Functional decomposition is an important goal in the life sciences, and is central to mechanistic explanation and explanatory reduction. A growing literature in philosophy of science, however, has challenged decomposition-based notions of explanation. ‘Holists’ posit that complex systems exhibit context-sensitivity, dynamic interaction, and network dependence, and that these properties undermine decomposition. They then infer from the failure of decomposition to the failure of mechanistic explanation and reduction. I argue that complexity, so construed, is only incompatible with one notion of decomposition, (...) which I call ‘atomism’, and not with decomposition writ large. Atomism posits that function ascriptions must be made to parts with minimal reference to the surrounding system. Complexity does indeed falsify atomism, but I contend that there is a weaker, ‘contextualist’ notion of decomposition that is fully compatible with the properties that holists cite. Contextualism suggests that the function of parts can shift with external context, and that interactions with other parts might help determine their context-appropriate functions. This still admits of functional decomposition within a given context. I will give examples based on the notion of oscillatory multiplexing in systems neuroscience. If contextualism is feasible, then holist inferences are faulty—one cannot infer from the presence of complexity to the failure of decomposition, mechanism, and reductionism. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been fascinated by the stream of consciousness––thoughts, images, and bits of inner speech that dance across the inner stage. Yet for centuries, such “mind-wandering” was deemed private and thus resistant to empirical investigation. Recent developments in psychology and neuroscience have reinvigorated scientific interest in the stream of thought, leading some researchers to dub this “the era of the wandering mind”. Despite this flurry of progress, scientists have stressed that mind-wandering research requires firmer philosophical foundations. The time is (...) therefore ripe for the philosophy of mind-wandering. Our review begins with a foundational question: what is mind-wandering? We then investigate the significance of mind-wandering for general philosophical topics, namely mental action, introspection, and the norms of thinking and attention. (shrink)

Vann McGee has recently argued that Belnap’s criteria constrain the formal rules of classical natural deduction to uniquely determine the semantic values of the propositional logical connectives and quantifiers if the rules are taken to be open-ended, i.e., if they are truth-preserving within any mathematically possible extension of the original language. The main assumption of his argument is that for any class of models there is a mathematically possible language in which there is a sentence true in just those models. (...) I show that this assumption does not hold for the class of models of classical propositional logic. In particular, I show that the existence of non-normal models for negation undermines McGee’s argument. (shrink)

Imagine you are casually browsing an online bookstore, looking for an interesting novel. Suppose the store predicts you will want to buy a particular novel: the one most chosen by people of your same age, gender, location, and occupational status. The store recommends the book, it appeals to you, and so you choose it. Central to this scenario is an automated prediction of what you desire. This article raises moral concerns about such predictions. More generally, this article examines the ethics (...) of artificial social cognition—the ethical dimensions of attribution of mental states to humans by artificial systems. The focus is presumptuous aim attributions, which are defined here as aim attributions based crucially on the premise that the person in question will have aims like superficially similar people. Several everyday examples demonstrate that this sort of presumptuousness is already a familiar moral concern. The scope of this moral concern is extended by new technologies. In particular, recommender systems based on collaborative filtering are now commonly used to automatically recommend products and information to humans. Examination of these systems demonstrates that they naturally attribute aims presumptuously. This article presents two reservations about the widespread adoption of such systems. First, the severity of our antecedent moral concern about presumptuousness increases when aim attribution processes are automated and accelerated. Second, a foreseeable consequence of reliance on these systems is an unwarranted inducement of interpersonal conformity. (shrink)

