This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

In this article, following on from earlier debates in the journal regarding the ‘thorny issue’ of epochē and bracketing in sociological phenomenological research, we consider more generally the challenges of engaging in reflexivity and bracketing when undertaking ethnographic ‘insider’ research, or research in familiar settings. We ground our discussion and illustrate some of the key challenges by drawing on the experience of undertaking this research approach with a group of competitive swimmers, who were participating in a British university performance swimming (...) programme at the time of the doctoral study. The primary researcher was highly familiar with the phenomenon of competitive swimming, having been both a competitive swimmer and swimming coach. Some of the key elements of a sociological phenomenological approach to studying physical-cultural embodiment are first delineated, before addressing the considerable challenges of engaging in sustained reflexivity and bracketing, using the swimming research for illustrative purposes. We suggest some practical ways in which researchers in sport and physical cultures might approach epochē and bracketing in ethnographic ‘insider’ research. -/- KEYWORDS: Sociological phenomenology, competitive swimming, insider research, epochē/bracketing. (shrink)

Many epidemics consist in individuals spreading infection to others. From the population perspective, they also have population characteristics important in modeling, explaining, and intervening in epidemics. I analyze epidemiology’s contemporary population perspective through the example of epidemics by examining two central principles attributed to Geoffrey Rose: a distinction between the causes of cases and the causes of incidence, and between “high-risk” and “population” strategies of prevention. Both principles require revision or clarification to capture the sense in which they describe distinct (...) perspectives on the same phenomenon, each perspective capturing a different level of contrastive analysis. (shrink)

In this article, we address an existing lacuna in the sociology of the senses, by employing sociological phenomenology to illuminate the under-researched sense of temperature, as lived by a social group for whom water temperature is particularly salient: competitive pool swimmers. The research contributes to a developing ‘sensory sociology’ that highlights the importance of the socio-cultural framing of the senses and ‘sensory work’, but where there remains a dearth of sociological exploration into senses extending beyond the ‘classic five’ sensorium. Drawing (...) on data from a three-year ethnographic study of competitive swimmers in the UK, our analysis explores the rich sensuousities of swimming, and highlights the role of temperature as fundamentally affecting the affordances offered by the aquatic environment. The article contributes original theoretical perspectives to the sociology of the senses and of sport in addressing the ways in which social actors in the aquatic environment interact, both intersubjectively and intercorporeally, as thermal beings. (shrink)

What meaning does epidemiological evidence have for the individual? In evidence-based medicine, epidemiological evidence measures the patient’s risk of the outcome or the change in risk due to an intervention. The patient’s risk is commonly understood as an individual probability. The problem of understanding epidemiological evidence and risk thus becomes the challenge of interpreting individual patient probabilities. I argue that the patient’s risk is interpreted ontically, as a propensity. After exploring formidable problems with this interpretation in the medical context, I (...) propose an epistemic reinterpretation of individual patient probabilities as credences. On this view, epidemiological evidence informs medical uncertainty. (shrink)

It is sometimes thought that randomized study group allocation is uniquely proficient at producing comparison groups that are evenly balanced for all confounding causes. Philosophers have argued that in real randomized controlled trials this balance assumption typically fails. But is the balance assumption an important ideal? I run a thought experiment, the CONFOUND study, to answer this question. I then suggest a new account of causal inference in ideal and real comparative group studies that helps clarify the roles of confounding (...) variables and randomization. 1Confounders and Causes2The Balance Assumption3The CONFOUND Study 3.1CONFOUND 13.2CONFOUND 24Disjunction C and the Ideal Study 4.1The ultimate ‘other cause’: C4.2The ideal comparative group study4.3Required conditions for causal inference5Confounders as Causes, Confounders as Correlates6Summary. (shrink)

