Este trabajo de campo, se produce dentro de un acuerdo interinstitucional, el que tiene como objetivo aportar a la permanencia y desarrollo sustentable de la quesería artesanal de la región oeste, sur y este del Uruguay. La mayoría de estos productores agropecuarios familiares se encuentran en un proceso de formalización de su producción y comercialización. Cuentan con escasa información que dificulta introducir la gestión de costos en los establecimientos. Es así que se seleccionaron 9 establecimientos como una fase piloto, con (...) el propósito analizar el costo de la producción de queso artesanal en la etapa “previa a la maduración”. Entendiendo que el objetivo de este trabajo es facilitar al productor la toma de decisiones relativas a precios y dada la escasa o nula información de períodos anteriores, se optó por un modelo de costo variable resultante, aunque de forma híbrida ya que ciertos datos se basaron en la especificación técnica y el periodo observado es de solamente una elaboración y no de la totalidad de elaboraciones realizadas en el mes, como es usual en la práctica de cálculo de costos resultantes. A efecto de cumplir con el objetivo del trabajo se realizaron las siguientes actividades en cada establecimiento: 1. Se visitó la quesería artesanal. 2. Se mantuvo una entrevista personal con el propietario del establecimiento con el objetivo de relevar información relacionada al proceso, y los factores productivos intervinientes en el mismo. 3. Se trabajó con la Información histórica obtenida de registros que aportó el productor. 4. Asimismo, se consideraron especificaciones técnicas proporcionadas por los especialistas. Es así que, mediante esta metodología de costeo aplicado en cada uno de los establecimientos, el productor estaría en condiciones de conocer el precio mínimo al que puede vender un kg de queso, no es conveniente hacerlo por debajo del costo variable. No obstante, el productor debe tener presente que la diferencia entre el precio pactado de venta menos su costo variable (denominado contribución marginal), va en primera instancia a cubrir los costos fijos. Dado que se relevó solo un día, en todos los establecimientos el único supuesto razonable es que la producción sea relativamente constante en los 30 días, si fuera ese caso, la producción mensual seria aproximadamente el monto del kg a la venta. Como limitación al alcance de este trabajo, es que lo anterior es adecuado cuando no existe un proceso de maduración, en el caso de que el mismo existiera deberá adicionarse el costo variable de dicho proceso, que consiste básicamente en la cuantificación del valor tiempo del dinero o costo de la inmovilización del capital, así como las mermas que se incurren en el proceso de maduración. (shrink)

This fourteenth volume of Collected Papers is an eclectic tome of 87 papers in Neutrosophics and other fields, such as mathematics, fuzzy sets, intuitionistic fuzzy sets, picture fuzzy sets, information fusion, robotics, statistics, or extenics, comprising 936 pages, published between 2008-2022 in different scientific journals or currently in press, by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 99 co-authors (alphabetically ordered) from 26 countries: Ahmed B. Al-Nafee, Adesina Abdul Akeem Agboola, Akbar Rezaei, Shariful Alam, Marina Alonso, Fran Andujar, (...) Toshinori Asai, Assia Bakali, Azmat Hussain, Daniela Baran, Bijan Davvaz, Bilal Hadjadji, Carlos Díaz Bohorquez, Robert N. Boyd, M. Caldas, Cenap Özel, Pankaj Chauhan, Victor Christianto, Salvador Coll, Shyamal Dalapati, Irfan Deli, Balasubramanian Elavarasan, Fahad Alsharari, Yonfei Feng, Daniela Gîfu, Rafael Rojas Gualdrón, Haipeng Wang, Hemant Kumar Gianey, Noel Batista Hernández, Abdel-Nasser Hussein, Ibrahim M. Hezam, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Muthusamy Karthika, Nour Eldeen M. Khalifa, Madad Khan, Kifayat Ullah, Valeri Kroumov, Tapan Kumar Roy, Deepesh Kunwar, Le Thi Nhung, Pedro López, Mai Mohamed, Manh Van Vu, Miguel A. Quiroz-Martínez, Marcel Migdalovici, Kritika Mishra, Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Mohamed Talea, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohammed Alshumrani, Mohamed Loey, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Shabir, Mumtaz Ali, Nassim Abbas, Munazza Naz, Ngan Thi Roan, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Rishwanth Mani Parimala, Ion Pătrașcu, Surapati Pramanik, Quek Shio Gai, Qiang Guo, Rajab Ali Borzooei, Nimitha Rajesh, Jesús Estupiñan Ricardo, Juan Miguel Martínez Rubio, Saeed Mirvakili, Arsham Borumand Saeid, Saeid Jafari, Said Broumi, Ahmed A. Salama, Nirmala Sawan, Gheorghe Săvoiu, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Seok-Zun Song, Shahzaib Ashraf, Jayant Singh, Rajesh Singh, Son Hoang Le, Tahir Mahmood, Kenta Takaya, Mirela Teodorescu, Ramalingam Udhayakumar, Maikel Y. Leyva Vázquez, V. Venkateswara Rao, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Gabriela Vlădeanu, Michael Voskoglou, Yaser Saber, Yong Deng, You He, Youcef Chibani, Young Bae Jun, Wadei F. Al-Omeri, Hongbo Wang, Zayen Azzouz Omar. (shrink)

Published in the American Journal of Bioethics.

