The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The sense of form that provides the modern poet with a unique experience of the literary object has been crucial to various attempts to compare poetry to other cultural activities. In maintaining similar conceptions of the relationship between poetry and painting, Arthur Rimbaud and W. C. Williams establish a common basis for interpreting their creative work. And yet their poetry is more crucially concerned with the sudden emergence of visible "worlds" containing verbal objects that integrate a new kind of (...) literary text. This paper discusses the emergence of "aesthetic worlds" in the work of both poets and then examines how a common concern with Baroque form unites them in the phenomenological task of overcoming Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

In recent decades, the intertwining ideas of self-determination and well-being have received tremendous support in bioethics. Discussions regarding self-determination, or autonomy, often focus on two dimensions—the capacity of the patient and the freedom from external coercion. The practice of obtaining informed consent, for example, has become a standard procedure in therapeutic and research medicine. On the surface, it appears that patients now have more opportunities to exercise their self-determination than ever. Nonetheless, discussions of patient autonomy in the bioethics literature, which (...) focus on individual patients making particular decisions, neglect the social structure within which health-care decisions are made. Looking through the lens of disability and informed by the feminist conception of relational autonomy, this essay argues that the issue of autonomy is much more complex than the individualist model suggests. The social system and the ableist ideology impose various forms of pressure or oppressive power that can affect people’s ability to choose according to their value system. Even if such powers are not directly coercive, they influence potential parents’ decisions indirectly—they structure their alternatives in such a way that certain options are never considered as viable and other decisions must be made. This paper argues that, instead of only focusing on the individual act of decision-making, we need to pay attention to the social structure that frames people’s decision. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article deals with the communicational aspects of Aristotle’s theory of signification as laid out in the initial chapters of the De Interpretatione (Int.).1 We begin by outlining the reception and main interpretations of the chapters under discussion, rather siding with the linguistic strand. We then argue that the first four chapters present an account of verbal communication, in which words signify things via thoughts. We show how Aristotle determines voice as a conventional and hence accidental medium of signification: (...) words as ‘spoken sounds’ are tokens of thoughts, which in turn are signs or natural likenesses of things. We argue that, in this way, linguistic expressions may both signify thoughts and refer to things. This double account of signification also explains the variety of ontological, logical and psychological interpretations of the initial chapters of Int. (shrink)

In traditional linguistic accounts of context, one thinks of the immediate features of a speech situation, that is, a situation in which an expression is uttered. Thus, features such as time, location, speaker, hearer and preceding discourse are all parts of context. But context is a wider and more transcendental notion than what these accounts imply. For one thing, context is a relational concept relating social actions and their surroundings, relating social actions, relating individual actors and their surroundings, and relating (...) the set of individual actors and their social actions to their surroundings. (shrink)

As national and state health care policy -making becomes contentious and complex, there is a need for a forum to debate and explore public concerns and values in health care, give voice to local citizens, to facilitate consensus among various stakeholders, and provide feedback and direction to health care institutions and policy makers. This paper explores the role that regional health care ethics committees can play and provides two contrasting examples of Networks involved in facilitation of public input into and (...) the development of health care policies and adoption of state-wide practices. (shrink)

Since the sharing economy is a rather new phenomenon, there is still no official definition of it in the legal framework of Croatia. The continuous development of sharing economy started a few years after the 1998 global and domestic economic crisis stroked Croatia. Namely, a total of eight platforms in the sectors of transportation, accommodation, finance, and online skills could be identified. The total market share of these platforms amounts to estimated market revenue of roughly 106 million EUR. When compared (...) to the other EU Member States, it could be noticed that Croatia falls within the group of countries with a below-average performance by a number of platforms per 1 million population, as well as in the level of revenues compared to national GDP. Figures that are more promising can be detected regarding the collaborative economy’s contribution to national employment, which positions Croatia within the EU average. Future studies should explain in greater depth how the sharing economy poses several new challenges for regulators in Croatia and countries across the EU. In particular, policymakers must comprehend the big picture and provide regulatory guidelines to manage the long-term changes in job markets, public safety, competition, and digital trust. (shrink)

This précis summarizes the main topics, arguments and conclusions of the book. Many interesting arguments and critiques have, of course, been omitted in order to make this summary appropriately brief.