As has recently been highlighted, despite the prevalence of methodological “confessional tales” in ethnography generally, the challenges of undertaking ethnographic research specifically in institutional sports settings remain underexplored. Drawing on data from a 3-year ethnographic study of competitive swimming in the United Kingdom (UK), here we explore some of the practical challenges of balancing different elements of the researcher’s role when undertaking ethnographic “insider” research in familiar settings. In particular, we consider the difficulties of balancing the role of a doctoral (...) researcher and the chosen research role of a volunteer coach with a competitive swimming program. Employing the anthropological concept of liminality, we also analyze the lived challenges of leaving a highly familiar field and entering a state of liminality, where the researcher was caught on the threshold betwixt and between a return to full-time employment in the former “known” role of coach, and a move forward to embrace a new “unknown” role as a full-time member of academic staff. (shrink)

Introduction: Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are an important source of justification for clinical decisions in modern evidence-based practice. Yet, we have given little attention to how they argue their evidence. In particular, how do CPGs argue for treatment with long-term medications that are increasingly prescribed to older patients? Approach and rationale: I selected six disease-specific guidelines recommending treatment with five of the medication classes most commonly prescribed for seniors in Ontario, Canada. I considered the stated aims of these CPGs and (...) the techniques employed towards those aims. Finally, I reconstructed and logically analysed the arguments supporting recommendations for pharmacotherapy. Analysis: The primary function of CPGs is rhetorical, or persuasive, and their means of persuasion include both a display of their credibility and their argumentation. Arguments supporting pharmacotherapy recommendations for the target population follow a common inductive pattern: statistical generalization from randomized controlled trial (RCT) and meta-analysis evidence. Two of the CPGs also argue their treatment recommendations for older patients in this style, while three fail to justify pharmacotherapy specifically for the older population. Discussion: The arguments analysed lack the auxiliary assumptions that would warrant making a generalization about the clinical effectiveness of medications for the older population. Guidelines reason using simple induction, while ignoring important inferential gaps. Future guidelines should aspire to be well-reasoned rather than simply evidence-based; argue from a plurality of evidence; be wary of hasty inductions; appropriately limit the scope of their recommendations; and avoid making law-like, prescriptive generalizations. (shrink)

Twenty-first century science faces a dilemma. Two of its well-verified foundation stones - relativity and quantum theory - have proven inconsistent. Resolution of the conflict has resisted improvements in experimental precision leaving some to believe that some fundamental understanding in our world-view may need modification or even radical reform. Employment of the wave-front model of electrodynamics, as a propagation process with a Markov property, may offer just such a clarification.

With the ascent of modern epidemiology in the Twentieth Century came a new standard model of prediction in public health and clinical medicine. In this article, we describe the structure of the model. The standard model uses epidemiological measures-most commonly, risk measures-to predict outcomes (prognosis) and effect sizes (treatment) in a patient population that can then be transformed into probabilities for individual patients. In the first step, a risk measure in a study population is generalized or extrapolated to a target (...) population. In the second step, the risk measure is particularized or transformed to yield probabilistic information relevant to a patient from the target population. Hence, we call the approach the Risk Generalization-Particularization (Risk GP) Model. There are serious problems at both stages, especially with the extent to which the required assumptions will hold and the extent to which we have evidence for the assumptions. Given that there are other models of prediction that use different assumptions, we should not inflexibly commit ourselves to one standard model. Instead, model pluralism should be standard in medical prediction. (shrink)

Over the past several decades, we devoted much energy to generating, reviewing and summarizing evidence. We have given far less attention to the issue of how to thoughtfully apply the evidence once we have it. That’s fine if all we care about is that our clinical decisions are evidence-based, but not so good if we also want them to be well-reasoned. Let us not forget that evidence based medicine (EBM) grew out of an interest in making medicine ‘rational’, with the (...) idea that rational clinical evaluations should be evidence-based. I agree with the uncontroversial statement that the best decision is supported, at least in part, by the best available evidence. Rationality, however, is constituted by reasoning, not evidence. Complete arguments are necessary for rational evaluations, arguments that begin with general evidence and end in a conclusion about a particular patient. In order to traverse these inferential gaps, medicine must address the issue of how to establish, as an intermediate premise, what the evidence has to say about the efficacy of an intervention for particular patients in a particular practice setting. (shrink)

