The Disputationes Theologiae from 1655 of Bartolomeo Mastri (1602–1673) is structured after the model of the medieval commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Four Books of Sentences and hence has a large section in the first part on divine knowledge. Within this section, called Disputation on the Divine Intellect (Disputatio de Divino Intellectu), Mastri’s long and nuanced discussion of divine foreknowledge merits particular attention. In the time of Mastri, the theological issue of divine foreknowledge and its relation to human freedom had (...) gained particular prominence, with the Jesuits and the Thomists each opting for their particular doctrine on this subject as well as the related topics of grace and predestination, thereby competing to establish the definitive Roman Catholic reaction to the Protestant and Reformed views on these matters. Mastri, entering the debate at a rather late stage (almost half a century after Paul V’s famous attempt in 1607 to call off the controversy De Auxiliis by prohibiting any further polemics on the subject of grace), sets out to locate a clearly Scotist position in this rather peculiar historical landscape called Early Modern theology. This article discusses Mastri's contribution to the debate and highlights its coherence with other aspects of Mastri's doctrine of divine knowledge. (shrink)

This paper argues that "that"-clauses do not reference propositions because they are not intersubstitutible with other expressions that do reference propositions. In particular, "that"-clauses are shown to not be intersubstitutible with propositional anaphors like "so." The substitution failures are further argued to support a semantics on which "that"-clauses are predicates.

The corporate meltdowns of this and the previous decade in the US - WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, and in Australia - FAI, HIH and AWB being among the many examples - have resulted in the governments of those two countries introducing legislation and policy guidelines aimed at minimising future corporate misbehaviour. -/- The US has introduced the Sarbanes Oxley Act, with requirements on corporate accountants and auditors, as well as its whistleblowing provisions. It has revised the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for Organizations. (...) New rules for the NYSE and NASDAQ have also been introduced. In addition, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice have further strengthened the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act 1977, last revised in 1997. -/- Australia has revised the Corporations Act to include whistleblower protection clauses as well as adopted the ASX Corporate Governance guidelines. Standards Australia has issued its handbook on corporate governance. Although not a business issue, the Australian government has also announced that it will introduce whistleblower protection legislation for the public sector by the end of its first term in office. This legislation will likely influence whatever the private sector does in this respect. The inclusion of whistleblower protection in both Sarbanes–Oxley and the Corporations Act reflects a growing body of research that finds that people internal to an organisation are the most effective way to identify corporate wrongs. The Commonwealth Treasury has recently issued an options paper, stating that the Corporations Act has been ineffectual. It has sought submissions on revisions to the legislation that the Australian Government could take. This paper examines the policies advocated by over 20 organisations and academics concerned with whistleblowing issues. It draws the conclusion that on current indications, even after further reform, Australian legislation and policies are still likely to be less effectual than overseas practices. -/- --------------------------------- . (shrink)

Johnston maintains that the notion of a proposition -- ”a language independent (abstract) particular” -- can be dispensed with in philosophical semantics and replaced with that of a propositional act. A propositional act is a component of a speech act that is responsible for the propositional content of the speech act. Traditionally, it is thought that a propositional act yields the propositional content of a speech act by being an act of expressing a proposition. And it is the expressed proposition (...) that serves as the propositional content of the speech act. Johnston points out, however, that a propositional act is a structured event consisting minimally of a referential act, a predicative act, and a time-designative act. And on Johnston's view, the propositional content is the structured propositional act itself. (Strictly speaking, Johnston analyzes sameness of propositional content in terms of sameness of propositional act type, from which I, perhaps rashly, inferred that the propositional content of a speech act should be taken to be the propositional act itself). Johnston argues that a semantic analysis in terms of propositional acts enables us to reconcile the necessity of both, (1) Hesperus is Phosphorus (2) Phosphorus is Phosphorus with their intuitive difference in meaning, while maintaining the direct reference theory of proper names. Moreover, he argues that invoking propositional acts rather than propositions has the advantage of being able to capture the various senses in which distinct statements might be said to "say the same thing", as well as that of ontological parsimony. I will address each of these claims in turn, but first, I want to point out that the propositionalist can easily reconcile the necessity of (1) and (2) with their intuitive difference in meaning, without forsaking direct reference. All one needs to do is invoke the Fregean idea that there is a meaning shift in “thatâ€-clauses of (opaque) indirect discourse (and other) ascriptions.. (shrink)

