Deception has recently received a significant amount of attention. One of main reasons is that it lies at the intersection of various areas of research, such as the evolution of cooperation, animal communication, ethics or epistemology. This essay focuses on the biological approach to deception and argues that standard definitions put forward by most biologists and philosophers are inadequate. We provide a functional account of deception which solves the problems of extant accounts in virtue of two characteristics: deceptive states have (...) the function of causing a misinformative states and they do not necessarily provide direct benefits to the deceivers and losses to the targets. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the controversy over the legacy of Kantian moral philosophy in Dewey’s German Philosophy and Politics. It argues that the polemical reaction to Dewey’s book by Julius Ebbinghaus, reiterated through Axel Honneth and Ebbinghaus’s student Georg Geismann, is based on talking at cross-purposes. While Dewey’s reading of Kant is, indeed, flawed, Ebbinghaus and Geismann misconceive Dewey’s argumentative intent. Nevertheless, the controversy serves to clarify Dewey’s line of argument and to discuss parallels with and differences from the world war (...) genealogy and the Frankfurt School’s theory of immanent critique. Furthermore, the chapter suggests that the role of Hegel’s Emptiness Charge in German Philosophy and Politics should be considered in light of Dewey’s theory of growth. Accordingly, Dewey’s book is not merely a piece of “world war literature”, first, because its line of argument also appears in books by Dewey, which are surely not part of this category, and second, because the Hegelian Emptiness Charge is a variant of what Dewey calls a philosophical fallacy. (shrink)

Jean-François Lyotard's intellectual evolution in the late 1970s and 1980s is well known in continental philosophy. In 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard became famous for his report on "the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation". Later, in his magnum opus Le diférend he expanded on this, claiming that "a universal rule of judgment between heterogeneous genres is lacking in general". Yet, this creative moment in Lyotard's career, responsible for shaping the philosophical concept of the postmodern (...) condition, is rarely connected to his book La guerre des Algériens (1989). This work was supposed to implement his new postmodern concepts in relation to the war in Algeria. The present article looks at La guerre des Algériens, within its broader historical and philosophical context, as a unique opportunity to evaluate the validity of Lyotard's philosophical shift, especially his new concept of radical heterogeneity at work in history. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin teaches us that books have a Nachreife, a “maturing process” in their afterlife during which they leave their original but limited historical and cultural context in order to take part in a process that is not defined by the intention of the author or the reader. Through their interaction, writers and readers transform the relationships among the times, places, languages, and schools of thought that informed a literary or philosophical work when it was born. Don Isaac Abravanel’s critical (...) reception of Gersonides is an interesting example of such a transformation, in that it both disassembled the Provençal scholar’s initial scientific and theological project and established new links and interpretations. Don Isaac’s critique of Gersonides did not derive only from a historical process within the Jewish intellectual sphere; it also followed Christian and Humanist trends, including Petrarch’s development of a Humanist defense of religion, more independent of science. Abravanel’s critical reception of Gersonides is an interesting meeting point of Jewish and Christian literary and philosophical trends. In that sense, the cultural and historical processes that informed Abravanel’s attitude towards Gersonides helped create the conditions for a belated literary encounter between two great scholars who had lived in the same geographical and cultural environment of the papal court at Avignon: Gersonides and Petrarch. This new connection produced by the reception process is what our comparative study of Abravanel’s reading of Gersonides in both Jewish and Christian contexts attempts to demonstrate. (shrink)

This article aims to combine the strengths of Erich Fromm’s and John Dewey’s social philosophies. I argue that the merits of this comparison become particularly clear when the theories are outlined and compared in the following three steps. First, a social theoretical common ground of Dewey and Fromm will be illustrated. Their “World War genealogies” share the same defense mechanism as the major explanation of the Germans’ tendency to voluntary submission, which involves a strong feeling of powerlessness. Against this background, (...) the next step elaborates the ethical side of their argument. Already the World War genealogies are written with melioristic intent, and especially later works (in case of both authors) elaborate the respective ethical theory as well as the ideas concerning melioristic social science and social psychology. These ethics aim at good communication (in a broad sense), while the melioristic social research focuses on the concrete manifestations of social character, allowing to empirically identify hindering and facilitating factors of social amelioration. Both can be linked using the concept of communicative power(lessness). By way of outlook, I will finally consider the combination of a democratic, communication-oriented ethics with qualitative sociopsychoanalytic research in Fromm’s sense as a straightforward and promising approach for an interdisciplinary social philosophy. (shrink)