The new field of meta-research investigates industry bias, publication bias, contradictions between studies, and other trends in medical research. I argue that its findings should be used as meta-evidence for evaluating therapies. ‘Meta-evidence’ is evidence about the support that direct ‘first-order evidence’ provides the hypothesis. I consider three objections to my proposal: the irrelevance objection, the screening-off objection, and the underdetermination objection. I argue that meta-research evidence works by rationally revising our confidence in first-order evidence and, consequently, in the hypothesis—typically, (...) downward. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge and Andrew Kuper suggest that we should promote an ‘institutional’ solution to global poverty. They advocate the institutional solution because they think that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can never be the primary agents of justice in the long run. They provide several standard criticisms of NGO aid in support of this claim. However, there is a more serious problem for institutional solutions: how to generate enough goodwill among rich nation-states that they would be willing to commit themselves to supranational (...) institutional reforms. In the current international political climate, the implementation of such institutional reforms introduces several intractable problems, including difficulties of global coordination and enforcement. I defend the solution of NGO aid from the criticisms presented by Pogge and Kuper, and propose how it might be reformed. My main suggestion is that all practising NGOs should be required to be ‘accountable for reasonableness’ in the sense that Norman Daniels and James Sabin have outlined. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, several new “medicines” have come screeching onto health care’s various platforms, including narrative medicine, personalized medicine, precision medicine and person-centred medicine. Philosopher Miriam Solomon calls the first three of these movements different “ways of knowing” or “methods,” and argues that they are each a response to shortcomings of methods that came before them. They should also be understood as reactions to the current dominant model of medicine. In this article, I will describe our dominant model, (...) which I call “the new medical model.” I will argue that several towering problems in modern medicine can be traced to its philosophical foundations, which calls for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

In this article, I will reconstruct the monocausal model and argue that modern 'multifactorial diseases' are not monocausal by definition. 'Multifactorial diseases' are instead defined according to a constitutive disease model. On closer analysis, infectious diseases are also defined using the constitutive model rather than the monocausal model. As a result, our classification models alone cannot explain why infectious diseases have a universal etiology while chronic and noncommunicable diseases lack one. The explanation is instead provided by the nineteenth-century germ theorists.

Joan McGregor argues that “colleges and universities should adopt as part of their core mission the development of skills of civil discourse” rather than engaging in the practice of restricting controversial speakers from making presentations on campuses. I agree with McGregor concerning the need for increased civil discourse. However, this does not mean universities should welcome speakers to publicly present any material they wish without restriction or oversight. In this paper, I make three main arguments: (i) Colleges and universities have (...) a duty to protect members of the campus community from the harm and exclusion resulting from hateful or harmful speech, in the same way that they must protect them from sexual assaults and concussions. (ii) In the vast majority of cases, this duty can be fulfilled by holding speakers to standards of discourse that prevail in academic debate, and insisting on a number of procedural requirements. (iii) We should be wary of conservative arguments framed in terms of free speech, because they can be deployed to undermine important functions of the university in a democratic society, namely, to teach students how to be discerning citizens, and to protect thinkers willing to be critical of the government and the ruling classes. (shrink)

Non‐governmental aid programs are an important source of health care for many people in the developing world. Despite the central role non‐governmental organizations play in the delivery of these vital services, for the most part they either lack formal systems of accountability to their recipients altogether, or have only very weak requirements in this regard. This is because most NGOs are both self‐mandating and self‐regulating. What is needed in terms of accountability is some means by which all the relevant stakeholders (...) can have their interests represented and considered. An ideally accountable decision‐making process for NGOs should identify acceptable justifications and rule out unacceptable ones. Thus, the point of this paper is to evaluate three prominent types of justification given for decisions taken at the Dutch headquarters of Médecins sans Frontières. They are: population health justifications, mandate‐based justifications and advocacy‐based justifications. The central question at issue is whether these justifications are sufficiently robust to answer the concerns and objections that various stakeholders may have. I am particularly concerned with the legitimacy these justifications have in the eyes of project beneficiaries. I argue that special responsibilities to certain communities can arise out of long‐term engagement with them, but that this type of priority needs to be constrained such that it does not exclude other potential beneficiaries to an undesirable extent. Finally, I suggest several new institutional mechanisms that would enhance the overall equity of decisions and so would ultimately contribute to the legitimacy of the organization as a whole. (shrink)

