ABSTRACT The idea that two words can be instances of the same word is a central intuition in our conception of language. This fact underlies many of the claims that we make about how we communicate, and how we understand each other. Given this, irrespective of what we think words are, it is common to think that any putative ontology of words, must be able to explain this feature of language. That is, we need to provide criteria of identity for (...) word-types which allow us to individuate words such that it can be the case that two particular word-instances are instances of the same word-type. One solution, recently further developed by Irmak, holds that words are individuated by their history. In this paper, I argue that this view either fails to account for our intuitions about word identity, or is too vague to be a plausible answer to the problem of word individuation. (shrink)

It has been widely argued that words are analogous to species such that words, like species, are natural kinds. In this paper, I consider the metaphysics of word-kinds. After arguing against an essentialist approach, I argue that word-kinds are homeostatic property clusters, in line with the dominant approach to other biological and psychological kinds.

It has been a common assumption that words are substances that instantiate or have properties. In this paper, I question the assumption that our ontology of words requires posting substances by outlining a bundle theory of words, wherein words are bundles of various sorts of properties (such as semantic, phonetic, orthographic, and grammatical properties). I argue that this view can better account for certain phenomena than substance theories, is ontologically more parsimonious, and coheres with claims in linguistics.

Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

The natural name theory, recently discussed by Johnson (2018), is proposed as an explanation of pure quotation where the quoted term(s) refers to a linguistic object such as in the sentence ‘In the above, ‘bank’ is ambiguous’. After outlining the theory, I raise a problem for the natural name theory. I argue that positing a resemblance relation between the name and the linguistic object it names does not allow us to rule out cases where the natural name fails to resemble (...) the linguistic object it names. I argue that to avoid this problem, we can combine the natural name theory with a type-realist metaphysics of language, and hold that the name is natural because the name is an instance of the kind that it names. I conclude by reflecting on the importance of the metaphysics of language for questions in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This paper addresses the ontological status of the ontological categories as defended within E.J. Lowe’s four-category ontology (kinds, objects, properties/relations, and modes). I consider the arguments in Griffith (2015. “Do Ontological Categories Exist?” Metaphysica 16 (1):25–35) against Lowe’s claim that ontological categories do not exist, and argue that Griffith’s objections to Lowe do not work once we fully take advantage of ontological resources available within Lowe’s four-category ontology. I then argue that the claim that ontological categories do not exist has (...) no undesirable consequences for Lowe’s brand of realism. (shrink)

Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki are two of the most prominent Canadian public ‎intellectuals ‎involved in the global warming debate. They both argue that anthropogenic global ‎warming is ‎occurring, warn against its grave consequences, and urge governments and the ‎public to take ‎immediate, decisive, extensive, and profound measures to prevent it. They differ, ‎however, in the ‎reasons and evidence they provide in support of their position. While Suzuki ‎stresses the scientific ‎evidence in favour of the global warming theory and the (...) scientific ‎consensus around it, Atwood is ‎suspicious of the objectivity of science, and draws on an ‎idiosyncratic neo-Malthusian theory of ‎human development. Their implicit views ‎about the cognitive authority of science may be ‎identified with Critical Contextual Empiricism ‎and Feminist Standpoint Epistemology, respectively, ‎both of which face difficulties with ‎providing solid grounds for the position they advocate.‎ ‎. (shrink)

Primitives are both important and unavoidable, and which set of primitives we endorse will greatly shape our theories and how those theories provide solutions to the problems that we take to be important. After introducing the notion of a primitive posit, I discuss the different kinds of primitives that we might posit. Following Cowling (2013), I distinguish between ontological and ideological primitives, and, following Benovsky (2013) between functional and content views of primitives. I then propose that these two distinctions cut (...) across each other leading to four types of primitive posits. I then argue that theoretical virtues should be taken to be meta-theoretical ideological primitives. I close with some reflections on the global nature of comparing sets of primitives. (shrink)

