Background: Current practice frequently fails to provide care consistent with the preferences of decisionally-incapacitated patients. It also imposes significant emotional burden on their surrogates. Algorithmic-based patient preference predictors (PPPs) have been proposed as a possible way to address these two concerns. While previous research found that patients strongly support the use of PPPs, the views of surrogates are unknown. The present study thus assessed the views of experienced surrogates regarding the possible use of PPPs as a means to help make (...) treatment decisions for decisionally-incapacitated patients. -/- Methods: This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to determine the views of experienced surrogates [n=26] who were identified from two academic medical centers and two community hospitals. The primary outcomes were respondents’ overall level of support for the idea of using PPPs and the themes related to their views on how a PPP should be used, if at all, in practice. -/- Results: Overall, 21 participants supported the idea of using PPPs. The remaining five indicated that they would not use a PPP because they made decisions based on the patient’s best interests, not based on substituted judgment. Major themes which emerged were that surrogates, not the patient’s preferences, should determine how treatment decisions are made, and concern that PPPs might be used to deny expensive care or be biased against minority groups. -/- Conclusions: Surrogates, like patients, strongly support the idea of using PPPs to help make treatment decisions for decisionally-incapacitated patients. These findings provide support for developing a PPP and assessing it in practice. At the same time, patients and surrogates disagree over whose preferences should determine how treatment decisions are made, including whether to use a PPP. These findings reveal a fundamental disagreement regarding the guiding principles for surrogate decision-making. Future research is needed to assess this disagreement and consider ways to address it. (shrink)

We often find ourselves in situations where it is up to us to make decisions on behalf of others. How can we determine whether such decisions are morally justified, especially if those decisions may change who it is these others end up becoming? In this paper, I will evaluate one plausible kind of justification that may tempt us: we may want to justify our decision by appealing to the likelihood that the other person will be glad we made that specific (...) choice down the line. Although it is tempting, I ultimately argue that we should reject this sort of appeal as a plausible justification for the moral permissibility of our vicarious decisions. This is because the decisions that we make on behalf of another may affect the interests and values that that person will hold in the future. As I will show, this complicates the justificatory relationship between present decisions and future attitudes, since the latter can depend on the former. This is not to say that the predicted future attitudes of others can play no significant role in justifying our decisions on others’ behalf. Rather, appealing to the future attitudes in our moral justifications may play an important role in our practical thinking but only when we consider the future attitudes of all relevant possible futures. (shrink)

When people are making certain medical decisions – especially potentially transformative ones – the specter of regret may color their choices. In this paper, I ask: can predicting that we will regret a decision in the future serve any justificatory role in our present decision-making? And if so, what role? While there are many pitfalls to such reasoning, I ultimately conclude that considering future retrospective emotions like regret in our decisionmaking can be both rational and authentic. Rather than indicating that (...) one is about to make a mistake or that there is some underlying value that one already cares about but is overlooking, the prediction that one will regret a decision in the future makes one confront how her present values and priorities may change as a result of her choice in ways she cannot presently anticipate. (shrink)

This paper considers the responsibilities of the FDA with regard to disseminating information about the benefits and harms of e-cigarettes. Tobacco harm reduction advocates claim that the FDA has been overcautious and has violated ethical obligations by failing to clearly communicate to the public that e-cigarettes are far less harmful than cigarettes. We argue, by contrast, that the FDA’s obligations in this arena are more complex than they may appear at first blush. Though the FDA is accountable for informing the (...) public about the health risks and benefits of products it regulates, it also has other roles that inform when and how it should disseminate information. In addition to being a knowledge purveyor, it is also a knowledge producer, an advisor to the public, and a practical agent shaping the material conditions in which people make health-related choices. In our view, those other roles call for caution in the way the FDA interprets and communicates the available evidence. (shrink)

Many people view disabilities as misfortunes, call this the standard view. In this paper, I examine one criticism that has been launched against the Standard View. Rather than determine in advance whether having a disability is good or bad for a person, some critics argue that the Standard View is reflective of and brings about inappropriate emotional responses toward people with disabilities and their circumstances. For instance, philosophers have recently argued that in holding the standard view, we become prone to (...) a destructive kind of unwarranted pity or that the view leads us to hold certain untenable or inappropriate hopes for our children and for our society. I think this sort of challenge to the Standard View has a lot of appeal, but I worry that if it is not properly articulated, the approach is vulnerable to what has been known as “The Wrong Kind of Reason” problem. The paper highlights and addresses this worry. (shrink)