Forensics is proposed as a means to understand, trace, and recompile data and computational activities. It has a securitocratic dimension and one that is being developed as a means of opening processes, events and systems into a more public state. This article proposes an analysis of forces at play in the circulation of a ‘screener’ of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight and associated files, to suggest that forensic approaches used to control flows of data may be repurposed for dis­semination. The (...) article maps a brief history of digital forensics and sets out some of its political entailments, indicating further lines of enquiry regarding the inter-relation of technosocial powers constituted in the interactions between forensics and coun­ter-measures. The article proposes that the posthumanities are partially constituted by a renewed relationship between questions of culture, subjectivity, knowledge and the technical. Some propositions for the technical as grounds for cultural politics are made. (shrink)

There have been several calls from LIS researchers for practical or applied research not to ignore the epistemological assumptions underlying the systems and artifacts they design lest they showcase only the dominant theory at a given time. Others have also deplored the "epistemological promiscuity" or "eclecticism" of the field, its incessant borrowing of theories and models from elsewhere and the fact that the field has largely neglected the contributions that philosophy and epistemology could have made in its research. This problem (...) raises that of the boundaries of LIS and is all the more troublesome because boundaries between epistemological theories are fuzzy. Indeed, some epistemological theories share the same basic assumptions or are historically derived from one another. Gathering a wide array of acknowledged theorists in philosophy of science and epistemology, this panel aims to examine how research work in the LIS field can clearly articulate the epistemological assumptions underlying that research and under what constraints this can be achieved. The topic is of prime importance to Information studies as a whole and to ASIST as the scientific flag bearer of information scientists worldwide. (shrink)

This article is a response to William Lynch’s, ‘Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller’s Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination,’ an extended and thoughtful reflection on my Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History. I grant that Lynch has captured well, albeit critically, the spirit and content of the book – and the thirty-year intellectual journey that led to it. In this piece, I respond at two levels. First, I justify my posture towards my predecessors and contemporaries, (...) which Lynch shrewdly sees as my opposition to deference. However, most of the response concerns an elaboration of my theodicy-focussed sense of social epistemology, which is long-standing but only started to become prominent about ten years ago, in light of my involvement in the evolution controversies. Here I aim to draw together a set of my abiding interests – scientific, theological and philosophical – in trying to provide a normative foundation for the future of humanity. (shrink)

Many people in the developing world access essential health services either partially or primarily through programs run by international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). Given that such programs are typically designed and run by Westerners, and funded by Western countries and their citizens, it is not surprising that such programs are regarded by many as vehicles for Western cultural imperialism. In this chapter, I consider this phenomenon as it emerges in the context of development and humanitarian aid programs, particularly those delivering medical (...) treatment, nutrition and access to clean water. I argue that in order to avoid contributing to cultural imperialism, INGOs have a duty to ensure that they do not offer services in a way that requires their beneficiaries to choose between accessing essential health services and violating or otherwise undermining traditional norms and practices which have significance for their beneficiaries. Following Onora O'Neill, I argue that offers requiring such a choice are effectively “unrefuseable” and so coercive. INGOs therefore, must avoid making such offers, and can accomplish this by means of an iterated process of reciprocal negotiation under conditions of equality, in which both the INGOs’ and the beneficiaries’ deep values and concerns play a role. In essence, I claim that employing such a process is a requirement of procedural justice, given the non-ideal conditions in which INGOs must operate. (shrink)

As recently highlighted, despite a burgeoning field of sensory ethnography, the practices, production, and accountability of the senses in specific social interactional contexts remain sociologically under-explored. To contribute original insights to a literature on the sensuous body in physical–cultural contexts, here we adopt an ethnomethodologically sensitive perspective to focus on the accomplishment, social organization, and accountability of sensoriality in interaction. Exploring instances of the senses at work in social interaction, we utilize data from two ethnographic research projects to investigate the (...) production of running-together and swimming-together by skilled, experienced practitioners. We focus on two interlinked sensory modalities: auditory attunement, and vision and intercorporeality, identified as key dimensions of sensory embodiment and “togethering” in these particular domains. (shrink)

