The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

The development of the Functional Genomics Investigation Ontology (FuGO) is a collaborative, international effort that will provide a resource for annotating functional genomics investigations, including the study design, protocols and instrumentation used, the data generated and the types of analysis performed on the data. FuGO will contain both terms that are universal to all functional genomics investigations and those that are domain specific. In this way, the ontology will serve as the “semantic glue” to provide a common understanding of data (...) from across these disparate data sources. In addition, FuGO will reference out to existing mature ontologies to avoid the need to duplicate these resources, and will do so in such a way as to enable their ease of use in annotation. This project is in the early stages of development; the paper will describe efforts to initiate the project, the scope and organization of the project, the work accomplished to date, and the challenges encountered, as well as future plans. (shrink)

Ormerod and Chronicle reported that optimal solutions to traveling salesperson problems were judged to be aesthetically more pleasing than poorer solutions and that solutions with more convex hull nodes were rated as better figures. To test these conclusions, solution regularity and the number of potential intersections were held constant, whereas solution optimality, the number of internal nodes, and the number of nearest neighbors in each solution were varied factorially. The results did not support the view that the convex hull is (...) an important determinant of figural attractiveness. Also, in contrast to the findings of Ormerod and Chronicle, there were consistent individual differences. Participants appeared to be divided as to whether the most attractive figure enclosed a given area within a perimeter of minimum or maximum length. It is concluded that future research in this area cannot afford to focus exclusively on group performance measures. (shrink)

How should we understand the Confucian doctrine of the rectification of names (zhengming): what does it mean that an object’s name must be in accordance with its reality, and why does it matter? The aim of this paper is to answer this question by advocating a novel interpretation of the later Confucian, Xunzi’s account of the doctrine. Xunzi claims that sage-kings ascribe names and values to objects by convention, and since they are sages, they know the truth. When we misuse (...) names, we are departing from a sagely convention of naming. As sagely convention determines moral truth, departure from the linguistic convention of the sages is a departure from moral truth. On my interpretation of Xunzi, the rectification of names is not a doctrine about what is true, but a doctrine about how we aim at truth. We are aiming at descriptive truth when our language conforms to the correct name of an object according to what I call ‘Confucian conventionalism’. When we correctly aim at descriptive truth we can aim at moral truth. Therefore, I claim that the doctrine of the rectification of names is concerned with discerning the literal accordance of language with an object (what is descriptively, linguistically true), to determine what is normatively, or morally, true. According to Xunzi, moral truth is grounded in linguistic truth. (shrink)

Vaccine research, as well as the development, testing, clinical trials, and commercial uses of vaccines involve complex processes with various biological data that include gene and protein expression, analysis of molecular and cellular interactions, study of tissue and whole body responses, and extensive epidemiological modeling. Although many data resources are available to meet different aspects of vaccine needs, it remains a challenge how we are to standardize vaccine annotation, integrate data about varied vaccine types and resources, and support advanced vaccine (...) data analysis and inference. To address these problems, the community-based Vaccine Ontology (VO) has been developed through collaboration with vaccine researchers and many national and international centers and programs, including the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO), the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) Initiative, and the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI). VO utilizes the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as the top ontology and the Relation Ontology (RO) for definition of term relationships. VO is represented in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) and edited using the Protégé-OWL. Currently VO contains more than 2000 terms and relationships. VO emphasizes on classification of vaccines and vaccine components, vaccine quality and phenotypes, and host immune response to vaccines. These reflect different aspects of vaccine composition and biology and can thus be used to model individual vaccines. More than 200 licensed vaccines and many vaccine candidates in research or clinical trials have been modeled in VO. VO is being used for vaccine literature mining through collaboration with the National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics (NCIBI). Multiple VO applications will be presented. (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)

I defend the continuing importance, and attraction of, moral saints. The objective of this paper is twofold; firstly, to critique Wolf’s definition of sainthood, and secondly, to argue against her view that one should not desire to be a moral saint, nor emulate them. In section 1, I argue that moral saints are highly complex moral agents, and that Wolf’s definition does not capture this complexity. My second argument is that Wolf’s account that there are two kinds of saints, loving (...) and rational, leads to a tension. Either: (1) the distinction between loving and rational saints is justifiable; but then argu- ments against the benefits of sainthood ought to be directed independently against each kind of saint which, Wolf does not do; or (2) the distinction is not justifiable, in which case the division is explanatorily impotent. In section 2, I will present Wolf’s argument for why one should not want to be a moral saint, nor even know one. I counter that Wolf over-emphasises non-moral values, to the point that these values have a monopoly on what constitutes a well-rounded life. Wolf must provide a more definitive scope for non-moral values, as the distinction between moral and non-moral values is ambiguous. Finally, I argue that moral saints can serve as moral exemplars and visionaries. By admir- ing and emulating them, we can adapt our own moral behavior, and by example, moral saints can discover new and better ways of pursuing moral goods. (shrink)

