How are causal judgements such as 'The ice on the road caused the traffic accident' connected with counterfactual judgements such as 'If there had not been any ice on the road, the traffic accident would not have happened'? This volume throws new light on this question by uniting, for the first time, psychological and philosophical approaches to causation and counterfactuals. Traditionally, philosophers have primarily been interested in connections between causal and counterfactual claims on the level of meaning or truth-conditions. More (...) recently, however, they have also increasingly turned their attention to psychological connections between causal and counterfactual understanding or reasoning. At the same time, there has been a surge in interest in empirical work on causal and counterfactual cognition amongst developmental, cognitive, and social psychologists--much of it inspired by work in philosophy. In this volume, twelve original contributions from leading philosophers and psychologists explore in detail what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify the issues at stake in empirical work on the cognitive underpinnings of, and relationships between, causal and counterfactual thought. (shrink)

Machine learning algorithms may radically improve our ability to diagnose and treat disease. For moral, legal, and scientific reasons, it is essential that doctors and patients be able to understand and explain the predictions of these models. Scalable, customisable, and ethical solutions can be achieved by working together with relevant stakeholders, including patients, data scientists, and policy makers.

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

All parties involved in researching, developing, manufacturing, and distributing COVID-19 vaccines need guidance on their ethical obligations. We focus on pharmaceutical companies' obligations because their capacities to research, develop, manufacture, and distribute vaccines make them uniquely placed for stemming the pandemic. We argue that an ethical approach to COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution should satisfy four uncontroversial principles: optimising vaccine production, including development, testing, and manufacturing; fair distribution; sustainability; and accountability. All parties' obligations should be coordinated and mutually consistent. For (...) instance, companies should not be obligated to provide host countries with additional booster shots at the expense of fulfilling bilateral contracts with countries in which there are surges. Finally, any satisfactory approach should include mechanisms for assurance that all parties are honouring their obligations. This assurance enables countries, pharmaceutical companies, global organisations, and others to verify compliance with the chosen approach and protect ethically compliant stakeholders from being unfairly exploited by unethical behaviour of others. (shrink)

In real-time, Twitter strongly imprints world events, popular culture, and the day-to-day; Twitter records an ever growing compendium of language use and change; and Twitter has been shown to enable certain kinds of prediction. Vitally, and absent from many standard corpora such as books and news archives, Twitter also encodes popularity and spreading through retweets. Here, we describe Storywrangler, an ongoing, day-scale curation of over 100 billion tweets containing around 1 trillion 1-grams from 2008 to 2020. For each day, we (...) break tweets into 1-, 2-, and 3-grams across 150+ languages, record usage frequencies, and generate Zipf distributions. We make the data set available through an interactive time series viewer, and as downloadable time series and daily distributions. We showcase a few examples of the many possible avenues of study we aim to enable including how social amplification can be visualized through ‘contagiograms’. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Das spezifische Ziel von Argumentationen ist nicht einfach, den Adressaten etwas glauben zu machen - dies wäre bloße Rhetorik ﷓, sondern: den Adressaten beim Erkennen der Akzeptabilität (insbesondere der Wahrheit) der These anzuleiten und ihn so zu begründetem Glauben, zu Erkenntnis zu führen. Argumentationen leiten das Erkennen an, indem sie in ihren Argumenten hinreichende Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen der These als erfüllt beurteilen und so den Adressaten implizit auffordern, diese Bedingungen zu überprüfen. Argumentationen sind gültig, wenn sie prinzipiell das Erkennen anleiten können; d. (...) h. wenn die genannten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen hinreichend sind, wenn sie tatsächlich erfüllt (die Argumente also wahr) sind und wenn es irgendjemanden gibt, der zwar die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Eine gültige Argumentation ist adäquat, um einen bestimmten Adressaten rational zu überzeugen, wenn dieser u. a. die Akzeptabilität der Argumente, nicht aber die der These erkannt hat. Die in gültigen Argumentationen als erfüllt beurteilten Akzeptabilitätsbedingungen sind Konkretisierungen allgemeiner Erkenntnisprinzipien für die spezifische These, z. B. des deduktiven Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie von wahren Propositionen logisch impliziert wird.' oder des erkenntnisgenetischen Erkenntnisprinzips: 'Eine Proposition ist wahr, wenn sie korrekt verifiziert worden ist.' Eine Konkretisierung des deduktiven Prinzips für eine These p wäre z. B.: 'p ist wahr, 1. wenn q und r wahr sind und 2. wenn q und r zusammen p logisch implizieren.' Sind beide Bedingungen erfüllt, so könnte 'q; r; also p.' eine gültige deduktive Argumentation sein. Die verschiedenen Argumentationstypen unterscheiden sich danach, auf welchem Erkenntnisprinzip sie basieren. Das argumentativ angeleitete Erkennen der Akzeptabilität der These funktioniert so: Der Adressat benutzt das von ihm (zumindest implizit) gewußte allgemeine Erkenntnisprinzip als Checkliste, auf der er nach dem Vorbringen der Argumente abhakt, welche Akzeptabilitätsbedingung des Erkenntnisprinzips durch das Zutreffen des Arguments jeweils erfüllt wird. Auf der Basis dieser Funktionsbestimmung werden in der "Praktischen Argumentationstheorie" (erstmalig) präzise Gültigkeitskriterien für Argumentationen allgemein und für mehrere spezielle Argumentationstypen entwickelt, erkenntnistheoretisch begründet und auf komplexe Argumentationsbeispiele aus Philosophie, Wissenschaft, Technik und Kultur angewendet. Die Analyse der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundlagen - der zugrundeliegenden Erkenntnisprinzipien - vor allem der interpretierenden und praktischen Argumentationen ist zudem von erheblicher Bedeutung weit über die Argumentationstheorie hinaus: für die Interpretationstheorie, die Handlungstheorie und die praktische Philosophie. (shrink)