Our behavior doesn't always match the beliefs attributed to us, and sometimes the mismatch raises questions about what our beliefs actually are. I compare two approaches to such cases, and argue in favor of the one which allows some belief-attributions to lack a determinate truth-value. That approach avoids an inappropriate assumption about cognitive activity: namely, that whenever we fail in performing one cognitive activity, there is a distinct cognitive activity at which we succeed. The indeterminacy-allowing approach also meshes well with (...) an attractive view of folk-psychology: that ascriptions can help shape the attitudes they report. (shrink)

Two attitudes are possible: one, that the world is an absolute jungle and that the exercise of coercive power by rulers is only a manifestation of this; and the other, that it is both necessary and right that there should be this exercise of power, that through it the world is much less of a jungle than it could possibly be without it, so that one should in principle be glad of the existence of such power, and only take exception (...) to its unjust exercise. (shrink)

Draft of forthcoming article in the Journal of Medical Ethics where I discuss ethical tension between LGBT testimony and testimonial trust of medical professionals.

Bortolotti argues that the irrationality of many delusions is no different in kind from the irrationality that marks many non-pathological states typically treated as beliefs. She takes this to secure the doxastic status of those delusions. Bortolotti’s approach has many benefits. For example, it accounts for the fact that we can often make some sense of what deluded subjects are up to, and helps explain why some deluded subjects are helped by cognitive behavioral therapy. But there is an alternative approach (...) that secures the same benefits as Bortolotti’s account while bringing additional benefits. The alternative approach treats both many delusions and many of the non-pathological states to which Bortolotti compares them as in-between states. Subjects in in-between states don’t fully believe the beliefs which it is sometimes convenient to ascribe to them. This alternative approach to belief and belief-ascription fits well with an independently attractive account of the varied purposes of our ordinary attitude ascriptions. It also makes it easier to make fine-grained distinctions between intentional attitudes of different kinds. (shrink)

Are living organisms--as Descartes argued--just machines? Or is the nature of life such that it can never be fully explained by mechanistic models? In this thought-provoking and controversial book, eminent geophysicist Walter M. Elsasser argues that the behavior of living organisms cannot be reduced to physico-chemical causality. Suggesting that molecular biology today is at the same point as Newtonian physics on the eve of the quantum revolution, Elsasser lays the foundation for a theoretical biology that points the way toward a (...) natural philosophy of organic life. Explicitly repudiating "vitalism" (the notion that the laws of nature need to be modified when applied to living organisms), Elsasser argues instead that the structural complexity of even a single living cell is "transcomputational"--that is, beyond the power of any imaginable system to compute. Beginning from this insight, Elsasser leads the reader through a step-by-step process that ultimately arrives at the conclusion that living and non-living matter are separated by "a no-man's land of irrationality." Trained in Germany as a physicist, Elsasser first pondered the implications of quantum mechanics for biology as early as 1951. The more closely he studied the inherent complexity of life, the more skeptical he became of the reductionist view of organisms as tiny machines. "An organism," he concluded, "is a source of causal chains which cannot be traced beyond a terminal point because they are lost in the unfathomable complexity of the organism." Like the physicist who works within the bounds of an unfathomable universe, Elsasser argues, the biologist must seek answers within a system that is no less unfathomable. (shrink)

The imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it tempting to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie argue that adopting a dispositional account of belief can secure the doxastic status of delusions. But dispositionalism can only secure genuinely doxastic status for mental states by giving folk-psychological norms a significant role in the individuation of attitudes. When such norms individuate belief, deluded subjects will not count as believing their delusions. In general, dispositionalism won't confer genuinely doxastic status more often than do (...) competing accounts of belief. (shrink)

