After introducing the new field of cultural evolution, we review a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that culture shapes what people attend to, perceive and remember as well as how they think, feel and reason. Focusing on perception, spatial navigation, mentalizing, thinking styles, reasoning (epistemic norms) and language, we discuss not only important variation in these domains, but emphasize that most researchers (including philosophers) and research participants are psychologically peculiar within a global and historical context. This rising tide of (...) evidence recommends caution in relying on one’s intuitions or even in generalizing from reliable psychological findings to the species, Homo sapiens. Our evolutionary approach suggests that humans have evolved a suite of reliably developing cognitive abilities that adapt our minds, information-processing abilities and emotions ontogenetically to the diverse culturally-constructed worlds we confront. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

(in lieu of abstract, first paragraphs here) For philosophers, reading Richard Dawkins is often a frustrating experience. Many of Dawkins’ writings treat important philosophical topics, such as the existence of God, the meaning of life, the relationship of randomness to order. Dawkins has original ideas, but he lacks the philosophical training and vocabulary to articulate these ideas properly and to develop them coherently. In Believing in Dawkins, Eric Steinhart sets himself an ambitious task: to use the writings of Dawkins to (...) present a coherent, naturalistic alternative to religious metaphysics, specifically to Christian theism. Using an architectural metaphor, he summarizes the project of Believing in Dawkins as follows -/- It is helpful to think of the Dawkinsian texts in architectural terms. His fragmentary sketches for spiritual naturalism are like architectural drawings. Sometimes they depict little windows, while other times they portray enormous spires reaching towards the stars. The edifice is vast. But these architectural diagrams are often unclear, incomplete, and inconsistent. I want to clarify them, fill in their missing parts, and resolve their conflicts. So I’m using his writings to construct a novel building. … To fit his fragmentary plans into a coherent and self-supporting structure, I will add some large-scale frameworks (10). -/- Steinhart’s wide-ranging book covers many topics: complexity, ontology, possibility, humanity, spirituality, among many others. He does not sneak theism into Dawkins’ writings. In fact, Steinhart argues that many practices and ideas that he uses to construct the edifice of Dawkins’ spiritual naturalism have been hijacked by theism, such as the notion of an afterlife, sacredness, holiness, and even the notion of gratitude. (shrink)

Both European and Anglo-American philosophical traditions of Kant scholarship draw a sharp distinction between Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophies. They cite KrV, A 14.23 –28; KrV, A 15.01– 09; KrV, B 28.22 – 28; KrV, B 29.01 –12 as evidence that the analyses of intuition, understanding and reason proffered in the first Critique apply to cognition only, and therefore do not significantly illuminate his analyses of inclination, desire, or respect for the moral law in the Groundwork, second Critique, Metaphysics (...) of Morals, or Religion. This paper is part of a larger project that takes issue with this near-universal consensus, and with the canonical interpretation of KrV, A 14.23– 28; KrV, A 15.01 –09; KrV,B 28.22 –28; KrV, B 29.01 – 12. Many of the most important terms in Kant’s mature moral philosophy – such as “action,” “reason,” “freedom,” “will,” “categorical,” “imperative,” “ought,” “maxim,” “duty,” “inclination,” “end,” and “idea” – are introduced, and sometimes elaborated at length, in the first Critique; and often appear in the Groundwork with little or no further elaboration. This suggests that Kant intended the analysis of self and rationality in the first Critique to serve as a formal foundation for his subsequent analysis of practical deliberation and moral motivation in the Groundwork. Here I argue specifically that Kant’s use of the first-/third-person asymmetry in his analysis of action in the first Critique’s Resolution of the Third Antinomy is necessary to his account of moral motivation and moral intention in the Groundwork; and that the structure of pure apperception he offers in the Transcendental Deduction resolves this asymmetry. (shrink)

Many real-world agents recognise that they impose harms by choosing to emit carbon, e.g., by flying. Yet many do so anyway, and then attempt to make things right by offsetting those harms. Such offsetters typically believe that, by offsetting, they change the deontic status of their behaviour, making an otherwise impermissible action permissible. Do they succeed in practice? Some philosophers have argued that they do, since their offsets appear to reverse the adverse effects of their emissions. But we show that (...) they do not. In practice, standard carbon offsetting does not reverse the harms of the original action, nor does it even benefit the same group as was harmed. Standard moral theories hence deny that such offsetting succeeds. Indeed, we show that any moral theory that allows offsetting in this setting faces a dilemma between allowing any wrong to be offset, no matter how grievous, and recognising an implausibly sharp discontinuity between offsettable actions and non-offsettable actions. The most plausible response is to accept that carbon offsetting fails to right our climate wrongs. (shrink)

