Over the last decades, network-based approaches have become highly popular in diverse fields of biology, including neuroscience, ecology, molecular biology and genetics. While these approaches continue to grow very rapidly, some of their conceptual and methodological aspects still require a programmatic foundation. This challenge particularly concerns the question of whether a generalized account of explanatory, organisational and descriptive levels of networks can be applied universally across biological sciences. To this end, this highly interdisciplinary theme issue focuses on the definition, motivation (...) and application of key concepts in biological network science, such as explanatory power of distinctively network explanations, network levels, and network hierarchies. (shrink)

Terms loaded with informational connotations are often employed to refer to genes and their dynamics. Indeed, genes are usually perceived by biologists as basically ‘the carriers of hereditary information.’ Nevertheless, a number of researchers consider such talk as inadequate and ‘just metaphorical,’ thus expressing a skepticism about the use of the term ‘information’ and its derivatives in biology as a natural science. First, because the meaning of that term in biology is not as precise as it is, for instance, in (...) the mathematical theory of communication. Second, because it seems to refer to a purported semantic property of genes without theoretically clarifying if any genuinely intrinsic semantics is involved. Biosemiotics, a field that attempts to analyze biological systems as semiotic systems, makes it possible to advance in the understanding of the concept of information in biology. From the perspective of Peircean biosemiotics, we develop here an account of genes as signs, including a detailed analysis of two fundamental processes in the genetic information system (transcription and protein synthesis) that have not been made so far in this field of research. Furthermore, we propose here an account of information based on Peircean semiotics and apply it to our analysis of transcription and protein synthesis. (shrink)

Most current techniques to deal with invasive species are ineffective or have highly damaging side effects. To this end suppression-drives based on clustered regularly inter-spaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have been touted as a potential silver bullet for the problem, allowing for a highly focused, humane and cost-effective means of removing a target species from an environment. Suppression-drives come with serious risks, however, such that the precautionary principle seems to warrant us not deploying this technology. The focus of this paper (...) is on one such risk – the danger of a suppression-drive escaping containment and wiping out the target species globally. Here, I argue that in most cases this risk is significant enough to warrant not using a gene-drive. In some cases, however, we can bypass the precautionary principle by using an approach that hinges on what I term the ‘Worst-Case Clause’. This clause, in turn, provides us with a litmus test that can be fruitfully used to determine what species are viable targets for suppression-drives in the wild. Using this metric in concert with other considerations, I suggest that only three species are currently possible viable targets – the European rabbit, ship rat and Caribbean Tree Frog. (shrink)