The article presents an inter-regional and inter-religious discussion of the crisis of liberalism that challenges some of the common assumptions in the study of intellectual history. The paper begins by painting with a broad brush the migration of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European liberal transformations to the rapidly changing Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. In the second part, the essay focuses on Paris’s interwar intellectual scene, where this expansion of liberalism is reflected critically from the perspective of the European crisis (...) of the 1930s. Moving from the East to the West, the chapter reconstructs step by step a growing convergence that established itself between the theopolitical question of the late Ottoman Empire and important intellectual trends in the interwar period in Paris. For this purpose, it uses as a guiding thread a Jewish intellectual episode: Leo Strauss’s rediscovery of a Jewish–Islamic philosophical model successfully developed during the Middle Ages. The reconstruction of this episode and its intellectual background in the 1930s illuminates an overlooked interconnection with similar questioning in the late and post-Ottoman Levant. (shrink)

A la question « quo vadis Israel ?», il est possible de répondre partiellement en juxtaposant l’été 2018, et notamment la loi fondamentale « Israël État-nation du Peuple Juif » votée le 19 juillet sous l’impulsion du gouvernement Netanyahu, et l’été 2011, où un mouvement de protestation commença le 14 juillet sur l’Avenue Rothschild à Tel Aviv, s’étendant ensuite à tout Israël et atteignant des proportions jamais connue dans le pays. Comment sommes-nous passés de l’espoir soulevé par le mouvement social (...) de 2011 qui faisait suite au Printemps arabe de Tunisie et d’Egypte, à la réaction politique implacable déployée par les différents gouvernements Netanyahu? Les quelques pages qui suivent tenteront de faire passer, ou plutôt de faire chuter le lecteur du soulèvement de l’été 2011 au changement néfaste de régime qui s’annonce avec le vote de la loi fondamentale « Israël État-nation du Peuple Juif. » L’auteur de ces lignes, témoin engagé, ne prétend pas à une étude historique de cette chute. Il a simplement voulu faire résonner sur le papier certaines des voix discordantes de ces sept dernières années. (shrink)

The journey of Byzantine scholar Manuel Chrysoloras and his stay in Florence at the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has been celebrated as an event that decisively shaped the course of European humanism. The later return of Enlightenment humanism to Ottoman lands in the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries can be described as the return of Chrysoloras. This return is generally known in a fragmentary form as a regional phenomenon: the story of Greek, Arab, Turkish and Jewish nationalisms (...) and of the Ottoman reforms. It is also framed historically as the evolution from a traditional and theological society to new forms of epistemic, literary, civic and national communities, while often leaving aside failures and later contradictory transformations. The present essay offers an integrative study of modern humanism in late Ottoman and post-Ottoman contexts. The migration of Enlightenment humanism to the Middle East raised a wide range of expectations, projecting a new national or imperial organization within a harmonious diplomatic relationship with Christian Europe and the Americas. Yet, the more the revivalist and reformist projects evolved, the more they involved ethnic and religious conflicts and colonial intervention. This article illuminates the rise and fall of humanism in Middle Eastern contexts. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin teaches us that books have a Nachreife, a “maturing process” in their afterlife during which they leave their original but limited historical and cultural context in order to take part in a process that is not defined by the intention of the author or the reader. Through their interaction, writers and readers transform the relationships among the times, places, languages, and schools of thought that informed a literary or philosophical work when it was born. Don Isaac Abravanel’s critical (...) reception of Gersonides is an interesting example of such a transformation, in that it both disassembled the Provençal scholar’s initial scientific and theological project and established new links and interpretations. Don Isaac’s critique of Gersonides did not derive only from a historical process within the Jewish intellectual sphere; it also followed Christian and Humanist trends, including Petrarch’s development of a Humanist defense of religion, more independent of science. Abravanel’s critical reception of Gersonides is an interesting meeting point of Jewish and Christian literary and philosophical trends. In that sense, the cultural and historical processes that informed Abravanel’s attitude towards Gersonides helped create the conditions for a belated literary encounter between two great scholars who had lived in the same geographical and cultural environment of the papal court at Avignon: Gersonides and Petrarch. This new connection produced by the reception process is what our comparative study of Abravanel’s reading of Gersonides in both Jewish and Christian contexts attempts to demonstrate. (shrink)

Don Isaac Abravanel was one of the first Jewish thinkers to express republican positions, yet very little is known about his knowledge of humanistic republican conceptions. Had he read Leonardo Bruni’s republican writings? Had he even heard of them? In this essay I attempt to address this philological gap by comparing Abravanel’s republican commentary on 1 Samuel 8 with Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae Urbis, especially the motif of the plea to God to authorize a political regime. This comparison is particularly useful (...) for illuminating their respective positions on republicanism, their shared interests and conceptions, as well as their divergent attitudes to their own political and historical environment. This divergence, I argue, sheds light on the early modern Christian and Jewish receptions of ancient republicanism. (shrink)