The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently (...) of the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic (...) account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology. (shrink)

The vitalism/reductionism debate in the life sciences shows that the idea of emergence as something principally unexplainable will often be falsified by the development of science. Nevertheless, the concept of emergence keeps reappearing in various sciences, and cannot easily be dispensed with in an evolutionary world-view. We argue that what is needed is an ontological nonreductionist theory of levels of reality which includes a concept of emergence, and which can support an evolutionary account of the origin of levels. Classical explication (...) of emergence as “the creation of new properties” is discussed critically, and specific distinctions between various kinds of emergence are introduced for the purpose of developing an ontology of levels, framed in a materialistic and evolutionary perspective. A concept of the relation between levels as being inclusive is suggested, permitting the “local” existence of different ontologies. We identify, as a working hypothesis, four primary levels and explicate their nonhomomorphic interlevel relations. Explainability of emergence in relation to determinism and predictability is considered. Recent research in self-organizing non-linear dynamical systems represents a revival of the scientific study of emergence, and we argue that these recent developments can be seen as a step toward a final “devitalisation” of emergence. (shrink)

Nearly all success is due to some mix of ability and luck. But some successes we attribute to the agent’s ability, whereas others we attribute to luck. To better understand the criteria distinguishing credit from luck, we conducted a series of four studies on knowledge attributions. Knowledge is an achievement that involves reaching the truth. But many factors affecting the truth are beyond our control and reaching the truth is often partly due to luck. Which sorts of luck are compatible (...) with knowledge? We find that knowledge attributions are highly sensitive to lucky events that change the explanation for why a belief is true. By contrast, knowledge attributions are surprisingly insensitive to lucky events that threaten but ultimately fail to change the explanation for why a belief is true. These results shed light on our concept of knowledge, help explain apparent inconsistencies in prior work on knowledge attributions, and constitute progress toward a general understanding of the relation between success and luck. (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)

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)

Vigorous debate over the moral propriety of cognitive enhancement exists, but the views of the public have been largely absent from the discussion. To address this gap in our knowledge, four experiments were carried out with contrastive vignettes in order to obtain quantitative data on public attitudes towards cognitive enhancement. The data collected suggest that the public is sensitive to and capable of understanding the four cardinal concerns identified by neuroethicists, and tend to cautiously accept cognitive enhancement even as they (...) recognize its potential perils. The public is biopolitically moderate, endorses both meritocratic principles and the intrinsic value of hard work, and appears to be sensitive to the salient moral issues raised in the debate. Taken together, these data suggest that public attitudes toward enhancement are sufficiently sophisticated to merit inclusion in policy deliberations, especially if we seek to align public sentiment and policy. (shrink)

Understanding everyday behavior relies heavily upon understanding our ability to improvise, how we are able to continuously anticipate and adapt in order to coordinate with our environment and others. Here we consider the ability of musicians to improvise, where they must spontaneously coordinate their actions with co-performers in order to produce novel musical expressions. Investigations of this behavior have traditionally focused on describing the organization of cognitive structures. The focus, here, however, is on the ability of the time-evolving patterns of (...) inter-musician movement coordination as revealed by the mathematical tools of complex dynamical systems to provide a new understanding of what potentiates the novelty of spontaneous musical action. We demonstrate this approach through the application of cross wavelet spectral analysis, which isolates the strength and patterning of the behavioral coordination that occurs between improvising musicians across a range of nested time-scales. Revealing the sophistication of the previously unexplored dynamics of movement coordination between improvising musicians is an important step towards understanding how creative musical expressions emerge from the spontaneous coordination of multiple musical bodies. (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)

Calls for interdisciplinarity in the humanities often presume the existence of disciplines as separate academic fields, with research collaboration framed as a crossing of the borders between separate areas of knowledge. By way of two case studies and a comparative approach called borderology, the chapter questions such a notion and investigates other aspects of interdisciplinary work as practised by researchers in the humanities and the social sciences. First, the rich work on modern love by sociologist Eva Illouz, illustrating a form (...) of intrinsic interdisciplinarity, is analyzed. Second, recent work within friendship studies is compared, and borderology is used to shed light upon friendship both as a real phenomenon and as a cluster of concepts invoked and investigated by different disciplines. These examples may help policy makers appreciate one of the ways in which the humanities are always already interdisciplinary. (shrink)

