In The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, David Papineau offers some metaphysical reasons for rejecting representationalism. This paper overviews these reasons, arguing that while some of his arguments against some versions of representationalism succeed, there are versions of phenomenal intentionalism that escape his criticisms. Still, once we consider some of the contents of perceptual experiences, such as their perspectival contents, it is clear that perceptual experience does not present us with the world as we take it to be. This leads to (...) a rather attenuated form of representationalism, perhaps one that even Papineau could come close to agreeing with. (shrink)

Four studies explore the role of perceptual fluency in attenuating bullshit receptivity, or the tendency for individuals to rate otherwise meaningless statements as “profound”. Across four studies, we presented participants with a sample of pseudoprofound bullshit statements in either a fluent or disfluent font and found that overall, disfluency attenuated bullshit receptivity while also finding little evidence that this effect was moderated by cognitive thinking style. In all studies, we measured participants’ cognitive reflection, need for cognition, faith in intuition, and (...) superstitious beliefs. Superstition strongly predicted bullshit receptivity regardless of fluency. Inconclusive results were found for the remaining scales. Potential links for the role of perceptual disfluency in promoting analytic thinking are discussed. (shrink)

What sort of doxastic response is rational to learning that one disagrees with an epistemic peer who has evaluated the same evidence? I argue that even weak general recommendations run the risk of being incompatible with a pair of real epistemic phenomena, what I call evidential attenuation and evidential amplification. I focus on a popular and intuitive view of disagreement, the equal weight view. I take it to state that in cases of peer disagreement, a subject ought to end (...) up equally confident that her own opinion is correct as that the opinion of her peer is. I say why we should regard the equal weight view as a synchronic constraint on (prior) credence functions. I then spell out a trilemma for the view: it violates what are intuitively correct updates (also leading to violations of conditionalisation), it poses implausible restrictions on prior credence functions, or it is non-substantive. The sorts of reasons why the equal weight view fails apply to other views as well: there is no blanket answer to the question of how a subject should adjust her opinions in cases of peer disagreement. (shrink)

This paper pursues two lines of inquiry. First, drawing on evidence from clinical literature on borderline states of consciousness, I propose a new categorical framework for liminal states of consciousness associated with certain forms of meditative attainment; second, I argue for dissociating phenomenal character from phenomenal content in accounting for the etiology of nonconceptual states of awareness. My central argument is that while the idea of nonconceptual awareness remains problematic for Buddhist philosophy of mind, our linguistic and categorizing practices cannot (...) be adequately explained without considering the ways in which the first-person phenomenology grounds a more basic level of cognitive and affective sensing. (shrink)

Much contemporary debate on the nature of mechanisms centers on the issue of modulating negative causes. One type of negative causability, which I refer to as “causation by absence,” appears difficult to incorporate into modern accounts of mechanistic explanation. This paper argues that a recent attempt to resolve this problem, proposed by Benjamin Barros, requires improvement as it overlooks the fact that not all absences qualify as sources of mechanism failure. I suggest that there are a number of additional types (...) of effects caused by absences that need to be incorporated to account for the diversity of causal connections in the biological sciences. Furthermore, it is argued that recognizing natural variability in mechanisms, such as attenuation, leads to some interesting line-drawing issues for contemporary philosophy of mechanisms. (shrink)

According to a number of influential views in penal theory, 1 one of the primary goals of the criminal justice system is to rehabilitate offenders. Rehabilitativemeasures are commonly included as a part of a criminal sentence. For example, in some jurisdictions judges may order violent offenders to attend anger management classes or to undergo cognitive behavioural therapy as a part of their sentences. In a limited number of cases, neurointerventions — interventions that exert a direct biological effect on the brain (...) — have been used as aids to rehabilitation, typically being imposed as part of criminal sentences, separate treatment orders, or conditions of parole. Examples of such interventions include medications intended to attenuate addictive desires in substance-abusing offenders and agents intended to suppress libido in sex offenders.This chapter reviews some of the ethical issues raised by the use of neurointerventions as aids to rehabilitation. (shrink)

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis ought to serve as a reminder about the costs of failure to consider another long-term risk, climate change. For this reason, it is imperative to consider the merits of policies that may help to limit climate damages. This essay rebuts three common objections to carbon taxes: (1) that they do not change behaviour, (2) that they generate unfair burdens and increase inequality, and (3) that fundamental, systemic change is needed instead of carbon taxes. The (...) responses are (1) that there is both theoretical and empirical reason to think that carbon taxes do change behaviour, with larger taxes changing it to a greater extent; (2) that undistributed carbon taxes are regressive but distributing the tax receipts can alleviate that regressivity (and, in many cases, make the overall effect progressive); and (3) that while small changes for increasing democratic decision-making may be helpful, (fundamental) change takes time and the climate crisis requires urgent action. [Open access] //// -/- La crise de lamaladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) devrait servir de rappel sur les coûts de la non-prise en compte d’un autre risque à long terme, les changements climatiques. Pour cette raison, il est impératif de considérer lesmérites des politiques susceptibles de contribuer à limiter les changements climatiques. Cet essai réfute trois objections courantes aux taxes sur le carbone : (1) qu’elles ne changent pas les comportements (2) qu’elles génèrent des charges injustes et augmentent les inégalités, et (3) qu’un changement fondamental et systémique est nécessaire au lieu de taxes sur le carbone. Les réponses sont (1) qu’il existe des raisons à la fois théoriques et empiriques de penser que les taxes sur le carbone modifient effectivement les comportements, et que des taxes plus élevées les modifient dans une plus grande mesure; (2) que les taxes sur le carbone non distribuées sont régressives,mais que la distribution des recettes fiscales peut atténuer cette régressivité (et, dans de nombreux cas, rendre l’effet global progressif); et (3) que, bien que de petits changements pour l’amélioration de la prise de décision démocratique peuvent être utiles, un changement (fondamental) prend du temps et la crise climatique exige une action urgente. (shrink)

