When product design teams gather at the whiteboard in big-tech office parks and startup garages around the world, they ask themselves: How will customers use our technology? Is it better than our competitors’? How much money can we make? But one question that’s rarely asked: does our technology advance human flourishing? -/- In a new white paper by Harvard professor Danielle Allen and her colleagues Eli Frankel, Woojin Lim, Divya Siddarth, Josh Simons, and Glen Weyl entitled “The Ethics (...) of Decentralized Social Technologies: Lessons from Web3, the Fediverse, and Beyond,” the authors not only ask this question but offer a powerful framework for answering it. Drawing on the accumulated wisdom of democratic societies, the authors show that the values of democratic governance that have promoted human flourishing can be translated into a rubric for judging new technologies. -/- In this short research brief, we unpack and comment on the four-step logic at the core of their case. Ultimately, their argument demonstrates the power and the challenge – and above all, the urgency – of placing human flourishing at the center of technology governance. (shrink)

This paper argues that the plethora of experiments with decentralized social technologies (DSTs)—clusters of which are sometimes called “the Web 3.0 ecosystem” or “the Fediverse”—have brought us to a constitutional moment. These technologies enable radical innovations in social, economic, and political institutions and practices, with the potential to support transformative approaches to political economy. They demand governance innovation. The paper develops a framework of prudent vigilance for making ethical choices in this space that help to both grasp positive opportunities for (...) transformation and avoid the potentially problematic consequences. Most of our specific examples and concerns come from the blockchain/Web3 universe, as this has received the greatest investment, attention, and adoption to date. However, we aim to offer a framework for governance decision-making in conditions of uncertainty that applies more broadly to other DSTs. Specifically, under the framework of prudent vigilance, we propose a pragmatic, democratic, and pluralist approach to navigating bold experimentation with social practices and political economy enabled by these technologies. Our overarching goal is to provide a framework open to transformative improvement and constrained by guardrails and guiding values supportive of democracy, freedom, and pluralism. We take a relatively strong position, rather than simply laying out ethical issues and potential approaches. We seek to be provocative in order to spur further work and hope this paper will serve as a first bridge between academic philosophy and the DST community, which have hardly interacted to date. (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is indisputably running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to disappear from mainstream epistemology. Among others, Putnam (1978) still professes the a priori infallibility of some category (i) propositions, while Burge (...) (1986, 1988, 1996) and Lewis (1996) have recently affirmed the a priori infallibility of some category (ii) propositions. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: first, rationalist infallibilism unsurprisingly emerges as a defective epistemological doctrine, and second, more importantly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to lack cogency. (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified, i.e., justified in a way that is truth-entailing. In this paper, I examine the second thesis of rationalist infallibilism, what might be called ‘synthetic a priori infallibilism’. Exploring the seemingly only potentially plausible species of synthetic a priori infallibility, I reject the infallible justification of so-called self-justifying propositions.

The weak deflationist about truth is committed to two theses: one conceptual, the other ontological. On the conceptual thesis (what might be called a ‘triviality thesis’), the content of the truth predicate is exhausted by its involvement in some version of the ‘truth-schema’. On the ontological thesis, truth is a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I focus on weak deflationism’s ontological thesis, arguing that it generates an instability in its view of truth: the view threatens to collapse (...) into either that of strong deflationism (i.e., truth is not a property) or that of some form of inflationism (i.e., truth is a substantial property). The instability objection to weak deflationism is sketched by way of a truth-property ascription dilemma, the two horns of which its proponent is at pains to circumvent. (shrink)

Brouwer’s intuitionism was a far-reaching attempt to reform the foundations of mathematics. While the mathematical community was reluctant to accept Brouwer’s work, its response to later-developed brands of intuitionism, such as those presented by Hermann Weyl and Arend Heyting, was different. The paper accounts for this difference by analyzing the intuitionistic versions of Brouwer, Weyl, and Heyting in light of a two-tiered model of the body and image of mathematical knowledge. Such a perspective provides a richer account of (...) each story and points to a possible connection between the community’s reaction and the changes each mathematician had proposed. (shrink)