Recently, bioethicists and the UNCRPD have advocated for supported medical decision-making on behalf of patients with intellectual disabilities. But what does supported decision-making really entail? One compelling framework is Anita Silvers and Leslie Francis’ mental prosthesis account, which envisions supported decision-making as a process in which trustees act as mere appendages for the patient’s will; the trustee provides the cognitive tools the patient requires to realize her conception of her own good. We argue that supported decision-making would be better understood (...) as a collaborative process, giving patients with intellectual disabilities the opportunity to make decisions in a respectful relationship with trusted others. We offer an alternative account of supported decision-making where the primary constraint is to protect the patient from domination by the trustee. This is advantageous in its preservation of the prospects for genuine collaboration, for the mental prosthesis approach ultimately reinforces a problematic ideal of isolated patient self-determination. (shrink)

The increasing use of opioid treatment agreements has prompted debate within the medical community about ethical challenges with respect to their implementation. The focus of debate is usually on the efficacy of OTAs at reducing opioid misuse, how OTAs may undermine trust between physicians and patients and the potential coercive nature of requiring patients to sign such agreements as a condition for receiving pain care. An important consideration missing from these conversations is the potential for racial bias in the current (...) way that OTAs are incorporated into clinical practice and in the amount of physician discretion that current opioid guidelines support. While the use of OTAs has become mandatory in some states for certain classes of patients, physicians are still afforded great leeway in how these OTAs are implemented in clinical practice and how their terms should be enforced. This paper uses the guidelines provided for OTA implementation by the states of Indiana and Pennsylvania as case studies in order to argue that giving physicians certain kinds of discretion may exacerbate racial health disparities. This problem cannot simply be addressed by minimising physician discretion in general, but rather by providing mechanisms to hold physicians accountable for how they treat patients on long-term opioid therapy to ensure that such treatment is equitable. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

In ‘Induction and Natural Kinds’, I proposed a solution to the problem of induction according to which our use of inductive inference is reliable because it is grounded in the natural kind structure of the world. When we infer that unobserved members of a kind will have the same properties as observed members of the kind, we are right because all members of the kind possess the same essential properties. The claim that the existence of natural kinds is what grounds (...) reliable use of induction is based on an inference to the best explanation of the success of our inductive practices. As such, the argument for the existence of natural kinds employs a form of ampliative inference. But induction is likewise a form of ampliative inference. Given both of these facts, my account of the reliability of induction is subject to the objection that it provides a circular justification of induction, since it employs an ampliative inference to justify an ampliative inference. In this paper, I respond to the objection of circularity by arguing that what justifies induction is not the inference to the best explanation of its reliability. The ground of induction is the natural kinds themselves. (shrink)

A brief article on faith as a psychological attitude.

The chapter introduces and characterizes the notion of fittingness. It charts the history of the relation and its relevance to contemporary debates in normative and metanormative philosophy and proceeds to survey issues to do with fittingness covered in the volume’s chapters, including the nature and epistemology of fittingness, the relations between fittingness and reasons, the normativity of fittingness, fittingness and value theory, and the role of fittingness in theorizing about responsibility. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of issues to (...) do with fittingness that aren’t covered extensively by the volume’s chapters in order to indicate avenues for further research. (shrink)

It is common for young Christians to go off to college assured in their beliefs but, in the course of their first year or two, they meet what appears to them to be powerful defenses of scientific naturalism and crushing critiques of the basic Christian story (BCS), and many are thrown into doubt. They think to themselves something like this: "To be honest, I am troubled about the BCS. While the problem of evil, the apparent cultural basis for the diversity (...) of religions, the explanatory breadth of contemporary science, naturalistic explanations of religious experience and miracle reports, and textual and historical criticism of the Bible, among other things, don’t make me believe the BCS is false , I am in serious doubt about it, so much so that I lack belief of it. In that case, how can I have Christian faith? And if I don’t have faith, how can I keep on praying, attending church, affirming the creed, confessing my sins, taking the sacraments, singing the hymns and songs, and so on? I can’t, unless I’m a hypocrite. So integrity requires me to drop the whole thing and get out." Of course, our student is not alone. Many Christians find themselves for some portion of their lives somewhere on the trajectory from doubt to getting out. Indeed, Christians in the West struggle with intellectual doubt more than they used to, especially university-educated Christians. What should we say to them? Some will say “Get out!,” welcoming the development as a path to liberation. We explore a different response in this essay. (shrink)

in eds. Yujin Nagasawa and Erik Wielenberg, New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave MacMillan 2008).

