In this article, I argue that there is no discrepancy between Kant's Doctrine of Right (The Metaphysics of Morals) (1797), which legally permits lies that do not deprive someone of their rights or property, and his On a Supposed Right to Lie from Love of Humanity (1797), which argues that it would be a crime to lie to a murderer about the whereabouts of the innocent person he is pursuing.

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it looks (...) at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are not base. (shrink)

Review of Gibbs' book in which he argues against the twin assumptions that language is inherently literal, and that thought itself is literal. Metaphors, etc., are omnipresent in language, Gibbs argues, and the mind is inherently 'poetic', i.e., it engages in figurative thinking. For example, we conceptualize anger as "ANGER IS HEATED FLUID IN A CONTAINER" (p. 7), and as a result, that is how we talk about anger ('Bill is getting hot under the collar,' 'She blew up at me', (...) etc.). (shrink)

I reconcile the spatiotemporal location of repeatable artworks and impure sets with the non-location of natural numbers despite all three being varieties of abstract objects. This is possible because, while the identity conditions for all three can be given by abstraction principles, in the former two cases spatiotemporal location is a congruence for the equivalence relation featuring in the relevant principle, whereas in the latter it is not. I then generalize this to other ‘physical’ properties like shape, mass, and causal (...) powers. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that writers on metaphor have misunderstood Aristotle on metaphor. Aristotle is not an elitist about metaphor and does not consider metaphors to be merely ornamental. Rather, Aristotle believes that metaphors are ubiquitous and believes that people can express themselves in a clearer and more attractive way through the use of metaphors and that people learn and understand things better through metaphor. He also distinguishes between the use of metaphor and the coinage of metaphor, and believes (...) that the ability to coin marvelous new metaphors is a form of literary genius, and he provided an entirely natural origin of metaphor coinage. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that there are three different senses of 'lie' in Kant's moral philosophy: the lie in the ethical sense (the broadest sense, which includes lies to oneself), the lie in the 'juristic' sense (the narrowest sense, which only includes lies that specifically harm particular others), and the lie in the sense of right (or justice), which is narrower than the ethical sense, but broader than the juristic sense, since it includes all lies told to others, including (...) those who are bent on harming innocent others. (shrink)

This chapter both explains the origins of emotivism in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, R. B. Braithwaite, Austin Duncan-Jones, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson (along with the endorsement by Frank P. Ramsey, and the summary of C. D. Broad), and looks at MacIntyre's criticisms of emotivism as the inevitable result of Moore's attack on naturalistic ethics and his ushering in the fact/value, which was a historical product of the Enlightenment.

In this paper I defend Judith Jarvis Thomson's 'Good Samaritan Argument' (otherwise known as the 'feminist argument') for the permissibility of abortion, first advanced in her important, ground-breaking article 'A Defense of Abortion' (1971), against objections from Joseph Mahon (1979, 1984). I also highlight two problems with Thomson's argument as presented, and offer remedies for both of these problems. The article begins with a short history of the importance of the article to the development of practical ethics. Not alone (...) did it put the topic of the abortion on the philosophical map, but it made 'practical ethics' in the late 1960s feminist, also. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that the traditional interpretation of the commonly accepted moral asymmetry between secrets and lies is incorrect. On the standard interpretation of the commonly accepted view, lies are prima facie or pro tango morally wrong, whereas secrets are morally permissible. I argue that, when secrets are distinguished from mere acts of reticence and non-acknowledgement, as well as from acts of deception, so that they are defined as acts of not sharing believed-information while believing that the believed-information (...) is relevant, the correct interpretation of the commonly accepted moral asymmetry between secrets and lies is that secrets are also prima facie or pro tango morally wrong, albeit less morally wrong than lies. (shrink)

In this article Judith Jarvis Thomson's Good Samaritan Argument in defense of abortion in the case of rape is defended from two objections: the Kill vs. Let Die Objection, and the Intend to Kill vs. Merely Foresee Death Objection. The article concludes that these defenses do not defend Thomson from further objections from Peter Singer and David Oderberg.