Research in general, and research on friendship in particular, uses metaphors and analogies, and research itself can be seen in analogy with map making. This chapter takes us on a meandering walk along mono- and multidisciplinary inquiries into friendship as seen from many perspectives, like that of history and philosophy of science (that has analogical modelling as a canonical style of reasoning) and semiotics, to reflect on the uses of metaphor and analogy. Semiotics as founded by C. S. Peirce is (...) the science of representations, how representational devises relate to their objects and how the meaning generated depends upon context and interpretation. Metaphor and analogy are such representational tools, at once cognitive and common as we all use them to think with, but also specialized within the sciences and humanities where they can be used in effective and misleading ways. It is shown how the general map analogy can be semiotically analysed as a diagram and how its general form can be applied to the aspects of friendship that concern the friends’ knowledge of Self and Other. We not only think, but also do things with metaphors, such as transforming a friend into some kin, or vice versa. (shrink)

Reflective equilibrium (RE) is often regarded as a powerful method in ethics, logic, and even philosophy in general. Despite this popularity, characterizations of the method have been fairly vague and unspecific so far. It thus may be doubted whether RE is more than a jumble of appealing but ultimately sketchy ideas that cannot be spelled out consistently. In this paper, we dispel such doubts by devising a formal model of RE. The model contains as components the agent’s commitments and a (...) theory that tries to systematize the commitments. It yields a precise picture of how the commitments and the theory are adjusted to each other. The model differentiates between equilibrium as a target state and the dynamic equilibration process. First solutions to the model, obtained by computer simulation, show that the method allows for consistent specification and that the model’s implications are plausible in view of expectations on RE. In particular, the mutual adjustment of commitments and theory can improve one’s commitments, as proponents of RE have suggested. We argue that our model is fruitful not only because it points to issues that need to be dealt with for a better understanding of RE, but also because it provides the means to address these issues. (shrink)

In everyday life and in science we acquire evidence of evidence and based on this new evidence we often change our epistemic states. An assumption underlying such practice is that the following EEE Slogan is correct: 'evidence of evidence is evidence' (Feldman 2007, p. 208). We suggest that evidence of evidence is best understood as higher-order evidence about the epistemic state of agents. In order to model evidence of evidence we introduce a new powerful framework for modelling epistemic states, Dyadic (...) Bayesianism. Based on this framework, we then discuss characterizations of evidence of evidence and argue for one of them. Finally, we show that whether the EEE Slogan holds, depends on the specific kind of evidence of evidence. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

In this paper we raise the question whether technological artifacts can properly speaking be trusted or said to be trustworthy. First, we set out some prevalent accounts of trust and trustworthiness and explain how they compare with the engineer’s notion of reliability. We distinguish between pure rational-choice accounts of trust, which do not differ in principle from mere judgments of reliability, and what we call “motivation-attributing” accounts of trust, which attribute specific motivations to trustworthy entities. Then we consider some examples (...) of technological entities that are, at first glance, best suited to serve as the objects of trust: intelligent systems that interact with users, and complex socio-technical systems. We conclude that the motivation-attributing concept of trustworthiness cannot be straightforwardly applied to these entities. Any applicable notion of trustworthy technology would have to depart significantly from the full-blown notion of trustworthiness associated with interpersonal trust. (shrink)

Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations, the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in clinical research and practice. We argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH utilizes rigorous and context-appropriate methodologies to analyze a wider range of first-person accounts of AVH (...) at 3 contextual levels: cultural, social, and historical; experiential; and biographical. We go on to show that there are significant potential benefits for voice hearers, clinicians, and researchers. These include informing the development and refinement of subtypes of hallucinations within and across diagnostic categories; “front-loading” research in cognitive neuroscience; and suggesting new possibilities for therapeutic intervention. In conclusion, we argue that an interdisciplinary approach to the phenomenology of AVH can nourish the ethical core of scientific enquiry by challenging its interpretive paradigms, and offer voice hearers richer, potentially more empowering ways to make sense of their experiences. (shrink)