Özet -/- Bu çalışmada modern endüstri toplumlarında teknolojinin, bireylerin ve bir bütün olarak toplumun rasyonalitesini nasıl etkilediği ve bunun da ötesinde nasıl belirlediği incelenecektir. Bu inceleme Herbert Marcuse’nin Tek Boyutlu İnsan adlı eserinde ortaya koyduğu teknolojiye ilişkin görüşleri üzerinden yapılacaktır. Rasyonalite, bilgi ve deneyim arasındaki ilişki teknoloji üzerinden irdelenecek ve daha sonra Marcuse’nin ‘teknolojik rasyonalite’ kavramı Claus Offe’nin eleştirileri bağlamında çözümlenecektir. Son olarak Marcuse’nin teknoloji eleştirisi günümüzde ortaya çıkan toplumsal pratiklerle ele alınarak değerlendirilecektir. -/- Anahtar Terimler Teknoloji, Bilgi, Eleştiri, (...) Pratik, Kapitalist Toplum, Politika, Rasyonalite. -/- Rationality, Experience and Knowledge in the Age of Technology: Problems & Criticisms -/- Abstract -/- The question of how human potential is imprisoned in contemporary capitalism is one of the central topics of the analysis on social reality by every social theory which claims to be critical. This question which can be concretized as a systematic occupation with the cultural-technical forms which caused by contemporary capitalism and as an analysis of new types of social subjectivity which emerge as a result of these forms, essentially includes the effort to specify at what level and by using what kind of tools the current system grabs the individual by the throat. Frankfurt School tradition as one of the foremost traditions which conducts such an investigation, discusses the analysis of society over fragility of the bourgeois individual. -/- According to Frankfurt School, the individual in contemporary capitalism is extorted from bourgeois ideals and is out of breath as a result of blockade of overgrown structures in social context in which s/he lives. In other words, the bourgeois individual has been erased. In the late capitalist society where personal histories are melted away, technological progress is one of the processes that led to the deletion of the individual. The clearest expression of this emphasis finds correspondence in the introduction of Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man. Marcuse proposes two opposite theses in this work which he examines advanced industrial societies: 1) Advanced industrial society have a structure that it can control the qualitative changes in predictable future, 2) However, trends and forces which can reverse this situation (which can break this limitation and destroy capitalist society) also exist. First one claims that relations of domination in the social structures are sustainable in the future; and the other thesis emphasizes that the opportunity of emancipation of people by getting free of these power relations is still possible. However, Marcuse does not dwell on too much on the latter (which is the claim about possibility of powers and trends that can change the current situation). Moreover it could be argued that his arguments relating to technological rationality and one-dimensionality draws us into the impossibility of attaining any moment of a positive social transformation. -/- The book is dominated by an atmosphere of immense feeling of being encircled and hopelessness, thus it follows from the work of Marcuse that in the system that we live in it is even impossible to breathe freely. Although in follow-up studies after the One Dimensional Man (especially in writings in which vitality of 68 movement and the axis of New Left), it can be observed that there is an attempt to convert despair into hope, it is clear that Marcuse’s designations regarding technological life mechanisms should be discussed again given the technological advancements of our times. Within this context, in the study, how the technology affects and furthermore determines the individuals and society as a whole in the modern industrial societies has been investigated. This investigation has been carried out through Herbert Marcuse's views on technology which are presented in his work One-Dimensional Man. The relationship between rationality, knowledge and experience has been examined on the basis of technology, and then Marcuse's concept of ‘technological rationality’ has been analysed in the context of Claus Offe's criticisms. -/- Finally, Marcuse's critique of technology has been assessed by considering the emerging social practices in this day and time. Herbert Marcuse refers to the rationality which is created by technology and is directly based on submissive efficiency, as ‘technological rationality’. Thinker argues that what is considered to be rational in a society is subject to change with technological developments, and social rationality is directly connected to the technological advancements. There are three different projections of technological rationality approach which are in turn ontological, epistemological and ethicalpolitical approaches. Claus Offe claims that it is possible to group these different dimensions under three theses. According to the first one; scientific rationality has become the organizational principle of domination. -/- According to Offe, in his second thesis Marcuse mentions the emergence of technology sui generis i.e. as a distinctive autonomous technological rationality. And the third thesis proceeds on the line of the argument that socialist societies are under the impact of technological rationality as well as capitalist societies. According to Offe, even though these three theses are consistent with each other, Marcuse has been violated the most fundamental principle of the Critical Theory by not offering any possibility of social transformation which are aimed at the problems of extensive manipulation and pacified existence that brought about by technological rationality. Hence although Marcuse's work is of utmost importance with regard to his analysis and the issues that he has covered, it would not be wrong to say that a problematic argument from the point of the tradition of Critical Theory has been proposed. The main reason for this is the argument which asserts that the technology turned into a mechanism of domination which is almost irreversible and unchangeable. Therefore, such mechanism does not offer any resistance point where human can take a breath. As a result of this, emancipation which is the main political purpose of the Critical Theory has been invalidated. What could be the problems which are created by the negative situation that results from Marcuse's thesis on technology? For instance, how could the basis for the existence of opposing movements which are organized over the internet or the foundations of anti-capitalist radical critique be explained on the axis of Marcuse’s thesis? -/- There is a fundamental problem that has to be solved: if we declare only the validity of oppressive, central and ideological functions of technological devices, then the idea which is referred by authoritarian governments that current opposing movements or rebel groups organized over internet might be organized from a centre which is defined as imperialist power or external power becomes an affirmable argument. In other words, does Marcuse's technological determinist approach serves to legitimize the discourses such as "foreign powers or imperialist enemies," and so on which authoritarian powers frequently resort to. Is it possible to think of another alternative with regard to the problems produced by this rationality apart from the negative comments that revealed by the concept of technological rationality. From what frameworks this question can be answered In the conclusion of the study, answers to these questions have been searched. -/- Keywords: Technology, Knowledge, Criticism, Practice, Capitalist Society, Politics, Rationality. (shrink)

Özet: Bu yazıda nefret sözcüklerinin dilsel işlevi açıklanmaya çalışılacaktır. Bunun için öncelikle nefret sözcüklerinin kimi özelliklerini tartışıp sonrasında bu özelliklerin tümünün önereceğim sözcük sezdirimine dayalı nefret sözcükleri kuramı ile başarıyla açıklanabileceğini savunacağım. Buna göre nefret sözcükleri sözcük anlamı olarak bir insan grubuna işaret ederken, tipik kullanımlarında kimi olumsuz nitelikleri sözcük düzeyinde sezdirirler. Sözcük sezdirimi kavramı Grice'ın sezdirim kavramının bir tümcecikten daha küçük dilsel yapılara uyarlanmasıyla ortaya çıkar. Bu uyarlamanın olanaklı olduğunun gösterilmesi için Grice’ın tümce düzeyi için tasarladığı ilke ve maksimlerin (...) tümce altı düzeyde nasıl işlediğini açıklayacağım. Abstract: This paper aims at explaining the linguistic function of slurs. To this aim, I will first discuss certain features of slurs and then argue that these features can be successfully explained in my suggested phrasal implicature theory of slurs. In this view, slurs denote a group of people, and in their typical use they imply certain negative features at the phrasal level. Phrasal implicature is a notion which is developed by adapting Gricean notion of implicature to the linguistic units that are smaller than a clause. In order to show that this adaptation is possible, I will demonstrate how the Gricean principles and maxims work at the subsentential level. (shrink)

This chapter makes the following main claims about Hungarian: A. There is a detailed parallelism between the structures of noun phrases (DPs) and clauses (CPs), involving inflection, possessor extraction, and articles as complementizers. B. "HAVE sentences" are existential sentences involving possessor extraction. C. The argument frame of complex event nominals is identical to that of the underlying verb. D. The deverbal affix in nominals may have either a plain verb or a complex verb in its scope.