Healthcare systems across the globe are struggling with increasing costs and worsening outcomes. This presents those responsible for overseeing healthcare with a challenge. Increasingly, policymakers, politicians, clinical entrepreneurs and computer and data scientists argue that a key part of the solution will be ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) – particularly Machine Learning (ML). This argument stems not from the belief that all healthcare needs will soon be taken care of by “robot doctors.” Instead, it is an argument that rests on the classic (...) counterfactual definition of AI as an umbrella term for a range of techniques that can be used to make machines complete tasks in a way that would be considered intelligent were they to be completed by a human. Automation of this nature could offer great opportunities for the improvement of healthcare services and ultimately patients’ health by significantly improving human clinical capabilities in diagnosis, drug discovery, epidemiology, personalised medicine, and operational efficiency. However, if these AI solutions are to be embedded in clinical practice, then at least three issues need to be considered: the technical possibilities and limitations; the ethical, regulatory and legal framework; and the governance framework. In this article, we report on the results of a systematic analysis designed to provide a clear overview of the second of these elements: the ethical, regulatory and legal framework. We find that ethical issues arise at six levels of abstraction (individual, interpersonal, group, institutional, sectoral, and societal) and can be categorised as epistemic, normative, or overarching. We conclude by stressing how important it is that the ethical challenges raised by implementing AI in healthcare settings are tackled proactively rather than reactively and map the key considerations for policymakers to each of the ethical concerns highlighted. (shrink)

There is a basic distinction, in the realm of spatial boundaries, between bona fide boundaries on the one hand, and fiat boundaries on the other. The former are just the physical boundaries of old. The latter are exemplified especially by boundaries induced through human demarcation, for example in the geographic domain. The classical problems connected with the notions of adjacency, contact, separation and division can be resolved in an intuitive way by recognizing this two-sorted ontology of boundaries. Bona fide boundaries (...) yield a notion of contact that is effectively modeled by classical topology; the analogue of contact involving fiat boundaries calls, however, for a different account, based on the intuition that fiat boundaries do not support the open/closed distinction on which classical topology is based. In the presence of this two-sorted ontology it then transpires that mereotopology—topology erected on a mereological basis—is more than a trivial formal variant of classical point-set topology. (shrink)

This paper tackles the asymmetry of economic interests and geopolitics between developed and developing countries. Currently, the geopolitics presupposes that the majority of novel technologies are devised and designed in developed countries with their subsequent transfer to the developing countries. Moreover, in the context of the global crisis, the issue of de-dollarization is relevant from the political and economic points of view. Our specific focus is on the small oil countries and the issue how to get off the oil needle (...) in the painless way. Furthermore, the paper analyzes the rise of cryptocurrency that is envisaged as the substitute of the U.S. dollar which has been the world most dominating currency for the last several decades. This paper considers the global asymmetry which has the greatest impact on countries with economies dependent on energy exports. In the light of the diminishing returns from the sale of oil, we examine the ways for escaping this asymmetry. The authors consider the geopolitical asymmetry stemming from the dominance of the U.S. dollar, analyze the political situation and offer the pathways for the development of those economies where oil become an obstacle for economic development. The paper examines the ways of solving the above-mentioned problem by other states in detail and conduct the comparative analysis of the above issues in relation to the economy of Azerbaijan. From this case study we conduct a comparative analysis of the developed and developing countries taking into account the economic asymmetry and global economic and financial security. (shrink)

Following Kripke and Putnam, the received view of chemical kinds has been a microstructuralist one. To be a microstructuralist about chemical kinds is to think that membership in said kinds is conferred by microstructural properties. Recently, the received microstructuralist view has been elaborated and defended, but it has also been attacked on the basis of complexities, both chemical and ontological. Here, I look at which complexities really challenge the microstructuralist view; at how the view itself might be made more complicated (...) in order to accommodate such challenges; and finally, at what this increasingly complicated picture implies for our standard assessment of chemical kindhood—primarily, for the widespread assumption that chemical kinds in general are more neat and tidy than those messy biological ones. _1_ The Received View _2_ A Taxonomy of Chemical Kinds _3_ Atomic Number _4_ H2O, H3O+, OH−, and More _5_ Complicating the Microstructuralist Picture _6_ Concrete and Other Mixtures _7_ Macromolecules, Especially Proteins _8_ Abandoning Sameness of Elemental Composition _9_ Not So Different after All. (shrink)

The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen 1983; Cohen 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is (...) to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. -/- Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them. (shrink)

Functional diversity holds the promise of understanding ecosystems in ways unattainable by taxonomic diversity studies. Underlying this promise is the intuition that investigating the diversity of what organisms actually do—i.e. their functional traits—within ecosystems will generate more reliable insights into the ways these ecosystems behave, compared to considering only species diversity. But this promise also rests on several conceptual and methodological—i.e. epistemic—assumptions that cut across various theories and domains of ecology. These assumptions should be clearly addressed, notably for the sake (...) of an effective comparison and integration across domains, and for assessing whether or not to use functional diversity approaches for developing ecological management strategies. The objective of this contribution is to identify and critically analyze the most salient of these assumptions. To this aim, we provide an “epistemic roadmap” that pinpoints these assumptions along a set of historical, conceptual, empirical, theoretical, and normative dimensions. (shrink)