This article offers a history of the German concept of translation in four stages, moving from Luther’s Verdeutschung to Mendelssohn’s translation of the Psalms, and from the re-elaboration of the translation concept by Freud, Rosenzweig and Benjamin to Derrida’s Des tours de Babel. During the postwar years, many philosophers have studied different aspects of the Classical and Romantic elaboration of the German concept of translation. The contribution of this article is not to revisit these analyses, that are by now well (...) known, but to shed light on the role played by certain Jewish thinkers in the history of the Germanic concept of translation at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th, and also, later, within the French philosophy of the years 1960-1990. (shrink)

The violent death of Landauer in May 1919 at the end of the Räterepublik of Munich left several of his best friends with a terrible feeling: a sense of tension between the unique hopes incarnated by Landauer and the spiritual and political void his passing left behind. This article is an attempt to capture the tragic shift from a living revolutionary who projected his unique anarchist views onto the failed Munich Revolution to the efforts of a group of close friends (...) who searched to save their dear Landauer from the infamy of failure, making of his months in Munich and his death an important amendment to his spiritual and political legacy. (shrink)

Picture a simple scenario: a worm, in its modest way, traces a trail of paint as it moves across a sheet of paper. Now shift your imagination to a more complex scene, where a chimpanzee paints on another sheet of paper. A simple question arises: Do you perceive an identical creative process in these two animals? Can both of these animals be designated as authors of their creation? If only one, which one? This paper delves into the complexities of authorship, (...) consciousness, and agency, unpacking the nuanced distinctions between such scenarios and exploring the underlying principles that define creative authorship across different forms of life. It becomes evident that attributing authorship to an animal hinges on its intention to create, an aspect intertwined with its agency and awareness of the creative act. These concepts are far from straightforward, as they traverse the complex landscapes of animal ethics and law. But our exploration does not stop there. Now imagine a robot, endowed with artificial intelligence, producing music. This prompts us to question how we should evaluate and perceive such creations. Is the creative process of a machine fundamentally different from that of an animal or a human? As we venture further into this realm of human-made intelligence, we confront an array of ethical, philosophical, and legal quandaries. This paper provides a platform for a reflective discussion: ethologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and bioinformaticians converge in a multidisciplinary dialogue. Their insights provide valuable perspectives for establishing a foundation upon which to discuss the intricate concepts of authorship and appropriation concerning artistic works generated by non-human entities. (shrink)

This first critical edition of Isaac Abravanel’s correspondence opens a window into the cultural, political and commercial world of one of the first Jewish humanists of the quattrocento. Jewish leader of the expelled Sephardim after 1492, commentator of the Bible, Abravanel is a legendary figure of the Sephardic history. The edition of the letters along with the introductive essay that reconstructs their cultural background intends to connect the legendary figure of Abravanel to the major reason of his remarkable career: his (...) successful assimilation of Renaissance humanism. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed new light on major features of the early Zionist construction of a Jewish political space. Revisiting two early debates of Martin Buber (1878-1965) with Max Nordau (1849-1923) and Hermann Cohen (1842-1918), the article points at the limitation of the Zionist political construction for a later articulation of the Jewish and Palestinian complexity in a shared or divided land. Herzl’s understanding of Zionism as a strictly political and economic apparatus brought to an historical and ideological debate (...) at the fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 between the young Buber and the faithful associate of Herzl, Nordau. Against Nordau’s prioritization of the productivization of Jews, Buber developed in his famous speech on “Jewish Art” the necessity of a cultural and spiritual elevation of Jews. In 1916, in the middle of WWI, Buber’s cultural notion of Jewish national regeneration in Eretz Israel sets the backdrop for another debate and clash, this time with the German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen. (shrink)

This article proposes the first systematic explanation and analysis of Gustave Landauer’s central concept of Antipolitik. Liberation from the rule of the one or the many is at the heart of Landauer’s notion of antipolitics. For the purpose of understanding the originality of Landauer’s antipolitical stance, this essay juxtaposes Landauer’s key texts on this concept with several sources that constitute its philosophical background. With reference to La Boétie, Hobbes, Nietzsche, Proudhon, Kropotkin, Aristotle, Tönnies, and Marx, it clarifies three central dimensions (...) in Landauer’s concept of antipolitics: the psychological critique of political modernity, the search for a renewal of the spirit, and the therapeutic return to the community. (shrink)