The article develops a general theory of the goals of free moral commitment. The theoretical hook is the discussion of the strict efficiency striving as demanded by the movement and theory of effective altruism. A detailed example shows prima facie counterintuitive consequences of this efficiency striving, the analysis of which reveals various problems such as: merely point-like but not structural commitment; radical universalism; violation of established moral standards and institutions. The article takes these problems as an occasion to develop a (...) general theory of moral investment with moral guidelines and planning instruments of its implementation such as: efficiency; preservation of existing moral standards and obligations, especially also towards those close to one; rooted universalism with adequate consideration of all beneficiaries of one's moral concern through allocation of separate budgets; real efficiency also through inclusion of strategic and organic investments. (shrink)

We attribute three major insights to Hegel: first, an understanding of the real numbers as the paradigmatic kind of number ; second, a recognition that a quantitative relation has three elements, which is embedded in his conception of measure; and third, a recognition of the phenomenon of divergence of measures such as in second-order or continuous phase transitions in which correlation length diverges. For ease of exposition, we will refer to these three insights as the R First Theory, Tripartite Relations, (...) and Divergence of Measures. Given the constraints of space, we emphasize the first and the third in this paper. (shrink)

Nineteen fifty-eight was an extraordinary year for cultural innovation, especially in English literature. It was also a year in which several boldly revisionary positions were first articulated in analytic philosophy. And it was a crucial year for the establishment of structural linguistics, of structuralist anthropology, and of cognitive psychology. Taken together these developments had a radical effect on our conceptions of individual creativity and of the inheritance of tradition. The present essay attempts to illuminate the relationships among these developments, and (...) to explain the foundational role played by mathematical, logical and information theory in all of them. (shrink)

Quentin Meillassoux’s ‘Spectral Dilemma offers philosophy an answer to an age old problem, one that Pascal had intimated on in the wager. Is it better to believe in God for life or abstain from belief and declare atheism? The paradox of theism and atheism has separated philosophy for centuries by limiting the possibilities for real thought. For Meillassoux, there is more at stake than just the limitations of thought. Both atheism and theism have exhausted all the conditions of human life. (...) In order to answer this paradox Meillassoux must combine religious insight that the dead must be resurrected with the atheist conviction that God does not exist. (Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, Philosophy in the Making p.87). The aforementioned insight, grounds Meillassoux’s position in what he calls a Divine Ethics. The concept of the Divine carries both atheism and theism to their ultimate consequences to unveil the truth that … “God does not exist, and also that it is quite necessary to believe in God (Harman p.236). The Divine links both assertions in an absolute ethics which Meillassoux calls Divinology. This leads us to our next question what is the Spectral Dilemma? In order to answer this question, we cannot rely solely on what the dilemma is, for it is not, a sufficient account of what Meillassoux is trying to solve. We must proceed to understand the conditions of what Divine Ethics are, and how the Divinology can best represent life for both the living and the dead. What is a spectre? According to Meillassoux it is a dead person who has not been properly mourned (Meillassoux, Spectral Dilemma p.261). This person’s death haunts us. This haunting is the mere fact that we cannot mourn their loss, for as time passes by, our bond with the dead, or dearly departed, proves to be inadequate for our own lives. This haunting leads us to utter despair. The sheer horror of their death is a burden that lays heavy on our backs; and not just our own backs, or our families backs, but for all those people who have crossed their paths in history (Meillassoux p. 262). These terrible deaths are called Essential Spectres and they include all deaths, such as, odious, premature, the death of children, the death of parents; and all of those poor individuals who know that their own destiny will at some point in time, be the same as these poor individuals (Meillassoux p.262). But it is precisely all death in its inconclusive finality that haunts us all, not just natural deaths or even violent grueling death and causalities of war. These essential spectres, are the dead who refuse to Passover, even though they are gone. This concept must seem absurd to any reader to believe in them, but still, Meillassoux makes his point that these essential spectres still cry out to us all, that they still exist with us (Meillassoux p.262). Meillassoux claims that the completion of mourning must occur and Essential Mourning, which is described as an accomplishment of a living relationship with the dead, as opposed to maintaining a morbid bond with those who have survived after their deaths (Meillassoux p.263). According to Meillassoux, essential mourning grants us the possibility, of forming a bond again with the dearly departed (Meillassoux p.263). This bond actively animates their memory into our lives again, but the concept of accomplishment means, that to live again with those essential spectres … “[R]ather than relating to them with the memory of their morbid death” (Meillassoux p.263). In order to fully understand this possibility, we must ask the question does God exist. Is there a merciful spirit, which transcends all of humanity? Is this God working in the world? If so, then why do essential spectres exist? How is it possible that these terrible deaths occur in the world and are allowed by such a God? If this is so, that God allows these deaths to occur then perhaps God is not all powerful? Perhaps this so called transcendent principle is absent in the world (Meillassoux p.263).Meillassoux states that both the religious and atheist options do not allow for essential mourning to take place. Both these positions lead to disappear when confronting death. What is needed is what will follow in the rest of this paper … a Divine Inexistence. We need to assert the existence of a Virtual-God that is both inexistent and possible, but also contingent and unmasterable (Harman p.89). The Divine Inexistence is the main concept of Meillassoux’s Divinology but also the answer to the spectral dilemma, that a new ethics is both possible and needed. This Divine Ethics will both save Essential Spectres and Philosophy. My essential claim is that the actual article ‘Spectral Dilemma’ published in collapse Journal, is insufficient in fully answering the problem of essential spectres. The juxtaposition of atheism and theism is not enough to philosophically explain the significance of the Divine Inexistence. The article is not lengthy enough to explain how ontology, contingent-metaphysics and ethics relate to the fundamental problem. The Divine Inexistence must be fully articulated with the entirety of Meillassoux’s Divinology. I will attempt to fully express the entirety of Meillassoux for my reader, while at the same time, offering a comprehensive answer to the spectral dilemma. -/- . (shrink)