Time as the key to a theory of everything became recently a renewed topic in scientific literature. Social constructivism applied to physics abandons the inevitable essentials of nature. It adopts uncertainty in the scope of the existential activity of scientific research. We have enlightened the deep role of social constructivism of the predetermined Newtonian time and space notions in natural sciences. Despite its incompatibility with determinism governing the Newtonian mechanics, randomness and entropy are inevitable when negative localized energy is transformed (...) into spatially dissipative heat. In sharp contrast to the Newtonian notion, social constructivism makes room for the temporal twin of cyclic conservation and pseudo-linearly structural evolution both reconciling mechanical order and thermodynamic chaos in Leibnizian space-time. In the broad scope of natural sciences this triad nature of time produces a multiple reality and gives appropriate answers on virtual physical paradoxes. (shrink)

Sometimes constitutions fail. The unprecedented election of Donald Trump, a populist insurgent who lacks the prior political experience or military service of all presidents before him, is such a sharp break in American historical experience that it raises questions as to whether something is deeply amiss with the constitutional order. Constitutional failure is not uncommon. A path-breaking global study of national constitutions shows that on average, they last only nineteen years. The U.S. Constitution is an uncommon outlier and, as (...) such, is accounted by many a long-running success story. But could a bell be tolling for American constitutionalism? In this Essay, I assess the meaning of Trump’s shocking rise for the future of our constitutional order. The shock, of course, was not the election of a Republican president. There have been many Republican presidents since Lincoln, each making their own distinctive contribution to the American tradition. Yet, there are good reasons to think this time around is different. The efficacy and, perhaps, stability of our constitutional order are in question, and we should try to understand why. (shrink)

ArgumentIn the United States, scientific knowledge is brought before the courts by way of testimony – the testimony of scientific experts. We argue that this expertise is best understoodfirstas related to the quality of the underlying scienceand thenin terms of who delivers it. Bloodstain pattern analysis (BPA), a contemporary forensic science, serves as the vaulting point for our exploration of objectivity as a metric for the quality of a science in judicial contexts. We argue that BPA fails to meet the (...) minimal standard set by Helen Longino’s social-procedural account of objectivity (1990, 2002). In light of some pressing issues for social-procedural accounts, we offer an infrastructural account of objectivity. This account offers what amounts to a friendly amendment to Longino’s account and adds to the ways in which we might analyze social-procedural objectivity. Finally, we address an issue that is pressing in the legal context: given that scientific knowledge is delivered by individuals, not communities, at least in U.S. courts, we (may) need a way to evaluate individual scientific and epistemic agents. We suggest a means for making this evaluation that is derived from our infrastructural account of objectivity. (shrink)

Bilimsel faaliyetin ve bilimsel bilginin en temel özelliklerinden bir tanesi olarak karşımıza çıkan bilimsel nesnellik bilim felsefesi alanı içerisinde sıklıkla tartışılan bir konu olagelmiştir. Bu doğrultuda, bilimsel nesnelliğin temin edilmesine yönelik çeşitli görüşler ileri sürülmektedir. Genel olarak bilimsel nesnellik bilim insanlarının çalışmalarında olguları doğrudan yansıtması ya da bilim insanlarının çalışmalarını tarafsız bir bakış açısıyla tamamlaması olarak anlaşılmaktadır. Bu görüşlerin bilim felsefesi içerisindeki yansımaları sırasıyla olgulara bağlılık olarak nesnellik ve hiçbir yerden bakış olarak nesnellik isimleriyle olmuştur. Bu bakış açısı, kişisel çıkarların (...) ve değerlerin bilimsel çalışmalardan izole edilmesi sayesinde bilimsel nesnelliğin sağlanabileceğini kabul etmektedir. Diğer bir deyişle, bilimler değerlerden bağımsız olduğu takdirde nesnel olabilmektedirler. Bu görüşe karşı olarak, Helen Longino gibi bilim insanları ise değerleri bilimsel nesnelliğin bir gerekliliği olarak görmektedirler. Bu çalışmada, özellikle değerlerin göz ardı edilmesiyle bilimsel nesnelliğin gerçekleştirilmesinin mümkün olamayacağını vurgulan Helen Longino’nun “bağlamsal deneycilik” olarak bilinen görüşlerine yer verilmektedir. Buna göre Longino, bilimsel araştırmanın toplumsal yönlerini göz önünde bulundurarak değerden bağımsız ideali tamamen reddetmektedir. O değer yüklü bir bilimin hem bilgi kuramsal açıdan hem de nesnellik açısından güvenilir olabileceğini düşünmektedir. -/- Scientific objectivity, which is one of the most basic features of scientific activity and scientific knowledge, is a subject that is frequently discussed in the field of philosophy of science. In this direction, various views are put forward to ensure scientific objectivity. In general, scientific objectivity is understood as scientists reflecting the facts as they are in their studies or scientists completing their studies with an impartial point of view. The reflections of these views in the philosophy of science were respectively called objectivity as faithfulness to facts and objectivity as a view from nowhere. This perspective recognizes that scientific objectivity can be achieved by isolating personal interests and values from scientific studies. In other words, sciences can only be objective if they are value-free. Against this view, scientists such as Helen Longino see values as a necessity of scientific objectivity. In this study, Helen Longino's views known as "contextual empiricism" are included. Accordingly, it is emphasized that it is not possible to realize scientific objectivity by ignoring values. Longino completely rejects the value-free ideal, considering the social aspects of scientific research. She thinks that a value-laden science can be reliable both in terms of epistemology and objectivity. (shrink)