The article introduces readers to the study of disability, both with respect to the interdisciplinary field of disability studies and the field of philosophy of disability. We then offer an overview of three central areas of philosophical inquiry where feminist work in philosophy and disability has made significant contributions: (1) metaphysics and ontology, (2) epistemology and phenomenology, and (3) ethical, social, and political philosophy.

Mereonominalism, holonominalism, and part-whole realism represent competing views on the metaphysics of parts and wholes. Mereonominalism claims that what parts exist is a function of the concepts we use in describing composite wholes. Holonominalism claims that what composite wholes exist is a function of the concepts we use in describing things that can qualify as parts. Part-whole realism claims that parts and wholes exist independent of our concepts. I argue that all three views face problems, but that the problem facing (...) part-whole realism can be solved by adopting a version of hylomorphism that takes its cue from Aristotle’s account of form. (shrink)

Palawan is a land of promise, and of paradox. On maps, it appears on the edge of the Philippines, isolated. Indeed, it is a kind of last frontier. Its population remained tiny for centuries, the government offering homestead land in the 1950s practically for free to attract migrants from outside. The Palawan State University was established by law in 1965, but did not become operational until 1972. A commercial airport did not exist until the 1980s, and for many years, flights (...) were limited. Yet Palawan is one of the oldest sites of human habitation in the Philippines with the famous Tabon Cave human fossils. The oldest bone fragment here has been dated to be about 47,000 years. We know, too, that trade with China goes back several centuries. Today, Palawan seems to be making up for lost time with new commercial investments pouring in at breakneck speed. In particular, outsiders have rediscovered its potentials around logging, mining, fisheries, and tourism. This has caused concern among individuals and civil society organizations who want sustainable development, and see the commercial developments mainly as extractive, not just of natural resources but of the human. There’s very cheap labor available. And when potential investors marvel about cheap land, they’re actually talking about displacing earlier settlers, including indigenous people, from their lands. A subtle but still insidious aspect of the exploitation of human resources is a transformation of the very concept of human development. Using the rhetoric of modernity, residents in Palawan are reorienting the way they view themselves as well as their families and friends. The value of a human being now hinges on how they look, and the desired appearance is defined from the outside, as we see in this anthology of research reports coming from the Chemical Youth project of the University of Amsterdam and the University of the Philippines Diliman. We read about the importance of fair skin as a projection of cleanliness, of high social status (meaning someone not engaged in manual labor and therefore not exposed to the sun). We read of how “femininity” is defined around body contours, and cosmetics, and how hormones are used by male-to-female transgenders. We go beyond the visual, reading about the importance of controlling or enhancing body odors among tour guides, who interestingly are especially concerned about the bad odor management of their foreign customers, using car perfumes to keep their work manageable and we learn how difficult it is for security guards to stay alert during their long shifts. Energy drinks and cigarettes help them perform their duties. All these transformations through what the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault has called “technologies of the self” are as paradoxical as Palawan. On the surface, the products—which are technologies—seem to be mainly in the realm of the self but are, in reality, pushed, through marketing, from the outside, in contexts of inequality and exploitative labour relations. Personal aspirations are not personal but are for predefined standards of modernity, related to work-related demands and expectations. The self must be made presentable to the tourist, to the customers in malls, and to those who may threaten the properties that young people protect. It is not surprising that these transformations become problematic for the “self.” The skin whiteners, the hormones, the body deodorants, and the energy drinks are expensive and can distort budgetary priorities. The money for tonic drinks, for example, could well go into more nutritious food. The tragedy, too, many of the products used are of doubtful safety and efficacy. Even the energy drinks have much too high levels of caffeine that can cause cardiac palpitations. Cosmetics and the skin whiteners imported from China and unregistered with the Food and Drug Administration may contain toxic chemicals like mercury. But even registered skin whiteners can be problematic, their so-called “skin-whitening effect” coming about because they take away the upper layers of the skin, leaving behind a red glow (seen as “whitening”) which is actually inflammation. The whitened skin fails to protect against the sun, leading to adverse effects such as black spots. Ultimately though, the problems come with the very definition of the self. As the reports show, young people use the chemicals with some ambivalence, knowing how expensive they are and experiencing some of the undesirable side effects. There is, too, doubt about whether what they’re doing is indeed “good,” captured by how IP women will put on cosmetics only when they’re away from home and about to go to work. The cosmetics have to be removed before they return home because they are not socially acceptable. The research reports are not for Palawan alone. It must make us more critical and discerning as we revisit concepts of development and exploitation, modernity and tradition, self and community. The chemicals, in many ways, are like the products used in precolonial barter trade. For the Chinese, the beeswax and the sea cucumbers, for the inhabitants of Palawan the ceramics, represented faraway lands. To have those products gave prestige. Today, the skin whiteners and tonic drinks and other chemicals described in this anthology represent modernity with promises of not just of a more attractive self, but of better jobs, a better life. We are proud to have worked with the Palawan State University, and the people of Palawan, to gather powerful narratives that will now challenge the outside, the purveyors of modernity, to be more critical and discerning, the chemicals now to be seen not just as stuff applied to the biological body, but as powerful shapers of social bodies. (shrink)