Contemplative scholarship has recently reoriented attention towards the neuroscientific study of the soteriological ambition of Buddhist practice, 'awakening'. This article evaluates the project of seeking neural correlates for awakening. Key definitional and operational issues are identified demonstrating that: the nature of awakening is highly contested both within and across Buddhist traditions; the meaning of awakening is both context- and concept-dependent; and awakening may be non-conceptual and ineffable. It is demonstrated that operationalized secular conceptions of awakening, divorced from soteriological and cultural (...) factors, have little relationship to traditional Buddhist construct(s) of awakening. This article identifies methodological issues for secular conceptions of awakening concerning introspection and neuroimaging yet demonstrates also the value of recent advancements in empirical first-person phenomenology for attenuating introspective bias. Overall, it is contended that significant problems arise when decontextualizing awakening and placing it within a scientific naturalistic framework. Careful attention to the definitional, operational, and methodological neuroscientific obstacles identified herein is required in the responsible approach to the investigation of awakening states. (shrink)

At the phenomenal level, consciousness can be described as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness, consistently coherent in a particualr way; that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain, such that conscious self-awareness is explicitly characterized by I-ness, now-ness and here-ness. The psychological mechanism underwriting this spatiotemporal self-locatedness and its recursive processing style involves an evolutionary elaboration of the basic orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing spatiotemporal self-location computations as i-here-now. Cognition computes action-output (...) in the midst of ongoing movement, and consequently requires a constant self-locating spatiotemporal reference frame as basis for these computations. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged both the proliferation of anticipative feedforward processing mechansims, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive i-here-now processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness. (shrink)

Contrary to Block's assertion, “identity-crowding” does not provide an interesting instance of object-seeing without object-attention. The successful judgments and unusual phenomenology of identity-crowding are better explained by unconscious perception and non-perceptual phenomenology associated with cognitive states. In identity-crowding, as in other cases of crowding, subjects see jumbled textures and cannot individuate the items contributing to those textures in the absence of attention. Block presents an attenuated sense in which identity-crowded items are seen, but this is irrelevant to the debate about (...) phenomenal experience of an object in the absence of object-attention. Finally, even unconscious object perception in identity-crowding likely involves an attention-like selective process. (shrink)

Many philosophers and psychologists have sought to explain experiences of auditory verbal hallucinations and “inserted thoughts” in schizophrenia in terms of a failure on the part of patients to appropriately monitor their own inner speech. These self-monitoring accounts have recently been challenged by some who argue that AVHs are better explained in terms of the spontaneous activation of auditory-verbal representations. This paper defends two kinds of self-monitoring approach against the spontaneous activation account. The defense requires first making some important clarifications (...) concerning what is at issue in the dispute between the two forms of theory. A popular but problematic self-monitoring theory is then contrasted with two more plausible conceptions of what the relevant self-monitoring deficits involve. The first appeals to deficits in the neural mechanisms that normally filter or attenuate sensory signals that are the result of one’s own actions. The second, less familiar, form of self-monitoring approach draws an important analogy between Wernicke’s aphasia and AVHs in schizophrenia. This style of self-monitoring theory pursues possible connections among AVHs, inserted thoughts, and the disorganized speech characteristic formal thought disorder. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers and psychologists have claimed that the explanation that grounds both passivity phenomena in the cognitive domain and passivity phenomena that occur with respect to overt actions is, along broad lines, the same. Furthermore, they claim that the best account we have of such phenomena in both scenarios is the “comparator” account. However, there are reasons to doubt whether the comparator model can be exported from the realm of overt actions to the cognitive domain in general. There is (...) a lingering worry concerning such explanations of thought insertion: the "What is compared to what?" problem. Here I examine two ways to tackle this problem. First: thought insertion consists of the misattribution of strings of inner speech which are not attenuated (thought insertion is thus another name for auditory verbal hallucinations). Second: thought insertion is misattributed inner speech which exhibits the same phenomenological characteristics as normal inner speech. After explaining the types of problem that each of these potential solutions faces, I conclude with a set of open questions that the comparator theorist has to tackle. (shrink)

Entitlement is defined as a sort of epistemic justification that one can possess by default – a sort of epistemic justification that does not need to be earned or acquired. Epistemologists who accept the existence of entitlement generally have a certain anti-sceptical role in mind for it – entitlement is intended to help us resist what would otherwise be compelling radical sceptical arguments. But this role leaves various details unspecified and, thus, leaves scope for a number of different potential conceptions (...) of entitlement. At one extreme there are conceptions that portray entitlement as a weak, attenuated epistemic status and, at the other, we have conceptions that portray entitlement as something potent and strong. Certain intermediate conceptions are also possible. In this paper, I shall argue that the weak and intermediate conceptions of entitlement do not survive careful scrutiny, and the stronger conceptions – while they do, in a way, strain credulity – are the only conceptions that are ultimately viable. (shrink)