This article intends to shed new light on the impressive series of “war writings,” in which Hermann Cohen developed the idea of a possible messianic collaboration of German imperial ambitions and a modern Jewish Diaspora regenerated by German Spirit (from Russia to America). My paper pays special attention to two lecture tours planed by Cohen in the year 1914, one to Petersburg, Moscow, Riga, Vilna and Warsaw in May 1914, a few weeks before the outbreak of WWI; the other a (...) propaganda trip to America imagined at the beginning of WWI (Autumn 1914) by Cohen and a group of Jews linked to the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens – a plan which failed and turned only into the publication of an article in several American newspapers in German, English and Yiddish in early 1915. The article brings into consideration new archival material concerning the political background of these two initiatives. The article demonstrates how Cohen’s writings and activities during WWI were deploying a new Jewish and Imperial politics – which sought to pave the way for a messianic integration of Jewish Diaspora in the Imperial project of Germany, understood as the political realization of German Idealism. (shrink)

“For it is not impossible that a nation should have many leaders who convene, unite, and reach a consensus; they can thus govern and administer justice… Then also, why cannot they have terms of office…? When the turn of other magistrates comes to replace them, they will investigate the abuses of trust committed by earlier [magistrates]; Those found guilty will pay for their crimes… Finally, why cannot their powers be limited and determined by laws or norms?” These lines of Don (...) Isaac Abravanel’s Commentary on 1 Sam 8 earned him fame in 20th century scholarship as “the first early modern Jewish republican thinker.” Yet, the history of the modern rediscovery of Abravanel’s political thought is relatively unknown, and more so, its philosophical and political meaning. My paper will try to elucidate an important part of this history, while emphasizing its value for an understanding of the criticism of the Wissenschaft des Judentums between the two World Wars. (shrink)

This volume brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the intersections between crisis, scholarship, and action. The aim of this book is to think about the “moment of crisis,” through the concepts, writings, and methodologies awarded to us by Jewish thinkers in modernity. This book offers a broad gallery of accounts on the notion of crisis in Jewish modernity while emphasizing three terms: interpretation, heresy, and messianism. The main thesis of the volume is that the diasporic and (...) exilic experience of the Jewish people turned their philosophers and theologians into “experts in crisis management” who had to find resources within their own religion, culture and traditions in order to react, endure and overcome short- and long-term historical crises. The underlining assumption of this book is therefore that Jewish thought obtains resources for conceptualizing and reacting to the current forms of crisis in the global, European, and Israeli spheres. The volume addresses a large readership in humanities, social and political sciences and religious studies, taking as its assumption that scholars in modern Jewish thought have an extended responsibility to engage in contemporary debates. (shrink)

NO es toda la obra, es solo el escaneo de algunos de los ensayos.

No artigo “Wittgenstein: universalismo, lógica, gramática y lenguaje”, Alejandro Tomasini Bassols afirma que o problema com que Wittgenstein se depara ao fim do Tractatus ”“ as proposições do livro serem elucidações e contrassensos ”“ teve origem em seu erro de considerar a lógica, e não a linguagem, como o mais universal. Bassols afirma ainda que o assim chamado “paradoxo do Tractatus” não foi uma ameaça à segunda filosofia wittgensteiniana porque nela Wittgenstein não cometeu o mesmo erro. Neste artigo argumenta-se (...) que as proposições do Tractatus são contrassensos como consequência direta da teoria pictórica do significado, independentemente da ontologia tractatiana. Além disso, divergindo da opinião de Bassols de ter havido “genuíno progresso filosófico” entre a primeira e a segunda filosofia de Wittgenstein, ressalta-se como o mais sério problema que marca a primeira filosofia wittgensteiniana também marca a segunda: o contrassenso de que Wittgenstein nunca seguiu os próprios métodos filosóficos. (shrink)

This paper presents and discusses design studio outcomes developed in response to a studio brief linked to the Fun Palace Futures initiative of the Royal British Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in honour of architect Cedric Price and artist Joan Littlewood. The studio brief was collaboratively developed by the authors. Its core question was: How could the thoughts that guided the development and design of the Fun Palace – a project that was never built but is still today cited as (...) a model for thinking flexible and open architecture – be re-interpreted and renewed for the future? This line of thinking guided the initial and experimental research phase, during which students developed an understanding of what indeterminacy is or could be. The paper shows that through the translation of some of the essential principles of the Fun Palace project into pedagogical instruments, students were enabled to approach the questions of indeterminacy in an open and innovative manner. The paper argues that the use of a variety of media, which often went far beyond the conventional architectural pallet, and the introduction of media shifts were crucial in assisting the students in developing their own tools for creating a new kind of open and flexible architecture. The paper presents this pedagogic approach. We show that the conditions of indeterminacy, uncertainty, chance and change, hold potential for framing the design and creation of a new kind of dynamic architecture, and for initiating experimental architectural thinking in a design studio setting. (shrink)