Scientists use models to understand the natural world, and it is important not to conflate model and nature. As an illustration, we distinguish three different kinds of populations in studies of ecology and evolution: theoretical, laboratory, and natural populations, exemplified by the work of R.A. Fisher, Thomas Park, and David Lack, respectively. Biologists are rightly concerned with all three types of populations. We examine the interplay between these different kinds of populations, and their pertinent models, in three examples: the notion (...) of “effective” population size, the work of Thomas Park on /Tribolium/ populations, and model-based clustering algorithms such as /Structure/. Finally, we discuss ways to move safely between three distinct population types while avoiding confusing models and reality. (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.

At first blush, values such as diversity appear to be worth striving for. The question is whether or not such values—which have become increasingly prevalent in university mission statements—are values as such, which is to ask whether they are things of moral worth (Value, n.d.), or are something else altogether. My unpopular suspicion leans toward the latter. Personal opinions, of course, are hardly a justification for an impassioned critique, however, my opinions mirror those held by moderate and conservative witnesses to (...) the sociopolitical climate of academia (Pew Research Center, 2017) as well as individuals who would typically be considered classically liberal such as Peter Boghossian (2021). Because of this concordance and in order to understand the constitutive relations of academic production, it becomes necessary to critically examine the nature of institutional values, separate from polemical rhetoric that either seeks to construct a "straw man" of them in order to lay them low or insulate them from outside reproach altogether Since "diversity" seems to be the chief concern among interested groups both in the academic setting and the world at large, this article's point of access to the relations of production in academia will be anchored by a Marxian assessment of diversity as a product of social labour in the academic environment. (shrink)

Suppose some person 'A' sets out to accomplish a difficult, long-term goal such as writing a passable Ph.D. thesis. What should you believe about whether A will succeed? The default answer is that you should believe whatever the total accessible evidence concerning A's abilities, circumstances, capacity for self-discipline, and so forth supports. But could it be that what you should believe depends in part on the relationship you have with A? We argue that it does, in the case where A (...) is yourself. The capacity for "grit" involves a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of evidence suggesting that one might fail, and this makes it rational to respond to the relevant evidence differently when you are the agent in question. We then explore whether similar arguments extend to the case of "believing in" our significant others -- our friends, lovers, family members, colleagues, patients, and students. (shrink)

In Byron, Shelley, and Goethe’s Faust, author Ben Hewitt has provided us with a carefully done and convincing study. Given this, it would have been interesting to see Hewitt’s effort to integrate Mary Shelley’s work into his narrative. Apart from any similarities between Faust and Frankenstein, it bears remembering that Goethe himself remained unconvinced by efforts to clearly demarcate works as “tragic” or “epic”; a fact that becomes especially clear in the number of works he’d devoted to rewriting the story (...) of Prometheus. One cannot help but wish that Hewitt had considered the connection between these works and Shelley’s own “Modern Prometheus” in juxtaposition to his reading of P.B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, for this would have made for an especially good ending to Hewitt’s story. Wayne Deakin’s consideration of Hegel and the English Romantic Tradition does indeed close with a brief consideration of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus, but this comes only at the end of a much longer set of considerations. In this book Deakin adopts a similar strategy as that of Hewitt, namely, foregoing any historical recovery of Hegel’s direct influence on the English Romantics—in Deakin’s case, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and P.B. Shelley—to focus instead on a reading of key poetic works in concert with their Hegelian framework. This reading essentially flows from Deakin’s effort to rethink Hegel’s relatively early notion of self-consciousness through his late lectures on aesthetics. For Deakin, this leads to “aesthetic recognition”; a situating of the self in relation to the world that remains in tension so far as the subject’s drive for autonomy will automatically be humbled by its reception of and to alterity—be that other “Nature” or other subject. (shrink)