Gene clustering is a useful exploratory technique to group together genes with similar expression levels under distinct cell cycle phases or distinct conditions. It helps the biologist to identify potentially meaningful relationships between genes. In this study, we propose a clustering method based on multivariate normal mixture models, where the number of clusters is predicted via sequential hypothesis tests: at each step, the method considers a mixture model of m components (m = 2 in the first step) and tests if (...) in fact it should be m - 1. If the hypothesis is rejected, m is increased and a new test is carried out. The method continues (increasing m) until the hypothesis is accepted. The theoretical core of the method is the full Bayesian significance test, an intuitive Bayesian approach, which needs no model complexity penalization nor positive probabilities for sharp hypotheses. Numerical experiments were based on a cDNA microarray dataset consisting of expression levels of 205 genes belonging to four functional categories, for 10 distinct strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. To analyze the method’s sensitivity to data dimension, we performed principal components analysis on the original dataset and predicted the number of classes using 2 to 10 principal components. Compared to Mclust (model-based clustering), our method shows more consistent results. (shrink)

The paper argues that the depiction of the Mediterranean coast of Africa in Ptolemy’s Geography was based on a source similar to the Stadiasmus of the Great Sea. Ptolemy’s and the Stadiasmus’ toponymy and distances between major points are mostly in good agreement. Ptolemy’s place names overlap with those of the Stadiasmus by 80%, and the total length of the coastline from Alexandria to Utica on Ptolemy’s map deviates from the Stadiasmus data by only 1% or 1.5%. A number of (...) serious disagreements between Ptolemy’s map and the Stadiasmus regarding the length of particular coastal stretches can be explained by assuming that Ptolemy had to tailor the distance data derived from periploi to his other sources, especially, to the longitudes of the key reference points, such as Cape Phyces, Cyrena, Berenica, Aesporis, Thena, and Carthage. A notable stretching and the subsequent contraction of the coast between Alexandria and Cyrenaica, as are exhibited by Ptolemy’s map relative to the Stadiasmus’ data, can be explained by assuming that several points on this coast were tied to the position of Crete, which was moved to the west being pushed by the westward shift of Rhodes. A sharp contraction of the two coastal stretches of the Great Sirte, oriented along the north-south direction, can be explained by Ptolemy’s erroneously underestimated value for the circumference of the Earth. The analysis of this contraction, as well as of the east-west stretching of the coast between Alexandria and Cyrene in angular terms relative to the modern map, makes it possible to assess the magnitude of Ptolemy’s error and to determine the length of his stade. This analysis shows that Ptolemy’s value for the circumference of the Earth must have been underestimated by approximately 20–27%, and Ptolemy’s stade must have been approximately 175–185 m length. Comparison of the Stadiasmus distance data with the modern map shows that the average length of the stade was close to 179 m or to the “common” stade of 185 m for the stretch between Alexandria and Berenice. (shrink)