Commentators such as Terence Irwin (1999) and Christopher Shields (2006) claim that the Ring of Gyges argument in Republic II cannot demonstrate that justice is chosen only for its consequences. This is because valuing justice for its own sake is compatible with judging its value to be overridable. Through examination of the rational commitments involved in valuing normative ideals such as justice, we aim to show that this analysis is mistaken. If Glaucon is right that everyone would endorse Gyges’ (...) behavior, it follows that nobody values justice intrinsically. Hence, the Gyges story constitutes a more serious challenge than critics maintain. (shrink)

Two controversies exist regarding the appropriate characterization of hierarchical and adaptive evolution in natural populations. In biology, there is the Wright-Fisher controversy over the relative roles of random genetic drift, natural selection, population structure, and interdemic selection in adaptive evolution begun by Sewall Wright and Ronald Aylmer Fisher. There is also the Units of Selection debate, spanning both the biological and the philosophical literature and including the impassioned group-selection debate. Why do these two discourses exist separately, and interact relatively little? (...) We postulate that the reason for this schism can be found in the differing focus of each controversy, a deep difference itself determined by distinct general styles of scientific research guiding each discourse. That is, the Wright-Fisher debate focuses on adaptive process, and tends to be instructed by the mathematical modeling style, while the focus of the Units of Selection controversy is adaptive product, and is typically guided by the function style. The differences between the two discourses can be usefully tracked by examining their interpretations of two contested strategies for theorizing hierarchical selection: horizontal and vertical averaging. (shrink)

Das Wiskott-Aldrich-Syndrom (WAS), ein genetisch bedingter Immundefekt mit klinischer Manifestation im Kleinkindalter, wird voraussichtlich in näherer Zukunft erstmals versuchsweise durch eine somatische Gentherapie behandelt werden. Im vor- liegenden Beitrag werden die wichtigsten medizinisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Fakten dieses Krankheitsbildes sowie die bisherigen Erfahrungen mit somatischen Gentherapien bei anderen Immunmangelsyndromen ausführlich dargestellt. Sodann erfolgt eine ethische Analyse eines möglichen gentherapeutischen Eingriffs bei WAS-Patienten, bei der die spezifischen Aspekte des Wiskott-Aldrich-Syndroms – insbesondere die fast ausschließliche Betroffenheit von Kindern sowie die unterschiedlich aussichtsreiche Alter- nativoption einer (...) allogenen Knochenmarktransplantation–wesentliche Aspekte der Beurteilung sind. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass ein gentherapeutischer Eingriff im vorliegenden Fall nicht im Rahmen einer Forschungsstudie, d.h. als Humanexperiment, gerechtfertigt werden kann, sondern allein als individueller Heilversuch. Gleichwohl las- sen die besonderen Risiken und die Innovativität eines solchen Eingriffs es notwendig erscheinen, diesen Heilversuch – anders als andere Heilbehandlungen mit bislang unerprobten Mitteln – in streng kontrollierter Form durchzuführen. Der neuartige Gedanke eines kontrollierten individuellen Heilversuchs zeichnet sich daher für den vorliegenden Fall, und womöglich auch für vergleichbare risikoreiche Behandlungsansätze namentlich im Bereich der Gentherapie, als geeignetes Instrument der Konzeption und Beurteilung ab. (shrink)