The objectively best language is intended to refer to some metaphysically privileged language that ‘carves reality at its joints’ perfectly. That is, it is the kind of language that various ‘metaphysical deflationists’ have argued is impossible. One common line of argument amongst deflationists is that we have no means to compare languages that all express true facts about the world in such a way to decide which is ‘better’. For example, the language is physics is not objectively better than the (...) language of economics, as each language has the semantic purpose of expressing some domain of truths about the world inexpressible in the other language, and therefore neither could be ‘objectively best’. In this paper, I argue that metaphysical deflationists have failed to recognise a distinction between fine- and coarse-grained semantic purposes of languages, and that a recognition of that distinction provides us grounds to compare languages to see which is objectively best. I argue that once we recognise the distinction between fine- and coarse-grained semantic purposes, then we can see that it is relative to the coarse-grained purpose that we must compare putative objectively best ontological languages. (shrink)

Providing empirically supportable instances of ontological emergence is notoriously difficult. Typically, the literature has focused on two possible sources. The first is the mind and consciousness; the second is within physics, and more specifically certain quantum effects. In this paper, I wish to suggest that the literature has overlooked a further possible instance of emergence, taken from the special science of linguistics. In particular, I will focus on the property of truth-evaluability, taken to be a property of sentences as created (...) by the language faculty within human minds (or brains). The claim will not be as strong as to suggest that the linguistic data and theories prove emergence. Rather the dialectical aim here is to say that we have some good reasons (even if not conclusive reasons) to think that the property is emergent. (shrink)

While every health care system stakeholder would seem to be concerned with obtaining the greatest value from a given technology, there is often a disconnect in the perception of value between a technology’s promoters and those responsible for the ultimate decision as to whether or not to pay for it. Adopting an empirical ethics approach, this paper examines how five Canadian medical device manufacturers, via their websites, frame the corporate “value proposition” of their innovation and seek to respond to what (...) they consider the key expectations of their customers. Our analysis shows that the manufacturers’ framing strategies combine claims that relate to valuable socio-technical goals and features such as prevention, efficiency, sense of security, real-time feedback, ease of use and flexibility, all elements that likely resonate with a large spectrum of health care system stakeholders. The websites do not describe, however, how the innovations may impact health care delivery and tend to obfuscate the decisional trade-offs these innovations represent from a health care system perspective. Such framing strategies, we argue, tend to bolster physicians’ and patients’ expectations and provide a large set of stakeholders with powerful rhetorical tools that may influence the health policy arena. Because these strategies are difficult to counter given the paucity of evidence and its limited use in policymaking, establishing sound collective health care priorities will require solid critiques of how certain kinds of medical devices may provide a better (i.e., more valuable) response to health care needs when compared to others. (shrink)

As I head home from work, I’m not sure whether my daughter’s new bike is green, and I’m also not sure whether I’m on drugs that distort my color perception. One thing that I am sure about is that my attitudes towards those possibilities are evidentially independent of one another, in the sense that changing my confidence in one shouldn’t affect my confidence in the other. When I get home and see the bike it looks green, so I increase my (...) confidence that it is green. But something else has changed: now an increase in my confidence that I’m on color-drugs would undermine my confidence that the bike is green. Jonathan Weisberg and Jim Pryor argue that the preceding story is problematic for standard Bayesian accounts of perceptual learning. Due to the ‘rigidity’ of Conditionalization, a negative probabilistic correlation between two propositions cannot be introduced by updating on one of them. Hence if my beliefs about my own color-sobriety start out independent of my beliefs about the color of the bike, then they must remain independent after I have my perceptual experience and update accordingly. Weisberg takes this to be a reason to reject Conditionalization. I argue that this conclusion is too pessimistic: Conditionalization is only part of the Bayesian story of perceptual learning, and the other part needn’t preserve independence. Hence Bayesian accounts of perceptual learning are perfectly consistent with potential underminers for perceptual beliefs. (shrink)

Sometimes ignorance is a legitimate excuse for morally wrong behavior, and sometimes it isn’t. If someone has secretly replaced my sugar with arsenic, then I’m blameless for putting arsenic in your tea. But if I put arsenic in your tea because I keep arsenic and sugar jars on the same shelf and don’t label them, then I’m plausibly blameworthy for poisoning you. Why is my ignorance in the first case a legitimate excuse, but my ignorance in the second case isn’t? (...) This essay explores the relationship between ignorance and blameworthiness. (shrink)