This is a comment on Lena Soler's 'The Incommensurability of Experimental Practices'.

The paper takes off from the suggestion of Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen that Kuhn’s account of science may be understood in coherentist terms. There are coherentist themes in Kuhn’s philosophy of science. But one crucial element is lacking. Kuhn does not deny the existence of basic beliefs which have a non-doxastic source of justification. Nor does he assert that epistemic justification only derives from inferential relationships between non-basic beliefs. Despite this, the coherentist interpretation is promising and I develop it further in this (...) paper. I raise the question of whether Kuhn’s account of science can deal with the input objection to coherentism. I argue that the role played by problems in Kuhn’s theory of science ensures that there is input from the external world into scientists’ belief-systems. I follow Hoyningen-Huene in pointing to the causal role played by the external world in determining perceptual states. I next turn to the question of whether Kuhn’s rejection of foundationalism implies coherentism. I argue that Kuhn’s rejection of the one-to-one relation between object and experience is compatible with a foundationalist account of justification. Nor does Kuhn’s rejection of the given entail the same coherentist implications as Sellars’ critique of the myth of the given. (shrink)

The idea that science is objective, or able to achieve objectivity, is in large part responsible for the role that science plays within society. But what is objectivity? The idea of objectivity is ambiguous. This paper distinguishes between three basic forms of objectivity. The first form of objectivity is ontological objectivity: the world as it is in itself does not depend upon what we think about it; it is independent of human thought, language, conceptual activity or experience. The second form (...) of objectivity is the objectivity of truth: truth does not depend upon what we believe or justifiably believe; truth depends upon the way reality itself is. The third form of objectivity is epistemic objectivity: this form of objectivity resides in the scientific method which ensures that subjective factors are excluded, and only epistemically relevant factors play a role in scientific inquiry. The paper considers two problems that arise for the notion of epistemic objectivity: the theory-dependence of observation and the variability of the methods of science. It is argued that the use of shared standard procedures ensures the objectivity of observation despite theory-dependence. It is argued that the variability of methods need not lead to epistemic relativism about science. The paper concludes with the realist suggestion that the best explanation of the success of the sciences is that the methods employed in the sciences are highly reliable truth-conducive tools of inquiry. The objectivity of the methods of the sciences leads to the objective truth about the objective world. (shrink)

El año 1962 vio la introducción, por parte de Kuhn y Feyerabend, de la tesis de la inconmensurabilidad de las teorías científicas . Desde entonces, la tesis ha sido debatida ampliamente y ha atraído muchos críticos. Su influencia aún es considerable, particularmente en las áreas de la historia y la filosofía de la ciencia interesadas en el cambio y la elección de teorías. Esta influencia se debe, en gran medida, a la inmensa popularidad de la obra maestra de Kuhn, La (...) Estructura de las revoluciones científicas, la cual asegura que la idea de la inconmensurabilidad continúe alcanzando un público amplio. Sin embargo, no es tan ampliamente apreciado que la versión de Kuhn de la inconmensurabilidad ha ido sufriendo, con el tiempo, un proceso continuo de revisión y clarificación. Como resultado de esto, la versión de la tesis por la que Kuhn es mejor conocido difiere notablemente de la versión que él asume en el presente. En este artículo presento un estudio del proceso de cambio, caracterizando las etapas principales por las que transcurre el concepto kuhniano de inconmensurabilidad. (shrink)

In The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir diagnoses “woman” as the “lost sex,” torn between her individual autonomy and her “feminine destiny.” Becoming a “real woman” in patriarchal societies demands that women lose their authentic, autonomous selves to become the “inessential Other” for Man. To better understand this diagnosis and how women might refind themselves, I rehabilitate the influence of Søren Kierkegaard and his concept of repetition as what must be lost to be found again in Beauvoir’s account of freedom (...) and, specifically, the liberation of women. Beauvoir offers a dual account of repetition, that of mundane repetition and sacrificial repetition, bringing them to bear both on her diagnosis of women’s oppression and her theorization of our liberation. Sacrificial repetition becomes a temporality for freedom—one must be able to repeat or retake their autonomy continuously toward an open future. For this to happen concretely, Beauvoir insists that we must sacrifice the (racist, classist) patriarchal ideals of the “real woman” and “real man” as we retake our autonomy and reconfigure the meaning of sex difference anew. (shrink)

This is a response to Dragan Jakowljewitsch's 'The Successes of Science and Scientific-Theoretical Realism: A Less Than Direct Connection'.