The chapter examines fifty years of philosophers working on lying - from the 1970s to the current day – focusing on how lying is defined (descriptively and normatively), whether lying involves an intention to deceive (Deceptionists) or not (Non-Deceptionists), why lying is wrong, and whether lying is worse than other forms of deception, including misleading with the truth. Philosophers discussed include Roderick Chisholm and Thomas Feehan, Alan Donagan, Sissela Boy, Charles Fried, David Simpson, David Simpson, Bernard Williams, Paul Faulkner, Thomas (...) Carson, Roy Sorensen, Don Fallis, Jennifer Saul, Andreas Stoke, Jonathan Webber and Clea Rees. (shrink)

In this article I address the neglected question of what kind of act keeping a secret is, and what Kant had to say about secret keeping. First, I provide a definition of keeping a secret, improving upon Sissela Bok's definition. I distinguish between keeping a secret and deception, incorporating Thomas Nagel. Then, I discuss what Kant had to say about keeping a secret, and advance an Kantian argument for the moral permissibility of secret-keeping.

In this paper I argue that, although Kant argues that morality is independent of God (and hence, agrees with the Euthyphro), and rejects Divine Command Theory (or Theological Voluntarism), he believes that all moral duties are also the commands of God, who is a moral being, and who is morally required to punish those who transgress the moral law: "God’s justice is the precise allocation of punishments and rewards in accordance with men’s good or bad behavior." However, since we lack (...) a strict proof of God's existence, we can still fulfill our duties from the motive of duty. if we did know that God exists, then this would undermine our pure moral motivation to do our duty, since we would have an even stronger interest in pleasing God through our good conduct. The effect of undermining our pure moral motivation would be to make us less eligible for divine reward, since God rewards us for doing our duty from the motive of duty. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the non-cognitivists of the first half of the twentieth century - the emotivists – were internalists about moral motivation. It is also commonly assumed that they were prompted to choose emotivism over other cognitivist positions in ethics because of their commitment to internalism. Finally, it is also commonly assumed that they used an internalist argument to argue for emotivism. -/- In this article I argue that the connection between emotivism and internalism is far more tenuous (...) than is commonly assumed. I focus on two of the most important and influential emotivists: A. J. Ayer and Charles L. Stevenson. While it is true that Stevenson was an internalist, Ayer refused to endorse internalism. Neither of them was originally prompted to choose emotivism over cognitivist positions in ethics by internalist considerations. Finally, Ayer never used an internalist argument to argue for emotivism; Stevenson did once borrow an internalist argument from another philosopher in order to argue for emotivism, but he later abandoned it. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Shelley's "A Defense of Poetry" is best understood as a defense of poetic language, which is in turn best understood as a defense of metaphorical language. According to Shelley, the metaphors of the poets reveal (extra-linguistic) reality, and have a truth value – they are true insofar as they capture reality. The literal language of "mere reasoners" of science and philosophy, by contrast, only reveals relations between ideas already known, and their statements are true (...) in virtue of the meanings of the words. Shelley's essays has been misunderstood because writers on metaphor such as David Cooper and Richard Rorty have assumed that metaphors are neither true nor false, and that defenders of metaphorical language such as Shelley are defending non-truth-apt language. Even those writers on metaphor who believe that metaphors are truth-apt, such as Raymond Gibbs, fail to understand that Shelley should be included in their number. (shrink)

In this book chapter I argue that contrary to what is said by Paul Guyer in Kant (Routledge, 2006) Kant's moral philosophy prohibits the bystander from throwing the switch to divert the runaway trolley to a side track with an innocent person on it in order to save more people who are in the path of the trolley in the "Trolley Problem" case made famous by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1976; 1985). Furthermore, Thomson herself (2008) came to agree that it would (...) be wrong to throw the switch, just as it is wrong to push the person off the bridge to stop the trolley (1976; 1985). In changing her mind about this case, Thomson came to agree with Kant as well as with Philippa Foot (1967) who argued in her original paper that a negative duty not to harm one healthy patient outweighed a positive duty to give aid to five other patients by transplanting the healthy person's organs. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that Richard Rorty and others are wrong to contrast the Romantic poets with Plato and other philosophers in virtue of a lack of concern for the truth. Percy Bysshe Shelley, in particular, believed that the metaphors in poetry revealed the fundamental truth about the world.

In this article I argue that it is underdetermined what Spinoza is arguing for when he says in Proposition 72 of Part IV of the Ethics that (translated) "A free man never acts deceitfully, but always in good faith." In "Spinoza, Lying, and Acting in Good Faith," John Bauer has argued that Spinoza lays down an absolute moral prohibition never to lie.