The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It will be illustrated above all by means of simple biological (...) examples, but the concept of niche should be understood as being, like concepts such as part, boundary, and location, a structural concept that is applicable in principle to a wide range of different domains. (shrink)

Epistemic paternalism is the thesis that a paternalistic interference with an individual's inquiry is justified when it is likely to bring about an epistemic improvement in her. In this article I claim that in order to motivate epistemic paternalism we must first account for the value of epistemic improvements. I propose that the epistemic paternalist has two options: either epistemic improvements are valuable because they contribute to wellbeing, or they are epistemically valuable. I will argue that these options constitute the (...) foundations of a dilemma: either epistemic paternalism collapses into general paternalism, or a distinctive project of justified epistemic paternalism is implausible. (shrink)

Neutral monism is a position in metaphysics defended by Mach, James, and Russell in the early twentieth century. It holds that minds and physical objects are essentially two different orderings of the same underlying neutral elements of nature. This paper sets out some of the central concepts, theses and the historical background of ideas that inform this doctrine of elements. The discussion begins with the classic neutral monism of Mach, James, and Russell in the first part of the paper, then (...) considers recent neo-Russellian versions in the second half. The chances for a revival of neutral monism are probably slight; its key ideas and starting points lie far from those in contemporary philosophy of mind. A better route might be through the philosophy of science and a deeper understanding of causation. (shrink)

Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary —hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our so-cial practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between realism and wholesome relativism?

In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...) cases of causation by omission. In particular, I elaborate on Helen Beebee’s idea that not all causal explanations are reports of causation. When we mention John’s failure to turn off the gas as an explanans of why there was an explosion, we do not say what caused the explosion. We do not mention any of the relevant causes. We just remark that one sort of event that was supposed to occur, and whose occurrence would have prevented the explosion, did not in fact occur. (shrink)

These essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual..

Scholarship on Aristotle’s NICOMACHEAN ETHICS (hereafter “the Ethics”) flourishes in an almost unprecedented fashion. In the last ten years, universities in North America have produced on average over ten doctoral dissertations a year that discuss the practical philosophy that Aristotle espouses in his Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics, and Politics. Since the beginning of the millennium there have been three new translations of the entire Ethics into English alone, several more that translate parts of the work into English and other modern (...) languages, and half a dozen collections of new articles discussing Aristotle’s Ethics. Such an outpouring of scholarship has produced an almost unmanageable wave of books, articles, and reviews. Through my topical bibliography, I seek to organize this wealth of scholarly writing so as to make it manageable both to scholars working across the disciplines of philosophy, classics, history, and politics, and to scholars pursuing theses on specific topics within the Ethics. The bibliography takes as its model and is much indebted to that compiled by Barnes, Schofield, and Sorabji in their Articles on Aristotle, Volume 2: Ethics and Politics (1977), which was further updated and incorporated into the complete bibliography to all of Aristotle’s writings in Barnes’s Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (1995). Although I have taken guidance from their model, my bibliography differs in one main respect. Whereas Barnes et al. were more selective and annotated their bibliography, I have been more comprehensive in my inclusion of items. I have sought to include all books and journal articles concerned with the Ethics written in English over the last 120 years; additionally, I have sought to include representative and central works of scholarship written on the Ethics in French, German, and Italian during the same period of time. (shrink)

This article discusses the adequacy of Rawls’ theory of justice as a tool for racial justice. It is argued that critics like Charles W Mills fail to appreciate both the insights and limits of the Rawlsian framework. The article has two main parts spread out over several different sections. The first is concerned with whether the Rawlsian framework suffices to prevent racial injustice. It is argued that there are reasons to doubt whether it does. The second part is concerned with (...) whether a Rawlsian framework has the resources to rectify past racial injustice. It is argued that it has more resources to do this than Mills allows. This second part of the article centers on two Rawlsian ideas: ideal theory and the fair equality of opportunity principle. It is argued that ideal theory is essential for the kind of rectificatory work that Mills wants nonideal theory to do, and that where there is a socioeconomic legacy of past injustice, it is hard to see how FEO could be implemented if it did no rectificatory work, a result which means that there is less need to turn to nonideal theory at all. (shrink)