This is a comment on Professor Holm Tetens' paper, 'Scientific Objectivity with a Human Face'.

Hannah Arendt's rich and varied political thought is more influential today than ever before, due in part to the collapse of communism and the need for ideas that move beyond the old ideologies of the Cold War. As Dana Villa shows, however, Arendt's thought is often poorly understood, both because of its complexity and because her fame has made it easy for critics to write about what she is reputed to have said rather than what she actually wrote. Villa (...) sets out to change that here, explaining clearly, carefully, and forcefully Arendt's major contributions to our understanding of politics, modernity, and the nature of political evil in our century.Villa begins by focusing on some of the most controversial aspects of Arendt's political thought. He shows that Arendt's famous idea of the banality of evil--inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann--does not, as some have maintained, lessen the guilt of war criminals by suggesting that they are mere cogs in a bureaucratic machine. He examines what she meant when she wrote that terror was the essence of totalitarianism, explaining that she believed Nazi and Soviet terror served above all to reinforce the totalitarian idea that humans are expendable units, subordinate to the all-determining laws of Nature or History. Villa clarifies the personal and philosophical relationship between Arendt and Heidegger, showing how her work drew on his thought while providing a firm repudiation of Heidegger's political idiocy under the Nazis. Less controversially, but as importantly, Villa also engages with Arendt's ideas about the relationship between political thought and political action. He explores her views about the roles of theatricality, philosophical reflection, and public-spiritedness in political life. And he explores what relationship, if any, Arendt saw between totalitarianism and the "great tradition" of Western political thought. Throughout, Villa shows how Arendt's ideas illuminate contemporary debates about the nature of modernity and democracy and how they deepen our understanding of philosophers ranging from Socrates and Plato to Habermas and Leo Strauss.Direct, lucid, and powerfully argued, this is a much-needed analysis of the central ideas of one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Democratizing the syllabus has been discussed in the fields of sociology and political science but rarely in philosophy. In this paper I will draw upon my experience of teaching Philosophy of Love in an online modality to examine the impact on motivation when students fill in the gaps presented in a democratic syllabus.

This book presents a critical analysis of the semantic incommensurability thesis of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend. In putting forward the thesis of incommensurability, Kuhn and Feyerabend drew attention to complex issues concerning the phenomenon of conceptual change in science. They raised serious problems about the semantic and logical relations between the content of theories which deploy unlike systems of concepts. Yet few of the more extreme claims associated with incommensurability stand scrutiny. The argument of this book is as follows. (...) The terms of theories with different concepts diverge semantically and the vocabularies of such theories may not be fully intertranslatable. Given the possibility of referential overlap between the terms of conceptually divergent theories, it does not follow that the content of such theories is incomparable. Nor, given the distinction between understanding a language and translation from one language into another, does it follow that the proponents of mutually untranslatable theories are unable to communicate. Neither is it the case that the shift between conceptually divergent theories involves a discontinuous transition between theories which have no common reference or that refer to distinct worlds of their own making. The semantic differences resulting from conceptual variance may be embraced within a thoroughly realist framework on which they are construed as diverse linguistic relations to a fixed and independent reality. -/- The book, which was originally published in 1994, has now been re-issued in the Routledge Revivals series. -/- . (shrink)

Why should we refrain from doing things that, taken collectively, are environmentally destructive, if our individual acts seem almost certain to make no difference? According to the expected consequences approach, we should refrain from doing these things because our individual acts have small risks of causing great harm, which outweigh the expected benefits of performing them. Several authors have argued convincingly that this provides a plausible account of our moral reasons to do things like vote for policies that will reduce (...) our countries’ greenhouse gas emissions, adopt plant-based diets, and otherwise reduce our individual emissions. But this approach has recently been challenged by authors like Bernward Gesang and Julia Nefsky. Gesang contends that it may be genuinely impossible for our individual emissions to make a morally relevant difference. Nefsky argues more generally that the expected consequences approach cannot adequately explain our reasons not to do things if there is no precise fact of the matter about whether their outcomes are harmful. -/- In the following chapter, author Howard Nye defends the expected consequences approach against these objections. Nye contends that Gesang has shown at most that our emissions could have metaphysically indeterministic effects that lack precise objective chances. He argues, moreover, that the expected consequences approach can draw upon existing extensions to cases of indeterminism and imprecise probabilities to deliver the result that we have the same moral reasons to reduce our emissions in Gesang’s scenario as in deterministic scenarios. Nye also shows how the expected consequences approach can draw upon these extensions to handle Nefsky’s concern about the absence of precise facts concerning whether the outcomes of certain acts are harmful. The author concludes that the expected consequences approach provides a fully adequate account of our moral reasons to take both political and personal action to reduce our ecological footprints. (shrink)