I argue that Merleau-Ponty is right to claim that some shift in an agent's perspective on the world is partly constitutive of their forming a habit, but that he is wrong about what this shift is because he wrongly conflates habit and skill. I defend an alternative: the perspectiival shift constitutive of habit-formation is that habitual courses of action come to be and seem familiar.

"William Day is . . . concerned to explore the dynamics of what Cavell calls 'a theology of reading' through a careful examination of a fragment of the philosopher's autobiography first published as 'Excerpts from Memory' (2006) and subsequently revised for Little Did I Know (2010). If, as Cavell suggests, 'the underlying subject' of both criticism and philosophy is 'the subject of examples', in which our interest lies in their emblematic aptness or richness as exemplars, exemplarity becomes central to the (...) aim of our reading. . . . Day considers how autobiography as a genre is preoccupied with the question of the author's exemplarity (Augustine or Rousseau), and in Cavell's retelling in 'Excerpts from Memory' he discusses how an event that Cavell would have us read allegorically - his move at the age of seven to a new apartment, his coming upon a familiar bowl containing nonpareils, his remark upon this to his father and his father's violent reaction - recasts a scene of paternal hatred as the child's offer of communion. Day suggests that this retelling proves to be redemptive: first, of the incident itself, and second, of the reader's own experience. Seeing how to read this autobiographical life as exemplary helps us to transfigure our own moments of deprivation into so many possibilities for freedom." --James Loxley and Andrew Taylor, introductory chapter to Stanley Cavell: Philosophy, Literature and Criticism, 15-16. (shrink)

2015 Reprint of 1956 Printing. Full facsimile of the original edition. Not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Cybernetics is here defined as "the science of control and communication, in the animal and the machine"-in a word, as the art of steersmanship; and this book will interest all who are interested in cybernetics, communication theory and methods for regulation and control. W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972) was an English psychiatrist and a pioneer in cybernetics, the study of complex systems. His two books, (...) "Design for a Brain" and "An Introduction to Cybernetics," were landmark works. They introduced exact and logical thinking into the nascent discipline and were highly influential. Contents include: What is new -- Change -- The Determinate Machine -- The Machine with Input -- Stability -- The Black Box -- Quantity of Variety -- Transmission of Variety -- Incessant Transmission -- Regulation in Biological Systems -- Requisite Variety -- The Error-controlled Regulator -- Regulating the Very Large System -- Amplifying Regulation. (shrink)

Seeing Wittgenstein Anew is the first collection to examine Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks on the concept of aspect-seeing. These essays show that aspect-seeing was not simply one more topic of investigation in Wittgenstein’s later writings, but, rather, that it was a pervasive and guiding concept in his efforts to turn philosophy’s attention to the actual conditions of our common life in language. Arranged in sections that highlight the pertinence of the aspect-seeing remarks to aesthetic and moral perception, self-knowledge, mind and consciousness, (...) linguistic agreement, philosophical therapy, and “seeing connections,” the sixteen essays, which were specially commissioned for this volume, demonstrate the unity of not only Philosophical Investigations but also Wittgenstein’s later thought as a whole. They open up novel paths across familiar fields of thought: the objectivity of interpretation, the fixity of the past, the acquisition of language, and the nature of human consciousness. Significantly, they exemplify how continuing consideration of the interrelated phenomena and concepts surrounding aspect-seeing might produce a fruitful way of doing philosophy. The volume includes a concordance for the unnumbered remarks in the various editions of Philosophical Investigations, including the latest (4th) edition. (The front matter is posted here. The introduction - "Seeing Aspects in Wittgenstein" - appears below under "Published articles."). (shrink)

Review of Joseph Y. Halpern (ed.), Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning About Knowledge: Proceedings of the 1986 Conference (Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1986),.