Laws of nature seem to take two forms. Fundamental physics discovers laws that hold without exception, ‘strict laws’, as they are sometimes called; even if some laws of fundamental physics are irreducibly probabilistic, the probabilistic relation is thought not to waver. In the nonfundamental, or special, sciences, matters differ. Laws of such sciences as psychology and economics hold only ceteris paribus – that is, when other things are equal. Sometimes events accord with these ceteris paribus laws (c.p. laws, hereafter), but (...) sometimes the laws are not manifest, as if they have somehow been placed in abeyance: the regular relation indicative of natural law can fail in circumstances where an analogous outcome would effectively refute the assertion of strict law. Many authors have questioned the supposed distinction between strict laws and c.p. laws. The brief against it comprises various considerations: from the complaint that c.p. clauses are void of meaning to the claim that, although understood well enough, they should appear in all law-statements. These two concerns, among others, are addressed in due course, but first, I venture a positive proposal. I contend that there is an important contrast between strict laws and c.p. laws, one that rests on an independent distinction between combinatorial and noncombinatorial nomic principles.2 Instantiations of certain properties, e.g., mass and charge, nomically produce individual forces, or more generally, causal influences,3 in accordance with noncombinatorial.. (shrink)

The typical habitat of overt nominative subjects is in finite clauses. But infinitival complements and infinitival adjuncts are also known to have overt nominative subjects, e.g. in Italian (Rizzi 1982), European Portuguese (Raposo 1987), and Spanish (Torrego 1998, Mensching 2000). The analyses make crucial reference to the movement of Aux or Infl to Comp, and to overt or covert infinitival inflection. This working paper is concerned with a novel set of data that appear to be of a different sort, in (...) that they probably do not depend on either rich infinitival inflection or on movement to C. (shrink)

We examine two competing solutions to Benardete paradoxes: causal finitism, according to which nothing can have infinitely many causes, and the unsatisfiable pair diagnosis (UPD), according to which such paradoxes are logically impossible and no metaphysical thesis need be adopted to avoid them. We argue that the UPD enjoys notable theoretical advantages over causal finitism. Causal finitists, however, have levelled two main objections to the UPD. First, they urge that the UPD requires positing a ‘mysterious force’ that prevents paradoxes from (...) arising. Since such a force is implausible, the UPD is in trouble. Second, they employ recombination or patchwork principles to argue that paradoxical situations would be possible if causal finitism were false. Since such situations are not possible, causal finitism is true, and so a substantive metaphysical thesis is needed to avoid the paradoxes. We argue that the UPD proponent can successfully respond to these objections. (shrink)

Benardete paradoxes involve a beginningless set each member of which satisfies some predicate just in case no earlier member satisfies it. Such paradoxes have been wielded on behalf of arguments for the impossibility of an infinite past. These arguments often deploy patchwork principles in support of their key linking premise. Here I argue that patchwork principles fail to justify this key premise.

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)

Traditionally, logic has been the dominant formal method within philosophy. Are logical methods still dominant today, or have the types of formal methods used in philosophy changed in recent times? To address this question, we coded a sample of philosophy papers from the late 2000s and from the late 2010s for the formal methods they used. The results indicate that the proportion of papers using logical methods remained more or less constant over that time period but the proportion of papers (...) using probabilistic methods was approximately three times higher in the late 2010s than it was in the late 2000s. Further analyses explored this change by looking more closely at specific methods, specific levels of technical engagement, and specific subdisciplines within philosophy. These analyses indicate that the increasing proportion of papers using probabilistic methods was pervasive, not confined to particular probabilistic methods, levels of sophistication, or subdisciplines. (shrink)

Scientific disagreements are an important catalyst for scientific progress. But what happens when scientists disagree amidst times of crisis, when we need quick yet reliable policy guidance? In this paper we provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies, we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE) and we specify desiderata for scientifically relevant (...) HOE. We use our account to analyze the controversy about the aerosol transmission of COVID-19. (shrink)

We rely on language to know the minds of others, but does language have a role to play in knowing our own minds? To suppose it does is to look for a connection between mastery of a language and the epistemic relation we bear to our inner lives. What could such a connection consist in? To explore this, I shall examine strategies for explaining self-knowledge in terms of the use we make of language to express and report our mental states. (...) Success in these strategies will depend on the view we take of speakers' understanding of the words they use to speak their minds. The key is to avoid circularity in the account of how they know what they mean; for if knowing what one is saying in speaking a language provides a means of knowing one's own mind, it cannot simply be a part of it. I shall look at ways in which we might proceed here, and examine whether the strategy can make room for a genuinely first-person point of view. But first let me try to motivate the problem of self-knowledge. (shrink)