Scientific realism is the position that the aim of science is to advance on truth and increase knowledge about observable and unobservable aspects of the mind-independent world which we inhabit. This book articulates and defends that position. In presenting a clear formulation and addressing the major arguments for scientific realism Sankey appeals to philosophers beyond the community of, typically Anglo-American, analytic philosophers of science to appreciate and understand the doctrine. The book emphasizes the epistemological aspects of scientific realism and contains (...) an original solution to the problem of induction that rests on an appeal to the principle of uniformity of nature. (shrink)

Socrates engages his audience in Phaedrus with speeches that include revised or newly composed myths that express his theory of philosophical eros. The aim of the speeches is to generate a love for truth that spills over into dialogue. Speeches are a starting point for dialogue, just like physical attraction is the beginning of love. In the case of Phaedrus, the beginning of philosophy is portrayed using playful and rhetorically rich speeches that serve as "love potions" awakening the novice's soul, (...) and ultimately leading Phaedrus to higher rungs on the ladder of love through the palinode, a medicinal speech. It is thinking about speeches, not the speeches themselves, which moves Socrates' student Phaedrus from the love of speeches to the love of Beauty itself. This is a stark contrast to the purpose of speechmaking for the sophist. The sophist seeks to enchant the soul, while the philosopher seeks to charm the soul into loving wisdom through stimulating discussions. Socrates also uses role reversals in the lover-beloved relationship to model the soul's ascent, contrasting the traditional roles with the way the lover and beloved are presented in Socrates' speeches. The novice must actively recollect Beauty itself in order to ascend, rather than passively listening to speeches that provide an image of beauty. Socrates' interlocutors must move themselves up the ladder of love from their own philosophical eros; wisdom is not attained by merely being pushed all the way up the ladder of love. (shrink)

In this article I attempt to show conclusively that the apparent intrinsic difference between causing collateral damage and directly attacking innocents is an illusion. I show how eleven morally irrelevant alterations can transform an apparently permissible case of harming as a side-effect into an apparently impermissible case of harming as a means. The alterations are as obviously irrelevant as the victims’ skin colour, and consistently treating them as relevant would have unacceptable implications for choices between more and less harmful ways (...) of securing greater goods. This shows not only how the principles philosophers have proposed for distinguishing between these cases cannot withstand scrutiny, but how we can be sure that there are no relevant differences yet to be discovered. I conclude by considering reasons to think that there are deontological constraints against harming, but that they apply just as forcefully against collateral harms as they do against intended harms. (shrink)

This essay explores a conception of responsibility at work in moral and criminal responsibility. Our conception draws on work in the compatibilist tradition that focuses on the choices of agents who are reasons-responsive and work in criminal jurisprudence that understands responsibility in terms of the choices of agents who have capacities for practical reason and whose situation affords them the fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. Our conception brings together the dimensions of normative competence and situational control, and we factor normative (...) competence into cognitive and volitional capacities, which we treat as equally important to normative competence and responsibility. Normative competence and situational control can and should be understood as expressing a common concern that blame and punishment presuppose that the agent had a fair opportunity to avoid wrongdoing. This fair opportunity is the umbrella concept in our understanding of responsibility, one that explains it distinctive architecture. (shrink)

In this chapter I defend a methodological view about how we should conduct substantive ethical inquiries in the fields of normative and practical ethics. I maintain that the direct plausibility and implausibility of general ethical principles – once fully clarified and understood – should be foundational in our substantive ethical reasoning. I argue that, in order to expose our ethical intuitions about particular cases to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether they can be justified by directly plausible principles. To (...) expose apparently plausible principles to maximal critical scrutiny, we must determine whether their direct plausibility can survive careful clarification of what they are really saying. This means that intuitions about cases are useful only in (a) suggesting principles that must stand on their own two feet, and (b) illustrating or otherwise helping us clarify what a principle is really saying. We should not reject principles that seem most directly plausible after we have fully clarified their content simply because they conflict with our intuitions about cases, because to do so is to side with uncritical prejudices over the teachings of critical scrutiny. (shrink)