‘Greek Ethics’, an undergraduate class taught by the British moral philosopher N. J. H. Dent, introduced this reviewer to the ethical philosophy of ancient Greece. The class had a modest purview—a sequence of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—but it proved no less effective, in retrospect, than more synoptic classes for having taken this apparently limited and (for its students and academic level) appropriate focus. This excellent Companion will now serve any such class extremely well, allowing students a broader exposure than that (...) traditional sequence, without sacrificing the class’s circumscribed focus. The eighteen chapters encompass some of what went before, and surprisingly much of what came after, those three central philosophers—including, for instance, a discussion of Plotinus and his successors, as well as a discussion of Horace. The book will therefore be useful in many different types of class on ethical philosophy in the ancient world. This Companion will be useful not only to students, but also to at least three further groups: specialists in ancient Greek philosophy (since some contributors advance significant new positions, e.g. R. Kamtekar on Plato’s ethical psychology and D. Charles on Aristotle’s ‘ergon argument’ as already implicitly invoking ‘to kalon’); scholars working in academic subjects adjacent to ancient Greek philosophy; and contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of moral responsibility responsibility (...) (as defended by R. Jay Wallace) and how best to respond to it. The third and last reply is concerned with Christopher Bennett's criticism of Russell's views concerning "motivational scepticism" and the possibility of pure practical reasons. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causal explanation, in the version presented by Jim Woodward, has been recently claimed capable of buttressing the widely felt—though poorly understood—hunch that high-level, relatively abstract explanations, of the sort provided by sciences like biology, psychology and economics, are in some cases explanatorily optimal. It is the aim of this paper to show that this is mistaken. Due to a lack of effective constraints on the causal variables at the heart of the interventionist causal-explanatory scheme, as presently (...) formulated it is either unable to prefer high-level explanations to low, or systematically overshoots, recommending explanations at so high of a level as to be virtually vacuous. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive study of the meaning and measure of enforceability. While we have long debated what restraints should govern the conduct of our social life, we have paid relatively little attention to the question of what it means to make a restraint enforceable. Focusing on the enforceability of legal rights but also addressing the enforceability of moral rights and social conventions, Mark Reiff explains how we use punishment and compensation to make restraints operative in the world. (...) After describing the various means by which restraints may be enforced, Reiff explains how the sufficiency of enforcement can be measured, and he presents a unified theory of deterrence, retribution, and compensation that shows how these aspects of enforceability are interconnected. Reiff then applies his theory of enforceability to illuminate a variety of real-world problem situations. (shrink)

This article investigates the claim that some truths are fundamentally or really true — and that other truths are not. Such a distinction can help us reconcile radically minimal metaphysical views with the verities of common sense. I develop an understanding of the distinction whereby Fundamentality is not itself a metaphysical distinction, but rather a device that must be presupposed to express metaphysical distinctions. Drawing on recent work by Rayo on anti-Quinean theories of ontological commitments, I formulate a rigourous theory (...) of the notion. In the final sections, I show how this package dovetails with ' interpretationist' theories of meaning to give sober content to thought that some things — perhaps sets, or gerrymandered mereological sums — can be 'postulated into existence'. (shrink)

The urgent importance of dealing with the climate crisis has led some influential theorists to argue that at least some demands for justice must give way to pragmatic and strategic considerations. These theorists (Cass Sunstein, Eric Posner, and David Weisbach, all academic lawyers, and John Broome, an academic philosopher) contend that the failures of international negotiations and other efforts to change economic policies and practices have shown that moral exhortations are worse than ineffective. Although Broome's position is similar in these (...) respects to that of Sunstein, Posner and Weisbach, it differs in other important respects, including his understanding of the idea of justice, his disagreement with the policy approach (which he calls "efficiency with sacrifice") favored by the economists Nicholas Stern and William Nordhaus, and his proposal for establishing a new international financial institution, a World Climate Bank, in addition to putting a price on carbon. Elsewhere I offer a critical analysis of the position taken by Posner and Weisbach in their book, Climate Change Justice. Their arguments against allowing principles of distributive justice (narrowly understood) to constrain treaty negotiations fail to rule out the principles of John Rawls' Law of Peoples (which is a conception of the moral basis of a just international order, including states' obligations to secure basic human rights for all). Therefore their arguments against shaping climate treaties to reflect any principles of justice do not succeed in supporting their position. Here I offer a critical analysis of Broome's position. I raise and discuss objections to Broome's proposal for a WCB, and I argue that the continued relevance of these objections is contingent on how the proposal for a WCB may get developed. (shrink)

Some types of solar radiation management (SRM) research are ethically problematic because they expose persons, animals, and ecosystems to significant risks. In our earlier work, we argued for ethical norms for SRM research based on norms for biomedical research. Biomedical researchers may not conduct research on persons without their consent, but universal consent is impractical for SRM research. We argue that instead of requiring universal consent, ethical norms for SRM research require only political legitimacy in decision-making about global SRM trials. (...) Using Allen Buchanan & Robert Keohane's model of global political legitimacy, we examine several existing global institutions as possible analogues for a politically legitimate SRM decision-making body. (shrink)