This paper defends the Intention Account of Inquiry. On this account, inquiry is best understood by appeal to a ‘question-directed intention’ (QDI), an intention to answer a question broadly construed. This account’s core commitments help meet recent challenges plaguing extant approaches to characterizing inquiry. First, QDIs are the type of mental state central to inquiry, not attitudes like curiosity or wonder. Second, holding a QDI towards a question and acting in service of it constitutes the start of inquiry. Third, controversial (...) norms which mandate a rational inquirer's ignorance towards the answer to her question can be reformulated and defended by appeal to rational constraints on intention. Fourth, instrumental pressures inquirers face are the standard pressures of plan-rationality. In defending these theses, I show that the Intention Account provides compelling explanations to standing challenges, in ways competitors cannot. It does so by advancing understanding of how our epistemic and practical agency are intertwined. (shrink)

Intersectionality has become the primary analytic tool that feminist and anti-racist scholars deploy for theorizing identity and oppression. This paper exposes and critically interrogates the assumptions underpinning intersectionality by focusing on four tensions within intersectionality scholarship: the lack of a defined intersectional methodology; the use of black women as quintessential intersectional subjects; the vague definition of intersectionality; and the empirical validity of intersectionality. Ultimately, my project does not seek to undermine intersectionality; instead, I encourage both feminist and anti-racist scholars to (...) grapple with intersectionality's theoretical, political, and methodological murkiness to construct a more complex way of theorizing identity and oppression. (shrink)

Public opinion research has shown that voters accept many falsehoods about politics. This observation is widely considered troubling for democracy—and especially participatory ideals of democracy. I argue that this influential narrative is nevertheless flawed, because it misunderstands the nature of political understanding. Drawing on philosophical examinations of scientific modelling, I demonstrate that accepting falsehoods within one’s model of political reality is compatible with—and indeed can positively enhance—one’s understanding of that reality. Thus, the observation that voters accept many political falsehoods does (...) not necessarily establish that they lack political understanding. I then address three worries: that voters cannot generally engage in such political modelling; that political modelling obscures facts that are crucial to political understanding; and that successful political modelling would require knowing that one’s model contains falsehoods. My responses reveal how, going forward, we should measure political ignorance; and they highlight the standing importance of participatory democracy. (shrink)

Cushman, Young, & Greene (2010) urge the consolidation of moral psychology around a dual-system consensus. On this view, a slow, often-overstretched rational system tends to produce consequentialist intuitions and action-tendencies, while a fast, affective system produces virtuous (or vicious) intuitions and action-tendencies that perform well in their habituated ecological niche but sometimes disastrously outside of it. This perspective suggests a habit-corrected-by-reason picture of moral behavior. Recent research, however, has raised questions about the adequacy of dual-process theories of cognition and behavior, (...) which tend to distinguish categorically between fast, affect-laden, automatic, sometimes-unconscious, nearly-incorrigible mental processes and slow, rational, effortful, conscious, corrigible mental processes. Processes of one alleged type often have properties associated with the contrary type. For instance, rational processes can be emotional, and fast thinking can perform logical operations. In addition, the fast-slow binary transforms a continuous temporal scale into a dichotomous one, losing potentially important information along the way. While these problems are beginning to be addressed in some subfields of psychology, moral psychology has yet to grapple with them. In this theoretical paper, we argue that moral psychology needs a framework that accounts for our knowledge of both temporal and spatial (anatomical) dimensions of the brain basis of moral cognition and virtuous decision-making. We argue that methodologies with very fine-grained temporal granularity, such as electroencephalography (EEG), should be used to complement more frequently used methodologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We outline how this might be accomplished using generosity, gratitude, and integrity as a case study. (shrink)

Achieving space situational awareness requires, at a minimum, the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Leveraging the resultant space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and conjunction assessment presents major challenges. This is in part because in characterizing space objects we reference a variety of identifiers, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, operational processes, operational statuses, and so forth, which tend to be defined in highly heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent (...) ways. The Space Domain Ontologies are designed to provide a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a way that is both consistent and computable. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in a suite of ontologies built around the existing Space Object Ontology. They are stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space situational awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators and analysts. This paper provides an overview of the Space Domain Ontologies and their development and use. It presents the motivation for and advantages of the Space Domain Ontologies, including the benefits they provide for enhancing and maintaining long-term space situational awareness. (shrink)

Current challenges in medical practice, research, and administration demand physicians who are familiar with bioethics, health law, and health economics. Curriculum directors at American Association of Medical Colleges-affiliated medical schools were sent confidential surveys requesting the number of required hours of the above subjects and the years in which they were taught, as well as instructor names. The number of relevant publications since 1990 for each named instructor was assessed by a PubMed search.In sum, teaching in all three subjects combined (...) comprises less than two percent of the total hours in the American medical curriculum, and most instructors have not recently published articles in the fields they teach. This suggests that medical schools should reevaluate their curricula and instructors in bioethics, health law, and health economics. (shrink)

There is an old worry, which dates back to Mill but has analogs even in Sextus, that the very definition of ‘validity’ implies that all valid arguments are circular. This paper investigates how contemporary formal tools can ellucidate that old worry. Its main finding is the existence of a genuine puzzle: a difficult-to-avoid correspondence between the definitions of ‘valid argument’ and ‘premise circular argument’.