Following John Rawls, nonideal theory is typically divided into: (1) “partial-compliance theory” and (2) “transitional theory." The former is concerned with those circumstances in which individuals and political regimes do not fully comply with the requirements of justice, such as when people break the law or some individuals do not do their fair share within a distributive scheme. The latter is concerned with circumstances in which background institutions may be unjust or may not exist at all. This paper focuses on (...) issues arising in transitional theory. In particular, I am concerned with what Rawls’ has called “burdened societies," that is, those societies that find themselves in unfavorable conditions, such that their historical, social or economic circumstances make it difficult to establish just institutions. The paper investigates exactly how such burdened societies should proceed towards a more just condition in an acceptable fashion. Rawls himself tells us very little, except to suggest that societies in this condition should look for policies and courses of action that are morally permissible, politically possible and likely to be effective. In this paper I first try to anticipate what a Rawlsian might say about the best way for burdened societies to handle transitional problems and so move towards the ideal of justice. Next, I construct a model of transitional justice for burdened societies. Ultimately, I argue for a model of transitional justice that makes use of a nonideal version of Rawls’ notion of the worst-off representative person. (shrink)

Recently theorists have demonstrated a growing interest in the ethical aspects of resource allocation in international non-governmental humanitarian, development and human rights organizations (INGOs). This article provides an analysis of Thomas Pogge's proposal for how international human rights organizations ought to choose which projects to fund. Pogge's allocation principle states that an INGO should govern its decision making about candidate projects by such rules and procedures as are expected to maximize its long-run cost-effectiveness, defined as the expected aggregate moral value (...) of the projects it undertakes divided by the expected aggregate cost of these projects? I critique Pogge's argument on two fronts: (1) I demonstrate that his view is problematic on his own terms, even if we accept the cost-effectiveness framework he employs. (2) I take issue with his overall approach because it generates results which can undermine the integrity of INGOs. Further, his approach mis-characterizes the nature of INGOs, and this mistake is at the root of his problematic view of INGO priority-setting. Ultimately, I argue for a conception of INGOs in which they are understood as ?organizations of principle?, in the sense that they are independent moral agents and so should be permitted a fairly wide sphere of autonomy within reasonable moral constraints. (shrink)

Citizens of liberal, affluent societies are regularly encouraged to support reforms meant to improve conditions for badly-off people in the developing world. Our economic and political support is solicited for causes such as: banning child labor, implementing universal primary education, closing down sweatshops and brothels, etc. But what if the relevant populations or individuals in the developing world do not support these particular reforms or aid programs? What if they would strongly prefer other reforms and programs, or would rank the (...) various benefits that might be offered differently than seems reasonable to the Western, liberal supporters of these campaigns and organizations? What is the proper liberal response here? I argue that the proper liberal response is to support those programs and reforms that the global poor most value. The bulk of the paper is devoted to arguing against the popular liberal argument which states that we can safely disregard the preferences of the oppressed when they seem very unreasonable because these individuals suffer from “adaptive preferences.” This typically is taken to mean that their preferences are “not their own” in an important sense. I put forward various different proposals for why adaptive preferences can be safely dismissed, but ultimately argue that they are not persuasive. And if it is no longer legitimate to appeal to adaptive preferences as a basis for disregarding what oppressed people want, then I argue that to do so is straightforward paternalism, and so is unjustifiable in all but the most extreme cases. Finally, I argue for the following concrete recommendations: Given that resources are not infinite, we should (1) Support programs that give oppressed people increased access to information, such as access to technology, (2) support those reforms and aid programs that the oppressed themselves regard as most important, with special emphasis on those opportunities for education that they deem valuable, and (3) refrain from supporting coercive policies intended to thwart adaptive preferences. (shrink)