Some theorists believe that there is a plurality of values, and that in many circumstances these values are incommensurable, or at least incomparable. Others believe that all values are reducible to a single super-value, or that even if there is a plurality of irreducible values these values are commensurable. But I will argue that both sides have got it wrong. Values are neither commensurable nor incommensurable, at least not in the way most people think. We are free to believe in (...) incommensurability or not, depending on what particular conception of morality we want to embrace. Incommensurability is accordingly not a theory about value. It is a presupposition that provides a necessary background condition for a certain kind of value to exist. It is therefore not the kind of view that can be morally true or false. As a presupposition, it can only be accepted or rejected on grounds that do not presuppose that morality already exists. Incommensurability is, like the rejection of hard determinism, one of the presuppositions on which morality as we know it happens to be based. (shrink)

In this paper I defend a pluralistic approach in understanding function, both in biological and other contexts. Talks about function are ubiquitous and crucial in biology, and it might be the key to bridge the “manifest image” and the “scientific image” identified by Sellars (1962). However, analysis of function has proven to be extremely difficult. The major puzzle is to make sense of “time-reversed causality”: how can property P be the cause of its realizer R? For example, “pumping blood” is (...) a property of hearts, but a property of hearts cannot be the cause of the presence of hearts, since properties cannot predate their realizers and be causes of them. In section 2 I discuss Wright’s etiological analysis, Cummins’ causal-role analysis, and their critics. In section 3 I defend a version of the “consensus without unity” strategy proposed by Godfrey-Smith from Christopher Boorse’s recent critique (2002). In Section 4 I conclude by reflecting on the relation between functional discourses and physicalism. (shrink)

Die bahnbrechenden wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der letzten Jahre erzwingen eine neue philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundkategorien der Biologie und der benachbarten Disziplinen. Insbesondere die Anwendung neuer informationstechnischer Mittel in der biomedizinischen Forschung und die damit verbundene, kontinuierlich zunehmende Datenflut sowie die Notwendigkeit, ihrer Herr zu werden, erfordern ein konsequentes Nachdenken darüber, wie biologische Daten systematisiert und klassifiziert werden können. Dafür wiederum bedarf es robuster Theorien von Grundbegriffen wie Art, Spezies, Teil, Ganzes, Funktion, Prozess, Fragment, Sequenz, Expression, Grenze, Locus, Umwelt, System usw. (...) Solche Begriffe gehören zum impliziten Wissen jedes Biologen. Sie spiegeln einerseits eine Dimension der biologischen Wirklichkeit wider, die auch vor dem Hintergrund der biologischen Evolution unverändert bleibt. Andererseits verlangt deren theoretische Behandlung nach zeitgemäßen Analoga der in der traditionellen aristotelischen Metaphysik entwickelten Methoden. Zugleich können so die explizit formulierten Theorien und Definitionen bereitgestellt werden, die für computergestützte Informationssysteme unabdingbar sind. Das Entwickeln derartiger Theorien und Definitionen ist eine Aufgabe der Philosophie, die in diesem Sinne herausgefordert ist, zwischen Biologie und Informatik zu vermitteln. (shrink)

Although social scientists have identified diverse behavioral patterns among children from dissimilarly structured families, marketing scholars have progressed little in relating family structure to consumption-related decisions. In particular, the roles played by members of single-mother families—which may include live-in grandparents, mother’s unmarried partner, and step-father with or without step-sibling(s)—may affect children’s influence on consumption-related decisions. For example, to offset a parental authority dynamic introduced by a new stepfather, the work-related constraints imposed on a breadwinning mother, or the imposition of adult-level (...) household responsibilities on children, single-mother families may attend more to their children’s product preferences. -/- Without a profile that includes socio-economic, behavioral, and psychological aspects, efficient and socially responsible marketing to single-mother households is compromised. Relative to dual-parent families, single-mother families tend to have fewer resources and less buying power, children who consume more materialistic and compulsively, and children who more strongly influence decision making for both own-use and family-use products. Timely research would ensure that these and other tendencies now differentiate single-mother from dual-parent families in ways that marketers should address. Hence, our threefold goal is (1) to consolidate and highlight gaps in existing theory applied to studying children’s influence on consumption-related decision making in single-mother families, and (2) to propose a hybrid framework that merges two theories conducive to such research, and (3) to identify promising research propositions for future research. (shrink)

Di er ci Qimeng (The second Enlightenment), by Wang Zhihe and Fan Meijun, is a timely book in Chinese about constructing a philosophical and practical way to contend with China's postmodernization. It combines Whitehead's process philosophy with a focus on Chinese modernity in order to map out a desirable postmodern society. It addresses the problem on several dimensions from policy making to basic value systems. The range of themes can be seen from the topics of the book's twelve chapters: (1) (...) Reverence for Land—Toward a Constructive Postmodern Agriculture; (2) Becoming Fully Human—Toward a Postmodern Organic Education; (3) Survival of the Harmonious-Toward a Constructive Postmodern Harmonious Culture; (4) Beauty .. (shrink)