FENOMENOLOGIA Y FISICA EN HUSSERL, WEYL Y NEELAMKAVIL: MATERIA-CAMPO BASADO EN EXTENSIÓN-CAMBIO Castillo Ochoa, Ruth Transferencias Interculturales e Históricas de la Europa Medieval Mediterránea RESUMEN La historia de la terminología científica posibilita dar cuenta de 'cambios lingüísticos' o contingencia de términos en Ciencia. La Fenomenología de Husserl resulta un marco filosófico completo para elucidar significados en terminología científica enfatizando el carácter a priori de conceptos fundacionales, su aspecto contingente (lenguaje), intersubjetividad, sujeto transcendental y epojé. En tal sentido, soportar las (...) nociones fundacionales en física bajo las categorías universales Extensión-Cambio de Neelamkavil contribuye al ideal husserliano. Aún no se llega a una imagen adecuada de las intricadas relaciones entre Filosofía y Ciencia. Sin embargo, los hallazgos científicos de Moser-Britt (2014) soportan posiciones kantianas y husserlianas en torno a los términos a priori que fundamentan las teorías físicas. Como consecuencia, los resultados han despertado el interés de filósofos y científicos hacia las ideas husserlianas en tanto terminología lingüística y comprensión aprioricista del mundo. De esta forma, dentro del estado actual del arte, P. Berghofer y H. Wiltsche (2018) abordan el rol de fenomenología en Filosofía de la Física; mientras J. Drummond (2019) en "Husserl: German Perspectives" analiza el rol de la fenomenología en Ciencia. R. Neelamkavil (2018) da cuenta de un nuevo conjunto de categorías en física que comulgan con las ideas de Husserl. La comprensión de los términos Masa y Campo en física, se aborda el estudio de H. Grelland "Husserl, Einstein y Weyl and Concepts of Space, Time and Space-Time" y H. Weyl, "Space, Matter and Time". Un análisis metalingüísitico entre términos científicos y fenomenológicos no se ha realizado aún. La intención de la propuesta es abordar este punto ciego. -/- PALABRAS CLAVE Extensión, Cambio, Masa, Campo, Esencia . (shrink)

Symmetries play a major role in physics, in particular since the work by E. Noether and H. Weyl in the first half of last century. Herein, we briefly review their role by recalling how symmetry changes allow to conceptually move from classical to relativistic and quantum physics. We then introduce our ongoing theoretical analysis in biology and show that symmetries play a radically different role in this discipline, when compared to those in current physics. By this comparison, we stress (...) that symmetries must be understood in relation to conservation and stability properties, as represented in the theories. We posit that the dynamics of biological organisms, in their various levels of organization, are not just processes, but permanent (extended, in our terminology) critical transitions and, thus, symmetry changes. Within the limits of a relative structural stability (or interval of viability), variability is at the core of these transitions. (shrink)

The superassertability theory of truth, inspired by Crispin Wright (1992, 2003), holds that a statement is true if and only if it is superassertable in the following sense: it possesses warrant that cannot be defeated by any improvement of our information. While initially promising, the superassertability theory of truth is vulnerable to a persistent difficulty highlighted by James Van Cleve (1996) and Terrence Horgan (1995) but not properly fleshed out: it is formally illegitimate in a similar sense that unsophisticated epistemic (...) theories of truth are widely acknowledged to be. Sustained analysis reveals that the unrestricted formal legitimacy argument is firmly grounded in first person conceivability evidence. (shrink)