Notwithstanding diverse opinions and debates about mixing methods, mixed methods research (MMR) is increasingly being used in sport and exercise psychology. In this paper, we describe MMR trends within leading sport and exercise psychology journals and explore critical realism as a possible underpinning framework for conducting MMR. Our meta-study of recent empirical mixed methods studies published in 2017–2019 indicates that eight (36%) of the 22 MMR studies explicitly stated a paradigmatic position (five drew on pragmatism, two switched paradigms between qualitative (...) and quantitative elements of the study, and one was situated in relativist-interpretivism). The remaining 14 (64%) studies did not report their underpinning research philosophical assumptions. Evaluating the merits and limitations of these positions against critical realist assumptions suggests that several paradigmatic disagreements are potentially reconcilable. These include (a) maintaining that ontological and epistemological concerns are important for methodological integrity of a mixed methods study; (b) switching between paradigms in the same study is problematic; and (c) refuting the qualitative-quantitative incommensurability thesis, therefore allowing mixed methods research without compromising philosophical coherence. From a critical realist position, we suggest that both quantitative and qualitative designs are justifiable in a mixed methods study because (1) they help corroborate, refine, or refute plausible explanations of phenomena (epistemological), but (2) with different methodologies utilised to perform different tasks in the same research design related to different psycho-social system features (ontological). We call for a collaborative engagement by researchers across paradigmatic positions to work towards the advancement of methodological pluralism in our research community. (shrink)

For people with Bipolar Affective Disorder, a self-binding (advance) directive (SBD), by which they commit themselves to treatment during future episodes of mania, even if unwilling, can seem the most rational way to deal with an imperfect predicament. Knowing that mania will almost certainly cause enormous damage to themselves, their preferred solution may well be to allow trusted others to enforce treatment and constraint, traumatic though this may be. No adequate provision exists for drafting a truly effective SBD and efforts (...) to establish such provision are hampered by very valid, but also paralysing ethical, clinical and legal concerns. Effectively, the autonomy and rights of people with bipolar are being 'protected' through being denied an opportunity to protect themselves. From a standpoint firmly rooted in the clinical context and experience of mania, this article argues that an SBD, based on a patient-centred evaluation of capacity to make treatment decisions (DMC-T) and grounded within the clinician-patient relationship, could represent a legitimate and ethically coherent form of self-determination. After setting out background information on fluctuating capacity, mania and advance directives, this article proposes a framework for constructing such an SBD, and considers common objections, possible solutions and suggestions for future research. (shrink)

In “Global Knowledge Frameworks and the Tasks of Cross-Cultural Philosophy,” Leigh Jenco searches for the conception of knowledge that best justifies the judgment that one can learn from non-local traditions of philosophy. Jenco considers four conceptions of knowledge, namely, in catchwords, the esoteric, Enlightenment, hermeneutic, and self- transformative conceptions of knowledge, and she defends the latter as more plausible than the former three. In this critical discussion of Jenco’s article, I provide reason to doubt the self-transformative conception, and also advance (...) a fifth, pluralist conception of knowledge that I contend best explains the prospect of learning from traditions other than one’s own. (shrink)

Last year saw the 20th anniversary edition of JECP, and in the introduction to the philosophy section of that landmark edition, we posed the question: apart from ethics, what is the role of philosophy ‘at the bedside’? The purpose of this question was not to downplay the significance of ethics to clinical practice. Rather, we raised it as part of a broader argument to the effect that ethical questions – about what we should do in any given situation – are (...) embedded within whole understandings of the situation, inseparable from our beliefs about what is the case, what it is that we feel we can claim to know, as well as the meaning we ascribe to different aspects of the situation or to our perception of it. Philosophy concerns fundamental questions: it is a discipline requiring us to examine the underlying assumptions we bring with us to our thinking about practical problems. Traditional academic philosophers divide their discipline into distinct areas that typically include logic: questions about meaning, truth and validity; ontology: questions about the nature of reality, what exists; epistemology: concerning knowledge; and ethics: how we should live and practice, the nature of value. Any credible attempt to analyse clinical reasoning will require us to think carefully about these types of question and the relationships between them, as they influence our thinking about specific situations and problems. So, the answers to the question we posed, about the role of philosophy at the bedside, are numerous and diverse, and that diversity is illustrated in the contributions to this thematic edition. (shrink)