"Surrender; therefore, surrender or fight" is apparently an argument corresponding to an inference from an imperative to an imperative. Several philosophers, however (Williams 1963; Wedeking 1970; Harrison 1991; Hansen 2008), have denied that imperative inferences exist, arguing that (1) no such inferences occur in everyday life, (2) imperatives cannot be premises or conclusions of inferences because it makes no sense to say, for example, "since surrender" or "it follows that surrender or fight", and (3) distinct imperatives have conflicting permissive presuppositions (...) ("surrender or fight" permits you to fight without surrendering, but "surrender" does not), so issuing distinct imperatives amounts to changing one's mind and thus cannot be construed as making an inference. In response I argue inter alia that, on a reasonable understanding of 'inference', some everyday-life inferences do have imperatives as premises and conclusions, and that issuing imperatives with conflicting permissive presuppositions does not amount to changing one's mind. (shrink)

Kadri Vihvelin, in "What time travelers cannot do" (Philos Stud 81: 315-330, 1996), argued that "no time traveler can kill the baby who in fact is her younger self, because (V1) "if someone would fail to do something, no matter how hard or how many times she tried, then she cannot do it", and (V2) if a time traveler tried to kill her baby self, she would always fail. Theodore Sider (Philos Stud 110: 115-138, 2002) criticized Vihvelin's argument, and Ira (...) Kiourti (Philos Stud 139: 343-352, 2008) criticized both Vihvelin's argument and Sider's critique. I present a critique of Vihvelin's argument different from both Sider's and Kiourti's critiques: I argue in a novel way that both V1 and V2 are false. Since Vihvelin's argument might be understood as providing a challenge to the possibility of time travel, if my critique succeeds then time travel survives such a challenge unscathed. (shrink)

In this review, we present some ethical imperatives observed in this pandemic from a data ethics perspective. Our exposition connects recurrent ethical problems in the discipline, such as, privacy, surveillance, transparency, accountability, and trust, to broader societal concerns about equality, discrimination, and justice. We acknowledge data ethics role as significant to develop technological, inclusive, and pluralist societies. - - - Resumen: En esta revisión, exponemos algunos de los imperativos éticos observados desde la ética de datos en esta pandemia. Nuestra exposición (...) busca conectar problemas éticos típicos dentro de esta disciplina, a saber, privacidad, vigilancia, transparencia, responsabilidad y confianza, con preocupaciones a nivel social relacionadas con la igualdad, discrimi nación y justicia. Consideramos que la ética de datos tiene un rol significativo para desarrollar sociedades tecnificadas, inclusivas y pluralistas. (shrink)

Berry, Daniels, and Ladin make a strong argument for discontinuing the use of, “lack of social support,” as an organ transplantation listing criterion. This argument, however, actually leads to conclusions much stronger than those that the authors’ propose: The argument works equally well against using, (1) any “psychosocial” factors at all as a listing criterion, and, (2) any criteria other than factors that directly relate to empirically established medical need, and/or empirically established survival rate. Moreover, while the authors rightly point (...) to a lack of empirical evidence connecting social support to survivability, they neglect mentioning that the empirical literature on social support provides grounds to favor listing persons who seem to, sadly, lack a social support system. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that Alexis de Tocqueville describes the virtue of citizenship in a way that is relevant to contemporary virtue ethics. He explains how a group can possess a virtue that is distinct from the virtue of individual members of the group. (this is an unofficial draft).

In this article, I apply Australian logician and ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood’s Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, specifically its alternative logic of “the dance of interaction,” to a controversial community-engagement program in my home state of Alabama. At Rural Studio, Auburn University students design free housing and public works for one of the poorest regions in the United States, known as the “Black Belt.” Through the lens of Plumwood’s ecofeminist dancing logic, the marginalized source of Rural Studio’s survival is (...) revealed to be the resilience of the disempowered majority-Black community. Inspired thereby, I sketch an ecofeminist choreography with three “dancing” concepts (namely Plumwood’s “the master model,” Vandana Shiva’s “nature’s logic,” and Ariel Salleh’s “holding”), acknowledging the resilience of the disempowered as a necessary step toward an ethically-sustainable aesthetics. (shrink)

I propose and articulate a novel theory of desire, called the Revised Reward Theory. As the name suggests, the theory is based—and expands—on Arpaly and Schroeder’s (2014) Reward Theory of Desire. The initial Reward Theory identifies desires with states of the reward learning system such that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to treat P as a reward upon receipt. The Revised Reward Theory identifies desires with a different state of the same system, such (...) that for an organism to desire some P is for its reward system to expect or predict that P will be rewarding (roughly) prior to receipt. The difference amounts to equating desires with what we ultimately find rewarding or satisfying versus those that underlie our motivations to obtain that which we take ourselves to desire. I argue that the structure of the reward system is incompatible with the original Reward Theory but compatible with the Revised Reward Theory. I demonstrate that this difference has important philosophical implications. I focus on moral responsibility and demonstrate Arpaly and Schroeder’s argument, that addiction can mitigate moral responsibility, turns on this precise difference. Arpaly, Schroeder, and I all ascribe to a meta-theory called ‘natural kindism’ which identifies mental kinds with neurocognitive kinds. This discussion, in addition to defending a theory of desire, is intended to act as a proof of concept for natural kindism as offering a powerful framework for relating empirical results to philosophical issues. (shrink)