This twelfth volume of Collected Papers includes 86 papers comprising 976 pages on Neutrosophics Theory and Applications, published between 2013-2021 in the international journal and book series “Neutrosophic Sets and Systems” by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 112 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 21 countries: Abdel Nasser H. Zaied, Muhammad Akram, Bobin Albert, S. A. Alblowi, S. Anitha, Guennoun Asmae, Assia Bakali, Ayman M. Manie, Abdul Sami Awan, Azeddine Elhassouny, Erick González-Caballero, D. Dafik, Mithun Datta, Arindam Dey, (...) Mamouni Dhar, Christopher Dyer, Nur Ain Ebas, Mohamed Eisa, Ahmed K. Essa, Faruk Karaaslan, João Alcione Sganderla Figueiredo, Jorge Fernando Goyes García, N. Ramila Gandhi, Sudipta Gayen, Gustavo Alvarez Gómez, Sharon Dinarza Álvarez Gómez, Haitham A. El-Ghareeb, Hamiden Abd El-Wahed Khalifa, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ibrahim M. Hezam, German Acurio Hidalgo, Le Hoang Son, R. Jahir Hussain, S. Satham Hussain, Ali Hussein Mahmood Al-Obaidi, Hays Hatem Imran, Nabeela Ishfaq, Saeid Jafari, R. Jansi, V. Jeyanthi, M. Jeyaraman, Sripati Jha, Jun Ye, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Abdullah Kargın, J. Kavikumar, Kawther Fawzi Hamza Alhasan, Huda E. Khalid, Neha Andalleb Khalid, Mohsin Khalid, Madad Khan, D. Koley, Valeri Kroumov, Manoranjan Kumar Singh, Pavan Kumar, Prem Kumar Singh, Ranjan Kumar, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, A.N. Mangayarkkarasi, Carlos Rosero Martínez, Marvelio Alfaro Matos, Mai Mohamed, Nivetha Martin, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, K. Mohana, Muhammad Irfan Ahamad, Rana Muhammad Zulqarnain, Muhammad Riaz, Muhammad Saeed, Muhammad Saqlain, Muhammad Shabir, Muhammad Zeeshan, Anjan Mukherjee, Mumtaz Ali, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Iqra Nawaz, Munazza Naz, Roan Thi Ngan, Necati Olgun, Rodolfo González Ortega, P. Pandiammal, I. Pradeepa, R. Princy, Marcos David Oviedo Rodríguez, Jesús Estupiñán Ricardo, A. Rohini, Sabu Sebastian, Abhijit Saha, Mehmet Șahin, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, A.A. Salama, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Sajana Shaik, Soufiane Idbrahim, S. Sowndrarajan, Mohamed Talea, Ruipu Tan, Chalapathi Tekuri, Selçuk Topal, S. P. Tiwari, Vakkas Uluçay, Maikel Leyva Vázquez, Chinnadurai Veerappan, M. Venkatachalam, Luige Vlădăreanu, Ştefan Vlăduţescu, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Xiao Long Xin.‬‬‬‬‬‬. (shrink)

This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s ...and the Pursuit of Happiness: Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.

R&D collaborations between industry, government, civil society, and research (also known as ‘quadruple helix collaborations’ (QHCs)) have recently gained attention from R&D theorists and practitioners. In aiming to come to grips with their complexity, past models have generally taken a stakeholder-analytical approach based on stakeholder types. Yet stakeholder types are difficult to operationalise. We therefore argue that a processual model is more suited for studying the interaction in QHCs because it eschews matters of titles and identities. We develop such a (...) model in which the QHC is represented as a process of generating four types of value: research value, market value, political value, and societal value. We then apply this processual model in analysing reallife cases of friction in QHCs. Friction is seen, not as an interpersonal clash, but as a discrepancy between two or more value-creation processes that compete for limited resources (some overperforming while others under-performing). (shrink)

A remarkable feature of the philosophical work on conspiracy theory theory has been that most philosophers agree there is nothing inherently problematic about conspiracy theories (AKA the thesis of particularism). Recent work, however, has challenged this consensus view, arguing that there really is something epistemically wrong with conspiracy theorising (AKA generalism). Are particularism and generalism incompatible? By looking at just how much particularists and generalists might have to give away to make their theoretical viewpoints compatible, I will argue that particularists (...) can accept many of the concerns that motivate generalism because generalism can never be about ‘all’ conspiracy theories without being either ahistorical or apolitical. In the end generalist critiques are best seen as useful guidelines or considerations for the appraising of particular conspiracy theories. (shrink)

Th e present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims.

Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists have been accused of a great many sins, but are the conspiracy theories conspiracy theorists believe epistemically problematic? Well, according to some recent work, yes, they are. Yet a number of other philosophers like Brian L. Keeley, Charles Pigden, Kurtis Hagen, Lee Basham, and the like have argued ‘No!’ I will argue that there are features of certain conspiracy theories which license suspicion of such theories. I will also argue that these features only license a (...) limited suspicion of these conspiracy theories, and thus we need to be careful about generalising from such suspicions to a view of the warrant of conspiracy theories more generally. To understand why, we need to get to the bottom of what exactly makes us suspicious of certain conspiracy theories, and how being suspicious of a conspiracy theory does not always tell us anything about how likely the theory in question is to be false. (shrink)