Here, we outline UPJA’s recent developments and the contents of Volume 2, Issue 2.

How do we determine whether individuals accept the actual consistency of a political argument instead of just its rhetorical good looks? This article answers this question by proposing an interpretation of political argument within the constraints of political liberalism. It utilises modern developments in the philosophy of logic and language to reclaim ‘meaningless nonsense’ from use as a partisan war cry and to build up political argument as something more than a power struggle between competing conceptions of the good. Standard (...) solutions for ‘clarifying’ meaning through descriptive definition encounter difficulties with the biases of status quo idioms (long noted by theorists like William Connolly and Quentin Skinner), as well as partisan translations and circularity. Collectively called linguistic gerrymandering, these difficulties threaten political liberalism’s underlying coherency. The proposed interpretation of political argument overcomes this with a new brand of conceptual analysis that can falsifiably determine whether rhetoric has hijacked political argument. (shrink)

We advance an account that grounds cognition, specifically decision-making, in an activity all organisms as autonomous systems must perform to keep themselves viable—controlling their production mechanisms. Production mechanisms, as we characterize them, perform activities such as procuring resources from their environment, putting these resources to use to construct and repair the organism's body and moving through the environment. Given the variable nature of the environment and the continual degradation of the organism, these production mechanisms must be regulated by control mechanisms (...) that select when a production is required and how it should be carried out. To operate on production mechanisms, control mechanisms need to procure information through measurement processes and evaluate possible actions. They are making decisions. In all organisms, these decisions are made by multiple different control mechanisms that are organized not hierarchically but heterarchically. In many cases, they employ internal models of features of the environment with which the organism must deal. Cognition, in the form of decision-making, is thus fundamental to living systems which must control their production mechanisms. (shrink)

Hylomorphism provides an attractive framework for addressing issues in philosophical anthropology. After describing a hylomorphic theory that dovetails with current work in philosophy of mind and in scientific disciplines such as biology and neuroscience, I discuss how this theory meshes with Christian eschatology, the doctrine of resurrection in particular.

Hegel experienced several personal, political, and professional crises during his life. These crises impacted his dense theory about the importance of rational self-reflection in the organic character and evolution of law. The article argues that Hegel’s Preface to the Philosophy of Right manifests how one philosopher came to terms with the personal, social and political crises in which he found himself. In particular, the article outlines the central themes of the Preface and then explicates the important notion of Bildung in (...) Hegel’s theory – an Enlightenment notion that Hegel absorbed from his own formal education. After retrieving Hegel’s reading of the virtues and flaws in Kant’s theory of law, the article then explicates Hegel’s understanding of freedom. The article then reviews the local politics in which Hegel found himself before, during and after Napoleon’s defeat. The article then turns to his professional rivalries with Jacob Fries and Friedrich Savigny. The article argues that the personal animosities shaped parts of his Preface. These complex influences and concerns explain why Hegel waited 20 years to publish his theory of law. Hegel’s Preface comes to terms with the crises of his own times. (shrink)

This essay explores the thesis that for vague predicates, uncertainty over whether a borderline instance x of red/large/tall/good is to be understood as practical uncertainty over whether to treat x as red/large/tall/good. Expressivist and quasi-realist treatments of vague predicates due to John MacFarlane and Daniel Elstein provide the stalking-horse. It examines the notion of treating/counting a thing as F , and links a central question about our attitudes to vague predications to normative evaluation of plans to treat a thing as (...) F . The essay examines how the account applies to normatively defective or contested terms. The final section raises a puzzle about the mechanics of MacFarlane’s detailed implementation for the case of gradable adjectives. (shrink)

In their Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, Landgrebe and Smith (2023) argue that it is impossible for artificial general intelligence (AGI) to succeed, on the grounds that it is impossible to perfectly model or emulate the “complex” “human neurocognitive system”. However, they do not show that it is logically impossible; they only show that it is practically impossible using current mathematical techniques. Nor do they prove that there could not be any other kinds of theories than those in (...) current use. Even if perfect theories were impossible or unlikely, perfection may not be needed and may even be unhelpful. (shrink)