If time travel is possible, presumably so is my shooting my younger self ; then apparently I can kill him – I can commit retrosuicide. But if I were to kill him I would not exist to shoot him, so how can I kill him? The standard solution to this paradox understands ability as compossibility with the relevant facts and points to an equivocation about which facts are relevant: my killing YS is compossible with his proximity but not with his (...) survival, so I can kill him if facts like his survival are irrelevant but I cannot if they are relevant. I identify a lacuna in this solution, namely its reliance without argument on the hidden assumption that my killing YS is possible: if it is impossible, it is not compossible with anything. I argue that this lacuna is important, and I sketch a different solution to the paradox. (shrink)

I defend the epistemic thesis that evaluations of people in terms of their moral character as good, bad, or intermediate are almost always epistemically unjustified. (1) Because most people are fragmented (they would behave deplorably in many and admirably in many other situations), one's prior probability that any given person is fragmented should be high. (2) Because one's information about specific people does not reliably distinguish those who are fragmented from those who are not, one's posterior probability that any given (...) person is fragmented should be close to one's prior—and thus should also be high. (3) Because being fragmented entails being indeterminate (neither good nor bad nor intermediate), one's posterior probability that any given person is indeterminate should also be high—and the epistemic thesis follows. (1) and (3) rely on previous work; here I support (2) by using a mathematical result together with empirical evidence from personality psychology. (shrink)

Criminal law practices in the US, including policing and incarceration, have drawn heavy criticism for their disproportionate impact on black people, particularly black men. At the same time, some feminist scholars and activists advocate for increases in criminal law responses to sexual assault, including expanding criminal statutes to cover more instances of sexual assault and increasing sentencing guidelines. These reforms are often justified by claims that criminal law should express more feminist values and reject sexist social schemas. This paper makes (...) the case that criminal legal interventions aimed at changing sexist social schemas, such as ‘rape culture,’ are unlikely to be successful because criminal law is effective at maintaining existing social norms, but bad at introducing novel ones. Similarly, in the US, criminality has been ideologically linked to blackness, so attempts to use the stigma of criminality to combat sexual violence are likely to reinforce anti-black racism. The very meaning of a criminal law depends on related social schemas, and the racist social schemas associated with criminality undermine the ability of criminal legal responses to present anti-sexist values. At best, criminal legal reforms aimed at expressing the equal dignity of women will be ambiguous because their meaning is negotiated by existing sexist and racist social schemas. Thus, penal expressivism cannot offer a justification for using criminal law to combat sexual assault. (shrink)

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources of evidence, (...) but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

Imagine that you are given access to an AI chatbot that compellingly mimics the personality and speech of a deceased loved one. If you start having regular interactions with this “thanabot,” could this new relationship be a continuation of the relationship you had with your loved one? And could a relationship with a thanabot preserve or replicate the value of a close human relationship? To the first question, we argue that a relationship with a thanabot cannot be a true continuation (...) of your relationship with a deceased loved one, though it might support one’s continuing bonds with the dead. To the second question, we argue that, in and of themselves, relationships with thanabots cannot benefit us as much as rewarding and healthy intimate relationships with other humans, though we explain why it is difficult to make reliable comparative generalizations about the instrumental value of these relationships. (shrink)

I argue that Evolutionary Psychologists’ notion of adaptationism is closest to what Peter Godfrey-Smith (2001) calls explanatory adaptationism and as a result, is not a good organizing principle for research in the biology of human behavior. I also argue that adopting an alternate notion of adaptationism presents much more explanatory resources to the biology of human behavior. I proceed by introducing Evolutionary Psychology and giving some examples of alternative approaches to the biological explanation of human behavior. Next I characterize adaptation (...) and explain the range of biological phenomena that can count as adaptations. I go onto introduce the range of adaptationist views that have been distinguished by philosophers of biology and lay out explanatory adaptationism in detail. (shrink)

As I have explored elsewhere, the Birmingham Philosophy Guild, which my former students and I re-founded in 2012, is a team of community members who engage in theoretical discussion, support group self-cultivation, and community activism. To further promote the guild as a catalyst for progressive social change, the present article connects it to both the popular cultural phenomenon of the “X-Men”—to make the guild more appealing to students and laypeople—and to the cutting-edge contemporary French philosophy of Étienne Balibar—to make the (...) guild more appealing to professors and culture workers. Moreover, the article connects these low- and high-brow phenomena to each other as well, thereby illustrating the political relevance of the lower, as well as a weakness in the higher, pursuant to social justice activism today. (shrink)