Prior work proposes a view of development of purpose and source of meaning in life as a more or less temporally distal project ideal self-situation in terms of which intermediate situations are experienced and prospects evaluated. This work considers Augustine on ensoulment alongside current work into self as adapted routines to common social regularities of the sort that Augustine found deficient. How can we account for such diversity of self-reported value orientation in terms of common structural dynamics differently developed, embodied (...) and enacted over the life course? This work in progress represents divergent views as different sorts of error theory, and hypothesizes that differential development of spindle neural projections underlies different accounts of error for attentive self-correction through iterative attenuation. Some implications for AI augmentation and value alignment of autonomous agents developed on such a model are briefly entertained. (shrink)

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e‐participation platforms, location‐based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a (...) catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the psychological mechanisms behind the construction of preference, especially the actual processes used by humans when they make decisions in their everyday lives or in business situations. The chapter uses cognitive psychological techniques to break down these processes and set them in their social context. When attributes are compatible with the response scale, they are assigned greater weight because they are most easily mapped onto the response. For instance, when subjects are asked to set a price (...) for a gamble this task is compatible with the information about the gamble payoff, which is also expressed in monetary values (e.g., dollars). Conversely, when the task requires a choice the payoff information is not easily mapped onto the response anymore and loses some of its salience. In fact, Slovic, Griffin, and Tversky (1990) could show that using non-monetary outcomes attenuates preference reversals when no compatibility between the pricing task and the outcome attribute was possible. An assumption of the compatibility effect is that response modes compatible with specific characteristics of the options (e.g., payoffs) draw attention to them. One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed—not merely revealed—in the process of elicitation (see e.g. Slovic). This conception is derived in part from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation often give rise to systematically different responses. These "preference reversals" violate the principle of procedure invariance fundamental to theories of rational choice and raise difficult questions about the nature of human values. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? Describing and explaining such failures of invariance will require choice models of far greater complexity than the traditional models -/- . (shrink)

After distinguishing three conceptions of virtue and its impact on ordinary attachments to external goods such as social status, power, friends, and wealth, this paper argues that the Confucian Analects is most charitably interpreted as endorsing the wholehearted internalization conception, on which virtue reforms but does not completely extinguish ordinary attachments to external goods. I begin by building on Amy Olberding’s attack on the extinguishing attachments conception, but go on to criticize her alternative, resolute sacrifice conception, on which the virtuous (...) retain their ordinary attachments to external goods but are able to master them and willingly settle for virtue. I argue that we should reject this view because, unlike the wholehearted internalization conception, it cannot capture the facts that virtue silences or attenuates attachment to viciously obtained external goods and that virtue grounds positive emotional and cognitive self-assessments that are incompatible with some ordinary attachments to external goods. (shrink)

The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition to (...) those who argue that formulation is impossible because no account of what is to count as physical can be provided, I argue that as long as the purpose of the argument in which the account is to be used are borne in mind there are no significant difficulties. The account of the physical which I develop holds as physical whatever is needed to fix the likelihood of pre-theoretically given physical effects, and hypothesises in addition that no chemical, biological or psychological factors will be needed in this way. The thus formulated Completeness Thesis is coherent, and has significant empirical content. In opposition to those who defend the doctrine of emergentism by means of philosophical arguments I contend that those arguments are flawed, setting up misleading dichotomies between needlessly attenuated alternatives and assuming the truth of what is to be proved. Against those who defend emergentism by appeal to the evidence, I argue that the history of science since the nineteenth century shows clearly that the empirical credentials of the view that the world is causally closed at the level of a small number of purely physical forces and types of energy is stronger than ever, and the credentials of emergentism correspondingly weaker. In opposition to those who argue that difficulties with reductionism point to the implausibility of the Completeness Thesis I argue that completeness in no way entails the kinds of reductionism which give rise to the difficulties in question. I argue further that the truth of the Completeness Thesis is in fact compatible with a great deal of taxonomic disorder and the impossibility of any general reduction of non-fundamental descriptions to fundamental ones. In opposition to those who argue that the epistemological credentials of fundamental physical laws are poor, and that those laws should in fact be seen as false, I contend that truth preserving accounts of fundamental laws can be developed. Developing such an account, I test it by considering cases of the composition of forces and causes, where what takes place is different to what is predicted by reference to any single law, and argue that viewing laws as tendencies allows their truth to be preserved, and sense to be made of both the experimental discovery of laws, and the fact that composition enables accurate prediction in at least some cases. (shrink)

Understanding cooperative human behaviour depends on insights into the biological basis of human altruism, as well as into socio-cultural development. In terms of evolutionary theory, kinship and reciprocity are well established as underlying cooperativeness. Reasons will be given suggesting an additional source, the capability of a cognition-based empathy that may have evolved as a by-product of strategic thought. An assessment of the range, the intrinsic limitations, and the conditions for activation of human cooperativeness would profit from a systems approach combining (...) biological and socio-cultural aspects. However, this is not yet the prevailing attitude among contemporary social and biological scientists who often hold prejudiced views of each other's notions. It is therefore worth noticing that the desirable integration of aspects has already been attempted, in remarkable and encouraging ways, in the history of thought on human nature. I will exemplify this with the ideas of the fourteenth century Arab-Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun. He set out to explicate human cooperativeness - "asabiyah" - as having a biological basis in common descent, but being extendable far beyond within social systems, though in a relatively unstable and attenuated fashion. He combined psychological and material factors in a dynamical theory of the rise and decline of political rulership, and related general social phenomena to basic features of human behaviour influenced by kinship, expectation of reciprocity, and empathic emotions. -/- . (shrink)

