The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the moral dimensions of gender affirmation. I argue that the moral value of gender affirmation is rooted in what Iris Murdoch called loving attention. Loving attention is central to the moral value of gender affirmation because such affirmation is otherwise too fragile or insincere to have such value. Moral reasons to engage in acts that gender affirm derive from the commitment to give and express loving attention to trans people as a way of challenging their (...) marginalization. In the latter part of the paper, I will discuss how my arguments bear on recent arguments by Robin Dembroff and Daniel Wodak (2018) on the use of gender-neutral language. They argue that we have a duty not to use gender-specific pronouns for anyone. Their conclusion turns, in part, on a rejection of gender affirmation as a moral duty. The value of gender affirmation, rooted in our moral perception of trans people, should make us skeptical of this conclusion, in favor of a more nuanced and pluralistic approach to the ethics of gendering. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth-century, and Smith is widely recognized to be one of his most penetrating interpreters, as well as an important philosophical voice in his own right. Combining his most important pieces over the last fifteen years along with two new essays, this book is Smith 's definitive treatise on Deleuze. The essays are divided into four sections, which cover Deleuze's use of the history of philosophy, an overview of his philosophical (...) system, an analysis of several Deleuzian concepts, as well as an assessment of his position within contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Proceedings of the papers presented at the Symposium on "Revisiting Turing and his Test: Comprehensiveness, Qualia, and the Real World" at the 2012 AISB and IACAP Symposium that was held in the Turing year 2012, 2–6 July at the University of Birmingham, UK. Ten papers. - http://www.pt-ai.org/turing-test --- Daniel Devatman Hromada: From Taxonomy of Turing Test-Consistent Scenarios Towards Attribution of Legal Status to Meta-modular Artificial Autonomous Agents - Michael Zillich: My Robot is Smarter than Your Robot: On the Need (...) for a Total Turing Test for Robots - Adam Linson, Chris Dobbyn and Robin Laney: Interactive Intelligence: Behaviour-based AI, Musical HCI and the Turing Test - Javier Insa, Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Sergio España - David Dowe and M.Victoria Hernandez-Lloreda: The anYnt Project Intelligence Test (Demo) - Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Javier Insa, David Dowe and Bill Hibbard: Turing Machines and Recursive Turing Tests — Francesco Bianchini and Domenica Bruni: What Language for Turing Test in the Age of Qualia? - Paul Schweizer: Could there be a Turing Test for Qualia? - Antonio Chella and Riccardo Manzotti: Jazz and Machine Consciousness: Towards a New Turing Test - William York and Jerry Swan: Taking Turing Seriously (But Not Literally) - Hajo Greif: Laws of Form and the Force of Function: Variations on the Turing Test. (shrink)

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, (...) situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationism—ought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and good-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness—as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a normative (...) reason to be normatively fundamental. Support-explanationism, we argue, enjoys many of the virtues of these views while avoiding their drawbacks. We conclude by exploring several further important implications: among other things, we argue that the influential metaphor of ‘weighing’ reasons is inapt, and propose a better one; that, contrary to what Berker (2019) suggests, there's no reason for non-naturalists about normativity to accept the Reasons-First view; and that, contrary to what Wodak (2020b) suggests, explanationist views can successfully accommodate what he calls ‘redundant reasons’. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

Nihilism is the thesis that no composite objects exist. Some ontologists have advocated abandoning nihilism in favor of deep nihilism, the thesis that composites do not existO, where to existO is to be in the domain of the most fundamental quantifier. By shifting from an existential to an existentialO thesis, the deep nihilist seems to secure all the benefits of a composite-free ontology without running afoul of ordinary belief in the existence of composites. I argue that, while there are well-known (...) reasons for accepting nihilism, there appears to be no reason at all to accept deep nihilism. In particular, deep nihilism draws no support either from the usual arguments for nihilism or from considerations of parsimony. (shrink)

While epistemologists have long debated what it takes for beliefs to be justified, they've devoted much less collective attention to the question of what it takes for beliefs to be excused, and how excuses differ from justifications. This stands in contrast to the state of affairs in legal scholarship, where the contrast between justifications and excuses is a standard topic in introductory criminal law textbooks. My goal in this paper is to extract some lessons from legal theory for epistemologists seeking (...) to distinguish epistemic justifications from epistemic excuses. First, I'll provide a brief overview of appeals to the justification/excuse distinction in epistemology, focusing on the internalism/externalism debate. Then, I'll identify some choice points in legal theory for how to think about the function of the justification/excuse distinction, and will in turn correspond to analogous choice points in epistemology. Ultimately, I'll argue that depending on which way we go at some crucial junctures, we can motivate either a traditional, non‐factive, internalist conception of justification, or a purely factive one where truth is all that's required for a belief to be justified. But there's no clear path, via legal theory, to view that only beliefs that amount to knowledge are justified. (shrink)