What is it to be a woman? What is it to be a man? We start by laying out desiderata for an analysis of 'woman' and 'man': descriptively, it should link these gender categories to sex biology without reducing them to sex biology, and politically, it should help us explain and combat traditional sexism while also allowing us to make sense of the activist view that gendering should be consensual. Using a Putnam-style 'Twin Earth' example, we argue that none of (...) the existing analyses in the feminist literature succeeds in meeting all of our desiderata. Finally, we propose a positive account that we believe can satisfy all the desiderata outlined. According to our theory, the genders 'woman' and 'man' are individuated not by their contemporary connections to sex biology, but by their historical continuity with classes that were originally closely connected to sex biology. (shrink)

In the middle of last century metaphysics was widely criticized, ridiculed, and committed to the flames. During this period a handful of philosophers, against several anti-metaphysical trends, defended metaphysics and articulated novel metaphysical doctrines. Donald C. Williams was one of these philosophers. But while his contributions to metaphysics are well known his defence of metaphysics is not and yet it played a key part in the development and revival of metaphysics. In this paper I present his defence of metaphysics in (...) its historical context. I also show how his defence is relevant in response to recent attacks on metaphysics. (shrink)

It is often assumed that adaptation — a temporary change in sensitivity to a perceptual dimension following exposure to that dimension — is a litmus test for what is and is not a “primary visual attribute”. Thus, papers purporting to find evidence of number adaptation motivate a claim of great philosophical significance: That number is something that can be seen in much the way that canonical visual features, like color, contrast, size, and speed, can. Fifteen years after its reported discovery, (...) number adaptation’s existence seems to be nearly undisputed, with dozens of papers documenting support for the phenomenon. The aim of this paper is to offer a counterweight — to critically assess the evidence for and against number adaptation. After surveying the many reasons for thinking that number adaptation exists, we introduce several lesser-known reasons to be skeptical. We then advance an alternative account — the old news hypothesis — which can accommodate previously published findings while explaining various (otherwise unexplained) anomalies in the existing literature. Next, we describe the results of eight pre-registered experiments which pit our novel old news hypothesis against the received number adaptation hypothesis. Collectively, the results of these experiments undermine the number adaptation hypothesis on several fronts, whilst consistently supporting the old news hypothesis. More broadly our work raises questions about the status of adaptation itself as a means of discerning what is and is not a visual attribute. (shrink)

Kant’s geographical theory, which was informed by contemporary travel reports, diaries, and journals, developed before his so-called “critical turn.” There are several reasons to study Kant’s lectures and material on geography. The geography provided Kant with terms, concepts, and metaphors which he employed in order to present or elucidate the critical philosophy. Some of the germs of what would become Kant’s critical philosophy can already be detected in the geography course. Finally, Kant’s geography is also one source of some of (...) the empirical claims in his philosophical works, including the Critique of the Power of Judgment. To give an example of this, I examine his account of the sublime. (shrink)

The strongest arguments for the permissibility of geoengineering (also known as climate engineering) rely implicitly on non-ideal theory—roughly, the theory of justice as applied to situations of partial compliance with principles of ideal justice. In an ideally just world, such arguments acknowledge, humanity should not deploy geoengineering; but in our imperfect world, society may need to complement mitigation and adaptation with geoengineering to reduce injustices associated with anthropogenic climate change. We interpret research proponents’ arguments as an application of a particular (...) branch of non-ideal theory known as “clinical theory.” Clinical theory aims to identify politically feasible institutions or policies that would address existing (or impending) injustice without violating certain kinds of moral permissibility constraints. We argue for three implications of clinical theory: First, conditional on falling costs and feasibility, clinical theory provides strong support for some geoengineering techniques that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Second, if some kinds of carbon dioxide removal technologies are supported by clinical theory, then clinical theory further supports using those technologies to enable “overshoot” scenarios in which developing countries exceed the cumulative emissions caps that would apply in ideal circumstances. Third, because of tensions between political feasibility and moral permissibility, clinical theory provides only weak support for geoengineering techniques that aim to manage incoming solar radiation. (shrink)

Recent work in cognitive modelling has found that most of the data that has been cited as evidence for the dual-process theory (DPT) of reasoning is best explained by non-linear, “monotonic” one-process models (Stephens et al., 2018, 2019). In this paper, I consider an important caveat of this research: it uses models that are committed to unrealistic assumptions about how effectively task conditions can isolate Type-1 and Type-2 reasoning. To avoid this caveat, I develop a coordinated theoretical, experimental, and modelling (...) strategy to better test DPT. First, I propose that Type-1 and Type-2 reasoning are defined as reasoning that precedes and follows metacognitive control, respectively. Second, I argue that reasoning that precedes and follows metacognitive control can be effectively isolated using debiasing paradigms that manipulate metacognitive heuristics (e.g., processing fluency) to prevent or trigger metacognitive control, respectively. Third, I argue that monotonic modelling can allow us to decisively test DPT only when we use them to analyse data from this particular kind of debiasing paradigm. (shrink)