This article argues that our attention is pervasively biased by embodied affects and that we are normatively assessable in light of this. From a contemporary perspective, normative theorizing about attention is a relatively new trend (Siegel 2017: Ch. 9, Irving 2019, Bommarito 2018: Ch. 5). However, Buddhist philosophy has provided us with a well-spring of normatively rich theorizing about attention from its inception. This article will address how norms of attention are dealt with in Buddhaghosa’s (5th-6th CE) claims about how (...) wholesome forms of empathy can go wrong. Through this analysis, I will show that Buddhist philosophers like Buddhaghosa think there is an existential norm of attention, one that commands us not just to pay attention to ourselves and the world properly, but one whereby we are exhorted to attend to ourselves in a way that gradually transforms our cognitive-emotional constitution so that we become liberated from suffering. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to demonstrate that the consequences of the current United States health insurance scheme on both physician and patient autonomy is dire. So dire, in fact, that the only moral solution is something other than what we have now. The United States healthcare system faces much criticism at present. But my focus is particular: I am interested in the ways in which insurance interferes with physician and patient autonomy. I will argue in favor of an expansion (...) of the traditional conception of what I call “medical autonomy” or “healthcare autonomy” and the usual role it plays in bioethical discussions. More generally, I show that in morally designing or evaluating any healthcare system, serious attention should be paid to how this system helps foster what I call active autonomy. (shrink)

Diabetic ketoacidosis is a serious, medical emergency that can be fatal but treatable, we aimed to evaluate the clinical profile of patients admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis. This case series study enrolled 213 non-pregnant adult and adolescent patients admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis at Tripoli Diabetes Hospital from January to September 2023. Demographic data, clinical characteristics, laboratory findings, precipitating factors, and patient outcomes were extracted from medical records and analyzed. Type 1 diabetes mellitus was present in 187 (87.8%) of patients, the age (...) range 11-84 years, (30.26±13.28), with 130 patients ≤30 years old (61.0%), females accounting for 110 of the patients (51.6%), 109 had a diabetes duration of less than 10 years (51.2%). The most common precipitating factor was insulin omission 92 (43.2%) in patients with known diabetes mellitus, whereas, diabetic ketoacidosis as the first presentation of diabetes mellitus in 24 patients (11.7%), systolic blood pressure ranged 50-160 mmHg (112.82±16.19), diastolic blood pressure varied 30-100 mmHg (70.24±11.32). Plasma glucose at presentation ranged 183-1494 mg/dl (462.92±169.85), with Eu-glycemic diabetic ketoacidosis 100-249 mg/dl were in nine patients (4.2%), whereas most of cases (135 patients, 63.4%) present with plasma glucose 250-500 mg/dl, while hyperosmolar status (≥701 mg/dl) were present in 13 patients (6.1%). Venous pH varied from 6.7-7.42 (7.13±0.14), 132 (62.0%) patients presented with pH <7.24, while severe acidosis was pH < 7 in 32 of patients (14.6%), serum bicarbonate with 10.93±4.95, severe (<5 mmol) in 91 patients (42.7%) and moderate (5-10 mmol) were in 79 patients (37.08%). The mean length of hospital stay was 3.33 days, with an average of 2.11 days spent in the high-dependent unit. Serum potassium varied from 2.4-6.7 meq/L with 3.66± 0.63, most common complications of diabetic ketoacidosis treatment were hypokalemia observed in 82 (35.7%) of cases, and hypoglycemia was detected in 41 patients (19.2%). 170 patients were discharged in good condition (79.8%), and 17.8% of patients were transferred to another hospital to receive further management for co-morbid diseases with diabetes after controlling their hyperglycemic crises. The majority of patients presented with the critical status of diabetic ketoacidosis. The findings emphasize the importance of patient education about prevention measures prompt presentation to the hospital, and clinicians' awareness for early and aggressive treatment of hyperglycemic crises. (shrink)