In this review of John Shand's book on the history of western philosophy, I point out that the book is only concerned with epistemology and metaphysics, and only considers in detail the work of twenty individual philosophers. There are no entries on Socrates, Hobbes, Bentham, Schopenhauer, Mill, Kierkegaard, Marx, James, Frege, or Heidegger, and the final chapter on "Recent Philosophy" is only six and a half pages long, with each of the thirteen philosophers given a single paragraph each. Within (...) these narrow limits, Shand does an excellent job of presenting the epistemology and metaphysics of each major philosopher considered. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the writings of Mark Twain on lying, especially his essays "On the decay of the Art of Lying" and "My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It." I show that Twain held that there were two kinds of lies: the spoken lie and the silent lie. The silent lie is the lie of not saying what one is thinking, and is far more common than the spoken lie. The greatest silent lies, according to (...) Twain, were the national silent lies that there was nothing wrong with slavery (the U.S.), that there was nothing wrong with the prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus (France), and that there was nothing wrong with imperialism (UK). According to Twain, lying is unavoidable. Since lying is unavoidable, one must simply avoid injurious lies, and tell beneficial lies. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Ridley Scott's first feature film, The Duelists, which is an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad novella, contains his deepest meditation on honor in his entire career. The film may be said to answer the following question about honor: is being bound to do something by honor, when it is contrary to one's self-interest, a good thing, or a bad thing? It may be said to give the answer that it may be either good or (...) bad. It is bad that D'Hubert is bound by honor to duel with Feraud; it is good that, in the end, Feraud is bound by honor to cease dueling with D'Hubert. In this way, Kant was correct that "the inclination to honor" may light "upon that which is in fact in the common interest and in conformity with duty," or it may light upon what is contrary to duty. (shrink)

Is it possible to recover lost moral ground? In the closing episodes of the TV show "Breaking Bad", it becomes clear that the protagonist, Walter White, believes that the correct answer to this question is an affirmative one. Walt believes that he can, and that he has, recovered lost moral ground. "Breaking Bad" may be said to explore two distinct and incompatible ways of attempting to recover lost moral ground. The first way is revisionist. This is to rewrite the script (...) of what, morally speaking, has occurred, so that it appears that nothing wrong was done. The second way is restorative. This is to admit to morally wrongful behavior, but to attempt to make amends for it. While we concede that it is possible to recover lost moral ground in both of these ways, we deny that Walt is able to do so in both of these ways. At best, Walt can only hope to recover lost moral ground by attempting to make amends for his past misdeeds. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Machiavelli does not hold that all deception is permissible in war. While Machiavelli claims that "deceit... in the conduct of war is laudable and honorable," he insists that such deceit, or ruses of war, is not to be confounded with perfidy. Any Lee's U.S. Civil War film, "Ride With the Devil," illustrates this difference. The film also illustrates the difference between lying as part of romance, which is permitted, and lying at the moment of (...) truth in a relationship, when admitting one's feelings, which is not. (shrink)

Short survey of philosophical literature on the definition of lying and the ethics of lying.

In this article I reject the argument of Colin McGinn ("Must I Be Morally Perfect?", 1992) that ordinary morality requires that each of us be morally perfect. McGinn's definition of moral perfection –– according to which I am morally perfect if I never do anything that is supererogatory, but always do what is obligatory, and always avoid doing what is impermissible –– should be rejected, because it is open to the objection that I am morally perfect if I always do (...) what is optional but bad to do (what is suberogatory), in addition to always doing what is obligatory and always avoiding what is impermissible. Moral perfection may be defined as always doing what is obligatory, and always doing what is optional but good to do (supererogatory), and never doing what is impermissible, and never doing what is optional but bad to do [suberogatory]. Since ordinary morality does not require this, ordinary morality does not require moral perfection. (shrink)

For many years there has been a debate about the role of the parietal lobe in the generation of behavior. Does it generate movement plans (intention) or choose objects in the environment for further processing? To answer this, we focus on the lateral intraparietal area (LIP), an area that has been shown to play independent roles in target selection for saccades and the generation of visual attention. Based on results from a variety of tasks, we propose that LIP acts as (...) a priority map in which objects are represented by activity proportional to their behavioral priority. We present evidence to show that the priority map combines bottom-up inputs like a rapid visual response with an array of top-down signals like a saccade plan. The spatial location representing the peak of the map is used by the oculomotor system to target saccades and by the visual system to guide visual attention. (shrink)