This article links recent work on assimilative and contrastive counterfactual thinking with research on the impact of accountability on judgment and choice. Relative to participants who felt accountable solely for bottom-line performance outcomes, participants who were accountable for their decision-making process (a) had more pronounced differential reactions to clearly winning versus (winning but) nearly losing and to clearly losing versus (losing but) nearly winning; (b) were less satisfied with the quality of their decisions when they nearly lost and more satisfied (...) with the quality of their decisions when they nearly won; and (c) invested less money into investments that nearly failed and more money into investments that nearly succeeded. This pattern is consistent with the hypothesis that process accountability amplified assimilative counterfactual thinking, whereas outcome accountability attenuated it. The evidence underscores the power of contextual features of the decision-making environment to shape key cognitive and affective consequences of upward and downward counterfactual comparisons. (shrink)

Two studies examined the allegiance bias – the rendering of biased predictions by individuals who are psychologically invested in a desired outcome. In Study 1, fans of either Notre Dame or University of Miami college football read information about an upcoming game between the two teams and then explained a hypothetical victory either by Notre Dame or Miami. Although explaining a hypothetical victory biased the judgments of controls (i.e., fans of neither team) in the direction of the team explained, the (...) judgments of Notre Dame and Miami fans favored their team in every explanation condition. In addition, fans exhibited biased recall for facts favoring their own teams and this biased recall predicted fans’ judgments regarding the upcoming game. Study 2 attempted to specify a debiasing technique that might attenuate the allegiance bias. Indiana University basketball fans described what they thought might happen in an upcoming game between Indiana and the University of Michigan while anticipating having a discussion about the game (i.e., predecisional accountability) with either an Indiana fan, a Michigan fan, or a fan of unknown allegiance. As predicted, anticipating a discussion with a fan of unknown allegiance engendered game predictions that were the least biased in favor of an Indiana victory. Implications for social explanation and prediction research are discussed. (shrink)

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has a new mechanism to receive individual complaints and issue views, which makes the question of how the Committee should interpret the broad articles of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights more pressing than ever. Most commentators on the legitimacy of the CESCR’s interpretation have argued that interpreters should make better use of Articles 31–33 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) in order to improve (...) the legitimacy of their findings. In this article, we argue conversely that the individual communication mechanism should be evaluated and reformed in terms of legitimate authority. In the context of the Committee’s process of interpretation, we contend that proportionality is better suited than the various interpretive options of the VCLT to offer a consistent procedure that is able to generate legitimacy by attenuating the tension between personal and collective autonomy. (shrink)

Background: Individuals with psychopathic traits demonstrate an attenuated emotional response to aversive stimuli. However, recent evidence suggests heterogeneity in emotional reactivity among individuals with psychopathic or callous-unemotional (CU) traits, the emotional detachment dimension of psychopathy. We hypothesize that primary variants of psychopathy will respond with blunted affect to negatively valenced stimuli, whereas individuals marked with histories of childhood trauma/maltreatment exposure, known as secondary variants, will display heightened emotional reactivity. To test this hypothesis, the present study examined fear-potentiated startle between psychopathy (...) variants while viewing aversive, pleasant, and neutral scenes. Method: 238 incarcerated adolescent (M age = 16.8, SD = 1.11 years) boys completed a picture-startle paradigm and self-report questionnaires assessing CU traits, antisocial-aggressive behavior, and maltreatment. Results: Latent profile analyses identified four classes; primary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, low maltreatment; n = 46), secondary variants (high CU traits, high aggression, high maltreatment; n = 42), and two nonpsychopathic groups differentiated on maltreatment experience (n = 148). Findings from an ANOVA comparing identified groups on startle amplitude difference scores (i.e., aversive-neutral) suggested a main effect for group, F(3,196)=8.91, p<.001, η2 = .12. Primary variants of juvenile psychopathy displayed reduced startle potentiation to aversive images (threat and victim scenes), whereas secondary variants distinguished by high levels of childhood maltreatment did not. Conclusions: Findings add to a rapidly growing body of literature supporting the possibility of multiple developmental pathways to psychopathy (i.e., equifinality), and extend it by finding support for divergent potential biomarkers between primary and secondary psychopathy variants. (shrink)

In this paper I take evolutionary biology as an example to reflect on the role of philosophy and on the transformations that philosophy is constantly stimulated to do in its own approach when dealing with science. I consider that some intellectual movements within evolutionary biology (more specifically, the various calls for 'synthesis') express metascientific views, i.e., claims about 'what it is to do research' in evolutionary biology at different times. In the construction of metascientific views I see a fundamental role (...) to be played by philosophy, and, at the same time, a need to complement the philosophical methods with many more methods coming from other sciences. What leads philosophy out of itself is its own attention to scientific practice. My humble methodological suggestions are, at this stage, only meant to help us imagine metascientific views that are built with a more scientific, interdisciplinary approach, in order to attenuate partiality, subjectivity and impressionism in describing the scientific community. And yet, we should not be naïve and imbued with the myth of 'datadriven' research, especially in this field: other complex issues about metascientific views call for a serious, constant philosophical reflection on scientific practice. (shrink)