The proliferation of conspiracy theories poses a significant threat to democratic decision-making. To counter this threat, many political theorists advocate countering conspiracy theories with ‘more speech’ (or ‘counterspeech’). Yet conspiracy theories are notoriously resistant to counterspeech. This article aims to conceptualise and defend a novel form of counterspeech – narrative counterspeech – that is singularly well-placed to overcome this resistance. My argument proceeds in three steps. First, I argue that conspiracy theories pose a special problem for counterspeech for three interconnected (...) reasons relating to salience, emotion and internal coherence. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology, philosophy of emotion and cognitive science, I then demonstrate that narrative forms of counterspeech constitute an apt response to this diagnosis. Finally, I forestall two objections: the first questions the likely effectiveness of narrative counterspeech; the second insists that, even if it were effective, it would remain unacceptably manipulative. Neither objection, I contend, is ultimately compelling. (shrink)

This essay argues that what is provoking about Ibn Rushd today is not his stance on such topics as the eternity of the world, God's knowledge of singular things, or the immortality of the soul. It is rather his radical philosophical elitisim, i.e., his view that every religion has room for philosophy, but only for the few - the majority must simply follow holy writ and leave all questioning and allegorical interpretation to those few individuals who possess sufficient training in (...) apodictic thinking. I start out with chapters on Salman Rushdie and his view of Ibn Rushd in the novel Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and the reception of Ibn Rushd in the Latin scholastic tradition. I then switch to Ibn Rushd’s biography and the context of his work in Almohad Andalusia. I provide an overview of the development of Islamic philosophy up until Ibn Rushd. I then, in five chapters, offer a detailed reading of his fatwa in defense of philosophy (called the Decisive Treatise). I conclude with some general remarks on the relationship between metaphysics and politics in Ibn Rushd’s works, drawing parallels to other thinkers both in the Islamic and in the Western tradition. The book ends with a selection of Danish-language translations of texts by Ibn Rushd that were translated into Latin during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (his Letter to a friend concerning God’s knowledge of singular things, the last chapter of the Incoherence of the Incoherence, and commenta 5 and 36 from the Commentary on De anima III). (shrink)

We consider an ethical dilemma in global health: is it ethically acceptable to provide some patients cheaper treatments that are less effective or more toxic than the treatments other patients receive? We argue that it is ethical to consider local resource constraints when deciding what interventions to provide. The provision of cheaper, less effective health care is frequently the most effective way of promoting health and realizing the ethical values of utility, equality, and priority to the worst off.

The work argues that engaging Africa's cultural and epistemic resources as social imaginaries, and not as metaphysical or ontological “essences,” could help practitioners of African philosophy overcome the cluster of shortcomings and undesirable features associated with “ethnophilosophy.” A number of points are outlined to buttress this claim. First, the framework of social imaginaries does not operate with the false assumption that Africa's cultural forms and epistemic resources are static and immutable. Second, this framework does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations (...) about Africa or large swathes of it. Third, the framework of social imaginaries remedies ethnophilosophy's problem of collectivism. Fourth, unlike ethnophilosophy, it does not romanticize and canonize a supposedly “idyllic” African past, which militates against a realistic and forward‐looking philosophizing. Finally, with the framework of social imaginaries, Africa's indigenous cultural and epistemic resources become amenable to being engaged with critical philosophical rigor. This not only enhances their potential for cross‐cultural philosophical conversation but also enhances their usefulness for addressing current sociopolitical issues affecting Africa. The discussion in this paper somewhat touches upon the question of method in African philosophy, using the ethnophilosophy problem to navigate the vast gamut of issues involved. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critique three aspects of Emily Walsh's proposal to reduce the moral and legal weight of advance directives: (1) the ambiguity of its initial thesis, (2) its views about the ethics and legality of clinical practice, and (3) its interpretation and application of Ronald Dworkin’s account of advance directives and L.A. Paul's view on transformative experience. I also consider what Walsh’s proposal would mean for people facing the prospect of dementia. I conclude that our reasons to honor (...) many advance directives survive the move to a transformative experience framework. (shrink)

We propose the beginnings of a general theory of environments, of the parts or regions of space in which organisms live and move. We draw on two sources: on the one hand on recent work on the ontology of space; and on the other hand on work by ecological scientists on concepts such as territory, habitat, and niche. An environment is in first approximation a volume of space; it is a specific habitat, location, or site that is suitable or adequate (...) for given purposes (of foraging, resting, hunting, breeding, nesting, grooming) in the life of an organism or group of organisms. This spatial notion of environment can be drawn closer to biological and ecological science by taking account of the pertinent physical attributes realized within given spatial regions. (shrink)