In this article we focus on three key precepts shared by Confucianism and the African ethic of Ubuntu: the central value of community, the desirability of ethical partiality, and the idea that we tend to become morally better as we grow older. For each of these broad similarities, there are key differences underlying them, and we discuss those as well as speculate about the reasons for them. Our aim is not to take sides, but we do suggest ways that Ubuntu (...) and Confucianism might have something to learn from each other and perhaps come closer. We hope that our preliminary reflections can inspire further debate and thinking on a theme – dialogues between long-standing and large-scale non-Western traditions – that is bound to increase in importance as non-Western societies play a greater role in the global system and as the search continues for a 'global ethic'. (shrink)

One challenge to the rationality of religious commitment has it that faith is unreasonable because it involves believing on insufficient evidence. However, this challenge and influential attempts to reply depend on assumptions about what it is to have faith that are open to question. I distinguish between three conceptions of faith each of which can claim some plausible grounding in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Questions about the rationality or justification of religious commitment and the extent of compatibility with doubt look different (...) on accounts of faith in which trust or hope, rather than belief, are the primary basis for the commitments. On such accounts, while the person of faith has a stake in the truth of the content, practical as well as epistemic considerations can legitimately figure in normative appraisals. Trust and hope can be appropriate in situations of recognized risk, need not involve self-deception, and are compatible with the idea that one's purely epistemic opinions should be responsive only to evidence.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Although it may seem like a truism to assert that biology is the science that studies organisms, during the second half of the twentieth century the organism category disappeared from biological theory. Over the past decade, however, biology has begun to witness the return of the organism as a fundamental explanatory concept. There are three major causes: (a) the realization that the Modern Synthesis does not provide a fully satisfactory understanding of evolution; (b) the growing awareness of the limits of (...) reductionism in molecular biology; and (c) the renewed interest in the nature of life as a genuine scientific problem. This essay examines these recent developments and considers the new epistemological roles being played by the organism in each of them. It also reflects on what the present resurgence of the organism means for the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Dry earth seems to its inhabitants (our intrinsic duplicates) just as earth seems to us, that is, it seems to them as though there are rivers and lakes and a clear, odorless liquid flowing from their faucets. But, in fact, this is an illusion; there is no such liquid anywhere on the planet. I address two objections to externalism concerning the nature of the concept that is expressed by the word 'water' in the mouths of the inhabitants of dry earth. (...) Gabriel Segal presents a dilemma for the externalist concerning the application conditions of the concept, and Paul Boghossian presents a dilemma for the externalist concerning the complexity of the concept. I show that, in both cases, the externalist may occupy the horn of his choice without departing from either the letter or spirit of externalism. (shrink)

The machine conception of the organism (MCO) is one of the most pervasive notions in modern biology. However, it has not yet received much attention by philosophers of biology. The MCO has its origins in Cartesian natural philosophy, and it is based on the metaphorical redescription of the organism as a machine. In this paper I argue that although organisms and machines resemble each other in some basic respects, they are actually very different kinds of systems. I submit that the (...) most significant difference between organisms and machines is that the former are intrinsically purposive whereas the latter are extrinsically purposive. Using this distinction as a starting point, I discuss a wide range of dissimilarities between organisms and machines that collectively lay bare the inadequacy of the MCO as a general theory of living systems. To account for the MCO’s prevalence in biology, I distinguish between its theoretical, heuristic, and rhetorical functions. I explain why the MCO is valuable when it is employed heuristically but not theoretically, and finally I illustrate the serious problems that arise from the rhetorical appeal to the MCO. (shrink)

Words, languages, symphonies, fictional characters, games, and recipes are plausibly abstract artifacts— entities that have no spatial location and that are deliberately brought into existence as a result of creative acts. Many accept that composition is unrestricted: for every plurality of material objects, there is a material object that is the sum of those objects. These two views may seem entirely unrelated. I will argue that the most influential argument against restricted composition—the vagueness argument—doubles as an argument that there can (...) be no abstract artifacts. There is no way to resist the vagueness argument against abstract artifacts that does not also undermine the vagueness argument against restricted composition. (shrink)