In this book review I argue that, broadly speaking, there are three rival accounts of the relationship between having a normative reason to act and being motivated to act. Neo-Humeans argue that an agent has a normative reason to act if and only if so doing would satisfy some desire of the agent; consequently, their task is to show that there is an internal relation between an agent’s having a normative reason to act and an agent’s having a desire to (...) act. Kantians argue that any agent who has a normative reason to act, and who is practically rational (i.e., not suffering from some debilitating form of practical irrationality, such as weakness of will or depression), will act; consequently, their task is to show that normative reasons always have overriding authority and that it is always irrational not to act upon them. Neo-Aristotelians argue that normative reasons for action are derived from facts about human well-being, and that an agent will be motivated to act provided that she has been habituated into having desires, guided by reason, to act for her own well-being; consequently, their task is to show how normative reasons can be derived from facts about human well-being and whether it is always in an agent’s best interest to act morally. (shrink)

In this review of Ezra Suleiman's book I explain his argument that democracies need independent professional bureaucracies with Weberian "impersonal" authority, and that the greatest threat to the authority of government and the health of democracy is the trend towards turning bureaucracy into an instrument of the governing political party of the day.

In this review of essays on the topic of practical reason, the neo-Humeanism of philosophers such as James Drier, according to whom reasons are instrumental, is shown to be susceptible to the objections of Kantian philosophers such as Christine Korsgaard: the fact that you desire to X can never entail that you ought to X. Kantianism, however, comes under attack from neo-Aristotelian philosophers such as Berys Gaut, who argues that it is a mistake to identify goodness with being the (...) object of free rational choice. (shrink)

In this review of Brooke Harrington's edited collection of essays on deception, written by people from different disciplines and giving us a good "status report" on what various disciplines have to say about deception and lying, I reject social psychologist Mark Frank's taxonomy of passive deception, active consensual deception, and active non-consensual deception (active consensual deception is not deception), as well as his definition of deception as "anything that misleads another for some gain" ("for gain" is a reason for engaging (...) in deception, not part of its definition). I also take issue with management professor Guido Mollering's claim that all deception involves a violation of trust. (shrink)

Wilson's book has two aims: a metaethical aim, to provide a non-moral-realist account of moral judgment and moral theorizing in terms of preferences for certain 'paraworlds' over other 'paraworlds,' and a normative ethical aim, to argue for greater socio-economic, and gender, equality. I am sympathetic to the second normative ethical aim, but I do not consider the metaethical redescription of moral judgment and moral theorizing in terms of preferences for paraworlds to be accurate or helpful. Her critique of "immanentism," or (...) merely making visible and understandable the moral aspects of particular ways of life, in the second part of the book, is valuable, along with her criticisms of virtue theory as the most conservative of the Big Three moral theories. Her rejection of Rawlsian redistribution, in favor of a qualified egalitarianism that includes merit, is also worthy of consideration. (shrink)

In this review of Peter Walmsley's book, the first book-length treatment of Berkeley as a writer, Berkeley is shown to be a master stylist. He is also shown to have a theory of language that is "explicitly rhetorical," since he held, contrary to Locke, that language had ends other than the communication of ideas.

In this review I consider Gorman's arguments for redescrbiing the history of ethics, from Plato to Isaiah Berlin, as the history of theories of human rights, and for the conclusions that human rights are dependent, that they change over time, and that they may conflict with each other. I disagree with his interpretations of Plato, Hobbes, and Kant, as well as the idea that their moral theories can be converted into theories of human rights without loss, and I argue that (...) his various conclusions about human rights depend upon assumptions - such as that ethics is essentially concerned with motivation, that human nature is changing to the extent that human reason is changing, and that moral reality is inconsistent – that many would reject. Along the way I point out various blunders, such as the claim that that the Hobbesian social contract is a "covenant with the sovereign", and the claim that, according to Kant, "If I act wrongly... I may be acceptably treated as a means.". (shrink)