Can new technology enhance purpose-driven, democratic dialogue in groups, governments, and societies? Online Deliberation: Design, Research, and Practice is the first book that attempts to sample the full range of work on online deliberation, forging new connections between academic research, technology designers, and practitioners. Since some of the most exciting innovations have occurred outside of traditional institutions, and those involved have often worked in relative isolation from each other, work in this growing field has often failed to reflect the full (...) set of perspectives on online deliberation. This volume is aimed at those working at the crossroads of information/communication technology and social science, and documents early findings in, and perspectives on, this new field by many of its pioneers. -/- CONTENTS: -/- Introduction: The Blossoming Field of Online Deliberation (Todd Davies, pp. 1-19) -/- Part I - Prospects for Online Civic Engagement -/- Chapter 1: Virtual Public Consultation: Prospects for Internet Deliberative Democracy (James S. Fishkin, pp. 23-35) -/- Chapter 2: Citizens Deliberating Online: Theory and Some Evidence (Vincent Price, pp. 37-58) -/- Chapter 3: Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics? Scientific Foundations for Success (Arthur Lupia, pp. 59-69) -/- Chapter 4: Deliberative Democracy, Online Discussion, and Project PICOLA (Public Informed Citizen Online Assembly) (Robert Cavalier with Miso Kim and Zachary Sam Zaiss, pp. 71-79) -/- Part II - Online Dialogue in the Wild -/- Chapter 5: Friends, Foes, and Fringe: Norms and Structure in Political Discussion Networks (John Kelly, Danyel Fisher, and Marc Smith, pp. 83-93) -/- Chapter 6: Searching the Net for Differences of Opinion (Warren Sack, John Kelly, and Michael Dale, pp. 95-104) -/- Chapter 7: Happy Accidents: Deliberation and Online Exposure to Opposing Views (Azi Lev-On and Bernard Manin, pp. 105-122) -/- Chapter 8: Rethinking Local Conversations on the Web (Sameer Ahuja, Manuel Pérez-Quiñones, and Andrea Kavanaugh, pp. 123-129) -/- Part III - Online Public Consultation -/- Chapter 9: Deliberation in E-Rulemaking? The Problem of Mass Participation (David Schlosberg, Steve Zavestoski, and Stuart Shulman, pp. 133-148) -/- Chapter 10: Turning GOLD into EPG: Lessons from Low-Tech Democratic Experimentalism for Electronic Rulemaking and Other Ventures in Cyberdemocracy (Peter M. Shane, pp. 149-162) -/- Chapter 11: Baudrillard and the Virtual Cow: Simulation Games and Citizen Participation (Hélène Michel and Dominique Kreziak, pp. 163-166) -/- Chapter 12: Using Web-Based Group Support Systems to Enhance Procedural Fairness in Administrative Decision Making in South Africa (Hossana Twinomurinzi and Jackie Phahlamohlaka, pp. 167-169) -/- Chapter 13: Citizen Participation Is Critical: An Example from Sweden (Tomas Ohlin, pp. 171-173) -/- Part IV - Online Deliberation in Organizations -/- Chapter 14: Online Deliberation in the Government of Canada: Organizing the Back Office (Elisabeth Richard, pp. 177-191) -/- Chapter 15: Political Action and Organization Building: An Internet-Based Engagement Model (Mark Cooper, pp. 193-202) -/- Chapter 16: Wiki Collaboration Within Political Parties: Benefits and Challenges (Kate Raynes-Goldie and David Fono, pp. 203-205) -/- Chapter 17: Debian’s Democracy (Gunnar Ristroph, pp. 207-211) -/- Chapter 18: Software Support for Face-to-Face Parliamentary Procedure (Dana Dahlstrom and Bayle Shanks, pp. 213-220) -/- Part V - Online Facilitation -/- Chapter 19: Deliberation on the Net: Lessons from a Field Experiment (June Woong Rhee and Eun-mee Kim, pp. 223-232) -/- Chapter 20: The Role of the Moderator: Problems and Possibilities for Government-Run Online Discussion Forums (Scott Wright, pp. 233-242) -/- Chapter 21: Silencing the Clatter: Removing Anonymity from a Corporate Online Community (Gilly Leshed, pp. 243-251) -/- Chapter 22: Facilitation and Inclusive Deliberation (Matthias Trénel, pp. 253-257) -/- Chapter 23: Rethinking the ‘Informed’ Participant: Precautions and Recommendations for the Design of Online Deliberation (Kevin S. Ramsey and Matthew W. Wilson, pp. 259-267) -/- Chapter 24: PerlNomic: Rule Making and Enforcement in Digital Shared Spaces (Mark E. Phair and Adam Bliss, pp. 269-271) -/- Part VI - Design of Deliberation Tools -/- Chapter 25: An Online Environment for Democratic Deliberation: Motivations, Principles, and Design (Todd Davies, Brendan O’Connor, Alex Cochran, Jonathan J. Effrat, Andrew Parker, Benjamin Newman, and Aaron Tam, pp. 275-292) -/- Chapter 26: Online Civic Deliberation with E-Liberate (Douglas Schuler, pp. 293-302) -/- Chapter 27: Parliament: A Module for Parliamentary Procedure Software (Bayle Shanks and Dana Dahlstrom, pp. 303-307) -/- Chapter 28: Decision Structure: A New Approach to Three Problems in Deliberation (Raymond J. Pingree, pp. 309-316) -/- Chapter 29: Design Requirements of Argument Mapping Software for Teaching Deliberation (Matthew W. Easterday, Jordan S. Kanarek, and Maralee Harrell, pp. 317-323) -/- Chapter 30: Email-Embedded Voting with eVote/Clerk (Marilyn Davis, pp. 325-327) -/- Epilogue: Understanding Diversity in the Field of Online Deliberation (Seeta Peña Gangadharan, pp. 329-358). -/- For individual chapter downloads, go to odbook.stanford.edu. (shrink)