Computer simulations of the formation and evolution of large-scale structure in the universe are integral to the enterprise of modern cosmology. Establishing the reliability of these simulations has been extremely challenging, primarily because of epistemic opacity. In this setting, robustness analysis defined by requiring converging outputs from a diverse ensemble of simulations is insufficient to determine simulation validity. We propose an alternative path of structured code validation that applies eliminative reasoning to isolate and reduce possible sources of error, a potential (...) path that is already being explored by some cosmologists. (shrink)

In two occasions a Bibliography of Structuralism has been published in Erkenntnis (1989, 1994). Since then a lot of water has flowed under the bridge and the structuralist program has shown a continuous development. The aim of the present bibliography is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of An Architectonic for Science –structuralism’s main reference work– and of its recent translation into Spanish by updating the previous bibliographies with titles which have appeared since 1994 as well as before (...) that year but which are not included in them. As in the former deliveries, this bibliography only covers books and articles that are concerned directly with the structuralist approach in the philosophy of science. We would like to thank the many colleagues who have helped us in collecting all the information. Notwithstanding we apologize in advance for the possible entries that we missed to include in this third Bibliography of Structuralism. (shrink)

Euclid’s Elements inspired a number of foundationalist accounts of mathematics, which dominated the epistemology of the discipline for many centuries in the West. Yet surprisingly little has been written by recent philosophers about this conception of mathematical knowledge. The great exception is Imre Lakatos, whose characterisation of the Euclidean Programme in the philosophy of mathematics counts as one of his central contributions. In this essay, we examine Lakatos’s account of the Euclidean Programme with a critical eye, and suggest an alternative (...) picture which builds on his work, but differs in a number of important respects. (shrink)

Do famous athletes have special obligations to act virtuously? A number of philosophers have investigated this question by examining whether famous athletes are subject to special role model obligations (Wellman 2003; Feezel 2005; Spurgin 2012). In this paper we will take a different approach and give a positive response to this question by arguing for the position that sport and gaming celebrities are ‘ambassadors of the game’: moral agents whose vocations as rule-followers have unique implications for their non-lusory lives. According (...) to this idea, the actions of a game’s players and other stakeholders—especially the actions of its stars—directly affect the value of the game itself, a fact which generates additional moral reasons to behave in a virtuous manner. We will begin by explaining the three main positions one may take with respect to the question: moral exceptionalism, moral generalism, and moral exemplarism. We will argue that no convincing case for moral exemplarism has thus far been made, which gives us reason to look for new ways to defend this position. We then provide our own ‘ambassadors of the game’ account and argue that it gives us good reason to think that sport and game celebrities are subject to special obligations to act virtuously. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to re-assess reflective equilibrium (“RE”). We ask whether there is a conception of RE that can be defended against the various objections that have been raised against RE in the literature. To answer this question, we provide a systematic overview of the main objections, and for each objection, we investigate why it looks plausible, on what standard or expectation it is based, how it can be answered and which features RE must have to meet (...) the objection. We find that there is a conception of RE that promises to withstand all objections. However, this conception has some features that may be unexpected: it aims at a justification that is tailored to understanding and it is neither tied to intuitions nor does it imply coherentism. We conclude by pointing out a cluster of questions we think RE theorists should pay more attention to. (shrink)

Warning: includes two somewhat graphic images. This paper is an effort to lay out a taxomony of conceptual relations between the domains of the sublime and the religious. -/- .

According to certain kinds of semantic dispositionalism, what an agent means by her words is grounded by her dispositions to complete simple tasks. This sort of position is often thought to avoid the finitude problem raised by Kripke against simpler forms of dispositionalism. The traditional objection is that, since words possess indefinite (or infinite) extensions, and our dispositions to use words are only finite, those dispositions prove inadequate to serve as ground for what we mean by our words. I argue (...) that, even if such positions (emphasizing simple tasks) avoid the traditional form of Kripke's charge, they still succumb to special cases of the finitude problem. Furthermore, I show how such positions can be augmented so as to avoid even these special cases. Doing so requires qualifying the dispositions of interest as those possessed by the abstracted version of an actual agent (in contrast to, say, an idealized version of the agent). In addition to avoiding the finitude problem in its various forms, the position that results provides new materials for appreciating the role that abstracting models can play for a dispositionalist theory of meaning. (shrink)

Die Welt ist voller Leid. Gott ist entweder unfähig, es zu verhindern – dann ist Er nicht allmächtig –, oder Er will es nicht verhindern – dann ist Er nicht vollkommen gut. Seit Generationen wird dies als das schlagendste Argument gegen den Glauben angesehen, daß ein allmächtiges und allgütiges Wesen existiert. Natürlich haben Theisten sich die größte Mühe gegeben, eine angemessene Erwiderung vorzubringen. ... Selbst wenn nur ein einziges Individuum unnötigerweise für einen kurzen Moment eine leichte Unannehmlichkeit zu ertragen hätte, (...) wäre das Problem logisch ebenso real – obwohl es nicht so schmerzhaft wäre oder möglicherweise sogar unbemerkt bliebe. (shrink)