This essay discusses how our traditional ethics may harbor assumptions that place humans in a position in which overt violence towards animals is an almost inevitable outcome since their formulation involves violence towards ourselves and our animal fellows in our cutting our embodied ties with them. The essay explores Derrida’s Animal that Therefore, I Am, in its detailing of the two discourses within European intellectual history of those who felt they were “above” animals and were not addressed by them versus (...) those who could acknowledge that animals do address us. Derrida also cites the “lyconomy” of this tradition that brandishes the image of the “wolf” within us as a streak of rapacious violence that we can only fight with violence, thus projecting onto the wolf a false identity to justify our own demons of violence. Merleau-Ponty’s notions of embodiment further this idea that we are enmeshed with animals in a basic affective, perceptual and visceral way and that to ignore this interweaving of lives is to do violence to ourselves as well as violence towards them. I then cite ethologists for evidence that wolves are one of the most social, non-violent animals on the planet and detail how two million were slaughtered in the name of eradicating an “evil” being. Such behavior on our part I call “speciocide,” as heinous as genocide. Finally, phenomenology, as one particular philosophical approach, may have a critical edge in helping us to see our animal fellows more clearly, to understand them better, and discern our truer moral obligations to them. (shrink)

Beauchamp and Childress created the ‘four principle’ approach to help clinicians analyse and resolve ethical dilemmas they may encounter when working. In this project, I will consider whether autonomy ought to have a privileged position within the four principles and if the four principles can apply outside the medical sphere.

Earthbodies describes how our bodies are open circuits to a sensual magic and planetary care that when closed off leads to disastrous detours, such as illness, ...

According to Field’s influential incompleteness objection, Tarski’s semantic theory of truth is unsatisfactory since the definition that forms its basis is incomplete in two distinct senses: (1) it is physicalistically inadequate, and for this reason, (2) it is conceptually deficient. In this paper, I defend the semantic theory of truth against the incompleteness objection by conceding (1) but rejecting (2). After arguing that Davidson and McDowell’s reply to the incompleteness objection fails to pass muster, I argue that, within the constraints (...) of a non-reductive physicalism and a holism concerning the concepts of truth, reference and meaning, conceding Field’s physicalistic inadequacy conclusion while rejecting his conceptual deficiency conclusion is a promising reply to the incompleteness objection. (shrink)

The current technoscientific progress has led to a sectorization in the philosophy of science. Today the philosophy of science isn't is informal interested in studying old problems about the general characteristics of scientific practice. The interest of the philosopher of science is the study of concepts, problems and riddles of particular disciplines. Then, within this progress of philosophy of science, neuroscientific research stands out, because it invades issues traditionally addressed by the humanities, such as the nature of consciousness, action, knowledge, (...) normativity, etc. As a result, the new area of interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and philosophy arises: neurophilosophy. This emerging area applies neuroscientific concepts to traditional philosophical questions, limiting their responses to neuroscientific revelations about nervous systems. Neurophilosophy research focuses on problems related to the indirect nature of mind and brain, computational or representative analysis of brain process, relationships between psychological and neuroscientific research, adequate adaptations of physical and philosophical concepts in neuroscience and the place of cognitive functions. Now, the temporal representation of conscious experience and the types of the neural architecture to represent objects in time have aroused scientific interest. Under these interests, we focus on the studies on the temporary triadic structure of phenomenological consciousness in Dan Lloyd and Rick Grush. From Grush’s studies, the importance of Kantian ideas for cognitive neuroscience emerges, due to the active way in which Kant conceived space and time as forms of intuition, within which the mind interprets its experience. Under this perspective, the theoretical arguments of Dennett-Kinsbourne and Eagleman-Sejnowski represent winks in the direction of Kant-Husserl within the neuroscientific goal while considering that the contents provided by the mind included space, objects and perception of causal relationships. Then, theories of cognitive neuroscience are beginning to suggest that these elements are also, as Kant argued, interpretative elaborations provided by mind / brain, and not only content received from outside. In other words, current cognitive neuroscientific theories try to pass from its Humean phase to a Kantian phase. So, the challenge has been to explain that these elements are provided by the mind and the world itself, and how they have the content they have come from. These are lacking in current studies. Filling this gap helps to involve the analysis of the scientist’s experience in his theoretical attitude. In this sense, an investigation under the Kantian-Husserlian approach that involves pure intuitions a priori with the experience of the scientific and neuroscientific concepts represents a ground-breaking. At present, a neurophilosophical study about this does not exist. In this sense, one feasible proposal for research would be based on the application of neuroscientific results of Moser-Britt to philosophical problems of foundational notions in relativistic physics: space, time, space-time, field, etc., under the Kantian-Husserlian approach, which allows to demonstrate the multidisciplinary link between neurophilosophy and physics. This represents a ground-breaking area in current interests in scientific research, with a positive impact in the field of neuroscience, and contributing to the study of abstraction emphasizing the importance of Kant’s Copernican turn and Husserl’s phenomenological ideas in the construction of physical theories. -/- . (shrink)