Commentators of the judicial decisions of Justice Holmes have often situated the decisions inside the doctrines of freedom of expression and the rules and tests approach to legal analysis. This Paper situates his judgments in the context of a political theory. Drawing from his articles, lectures and correspondence, the Paper highlights Holmes’ reaction to the idealism and rationalism of the intellectual current before him. His view of human nature, conditioned by his war experience, is elaborated. The Paper especially examines his (...) theory of political struggle with the process-oriented view that the dominant social groups invariably become the political elite. The Paper then connects his theory of human nature to his legal doctrines, the role of the judiciary, the nature of the state, and a legal right. (shrink)

Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on W. K. Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief”. Published in Clifford, W.K. “L’ètica de la creença”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 129–150. // Catalan translation, introductory study and notes on William James’s “The Will to Believe”. Published in James, William. “La voluntat de creure”. Quaderns de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 151–172. [Introductory study published in Oya, Alberto. “Introducció. El debat entre W. K. Clifford i William James”. Quaderns (...) de Filosofia, vol. III, n. 2 (2016), pp. 123–127]. (shrink)

Part I argues that ontological arguments, like other classical proofs of the existence of God, are parts of larger arguments in which they are embedded. These larger arguments include reasons supporting the proofs’ premises and responses to them, and to the proofs’ claims to validity and non-circularity, since, in the final analysis, our assessment of the proofs will express our best judgment of the cumulative force of all the considerations bearing on their overall adequacy. Part II illustrates these points by (...) examining contemporary defences of, and attacks on, one of the ontological argument’s central premises, namely, that God’s existence is logically possible. (shrink)

Neuroscience can relate to ethics and normative issues via the brain’s cognitive control network. This network accomplishes several executive processes, such as planning, task-switching, monitoring, and inhibiting. These processes allow us to increase the accuracy of our perceptions and our memory recall. They also allow us to plan much farther into the future, and with much more detail than any of our fellow mammals. These abilities also make us fitting subjects for responsibility claims. Their activity, or lack thereof, is at (...) the heart of culpability. For instance, planning to kill someone is strong evidence of what the law calls mens rea—a guilty mind. Claims about norms, or ethical “should” claims, express two-level propositions, directed at the behaving person at one level, and at that person’s mind and cognitive control network at another level. Thus, “People should stop themselves from hurting others,” is a claim about how people should behave and also a claim about how their cognitive control networks should behave—i.e., they should inhibit harmful behavior, or the intentions leading up to it. Planning is both an ability of the full person, and of that person’s mind. Neuroscience affirms the common notion, seen both in law and folk psychology, that what makes us guilty or culpable are certain events and states that exist in our minds. Overt behavior, including speech, is fallible evidence of these states and processes. Cases of negligence still involve the executive processes, but “negatively,” in that negligence results when certain types of executive activity fail to take place. (shrink)

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the clarifying (...) experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art. (shrink)

Eating is a fundamental behavior in which all organisms must engage in order to procure the material and energy from their environment that they need to maintain themselves. Since controlling eating requires procuring, processing, and assessing information, it constitutes a cognitive activity that provides a productive domain for pursuing cognitive biology as proposed by Ladislav Kováč. In agreement with Kováč, we argue that cognition is fundamentally grounded in chemical signaling and processing. To support this thesis, we adopt Cisek’s strategy of (...) phylogenetic refinement, focusing on two animal phyla, Porifera and Placozoa, organisms that do not have neurons, muscles, or an alimentary canal, but nonetheless need to coordinate the activity of cells of multiple types in order to eat. We review what research has revealed so far about how these animals gather and process information to control their eating behavior. (shrink)

The present article is a slightly revised version of my article in Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39, no. 2 (2012): 174–91. I appreciate the opportunity to republish with very minor corrections. This article highlights sympathies between Wang Yangming’s notion of zhenzhi (real knowing) and Stanley Cavell’s concept of acknowledgment. I begin by noting a problem in interpreting Wang on the unity of knowing and acting, which leads to considering how our suffering pain figures in our “real knowing” of another’s pain. (...) I then turn to Cavell’s description of a related problem in modern skepticism, where Cavell argues that knowing another’s pain requires acknowledging it. Cavell’s concept of acknowledgment answers to Wang’s insistence that knowing and acting are one, and corrects Antonio Cua’s very different appropriation of “acknowledgment” to explain Wang’s doctrine. (shrink)

Mind, Brain, and Free Will, Richard Swinburne’s stimulating new book, covers a great deal of territory. I’ll focus on some of the positions Swinburne defends in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers are likely to have reservations about the arguments he uses to defend them, and others will think his basic position is unmotivated. My goal in this brief discussion is to articulate some of the reasons why.