David Hume was clearly a critic of religion. It is still debated, however, whether or not he was an atheist who denied the existence of God. According to some interpretations he was a theist of some kind and others claim he was an agnostic who simply suspends any belief on this issue. This essay argues that Hume’s theory of belief tells against any theistic interpretation – including the weaker, “attenuated” accounts. It then turns to the case for the view that (...) Hume’s criticisms of theism were limited to the “soft” skeptical (agnostic) aim of discrediting theist arguments, and shows that he is committed to a “harder” skeptical view that denies the theist hypothesis (in all its forms). Hume’s atheistic commitments are, the paper concludes, entirely consistent with his mitigated skeptical principles. (shrink)

Metaphysical explanations, unlike many other kinds of explanation, are standardly thought to be insensitive to our epistemic situation and so are not evaluable by cognitive values such as salience. I consider a case study that challenges this view. Some properties are distributed over an extension. For example, the property of being polka-dotted red on white, when instantiated, is distributed over a surface. Similar properties have been put to work in a variety of explanatory tasks in recent metaphysics, including: providing an (...) analysis of change, giving to presentists truthmakers for past claims; giving to priority monists an account of basic heterogeneous entities; and giving to friends of extended simples an explanation of how an extended simple can enjoy qualitative variation. I argue that such explanations exhibit salience failure. How ought we represent the semantics of salience? Differences in linguistic stress induce semantic differences similar to the semantic differences induced in explanations by differences in salience, and I will draw an analogy with linguistic theories of focus sensitivity to sketch how one might model the role of salience in these kinds of explanations. I end with a few tentative conclusions about the role of cognitive values in metaphysical explanations. Some theorists view the citation of a ground as a sufficient explanation. If certain explanations appealing to distributed properties exhibit attenuated salience, then arguably the mere citation of a ground does not always provide an adequate explanation. (shrink)

In light of the pragmatic aspirations of ordinary language philosophy, this essay critically examines the competing grammatical strictures that are often set forth within the theoretical discourse of 'power'. It repudiates both categorically appraisive employments of 'power' and the antithetical urge to fully operationalize the concept. It offers an attenuated defense of the thesis that 'power' is an essentially contestable concept, but rejects the notion that this linguistic fact stems from conflict between antipodal ideological paradigms. Careful attention to the ordinary (...) pragmatics of power-language evinces the prospects for integrating various context-specific aspects of power and mediating between traditionally divergent theoretical frameworks. (shrink)

I offer a reading of the two conceptions of the good found in Plato’s Protagoras: the popular conception—‘the many’s’ conception—and Socrates’ conception. I pay particular attention to the three kinds of goods Socrates introduces: (a) bodily pleasures like food, drink, and sex; (b) instrumental goods like wealth, health, or power; and (c) virtuous actions like courageously going to war. My reading revises existing views about these goods in two ways. First, I argue that the many are only ‘hedonists’ in a (...) very attenuated sense. They do not value goods of kind (b) simply as means to pleasures of kind (a); rather, they have fundamentally different attitudes to (a) and (b). Second, the hedonism that Socrates’ defends includes a distinction between kinds of pleasures: (a) bodily pleasures and (c) the pleasures of virtuous actions. This distinction between kinds of pleasures—some that do and some that do not exert the ‘power of appearance’—allows Socrates to address one of the central beliefs in the popular conception of akrasia, namely that it involves a special kind of unruly desire: non-rational appetites for pleasures like food, drink, or sex. Socrates replaces the motivational push of non-rational appetites with the epistemic pull of the appearance of immediate pleasures like food, drink, and sex. (shrink)

In certain corners of the moral enhancement debate, it has been suggested we ought to consider the prospect of supplementing conventional methods of enhancing sexual fidelity (e.g. relationship counselling, moral education, self-betterment, etc.) with biochemical fidelity enhancement methods. In surveying this argument, I begin from the conviction that generally-speaking moral enhancement ought to expectably attenuate (or at least not exacerbate) vulnerability. Assuming conventional methods of enhancing sexual fidelity are at least partially effective in this respect – e.g., that relationship counselling (...) sometimes successfully attenuates the particular vulnerability victims of infidelity feel – then presumably the case for supplementing conventional methods with biochemical methods turns, in part, on the claim that doing so will better promote attenuation of victim vulnerability. -/- In this paper I argue that on a sufficiently sophisticated conception of what this vulnerability consists in, biochemical methods of enhancing fidelity will not expectably attenuate victims’ vulnerability. Moreover, when combined with conventional methods, biochemical methods will predictably tend to undermine whatever attenuation conventional methods expectably promote in that respect. Thus, I conclude that couples committed to saving their relationship following an instance of sexual infidelity have reason to prefer conventional methods of enhancing sexual fidelity sans biochemical methods to conventional methods plus biochemical methods. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre’s work in ethics follows in the footsteps of twentieth century efforts to put the ideals of Enlightenment and modernity on trial, and his book After Virtue diagnoses a wide-spread malaise in contemporary moral discourse. As a corrective to this condition, MacIntyre offers a remedy along Aristotelian-Thomistic lines. He specifically conceives of a recovery of these lines that would allow for a common ground in moral debates which would reveal the normative and teleological character of the human good. However, (...) within these pages, I argue that MacIntyre underestimates how his moral corrective is actually a re-inscription of the Enlightenment project, and thus equally doomed to failure. I do this by sketching out three different lines. First, I present MacIntyre’s appraisal of modern moral discourse, which has long since abandoned a reliance of Aristotelian principles of ethics. Second, I outline an informative disjunction MacIntyre sets up between having to choose between a Nietzschean or an Aristotelian model of ethical action. Last, I argue that MacIntyre’s own choice, simultaneously based on, but also diverging from, Aristotle fails because his revamped account of the virtue formation so necessary for modern human flourishing leaves open a space for its development according to contingent histories and traditions, which implies an attenuated account of the virtue ethics he seeks to recover, and vindicates, rather than condemns, the Enlightenment’s attempt to liberate moral theories from its strict teleological forbears. (shrink)