Can the best arguments for a privation theory of evil be parodied, with equal plausibility, as arguments for a privation theory of good? The privation theory of evil claims that evil has no positive existence, and it is but a privation of good. The privation theory of good claims the opposite. I approach this topic as one element in the so-called evil-God Challenge. Stephen Law has argued that the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect God (...) (theism) is on a par with the epistemic support for belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, but completely evil-God (maltheism). In fact, he concludes, the arguments for an evil God are symmetrical with, and isomorphic to, those for a good God. The privation theory of evil has often been used to defend theism against the argument from evil. Thus, part of the evil-God Challenge is to evaluate arguments for the privation theory of evil for their vulnerability to maltheist parody. I consider a broad range of arguments for the privation theory of evil, and I argue that most of them are vulnerable to parodic neutralization. Furthermore, I argue that although the thesis of the convertibility of being and goodness is often held to entail the privation theory of evil, or to be entailed by it (or to be equivalent to it), it is independent of the privation theory. I do find that David Oderberg’s recent argument for the privation theory of evil resists any easy maltheist parody, but I argue that it has a defect. I sketch an argument according to which his good-as-fulfillment account is compatible with a perfectly evil god. My tentative conclusion is that the privation theory of evil enjoys little more plausibility than does the privation theory of good. (shrink)

Wil Waluchow has advanced perhaps the most convincing argument in favour of what he eloquently termed ‘inclusive legal positivism’, the view that a given legal system could make legal validity depend on moral truths. This chapter refocuses the case for the opposing view of exclusive positivism on the metaphysical tension in seeing law as an institutional social fact and yet for its validity to depend on something that is not a social fact, developing an understanding of official mistake as a (...) way of highlighting that tension. If legal validity itself is understood as a socially constructed status (something with which any legal positivist would agree), key officials (as a group) cannot be wrong about the criteria sufficient for institutional membership having been met. While the officials cannot be wrong about the sufficient conditions, they can be wrong about the necessary (gatekeeping) ones and the moral criteria that inclusive positivists say could be included among the criteria of validity are invariably understood to be necessary conditions. That might look like a point in favour of inclusive positivism, but it is only the sufficient conditions that are constitutive of legal validity. Two facets of legal decisions are then marshalled to buttress the case for exclusive positivism: that almost every legal decision is also a determination of validity, and that all such decisions are systemically treated as correct until reviewed by a court of superior jurisdiction (which is itself a sufficient condition for membership). The implication of this is that moral criteria, understood as gatekeepers for legal validity, cannot be constitutive of legal validity. (shrink)

Some theories of language, thought, and experience require their adherents to say unpalatable things about human individuals whose capacities for rational activity are seriously diminished. Donald Davidson, for example, takes the interdependence of the concepts of thought and language to entail that thoughts may only be attributed to an individual who is an interpreter of others’ speech. And John McDowell's account of human experience as the involuntary exercise of conceptual capacities can be applied easily only to individuals who make some (...) reasonable judgments, because conceptual capacities are paradigmatically exercised in judgments. In both cases, we seem forced towards an error theory about any ordinary understanding of impaired human individuals as minded, or as undergoing human experience. (shrink)

We can increase our understanding of expression by considering an analogy to demonstrative reference. The connections between a demonstrative phrase and its referent, in a case of fully successful communication with that phrase, are analogous to the connections between an expressible state and the behavior that expresses it. The connections in each case serve to maintain a certain status for the connected elements: as actions of persons; or as objects, events, or states significant to persons. The analogy to demonstrative reference (...) helps show that a positive account of expression can make conceptual connections between expressed states and expressive behaviors without courting reductive behaviorism. A general account of expression as marked by these connections is compared to accounts of expression offered by Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green. Bar-On’s account turns out to be compatible with the account proposed here, once some of its consequences are fully appreciated. Green’s account rules out, as not expressive, some behaviors like crouching (in fear) that intuitively seem expressive. When Green’s account is altered to allow such behaviors back in, the resulting account also fits the one proposed. (shrink)

The concept of bias is pervasive in both popular discourse and empirical theorizing within philosophy, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence. This widespread application threatens to render the concept too heterogeneous and unwieldy for systematic investigation. This article explores recent philosophical literature attempting to identify a single theoretical category—termed ‘bias’—that could be unified across different contexts. To achieve this aim, the article provides a comprehensive review of theories of bias that are significant in the fields of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, (...) machine learning, and epistemology. It focuses on key examples such as perceptual bias, implicit bias, explicit bias, and algorithmic bias, scrutinizing their similarities and differences. Although these explorations may not conclusively establish the existence of a natural theoretical kind, pursuing the possibility offers valuable insights into how bias is conceptualized and deployed across diverse domains, thus deepening our understanding of its complexities across a wide range of cognitive and computational processes. (shrink)