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the first participatory budgeting experiment in the United States, in Chicago's 49th Ward. There are two avenues of inquiry: First, does participatory budgeting result in different budgetary priorities than standard practices? Second, do projects meet normative social justice outcomes? It is clear that allowing citizens to determine municipal budget projects results in very different outcomes than standard procedures. Importantly, citizens in the 49th Ward consistently choose projects that the research literature classifies as low (...) priority. The results are mixed, however, when it comes to social justice outcomes. While there is no clear pattern in which projects are located only in affluent sections of the ward, there is evidence of geographic clustering. Select areas are awarded projects like community gardens, dog parks, and playgrounds, while others are limited to street resurfacing, sidewalk repairs, bike racks, and bike lanes. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions for future programmatic changes. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to formalize long-term trajectories of human civilization as a scientific and ethical field of study. The long-term trajectory of human civilization can be defined as the path that human civilization takes during the entire future time period in which human civilization could continue to exist. -/- Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on four types of trajectories: status quo trajectories, in which human civilization persists in a state broadly similar to its current state into the distant future; catastrophe (...) trajectories, in which one or more events cause significant harm to human civilization; technological transformation trajectories, in which radical technological breakthroughs put human civilization on a fundamentally different course; and astronomical trajectories, in which human civilization expands beyond its home planet and into the accessible portions of the cosmos. -/- Findings Status quo trajectories appear unlikely to persist into the distant future, especially in light of long-term astronomical processes. Several catastrophe, technological transformation and astronomical trajectories appear possible. -/- Originality/value Some current actions may be able to affect the long-term trajectory. Whether these actions should be pursued depends on a mix of empirical and ethical factors. For some ethical frameworks, these actions may be especially important to pursue. (shrink)

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word-type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an overview of some of the most prominent views proposed in the literature, with a particular focus on the debate between type-realist, nominalist, and eliminativist ontologies of words.

The original book chapter does not have an abstract. However, I have written an abstract for this repository: Religious life encompasses a wide diversity of situations for which the emotional tone is on a continuum from extreme euphoria to extreme dysphoria. In this book chapter, we propose the novel hypothesis that euphoria and dysphoria have distinctly separate functional consequences for religious evolution and survivability. This is due to the differential cognitive states that are created in euphoric and dysphoric situations. Based (...) on readings from religious studies and cognitive psychology, we propose that euphoria in religion is conducive to social bonding and situations needing lateral thinking and creativity; whereas dysphoria in religion is conducive to situations where precision and analogical reasoning are necessary. (shrink)

Abstract: Northern state, Sudan is extremely affected by desertification and Salinization processes, there for this study aimed to investigate an effective method to improve the salt affected soil. Two field experiments were carried out in two successive seasons ( July 2005 – June 2006 ) at Dongola University farm, in the North State to investigate the effect of irrigation frequency ( 7 and 14 days ) and farm yard manure (M0 , M1 , M2 , andM3 ) on salt leaching (...) undersaline – sodic soil . The experiment was designed in spilt – plot design , where irrigation frequency was assigned in the main plots ( 6x28m) and farm yard manure were the sub – plots ( 6x7m) .The total cultivated area was 1342m2 for each experiment. The quantity of water applied was estimated according to Jensen andHaise (1963 ) . The total water quantity was the same by the end of the season. In general , the result indicated that irrigation frequency of 7 days enhanced salt leaching from the root zone. Generally , the reduction in electrical conductivity ( ECe ) and sodium adsorption ratio ( SAR ) due to irrigation frequency was more effective in 7 day irrigation interval as compared with 14 – day irrigation interval . the data obtained indicated that the addition of FYM 10 ton/feddan, significantly degreased the (ECe) and the (SAR) and leached them below the root zone. So, we can conclude that the efficiency of salt leaching is markedly affected by irrigation frequency and yard manure. (shrink)

This article examines whether it is possible to uphold one form of deflationism towards metaphysics, ontological pluralism, whilst maintaining metaphysical realism. The focus therefore is on one prominent deflationist who fits the definition of an ontological pluralist, Eli Hirsch, and his self-ascription as a realist. The article argues that ontological pluralism is not amenable to the ascription of realism under some basic intuitions as to what a “realist” position is committed to. These basic intuitions include a commitment to more than (...) a stuff-ontology, and a view that realism carries with it more than a rejection of idealism. This issue is more than merely terminological. The ascription of realism is an important classification in order to understand what sorts of entities can be the truthmakers within a given theory. “Realism” is thus an important term to understand the nature of the entities that a given theory accepts into its ontology. (shrink)

An overview of the concept of Strong Emergence, and a summary of the papers within the special issue.