TB human challenge studies could accelerate TB vaccine development by reducing uncertainty in early-stage vaccine testing, selecting promising vaccine candidates for large-scale field trials, and identifying an immune correlate of protection. However, ethical concerns regarding the exposure of trial participants and bystanders to significant risk have been a limiting factor for TB human challenge models. We analyze the expected social value and risks of different types of TB human challenge models, and conclude that given the massive public health burden of (...) TB, challenge models with even scant probabilities of expediting TB vaccine authorization have enormous expected humanitarian value, saving between 33,000 and 1,375,000 lives over the next ten years. We argue that attenuated M.tb challenge trials can be conducted ethically, and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of conducting virulent M.tb challenge trials. (shrink)

Many commentators have claimed that Nietzsche views the “sublimation” (Sublimierung) of drives as a positive achievement. Against this tradition, I argue that, on the dominant if not universal Nietzschean use of Sublimierung and its cognates, sublimation is just a broad psychological analogue of the traditional (al)chemical process: the “vaporization” of drives into a finer or lighter state, figuratively if not literally. This can yield ennobling elevation, or purity in a positive sense—the intensified “sublimate” of an unrefined original sample. But it (...) can also yield drives that are attenuated or otherworldly, in a pejorative sense. One (but only one) kind of Nietzschean sublimation is the “translation” of drives to “imaginative and spiritual” (Imaginative und Seelische) modes of expression. I con­clude that, despite certain appearances to the contrary, Nietzsche ultimately values basic drives’ powerful expression, without preferring either that this occur specifically as “higher culture” or as “savage” natural impulse. (shrink)

Press release. -/- The ebook entitled, Einstein’s Revolution: A Study of Theory-Unification, gives students of physics and philosophy, and general readers, an epistemological insight into the genesis of Einstein’s special relativity and its further unification with other theories, that ended well by the construction of general relativity. The book was developed by Rinat Nugayev who graduated from Kazan State University relativity department and got his M.Sci at Moscow State University department of philosophy of science and Ph.D at Moscow Institute of (...) Philosophy, Russian Academy of Science. He has forty years of philosophy of science and relativistic astrophysics teaching and research experience evincing in more than 200 papers in the scientific journals of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, USA, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, Poland, Romania, France, Greece, Japan and some other countries, and 8 monographs. Revolutions in physics all embody theoretical unification. Hence the overall aim of the present book is to unfold Einstein’s unificationist modus operandi, the hallmarks of actual Einstein’s methodology of unification that engendered his 1905 special relativity, as well as his 1915 general relativity. To achieve the object, a lucid epistemic model is exposed aimed at an analysis of the reasons for mature theory change in science (chapter1). According to the model, scientific revolutions were not due to fanciful creation of new ideas ‘ex nihilo’, but rather to the long-term processes of the reconciliation, interpenetration and intertwinement of ‘old’ research traditions preceding such breaks .Accordingly, origins of scientific revolutions lie not in a clash of fundamental theories with facts, but of “old” mature research traditions with each other, leading to contradictions that can only be attenuated in a more general theoretical approach. In chapter 2 it is contended that Einstein’s ingenious approach to special relativity creation, substantially distinguishing him from Lorentz’s and Poincaré’s invaluable impacts, turns to be a milestone of maxwellian electrodynamics, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics reconciliation design. Special relativity turns out to be grounded on Einstein’s breakthrough 1905 light quantum hypothesis. Eventually the author amends the received view on the general relativity genesis by stressing that the main reason for Einstein’s victory over the rival programmes of Abraham and Nordström was a unificationist character of Einstein’s research programme (chapter 3). Rinat M. Nugayev, Ph.D, professor of Volga Region Academy, Kazan, the Republic of Tatarstan, the Russian Federation. (shrink)

David Hume was clearly a critic of religion. It is still debated, however, whether or not he was an atheist who denied the existence of God. According to some interpretations he was a theist of some kind and others claim he was an agnostic who simply suspends any belief on this issue. This essay argues that Hume’s theory of belief tells against any theistic interpretation – including the weaker, “attenuated” accounts. It then turns to the case for the view that (...) Hume’s criticisms of theism were limited to the “soft” skeptical (agnostic) aim of discrediting theist arguments, and shows that he is committed to a “harder” skeptical view that denies the theist hypothesis (in all its forms). Hume’s atheistic commitments are, the paper concludes, entirely consistent with his mitigated skeptical principles. (shrink)