There is a paucity of research on how psychopathy relates to decision-making. In this study, we assessed the relationship between affective decision-making and psychopathic personality. A sample of prisoners (n D 49) was characterized in terms of psychopathic traits using the Psychopathic Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV). Decision-making was assessed using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Higher levels of psychopathy related to more advantageous choices (p D .003). Also counter-intuitively, higher levels of antisocial traits (facet 4) predicted advantageous choices during the (...) learning phase of the task (p D .004). Our findings suggest that some psychopathic facets may be more relevant to decisionmaking under risk, and highlight the importance of further investigations considering facet and trait-level relationships with decision-making. (shrink)

We discuss Sharon Ryan’s Deep Rationality Theory of wisdom, defended recently in her “Wisdom, Knowledge and Rationality.” We argue that (a) Ryan’s use of the term “rationality” needs further elaboration; (b) there is a problem with requiring that the wise person possess justified beliefs but not necessarily knowledge; (c) the conditions of DRT are not all necessary; (d) the conditions are not sufficient. At the end of our discussion, we suggest that there may be a problem with the (...) very assumption that an informative, non-circular set of necessary and sufficient conditions of wisdom can be given. (shrink)

This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is (...) most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

In this paper we apply the popular Best System Account of laws to typical eternal worlds – both classical eternal worlds and eternal worlds of the kind posited by popular contemporary cosmological theories. We show that, according to the Best System Account, such worlds will have no laws that meaningfully constrain boundary conditions. It’s generally thought that lawful constraints on boundary conditions are required to avoid skeptical arguments. Thus the lack of such laws given the Best System Account may seem (...) like a severe problem for the view. We show, however, that at eternal worlds, lawful constraints on boundary conditions do little to help fend off skeptical worries. So with respect to handling these skeptical worries, the proponent of the Best System Account is no worse off than their competitors. (shrink)

This paper provide the first extended discussion in the philosophical literature of the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” and the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations of the “right to know,” it is argued that victims of gross violations and injustices not only have the right to know what happened, but also the right to be known—to be a giver of knowledge to others about their (...) own experiences. It is shown that such victims can suffer epistemic wrongs by being rendered invisible, vilified or demonized, or systematically distorted, and that these ways of not being known demand epistemic reparations. While there are traditional reparations that are epistemic in nature, such as memorialization and education, it is argued that there is a prior and arguably more important epistemic reparation—knowing victims of gross violations and injustices in the sense of bearing witness. The paper concludes with a sketch of an epistemological picture to underwrite this notion of epistemic reparations, one that significantly expands the traditional picture by including epistemic duties that are imperfect in nature and concern actions in addition to beliefs. (shrink)

How should you evaluate your choices when you’re unsure what their outcomes will be? One popular answer is to rank your options in terms of their expected utilities. But what should you do when you think that the value of their respective outcomes might be incommensurable? In the face of incommensurable values, it no longer makes sense to speak of ranking your options according to expected utility. Are there any general principles to guide us when facing decisions of this kind? (...) If only! This chapter develops an impossibility result: it holds that there are a handful of independently plausible constraints that no such decision theory can jointly satisfy. The result, while depressing, can be used to helpfully classify extant approaches based on which of the constraints they violate. (shrink)

That a standard of medical care must outline services that benefit the patient is relatively uncontroversial. However, one must determine how the practices outlined in a medical standard of care should benefit the patient. I will argue that practices outlined in a standard of medical care must not detract from the patient’s well-functioning and that clinicians can refuse to provide services that do. This paper, therefore, will advance the following two claims: (1) a standard of medical care must not cause (...) dysfunction, and (2) if a physician is medically rational to not provide some service which fails to meet the above condition (i.e. fails to be a standard of medical care), then she may refuse to do so. I then apply my thesis to the prescription of puberty blockers to children with gender dysphoria. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel problem for representationalism (also known as "intentionalism"), a popular contemporary account of perception. We argue that representationalism is incompatible with supervaluationism, the leading contemporary account of vagueness. The problem generalizes to naive realism and related views, which are also incompatible with supervaluationism.