In this paper, I endorse the idea that age is a defensible criterion for eligibility to vote, where age is itself a proxy for having a broad set of cognitive and motivational capacities. Given the current (and defeasible) state of developmental research, I suggest that the age of 16 is a good proxy for such capacities. In defending this thesis, I consider alternative and narrower capacity conditions while drawing on insights from a parallel debate about capacities and age requirements in (...) the criminal law. I also argue that the expansive capacity condition I adopt satisfies a number of powerful and complementary rationales for voting eligibility, and conclude by addressing challenging arguments that, on the one hand, capacity should not underlie voting eligibility in the first place, and, on the other, that capacity should do so directly and not via any sort of proxy, including age. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend three claims about what it will take for an AI system to be a basic moral patient to whom we can owe duties of non-maleficence not to harm her and duties of beneficence to benefit her: (1) Moral patients are mental patients; (2) Mental patients are true intentional systems; and (3) True intentional systems are systematically flexible. We suggest that we should be particularly alert to the possibility of such systematically flexible true intentional systems developing (...) in the areas of exploratory robots and artificial personal assistants. Finally, we argue that in light of our failure to respect the well-being of existing biological moral patients and worries about our limited resources, there are compelling moral reasons to treat artificial moral patiency as something to be avoided at least for now. (shrink)

This paper presents a naturalistic response to the challenge of epistemic relativism. The case of the Azande poison oracle is employed as an example of an alternative epistemic norm which may be used to justify beliefs about everyday occurrences. While a distinction is made between scepticism and relativism, an argument in support of epistemic relativism is presented that is based on the sceptical problem of the criterion. A response to the resulting relativistic position is then provided on the basis of (...) a particularist response to scepticism combined with a naturalistic approach to the warrant of epistemic norms. It is argued that it is possible to comparatively assess the ability of epistemic norms to lead to epistemic aims. As against the epistemic relativist, it is possible to provide an objective basis for the choice between alternative epistemic norms. (shrink)

The paper presents a realist account of the epistemic objectivity of science. Epistemic objectivity is distinguished from ontological objectivity and the objectivity of truth. As background, T.S. Kuhn’s idea that scientific theory-choice is based on shared scientific values with a role for both objective and subjective factors is discussed. Kuhn’s values are epistemologically ungrounded, hence provide a minimal sense of objectivity. A robust account of epistemic objectivity on which methodological norms are reliable means of arriving at the truth is presented. (...) The problem remains that deliberative judgement is required to determine the relevance and relative significance of a range of methodological norms. A role is sketched for cognitive virtues which may be exercised in the course of the deliberative judgement. (shrink)

This is a brief exploration of the notion of an objective fact. The form of objectivity at issue is distinct from epistemic objectivity or objectivity about truth. It is an ontological form of objectivity. Objective facts may obtain whether or not we know, believe or are aware of them. They depend upon objects, for example, on the properties that objects have or the relationships into which objects enter. Setting scepticism to one side, there is a perfectly mundane sense in which (...) we may come to have knowledge or fail to have knowledge of such facts. We must perceive objective facts from a perspective, but this does not enter into the facts. Nor does the fact that we must describe facts using language mean that facts are language-dependent. (shrink)

Since 1962 Kuhn's concept of incommensurability has undergone a process of transformation. His current account of incommensurability has little in common with his original account of it. Originally, incommensurability was a relation of methodological, observational and conceptual disparity between paradigms. Later Kuhn restricted the notion to the semantical sphere and assimilated it to the indeterminacy of translation. Recently he has developed an account of it as localized translation failure between subsets of terms employed by theories.