This article concerns Quentin Meillassoux’s claim that Kant’s revolution is responsible for philosophy’s catastrophic loss of the ‘great outdoors’, of our knowledge of things as they are in themselves. I argue that Meillassoux’s critique of Kant’s ‘weak’ correlationism and his defence of ‘strong’ correlationism are predicated on a fallacious argument (termed ‘the Gem’ by David Stove) and the traditional, but in my view mistaken, metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s transcendental distinction. I draw on Henry Allison’s interpretation of Kant’s idealism to argue (...) that when Kant’s transcendental distinction is understood epistemologically we can avoid the fallacious reasoning underpinning Meillassoux’s argument, and at the very least attenuate his concerns about the ‘Kantian catastrophe’. (shrink)

Weighing competing obligations and achieving the “greatest balance” of right over wrong guides an individual, an agency or a country in determining what ought to be done in an ethically challenging situation. Conducting controlled human infection model (CHIM) studies in India is one such situation. The ethical challenge in conducting a CHIM study lies in completing the difficult task of introducing standardised, attenuated strains of micro-organisms into normal healthy volunteers, at the same time ensuring the safety of these healthy individuals (...) from potential and completely informed risks in a fashion that is transparent and accountable. The bar is further raised against the background of already fragile public confidence in biomedical research in India; especially when “deliberate” introduction of microbial agents into healthy individuals is involved, with the larger altruistic objective of gain to society as a whole. -/- This paper discusses the uses of CHIM studies with respect to the larger scientific Indian research enterprise of the 21st century. It further explores etic and emic perspectives in conducting such trials in India and seeks to generate an ethical coherence to the justification for conducting CHIM studies in India. The paper deliberates on ethical issues arising out of conducting CHIM studies and reflects on how developing the capacity for CHIM studies in India is likely to strengthen the health research and development sector in the country. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that Quine’s rejection of Carnap’s “radical” (FLPV; TDE 39) and “phenomenalistic” (FSS 15-16) reductionism—as it is manifest in the Aufbau—may be understood in terms of a broader historical context. In particular, it may be understood as a rejection of a contemporary variant of the second horn of Meno’s Paradox. As a result, Quine’s motivation to adopt naturalism may be understood independently of his pragmatic concerns. According to Quine, it was simply unreasonable (i.e. paradoxical) to adopt a Carnapian phenomenalistic/mentalistic (...) (non-naturalistic) approach to epistemology. Armed with what could only be his invigorated faith in the naturalistic method, he was then, as I see it, equipped to break what we may characterize as the physicalistic version of the naturalistic circle. This is a repudiation that, I show, entails his rejection of “attenuated” (FLPV; TDE 41) reductionism and concomitantly, his rejection of “analyticity,” if not “certainty” altogether. As a result, Quine could simultaneously dismiss what we may characterize as the Humean version of the naturalistic circle. Meanwhile, the practicality of an admittedly fallible science could be unashamedly embraced, although not just for the sake of its practicality—as Quine himself seems to misleadingly indicate throughout his work—but instead, as just noted, to avoid the seemingly Platonic paradox of Aufbauian reductionism. (shrink)

Drawing upon the recent theoretical framework of Burkean concept of identification (ID), the current study aims at probing the interaction of content and form in two letters penned by Iran’s Supreme Leader and addressed to the Youth on Jan. and Nov. 2015. To this end, the study seeks (i) to determine a role ID takes in the conveyance of intended assumptions to the targeted readers; and (ii) to observe if the writer’s objectives, i.e. to identify himself with the readers and (...) to realize his politically-religiously-infused creeds, result in success or failure; moreover, (iii) it seeks to determine how he achieved his end to attenuate the impacts of blazing inferno of Islamophobia and anti-Islam sentiments in his addressees. The whole corpus (about 3000 words), in light of van Dijk’s Socio-cognitive approach, is critically perused to seek out contextually-coded expressions. The study tries to set out a manner in which political text/talk could be analyzed rhetorically employing ID concept. It was found that ID as a two-way process is a key component for both parties to identify with. It makes the readers align themselves with the writer and helps the writer to associate with the readers and accomplish his goals. (shrink)

This paper examines the responses to advanced and transformative technologies in military literature, attenuates the conclusions of earlier work suggesting that there is an “ignorance of transhumanism” in the military, and updates the current layout of transhuman concerns in military thought. The military is not ignorant of transhuman issues and implications, though there was evidence for this in the past; militaries and non-state actors increasingly use disruptive technologies with what we may call transhuman provenance.