In his postapocalyptic novel, Those Who Remain, G. Michael Hopf (2016) makes an important observation about the effect crises can have on human psychology by noting that "hard times create strong [humans]" (loc. 200). While the catastrophic effects of the recent COVID-19 outbreak are incontestable, there are arguments to be made that the situation itself could be materia prima of a more grounded, and authentic generation of humanity, at least in theory. In this article I draw on Heidegger's early, implicit (...) ethic of finitude as well as his later work surrounding the nature of technology, and place them into dialogue with a global milieu contextualized by worldwide pandemic. I approach this discussion from two different angles: in the first part, I explicate the ethic of finitude, and use it as a framework to describe the observable behavior of communities worldwide in order to better understand how global crises impact the psychical welfare of individual human beings. In the second part, I apply lessons given to us by the later Heidegger, specifically those oriented around the movement away from calculative thinking, in an effort to define a loose, albeit fundamentally ennobling prescriptive aimed at easing the existential strain of the situation we have found ourselves in. *This is a pre-print of an article published in Human Arenas. The final authenticated version is available at DOI: 10.1007/s42087-020-00142-6. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

The puzzle of petitionary prayer: if we ask for the best thing, God was already going to do it, and if we ask for something that's not the best, God's not going to grant our request. In this paper, we give a new solution to the puzzle.

Can our beloved cats and dogs love us back? This chapter aims to find a satisfactory theory of love that substantiates the claim that they can. It begins by reconstructing and critically evaluating recent attempts by scientists to show that dogs can love humans back. Although these attempts are argued to be unsuccessful, it is further argued that they illuminate the need for an adequate theory of love and offer us some plausible ideas about love that direct us to two (...) recent philosophical theories of love that support the idea that dogs can love humans back. These two theories are discussed in detail before it is argued that dogs, but not cats, seem capable of loving humans under these theories. These theory-based defenses of the belief that dogs can love humans back are then criticized on the grounds that the theories they use are unsatisfactory because they fail to capture three central truths about love. This leads to a third theory of love that, after some friendly amendments, is argued to be a tentatively adequate theory that provisionally vindicates the claim that dogs, but not cats, can love humans back. (shrink)

Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects (ELSA) originated in the 4thEuropean Research Framework Programme (1994) andresponsible research and innovation (RRI) from the EC researchagenda in 2010. ELSA has received renewed attention inEuropean funding schemes and research. This raises the questionof how these two approaches to social responsibility relate toone another and if there is the possibility to align. There is aneed to evaluate the relationship/overlap between ELSA and RRIbecause there is a possibility that new ELSA research will reinventthe wheel if it (...) does not engage with the body of literaturealready present in RRI research. This provides unneeded extrabureaucracy, reformulations of research agendas, extrainvestment, and an overabundance of frameworks to implement,and ELSA research does not take advantage of the body ofresearch developed in RRI. This paper evaluates how ELSA andRRI diverge, are complementary, and can be aligned. (shrink)

To what extent should we trust our natural instincts about knowledge? The question has special urgency for epistemologists who want to draw evidential support for their theories from certain intuitive epistemic assessments while discounting others as misleading. This paper focuses on the viability of endorsing the legitimacy of Gettier intuitions while resisting the intuitive pull of skepticism – a combination of moves that most mainstream epistemologists find appealing. Awkwardly enough, the “good” Gettier intuitions and the “bad” skeptical intuitions seem to (...) be equally strong. This chapter argues that it is not a coincidence that these two types of intuition register with equal force: they are generated by a common mechanism. However, the input to this mechanism is interestingly different in the two types of case, and different in a way that can support the mainstream view that Gettier cases tell us something about knowledge where skeptical intuitions involve systematic error. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson challenges advocates of layered conceptions of reality to explain “how layers are distinguished” and “what holds them together” by “examining the world” (2014). One strategy for answering such questions is mereological, treating inter-layer relations as parthood relations, where layers exist whenever composition does, and the number of layers will be equivalent to the number of answers to Peter Van Inwagen’s Special Composition Question, while answers to his General Composition Question explain what holds the layers together (1987). Various answers (...) have been proffered for these questions, from the physicalist atomism of Richard Feynman (2015), Hilary Putnam (1958), and Kit Fine (1992) to the holism of Jonathan Schaffer (2010), the two-layer emergentism of Van Inwagen himself (1995), Tim Maudlin’s three-layered “flash ontology” (2011), and Rob Koons two-layered “thermal substances” (2019). In this PhD project, I seek to meet Thomasson’s challenge by identifying which of these proposals are compatible with plausible interpretations of quantum physics. Atomist answers may have difficulty with relativity, while holistic and emergentist models have trouble giving an account of experimental conditions. Maudlin and Koons’ views, meanwhile, may make testable predictions about the scope of entanglement. Examining the world can lead us to sharply winnow our theories about how layers are distinguished and what holds them together. (shrink)