The concept of the receptive field, first articulated by Hartline, is central to visual neuroscience. The receptive field of a neuron encompasses the spatial and temporal properties of stimuli that activate the neuron, and, as Hubel and Wiesel conceived of it, a neuron’s receptive field is static. This makes it possible to build models of neural circuits and to build up more complex receptive fields out of simpler ones. Recent work in visual neurophysiology is providing evidence that the classical receptive (...) field is an inaccurate picture. The receptive field seems to be a dynamic feature of the neuron. In particular, the receptive field of neurons in V1 seems to be dependent on the properties of the stimulus. In this paper, we review the history of the concept of the receptive field and the problematic data. We then consider a number of possible theoretical responses to these data. (shrink)

Both society and plasma (ionized gas) fluid are composed of active, interactive, and free, individuals. These individuals are responded to any internal and external effects (fields for plasma), and exhibit collective behaviour. According to this structure, there are a wide range of similarities between the plasma fluid and the society. The nature of fluidity of plasma arises from the interaction of its free interactive charges, so the society may behave as a fluid owing to the free interactive individuals. This fluid (...) model may explain many social phenomena like social instability, diffusion, flow, viscosity...So the society behaves as a sort of intellectual fluid. (shrink)

Mathematically, the oscillation can be related to circular motion; whereas complex oscillation (De Moivre's) can not be related to a mechanical model. A mechanical bevel gear of two different wheels radii is proposed. The position vector of the point is a real quantity. But when the small wheel can not be recognized (observed) within the system, the position vector becomes of a complex feature. The analysis shows that the complex oscillation is a microscopic phenomenon and can be occurred in the (...) following conditions: 1- There should be a gear system. 2- There should be an observation limit. (shrink)

In this research clipping, we present aspects of the audio-visual research Aquilomba Filomove carried out as collaborative action research by the Research Group Filomove: Philosophy, Arts and Latin América Aesthetics in 2018, together with Maria de Tie and the Comunidade Quilombola de Souza, in Chapada of Araripe, Municipality of Porteiras in the south of Ceará, Brazil. The coconut as an intertwined dance, tambourine touch and singing show the body techniques, rhythmic cells and compositional strategies that were part of the reconstruction (...) process of Afro-descendant manifestations, producing spaces of identification for the group. We guide action research towards the critical-reflective rescue of Latin American African American material and immaterial cultural heritage. -/- Neste recorte de pesquisa, apresentamos aspectos da pesquisa audiovisual Aquilomba FiloMove: O processo de re(criar) a tradição na trajetória da Mestra Maria de Tie e a Comunidade Quilombola de Souza realizada como pesquisa ação colaborativa pelo Grupo de Pesquisa FiloMove: Filosofias, Artes e Estéticas da América Latina em 2018, em conjunto com Maria de Tie e a Comunidade Quilombola de Souza, na Chapada de Araripe, Município de Porteiras, no sul do Ceará. O coco, dança entrelaçada, toque do pandeiro e canto, mostra técnicas corporais, células rítmicas e estratégias composicionais que fizeram parte do processo de reconstrução das manifestações afrodescendentes, produzindo espaços de identificação e reconhecimento para o grupo. Orientamos a pesquisa-ação para o resgate crítico-reflexivo do patrimônio cultural material e imaterial afro latino americano. (shrink)

Psychiatric patients sometimes ask where to draw the line between who they are – their selves – and their mental illness. This problem is referred to as the self-illness ambiguity in the literature; it has been argued that solving said ambiguity is a crucial part of psychiatric treatment. I distinguish a Realist Solution from a Constructivist one. The former requires finding a supposedly pre-existing border, in the psychiatric patient’s mental life, between that which belongs to the self and that which (...) belongs to the mental illness. I argue that no such border exists, and that attempts to find it might even render the felt ambiguity worse. Instead, any solution must be constructivist; the patient (and others) should deliberate and discuss what to identify with or not. I further argue that psychiatric patients need not see their mental illness as wholly distinct from themselves to avoid ‘identifying with their diagnoses' in a problematic way. Finally, we can excuse problematic behaviour by mentally ill people – in fact, we can do so in a more nuanced and constructive way – while rejecting the view that the mental illness is wholly distinct from the patient’s self. (shrink)

New trends in the economic systems management in the context of modern global challenges: collective monograph / scientific edited by M. Bezpartochnyi, in 2 Vol. // VUZF University of Finance, Business and Entrepreneurship. – Sofia: VUZF Publishing House “St. Grigorii Bogoslov”, 2020. – Vol. 1. – 309 p.