In this paper, I explore two differing conceptions of J.G. Fichte’s Anstoß and how it relates to his Transcendental ‘I’, the ground of his Wissenschaftslehre. I argue that one should not attempt to read later interpretations of the Anstoß back into his earlier definition, but find that attempts to tread a middle way between the original and later interpretations have thus far been equally unsuccessful. Instead, I suggest a new way of interpreting the Anstoß as a constituent component of the (...) absolute I, built into his first principle of self-consciousness, and argue that this way allows the I to turn back upon itself without being externally determined. I argue that this way also avoids solipsistic and nihilistic objections by actually supporting the arguments of the proponents of earlier interpretations. I then advance to advocate the Anstoß’s importance in the wider sphere of understanding how Fichte’s theory of transzendentallogisch enables his first and rudimentary derivation of consciousness, prior to the finitely derived practical I of his later Jena writings. (shrink)

This essay uses a mental files theory of singular thought—a theory saying that singular thought about and reference to a particular object requires possession of a mental store of information taken to be about that object—to explain how we could have such thoughts about abstract mathematical objects. After showing why we should want an explanation of this I argue that none of three main contemporary mental files theories of singular thought—acquaintance theory, semantic instrumentalism, and semantic cognitivism—can give it. I argue (...) for two claims intended to advance our understanding of singular thought about mathematical abstracta. First, that the conditions for possession of a file for an abstract mathematical object are the same as the conditions for possessing a file for an object perceived in the past—namely, that the agent retains information about the object. Thus insofar as we are able to have memory-based files for objects perceived in the past, we ought to be able to have files for abstract mathematical objects too. Second, at least one recently articulated condition on a file’s being a device for singular thought—that it be capable of surviving a certain kind of change in the information it contains—can be satisfied by files for abstract mathematical objects. (shrink)

Background: The attitudes of many undergraduates towards practicum exercise is declining in each passing year, affecting the quality of educational leaders produced from higher education. Studies in the past, have documented that there is no significant difference in the attitudes of students with or without practicum experience towards academic activities in higher education. Little or nothing seems to be known at the moment regarding the reasons why there is an indifference in the attitudes of students after completing a practicum course. (...) In response to this gap, we designed this study to assess principals' leadership variables as the presumed cause of undergraduates' declining attitudes towards practicum exercise in secondary schools. -/- Methods: A census study was carried out in Cross River State, where the entire 667 secondary school administrators (271 principals and 396 vice principals) were studied. “Principals’ Leadership Variables and Undergraduates’ Attitudes Towards Practicum Exercise Questionnaire” (PLVUATPEQ), designed by the researchers, was used in data collection. Data collected were analysed using simple linear regression analysis. Results: We find amongst others, that principals’ leadership styles, communication patterns, decision-making and supervisory approaches significantly predict undergraduates' attitudes towards practicum exercise relatively. Each of these independent variables accounts differently for the variance in the dependent variable based on their unique coefficient of determination. -/- Conclusion: It was concluded generally, that principals’ leadership variables significantly predict undergraduates’ attitudes towards practicum exercise. The attitudes of undergraduates towards practicum exercise increases as the leadership styles, communication patterns, decision-making skills, and supervisory approaches of principals improve. The implications of this study are discussed for policy and educational reforms. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

I am interested in the use Kant makes of the pure intuition of space, and of properties and principles of space and spaces (i.e. figures, like spheres and lines), in the special metaphysical project of MAN. This is a large topic, so I will focus here on an aspect of it: the role of these things in his treatment of some of the laws of matter treated in the Dynamics and Mechanics Chapters. In MAN and other texts, Kant speaks of (...) space as the “ground,” “condition,” and “basis” of various laws, including the inverse-square and inverse-cube laws of attractive and repulsive force, and the Third Law of Mechanics. Moreover, in his proofs of all the laws just mentioned, the language of “construction” figures prominently, which suggests that Kant’s proofs (somehow) rest on or involve mathematical construction in his technical sense. Such claims give rise to a number of questions. How do properties and principles of space and spaces serve to ground this particular set of laws? Which spatial properties and principles is Kant appealing to? What, if anything, does the spatial grounding of the inverse-square and inverse-cube laws of diffusion (treated in the Dynamics Chapter) have in common with that of the Third treated in the Mechanics Chapter)? What role—if any—does mathematical construction play in Kant’s proofs of these laws? Finally, how if at all, are Kant’s grounding claims consistent with his other commitments—for example, how are they consistent with his notorious denial in Prolegomena §38 that there are any laws that “lie in space” (Prol 4:321)? I offer answers to these questions. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson’s work provides numerous ways to rethink and improve our approach to metaphysics. This chapter is my attempt to begin to sketch why I still think the easy approach leaves room for substantive metaphysical work, and why I do not think that metaphysics need rely on any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge. After distinguishing two possible forms of deflationism, I argue that the easy ontologist needs to accept (implicitly or explicitly) that there are worldly constraints on what sorts of entities could (...) exist, and could co-exist. I argue this leaves room for a substantive role for metaphysics if (following the work of E.J. Lowe) we take metaphysics to be concerned with the possible ways that reality could be. I explain how this conception does not need to appeal to any ‘epistemically metaphysical’ knowledge, and need only make use of conceptual and/or empirical means to arrive at views on what could exist (and co-exist). Thus, the answer I propose to the question posed in the title, at least in my view, is no-one. Or, at least, no-one should be afraid of conceptual analysis. Not even metaphysicians. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