A simple operating principle (similar to a combination of a pottery wheel and a catapult or, simply, the weapon used by David to slay Goliath) coupled with the success of some moderate engineering challenges may allow for the transmission of a carrier wave from Earth to Mars in less than one second! This paper also directly addresses the controversy of light speed variance/invariance (which has arisen from the “wave/particle nature of light” debate) by referencing Joseph A. Rybczyk’s 2012 paper, “Lunar (...) Laser Evidence of Light Speed Variance”. (shrink)

Minimalism is currently the received deflationary theory of truth. On minimalism, truth is a transparent concept and a deflated property of truth bearers. In this paper, I situate minimalism within current deflationary debate about truth by contrasting it with its main alternative―the redundancy theory of truth. I also outline three of the primary challenges facing minimalism, its formulation, explanatory adequacy and stability, and draw some lessons for the soundness of its conception of truth.

Cyborgs are ongoing becomings of a doubly “in-between” temporality of humans and machines. Materially made from components of both sorts of beings, cyborgs gain increasing function through an interweaving in which each alters the other, from the level of “neural plasticity” to software updates to emotional breakthroughs of which both are a part. One sort of temporal in-between is of the progressive unfolding of a deepening becoming as “not-one-not-two” and the other is a “doubling back” of time into itself in (...) which moments that were once disparate are conjoined or enjambed. Tracing the experience of Michael Chorost during a four year period of coming to terms with his cochlear implant, related in Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, the essay pinpoints shifts in awareness, perceptual belief, and being-with others that unfold within the in-between of person and machine. (shrink)

The critique of tourism as being only a distanced, detached, and consumerist passing through of foreign landscapes and cultures isdisputed in this essay. The idea that tourism necessarily fits the paradigm of inauthenticity as the tranquilized and alienated hopping from spot to spot in prepackaged, superficial presentations is contrasted with another sense of tourism as drawing upon the potential power of the glance to disrupt the everyday, to focus on the particular, to be surprised by the new, and to bodily (...) join up with the rhythms of place being as shifting. Authenticity is seen in both Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to be primarily about a greater bodily awareness of surround and transformation of the self as an ongoing process of “selving” that yields a more singular sense of who one is in relationship to places and their interconnectedness. To gain a better sense of oneself in one own being or uniqueness is to gain more meaning through emplacement within the surround. The glance at a new world can open up an “interplace” which expands anddeepens the sense of who we are in the interconnection and reverberations among places. (shrink)

Linguistic competence, in general terms, involves the ability to learn, understand, and speak a language. The nativist view in the philosophy of linguistics holds that the principal foundation of linguistic competence is an innate faculty of linguistic cognition. In this paper, close scrutiny is given to nativism's fundamental commitments in the area of metaphysics. In the course of this exploration it is argued that any minimally defensible variety of nativism is, for better or worse, married to two theses: linguistic competence (...) is grounded in a faculty of linguistic cognition that is (i) embodied and (ii) whose operating rules are represented in the brains of human language users. (shrink)