The primary aim of this chapter is to show that several missteps made by others in in their thinking about law as an artefact are due to misconceptions about the role of intentions in understanding law as an artefact. I first briefly recap my own contention that law is a genre of institutionalized abstract artefacts (put forth in The Functions of Law (OUP 2016) and subsequent papers), mostly following Searle’s understanding of institutions and Thomasson’s understanding of public artefacts. I highlight (...) the central place that this theory affords law’s functions, without requiring the theorist to say that possession or performance of the function is either necessary or sufficient for inclusion in the class of law. Some of the most common misunderstandings are exemplified in Brian Leiter’s paper ‘Legal Positivism about the Artifact Law’. He thinks that holding an intentionalist view of artefacts commits the theorist to privileging drafters’ intentions when interpreting law. (It doesn’t.) He also has confusions about the differences between artefact tokens and artefact types leading him to a problematically broad understanding of artefacts. Another problem can be seen in thinking that functional understandings of artefacts are vulnerable to the same problems that arise in functional explanations for biological systems. I go on to consider the work of Luka Burazin and Corrado Roversi, addressing worries that making intentionality central to artefacts implies too much conscious thought is required to make one, noting that several theories of intentionality do not require conscious thought in the execution of intentional action. While those who think a central place for intentionality threatens to leave us unable to explain customary law, this can be dealt with by noting the important distinction between customary rules and customary laws (where the latter requires a decision to enlist public aid in redressing violations). I claim that authors’ intentions are communicated requests for the artefacts’ audiences to see the artefacts as members of their putative kinds. Finally, I address the question of whether or not legal systems are themselves artefacts and institutions, given that they may or may not have been intentionally created. An early lawgiver might have created a legal system by accident in the process of handing down the first laws. I raise the possibility that we might want to impute intentionality to necessary by-products of artefact creation, seeing those by-products as artefacts as well. (shrink)

Many take Kantian ethics to founder when it comes to our duties to animals. In this paper, I advocate a novel approach to this problem. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I canvass various passages from Kant in order to set up the problem. In the second, I introduce a novel approach to this problem. In the third, I defend my approach from various objections. By way of preview: I advocate rejecting the premise that nonhuman animals (...) are nonrational. (shrink)

People often discriminate based on negative or positive stereotypes about others. Important examples of this are highlighted by the theory of ambivalent sexism. This theory distinguishes sexist stereotypes that are negative (hostile sexism) from those that are positive (benevolent sexism). While both forms of sexism are considered wrong towards women, hostile sexism seems intuitively worse than benevolent sexism. In this article, we ask whether the difference between discriminating based on positive vs. negative stereotypes in itself makes a morally relevant difference. (...) We suggest that it does not. By examining a number of prominent accounts of what makes discrimination wrong, we defend the Moral Irrelevance View according to which stereotype valence is irrelevant to the moral evaluation of discrimination, all else equal. (shrink)

Rob Withagen has rendered the distinction between affordances and invitations more radical in two aspects: (i) affordances do not explain behavior anymore, invitations do; (ii) invitations do not boil down to affectively charged affordances, they also encompass affectively charged misperceptions. I argue that Withagen went too far. If we understand affordances as a relation between the abilities of an individual organism and its environment, then we already have sufficient resources to incorporate affectivity in the ecological approach. Affective states constitute perceptual (...) abilities and modulate their exercise, in that every perception of affordance is affectively charged. Affective states are crucial for guiding our attention to the possibilities of action relevant to the activities in which we are engaged and for providing a sense of the quality of our relationship with the environment. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative applies to maxim tokens rather than to maxim types. The article has three main parts. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I argue for it. In the third, I argue, further, that, if my thesis is correct, then tokens of different maxim types can have different deontic statuses for different agents.

This paper explores the complex nature of social biases, arguing for a functional framework that recognizes their unity and diversity. The functional approach posits that all biases share a common functional role in overcoming underdetermination. This framework, I argue, provides a comprehensive understanding of how all psychological biases, including social biases, are unified. I then turn to the question of disunity, demonstrating how psychological social biases differ systematically in the mental states and processes that constitute them. These differences indicate that (...) biases at various levels of the cognitive architecture require distinct treatment along at least two dimensions: epistemic evaluation and mitigation strategies. By examining social biases through this dual lens of unity and diversity, we can more effectively identify when and how to intervene on problematic biases. Ultimately, this approach provides a nuanced understanding of the nature of social bias, offering practical guidance for addressing existing biases and proactively managing emerging biases in both human and artificial minds. (shrink)

Whitehead's 1922 theory of gravitation continues to attract the attention of philosophers, despite evidence presented in 1971 that it violates experiment. We demonstrate that the theory strongly fails five quite different experimental tests, and conclude that, notwithstanding its meritorious philosophical underpinnings, Whitehead's theory is truly dead.