In his latest book, Michael Devitt rejects Chomsky’s mentalist conception of linguistics. The case against Chomsky is based on two principal claims. First, that we can separate the study of linguistic competence from the study of its outputs: only the latter belongs to linguistic inquiry. Second, Chomsky’s account of a speaker’s competence as consisiting in the mental representation of rules of a grammar for his language is mistaken. I shall argue, first, that Devitt fails to make a case for separating (...) the study of outputs from the study of competence, and second, that Devitt mis-characterises Chomsky’s account of competence, and so his objections miss their target. Chomsky’s own views come close to a denial that speaker’s have knowledge of their language. But a satisfactory account of what speakers are able to do will need to ascribe them linguistic knowledge that they use to speak and understand. I shall explore a conception of speaker’s knowledge of language that confirrns Chomsky’s mentalist view of linguistics but which is immune to Devitt’s criticism. (shrink)

Florence Ashley has responded to our response to ‘Gatekeeping hormone replacement therapy for transgender patients is dehumanising.’ Ashley criticises some of our objections to their view that patients seeking hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for gender dysphoria should not have to undergo a prior psychological assessment. Here we clarify our objections, most importantly that concerning the parity between cosmetic surgery and the sort of intervention Ashley has in mind. Firstly, we show Ashley’s criticism of our comparison is insubstantial. We then examine (...) their comments regarding the analogy between abortion and HRT, and the language of informed consent. We also scrutinize the data upon which Ashley relies to defend the claim that informed consent without assessment always yields positive outcomes, finding this conclusion to be overstated. Finally, even if Ashley’s arguments were vindicated, the claim that the gatekeeping of HRT is motivated by hostility towards transgender people remains unsupported. (shrink)

Considerations of autonomy and independence, properly understood, support strictly egalitarian provision of necessary medical treatment. If the financially better-off can purchase access to necessary medical treatments that the financially less well-off cannot purchase without help, then their discretionary power to give or to withhold monetary gifts indirectly gives them the power to make life-and-death or sickness-and-health decisions for others. To prevent private citizens from having this objectionable form of power, government must ensure that citizens’ finances do not affect their access (...) to medical treatments that significantly prolong life, relieve suffering, or cure or mitigate disabilities. Government should ensure this even if doing so involves leveling down and even if it is unclear whether egalitarian provision of necessary treatment would provide better care to the poor than a less egalitarian health care system would. (shrink)

The «extended mind thesis» sounds like a substantive thesis, the truth of which we should investigate. But actually the thesis a) turns about to be just a statement on where the demarcations for the «mental» are to be set (internal, external,…), i.e. it is about the «mark of the mental»; and b) the choice about the mark of the mental is a verbal choice, not a matter of scientific discovery. So, the «extended mind thesis » is a remark on how (...) its supporters or opponents want to use the word ‘mind’, not a thesis of cognitive science or philosophy. The upshot of the extended mind discussion should not be to draw the line further out, but to drop the demarcation project. (shrink)

In this paper I want to propose an argument to support Jerry Fodor’s thesis (Fodor 1983) that input systems are modular and thus informationally encapsulated. The argument starts with the suggestion that there is a “grounding problem” in perception, i. e. that there is a problem in explaining how perception that can yield a visual experience is possible, how sensation can become meaningful perception of something for the subject. Given that visual experience is actually possible, this invites a transcendental argument (...) that explains the conditions of its possibility. I propose that one of these conditions is the existence of a visual module in Fodor’s sense that allows the step from sensation to object-identifying perception, thus enabling visual experience. It seems to follow that there is informationally encapsulated nonconceptual content in visual perception. (shrink)