I show that the Eternalist faces a trilemma. Given their theory of time, three claims are each very plausible, yet together form an inconsistent triad. Denying any one of these claims will have significant consequences for how they can conceive of the material realm. I urge that the best strategy is to deny the first claim, and show that this would have a significant consequence: Perdurantism is false.

In *Here and There*, Stanley Cavell suggests that music, like speech, implicates the listener, so that our descriptions of music "are to be thought of not as discoveries but as impressions and assignments of meaning." Such impressions express what "makes an impression upon us," "what truly matters to us." Moreover, this aspect of music "is itself more revolutionary than ... any political event of which it could be said to form a part." I offer one indication of that significance by (...) considering a recent challenge to an old claim about the relation between jazz and democracy. Stanley Crouch claims that jazz practice is an emblem of democracy, while Benjamin Givan observes the undemocratic, hierarchical way that jazz musicians work together. But both positions rest on a limited notion of "democracy." I contrast it to the tradition in political thought that requires each citizen to find their own voice if they're to acquire the ability to govern themselves. Consequently, a better emblem of jazz's democratic advance lies in the challenge it presents to the attentive listener. Jazz listening is increasingly characterized by a learned culture of hearing what isn't played, hearing allusions, hearing unspoken interplay. The nature of this "hearing between the lines" parallels the tradition of esoteric writing in the history of political thought. It suggests that jazz's democratic importance is found in the listener's willingness to give voice to what she hears, not knowing whether her experience is shared by others or whether it singles her out, possibly for skepticism or ridicule. (shrink)

Suppose that an altruistic agent who is uncertain between evidential and causal decision theory finds herself in a situation where these theories give conflicting verdicts. We argue that even if she has significantly higher credence in CDT, she should nevertheless act in accordance with EDT. First, we claim that the appropriate response to normative uncertainty is to hedge one's bets. That is, if the stakes are much higher on one theory than another, and the credences you assign to each of (...) these theories are not very different, then it is appropriate to choose the option that performs best on the high-stakes theory. Second, we show that, given the assumption of altruism, the existence of correlated decision makers will increase the stakes for EDT but leave the stakes for CDT unaffected. Together these two claims imply that whenever there are sufficiently many correlated agents, the appropriate response is to act in accordance with EDT. (shrink)

[This download contains the Table of Contents and Chapter 1.] This first book-length study of confabulation breaks ground in both philosophy and cognitive science.

Although the Evans argument against vague identity has been much discussed, proposah for blocking it have not so far satisfied general conditions which any solution ought to meet. Moreover, the relation between ontically vague identity and ontic vagueness more generally has not yet been satisfactorily addressed. I advocate a way of resisting the Evans argument which satisfies the conditions. To show how this approach can vindicate particular cases of ontically vague identity, I develop a framework for describing ontic vagueness in (...) general in terms of multiple actualities. This provides aprìncipled approach to ontically vague identity which is unaffected by the Evans argument. (shrink)

What methodological approaches do research programs use to investigate the world? Elisabeth Lloyd’s Logic of Research Questions (LRQ) characterizes such approaches in terms of the questions that the researchers ask and causal factors they consider. She uses the Logic of Research Questions Framework to criticize adaptationist programs in evolutionary biology for dogmatically assuming selection explanations of the traits of organisms. I argue that Lloyd’s general criticism of methodological adaptationism is an artefact of the impoverished LRQ. My Ordered Factors Proposal extends (...) the LRQ to characterize approaches with sequences of questions and factors. I highlight the importance that ordering one’s investigation plays in approaches at the level of adaptationism by analyzing two research programs in community ecology: competitionists and neutralists. Competitionists and neutralists take opposed starting points and use explanatory and developmental heuristics to consider more factors in due time. On the Ordered Factors Proposal, these approaches are not only the ecological factors they are open to considering but also the order in which they will consider them. My disagreement with Lloyd’s over how to characterize methodological approaches reflects different views about methodological monism and pluralism. (shrink)

An essential property of a thing tells us about the real definition of that thing. In this dissertation, I argue that a real definition states conditions on the identity of things and explains how they differ from other individuals or members of other kinds. I then apply this account to show that some essential properties are discovered by science. I also argue contrary to reductionist accounts of essence and show that several of Kit Fine's applications of the notion of essence (...) to ontological dependence and to the reduction of modality, are spurious. Finally, I argue that the real definition of each human person accounts for their personal identity over time. (shrink)