This essay details wolves’ sense of their surround in terms of how wolves’ perceptual acuities, motor abilities, daily habits, overriding concerns, network of intimate social bonds and relationship to prey gives them a unique sense of space, time, belonging with other wolves, memorial sense, imaginative capacities, dominant emotions (of affection, play, loyalty, hunger, etc.), communicative avenues, partnership with other creatures, and key role in ecological thriving. Wolves are seen to live within a vast sense of aroundness and closeness to aspects (...) of their surround (compared to humans), a highly charged intimacy and cooperation with other wolves, and a caring and non-aggressive attitude that goes beyond the pack, despite their loyalty and defense of territory. The cultural myths and history that absurdly demonize the wolf are explored in their self-righteous attempts to exterminate wolves, which I call “speciocide” and probe for projections of human viciousness. The supposed rapaciousness of wolves is re-examined by expanding Barry Lopez’s sense of the silent dialogue of death with other creatures to be reconsidered as a kind of respect, assertion of vitality, recognition or mortality and cooperation. (shrink)

The study aimed to investigate the language learning strategies and their contribution to the language competence of English major students in the teacher education program at Kapalong College of Agriculture Sciences and Technology. The researcher utilized a mixed-method design using the convergent parallel approach. Participants were English major students across all year levels at the college institution, with 204 students randomly selected for the quantitative phase and approximately 10 students purposively selected for the qualitative phase: 5 for in-depth interviews and (...) 5 for focused group discussions. The results indicated that both the level of language learning strategies and language competence were high; the findings were rejected, which reveals that there is significant relationship between them. Further, the findings from both the quantitative and qualitative phases largely converged however, there was one divergent indicator. The study confirmed that language learning strategies significantly impact the enhancement of language competencies among English major students, facilitating effective and efficient language use in realistic contexts. It is recommended that language learners must also prioritize memory strategies despite from the indicators’ lowest mean based from the results, such as mnemonic devices and spaced repetition techniques, to enhance vocabulary and grammar retention. Additionally, to improve speaking competency, students should engage in practical applications of the language within their specific contexts, allowing them to practice and develop fluency, essential for effective communication in professional, social, and academic environments. (shrink)

Evidence matters for responsibility. This paper investigates implications of this insight for group responsibility and the literature on group belief. In particular, we will be focusing on the transmission of group responsibility from group to individual. We will argue that there are cases in which responsibility transmits fully (to all members of the group), partially (to some but not all of its members), or not at all (to none of its members), and we will explore some implications of these observations (...) for accounts of group belief and evidence in the literature on social epistemology. More specifically, we will provide reason to think that these observations provide support for an account of group belief that we favour over its main rivals in the literature. (shrink)

There are many things—call them ‘experts’—that you should defer to in forming your opinions. The trouble is, many experts are modest: they’re less than certain that they are worthy of deference. When this happens, the standard theories of deference break down: the most popular (“Reflection”-style) principles collapse to inconsistency, while their most popular (“New-Reflection”-style) variants allow you to defer to someone while regarding them as an anti-expert. We propose a middle way: deferring to someone involves preferring to make any decision (...) using their opinions instead of your own. In a slogan, deferring opinions is deferring decisions. Generalizing the proposal of Dorst (2020a), we first formulate a new principle that shows exactly how your opinions must relate to an expert’s for this to be so. We then build off the results of Levinstein (2019) and Campbell-Moore (2020) to show that this principle is also equivalent to the constraint that you must always expect the expert’s estimates to be more accurate than your own. Finally, we characterize the conditions an expert’s opinions must meet to be worthy of deference in this sense, showing how they sit naturally between the too-strong constraints of Reflection and the too-weak constraints of New Reflection. (shrink)

Many claims about conceptual matters are often represented as, or inferred from, claims about the meaning, reference, or mastery, of words. But sometimes this has led to treating conceptual analysis as though it were nothing but linguistic analysis. We canvass the most promising justifications for moving from linguistic premises to substantive conclusions. We show that these justifications fail and argue against current practice (in metaethics and elsewhere), which confuses an investigation of a word’s meaning, reference, or competence conditions with an (...) analysis of some concept or property associated with that word. (shrink)