The global water crisis is being exacerbated by climate change, even in the United States. Recycled water is a feasible alternative to alleviate the water shortage, but it is constrained by humans’ perceptions. The current study examines how residents’ water scarcity awareness and climate change belief influence their willingness to use recycled water directly and indirectly. Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics was employed on a dataset of 1831 residents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an arid inland region in the US. We (...) discovered that residents’ willingness to use direct recycled potable water is positively affected by their awareness of water scarcity, but only if they believe in the impacts of climate change on the water cycle. Meanwhile, the willingness to use indirect recycled potable water is influenced by water scarcity awareness, and the belief in climate change further enhances this effect. These findings implicate that fighting climate change denialism and informing the public of the water scarcity situation in the region can contribute to the effectiveness and sustainability of long-term water conservation and climate change alleviation efforts. (shrink)

In his consideration of thought development August Comte has been proposed a three stage model of thinking development. The way that led to any new type of think may repeat itself to produce another new type. So the way that led to philosophy of science may be repeated. It perhaps to attribute the mechanism of thought evolution to a process of accumulation of unanswered questions which is flowed by a declination in that type of thinking interest. One can say that (...) the accumulation of unverified huge new physics theories and ideas; leads to a declination in physics interest and that may lead to a new type of philosophy. The proposed new type is the philosophy of technology, and probably can be considered as the fourth stage according to Comte model. (shrink)

In this paper I outline and defend a new approach to personal-identity—personal-identity non-cognitivism—and argue that it has several advantages over its cognitivist rivals. On this view utterances of personal-identity sentences express a non-cognitive attitude towards relevant person-stages. The resulting view offers a pleasingly nuanced picture of what we are doing when we utter such sentences.

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the world (...) supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are reasons to believe that an implicit bias for normalcy influences what are considered medically necessary treatments in psychiatry. First, we outline two prima facie reasons to suspect that this is the case. A bias for ‘the normal’ is already documented in disability studies; it is reasonable to suspect that it affects psychiatry too, since psychiatric patients, like disabled people, are often perceived as ‘weird’ by others. Secondly, psychiatry's explicitly endorsed values of well-being (...) and function are hard to measure directly, which is why we see simpler box-ticking conceptions of recovery used in large research studies. This need not be problematic, but might lead to researchers and clinicians focusing too much on treatments that promote easy-to-measure proxies for recovery, instead of what actually matters to psychiatric patients themselves. Next, we provide examples of treatments and treatment decisions within two areas – self-injury and psychosis – which are hard to explain unless we assume that an implicit and harmful normalcy bias is at work. We conclude with some suggestions for clinicians and future research. (shrink)

Normatively inappropriate scientific dissent prevents warranted closure of scientific controversies and confuses the public about the state of policy-relevant science, such as anthropogenic climate change. Against recent criticism by de Melo-Martín and Intemann of the viability of any conception of normatively inappropriate dissent, I identify three conditions for normatively inappropriate dissent: its generation process is politically illegitimate, it imposes an unjust distribution of inductive risks, and it adopts evidential thresholds outside an accepted range. I supplement these conditions with an inference-to-the-best-explanation (...) account of knowledge-based consensus and dissent to allow policy makers to reliably identify unreliable scientific dissent. (shrink)