Pode-se dizer que desde o início da ciência moderna muito se falou sobre virtudes teóricas tais como simplicidade, unificação, adequação empírica, fecundidade, coerência, etc., isto é, virtudes de uma boa teoria, mas pouco se falou das virtudes dos cientistas enquanto agentes. Todavia, hoje em dia, cada vez mais vem crescendo um interesse sobre qual é o papel das virtudes e dos vícios epistêmicos dos cientistas. Além de diversos artigos, já existem dois importantes livros os quais possuem diversos contribuidores: “Virtue Epistemology (...) Naturalized: Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science” organizado por Abrol Fairweather em 2014 e “Epistemic Virtues in the Sciences and the Humanities” organizado por Jeroen Van Dongen e Paul Herman em 2017. Contudo a atenção maior foi direcionada às virtudes epistêmicas e não aos vícios epistêmicos. Nesses dois livros citados acima, com o total de 29 capítulos, apenas 1 deles é dedicado ao vício epistêmico. O que não é de todo inesperado, se, de maneira análoga, temos em mente que apenas agora com os trabalhos de Quassim Cassam surgiu uma epistemologia do vício. É nesse cenário que Cedric Paternotte e Milena Ivanova entram na discussão com o artigo “Virtues and Vices in Scientific Practice” publicado em 2017. Apesar de eles apontarem o papel das virtudes e dos vícios na prática científica, será contemplado apenas o que eles falam sobre o vício epistêmico na ciência. O que é dito nesse artigo é simples e controverso: o vício epistêmico pode ter função benéfica para o sucesso científico. Na seção I será explicado brevemente o que são as virtudes epistêmicas, em II fala-se um pouco do cenário das virtudes na história da ciência, III será dedicado a argumentação de Paternotte e Ivanova e, por fim, IV fornecerá três breves comentários sobre a posição dos autores. (shrink)

Should a principle of charity be applied to the interpretation of the colour concepts exercised in visual experience? We think not. We shall argue, for one thing, that the grounds for applying a principle of charity are lacking in the case of colour concepts. More importantly, we shall argue that attempts at giving the experience of colour a charitable interpretation either fail to respect obvious features of that experience or fail to interpret it charitably, after all. Charity to visual experience (...) is therefore no motive for resisting the natural, Galilean response to a scientific understanding of light and vision. The best interpretation of colour experience ends up convicting it of widespread and systematic error. (shrink)

A set of visual search experiments tested the proposal that focused attention is needed to detect change. Displays were arrays of rectangles, with the target being the item that continually changed its orientation or contrast polarity. Five aspects of performance were examined: linearity of response, processing time, capacity, selectivity, and memory trace. Detection of change was found to be a self-terminating process requiring a time that increased linearly with the number of items in the display. Capacity for orientation was found (...) to be about 5 items, a value comparable to estimates of attentional capacity. Observers were able to filter out both static and dynamic variations in irrelevant properties. Analysis also indicated a memory for previously-attended locations. These results support the hypothesis that the process needed to detect change is much the same as the attentional process needed to detect complex static patterns. Interestingly, the features of orientation and polarity were found to be handled in somewhat different ways. Taken together, these results not only provide evidence that focused attention is needed to see change, but also show that change detection itself can provide new insights into the nature of attentional processing. (shrink)

The question I want to explore is whether experience supports an antireductionist ontology of time, that is, whether we should take it to support an ontology that includes a primitive, monadic property of nowness responsible for the special feel of events in the present, and a relation of passage that events instantiate in virtue of literally passing from the future, to the present, and then into the past.

Financial literacy is becoming a pivotal skill in navigating the marketplaces within the predominant rising digital branches of trading domains; however, there remains a concerning gap in the purchasing behavior of adolescents, who are its primary users. With this in mind, the main objective of our research is to determine whether there is a relationship between a student's level of financial literacy and their online purchase decision-making. The researchers employed an explanatory mixed approach and purposive sampling to identify respondents from (...) Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc. A 5-point Likert scale survey was utilized to collect data from 66 respondents, followed by semi-structured interviews with 10 selected participants. The results showed a moderately positive correlation between a student's financial literacy and online purchase decisions, as determined by the Pearson correlation coefficient. Thus, the thematic analysis revealed that respondents generally have good financial literacy, emphasizing factors like pricing, online reviews, and product ratings when making digital marketplace decisions. However, there are notable gaps in their understanding of basic financial concepts and their ability to apply them in real-life situations. To effectively enhance students’ financial literacy and online purchasing decisions, a holistic approach is necessary, including targeted interventions, practical applications, and continuous adaptation to evolving consumer behaviors. Educational institutions, policymakers, and stakeholders should work together to create comprehensive programs that provide students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to negotiate real-world financial situations and make sound judgments in the digital commerce ecosystem. By emphasizing practical learning, key financial concepts, and trustbuilding approaches, educators may empower students to become responsible consumers capable of managing their resources successfully and ethically. (shrink)