Postpartum depression is a major maternal health problem after childbirth. It can start at any time within the first year after delivery and continue for several years. It is characterized by an inability to experience pleasure, anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, spontaneous crying and depressed mood. Some women with postpartum depression even have thoughts of harming their child and self-harm. This study aims to find out the status of postpartum depression and the associated factors among postnatal mothers at the first, fourth (...) and sixth month. This study is a prospective descriptive study, carried out in three major health facilities in Misurata. This study consists of a three-part questionnaire. Part 1 covers the demographic characteristics of the participants, while Part 2 explores the associated risk factors according to the variables used. Part 3 consists of the psychological evaluation of the participants. A hundred mothers (ages between 15 and 43 years) were enrolled in this study. The findings revealed that the prevalence of depression is 60.0% and 22.0% are suffering from borderline depression. Development of depression was strongly correlated with sleeping disturbances, the state of the neonate after birth, excess consumption of stimulants, less weight acceptance by mothers during pregnancy and infant illness. There was a weak relation between depression and delivery state, maternal admission to the hospital during the current pregnancy, and infant gender dissatisfaction. No correlation was found with the development of depression regarding miscarriage, maternal medical problems after delivery, previous child sex, maternal age, education, parity or neonate weight. Thus, this study shows that the chance of having a miscarriage and an unhealthy neonate increases with advanced maternal age. It also shows that caesarean section is associated with bad neonatal outcomes, more weight gain and having gestational diabetes or preeclampsia during pregnancy. Maternal sleeping problems are more pronounced in the first month, attributed to the baby's care, compared with the fourth and sixth months. The study indicates that depression is a common state of psychiatric disorders among Libyan women and should have appropriate attention by physicians and gynecologists. (shrink)

In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are (...) presumptively wrong. (shrink)

Dorit Bar-On aims to account for the distinctive security of avowals by appealing to expression. She officially commits herself only to a negative characterization of expression, contending that expressive behavior is not epistemically based in self-judgments. I argue that her account of avowals, if it relies exclusively on this negative account of expression, can't achieve the explanatory depth she claims for it. Bar-On does explore the possibility that expression is a kind of perception-enabling showing. If she endorsed this positive account, (...) her argument would re-gain an explanatory advantage over its rivals. But extending this account to linguistic expressive behavior would bring Bar-On very close to constitutive accounts of first-person authority. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen's Direct Argument (DA) purports to establish the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility, without appealing to the notion of avoidability, a notion on whose analysis compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree. Van Inwagen intended DA to refute compatibilism, or at least to shift the burden of proof onto the compatibilist. In this paper, we offer a critical assessment of DA. We examine a variety of objections to DA due to John Fischer and Mark Ravizza, Ishtiyaque Haji, Seth Shabo, Michael (...) McKenna, and David Widerker. We divide these objections into those based on dialectical considerations (section 1), and objections in the form of counterexamples to a central principle which the Direct Argument employs (sec 2). The conclusion we reach is that the proponent of DA can deal plausibly with these objections, thus establishing DA as a powerful argument in favor of incompatibilism. (shrink)

In this piece, I argue that we Homo sapiens have an ethical duty to restore natural darkness to biodiverse, forested ecosystems. Historically, human beings have relied on forests for material sustenance and psychophysiological wellbeing. Utilizing the philosophical concepts of wildness and relational value, I argue that we are thereby bound by reciprocity to (in return) mitigate forestadjacent light pollution. After all, a variety of forest-dwelling species are negatively impacted by dwindling natural darkness, including (but not limited to): insectivorous and frugivorous (...) bats, various plant (including tree) species, fungi, and a variety of nocturnal pollinators. In addition, the loss of natural darkness precludes human subjects from undergoing a variety of transformative experiences that are uniquely associated with immersion in dark, biodiverse forests. Finally, as oldgrowth groves disproportionately sequester carbon and are negatively impacted by light pollution, increasing artificial light at night indirectly (and worryingly) serves as a driver of global climate change. (shrink)

I show that conceptual philosophical anarchism, the claim that law cannot give reasons for action, is entailed by several popular theories about law. Reductionists about practical authority believe that all supposedly legitimate practical authority reduces to forms of theoretical authority. They tend to embrace anarchism, but some readers might not be clear why. Trigger theorists about reason-giving believe that all reason-giving merely activates pre-existing conditional reasons. Natural lawyers hold that all legal reasons are sourced in the natural law, which entails (...) that positive law cannot provide reasons for action. If you are attracted to any of these theories and still think that positive law creates new practical reasons, you might have to give up one or the other position. If anarchism is entailed by believing the normativity in law’s directives pre-dates the directive, only a few may be able to avoid it, Hans Kelsen, Mark Greenberg, and Joseph Raz being the most likely. (shrink)