Historical evidence shows that mental symptoms were constructed in a particular historical and cultural context (19th Century alienism). According to the Cambridge model of symptom-formation, mental symptoms are mental acts whereby sufferers configure, by means of cultural templates, information invading their awareness. This information, which can be of biological or semantic origin, is pre-conceptual and pre-linguistic and to be understood and communicated requires formatting and linguistic collocation. Mental symptoms are hybrid objects, that is, blends of inchoate biological or symbolic signals (...) and cultural configurators. "Culture" plays a very deep role in symptom-formation because templates can attenuate or abolish the specificity of the biological signals involved. This means that signals from different brain sites can be configured as the same symptom and signals from the same site as different symptoms. Although always present, the neurobiological substratum is not fundamental in the understanding and management of mental symptoms. These can only be comprehended in relation to the manner of their construction and the cognitive and emotional biographies of each patient. Direct interference with the brain sites involved may dull mental symptoms but is unlikely to offer long-term cure. If the configuratory style and needs of the patient are not understood and dealt with, he is likely to keep re-constituting or replicating his symptoms in relation to other biological signals. In summary, mental symptoms are not passive happenings but genuine mental acts. Hence, the manner and motivation of their construction may be more important than the signal of brain distress that might have provoked them in the first place. (shrink)

In Jylkkä’s (2022) Mary on Acid: Experiences of unity and the epistemic gap the author contends that psychedelic experience, by inducing unitary—nondual—experiences of subject-object dissolution, brings to light the epistemic gap between unitary knowledge, constituted by experience, and relational knowledge, distinct from the experience. Jylkkä draws a connection between the nondual experience as occasioned through psychedelic usage, and Buddhist contemplative practices. Whilst Jylkkä's ambition to establish an epistemic dialogue between analytic philosophy, Buddhism and the science of psychedelics is laudable, more (...) rigorous attention is required to characterizing the forms of unitary, nondual, experience occasioned by psychedelic use. Whilst such parallelism may speak to a deeper unification, such a claim requires substantiation to avoid indulging a naïve perennialism which elides the varied and rich engagement with nonduality across contemplative traditions. This article highlights the: internal tensions that exist surrounding the nature of the nondual elucidated across Indo-Tibetan traditions; dangers of decontextualizing states induced through culturally embedded contemplative practices; under recognized epistemic function of ceremonial ethnomedicine usage in generating Indigenous metaphysics; under acknowledged potential of psychedelic substances for attenuating introspective bias in first-person phenomenological inquiry. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the implications of the notion of hyperspace for scientific realism and the sort of theoretical activity represented by the attempt to arrive at a literal characterization of the noumenal realities that natural science, especially physics, investigates. I conclude that whether or not this enterprise is possible, its being so depends on factors outside of our control for which no internal means of correction is possible. Only a very attenuated form of scientific realism, then, can reasonably (...) be endorsed by sober philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been associated with naturalism due to his arguments that morality, religion, metaphysics, and consciousness are products of natural biological organisms and ultimately natural phenomena. The subject and its mental life are only comprehensible in relation to natural desires, drives, impulses, and instincts. I argue that such typical natu-ralizing tendencies do not exhaust Nietzsche’s project, since they occur in the context of his critique of “nature” and metaphysical, speculative, and scientific naturalisms. Nie-tzsche challenges otherworldly projections of this-worldly beings, as (...) his naturalistic in-terpreters claim, but further the idolization of immanent worldly natural phenomena, in-cluding science itself. “Nature” is an idealization of natural organisms and environments in which its construction, projection, and interpretation is forgotten. Nietzsche strategical-ly uses naturalistic scientific strategies of explanation and demystification, while demys-tifying science, positivism, and naturalism for the sake of life. These do not provide either certainties or foundations for knowledge or life. Naturalism would be anti-natural if it denies of multiplicity and conflict of the forces of life, bracketing the natural and his-torical conditions of existence, and the interpretive and perspectival character of life and knowledge. The nexus of nature and history in Nietzsche is better clarified through his portrayal of the feeling of life and its intensification, attenuation, and transformation in relation to the forces and conditions of life, which encompass processes of socialization and interpretive and artistic individuation in the context of a life. (shrink)

Nietzsche has been associated with naturalism due to his arguments that morality, religion, metaphysics, and consciousness are products of natural biological organisms and ultimately natural phenomena. The subject and its mental life are only comprehensible in relation to natural desires, drives, impulses, and instincts. I argue that such typical naturalizing tendencies do not exhaust Nietzsche’s project, since they occur in the context of his critique of “nature” and metaphysical, speculative, and scientific naturalisms. Nietzsche challenges otherworldly projections of this-worldly beings, as (...) his naturalistic interpreters claim, but further the idolization of immanent worldly natural phenomena, including science itself. “Nature” is an idealization of natural organisms and environments in which its construction, projection, and interpretation is forgotten. Nietzsche strategically uses naturalistic scientific strategies of explanation and demystification, while demystifying science, positivism, and naturalism for the sake of life. These do not provide either certainties or foundations for knowledge or life. Naturalism would be anti-natural if it denies of multiplicity and conflict of the forces of life, bracketing the natural and historical conditions of existence, and the interpretive and perspectival character of life and knowledge. The nexus of nature and history in Nietzsche is better clarified through his portrayal of the feeling of life and its intensification, attenuation, and transformation in relation to the forces andconditions of life, which encompass processes of socialization and interpretive and artistic individuation in the context of a life. (shrink)

This paper examines the responses to advanced and transformative technologies in military literature, attenuates the conclusions of earlier work suggesting that there is an “ignorance of transhumanism” in the military, and updates the current layout of transhuman concerns in military thought. The military is not ignorant of transhuman issues and implications, though there was evidence for this in the past; militaries and non-state actors (including terrorists) increasingly use disruptive technologies with what we may call transhuman provenance.