On an optimistic version of realist moral epistemology, a significant range of ordinary moral beliefs, construed in realist terms, constitute knowledge—or at least some weaker positive epistemic status, such as epistemic justification. The “debunking challenge” to this view grants prima facie justification but claims that it is “debunked” (i.e., defeated), yielding the final verdict that moral beliefs are ultima facie unjustified. Notable candidate “debunkers” (i.e., defeaters) include the so-called “evolutionary debunking arguments,” the “Benacerraf-Field Challenge,” and persistent moral disagreement among epistemic (...) peers. Such defeaters are best treated as higher-order evidence—viz., evidence contesting the merits of the first-order evidence on which moral beliefs are based. This chapter first develops a theory of higher-order defeat in general, which it then applies to debunking in particular. The result: the challenge fails entirely on epistemic grounds—regardless of whether or not its empirical and metaphysical presuppositions are correct. An advantage of this purely epistemic defense over alternative strategies is that the former extends even to laypersons who themselves lack the expertise necessary to formulate an adequate response. However, this leaves open the prospects for non-epistemological interpretations of debunking (e.g., moral or ontological). The chapter therefore concludes with brief suggestions in that direction. (shrink)

Applying critical rationalism, all criticism is to be welcomed. A response can help to elucidate matters even when the criticisms are poor, misconceived, and hostile. Thus, we turn to the review.

As someone who wishes Escape from Leviathan (EfL) to succeed, I am grateful for a review with such high praise from a well-known classical liberal. As a critical rationalist who also wishes to learn from his mistakes, I am also grateful for Norman Barry’s criticisms. The only way that I can hope to try to repay these and appreciate their full force is by doing my best to reply to them.

David Friedman posed a number of libertarian philosophical problems (Friedman 1989). This essay criticizes Walter Block’s Rothbardian responses (Block 2011) and compares them with J C Lester’s critical-rationalist, libertarian-theory responses (Lester [2000] 2012). The main issues are as follows. 1. Critical rationalism and how it applies to libertarianism. 2.1. How libertarianism is not inherently about law and is inherently about morals. 2.2. How liberty relates to property and can be maximized: carbon dioxide and radio waves. 2.3. Applying the theory to (...) flashlights. 2.4. Applying the theory to the probability of imposed risks. 2.5. “Homesteading” or initial acquisition. 2.6 What is “essential” for a “true libertarian.” 2.7. Crime and punishment. 2.8. Extent of punishment. 2.9. The libertarian response to a madman with a gun. 2.10. How contradictions in rights are possible. 2.11. The draft. 3.1. Utilitarian libertarianism and “nose counting”. 3.2. How interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible and utility monsters are not a threat. 3.3. Why it is not utilitarian in practice to kill an innocent prisoner to prevent a riot. 3.4. Why David Friedman should not be forced to give up one of his eyes. 3.5. How utilitarians can be libertarians. Conclusion: a proper theory of liberty combined with critical rationalism offers superior solutions to Friedman’s problems. Appendix: replies to two commentators. (shrink)

Why learn about philosophy? Because it is the master subject; more fundamental than all of the others: it critically examines their fundamental assumptions and presuppositions. And without some grasp of philosophy one cannot be fully educated or even intellectually autonomous: one is the meme-marionette of unexamined traditions, fashions, and commonsense assumptions.

Some environmental ethicists and economists argue that attributing infinite value to the environment is a good way to represent an absolute obligation to protect it. Others argue against modelling the value of the environment in this way: the assignment of infinite value leads to immense technical and philosophical difficulties that undermine the environmentalist project. First, there is a problem of discrimination: saving a large region of habitat is better than saving a small region; yet if both outcomes have infinite value, (...) then decision theory prescribes indifference. Second, there is a problem of swamping probabilities: an act with a small but positive probability of saving an endangered species appears to be on par with an act that has a high probability of achieving this outcome, since both have infinite expected value. Our paper shows that a relative concept of infinite value can be meaningfully defined, and provides a good model for securing the priority of the natural environment while avoiding the failures noted by sceptics about infinite value. Our claim is not that the relative infinity utility model gets every detail correct, but rather that it provides a rigorous philosophical framework for thinking about decisions affecting the environment. (shrink)

This chapter first surveys general issues in the epistemic internalism / externalism debate: what is the distinction, what motivates it, and what arguments can be given on both sides. -/- The second part of the chapter will examine the internalism / externalism debate as regards to the specific case of the epistemology of memory belief.