Traditional notions of translation (TN or ‘narrow translation’) have had a primary focus on text translation and how meaning can be preserved. This chapter employs an alternative semiotic understanding of translation (TS or ‘semiotic translation’), as suggested by Kobus Marais, to demonstrate how it can be used to study inter-epoch changes in norm-directed practices and their conceptualizations, cross-cultural developments and interdisciplinary translations of concepts used to describe them. Friendship practices and their theoretical descriptions are used as a case to show (...) the need for alternative understandings of translation processes. TS occurs not only when texts are taken as signs of complex phenomena but also when a mode of life and the sociolinguistic practice of one generation or culture is interpreted and changed by its inheritors. To develop TS as a general and theoretically more satisfying model, we investigate some of the processes involved in the inter-epoch conceptualizations and cross-cultural developments of friendship. Claiming that different friendship studies all contribute to knowledge of some aspects of ‘the same’ phenomenon demands the possibility of translations of ‘friendship’ as a word, concept, practice, interpersonal relationship, social bond, ideal, form of love, normative constraint, power relation or any other terms that have been used to characterize its phenomenology and dynamics. Analysing TS translations of friendship across epochs (from Confucius and Aristotle through the following eras, up to modernity), cultures (worldwide) and languages demonstrates how the perspective of TS helps us grasp ancient texts, their translations and cross-cultural friendship performances better without forcing upon the material our late-modern perspectives and norms. It is suggested that frames (from artificial intelligence and philosophy of science) can be an analytic tool for studying TS processes. Finally, some challenges to be resolved in further research are outlined. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (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)

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)

This is the introduction to the volume Cognitive Issues in the Long Scotist Tradition. The introduction discusses the longevity of the Scotist tradition and how it challenges our usual historiographical categories of Medieval and Early Modern philosophy. The Scotist tradition stretches right across these categories. The individual papers of the volume are briefly summarized.

Concerns about the risks of unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions are growing. At the same time, confidence that international policy agreements will succeed in considerably lowering anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is declining. Perhaps as a result, various geoengineering solutions are gaining attention and credibility as a way to manage climate change. Serious consideration is currently being given to proposals to cool the planet through solar-radiation management. Here we analyze how the unique and nontrivial risks of geoengineering strategies pose fundamental questions at (...) the interface between science and ethics. To illustrate the importance of integrated ethical and scientific analysis, we define key open questions and outline a coupled scientific-ethical research agenda to analyze solar-radiation management geoengineering proposals. We identify nine key fields of coupled research including whether solar-radiation management can be tested, how quickly learning could occur, normative decisions embedded in how different climate trajectories are valued, and justice issues regarding distribution of the harms and benefits of geoengineering. To ensure that ethical analyses are coupled with scientific analyses of this form of geoengineering, we advocate that funding agencies recognize the essential nature of this coupled research by establishing an Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications program for solar-radiation management. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology provides terms for and supports annotation of species-specific protein complexes in an ontology framework that relates them both to their components and to species-independent families of complexes. Comprehensive curation of experimentally known forms and annotations thereof is expected to expose discrepancies, differences, and gaps in our knowledge. We have annotated the early events of innate immune signaling mediated by Toll-Like Receptor 3 and 4 complexes in human, mouse, and chicken. The resulting ontology and annotation data set has (...) allowed us to identify species-specific gaps in experimental data and possible functional differences between species, and to employ inferred structural and functional relationships to suggest plausible resolutions of these discrepancies and gaps. (shrink)

In 1968, Jürgen Habermas claimed that, in an advanced technological society, the emancipatory force of knowledge can only be regained by actively recovering the ‘forgotten experience of reflection’. In this article, we argue that, in the contemporary situation, critical reflection requires a deliberative ambiance, a process of mutual learning, a consciously organised process of deliberative and distributed reflection. And this especially applies, we argue, to critical reflection concerning a specific subset of technologies which are actually oriented towards optimising human cognition. (...) In order to create a deliberative ambiance, fostering critical upstream reflection on emerging technologies, we developed the concept of a mutual learning exercise. Building on a number of case studies, we analyse what an MLE involves, both practically and conceptually, focussing on key aspects such as ambiance and expertise, the role of ‘genres of the imagination’ and the profiles of various ‘subcultures of debate’. Ideally, an MLE becomes a contemporary version of the Socratic agora, providing a stage where multiple and sometimes unexpected voices and perspectives mutually challenge each other, in order to strength-en the societal robustness and responsiveness of emerg-ing technologies. (shrink)