Let us call non-presentist dynamism any view according to which (a) a single moment of time is objectively present and (b) which time is objectively present changes and (c) objectively non-present times exist, and at least some of these are occupied by objects, events, or properties. Non-presentist dynamism has an advantage over presentist dynamism—the view that only present objects, properties, and events exist, and that which objects, properties and events there are, changes—in the truthmaking arena. Presentists have trouble finding plausible (...) truthmakers for past (and future) tensed propositions, since no past, (or future) objects, properties, or events exist, which could make true said propositions. Hence presentists have to resort to one of two strategies. According to the first, nothing makes past (or future) tensed propositions true, though some are true nonetheless. For some class of propositions, the truth of said propositions does not in any way depend on ontology. This strategy rejects even the fairly weak requirement that for any proposition P, and worlds w and v, if P is true in w but not in v, then either something exists in v but not in w or else some n-tuple of things stands in some fundamental relation in v but not in w . Call this account No Truthmaker: -/- No Truthmaker: There are no truthmakers for past-tensed truths. -/- Embracing No Truthmaker is typically taken to be a cost of presentism. According to the second strategy, some presently existing thing makes true past-tensed truths. Advocates of this strategy embrace anti-aboutness truthmaking, the view that while all truths are grounded in being, the truth of a proposition need not grounded in the thing(s) the proposition is about. Since past things do not exist, past-tensed propositions are made true by something other than what they are about. Such presentists endorse some version of Present Record Truthmaking. (shrink)

Mainstream analytic epistemology regards knowledge as the property of individuals, rather ‎than groups. Drawing on insights from the reality of knowledge production and dissemination ‎in the sciences, I argue, from within the analytic framework, that this view is wrong. I defend ‎the thesis of ‘knowledge-level justification communalism’, which states that at least some ‎knowledge, typically knowledge obtained from expert testimony, is the property of a ‎community and possibly none of its individual members, in that only the community or some ‎members (...) of it collectively possesses knowledge-level justification for its individual members’ ‎beliefs. I address several objections that individuals, qua individuals, have or are able to ‎acquire knowledge-level justification for all the beliefs they obtain from expert testimony. I ‎argue that the problem I identify with individualism is invariant under any specific account of ‎justification, internalist or externalist. ‎. (shrink)

According to conventionalist or conativist views about personal-identity, utterances of personal-identity sentences express propositions that are, in part, made true by the conative attitudes of relevant persons-stages. In this paper I introduce assessor relative conativism: the view that a personal-identity proposition can be true when evaluated at one person-stage's context and false when evaluated at another person-stage's context, because person-stages have different patterns of conative attitudes. I present several reasons to embrace assessor relative conativism over its more familiar realizer relative (...) cousin. (shrink)

Investigation of neural and cognitive processes underlying individual variation in moral preferences is underway, with notable similarities emerging between moral- and risk-based decision-making. Here we specifically assessed moral distributive justice preferences and non-moral financial gambling preferences in the same individuals, and report an association between these seemingly disparate forms of decision-making. Moreover, we find this association between distributive justice and risky decision-making exists primarily when the latter is assessed with the Iowa Gambling Task. These findings are consistent with neuroimaging studies (...) of brain function during moral and risky decision-making. This research also constitutes the first replication of a novel experimental measure of distributive justice decision-making, for which individual variation in performance was found. Further examination of decision-making processes across different contexts may lead to an improved understanding of the factors affecting moral behaviour. (shrink)

This book advertises itself as an exploration of the world-time parallel, that is, the parallel between the modal dimension, on the one hand, and the temporal dimension, on the other. It is that, and much more. As the authors point out, there is reasonable agreement that we can model times, through temporal logic, in ways that are analogous to those by which we model modality through the logic of possible worlds. But this formal parallel has almost universally been taken to (...) be a merely formal parallel: thus it is held that no metaphysical conclusions ought to be drawn from it. Thus, it is generally thought that one is free to accept an argument for actualism, say, but to reject a parallel argument for presentism. Rini and Cresswell compellingly argue that this is a mistake: the temporal and the modal are more than merely formally analogous. (shrink)

Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among (...) the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions—social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. (shrink)

According to the Value-Neutrality Thesis, technology is morally and politically neutral, neither good nor bad. A knife may be put to bad use to murder an innocent person or to good use to peel an apple for a starving person, but the knife itself is a mere instrument, not a proper subject for moral or political evaluation. While contemporary philosophers of technology widely reject the VNT, it remains unclear whether claims about values in technology are just a figure of speech (...) or nontrivial empirical claims with genuine factual content and real-world implications. This paper provides the missing argument. I argue that by virtue of their material properties, technological artifacts are part of the normative order rather than external to it. I illustrate how values can be empirically identified in technology. The reason why value-talk is not trivial or metaphorical is that due to the endurance and longevity of technological artifacts, values embedded in them have long-term implications that surpass their designers and builders. I further argue that taking sides in this debate has real-world implications in the form of moral constraints on the development of technology. (shrink)