To most of us – believers and non-believers alike – the possibility of a perfect God co-existing with the kinds of evil that we see calls out for explanation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the belief that God must have justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see has been a perennial feature of theistic thought. Recently, however, a growing number of authors have argued that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with the existence of gratuitous (...) evil. Given powerful, millenia-long sensibilities about power and love and justice, it isn’t hard to find that suggestion simply incredible. Nonetheless, in this paper I will argue that the most prominent theistic alternatives to what has seemed incredible to most of us throughout most of history are themselves patently unacceptable for the theist as well. On any of the most widely accepted accounts of how God could have justifying reasons for permitting some evils, God’s existence means that we have justifying reasons for perpetrating and allowing every evil that we see. That's hard to swallow too. If I’m right about all of this, then two competing outcomes seem to present themselves as a possible result. On the one hand, for the theist, the apparently outrageous suggestion that the existence of a perfect God is compatible with gratuitous evil no longer looks like it faces a formidable, hard-to-resist alternative. On the other hand, some like me might think that my arguments go no distance at all towards dispelling the incredibility of the gratuitous evil nouvelle vague. On this line, theism may seem now to be between the rock and the hard place: it seems hard to make sense of the existence of a perfect God whether or not He has justifying reasons for allowing all the evil that we see. (shrink)

We argue that there is a conflict among classical theism's commitments to divine simplicity, divine creative freedom, and omniscience. We start by defining key terms for the debate related to classical theism. Then we articulate a new argument, the Aloneness Argument, aiming to establish a conflict among these attributes. In broad outline, the argument proceeds as follows. Under classical theism, it's possible that God exists without anything apart from Him. Any knowledge God has in such a world would be wholly (...) intrinsic. But there are contingent truths in every world, including the world in which God exists alone. So, it's possible that God contingently has wholly intrinsic knowledge. But whatever is contingent and wholly intrinsic is an accident. So, God possibly has an accident. This is incompatible with classical theism. Finally, we consider and rebut several objections. (shrink)

This introduction to the Journal of Business Research special issue on anti-consumption briefly defines and highlights the importance of anticonsumption research, provides an overview of the latest studies in the area, and suggests an agenda for future research on anti-consumption.

This essay is my review of Philip Booth’s Wellbeing and the Role of Government. The book is an anthology of original articles by eminent researchers in modern happiness economics, such as: Booth himself; Paul Omerod; David Sacks, Betsey Stephenson, and Justin Wolfers; Christopher Snowden; J. R. Shackleton; Christian Bjornskov; Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne; and Pedro Schwartz. I conclude by offering several criticisms of the work.

Alan Turing, one of the fathers of computing, warned that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could one day pose an existential risk to humanity. Today, recent advancements in the field AI have been accompanied by a renewed set of existential warnings. But what exactly constitutes an existential risk? And how exactly does AI pose such a threat? In this chapter we aim to answer these questions. In particular, we will critically explore three commonly cited reasons for thinking that AI poses an existential (...) threat to humanity: the control problem, the possibility of global disruption from an AI race dynamic, and the weaponization of AI. (shrink)

Standpoint theorists have long been clear that marginalization does not make better understanding a given. They have been less clear, though, that social dominance does not make ignorance a given. Indeed, many standpoint theorists have implicitly committed themselves to what I call the strong epistemic disadvantage thesis. According to this thesis, there are strong, substantive limits on what the socially dominant can know about oppression that they do not personally experience. I argue that this thesis is not just implausible but (...) politically pernicious; it is an excuse for ignorance and silence that stifles our ability to address many injustices. Moreover, I argue that if we are to avoid lending support to the SEDT while working within a standpoint theory framework, we must hold that the socially dominant can achieve marginalized standpoints. So, we must hold that men can achieve feminist standpoints, that white women (and men) can achieve black feminist standpoints, and so on. (shrink)

There is an undeniable tendency to dismiss women’s sexual assault allegations out of hand. However, this tendency is not monolithic—allegations that black men have raped white women are often met with deadly seriousness. I argue that contemporary rape culture is characterized by the interplay between rape myths that minimize rape, and myths that catastrophize rape. Together, these two sets of rape myths distort the epistemic resources that people use when assessing rape allegations. These distortions result in the unjust exoneration of (...) people we cannot conceive of as monstrous, while making it too easy to believe that some marginalized people could be rapists. I also argue that rape myths enable a novel kind of epistemic injustice. This injustice concerns how our assessments of trustworthiness and our assessments of plausibility interact. I argue that rape myths can result in runaway credibility deflations that can explain both why people fail to believe most women, and also why people may unjustly believe false allegations that white women have been raped by black men. (shrink)

There are many different kinds of libertarianism. The first is right libertarianism, which received its most powerful expression in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), a book that still sets the baseline for discussions of libertarianism today. The second, I will call faux libertarianism. For reasons I will explain in this paper, most ‘man-on-the-street’ libertarians and most politicians who claim to be libertarians are actually this kind of libertarian. And third, there is left libertarianism, which is what I shall (...) spend most of this paper explicating. But I will not simply be surveying the views of those who identify as left libertarians and put this forth as if I were engaged in an exegetical exercise. Instead, what I shall set forth is a kind of manifesto, a statement of why I consider myself a left libertarian, one that takes this approach to political morality well beyond where it was left around the end of the last century by the previous generation of left libertarians. My hope is to provide those who find certain left libertarian ideas attractive a guide by which they can explain and harmonise their own views, recognise left libertarianism as a distinct comprehensive political doctrine, and feel more open to identify themselves as left libertarian too. (shrink)