We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., wellbeing) of individuals and explore the possibility of such theories ascribing some priority to benefits to those who are worse off—without this priority being absolute. Utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives on the basis of total or average benefits) ascribes no priority to the worse off, and leximin (which evaluates alternatives by giving lexical priority to the worst off, and then the second worst off, and so on) (...) ascribes absolute priority to the worse off (i.e., favors even a very small benefit to a worse off person over very large benefits to large numbers of better off people). Neither extreme view, we assume, is plausible. (shrink)

Recent studies show that racism still exists in the American medical profession, the fact of which legitimizes the historically long-legacy of mistrust towards medical profession and health authorities among African Americans. Thus, it was suspected that the participation of black patients in end-of-life care has always been significantly low stemmed primarily from their mistrust of the medical profession. On the other hand, much research finds that there are other reasons than the mistrust which makes African Americans feel reluctant to the (...) end-of-life care, such as cultural-religious difference and genuine misunderstanding of the services. If so, two crucial questions are raised. One is how pervasive or significant the mistrust is, compared to the other factors, when they opt out of the end-of-life care. The other is if there is a remedy or solution to the seemingly broken relationship. While no studies available answer these questions, we have conducted an experiment to explore them. The research was performed at two Philadelphia hospitals of Mercy Health System, and the result shows that Black patients’ mistrust is not too great to overcome and that education can remove the epistemic obstacles as well as overcome the mistrust. (shrink)

There are striking parallels between current capability theories and the moral philosophy of Karl Christian Friedrich Krause. This article reconstructs central arguments of Krause’s ethics and correlates them with passages from the works of Martha Nussbaum, showing that such similarities extend not only to what, substantially, is being professed in either philosophy but also, procedurally, to the question of how the respective moral conclusions are reached. As Krause correlates responsibility with capability, the article begins with an examination of Krause’s idea (...) of human — as compared to animal — freedom and their respective normative implications. Next, the argument is extended to the social responsibilities of personal freedom, before widening the scope to the cosmopolitan plane. The paper then briefly examines historical links between Krause and current capability theorists, before concluding. (shrink)

Many cultural variations in emotions have been documented in previous research, but a general theoretical framework involving cultural sources of these variations is still missing. The main goal of the present study was to determine what components of cultural complexity interact with the emotional experience and behavior of individuals. The proposed framework conceptually distinguishes five main components of cultural complexity relating to emotions: 1) emotion language, 2) conceptual knowledge about emotions, 3) emotion-related values, 4) feelings rules, i.e. norms for subjective (...) experience, and 5) display rules, i.e. norms for emotional expression. (shrink)

Objective: There are benefits and risks of giving patients more granular control of their personal health information in electronic health record (EHR) systems. When designing EHR systems and policies, informaticists and system developers must balance these benefits and risks. Ethical considerations should be an explicit part of this balancing. Our objective was to develop a structured ethics framework to accomplish this. -/- Methods: We reviewed existing literature on the ethical and policy issues, developed an ethics framework called a “Points to (...) Consider” (P2C) document, and convened a national expert panel to review and critique the P2C. -/- Results: We developed the P2C to aid informaticists designing an advanced query tool for an electronic health record (EHR) system in Indianapolis. The P2C consists of six questions (“Points”) that frame important ethical issues, apply accepted principles of bioethics and Fair Information Practices, comment on how questions might be answered, and address implications for patient care. -/- Discussion: The P2C is intended to clarify whatis at stake when designers try to accommodate potentially competing ethical commitments and logistical realities. The P2C was developed to guide informaticists who were designing a query tool in an existing EHR that would permit patient granular control. While consideration of ethical issues is coming to the forefront of medical informatics design and development practices, more reflection is needed to facilitate optimal collaboration between designers and ethicists. This report contributes to that discussion. (shrink)

Using the phenomenon of friendship as a case, the possibilities of a neurosemiotics of friendship is investigated by analysing ongoing research in cognitive social neuroscience on friendship. Neurosemiotics, both as a field dealing with particular semiosic processes that are neurobiologically based, and as an approach to the knowledge gained in neuroscience interpreting its semiosis of inquiry and dissemination, can help us better understand the construct of friendship having a neural basis. Thus, the claim that neural similarity predict friendship, analysed as (...) an instance of a propositional dicisign, can be true or false, depending on how prediction and friendship is interpreted. (shrink)

The late-scholastic school of Scotism (after John Duns Scotus, 1308) had considerable room for disagreement. This volume innovatively demonstrates just how vividly Scotist philosophers and theologians discussed cognitive matters from the 14th until the 17th century. It further shows how the Scotist ideas were received in Protestant and Reformed milieus.