In a shift of position that has gone largely unnoticed by the great majority of commentators, Thomas Kuhn's version of the incommensurability thesis underwent a major transformation over the last decade and a half of his life. In his later work, Kuhn argued that incommensurability is a relation of translation failure between local subsets of interdefined theoretical terms, which encapsulate the taxonomic structure of a theory. Incommensurability arises because it is impossible to transfer the natural categories employed within one taxonomic (...) structure into the categorial system of another such structure. Apparently on the basis of such taxonomic incommensurability, Kuhn asserted a number of antirealist theses about truth, reference and reality. In this paper, it will be argued, however, that, far from leading to antirealist consequences about the relationship between theory and reality, the taxonomic incommensurability thesis may be incorporated unproblematically within a reasonably robust scientific realist framework. (shrink)

The contemporary debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is conditioned by a polarity between two opposing arguments: the realist’s success argument and the anti-realist’s pessimistic induction. This polarity has skewed the debate away from the problem that lies at the source of the debate. From a realist point of view, the historical approach to the philosophy of science which came to the fore in the 1960s gave rise to an unsatisfactory conception of scientific progress. One of the main motivations for (...) the scientific realist appeal to the success of science was the need to provide a substantive account of the progress of science as an increase of knowledge about the same entities as those referred to by earlier theories in the history of science. But the idea that a substantive conception of progress requires continuity of reference has faded from the contemporary debate. In this paper, I revisit the historical movement in the philosophy of science in an attempt to resuscitate the original agenda of the debate about scientific realism. I also briefly outline the way in which the realist should employ the theory of reference as the basis for a robust account of scientific progress which will satisfy realist requirements. (shrink)

Some facts are objective. Some facts are subjective. Subjective facts are personal facts about individuals. It is the purpose of this short note to suggest that subjective facts are in fact objective facts about us. This applies not just to facts involving relations to entities that are independent of us, but to our tastes. It is an objective fact about us that we have the tastes that we do though there may be no objective matter of fact that our tastes (...) reflect or fail to reflect. (shrink)

Abstract: This research paper presents a novel approach to predict audit risks using a neural network model. The dataset used for this study was obtained from Kaggle and comprises 774 samples with 18 features, including Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, History_score, score, and Risk. The proposed neural network architecture consists of three layers, including one input layer, one hidden layer, and one output layer. The neural network model was trained and validated, achieving (...) an impressive accuracy of 100% and an average error of 0.000015, indicating its robust predictive capability. Moreover, we conducted feature importance analysis to identify the most influential features for predicting audit risk. The key features found to be critical for classifying fraudulent activities in audit risk prediction are Sector_score, PARA_A, SCORE_A, PARA_B, SCORE_B, TOTAL, numbers, marks, Money_Value, District, Loss, Loss_SCORE, History, and History_score. This research contributes to the field of audit risk prediction by demonstrating the effectiveness of a neural network-based approach and highlighting the importance of specific features in detecting fraudulent activities. The findings have significant implications for auditors and organizations seeking to enhance their audit risk assessment processes, ultimately leading to improved financial transparency and fraud detection. (shrink)

Agent-centered constraints on harming hold that some harmful upshots of our conduct cannot be justified by its generating equal or somewhat greater benefits. In this paper I argue that all plausible theories of agent-centered constraints on harming are undermined by the likelihood that our actions will have butterfly effects, or cause cascades of changes that make the world dramatically different than it would have been. Theories that impose constraints against only intended harming or proximally caused harm have unacceptable implications for (...) choices between more and less harmful ways of securing greater goods. This leaves as plausible only theories that impose constraints against causing some unintended distal harms. But, I argue, given the distal harms our actions are likely to cause through their butterfly effects, these theories entail that any way of sustaining our lives is overwhelmingly likely to involve unjustified killing, and that we are therefore morally required either to allow ourselves to waste away or kill ourselves. (shrink)

Success semantics holds, roughly, that what it is for a state of an agent to be a belief that P is for it to be disposed to combine with her desires to cause behaviour that would fulfill those desires if P. J. T. Whyte supplements this with an account of the contents of an agent's “basic desires” to provide an attractive naturalistic theory of mental content. We argue that Whyte's strategy can avoid the objections raised against it by restricting “basic (...) desires” to sensory inclinations that cause us to do things independently of our beliefs about their contents. -/- La sémantique du succès soutient, en gros, que ce qu'il faut pour qu'un état d'un agent soit une croyance en P, c'est que cet état soit disposé à se combiner avec ses désirs pour provoquer un comportement qui répondrait à ces désirs si P. J. T. Whyte complète cela par un compte-rendu du contenu des « désirs de base » d'un agent pour fournir une théorie naturaliste attrayante du contenu mental. Nous soutenons que la stratégie de Whyte peut éviter les objections qui lui sont faites en restreignant les « désirs de base » aux inclinations sensorielles qui nous font agir indépendamment de nos croyances sur leur contenu. (shrink)