Unless one embraces activities as foundational, understanding activities in mechanisms requires an account of the means by which entities in biological mechanisms engage in their activities—an account that does not merely explain activities in terms of more basic entities and activities. Recent biological research on molecular motors exemplifies such an account, one that explains activities in terms of free energy and constraints. After describing the characteristic “stepping” activities of these molecules and mapping the stages of those steps onto the stages (...) of the motors’ hydrolytic cycles, researchers pieced together from images of the molecules in different hydrolyzation states accounts of how the chemical energy in ATP is transformed in the constrained environments of the motors into the characteristic activities of the motors. We argue that New Mechanism’s standard set of analytic categories—entities, activities, and organization—should be expanded to include constraints and energetics. Not only is such an expansion required descriptively to capture research on molecular motors but, more importantly from a philosophical point of view, it enables a non-regressive account of activities in mechanisms. In other words, this expansion enables a philosophical account of mechanistic explanation that avoids a regress of entities and activities “all the way down.” Rather, mechanistic explanation bottoms out in constraints and energetics. (shrink)

This paper argues that the reading of Althusser which finds a pronounced continuity in his conception of the relations among science, philosophy, and politics is the correct one, this essay will begin with an examination of Althusser’s “scientism.” The meaning of this term (one that differs slightly from contemporary usages) will be specified before showing how and in what way Althusser’s political philosophy between 1960 and 1980 can be described as “scientistic.” The next section details the important political role Althusser (...) assigned to the sciences and particularly to the science of historical materialism during this period. This accomplished, the arguments of interpreters who emphasize the apparent difference in Althusser’s attitude towards science before and after 1980 will be considered. Here, possible reasons for such a reading will be rehearsed. Next, with the support of recently published and archival documents, this essay will engage in a close and comparative reading of Althusser’s texts from the 1970s and 1980s that have as their subject the relations among philosophy, science, and politics. This survey will show the continuity in Althusser’s position vis-à-vis the sciences: namely, that if we want good (i.e. desired) socio-politico-economic changes to result from our political actions, then it is necessary to engage in social scientific research or, at the very least, to consult such research and to use this knowledge in our political decision making. All this serves to support the conclusion that Althusser’s “new” political philosophy from the 1980s is not really so new. On the contrary, his writings on the materialism of the encounter and aleatory materialism represent prolongations and elaborations of positions and ideas already developed in the 1960s and 1970s and that include a mostly consistent understanding of the relations between scientific knowledge and political action. This is true even if the rhetorical and philosophical style in which these ideas are put forth in the 1980s differs from the ways in which these ideas were introduced during the prior two decades. (shrink)

Neutral Theory is controversial in ecology. Ecologists and philosophers have diagnosed the source of the controversy as: its false assumption that individuals in different species within the same trophic level are ecologically equivalent, its conflict with Competition Theory and the adaptation of species, its role as a null hypothesis, and as a Lakatosian research programme. In this paper, I show why we should instead understand the conflict at the level of research programs which involve more than theory. The Neutralist and (...) Competitionist research programs borrow and construct theories, models, and experiments for various aims and given their home ecological systems. I present a holistic and pragmatic view of the controversy that foregrounds the interrelation between many kinds of practices and decisions in ecological research. (shrink)

This study was intended to determine the level of factors affecting the decision of 4th year BS Accountancy students from College of Maasin to work after graduation or to take the 2022 CPALE. In order to determine the factors affecting the decision of the graduating Accountancy students, the researchers adopted the descriptive survey design. Descriptive survey is a sort of descriptive study that uses surveys to collect data on a variety of issues. The goal of this information is to see (...) how different circumstances can be obtained among the respondents. The following results were derived in the course of the conduct of this study; There is bigger percentage of female than of male where 26 out of 27 belongs to the age group of 20 to 22. Majority of the student’s parent’s occupation status is working. Conversely, most of them only earns P2,000 to P5,000 per month even though the household member earning for a living is 1 to 4 members, the first 3 factors namely financial status, peer pressure and parent’s influence were found to slightly affect the decision of the student with regards to taking the CPALE or to work after graduation. The last factor, school’s teaching influence turned out that it somewhat affects the decision of the students, there is a significant difference between the teaching influence factor and the demographic profile of gender while on the age and parent’s occupation status, it has a significance difference with financial status factor. As BSA students taking a course where a licensure examination awaits after graduation, it is necessary to take some factors into consideration before coming up into a decision regarding taking the CPALE or to work after graduation. Based on the results of the study, the level of factors to affect the decision of the students was determined. It has been shown in the results that the three factors namely financial status, peer pressure and parent’s influence can slightly affect the student’s decision. However, among three, peer pressure has the highest weighted mean rating of 2.86. On the other hand, the school’s teaching influence has the lowest weighted mean rating of 2.29 which means it can somewhat affect the decision of the student. (shrink)