This paper presents a new kind of problem in the ethics of distribution. The problem takes the form of several “calibration dilemmas,” in which intuitively reasonable aversion to small-stakes inequalities requires leading theories of distribution to recommend intuitively unreasonable aversion to large-stakes inequalities. We first lay out a series of such dilemmas for prioritarian theories. We then consider a widely endorsed family of egalitarian views and show that they are subject to even more forceful calibration dilemmas than prioritarian theories. Finally, (...) we show that our results challenge common utilitarian accounts of the badness of inequalities in resources. (shrink)

Is well-being the kind of thing that can be summed across individuals? This paper takes a measurement-theoretic approach to answering this question. To make sense of adding well-being, we would need to identify some natural "concatenation" operation on the bearers of well-being that satisfies the axioms of extensive measurement and can therefore be represented by the arithmetic operation of addition. I explore various proposals along these lines, involving the concatenation of segments within lives over time, of entire lives led alongside (...) one another or in sequence, and of evaluatively basic propositions via conjunction. All of these proposals turn out to carry highly controversial commitments about the good. I do not claim that these commitments are unacceptable. But they suggest that we cannot simply take for granted, as many philosophers do, that there is any such thing as the sum of well-being. (shrink)

Totalism is the view that one distribution of well-being is better than another just in case the one contains a greater sum of well-being than the other. Many philosophers, following Parfit, reject totalism on the grounds that it entails the repugnant conclusion: that, for any number of excellent lives, there is some number of lives that are barely worth living whose existence would be better. This paper develops a theory of welfare aggregation—the lexical-threshold view—that allows totalism to avoid the repugnant (...) conclusion, as well as its analogues involving suffering populations and the lengths of individual lives. The theory is grounded in some independently plausible views about the structure of well-being, identifies a new source of incommensurability in population ethics, and avoids some of the implausibly extreme consequences of other lexical views, without violating the intuitive separability of lives. (shrink)

Matthew Adler's Measuring Social Welfare is an introduction to the social welfare function (SWF) methodology. This essay questions some ideas at the core of the SWF methodology having to do with the relation between the SWF and the measure of well-being. The facts about individual well-being do not single out a particular scale on which well-being must be measured. As with physical quantities, there are multiple scales that can be used to represent the same information about well-being; no one scale (...) is special. Like physical laws, the SWF and its ranking of distributions cannot depend on exactly which of these scales we use. Adler and other theorists in the SWF tradition have used this idea to derive highly restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. These constraints rule out seemingly plausible views about distributive justice and population ethics. I argue, however, that these constraints stem from a simple but instructive mistake. The SWF should not be applied to vectors of numbers such as 1 and 2, but rather to vectors of dimensioned quantities such as 1 util and 2 utils. This seemingly pedantic suggestion turns out to have far-reaching consequences. Unlike the orthodox SWF approach, treating welfare levels as dimensioned quantities lets us distinguish between real changes in well-being and mere changes in the unit of measurement. It does this without making the SWF depend on the scale on which welfare is measured, and in a way that avoids the restrictive constraints on the shape of the SWF. (shrink)

The Rachels–Temkin spectrum arguments against the transitivity of better than involve good or bad experiences, lives, or outcomes that vary along multiple dimensions—e.g., duration and intensity of pleasure or pain. This paper presents variations on these arguments involving combinations of good and bad experiences, which have even more radical implications than the violation of transitivity. These variations force opponents of transitivity to conclude that something good is worse than something that isn’t good, on pain of rejecting the good altogether. That (...) is impossible, so we must reject the spectrum arguments. (shrink)

In this paper an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, for predicting the category of a tumor was developed and tested. Taking patients’ tests, a number of information gained that influence the classification of the tumor. Such information as age, sex, histologic-type, degree-of-diffe, status of bone, bone-marrow, lung, pleura, peritoneum, liver, brain, skin, neck, supraclavicular, axillar, mediastinum, and abdominal. They were used as input variables for the ANN model. A model based on the Multilayer Perceptron Topology was established and trained using (...) data set which its title is “primary tumor” and was obtained from the University Medical Centre, Institute of Oncology, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia Test data evaluation shows that the ANN model is able to correctly predict the tumor category with 76.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