Summary Background Self-binding directives instruct clinicians to overrule treatment refusal during future severe episodes of illness. These directives are promoted as having potential to increase autonomy for individuals with severe episodic mental illness. Although lived experience is central to their creation, service users’ views on self-binding directives have not been investigated substantially. This study aimed to explore whether reasons for endorsement, ambivalence, or rejection given by service users with bipolar disorder can address concerns regarding self-binding directives, decision-making capacity, and human (...) rights. Methods This study used qualitative data from an internet-based survey distributed to the mailing list of the UK charity Bipolar UK, which contained multiple closed and open questions on advance decision-making in bipolar disorder. Quantitative analysis of a closed question about self-binding directives had already demonstrated endorsement amongst a very high proportion of participants with bipolar disorder who completed the survey. We conducted thematic analysis of responses from those participants who answered a subsequent open question about reasons for their view. Research was co-produced within a multi-disciplinary team, with clinical, legal, and ethical expertise, and lived experience of bipolar disorder. Ideas and methodologies associated with all these areas of expertise were used in the analysis of these reasons and to gain insight into the thoughts of individuals with bipolar disorder about self-binding directives and associated issues. Findings Between Oct 23 and Dec 5, 2017, 932 individuals with a self-reported clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder completed the internet survey, with 565 (154 men; 400 women; 11 transgender or other) providing free text answers to the open question. A large majority of respondents endorsed self-binding directives, nearly all describing a determinate shift to types of distorted thinking and decision-making when unwell as their key justification. Responses indicating ambivalence were dominated by logistical concerns about the drafting and implementation of self-binding directives, while those who rejected self-binding directives also cited logistical concerns, validity of their thinking when unwell, and potential contravention of human rights. Interpretation This study is, to our knowledge, the first large study of reasons why mental health service users might endorse or reject the use of self-binding directives. The findings provide empirical support for introducing self-binding directives into mental health advance decision-making practice and policy and may help to address enduring ethical concerns surrounding possible implementation of the directive while a person retains decision-making capacity. The opinions expressed here in responses given by multiple service users with bipolar disorder challenge a prominent view within international disability rights debates that involuntary treatment and recognition of impaired mental capacity constitute inherent human rights violations. Funding The Wellcome Trust . (shrink)

ABSTRACTTime-consciousness has long been a focus of research in phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. We advance and extend this tradition of research by focusing on the character of temporal experience under conditions of mania. Symptom scales and diagnostic criteria for mania are peppered with temporally inflected language: increased rate of speech, racing thoughts, flight-of-ideas, hyperactivity. But what is the underlying structure of temporal experience in manic episodes? We tackle this question using a strategically hybrid approach. We recover and reconstruct three hypotheses (...) regarding manic temporality that were advanced and modeled by two pioneers of clinical phenomenology: Eugène Minkowski and Ludwig Binswanger. We then test, critique, and refine these hypotheses using heterophenomenological methods in an interview-based study of persons with a history of bipolar and a current diagnosis of acute mania. Our conclusions support a central hypothesis due to Minkowski... (shrink)

I should like to offer my greatest thanks to Paul Griffiths for providing the opportunity for this exchange, and to commentators Gillian Brown, Steven Fuller, Stefan Linquist, and Erika Milam for their generous and thought-provoking comments. I shall do my best in this space to respond to some of their concerns.

1. Do models formulated in programming languages use explicit rules where connectionist models do not? 2. Are rules as found in programming languages hard, precise, and exceptionless, where connectionist rules are not? 3. Do connectionist models use rules operating on distributed representations where models formulated in programming languages do not? 4. Do connectionist models fail to use structure sensitive rules of the sort found in "classical" computer architectures? In this chapter we argue that the answer to each of these questions (...) is negative. (shrink)

The experimental turn in philosophy has reached several sub-fields including ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. This paper is among the first to apply experimental techniques to questions in the philosophy of law. Specifically, we examine Lon Fuller's procedural natural law theory. Fuller famously claimed that legal systems necessarily observe eight principles he called "the inner morality of law." We evaluate Fuller's claim by surveying both ordinary people and legal experts about their intuitions about legal systems. We conclude that, (...) at best, we should be skeptical of Fuller's inner morality of law in light of the experimental data. (shrink)

The debate between natural law and positivist law has been received much attention. Ronald Dworkin exposes the limitation of positivist law through the argument of hard cases. This argument is furthered strengthened when we apply the interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr and the voluntarist natural law tradition, and Lon Fuller’s ‘procedural view’ and the application of the ‘principles of legality’.