According to new mechanists, mechanisms explain how specific biological phenomena are produced. New mechanists have had little to say about how mechanisms relate to the organism in which they reside. A key feature of organisms, emphasized by the autonomy tradition, is that organisms maintain themselves. To do this, they rely on mechanisms. But mechanisms must be controlled so that they produce the phenomena for which they are responsible when and in the manner needed by the organism. To account for how (...) they are controlled, we characterize mechanisms as sets of constraints on the flow of free energy. Some constraints are flexible and can be acted on by other mechanisms, control mechanisms, that utilize information procured from the organism and its environment to alter the flexible constraints in other mechanisms so that they produce phenomena appropriate to the circumstances. We further show that control mechanisms in living organisms are organized heterarchically—control is carried out primarily by local controllers that integrate information they acquire as well as that which they procure from other control mechanisms. The result is not a hierarchy of control but an integrated network of control mechanisms that has been crafted over the course of evolution. (shrink)

Worlds where things divide forever ("gunk" worlds) are apparently conceivable. The conceivability of such scenarios has been used as an argument against "nihilist" or "near-nihilist" answers to the special composition question. I argue that the mereological nihilist has the resources to explain away the illusion that gunk is possible.

A representationalist-friendly introduction to representationalism which covers a number of central problems and objections.

"William Day is . . . concerned to explore the dynamics of what Cavell calls 'a theology of reading' through a careful examination of a fragment of the philosopher's autobiography first published as 'Excerpts from Memory' (2006) and subsequently revised for Little Did I Know (2010). If, as Cavell suggests, 'the underlying subject' of both criticism and philosophy is 'the subject of examples', in which our interest lies in their emblematic aptness or richness as exemplars, exemplarity becomes central to the (...) aim of our reading. . . . Day considers how autobiography as a genre is preoccupied with the question of the author's exemplarity (Augustine or Rousseau), and in Cavell's retelling in 'Excerpts from Memory' he discusses how an event that Cavell would have us read allegorically - his move at the age of seven to a new apartment, his coming upon a familiar bowl containing nonpareils, his remark upon this to his father and his father's violent reaction - recasts a scene of paternal hatred as the child's offer of communion. Day suggests that this retelling proves to be redemptive: first, of the incident itself, and second, of the reader's own experience. Seeing how to read this autobiographical life as exemplary helps us to transfigure our own moments of deprivation into so many possibilities for freedom." --James Loxley and Andrew Taylor, introductory chapter to Stanley Cavell: Philosophy, Literature and Criticism, 15-16. (shrink)

The first and greatest commandment according to Jesus, and so the one most central to Christian practice, is the command to love God. We argue that this commandment is best interpreted in aretaic rather than deontic terms. In brief, we argue that there is no obligation to love God. While bad, failure to seek and enjoy a union of love with God is not in violation of any general moral requirement. The core argument is straightforward: relations of intimacy should not (...) be morally imposed upon autonomous beings. We contend that such reasoning applies to human beings’ relationship to God. So, even if our ultimate end is to enjoy communion with God, God has no right that human beings seek a relationship with him. If this is correct, then the command to ‘love God’ is not the sort of moral principle that can be supported by threats of hellfire or other forms of coercion. (shrink)

In this essay, we suggest practical ways to shift the framing of crisis standards of care toward disability justice. We elaborate on the vision statement provided in the 2010 Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) “Summary of Guidance for Establishing Crisis Standards of Care for Use in Disaster Situations,” which emphasizes fairness; equitable processes; community and provider engagement, education, and communication; and the rule of law. We argue that interpreting these elements through disability justice entails a commitment to both (...) distributive and recognitive justice. The disability rights movement's demand “Nothing about us, without us” requires substantive inclusion of disabled people in decision‐making related to their interests, including in crisis planning before, during, and after a pandemic like Covid‐19. (shrink)