Essentialism is widely regarded as a mistaken view of biological kinds, such as species. After recounting why (sections 2-3), we provide a brief survey of the chief responses to the “death of essentialism” in the philosophy of biology (section 4). We then develop one of these responses, the claim that biological kinds are homeostatic property clusters (sections 5-6) illustrating this view with several novel examples (section 7). Although this view was first expressed 20 years ago, and has received recent discussion (...) and critique, it remains underdeveloped and is often misrepresented by its critics (section 8). (shrink)

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, USA, conducted a species status assessment for a petition to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) under the Endangered Species Act in 2020-2022. This federal undertaking could not be adequately prepared without including the knowledge of Indigenous People who have a deep cultural connection with the subspecies. Our objective is to communicate the authoritative expertise and voice of the Indigenous People who partnered on the project by demonstrating how their (...) knowledge contributed to the species status assessment. The Indigenous knowledge applied in the assessment is the cultural and intellectual property of those who have shared it. We employed rapid appraisal research to expeditiously develop a preliminary and qualitative understanding of Indigenous People's cultural and ecological knowledge of Alexander Archipelago wolves. We used semi-directed interviewing and inductive coding from grounded theory for text analysis. Indigenous knowledge contributed to the agency's understanding of the Alexander Archipelago wolf in Southeast Alaska and helped the agency with their classification decision. Indigenous research partners explained the rich cultural significance and position of wolves in Tlingit society and described human–wolf relationships and ecological interactions. The agency used a single-species assessment approach based in species ecology and conservation biology, whereas the Indigenous wolf experts applied a multi-species, community ecology approach based in a sociocultural context of balance and respect. The Indigenous wolf experts successfully addressed knowledge gaps identified by the agency. The partners were challenged by a short regulatory timeframe that did not allow for comprehensive study of Indigenous knowledge and constrained review and feedback by Indigenous experts. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service learned that its assessment framework was not designed to account for an Indigenous worldview. To level the playing field, the agency and Indigenous experts should discuss how to co-develop an assessment framework that equitably applies both perspectives. (shrink)

In this chapter, we will summarize recent empirical results highlighting how different groups of people solve pure coordination games. Such games are traditionally studied in behavioural economics, where two people need to coordinate without communicating with each other. Our results suggest that coordination choices vary across groups of people, and that people can adapt flexibly to these differences in order to coordinate between groups. We propose that pure coordination games are a useful empirical platform for studying aspects of mindshaping. Drawing (...) on existing psychological literature on alignment during interactions, we suggest that experience of successful interaction leads people to develop aligned intuitions about what is relevant and appropriate that support coordination when interaction and communication is not possible. Consistent with arguments made in the literature on mindshaping we believe that such alignment is more important for coordination than mindreading inferences about mental states, and indeed that mindreading is instead a form of coordination behaviour that is dependent upon intuitive alignment. (shrink)

Academic excellence and intelligence are commonly lauded as commendable attributes synonymous with success. However, a disconcerting trend has surfaced within educational institutions, challenging the prevailing narrative of scholastic accomplishment—smart shaming. This research delves into the increasing concern of smart shaming within educational settings, particularly at Immaculate Conception College of Balayan, Inc., questioning the predominant emphasis on academic excellence and intelligence. A qualitative case study design, along with judgmental sampling, was employed to examine fifteen (15) student leaders who had experienced smart (...) shaming on campus. Thematic analysis revealed that sarcastic remarks including "edi wow," "Okay ikaw na matalino," "bidabida," and "sipsip" were a prevalent manifestation of smart shaming, adversely affecting emotional well-being, academic and leadership prowess, mental health, and self-perception. Coping mechanisms, predominantly centered around ignoring and focusing on goals, were identified. The findings underscore the imperative for educators to remain vigilant regarding instances of smart shaming in classrooms, promoting open communication to ensure student well-being. Additionally, guidance counselors play a pivotal role in aiding students in effectively navigating the repercussions of smart shaming. This study advocates for proactive programs and interventions to address and alleviate the deleterious effects of smart shaming on students. (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay men to kiss in (...) public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