Curiosity is evident in humans of all sorts from early infancy, and it has also been said to appear in a wide range of other animals, including monkeys, birds, rats, and octopuses. The classical definition of curiosity as an intrinsic desire for knowledge may seem inapplicable to animal curiosity: one might wonder how and indeed whether a rat could have such a fancy desire. Even if rats must learn many things to survive, one might expect their learning must be driven (...) by simpler incentives, such as hunger. One might also wonder what proximal signals could guide animals towards knowledge itself, or how something as abstract as knowledge could ever be a motivational target for an unreflective animal. Taking a cue from recent work in reinforcement learning, I argue that surprise functions as a reward signal for the curious animal, and then show how this amounts to a desire for knowledge gain, where knowledge is conceived of as a cognitive adaptation to reality. This adaptation results in a mental state whose existence depends essentially on the truth of its contents, a factive mental state. Curious creatures benefit from an interaction between the prediction-error correction processes of basic learning and the active surprise-seeking force of their curiosity. This internally adversarial interaction accelerates knowledge gain in ways that are very helpful for agents with the restrictions of biological creatures, in environments with the complexity of our natural world. (shrink)

This chapter explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of (...) radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR. (shrink)

Why do we find agents less blameworthy when they face mitigating circumstances, and what does this show about philosophical theories of moral responsibility? We present novel evidence that the tendency to mitigate the blameworthiness of agents is driven both by the perception that they are less normatively competent—in particular, less able to know that what they are doing is wrong—and by the perception that their behavior is less attributable to their deep selves. Consequently, we argue that philosophers cannot rely on (...) the case strategy to support the Normative Competence theory of moral responsibility over the Deep Self theory. However, we also outline ways in which further empirical and philosophical work would shift the debate, by showing that there is a significant departure between ordinary concepts and corresponding philosophical concepts, or by focusing on a different type of coherence with ordinary judgments. (shrink)

Coronavirus disease 2019 can lead to respiratory failure. Some patients require extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. During the current pandemic, health care resources in some cities have been overwhelmed, and doctors have faced complex decisions about resource allocation. We present a case in which a pediatric hospital caring for both children and adults seeks to establish guidelines for the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation if there are not enough resources to treat every patient. Experts in critical care, end-of-life care, bioethics, and (...) health policy discuss if age should guide rationing decisions. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann’s important new book on scepticism is attractively systematic and thorough. He places familiar ideas under an exceptionally bright spotlight, e.

Michael Devitt ([2006a], [2006b]) argues that, insofar as linguists possess better theories about language than non-linguists, their linguistic intuitions are more reliable. (Culbertson and Gross [2009]) presented empirical evidence contrary to this claim. Devitt ([2010]) replies that, in part because we overemphasize the distinction between acceptability and grammaticality, we misunderstand linguists' claims, fall into inconsistency, and fail to see how our empirical results can be squared with his position. We reply in this note. Inter alia we argue that Devitt's focus (...) on grammaticality intuitions, rather than acceptability intuitions, distances his discussion from actual linguistic practice. We close by questioning a demand that drives his discussion—viz., that, for linguistic intuitions to supply evidence for linguistic theorizing, a better account of why they are evidence is required. (shrink)

Kopec and Titelbaum collect five alleged counterexamples to Uniqueness, the thesis that it is impossible for agents who have the same total evidence to be ideally rational in having different doxastic attitudes toward the same proposition. I argue that four of the alleged counterexamples fail, and that Uniqueness should be slightly modified to accommodate the fifth example.

Because knowledge entails true belief, it is can be hard to explain why a given action is naturally seen as driven by one of these states as opposed to the other. A simpler and more radical characterization of knowledge helps to solve this problem while also shedding some light on what is special about social learning.

When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral beauty (...) in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

To say Early Confucians advocated the possession of a sense of shame as a means to moral virtue underestimates the tact and forethought they used successfully to mold natural dispositions to experience shame into a system of self, familial, and social governance. Shame represents an adaptive system of emotion, cognition, perception, and behavior in social primates for measurement of social rank. Early Confucians understood the utility of the shame system for promotion of cooperation, and they build and deploy cultural modules (...) – e.g., rituals, titles, punishments – with this in mind. These policies result in subtle alterations to components of the evolved shame system that are detectable in data form contemporary cross-cultural psychology that show that populations in the Confucian diaspora have a unique shame profile compared to Western and non-Western populations. The status of Confucian diaspora populations as outliers in the context of shame is partially explained by appeal to the cultural transmission and historical endurance of relevant Early Confucian cultural modules. (shrink)

In this article, robust evidence is provided showing that an individual’s moral character can contribute to the aesthetic quality of their appearance, as well as being beautiful or ugly itself. It is argued that this evidence supports two main conclusions. First, moral beauty and ugliness reside on the inside, and beauty and ugliness are not perception-dependent as a result; and, second, aesthetic perception is affected by moral information, and thus moral beauty and ugliness are on the outside as well.