This article explores the ethical architecture of the ‘beneficiary pays’ principle, which holds that agents can come to possess remedial obligations of corrective justice to others through the involuntary receipt of benefits stemming from injustice. Advocates of the principle face challenges of both persuasion and limitation in seeking to convince those unmoved of its normative force, and to explain in which cases of benefiting from injustice it does and does not give rise to rectificatory obligations. The article considers ways in (...) which advocates of the principle might seek to win over those sceptical of its merits by employing a modified principle which sidesteps the issue of enforceability, before considering the question of whether the argument can be expanded from cases of benefiting from wrongdoing specifically to other sorts of situation where one agent involuntarily benefits from another's loss. (shrink)

Medicines and medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients are frequently used on patients without their informed consent, despite a significant proportion of patients wanting to know if an animal-derived product is going to be used in their care. Here, I outline three arguments for why this practice is wrong. First, I argue that using animal-derived medical products on patients without their informed consent undermines respect for their autonomy. Second, it risks causing nontrivial psychological harm. Third, it is morally inconsistent to respect (...) patients’ dietary preferences and then use animal-derived medicines or medical devices on them without their informed consent. I then address several anticipated objections and conclude that the continued failure to address this issue is an ethical blind spot that warrants applying the principles of respect for autonomy and informed consent consistently. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

David Lewis’s arguments against magical ersatzism are notoriously puzzling. Untangling different strands in those arguments is useful for bringing out what he thought was wrong with not just one style of theory about possible worlds, but with much of the contemporary metaphysics of abstract objects. After setting out what I take Lewis’s arguments to be and how best to resist them, I consider the application of those arguments to general theories of properties and relations. The constraints Lewis motivates turn out (...) to yield an argument for concretism about possible individuals that is quite different from the better-known Lewisian arguments for that position. The discussion also touches on the puzzling question of whether things are the way they are because of the properties they have, or are the properties and relations the way they are because of the things that have them. (shrink)

A symposium on my *Objects: Nothing Out of the Ordinary* (2015). In response to Wallace, I attempt to clarify the dialectical and epistemic role that my arguments from counterexamples were meant to play, I provide a limited defense of the comparison to the Gettier examples, and I embrace the comparison to Moorean anti-skeptical arguments. In response to deRosset, I provide a clearer formulation of conservatism, explain how a conservative should think about the interaction between intuition and science, and discuss what (...) conservatives should say about scattered territories, clonal colonies, and arbitrary systems. In response to Tillman and Spencer, I fortify my original presentation of the debunking arguments by clarifying why, even while trees (if they exist) are paradigmatically causal, conservatives are meant to be rationally obstructed from believing that it is trees that are causing our tree beliefs. (shrink)

Some experiences—like the experience of eating cheesecake—are good experiences to have. But when we try to explain why they are good, we encounter a clash of intuitions. First, we have an objectivist intuition: plausibly, the experiences are good because they feel the way that they do. Second, we have a subjectivist intuition: if a person were indifferent to that kind of experience, then it might fail to be good for that person. Third, we have a possibility intuition: for any kind (...) of experience, possibly there is a subject who is indifferent to that kind of experience. The pleasure problem is the problem we face in reconciling these three claims. I explain the problem and argue for a solution. I argue that we ought to reject the most common solutions: rejecting the objectivist or subjectivist intuitions. Instead, we ought to follow Timothy Sprigge in rejecting the possibility claim. We should embrace the view that experiences bear necessary connections to our attitudes. (shrink)

This essay re-examines Kierkegaard's view of Socrates. I consider the problem that arises from Kierkegaard's appeal to Socrates as an exemplar for irony. The problem is that he also appears to think that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates cannot be represented. And part of the problem is the paradox of self-reference that immediately arises from trying to represent x as unrepresentable. On the solution I propose, Kierkegaard does not hold that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates is in no (...) way representable. Rather, he holds that, as an exemplar for irony, Socrates cannot be represented in a purely disinterested way. I show how, in The Concept of Irony, Kierkegaard makes use of 'limiting cases' of representation in order to bring Socrates into view as one who defies purely disinterested representation. I also show how this approach to Socrates connects up with Kierkegaard's more general interest in the problem of ethical exemplarity, where the problem is how ethical exemplars can be given as such, that is, in such a way that purely disinterested contemplation is not the appropriate response to them. (shrink)

Psychiatric and neurological disorders have historically provided key insights into the structure-function rela- tionships that subserve human social cognition and behavior, informing the concept of the ‘social brain’. In this review, we take stock of the current status of this concept, retaining a focus on disorders that impact social behavior. We discuss how the social brain, social cognition, and social behavior are interdependent, and emphasize the important role of development and com- pensation. We suggest that the social brain, and its (...) dysfunction and recovery, must be understood not in terms of specific structures, but rather in terms of their interaction in large-scale networks. (shrink)

This paper takes a closer look at ordinary thought and talk about motivating reasons, in an effort to better understand how it works. This is an important first step in understanding whether—and if so, how—such thought and talk should inform or constrain our substantive theorizing. One of the upshots is that ordinary judgments about motivating reasons are at best a partial and defeasible guide to what really matters, and that so-called factualists, propositionalists, and statists are all partly right, as well (...) as partly wrong, when it comes to the question of what motivating reasons “are”. (shrink)

Creationism about fictional entities requires a principle connecting what fictions say exist with which fictional entities really exist. The most natural way of spelling out such a principle yields inconsistent verdicts about how many fictional entities are generated by certain inconsistent fictions. Avoiding inconsistency without compromising the attractions of creationism will not be easy.