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)

Narrative desire, according to philosopher Adriana Cavarero, is the desire for one’s own history. What can semiotics of literature say about friendship as a dialogic phenomenon and the narrative desire for personal-historical knowledge in friendship, and how is this kind of knowledge semiotically different from knowledge achieved by science and scholarship? As an interpersonal relation, friendship is discussed here from the perspective of semiotics and precarious knowledge, i.e., as a historically contingent relation that can be semiotically modelled (represented by mappings (...) that are to some degree cognitively adequate and emotionally convincing) both within fiction literature and academic disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology and history. Friendship as a complex phenomenon has recently received increased attention from many distinct theoretical perspectives and disciplines. There are forms of “hidden interdisciplinarity” in friendship studies, as well as mono- and multidisciplinary approaches. A good case in point is recent discussions on how well a novel can model friendship. The opposite claims of philosopher Alexander Nehamas and literary critic Gregory Jusdanis on the adequacy of the novel for describing friendship will be discussed. By considering ‘The Neapolitan Novels’ by Elena Ferrante, depicting a close, difficult, life-long friendship between two women and its concerns with precarious dialogues and knowledge (like what the two very different persons really know about each other), as well as recent scholarship on Ferrante’s work, I show how her novels are not just inspired by, but also indirectly a critical comment upon the work on narrative friendship by Cavarero. Friends differ, and some of their differences constitute a challenge for universal models of friendship and narrative desire. Furthermore, Ferrante’s novels add a challenging complexity to a central insight analysed by Santaella as Peirce’s dialogism – that the action of signs is not merely individual but social, and that this applies as well to the person, whose thoughts are what she is “saying to that other self that is just coming into life in the flow of time” (CP 5.421; Santaella 2004: 132). The novels can be seen as modelling the very genesis of that dialogic self in the precarious process of finding a balance between dependency and autonomy between the friends. (shrink)

The evolutionary emergence of biological processes in organisms with inner, qualitative aspects has not been explained in any sufficient way by neurobiology, nor by the traditional neo-Darwinian paradigm — natural selection would appear to work just as well on insentient zombies (with the right behavioral input-output relations) as on real sentient animals. In consciousness studies one talks about the ‘hard problem’ of qualia. In this paper I sketch a set of principles about sign action, causality and emergent evolution. On the (...) basis of these principles, I characterize a concept of cause that would allow for a naturalistic explanation of the origin of consciousness. The suggested account of causation also turns the ‘hard problem’ of qualia into the easier problem of relating experimental biology to experiential biology. (shrink)

We describe on-going work on IAO-Intel, an information artifact ontology developed as part of a suite of ontologies designed to support the needs of the US Army intelligence community within the framework of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A). IAO-Intel provides a controlled, structured vocabulary for the consistent formulation of metadata about documents, images, emails and other carriers of information. It will provide a resource for uniform explication of the terms used in multiple existing military dictionaries, thesauri and metadata registries, (...) thereby enhancing the degree to which the content formulated with their aid will be available to computational reasoning. (shrink)

Abstract The first part argues that being an image is an (at least) four part relation between the image itself (x2), properties of recipients (B), the object (x3), and properties of the object (M). Referring to Grice, Schiffer, and Meggle, a distinction is made between communicativity and non-communicativity (manipulativity) of x2 regarding to B, x3, and M. The second part substitutes sign and image by explicates that denote properties relevant for x2 being an image regarding to B, x3, and M, (...) making thus clear why images are signs. Intentional relations and causal relations are the basis of this explication (influenced by Posner) that is also meant to give an idea of those properties that are typical of pieces of fine arts and of some other cultural practices. Additionally, it helps in understanding the difference between typical images and more abstract symbols. -/- Im ersten Abschnitt werden Gründe dafür genannt, Bildsein als mindestens vierstellige Beziehung aufzufassen: als Beziehung zwischen dem Bild (x2), Rezipienteneigenschaften (B), dem Bildgegenstand (x3) und Eigenschaften (M) des Bildgegenstandes. Dabei wird – anknüpfend an Grice, Schiffer und Meggle – zwischen Kommunikativität und NichtKommunikativität (Manipulativität) von x2 bzgl. B, x3 und M unterschieden. Im zweiten Abschnitt wird die Rede von ›Zeichen‹ und von ›Bildsein‹ ersetzt durch Explikate, die Eigenschaften bezeichnen, welche relevant dafür sind, dass x2 ein Bild bzgl. B, x3 und M ist – derart, dass deutlich wird, inwiefern Bilder Zeichen sind. Basis dieser – von Posner angeregten – Explikationen sind intentionale Beziehungen und Bewirken. Aus den Begriffspräzisierungen ergeben sich Einsichten sowohl in Bezug auf Eigenschaften, die typisch für Werke Bildender Kunst und einige andere kulturelle Praktiken sind, als auch in Bezug auf eine Abgrenzung zentraler Vertreter der Kategorie ›Bild‹ von eher nur bildhaften Symbolen. (shrink)