Most accounts of cognitive scaffolding focus on ways that external structure can support or augment an agent’s cognitive capacities. We call cases where the interests of the user are served benign scaffolding and argue for the possibility and reality of hostile scaffolding. This is scaffolding which depends on the same capacities of an agent to make cognitive use of external structure as in benign cases, but that undermines or exploits the user while serving the interests of another agent. We develop (...) criteria for scaffolding being hostile and show by reference to examples including the design features of electronic gambling machines and casino management systems that hostile scaffolding exists and can be highly effective. In cases where the scaffolding is deep and permits the offloading of significant cognitive work, hostile scaffolding exploitatively manipulates cognitive processing itself. Given the extent of human reliance on scaffolding this is an important and neglected vulnerability. [This is an updated version of the paper, added in February 2023.]. (shrink)

This essay discusses Cecilia Heyes’ groundbreaking new book Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. Heyes’ point of departure is the claim that current theories of cultural evolution fail adequately to make a place for the mind. Heyes articulates a cognitive psychology of cultural evolution by explaining how eponymous “cognitive gadgets,” such as imitation, mindreading and language, mental technologies, are “tuned” and “assembled” through social interaction and cultural learning. After recapitulating her explanations for the cultural and psychological origins of these (...) gadgets, we turn to criticisms. Among those, we find Heyes’ use of evolutionary theory confusing on several points of importance; alternative theories of cultural evolution, especially those of the Tomasello group and of Boyd, Richerson and Henrich, are misrepresented; the book neglects joint attention and other forms of intersubjectivity in its explanation of the origins of cognitive gadgets; and, whereas Heyes accuses other theories of being “mindblind,” we find her theory ironically other-blind and autistic in character. (shrink)

What is the nature of the concept BEAUTY? Does it differ fundamentally from nearby concepts such as PRETTINESS? It is argued that BEAUTY, but not PRETTINESS, is a dual-character concept. Across a number of contexts, it is proposed that BEAUTY has a descriptive sense that is characterised by, inter alia, having intrinsically pleasing appearances; and a normative sense associated with deeply-held values. This account is supported across two, pre-registered, studies (N=500), and by drawing on analysis of corpus data. It is (...) suggested that this can help to explain why beauty, unlike prettiness, is thought to be deep in both the sense of being important, and in the sense of being less closely tied to sensory surfaces. (shrink)

According to the most important objection to the existence of moral beauty, true judgements of moral beauty are not possible as moral judgements require being motivated to act in line with the moral judgement made, and judgements of beauty require not being motivated to act in any way. Here, I clarify the argument underlying the objection, and show that it does not show that moral beauty does not exist. I present two responses: namely, that the beauty of moral beauty does (...) not lie in the moral goodness per se (the “adjacent properties” response); and that only a dispositional motivation to act is required for the moral judgements that are typically made as part of judgements of moral beauty, whereas aesthetic judgements only rule out state motivations to act (the “equivocation of motivation required” response). In addressing the objection, I show how moral beauty is consistent with disinterestedness, and so should be accepted more widely; and also clarify where the beauty in moral beauty resides, and how the moral-aesthetic distinction should be drawn. (shrink)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke insists that all knowledge consists in perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. However, he also insists that knowledge extends to outer reality, claiming that perception yields ‘sensitive knowledge’ of the existence of outer objects. Some scholars have argued that Locke did not really mean to restrict knowledge to perceptions of relations within the realm of ideas; others have argued that sensitive knowledge is not strictly speaking a form of knowledge for Locke. (...) This chapter argues that Locke’s conception of sensitive knowledge is in fact compatible with his official definition of knowledge, and discusses his treatment of the problem of skepticism, both in the Essay and in the correspondence with Stillingfleet. (shrink)

Which traits are beautiful? And is their beauty perceptual? It is argued that moral virtues are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain emotion— ecstasy—and that compassion tends to be more beautiful than fair-mindedness because it tends to give rise to this emotion to a greater extent. It is then argued, on the basis that emotions are best thought of as a special, evaluative, kind of perception, that this argument suggests that moral virtues (...) are partly beautiful to the extent that they tend to give rise to a certain kind of evaluative perceptual experience. (shrink)