There are two leading theories about the ontology of dreams. One holds that dreams involve hallucinations and beliefs. The other holds that dreaming involves sensory and propositional imagining. I highlight two features of dreams which are more easily explained by the imagination theory. One is that certain things seem to be true in our dreams, even though they are not represented sensorily; this is easily explained if dreams involve propositional imagining. The other is that dream narratives can be temporally segmented, (...) involving events which take place across long spans of time; this makes sense if dreams involve sensory imagining, for we often sensorily imagine narratives during wakefulness in the same way. The two considerations are uni ed by the fact that both highlight forms of content determination characteristic of imagining. (shrink)

On an ‘internalist’ picture, knowledge isn’t necessary for understanding the nature of perception and perceptual experience. This contrasts with the ‘knowledge first’ picture, according to which it’s essential to the nature of successful perceiving as a mental state that it’s a way of knowing. It’s often thought that naturalistic theorizing about the mind should adopt the internalist picture. However, I argue that a powerful, recently prominent framework for scientific study of the mind, ‘predictive processing,’ instead supports the knowledge first picture. (...) Under predictive processing, it’s intrinsic to successful perceiving that it’s a state with the kind of modal robustness that’s distinctive of knowledge, which gives us reason to think of successful perceiving along knowledge first lines. Furthermore, I argue that the predictive processing framework encourages us to conceptualize experiences which don’t amount to knowledge along knowledge first lines, as states which by their nature fall short of knowledge. (shrink)

The last two decades have seen a surge of support for normative quietism: most notably, from Dworkin, Nagel, Parfit and Scanlon. Detractors like Enoch and McPherson object that quietism is incompatible with realism about normativity. The resulting debate has stagnated somewhat. In this paper I explore and defend a more promising way of developing that objection: I’ll argue that if normative quietism is true, we can create reasons out of thin air, so normative realists must reject normative quietism.

Lewis is famous as a contemporary philosophical system-builder. The most obvious way his philosophy exhibited a system was in its content: Lewis’s metaphysics, for example, provided answers to many metaphysical puzzles in an integrated way, and there are illuminating connections to be drawn between his general metaphysical views and, for example, his various views about the mind and its place in nature.

We argue that a certain version of pragmatic encroachment, according to which one knows that p only if one’s epistemic position with respect to p is practically adequate, has a problematic consequence: one can lose knowledge that p by getting evidence for p, and conversely, one can gain knowledge that p by getting evidence against p. We first describe this version of pragmatic encroachment, and then we defend that it has the problematic consequence. Finally, we deal with a worry that (...) the consequence we find problematic is not, in fact, problematic. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

A range of important ethical issues emerges from a consideration of the past interaction between colonizing and colonized peoples. This article first seeks to describe the key characteristics of colonialism as a system of domination and subjugation, before considering the legitimacy of contemporary judgments on the morality of historical colonialism. It then examines how the particular character of colonialism complicates arguments relating to the rectification of injustice. It concludes by asking what lessons those interested in ethics can learn from the (...) diverse body of work produced by writers in the postcolonial tradition. (shrink)

The notion of representation in neuroscience has largely been predicated on localizing the components of computational processes that explain cognitive function. On this view, which I call “algorithmic homuncularism,” individual, spatially and temporally distinct parts of the brain serve as vehicles for distinct contents, and the causal relationships between them implement the transformations specified by an algorithm. This view has a widespread influence in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, and has recently been ably articulated and defended by Shea. Still, I am (...) skeptical about algorithmic homuncularism, and I argue against it by focusing on recent methods for complex data analysis in systems neuroscience. I claim that analyses such as principle components analysis and linear discriminant analysis prevent individuating vehicles as algorithmic homuncularism recommends. Rather, each individual part contributes to a global state space, trajectories of which vary with important task parameters. I argue that, while homuncularism is false, this view still supports a kind of “vehicle realism,” and I apply this view to debates about the explanatory role of representation. (shrink)

In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that (...) MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience. (shrink)