I present a new argument for the repugnant conclusion. The core of the argument is a risky, intrapersonal analogue of the mere addition paradox. The argument is important for three reasons. First, some solutions to Parfit’s original puzzle do not obviously generalize to the intrapersonal puzzle in a plausible way. Second, it raises independently important questions about how to make decisions under uncertainty for the sake of people whose existence might depend on what we do. And, third, it suggests various (...) difficulties for leading views about the value of a person’s life compared to her nonexistence. (shrink)

One recent topic of debate in Bayesian epistemology has been the question of whether imprecise credences can be rational. I argue that one account of imprecise credences, the orthodox treatment as defended by James M. Joyce, is untenable. Despite Joyce’s claims to the contrary, a puzzle introduced by Roger White shows that the orthodox account, when paired with Bas C. van Fraassen’s Reflection Principle, can lead to inconsistent beliefs. Proponents of imprecise credences, then, must either provide a compelling reason to (...) reject Reflection or admit that the rational credences in White’s case are precise. (shrink)

The standard view of "believes" and other propositional attitude verbs is that such verbs express relations between agents and propositions. A sentence of the form “S believes that p” is true just in case S stands in the belief-relation to the proposition that p; this proposition is the referent of the complement clause "that p." On this view, we would expect the clausal complements of propositional attitude verbs to be freely intersubstitutable with their corresponding proposition descriptions—e.g., "the proposition that p"—as (...) they are in the case of "believes." In many cases, however, intersubstitution of that-clauses and proposition descriptions fails to preserve truth value or even grammaticality. These substitution failures lead some philosophers to reject the standard view of propositional attitude reports. Others conclude that propositional attitude verbs are systematically ambiguous. I reject both these views. On my view, the that-clause complements of propositional attitude verbs denote propositions, but proposition descriptions do not. (shrink)

This paper is about the role of interpersonal comparisons in Harsanyi's aggregation theorem. Harsanyi interpreted his theorem to show that a broadly utilitarian theory of distribution must be true even if there are no interpersonal comparisons of well-being. How is this possible? The orthodox view is that it is not. Some argue that the interpersonal comparability of well-being is hidden in Harsanyi's premises. Others argue that it is a surprising conclusion of Harsanyi's theorem, which is not presupposed by any one (...) of the premises. I argue instead that Harsanyi was right: his theorem and its weighted-utilitarian conclusion do not require interpersonal comparisons of well-being. The key to making sense of this possibility is to treat Harsanyi's weights as dimensional constants rather than dimensionless numbers. (shrink)

I defend the view that a reason for someone to do something is just a reason why she ought to do it. This simple view has been thought incompatible with the existence of reasons to do things that we may refrain from doing or even ought not to do. For it is widely assumed that there are reasons why we ought to do something only if we ought to do it. I present several counterexamples to this principle and reject some (...) ways of understanding "ought" so that the principle is compatible with my examples. I conclude with a hypothesis for when and why the principle should be expected to fail. (shrink)

Lara Buchak argues for a version of rank-weighted utilitarianism that assigns greater weight to the interests of the worse off. She argues that our distributive principles should be derived from the preferences of rational individuals behind a veil of ignorance, who ought to be risk averse. I argue that Buchak’s appeal to the veil of ignorance leads to a particular way of extending rank-weighted utilitarianism to the evaluation of uncertain prospects. This method recommends choices that violate the unanimous preferences of (...) rational individuals and choices that guarantee worse distributions. These results, I suggest, undermine Buchak’s argument for rank-weighted utilitarianism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Sometimes it seems that an existing bearer of value should be preserved even though it could be destroyed and replaced with something of equal or greater value. How can this conservative intuition be explained and justified? This paper distinguishes three answers, which I call existential, attitudinal, and object-affecting conservatism. I raise some problems for existential and attitudinal conservatism, and suggest how they can be solved by object-affecting conservatism.

How should we choose between uncertain prospects in which different possible people might exist at different levels of wellbeing? Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey offer an egalitarian answer to this question. I give some reasons to reject their answer and then sketch an alternative, which I call person-affecting prioritarianism.