People sometimes explain behavior by appealing to an essentialist concept of the self, often referred to as the true self. Existing studies suggest that people tend to believe that the true self is morally virtuous; that is deep inside, every person is motivated to behave in morally good ways. Is this belief particular to individuals with optimistic beliefs or people from Western cultures, or does it reflect a widely held cognitive bias in how people understand the self? To address this (...) question, we tested the good true self theory against two potential boundary conditions that are known to elicit different beliefs about the self as a whole. Study 1 tested whether individual differences in misanthropy—the tendency to view humans negatively—predict beliefs about the good true self in an American sample. The results indicate a consistent belief in a good true self, even among individuals who have an explicitly pessimistic view of others. Study 2 compared true self-attributions across cultural groups, by comparing samples from an independent country and a diverse set of interdependent countries. Results indicated that the direction and magnitude of the effect are comparable across all groups we tested. The belief in a good true self appears robust across groups varying in cultural orientation or misanthropy, suggesting a consistent psychological tendency to view the true self as morally good. (shrink)

A growing body of research has examined how people judge the persistence of identity over time—that is, how they decide that a particular individual is the same entity from one time to the next. While a great deal of progress has been made in understanding the types of features that people typically consider when making such judgments, to date, existing work has not explored how these judgments may be shaped by normative considerations. The present studies demonstrate that normative beliefs do (...) appear to play an important role in people's beliefs about persistence. Specifically, people are more likely to judge that the identity of a given entity remains the same when its features improve than when its features deteriorate. Study 1 provides a basic demonstration of this effect. Study 2 shows that this effect is moderated by individual differences in normative beliefs. Study 3 examines the underlying mechanism, which is the belief that, in general, various entities are essentially good. Study 4 directly manipulates beliefs about essence to show that the positivity bias regarding essences is causally responsible for the effect. (shrink)

Do psychological traits predict philosophical views? We administered the PhilPapers Survey, created by David Bourget and David Chalmers, which consists of 30 views on central philosophical topics (e.g., epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language) to a sample of professional philosophers (N = 314). We extended the PhilPapers survey to measure a number of psychological traits, such as personality, numeracy, well-being, lifestyle, and life experiences. We also included non-technical ‘translations’ of these views for eventual use in other (...) populations. We found limited to no support for the notion that personality or demographics predict philosophical views. We did, however, find that some psychological traits were predictive of philosophical views, even after strict correction for multiple comparisons. Findings include: higher interest in numeracy predicted physicalism, naturalism, and consequentialism; lower levels of well-being and higher levels of mental illness predicted hard determinism; using substances such as psychedelics and marijuana predicted non-realist and subjectivist views of morality and aesthetics; having had a transformative or self-transcendent experience predicted theism and idealism. We discuss whether or not these empirical results have philosophical implications, while noting that 68% of our sample of professional philosophers indicated that such findings would indeed have philosophical value. (shrink)

Quantum Mechanics is a fundamental physical theory about atomic-scale processes. It was built between 1920 and 1940 by the most distinguished physicists of that time. The accordance between the predictions of the theory and experimental results is remarkable. The physical interpretation of its mathematical constructs, however, raised unprecedented controversies. Ontological, semantic, and epistemic vagueness abound in the orthodox interpretations and have resulted in serious misunderstandings that are often repeated in textbooks and elsewhere. In this work, we identify, criticize, and clarify (...) the most spread ones. (shrink)