The debate regarding the role of conscientious objection in healthcare has been protracted, with increasing demands for curbs on conscientious objection. There is a growing body of evidence that indicates that in some cases, high rates of conscientious objection can affect access to legal medical services such as abortion—a major concern of critics of conscientious objection. Moreover, few solutions have been put forward that aim to satisfy both this concern and that of defenders of conscientious objection—being expected to participate in (...) the provision of services that compromise their moral integrity. Here we attempt to bring some resolution to the debate by proposing a pragmatic, long-term solution offering what we believe to be an acceptable compromise—a quota system for medical trainees in specialties where a conscientious objection can be exercised, and is known to cause conflict. We envisage two main objectives of the quota system we propose. First, as a means to introduce conscientious objection into countries where this is not presently permitted. Second, to minimise or eliminate the effects of high rates of conscientious objection in countries such as Italy, where access to legal abortion provision can be negatively affected. (shrink)

I advance a novel interpretation of Kant's argument that our original representation of space must be intuitive, according to which the intuitive status of spatial representation is secured by its infinitary structure. I defend a conception of intuitive representation as what must be given to the mind in order to be thought at all. Discursive representation, as modelled on the specific division of a highest genus into species, cannot account for infinite complexity. Because we represent space as infinitely complex, the (...) spatial manifold cannot be generated discursively and must therefore be given to the mind, i.e. represented in intuition. (shrink)

En este trabajo discutimos la extensión de la influencia que el pensamiento de Richard Owen tuvo sobre el de Charles Darwin. Además, se intentará mostrar lo heterogéneo de tal influencia, que va desde teorías específicas a giros retóricos. Esta influencia es en muchos casos subestimada, dando la sensación de que la novedad darwiniana consistió únicamente en mirar con ojos desprejuiciados lo que los otros no habían visto. Esta visión resulta injusta con Owen, y también con el esfuerzo conceptual llevado adelante (...) por Darwin con las piezas brindadas por sus precursores. Finalmente, este es un caso interesante para entender el tipo de novedad aportada por las revoluciones científicas y el modo sofisticado en que tal novedad se sustenta sobre el trabajo de los enfoques previos. (shrink)

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable (...) laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy? (shrink)

Just War Theory (JWT) replaced an older "warrior code," an approach to war that remains poorly understood and dismissively treated in the philosophical literature. This paper builds on recent work on honor to address these deficiencies. By providing a clear, systematic exposition of "Honor War Theory" (HWT), we can make sense of paradigm instances of warrior psychology and behavior, and understand the warrior code as the martial expression of a broader honor-based ethos that conceives of obligation in terms of fair (...) competition for prestige. Far from being a romantic and outmoded approach to war, HWT accounts for current conflicts and predicts moral intuitions that JWT either rejects or cannot comfortably accommodate. So although it is not recommended as a replacement for JWT, there is good reason think that a fully mature, realistic, and yet properly normative theory of war ethics will incorporate a variety of insights from HWT. (shrink)

One of Plato’s aims in the Phaedrus seems to be to outline an ‘ideal’ form of rhetoric. But it is unclear exactly what the ‘true’ rhetorician really looks like, and what exactly his methods are. More broadly, just how does Plato see the relation between rhetoric and philosophy? I argue, in light of Plato’s epistemology, that the “true craft (techne) of rhetoric” which he describes in the Phaedrus is a regulative, but also an unattainable ideal. Consequently, the mythical palinode in (...) the dialogue is not (as some have claimed) an example of the true techne—and indeed it could not be. But neither is dialectic. Rather, dialectic is the closest approximation of the true techne of rhetoric which can be had; that is to say, dialectic is the best and highest kind of psychagogia (a ‘leading of the soul through words’). Plato’s purpose in describing the “true techne of rhetoric”, then, is not to reform or to rehabilitate rhetoric, but to urge us to abandon it in favor of the philosophical life. One implication of this is that Plato is just as hostile toward rhetoric as he is in the Gorgias. (shrink)

Change blindness is the striking failure to see large changes that normally would be noticed easily. Over the past decade this phenomenon has greatly contributed to our understanding of attention, perception, and even consciousness. The surprising extent of change blindness explains its broad appeal, but its counterintuitive nature has also engendered confusions about the kinds of inferences that legitimately follow from it. Here we discuss the legitimate and the erroneous inferences that have been drawn, and offer a set of requirements (...) to help separate them. In doing so, we clarify the genuine contributions of change blindness research to our understanding of visual perception and awareness, and provide a glimpse of some ways in which change blindness might shape future research. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to possible worlds semantics in both logic and the philosophy of language, including a discussion of some of the advantages and challenges for possible worlds semantics.