The revival of the philosophy of mathematics in the 60s following its post-1931 slump left us with two conflicting positions on arithmetic’s ontological relationship to set theory. W.V. Quine’s view, presented in 'Word and Object' (1960), was that numbers are sets. The opposing view was advanced in another milestone of twentieth-century philosophy of mathematics, Paul Benacerraf’s 'What Numbers Could Not Be' (1965): one of the things numbers could not be, it explained, was sets; the other thing numbers could not be, (...) even more dramatically, was objects. Curiously, although Benacerraf’s article appeared in the heyday of Quine’s influence, it declined to engage the Quinean position squarely, even seemed to think it was not its business to do so. Despite that, in my experience, most philosophers believe that Benacerraf’s article put paid to the reductionist view that numbers are sets (though perhaps not the view that numbers are objects). My chapter will attempt to overturn this orthodoxy. (shrink)

The Formalist tradition in late-scholastic philosophy has gone unnoticed in standard historiography. This article’s overall objective is to add the Formalist tradition to what we know about Renaissance philosophy. I first show how the Formalist tradition was born out of some innovative considerations of hierarchies of distinctions in the wake of the Franciscan John Duns Scotus’s teaching on the formal distinction in the beginning of the fourteenth century (especially Francis of Meyronnes’s model of four distinctions and Petrus Thomae’s more elaborate (...) doctrine of seven kinds of distinctions). I then trace how Formalist literature developed from being an exclusively Franciscan affair to becoming a much more widespread phenomenon. Thus, from the decades up to 1500 and onwards, authors from various late-scholastic schools (Thomism, Lullism, Averroism, and others) produced Formalist literature, i.e., treatises on multiple kinds of distinctions. I highlight particularly how one Franciscan philosopher of the sixteenth century, Jean Du Douet, proposed to view the Formalist preoccupation with distinctions as a discipline in its own right, a proper scientia formalitatum. I finally argue that while this proposal met with dismissive reactions, Du Douet’s idea does in fact reflect the role Formalism played in the scholastic curriculum in the late sixteenth century, at least in Franciscan milieus. (shrink)

What is the status of a cat in a virtual reality environment? Is it a real object? Or part of a fiction? Virtual realism, as defended by D. J. Chalmers, takes it to be a virtual object that really exists, that has properties and is involved in real events. His preferred specification of virtual realism identifies the cat with a digital object. The project of this paper is to use a comparison between virtual reality environments and scientific computer simulations to (...) critically engage with Chalmers’s position. I first argue that, if it is sound, his virtual realism should also be applied to objects that figure in scientific computer simulations, e.g. to simulated galaxies. This leads to a slippery slope because it implies an unreasonable proliferation of digital objects. A philosophical analysis of scientific computer simulations suggests an alternative picture: The cat and the galaxies are parts of fictional models for which the computer provides model descriptions. This result motivates a deeper analysis of the way in which Chalmers builds up his realism. I argue that he buys realism too cheap. For instance, he does not really specify what virtual objects are supposed to be. As a result, rhetoric aside, his virtual realism isn’t far from a sort of fictionalism. (shrink)

Global climate change is one of the most widely discussed problems of our time. However, many libertarian thinkers have not participated in the ethical dimensions of this discussion due to a narrow focus on the scientific basis for concern about climate change. In this paper, I reject this approach and explore the kind of response libertarians should be offering instead. I frame the climate change problem as one which concerns potential rights-infringements and explore different ways in which climate change might (...) be thought to infringe upon rights. I conclude that there are some ways in which climate change might be expected to result in rights-infringements, but that some of the current concern about climate change cannot be reconciled with a rights-oriented paradigm. I close by outlining future directions for research, emphasizing that much remains to be done in order to formulate a complete libertarian perspective on climate change. (shrink)

In this short response to Kerstein and Bognar, we clarify three aspects of the complete lives system, which we propose as a system of allocating scarce medical interventions. We argue that the complete lives system provides meaningful guidance even though it does not provide an algorithm. We also defend the investment modification to the complete lives system, which prioritizes adolescents and older children over younger children; argue that sickest-first allocation remains flawed when scarcity is absolute and ongoing; and argue that (...) Kerstein and Bognar are mistaken to base their allocation principles on differences in personhood. (shrink)

The thesis that rationality consists in the straight-forward maximization of utility has not lacked critics. Typically, however, detractors reject the Humean picture of rationality upon which it seems based; they seek to emancipate reason from the tyranny of the passions. It is, then, noteworthy when an attack on this thesis comes from ‘within the ranks.’David Gauthier's paper ‘Reason and Maximization’ is just such an attack; and for this reason, among others, it is interesting. It is not successful, though. In defense (...) of this conclusion, we shall begin by relating the essentials of Gauthier's argument. Then we shall examine in some detail Gauthier's claim that the principle of straighforward max-imization fails to be self-supporting. We shall argue that Gauthier's defense of this claim is at best incomplete. Finally, we shall show that the fact that a normative principle is self-subverting or non-self-supporting does not entail that the principle is defective. (shrink)

This essay argues that reparations for wrongs by one's ancestors can be justified. Differential benefits to those descended from victims of one's ancestors is discrimination which can be justified by one's right to be partial to one's ancestors, doing what they, with clearer thinking, would have done--namely compensating their victims. So, while there is no obligation to discriminate, one has a right to, in virtue of one's partiality towards one's ancestors.