Driven by technological innovations, newborn screening (NBS) panels have been expanded and the development of genomic NBS pilot programs is rapidly progressing. Decisions on disease selection for NBS are still based on the Wilson and Jungner (WJ) criteria published in 1968. Despite this uniform reference, interpretation of the WJ criteria and actual disease selection for NBS programs are highly variable. A systematic literature search [PubMED search “Wilson” AND “Jungner”; last search 16.07.22] was performed to evaluate the applicability of the WJ (...) criteria for current and future NBS programs and the need for adaptation. By at least two reviewers, 105 publications (systematic literature search, N = 77; manual search, N = 28) were screened for relevant content and, finally, 38 publications were evaluated. Limited by the study design of qualitative text analysis, no statistical evaluation was performed, but a structured collection of reported aspects of criticism and proposed improvements was instead collated. This revealed a set of general limitations of the WJ criteria, such as imprecise terminology, lack of measurability and objectivity, missing pediatric focus, and absent guidance on program management. Furthermore, it unraveled specific aspects of criticism on clinical, diagnostic, therapeutic, and economical aspects. A major obstacle was found to be the incompletely understood natural history and phenotypic diversity of rare diseases prior to NBS implementation, resulting in uncertainty about case definition, risk stratification, and indications for treatment. This gap could be closed through the systematic collection and evaluation of real-world evidence on the quality, safety, and (cost-)effectiveness of NBS, as well as the long-term benefits experienced by screened individuals. An integrated NBS public health program that is designed to continuously learn would fulfil these requirements, and a multi-dimensional framework for future NBS programs integrating medical, ethical, legal, and societal perspectives is overdue. (shrink)

The emphasis on the limitations of objectivity, in specific guises and networks, has been a continuing theme of contemporary analytic philosophy for the past few decades. The popular sport of baiting feminist philosophers — into pointing to what's left out of objective knowledge, or into describing what methods, exactly, they would offer to replace the powerful objective methods grounding scientific knowledge — embodies a blatant double standard which has the effect of constantly putting feminist epistemologists on the defensive, on the (...) fringes, on the run.This strategy can only work if objectivity is transparent, simple, stable, and clear in its meaning. It most certainly is not. In fact, taking objectivity as a sort of beautiful primitive, self-evident in its value, and all-powerful in its revelatory power, requires careless philosophy, and the best workers in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science have made reworked definitions of objectivity absolutely central to their own projects. In fact, classic feminist concerns with exploring the impact of sex and gender on knowledge, understanding, and other relations between human beings and the rest of the world fall squarely within the sort of human and social settings thatare already considered central in most current analytic metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. I argue that the burden of proof is clearly on those who wish toreject the centrality and relevance of sex and gender to our most fundamental philosophical work on knowledge and reality. (shrink)

Abstract: Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly evolved, offering transformative capabilities for business decision-making. This paper explores how AI can be leveraged to enhance strategic decision-making in business contexts. It examines the integration of AI-driven analytics, predictive modeling, and automation to improve decision accuracy and operational efficiency. By analyzing current applications and case studies, the paper highlights the opportunities AI presents, including enhanced data insights, risk management, and personalized customer experiences. Additionally, it addresses the challenges businesses face in adopting AI, such (...) as data privacy concerns, integration issues, and the need for skilled personnel. The paper concludes with recommendations for effectively implementing AI solutions to maximize their benefits while navigating potential pitfalls. (shrink)

This paper is a critical discussion of John Dupré's recent defence of promiscuous realism in Part 1 of his The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. It also discusses some more general issues in the philosophy of biology and science. Dupré's chief strategy of argumentation appeals to debates within the philosophy of biology, all of which concern the nature of species. While the strategy is well motivated, I argue that Dupré's challenge to essentialist and unificationist views (...) about natural kinds is not successful. One conclusion is that an integrative conception of species is a real alternative to Dupré's pluralism. (shrink)

Discussions of whistleblowing and employee loyalty usually assume either that the concept of loyalty is irrelevant to the issue or, more commonly, that whistleblowing involves a moral choice in which the loyalty that an employee owes an employer comes to be pitted against the employee''s responsibility to serve public interest. I argue that both these views are mistaken and propose a third view which sees whistleblowing as entirely compatible with employee loyalty.

The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S's belief, B, is justified on the basis of S's knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The (...) generality problem applies to all cases of reflective justification: Given that is the product of a process-token that is an instance of indefinitely many belief-forming process-types (or BFPTs), why is the reliability of R, rather than the reliability of one of the indefinitely many other BFPTs, relevant to B's justificatory status? This form of the generality problem is restricted because it applies only to cases of reflective justification. But unless it is solved, the generality problem haunts all plausible theories of justification, not just reliabilist ones. (shrink)

When natural selection theory was presented, much active philosophical debate, in which Darwin himself participated, centered on its hypothetical nature, its explanatory power, and Darwin's methodology. Upon first examination, Darwin's support of his theory seems to consist of a set of claims pertaining to various aspects of explanatory success. I analyze the support of his method and theory given in the Origin of Species and private correspondence, and conclude that an interpretation focusing on the explanatory strengths of natural selection theory (...) accurately reflects neither Darwin's own self-consciously held views, nor the nature of his support. Darwin's methodological and philosophical arguments were at once consistently empiricist and more sophisticated than such interpretations credit to him. (shrink)