Anglo-American general jurisprudence remains preoccupied with the relationship of legality to morality. This has especially been so in the re-reading of Lon Fuller’s theory of an implied morality in any law. More often than not, Fuller has been said to distinguish between the identity of a discrete rule and something called ‘morality’. In this reading of Fuller, however, insufficient attention to what is signified by ‘morality’. Such an implied morality has been understood in terms of deontological duties, (...) the Good life, naturalism, and subjectively posited values. Each of these interpretations has a shared common denominator: namely, the distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, ‘facts’ and ‘values’. Legality is said to be nested in an ‘is’ world. An ‘is’ cannot be derived from an ‘ought’. This essay aims to press this distinction further. Fuller, I intend to argue, does indeed accept the is/ought distinction as have his commentators. The associations of the ‘oughts’ with deontological duties, the Good life, naturalism and subjective values, however, have been misdirected. This has been so because Fuller presupposed that legality was a matter of a spatial structure. Non-law was situated outside the structure. If a legislator or judge considered matters outside the structure as if they were binding upon jurists and, for that matter, upon members of the legal structure, the law was not binding. The crucial incident of the structure was the boundary of the structure. Fuller’s structuralist theory of law offers the opportunity to better understand what he signified by ‘the internal morality of law’. I shall privilege several elements of his theory: the relation of legal units to a structure, the nature of a structure, the constituents of a structure (territorial space, its pillars and its matter); the forms of the legal structure; the centrifugal and centripetal structures, the structure and traditional theories of morality, the role of the legal official in a structure, and why the internal knowledge in the structure is binding. Fuller especially privileged two features of a legal structure. The one was the boundary of the structure. The second concerned the exteriority of the boundary. Both features presupposed a territorial sense view of legal knowledge. The legal mind analysed any social problem through the map of such a sense of legal space. By concentrating upon the discrete rule in isolation of the implied structural boundary to which the rule referred, commentators have attributed been misdirected in their analyses of Fuller’s theory of law and morality. My argument in this respect will proceed as follows. In order to clarify Fuller’s senses of the morality of law, I shall first outline what he means by a ‘structure’. Second, how is the structure related to legal knowledge? Third, what are the various forms of the structure? Fourth, is the structure centrifugal or centripetal? And finally, why is the structure binding? (shrink)

In his new book, Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History, Steve Fuller returns to core themes of his program of social epistemology that he first outlined in his 1988 book, Social Epistemology. He develops a new, unorthodox theology and philosophy building upon his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in defense of intelligent design, leading to a call for maximal human experimentation. Beginning from the theological premise rooted in the Abrahamic religious tradition that we are created in (...) the image of God, Fuller argues that the spark of the divine within us distinguishes us from animals. I argue that Fuller’s recent work takes us away from key insights of his original work. In contrast, I advocate for a program of social epistemology rooted in evolutionary science rather than intelligent design, emphasize a precautionary and ecological approach rather than a proactionary approach that favors risky human experimentation, and attend to our material and sociological embeddedness rather than a transhumanist repudiation of the body. (shrink)

Gareth Evans a déclaré que la théorie causale de la référence doit être élargie pour inclure ce qu'il appelle des « bases multiples ». Après le baptême initial, l'utilisation du nom en présence de la personne peut, dans les bonnes circonstances, être considérée comme renforçant le nom dans son référent. Pour ceux qui sont en contact direct avec la personne, la référence pour l'expression du nom est résolue au moyen d'une chaîne causale qui inclut les personnes qui l'ont connue (...) lors du « baptême », ou en indexant la personne au nom au moment de la communication. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27380.37763. (shrink)

Gareth Evans, in The Causal Theory of Names, states that the causal theory of reference needs to be expanded to include what he calls multiple "bases". After the initial baptism, the use of the name in the presence of the person can, under the right circumstances, be considered as reinforcing the name in its referent. For those who are in direct contact with the person, the reference for the expression of the name is solved by means of a causal (...) chain that includes people who knew him during the "baptism", or by indexing the person to the name at the time of communication. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28651.08484 . (shrink)