The pseudosciences often bear a striking resemblance to the sciences. Using a mimicry account as a framework, this paper investigates how the appearance of social media posts influences people’s perception of the content of such posts as scientific. We present the results of two empiri- cal studies. The first, preparatory study identifies typical characteristics of “scientificness” in social media posts to inform feature manipulations for the main study. The main study then examines what happens if the features are systematically manipulated. (...) The findings support the hypothesis that pseudoscientific digital content benefits from using features of scientificness. We discuss implications for understanding the appeal and persistence of pseudoscience. (shrink)

In den vergangenen Jahren hat die Europäische Union (EU) wiederholt versucht, ihre Institutionen zu reformieren. Als der Entwurf für eine Europäische Verfassung und später der Vertrag von Lissabon ausgehandelt wurden, betraf einer der meistdiskutiertesten Streitpunkte die Frage, nach welcher Entscheidungsregel der EU-Ministerrat abstimmen sollte. Diese Frage ist eine genuin normative Frage. Deshalb sollten auch politische Philosophen und Ethiker etwas zu dieser Frage beitragen können. Im folgenden wollen wir uns dieser Herausforderung stellen und alternative Entscheidungsregeln für den EU-Ministerrat bewerten. Dabei erweisen (...) sich die Methoden der probablistische Modellierung und der Simulation sozialer Prozesse als unerlässlich.1 Damit wird deutlich, wie Simulationen auch innerhalb der angewandten politischen Philosophie als Methode eingesetzt werden können. (shrink)

The linguistic foundations of science and technology include many terms that have been borrowed from ancient languages. In the case of terms with origins in the Greek language, the modern meaning can often differ significantly from the original one. Here we use the PubMed database to demonstrate the prevalence of words of Greek origin in the language of modern science, and call for scientists to exercise care when coining new terms.

In the history of modern philosophy systematic connections were assumed to hold between the modal concepts of logical possibility and necessity and the concept of conceivability. However, in the eyes of many contemporary philosophers, insuperable objections face any attempt to analyze the modal concepts in terms of conceivability. It is important to keep in mind that a philosophical explanation of modality does not have to take the form of a reductive analysis. In this paper I attempt to provide a response-dependent (...) account of the modal concepts in terms of conceivability along the lines of a nonreductive model of explanation. (shrink)

You don't say much about who you are teaching, or what subject you teach, but you do seem to see a need to justify what you are doing. Perhaps you're teaching underprivileged children, opening their minds to possibilities that might otherwise never have occurred to them. Or maybe you're teaching the children of affluent families and opening their eyes to the big moral issues they will face in life — like global poverty, and climate change. If you're doing something like (...) this, then stick with it. Giving money isn't the only way to make a difference. (shrink)

I defend the following version of the ought-implies-can principle: (OIC) by virtue of conceptual necessity, an agent at a given time has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to do only what the agent at that time has the ability and opportunity to do. In short, obligations correspond to ability plus opportunity. My argument has three premises: (1) obligations correspond to reasons for action; (2) reasons for action correspond to potential actions; (3) potential actions correspond to ability plus opportunity. In the (...) bulk of the paper I address six objections to OIC: three objections based on putative counterexamples, and three objections based on arguments to the effect that OIC conflicts with the is/ought thesis, the possibility of hard determinism, and the denial of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Philosophical Context in Jena around 1800 A Metaphysics of Freedom Analytic and Synthetic Philosophy Metaphysics of Humanity Socioeconomic Philosophy The Natural World Harmonious Freedom Krause's Philosophy in Spain Ideal de la humanidad (the ideal of humanity) Latin American Reception Conclusion References Further Reading.