Consider a binary afterlife, wherein some people go to Heaven, others to Hell, and nobody goes to both. Would such a system be just? Theodore Sider argues: no. For, any possible criterion of determining where people go will involve treating very similar individuals very differently. Here, I argue that this point has deep and underappreciated implications for moral philosophy. The argument proceeds by analogy: many ethical theories make a sharp and practically significant distinction between persons and non-persons. Yet, just (...) like in the binary afterlife, this involves treating very similar individuals very differently. I propose two ways out. The first is to deny that such theories are strictly speaking true, but to claim that it is practically best if people adopt them. The second is to modify such theories so as to allow for continuous variation in the scope and strength of the moral obligations arising from personhood. (shrink)

Extensive measurement is the standard measurement-theoretic approach for constructing a ratio scale. It involves the comparison of objects that can be concatenated in an additively representable way. This paper studies the implications of extensively measurable welfare for social choice theory. We do this in two frameworks: an Arrovian framework with a fixed population and no interpersonal comparisons, and a generalized framework with variable populations and full interpersonal comparability. In each framework we use extensive measurement to introduce novel domain restrictions, independence (...) conditions, and constraints on social evaluation. We prove a welfarism theorem for these domains and characterize the social welfare functions that satisfy the axioms of extensive measurement at both the individual and social levels. The main results are simple axiomatizations of strong dictatorship in the Arrovian framework and classical utilitarianism in the generalized framework. (shrink)

Welfarism is the view that individual welfare is the only thing that matters. One important contribution of social choice theory has been to provide a precise formulation and axiomatic characterization of welfarism using Amartya Sen's framework of social welfare functionals. This paper is motivated by the observation that the standard formalization of welfarism is too restrictive, since a welfarist social planner need not be committed to maximizing a preference ordering or any other binary relation over alternatives. We therefore provide a (...) characterization of welfarism in a more general choice-functional setting and show that welfarism, so understood, carries no commitment to rationalizability. This characterization is compatible with welfare values having any structure whatsoever. It also sheds light on different formulations of anonymity, revealing only some of these to be fundamental requirements of impartiality. (shrink)

Tsui and Weymark (Economic Theory, 1997) have shown that the only continuous social welfare orderings on the whole Euclidean space which satisfy the weak Pareto principle and are invariant to individual-specific similarity transformations of utilities are strongly dictatorial. Their proof relies on functional equation arguments which are quite complex. This note provides a simpler proof of their theorem.

According to asymmetric comparativism, it is worse for a person to exist with a miserable life than not to exist, but it is not better for a person to exist with a happy life than not to exist. My aim in this paper is to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. My account of asymmetric comparativism begins with a different asymmetry, regarding the (dis)value of early death. I offer an account of this early death asymmetry, appealing to the (...) idea of conditional goods, and generalize it to explain how asymmetric comparativism could possibly be true. I also address the objection that asymmetric comparativism has unacceptably antinatalist implications. (shrink)

In this paper, we developed an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for detect the absence or presence of lung cancer in human body. Symptoms were used to diagnose the lung cancer, these symptoms such as Yellow fingers, Anxiety, Chronic Disease, Fatigue, Allergy, Wheezing, Coughing, Shortness of Breath, Swallowing Difficulty and Chest pain. They were used and other information about the person as input variables for our ANN. Our ANN established, trained, and validated using data set, which its title is “survey lung (...) cancer”. Model evaluation showed that the ANN model is able to detect the absence or presence of lung cancer with 96.67 % accuracy. (shrink)

According to the person-affecting restriction, one distribution of welfare can be better than another only if there is someone for whom it is better. Extant problems for the person-affecting restriction involve variable-population cases, such as the nonidentity problem, which are notoriously controversial and difficult to resolve. This paper develops a fixed-population problem for the person-affecting restriction. The problem reveals that, in the presence of incommensurable welfare levels, the person-affecting restriction is incompatible with minimal requirements of impartial beneficence even in fixed-population (...) contexts. (shrink)

The paper explores the methodology and goals of H. Odera Oruka’s sage philosophy project. Oruka interviewed wise persons who were mostly illiterate and from the rural areas of Kenya to show that a long tradition of critical thinking and philosophizing exists in Africa, even if there is no written record. His descriptions of the role of the academic philosopher turned interviewer varied, emphasizing their refraining from imposition of their own views (the social science model), their adding their own ideas (like (...) Plato), or their midwifery in helping others give birth to their own ideas (like Socrates). The accuracy and consistency of the various metaphors used by Oruka is the main focus of the article’s analysis. The article sums up the shortcomings of Oruka’s method as well as its strengths and concludes with Oruka’s challenge to academic philosophers to rethink their own roles in society. (shrink)