Saul Smilansky’s theory of free will and moral responsibility consists of two parts; dualism and illusionism. Dualism is the thesis that both compatibilism and hard determinism are partly true, and has puzzled many philosophers. I argue that Smilansky’s dualism can be given an unquestionably coherent and comprehensible interpretation if we reformulate it in terms of pro tanto reasons. Dualism so understood is the thesis that respect for persons gives us pro tanto reasons to blame wrongdoers, and also pro tanto reasons (...) not to blame them. These reasons must be we ighed against each other (and against relevant consequentialist reasons) in order to find out what we all things considered ought to do. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject’s interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed “Pragmatic Encroachment” has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden science reinforce each (...) other. Drawing on Douglas’ argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people’s inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment. (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)

It is commonly argued that values “fill the logical gap” of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE – a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weight-adjusting role of values is distinct (...) from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies. (shrink)

The aspiration for volitional evolution, or human evolution directed by humans themselves,has increased in philosophical, scientific, technical, and commercial literature. The prospect of shaping the very being who is the consumer of all other innovations offers great commercial potential, one to which all other innovations would in effect be subservient. Actually an amalgam of projected technical/commercial developments, this prospective innovation has practical and ethical ramifications. However, because it is often discussed in a scientific way (specifically that of evolutionary theory), it (...) first calls for examination in terms of common scientific approaches to evolution. Yet, as evolutionary-theory controversies point up, evolution may be considered as neither a directed nor a directable process – a problem for the ontology of volitional evolution. One challenge for theories and programs aiming to implement the proposed innovation is then whether it is theoretically coherent. While I offer responses to the challenge in the form of objections, these in turn remain problematic. Two central issues of responsible innovation arise: (1) If this prospect were feasible, would it be responsible to implement it, and (2) if it is not even theoretically coherent, is it responsible for innovators, even this early-on, to keep promoting it as if it were? (shrink)

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer positively valenced events to be in the future (positive future-bias) and negatively valenced events to be in the past (negative future-bias). The most extreme form of future-bias is absolute future-bias, whereby we completely discount the value of past events when forming our preferences. Various authors have thought that we are absolutely future-biased (Sullivan (2018:58); Parfit (1984:173) and that future-bias (absolute or otherwise) is at least rationally permissible (Prior (1959), Hare (2007; 2008), Kauppinen (2018), Heathwood (2008)). The (...) permissibility of future-bias is often held to be grounded in the structure of the temporal dimension. In this paper I consider several proposals for grounding the permissibility of such preferences and evaluate these in the light of the preferences we would have, and judge that we should have, in various time-travel scenarios. I argue that what we learn by considering these scenarios is that these preferences really have nothing to do with temporal structure. So if something grounds their permissibility, it is not temporal structure. (shrink)

A hard choice is a situation in which an agent is unable to make a justifiable choice from a given menu of alternatives. Our objective is to present a systematic treatment of the axiomatic structure of such situations. To do so, we draw on and contribute to the study of choice functions that can be indecisive, i.e., that may fail to select a non-empty set for some menus. In this more general framework, we present new characterizations of two well-known choice (...) rules, the maximally dominant choice rule and the top-cycle choice rule. Together with existing results, this yields an understanding of the circumstances in which hard choices arise. (shrink)

The authors of the book have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to effectively use modern approaches the management of competitiveness the economic entities in order to increase the efficiency of using the resource potential, formation of competitive advantages and development strategies. Basic research focuses on economic diagnostics of ensuring the competitiveness of economic entities, marketing and logistics, analysis of energy-efficient potential, assessment of development potential. The research results have been implemented in the different models of inventory management, (...) corporate social responsibility management, business process management and project management. The results of the study can be used in decision-making at the level the economic entities in different areas of activity and organizational-legal forms of ownership, ministries and departments that promote of development the economic entities and increase their competitiveness. The results can also be used by students and young scientists in modern concepts and mechanisms for management of competitiveness the economic entities in the context of efficient use the resource potential and iintroduction of modern innovations. (shrink)