Th e present article reports a series of experiments designed to extend the empirical investigation of folk metaethical intuitions by examining how different kinds of ethical disagreement can impact attributions of objectivity to ethical claims.

Ontology is one strategy for promoting interoperability of heterogeneous data through consistent tagging. An ontology is a controlled structured vocabulary consisting of general terms (such as “cell” or “image” or “tissue” or “microscope”) that form the basis for such tagging. These terms are designed to represent the types of entities in the domain of reality that the ontology has been devised to capture; the terms are provided with logical defi nitions thereby also supporting reasoning over the tagged data. Aim: This (...) paper provides a survey of the biomedical imaging ontologies that have been developed thus far. It outlines the challenges, particularly faced by ontologies in the fields of histopathological imaging and image analysis, and suggests a strategy for addressing these challenges in the example domain of quantitative histopathology imaging. The ultimate goal is to support the multiscale understanding of disease that comes from using interoperable ontologies to integrate imaging data with clinical and genomics data. (shrink)

Biological ontologies are used to organize, curate, and interpret the vast quantities of data arising from biological experiments. While this works well when using a single ontology, integrating multiple ontologies can be problematic, as they are developed independently, which can lead to incompatibilities. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry was created to address this by facilitating the development, harmonization, application, and sharing of ontologies, guided by a set of overarching principles. One challenge in reaching these goals was that the (...) OBO principles were not originally encoded in a precise fashion, and interpretation was subjective. Here we show how we have addressed this by formally encoding the OBO principles as operational rules and implementing a suite of automated validation checks and a dashboard for objectively evaluating each ontology’s compliance with each principle. This entailed a substantial effort to curate metadata across all ontologies and to coordinate with individual stakeholders. We have applied these checks across the full OBO suite of ontologies, revealing areas where individual ontologies require changes to conform to our principles. Our work demonstrates how a sizable federated community can be organized and evaluated on objective criteria that help improve overall quality and interoperability, which is vital for the sustenance of the OBO project and towards the overall goals of making data FAIR. Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical commitments of autopoietic enactivism in relation to Errol E Harris’s dialectical holism in the interest of establishing a common metaphysical ground. This will be undertaken in three stages. First, it is argued that Harris’s reasoning provides a means of developing enactivist ontology beyond discussions limited to cognitive science and into domains of metaphysics that have traditionally been avoided by phenomenologists. Here, I maintain enactivist commitments are consistent with Harris’s reasoning from (...) certain synthetic a priori first principles, to his derivation of a teleological anthropic principle, which asserts the necessity of consciousness within the cosmos. Second, it is proposed that Steven Rosen’s long-standing proposal for a topology of phenomenology may provide a common logical foundation for both Harris and enactivists regarding anthropic reasoning. Third, it is argued that a pragmatic approach to process ontology is the most rigorous way of responding to the realism/anti-realism concerns that inevitably follow. If successful, this work will update Harris’s arguments with contemporary scientific and philosophical terminology and extend enactivism from philosophy of mind, into a general phenomenological ontology. (shrink)

The second half of the 20th century may fairly be considered a golden age for the study of ancient philosophy. This period witnessed the creation of four English-language journals for specialists and two professional societies. Throughout this period there were numerous regional and national conferences, reading groups, NEH-sponsored summer seminars and institutes on various aspects of ancient thought, successful graduate programs in ancient philosophy at a sizable number of American universities, and a steady supply of jobs for specialists in the (...) field. Seminal studies by Gregory Vlastos and G.E.L. Owen stimulated broad interest in ancient Greek philosophy by showing how the methods and issues explored by ancient thinkers were relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. On a less happy note, in recent years some influential analytic philosophers have discounted the value of work in the history of philosophy, and public funding for philosophy, along with other humanities fields, has declined sharply. -/- . (shrink)