The incommensurability thesis is the thesis that the content of some alternative scientific theories is incomparable due to translation failure between the vocabulary the theories employ. This paper presents an overview of the main issues which have arisen in the debate about incommensurability. It also briefly outlines a response to the thesis based on a modified causal theory of reference which allows change of reference subsequent to initial baptism, as well as a role to description in the determination of reference. (...) On such a view. the content of theories may be compared on the basis of shared reference, despite failure of translation. Two recent developments involving the incomnensurability thesis are also examined: (i) the taxonomic version of the incomensurability thesis found in Kuhn’s later writings. (ii) Hoyningen-Huenc’s neo-Kantian interpretation of Kuhn’s metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between scepticism and epistemic relativism in the context of recent history and philosophy of science. More specifically, it seeks to show that significant treatments of epistemic relativism by influential figures in the history and philosophy of science draw upon the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. The paper begins with a presentation of the problem of the criterion as it occurs in the work of Sextus Empiricus. It is then shown that significant treatments of epistemic relativism (...) in recent history and philosophy of science (critical rationalism, historical philosophy of science and the strong programme) draw upon the problem of the criterion. It is briefly suggested that a particularist response to the problem of the criterion may be put to good use against epistemic relativism. (shrink)

This paper describes the position of scientific realism and presents the basic lines of argument for the position. Simply put, scientific realism is the view that the aim of science is knowledge of the truth about observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent, objective reality. Scientific realism is supported by several distinct lines of argument. It derives from a non-anthropocentric conception of our place in the natural world, and it is grounded in the epistemology and metaphysics of common sense. Further, (...) the success of science entitles us to infer both the approximate truth of mature scientific theories and the truth-conduciveness of the methods of science. (shrink)

This book concentrates on three topics: the problem of the semantic incommensurability of theories; the non-algorithmic character of rational scientific theory choice and naturalised accounts of the rationality of methodological change. The underlying aim is to show how the phenomenon of extensive conceptual and methodological variation in science need not give rise to a thorough-going epistemic or conceptual relativism.

Abstract: Each affective state has distinct motor-expressions, sensory perceptions, autonomic, and cognitive patterns. Panksepp (1998) proposed seven neural affective systems of which the SEEKING system, a generalized approach-seeking system, motivates organisms to pursue resources needed for survival. When an organism is presented with a novel stimulus, the dopamine (DA) in the nucleus accumbens septi (NAS) is released. The DA circuit outlines the generalized mesolimbic dopamine-centered SEEKING system and is especially responsive when there is an element of unpredictability in forthcoming rewards. (...) We propose that when the outcome of this interaction is unexpected or unanticipated then Panksepp’s “cognitive or expectancy reset” mechanism involving the cognitive dissonance would yield the subjective emotion of surprise. In order to appropriately react to the environment’s stimuli one needs fundamental processes that would enable one to distinguish between what is novel and what has been already experienced, as well as the different degrees of novelty. Novel events are those whose essential features of the representation (visceral and perceptual) are altered and being discrepant provoke more sustained attention. Novelty arises from salient and arousing events and the organism experiences surprise, as coming out of a habitual state. In this framework, we shall look at established theories of emotions and propose a different approach to their taxonomy. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between epistemic relativism and Pyrrhonian scepticism. It is argued that a fundamental argument for contemporary epistemic relativism derives from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion. Pyrrhonian scepticism is compared and contrasted with Cartesian scepticism about the external world and Humean scepticism about induction. Epistemic relativism is characterized as relativism due to the variation of epistemic norms, and is contrasted with other forms of cognitive relativism, such as truth relativism, conceptual relativism and ontological relativism. An argument (...) from the Pyrrhonian problem of the criterion to epistemic relativism is presented, and is contrasted with three other arguments for epistemic relativism. It is argued that the argument from the criterion is the most fundamental argument for epistemic relativism. Finally, it is noted how the argument of the present paper fits with the author’s previous suggestion that a particularist response to the Pyrrhonian sceptic may be combined with a naturalistic view of epistemic warrant to meet the challenge of epistemic relativism. (shrink)

Truth in a correspondence sense is objective in two ways. It is objective because the relation of correspondence is objective and because the facts to which truths correspond are objective. Truth about artifacts is problematic because artifacts are intentionally designed to perform certain functions, and so are not entirely mind independent. Against this, it is argued in this paper that truth about artifacts is perfectly objective despite the role played by intention and purpose in the production of artifacts.