This paper explores Spinoza’s relationship to poetry by considering two prominent allusions to classical literature in Spinoza’s political treatises. Susan James illuminates Spinoza’s worries about the dangers of poetic address. At the same time, Spinoza relies on poetic language and citation to press some central claims. References to Seneca and Tacitus, I suggest, aim to transform the popular imagination with respect to the relationship between government, violence, and domination. Poetic language reinforces his challenge to false solutions to the problems of (...) violence, rebellion, and the precarity of political authority, which preoccupied early-modern political thinkers. (shrink)

In his doctoral dissertation On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Arthur Schopenhauer there outlines a critique of Euclidean geometry on the basis of the changing nature of mathematics, and hence of demonstration, as a result of Kantian idealism. According to Schopenhauer, Euclid treats geometry synthetically, proceeding from the simple to the complex, from the known to the unknown, “synthesizing” later proofs on the basis of earlier ones. Such a method, although proving the case logically, nevertheless fails to attain the raison (...) d’être of the entity. In order to obtain this, a separate method is required, which Schopenhauer refers to as “analysis,” thus echoing a method already in practice among the early Greek geometers, with however some significant differences. In this essay, I here discuss Schopenhauer’s criticism of synthesis in Euclid’s Elements, and the nature and relevance of his own method of analysis. (shrink)

This essay represents a novel contribution to Nietzschean studies by combining an assessment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s challenging uses of “truth” and the “eternal return” with his insights drawn from Indian philosophies. Specifically, drawing on Martin Heidegger’s Nietzsche, I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of a static philosophy of being underpinning conceptual truth is best understood in line with the Theravada Buddhist critique of “self ” and “ego” as transitory. In conclusion, I find that Nietzsche’s “eternal return” can be understood as a (...) direct inversion of “nirvana”: Nietzsche celebrates profound attachment to each and every moment, independent from its pleasurable or distasteful registry. (shrink)

Spinoza is widely understood to criticize the role that fear plays in political life. Yet, in the Political Treatise, he maintains that everyone desires civil order due to a basic and universal fear of solitude. This chapter argues that Spinoza represents the fear of solitude as both a civilizing passion and as an affect that needs to be amplified and encouraged. The turbulence of social and political life makes solitude attractive, but isolation undermines the conditions of human power. Although it (...) may seem uncontroversial to understand isolation as something to avoid in political life, this chapter argues that Spinoza deflates the appeal of la vita solitaria even for philosophers and those seeking ethical perfection. (shrink)

In his recent article Philosophy Inside Out, Philip Kitcher presents a metaphilosophical outlook that aims at nothing less than a renewal of philosophy. His idea is to draw philosophers’ attention away from “timeless questions” in the so-called “core areas” of philosophy. Instead, philosophers should address questions that matter to human lives. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to reconstruct Kitcher’s view of how philosophy should be renewed; second, to point out some difficulties relating to his position. These difficulties (...) concern the integration of his naturalism into the pragmatic vision of philosophy, the role of putative philosophical experts, and the ideal status of the program of well-ordered inquiry. (shrink)

This implementation framework bridges the theoretical concepts of the Instructional Modular Approach with the practical development of Science Teaching Competency. It offers prospective teachers a structured, adaptive, and technology-enhanced pathway to becoming competent and innovative science educators. Each unit is meticulously designed to not only equip teachers with theoretical knowledge but also to hone their practical skills and competencies essential for a dynamic science teaching environment.

The computer science (CS) graduated students suffered from documenting their projects and specially from coordinating it. In addition, students’ supervisors faced difficulties with guiding their students to an efficient process of documenting. In this paper, we will offer a suggestion as a solution to the mentioned problems; that is an application to make the process of documenting computer science (CS) student graduation project easy and time-cost efficient. This solution will decrease the possibility of human mistakes and reduce the effort of (...) documenting process. (shrink)

In ‘Are Citizenship Tests Necessarily Illiberal?’, Michael Blake argues that difficult citizenship tests are not necessarily illiberal, so long as they test for the right things. In this paper, I argue that Blake’s attempt to square citizenship tests with liberalism fails. Blake underestimates the burdens citizenship tests impose on immigrants, ignoring in particular the egalitarian claims immigrants have on equal social membership. Moreover, Blake’s positive justification of citizenship tests – that they help justify immigrants’ coercive voting power – both neglects (...) the fact that such tests are coercively imposed on immigrants and that the citizenship test Blake envisions does little to help ensure immigrants’ votes are legitimate. Citizenship tests thus aren’t, even in principle, a way of protecting citizens from unjustified coercive power. They are, even under favourable circumstances, an illiberal way of obstructing immigrants’ quest for social equality. (shrink)