Why learn about libertarianism? Because politics causes or exacerbates the very problems that it purports to solve, or it misperceives voluntary behaviour and free markets as problems. Liberty is always preferable: its maximal practical observance entailing self-ownership, private property, and consensual interactions. And libertarianism will be the ideological framework of the future of humankind.

Teil I: Philosophie und KI Teil II: Ethik, Recht und Ökonomie der KI Teil III: KI zwischen Öffentlichkeit und persönlicher Lebenswelt Teil IV: Letzte Fragen.

Classically, gratitude is a tri-polar construal, logically ordering a benefactor, a benefice, and a beneficiary in a favour-giving-receiving situation. Grammatically, the poles are distinguished and bound together by the prepositions ”to’ and ”for’; so I call this classic concept ”to-for’ gratitude. Classic religious gratitude follows this schema, with God as the benefactor. Such gratitude, when felt, is a religious experience, and a reliable readiness or ”habit’ of such construal is a religious virtue. However, atheists have sometimes felt an urge or (...) need for an analogous experience and virtue of gratitude, and theists sometimes feel intellectual discomfort with classical theistic gratitude on consideration of the misfortunes that characterize our life along with its blessings. In response, another conception of religious gratitude has been attempted, a construal that lacks the to-for structure. This paper probes the significance of the benefactor for gratitude, both secular and religious, and, with Søren Kierkegaard’s help, some features of the theology of classical religious gratitude that dissolve the problem of misfortunes. (shrink)

Certain commentators on Russell's “no class” theory, in which apparent reference to classes or sets is eliminated using higher-order quantification, including W. V. Quine and (recently) Scott Soames, have doubted its success, noting the obscurity of Russell’s understanding of so-called “propositional functions”. These critics allege that realist readings of propositional functions fail to avoid commitment to classes or sets (or something equally problematic), and that nominalist readings fail to meet the demands placed on classes by mathematics. I show that Russell (...) did thoroughly explore these issues, and had good reasons for rejecting accounts of propositional functions as extra-linguistic entities. I argue in favor of a reading taking propositional functions to be nothing over and above open formulas which addresses many such worries, and in particular, does not interpret Russell as reducing classes to language. (shrink)

Klein’s account of epistemic justification, infinitism, supplies a novel solution to the regress problem. We argue that concentrating on the normative aspect of justification exposes a number of unpalatable consequences for infinitism, all of which warrant rejecting the position. As an intermediary step, we develop a stronger version of the ‘finite minds’ objection.

A common view among nontheists combines the de jure objection that theism is epistemically unacceptable with agnosticism about the de facto objection that theism is false. Following Plantinga, we can call this a “proper” de jure objection—a de jure objection that does not depend on any de facto objection. In his Warranted Christian Belief, Plantinga has produced a general argument against all proper de jure objections. Here I first show that this argument is logically fallacious (it makes subtle probabilistic fallacies (...) disguised by scope ambiguities), and proceed to lay the groundwork for the construction of actual proper de jure objections. (shrink)

Many countries are experiencing increasing levels of demand for access to assisted reproductive technologies. Policies regarding who can access ART and with what support from a collective purse are highly contested, raising questions about what state responses are justified. Whilst much of this debate has focused on the status of infertility as a disease, we argue that this is something of a distraction, since disease framing does not provide the far-reaching, robust justification for state support that proponents of ART seem (...) to suppose. Instead, we propose that debates about appropriate state responses should consider the various implications for health and broader well-being that may be associated with difficulties starting a family. We argue that the harms and disruption to valued life projects of subfertility-related suffering may provide a stronger basis for justifying state support in this context. Further, we suggest that, whilst ART may alleviate some of the harm resulting from subfertility, population-level considerations can indicate a broader range of interventions aimed at tackling different sources of subfertility-related harm, consistent with broader public health aims. (shrink)

Skeptics of the moral case against industrial farming often assert that harm to animals in industrial systems is limited to isolated instances of abuse that do not reflect standard practice and thus do not merit criticism of the industry at large. I argue that even if skeptics are correct that abuse is the exception rather than the rule, they must still answer for two additional varieties of serious harm to animals that are pervasive in industrial systems: procedural harm and institutional (...) oppression. That procedural and institutional harms create conditions under which abuse is virtually inevitable only increases the skeptic's burden. (shrink)

