthesis of the collective action, prestige, and neural capital and reproductive skew models. We sketch one such synthesis involving high-quality decision-making and other computational services. (shrink)

For decades, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have questioned the appropriateness and utility of prior review of their research by human subjects' ethics committees. This essay seeks to organize thematically some of their published complaints and to serve as a brief restatement of the major critiques of ethics review. In particular, it argues that 1) ethics committees impose silly restrictions, 2) ethics review is a solution in search of a problem, 3) ethics committees lack expertise, 4) ethics committees (...) apply inappropriate principles, 5) ethics review harms the innocent, and 6) better options exist. (shrink)

In an anonymous referee report written in 1945, Church suggested a sweeping argument against verificiationism, the thesis that every truth is knowable. The argument, which was published with due acknowledgement by Fitch almost two decades later, has generated significant attention as well as some interesting successor arguments. In this paper, we present the most important episodes in this intellectual history using the logic that Church himself favoured, and we give reasons for thinking that the arguments are less than decisive. However, (...) we present some new arguments against verificationism that we believe to be dialectically effective. (shrink)

It is tempting to think that a process of choosing a point at random from the surface of a sphere can be probabilistically symmetric, in the sense that any two regions of the sphere which differ by a rotation are equally likely to include the chosen point. Isaacs, Hájek, and Hawthorne (2022) argue from such symmetry principles and the mathematical paradoxes of measure to the existence of imprecise chances and the rationality of imprecise credences. Williamson (2007) has argued from a (...) related symmetry principle to the failure of probabilistic regularity. We contend that these arguments fail, because they rely on auxiliary assumptions about probability which are inconsistent with symmetry to begin with. We argue, moreover, that symmetry should be rejected in light of this inconsistency, and because it has implausible decision- theoretic implications. -/- The weaker principle of probabilistic invariance says that the probabilistic comparison of any two regions is unchanged by rotations of the sphere. This principle supports a more compelling argument for imprecise probability. We show, however, that invariance is incompatible with mundane judgments about what is probable. Ultimately, we find reason to be suspicious of the application of principles like symmetry and invariance to nonmeasurable regions. (shrink)

A semantic theory aims to make predictions that are accurate and comprehensive. Sometimes, though, a semantic theory falls short of this aim, and there is a mismatch between prediction and data. In such cases, defenders of the semantic theory often attempt to rescue it by appealing to Gricean pragmatics. The hope is that we can rescue the theory as long as we can use pragmatics to explain away its predictive failures. This pragmatic rescue strategy is one of the most popular (...) moves in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and formal semantics. In this paper I argue that this strategy fails whenever the predictive failures at issue can be recast in epistemological or metaphysical terms. This general “reformulation argument” undermines a wide variety of pragmatic rescue attempts. (shrink)

Brought to you by: Crop X editors: Jonathan Alexander Perez, Harmony Smith, Corinne Tendorf, David Turturo, and Derek Rahn Williams. Faculty Advisor: David Turturo; Crop X team included: Chaimae Alehyane, Zachary S. Casey, Suzanna Brinez, Jacob Brown, Elizabeth George, Francisco Javier Muniz Ituarte, Brodey Myers. -/- Credits: Huckabee College of Architecture; Graphic Designers: Studio BLDG (Blossom Liu + Danny Gray); English Editor: Luke Studebaker; Spanish Translator: Jessie Forbes; Printer: Die Keure. Cover Photo: Derek Williams. -/- Generously supported by the (...) Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Huckabee College of Architecture, Texas Tech University. (shrink)

The literature on blame is rather unfriendly to views that might be characterized as “character-evaluation” accounts. Here I will defend one such account against the many objections that are leveled against it. Defending the view against these objections will help us to evaluate what such a view has to offer. This paper defends the view against objections that accounts such as this cannot account for how much we care about blame, for the distinctively human nature of the blame phenomenon, for (...) forgiving the unrepentant, and for recalcitrant blame. Responding to these objections on behalf of the much beleaguered character-evaluation account clears the way for it to stand as a serious competitor in how we understand blame. (shrink)

In the recent book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design, E. V. R. Kojonen argues that a biological design inference is still possible in light of mainstream evolutionary theory and that evolution and design need not be in explanatory tension. This collection of essays is the product of a symposium held in March 2022, which interacted with the claims of the book. Contributors come from diverse academic backgrounds across philosophy, science, and theology, and both critique and extend Kojonen's argument. Here, (...) each contribution is introduced along with some important connections between them and key questions which remain open. (shrink)

The “American-style” class action, when combined with private rights, is an important tool of American regulatory policy. And just as American regulation has global reach, the global class action is not unfamiliar to U.S. courts. Yet, global U.S. class actions are facing ever-stronger headwinds. In addition to the recent retrenchment of class actions and international litigation generally, U.S. courts have raised additional barriers to global class actions in particular. This Article’s first goal, therefore, is to document these developments and their (...) consequences for regulation. Against this backdrop, this Article also reviews the options available to foreign lawmakers, foreign courts, foreign litigants and litigation funders, and foreign public enforcers. Foreign lawmakers may provide alternatives to global U.S. class actions; foreign courts and foreign litigants may explicitly or implicitly coordinate to approximate global class resolution; and foreign public enforcers may achieve the goals of global regulatory litigation while avoiding some of its legal impediments. Finally, this Article evaluates these various foreign responses from an institutional perspective, with special attention to the institutional incentives for lawmakers and law enforcers. (shrink)

Technikphilosophie reflektiert ein charakteristisches Oszillieren zwischen Technikfaszination und Technikskepsis moderner Gesellschaften und prüft so die Möglichkeiten eines verantwortungsbewussten kritisch bejahenden Gebrauchs von Technik. Zu diesen Aspekten im Umgang mit Technik hat zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts Max Scheler (1874-1928) aigene Ansätze vorgelegt, die im Vergleich zu entsprechenden Argumentationen Husserls und Heideggers damals kaum rezipiert worden sind. Wichtige Merkmale der Technikdeutung Schelers sind die wertphilosophische Orientierung und lebensphilosophische Implementierung. Dazu gehört die Frage, inwieweit Technikgebrach mehr sein sollte als ein Faktor der (...) Selbsterhaltung und deshalb seiner Einbettung in die Formen menschlicher Selbsttraszendenz bedarf"--Back cover. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 12, December 2019, Page 51-54.

Featuring a foreword by the eminent historian Anthony Grafton, this fascinating book draws upon a diverse range of sources-ancient histories, medieval theology, ...