This article is an account of an electronic discussion which took place between November 1995 and June 1996. A number of specialists in relevant research areas had been invited to take part in the discussion from the very beginning, and some were added later. Altogether 30 individuals subscribed to the list. The “target paper,” written by Allen Renear, was sent to the list on November 27, 1995. The target paper alone comprised 8,500 words. The ensuing discussion, to which 9 of (...) the members on the list made one or more individual contributions, comprises 30 entries of altogether 37,000 words. It is the function of this printed article to provide a brief summary and a key to the full electronic discussion which accompanies it. (shrink)

This paper investigates the emotional import of literary devices deployed in fiction. Reflecting on the often-favored approach in the analytic tradition that locates fictional characters, events, and narratives as sources of readers’ emotions, I attempt to broaden the scope of analysis by accounting for how literary devices trigger non-cognitive emotions. I argue that giving more expansive consideration to literary devices by which authors present content facilitates a better understanding of how fiction engages emotion. In doing so, I also explore the (...) somatic dimension of reading fiction. (shrink)

This chapter uncovers a less investigated aspect of the relationship between the two most important scholastic schools of the Renaissance, Thomism and Scotism: the influence of Scotist literature on distinctions as seen in some sixteenth-century Thomists. The chapter has a primary focus on Chrysostomus Javelli’s engagement in his discussion of divine attributes with the Scotist doctrine of distinctions, but also considers other Thomist sources. First, the beginnings of the highly specialised Scotist literature on distinctions are traced back to the start (...) of the fourteenth century; I show how some early followers of Duns Scotus, in particular Francis of Meyronnes and Petrus Thomae, systematised Scotus’ ontology of the various grades of being by compiling lists of subtle distinctions to be applied to various levels of reality. I give some indications as to the later reception of these models of distinctions in the Scotist school. Special attention is paid to Étienne Brulefer, since his summary of Petrus Thomae’s model of seven distinctions was Javelli’s source for the Scotist doctrine. I then investigate how Javelli worked with Brulefer’s summary, and how he sought to integrate the Scotist doctrine into his own discussion of divine attributes. Thomists traditionally allowed only a rational or mental kind of distinction among divine attributes, and between them and the divine essence. Javelli, however, endeavours to show how the Thomist position may be reconciled with the Scotist doctrine of a formal or ex natura rei distinction. He did not always endorse this conciliatory approach; I hypothesise that he changed his mind on the subject over time. Finally, I show how other Renaissance Thomists reacted to the Scotist system of distinctions; in particular, I draw attention to the Thomists Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, Bartolomeo Manzoli, and Mattia Gibboni da Aquario, who all wrote treatises on Thomist distinction theory modelled on the Scotist system of distinctions. In some of this literature, lists of distinctions based on Thomist metaphysics were compiled in order to replace the Scotist system. I argue that Javelli’s approach is more conciliatory and, in fact, has some overlap with the concordist thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who himself considered Scotus and Aquinas to be in fundamental agreement as regards the distinction between divine attributes. (shrink)

Bartolomeo Mastri’s Disputations on Metaphysics is the single most important work on metaphysics produced in the Scotist school during the Early Modern period. This contribution guides through the work by highlighting a selection of key passages that convey an impression of its historical-literary context, its subject matter, its main motifs and scientific aims, but also its limitations. Especially, we see Mastri emphasizing the theological aspect of theology, though he in the end refrains from exploring this aspect of metaphysics within his (...) work on metaphysics. I suggest that this discrepancy between Mastri’s concept of metaphysics and his work on metaphysics showcases the difficulty of organizing this discipline during the phase of transition from the traditional commentary format typical of medieval scholasticism to the Early Modern scholastic Cursus philosophicus literature. (shrink)

Pandeism is the belief that God chose to wholly become our Universe, imposing principles at this Becoming that have fostered the lawful evolution of multifarious structures, including life and consciousness. This article describes and defends a particular form of pandeism: living God pandeism (LGP). On LGP, our Universe inherits all of God's unsurpassable attributes—reality, unity, consciousness, knowledge, intelligence, and effectiveness—and includes as much reality, conscious and unconscious, as is possible consistent with retaining those attributes. God and the Universe, together “God-and-Universe,” (...) is also eternal into the future and the past. The article derives testable hypotheses from these claims and shows that the evidence to date confirms some of these while falsifying none. Theism cannot be tested in the same way. (shrink)