Aida Míguez Barciela explora la literatura evocando a la vez problemas fundamentales en la historia de la filosofía: los límites de la razón en la interpretación de Swift, la relación del capital y la moral en las novelas de Balzac y Defoe, la cuestión de la libertad del individuo en las lecturas de Kafka y Henry James, así como el problema del arte y la vida en Thomas Mann y Yourcenar. Con un estilo personal y al margen tanto de los (...) trabajos puramente académicos como de la crítica literaria más convencional, "Cuando los pájaros cantan en griego" incluye también ensayos sobre Virginia Woolf y Jane Austen, Melville y Mishima, Tolstói y los poemas homéricos, así como sobre otros autores que solemos considerar «clásicos». (shrink)

Certain advocates of the so-called “neo-logicist” movement in the philosophy of mathematics identify themselves as “neo-Fregeans” (e.g., Hale and Wright), presenting an updated and revised version of Frege’s form of logicism. Russell’s form of logicism is scarcely discussed in this literature and, when it is, often dismissed as not really logicism at all (in light of its assumption of axioms of infinity, reducibility and so on). In this paper I have three aims: firstly, to identify more clearly the primary meta-ontological (...) and methodological differences between Russell’s logicism and the more recent forms; secondly, to argue that Russell’s form of logicism offers more elegant and satisfactory solutions to a variety of problems that continue to plague the neo-logicist movement (the bad company objection, the embarrassment of richness objection, worries about a bloated ontology, etc.); thirdly, to argue that neo-Russellian forms of logicism remain viable positions for current philosophers of mathematics. (shrink)

Se esboza una interpretación de Helena en la Ilíada atendiendo a la cuestión que hace de ella la figura escindida y desarraigada capaz de reflejar asuntos pertenecientes al telón de fondo del poema. La razón del desarraigo aparece en el canto tercero como la terrible experiencia de la belleza, es decir, como la inevitabilidad del poder de Afrodita. Por qué éros nombra el desarraigo inherente al reconocimiento de la belleza se aclara a través de ciertos fragmentos de Safo y otras (...) alusiones al corpus griego. (shrink)

Aristotle’s cryptic De Anima III 5 has precipitated an enormous volume of commentary, especially about the identity of what has come to be known as active intellect and how it relates to potential intellect. Some take active intellect to be the prime mover of Metaphysics Λ, others a hypostatic or cosmic principle (for example, an ideal Intellect, intellect associated with the tenth celestial sphere, etc.), and others a faculty, potentiality, or power of the human soul that is distinct in function, (...) office, or operation from potential intellect. But a very different, ontologically lightweight way of characterizing active and potential intellect can be reconstructed from fragments of a work by the only interpreter personally acquainted with Aristotle, his junior colleague, Theophrastus of Eresus. This reconstruction suggests various philosophically attractive solutions to notorious problems raised by Aristotle’s text. (shrink)

Extension is probably the most general natural property. Is it a fundamental property? Leibniz claimed the answer was no, and that the structureless intuition of extension concealed more fundamental properties and relations. This paper follows Leibniz's program through Herbart and Riemann to Grassmann and uses Grassmann's algebra of points to build up levels of extensions algebraically. Finally, the connection between extension and measurement is considered.

My goal in this paper is to show that naturalists cannot reasonably endorse moral realism. My argument will come in two parts. The first part aims to show that any plausible and naturalistically acceptable argument in favor of belief in objective moral properties will appeal in part to simplicity considerations (broadly construed)—and this regardless of whether moral properties are reducible to non-moral properties. The second part argues for the conclusion that appeals to simplicity justify belief in moral properties only if (...) either those properties are not objective or something like theism is true. Thus, if my argument is sound, naturalists can reasonably accept moral realism only if they are prepared to accept something like theism. But, as will become clear, naturalists can reasonably accept theism or something like it only if belief in some such doctrine is justified by the methods of science. For present purposes, I’ll assume (what I think virtually every naturalist will grant) that belief in theism and relevantly similar doctrines is not justified by the methods of science. Thus, I will conclude that naturalists cannot reasonably accept moral realism. (shrink)