The Twin Earth thought experiment invites us to consider a liquid that has all of the superficial properties associated with water (clear, potable, etc.) but has entirely different deeper causal properties (composed of “XYZ” rather than of H2O). Although this thought experiment was originally introduced to illuminate questions in the theory of reference, it has also played a crucial role in empirically informed debates within the philosophy of psychology about people’s ordinary natural kind concepts. Those debates have sought to accommodate (...) an apparent fact about ordinary people’s judgments: Intuitively, the Twin Earth liquid is not water. We present results from four experiments showing that people do not, in fact, have this intuition. Instead, people tend to have the intuition that there is a sense in which the liquid is not water but also a sense in which it is water. We explore the implications of this finding for debates about theories of natural kind concepts, arguing that it supports views positing two distinct criteria for membership in natural kind categories – one based on deeper causal properties, the other based on superficial, observable properties. (shrink)

We argue that P. F. Strawson's hugely influential account of moral responsibility in ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (FR) is inextricably bound up with his barely known account of morality in ‘Social Morality and Individual Ideal’ (SMII). Reading FR through the lens of SMII has at least three far-reaching implications. First, the ethics–morality distinction in SMII gives content to Strawson's famous distinction between personal and moral reactive attitudes, which has often been thought to be a merely formal distinction. Second, the ethics–morality distinction (...) sheds light on the scope of moral responsibility in FR, which is narrower than commentators think. Third, Strawson's discussion of morality shows that he was not insensitive to issues of power, as several critics have claimed. The link between morality and power helps to make clear that Strawson allows for criticism of our moral responsibility practices. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s concepts shed light on the phenomenon of schizophrenia in at least three different ways: with a view to empathy, scientific explanation, or philosophical clarification. I consider two different “positive” wittgensteinian accounts―Campbell’s idea that delusions involve a mechanism of which different framework propositions are parts, Sass’ proposal that the schizophrenic patient can be described as a solipsist, and a Rhodes’ and Gipp’s account, where epistemic aspects of schizophrenia are explained as failures in the ordinary background of certainties. I argue that (...) none of them amounts to empathic-phenomenological understanding, but they provide examples of how philosophical concepts can contribute to scientific explanation, and to philosophical clarification respectively. (shrink)

A minimal truthmaker for a given proposition is the smallest portion of reality which makes this proposition true. Minimal truthmakers are frequently mentioned in the literature, but there has been no systematic account of what they are or of their importance. In this article we shall clarify the notion of a minimal truthmaker and argue that there is reason to think that at least some propositions have minimal truthmakers. We shall then argue that the notion can play a useful role (...) in truthmaker theory, by helping to explain the truth of certain propositions as precisely as possible. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subjects assertion that p matches her non-verbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from nearly 6,000 people across twenty-six samples, spanning twenty-two countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we suggest that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely (...) asserts that p, non-linguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

Once known as the city of silk, Suzhou 苏州 has become the centre of wedding dress production, selling paradise on earth for one day, including copies of the last royal wedding dress, out of shops at the foot of mythic Tiger Hill. Suzhou is also the host of what is known as the Silicon Valley of the East. It has attracted millions of migrants searching for a better future; millions of tourists visit every year to experience the past, strolling through (...) the gardens and courtyards of its Old Town. The contrasts could hardly be more apparent. Slow time, and fast time, and the time of the in-between, are woven into the city’s complex spatial fabric. This is a conversation by eight authors in eight frames on a city that connects them. (shrink)

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension (...) of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a ‘data mirror’ that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. (shrink)

Phylogeography, a relatively new subdicipline of evolutionary biology that attempts to unify the fields of phylogenetics and population biology in an explicit geographical context, has hosted in recent years a highly polarized debate related to the purported benefits and limitations that qualitative versus quantitative methods might contribute or impose on inferential processes in evolutionary biology. Here we present a friendly, non-technical introduction to the conflicting methods underlying the controversy, and exemplify it with a balanced selection of quotes from the primary (...) biological literature, to invite the philosophy of biology community to pay attention to the elements that have played a primary role in its presumed resolution. We also present the basic features of our own metascientific take on the debate, and point out—as a preliminary step in preparation for upcoming, more detailed treatments—the importance that appeals to authority in fields external to phylogeography per se have played in the current status of this highly visible evolutionary biology dispute. (shrink)