Are thought experiments nothing but arguments? I argue that it is not possible to make sense of the historical trajectory of certain thought experiments if one takes them to be arguments. Einstein and Bohr disagreed about the outcome of the clock-in-the-box thought experiment, and so they reconstructed it using different arguments. This is to be expected whenever scientists disagree about a thought experiment's outcome. Since any such episode consists of two arguments but just one thought experiment, the thought experiment cannot (...) be the arguments. (shrink)

I suggest following Paul Feyerabend's own advice, and interpreting Feyerabend's work in light of the principles laid out by John Stuart Mill. A review of Mill's essay, On Liberty, emphasizes the importance Mill placed on open and critical discussion for the vitality and progress of various aspects of human life, including the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Many of Feyerabend's more unusual stances, I suggest, are best interpreted as attempts to play certain roles--especially the role of "defender of unpopular minority opinion"--that (...) are necessary to fulfilling Mill's conditions for rational exchange and optimal human development. (shrink)

Vision constitutes an interesting domain, or range of domains, for debate over the extended mind thesis, the idea that minds physically extend beyond the boundaries of the body. In part this is because vision and visual experience more particularly are sometimes presented as a kind of line in the sand for what we might call externalist creep about the mind: once all reasonable concessions have been made to externalists about the mind, visual experience marks a line beyond which lies a (...) safe haven for individualists. Here I want to put a little more pressure on such a view of visual experience, as well as to offer a more constructive, positive argument in defense of the idea of extended vision. (shrink)

Various authors debate the question of whether neuroscience is relevant to criminal responsibility. However, a plethora of different techniques and technologies, each with their own abilities and drawbacks, lurks beneath the label “neuroscience”; and in criminal law responsibility is not a single, unitary and generic concept, but it is rather a syndrome of at least six different concepts. Consequently, there are at least six different responsibility questions that the criminal law asks—at least one for each responsibility concept—and, I will suggest, (...) a multitude of ways in which the techniques and technologies that comprise neuroscience might help us to address those diverse questions. In a way, on my account neuroscience is relevant to criminal responsibility in many ways, but I hesitate to state my position like this because doing so obscures two points which I would rather highlight: one, neither neuroscience nor criminal responsibility are as unified as that; and two, the criminal law asks many different responsibility questions and not just one generic question. (shrink)

A suggestion famously made by Peter Winch and carried through to present discussions holds that what constitutes the social as a kind consists of something shared – rules or practices commonly learned, internalized, or otherwise acquired by all members belonging to a society. This essays argues against the explanatory efficacy of appeals to this shared something as constitutive of a social kind by examining a violation of social norms or rules, viz., mistakes. I argue that an asymmetric relation exists between (...) the notion of mistakes and that of the social. In particular, mistakes do not presuppose a concept of the social, but the concept of the social requires prior specification of a category of mistakes. But no such prior specification proves possible. The very notion of a mistake is so inchoate that it makes it impossible to provide the kind of regimentation required for a rule-governed domain. Thus, there may be recognized mistakes even in the absence of a unified system or common knowledge of norms.Later writers attempt to avoid Winch's over-strong assumption that something shared and internal constitutes the social but cannot. Extending recent work by Stephen Turner, I argue that ``the social'' is not a domain that is susceptible to lawlike treatment, but rather a heterogeneous, motley collection. For absent the assumption of a shared something, no social object exists to be explained. So, I conclude, we have at present no clear way of marking out the social as a coherent or unified domain of inquiry. (shrink)

Abstract: As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies become increasingly integrated into various sectors, ethical considerations surrounding their development and deployment have become paramount. This paper explores the multifaceted ethical landscape of AI, focusing on key challenges such as bias, transparency, privacy, and accountability. It examines how these issues manifest in AI systems and their impact on society. The paper also evaluates current approaches and solutions aimed at mitigating these ethical concerns, including regulatory frameworks, ethical guidelines, and best practices for AI design. (...) By providing a comprehensive analysis of these challenges and solutions, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on responsible AI development and implementation, advocating for a balance between technological innovation and ethical integrity. (shrink)

I argue that four of the fundamental claims of those calling themselves `genic pluralists'Philip Kitcher, Kim Sterelny, and Ken Watersare defective. First, they claim that once genic selectionism is recognized, the units of selection problems will be dissolved. Second, Sterelny and Kitcher claim that there are no targets of selection. Third, Sterelny, Kitcher, and Waters claim that they have a concept of genic causation that allows them to give independent genic causal accounts of all selection processes. I argue that each (...) one of these claims is either false or misleading. Moreover, the challenge that arises from the availability of genic causal accounts, namely, the inability to choose on rational grounds among genic and higher-level accounts, is unsupported. (shrink)

A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)