One objection to conventional AI ethics is that it slows innovation. This presentation responds by reconfiguring ethics as an innovation accelerator. The critical elements develop from a contrast between Stability AI’s Diffusion and OpenAI’s Dall-E. By analyzing the divergent values underlying their opposed strategies for development and deployment, five conceptions are identified as common to acceleration ethics. Uncertainty is understood as positive and encouraging, rather than discouraging. Innovation is conceived as intrinsically valuable, instead of worthwhile only as mediated by social (...) effects. AI problems are solved by more AI, not less. Permissions and restrictions governing AI emerge from a decentralized process, instead of a unified authority. The work of ethics is embedded in AI development and application, instead of functioning from outside. Together, these attitudes and practices remake ethics as provoking rather than restraining artificial intelligence. (shrink)

A common response to radical skeptical challenges to our knowledge of the external world has been that there are explanatory reasons (e.g., simplicity, coherence, explanatory power, conservatism) for favoring commonsense explanations of our sensory experiences over skeptical explanations. Despite the degree of visibility this class of response has enjoyed, it has often been viewed with skepticism [sic] by the epistemological community because of concerns about the epistemic merits of explanatory reasoning. I argue that skeptical challenges that employ skeptical hypotheses presuppose (...) central explanationist tenets and that this fact should raise one’s estimation of the strength of explanationist responses to skepticism. (shrink)

Conscious recollection, of the kind characterised by sensory mental imagery, is often thought to involve ‘episodically’ recalling experienced events in one’s personal past. One might wonder whether this overlooks distinctive ways in which we sometimes recall ordinary, persisting objects. Of course, one can recall an object by remembering an event in which one encountered it. But are there acts of recall which are distinctively objectual in that they are not about objects in this mediated way (i.e., by way of being (...) about events in which they featured)? This question has broad implications, not least for understanding the nature and role of imagery in remembering, the requirements of memory-based singular thought about objects, and the sense in which remembering involves ‘mental time travel’ through which one ‘relives’ past events. In this paper, I argue that we sometimes do recall objects from our past without remembering events in which they featured. The positive view of such cases I go on to propose draws on a wide body of empirical work in its support and accommodates a more nuanced picture of the role of imagery in remembering. In a slogan: remembering might essentially involve a kind of ‘re-experiencing’, but it need not involve ‘reliving’. (shrink)

In this review, we describe some of the central philosophical issues facing origins-of-life research and provide a targeted history of the developments that have led to the multidisciplinary field of origins-of-life studies. We outline these issues and developments to guide researchers and students from all fields. With respect to philosophy, we provide brief summaries of debates with respect to (1) definitions (or theories) of life, what life is and how research should be conducted in the absence of an accepted theory (...) of life, (2) the distinctions between synthetic, historical, and universal projects in origins-of-life studies, issues with strategies for inferring the origins of life, such as (3) the nature of the first living entities (the “bottom up” approach) and (4) how to infer the nature of the last universal common ancestor (the “top down” approach), and (5) the status of origins of life as a science. Each of these debates influences the others. Although there are clusters of researchers that agree on some answers to these issues, each of these debates is still open. With respect to history, we outline several independent paths that have led to some of the approaches now prevalent in origins-of-life studies. These include one path from early views of life through the scientific revolutions brought about by Linnaeus (von Linn.), Wöhler, Miller, and others. In this approach, new theories, tools, and evidence guide new thoughts about the nature of life and its origin.We also describe another family of paths motivated by a” circularity” approach to life, which is guided by such thinkers as Maturana & Varela, Gánti, Rosen, and others. These views echo ideas developed by Kant and Aristotle, though they do so using modern science in ways that produce exciting avenues of investigation. By exploring the history of these ideas, we can see how many of the issues that currently interest us have been guided by the contexts in which the ideas were developed. The disciplinary backgrounds of each of these scholars has influenced the questions they sought to answer, the experiments they envisioned, and the kinds of data they collected. We conclude by encouraging scientists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences to explore ways in which they can interact to provide a deeper understanding of the conceptual assumptions, structure, and history of origins-of-life research. This may be useful to help frame future research agendas and bring awareness to the multifaceted issues facing this challenging scientific question. (shrink)