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)

Similarity and difference, patterns of variation, consistency and coherence: these are the reference points of the philosopher. Understanding experience, exploring ideas through particular instantiations, novel and innovative thinking: these are the reference points of the artist. However, at certain points in the proceedings of our Symposium titled, Next to Nothing: Art as Performance, this characterisation of philosopher and artist respectively might have been construed the other way around. The commentator/philosophers referenced their philosophical interests through the particular examples/instantiations created by the (...) artist and in virtue of which they were then able to engage with novel and innovative thinking. From the artists’ presentations, on the other hand, emerged a series of contrasts within which philosophical and artistic ideas resonated. This interface of philosopher-artist bore witness to the fact that just as art approaches philosophy in providing its own analysis, philosophy approaches art in being a co-creator of art’s meaning. In what follows, we discuss the conception of philosophy-art that emerged from the Symposium, and the methodological minimalism which we employed in order to achieve it. We conclude by drawing out an implication of the Symposium’s achievement which is that a counterpoint to Institutional theories of art may well be the point from which future directions will take hold, if philosophy-art gains traction. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemologists of education have raised concerns about the distorting effects of some of the processes and structures of contemporary academia on the epistemic practice and character of academic researchers. Such concerns have been articulated using the concept of epistemic corruption. In this paper, we lend credibility to these theoretically-motivated concerns using the example of the research impact agenda during the period 2012-2014. Interview data from UK and Australian academics confirms the impact agenda system, at its inception, facilitated the development (...) and exercise of epistemic vices. As well as vindicating theoretically-motivated claims about epistemic corruption, inclusion of empirical methods and material can help us put the concept to work in ongoing critical scrutiny of evolving forms of the research impact agenda. (shrink)

This paper considers the nature of the changes that took place in logic teaching at the University of Oxford from the beginning of the sixteenth century, when students attended university lectures on Aristotle’s texts as well as studying short works dealing with specifically medieval developments, to the beginning of the eighteenth century when teaching was centred in the colleges, the medieval developments had largely disappeared, and manuals summarizing Aristotelian logic were used. The paper also considers the reasons for these changes, (...) including changes in English society, and the effect of humanism and the more scholarly Aristotelianism that it produced. (shrink)

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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

Moral abolitionists claim that morality ought to be abolished. According to one of their most prominent arguments, this is because making moral judgments renders people significantly less tolerant toward anyone who holds divergent views. In this paper we investigate the hypothesis that morality’s tolerance-decreasing effect only occurs if people are realists about moral issues, i.e., they interpret these issues as objectively grounded. We found support for this hypothesis (Studies 1 and 2). Yet, it also turned out that the intolerance associated (...) with realism is mediated by moral conviction and perceived consensus. People tend to feel more strongly about those moral issues they ground objectively and, in doing so, are more prone to display the vice of moral smugness toward those who disagree with them. The remedy for this that has been recommended is humility which we found (Study 3) is indeed related to reduced intolerance, in part by predicting a reduction in realism, but also in part through a direct connection to intolerance. These results put pressure on abolitionists’ “argument from intolerance.”. (shrink)

The dominant approach to assessing decision-making capacity in medicine focuses on determining the extent to which individuals possess certain core cognitive abilities. Critics have argued that this model delivers the wrong verdict in certain cases where patient values that are the product of mental disorder or disordered affective states undermine decision-making without undermining cognition. I argue for a re-conceptualization of what it is to possess the capacity to make medical treatment decisions. It is, I argue, the ability to track one’s (...) own personal interests at least as well as most people can. Using this idea, I demonstrate that it is possible to craft a solution for the problem cases—one that neither alters existing criteria in dangerous ways (e.g. does not open the door to various kinds of abuse) nor violates the spirit of widely accepted ethical constraints on decision-making assessment. (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)

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)

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)

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she’s entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one’s knowledge that p. That’s why one (...) can’t rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called ‘the defeat solution’. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it doesn’t rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls ‘Entitlement’ (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser. (shrink)

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

A promising development in the philosophy of causation analyzes actual causation using structural equation models, i.e., “causal models”. This paper carefully considers what it means for an interpreted model to be accurate of its target situation. These considerations show, first, that our existing understanding of accuracy is inadequate. Further, and more controversially, they show that any causal model analysis is committed to a kind of relativism – a view whereby causation is a three-part relation holding between a cause, an effect, (...) and something else. In particular, insofar as a causal model analysis construes causation mind-and-language independently, it must treat causation as relative to a specification of background possibilities – i.e., a ‘modal profile.’ Or, so I argue. (shrink)

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)

This dissertation takes up questions of access at the level of language itself, as well as in the context of cultural institutions in emerging global communities. Using the texts of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Shani Mootoo, I argue experimental narrative techniques develop new understandings of mental disability by pushing against the limits of language, particularly in relation to mentally disabled women. The novels and plays examined function as creative objects that refigure the reader’s relationship to mental disability through (...) embodied reading practices. In resisting previous tendencies to read literary representations of mental disability as metaphor, I offer an alternative framework for understanding mental disability as an ongoing interactive process between bodies. Drawing on work from disability studies, critical gender studies, and trauma theory, I call for approaches to mental disability in literature that understand reading as an interactive process between reader and text, proposing a methodology for understanding how embodied reading practices inspire new understandings of mental disability and trauma in emerging global communities. In appreciating mental disability as an ongoing interactive process between bodies, readers can better attend to the nuanced ways in which complex embodiment calls for innovative modes of storytelling that challenge histories of representation. (shrink)

Jennifer Hawkins (2024) offers two cases that challenge traditional accounts of decision-making capacity, according to which respect for a medical decision turns on an individual’s cognitive capacities at the time the decision is made (Hawkins 2024; Appelbaum and Grisso 1988). In each of her described cases (involving anorexia nervosa and grief, respectively), a patient makes a decision that—although instrumentally rational at the time—does not reflect the patient’s longer-term values due to being in a particular psychological state. Importantly, this state (...) does not impair the patient’s cognition, but rather predisposes them to make a decision that conflicts with their own broader values, beliefs, or desires. (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)

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)

The authors included in this anthology of historical texts on aesthetics and philosophy of art, address the big questions. They attempt to place art within experience generally or within the life of a community; or they attempt to understand the nature of the aesthetic and its role within experience. Topics include mimesis, the relation between art and truth, the metaphysics of beauty, the function of art, and the ontology of art. All of the extracts included were written prior to the (...) middle of this century. The only aspect of this anthology which suggests that it was published recently is the inclusion of three Chinese pieces and one Indian piece. (shrink)

Recently several authors have argued that accuracy-first epistemology ends up licensing problematic epistemic bribes. They charge that it is better, given the accuracy-first approach, to deliberately form one false belief if this will lead to forming many other true beliefs. We argue that this is not a consequence of the accuracy-first view. If one forms one false belief and a number of other true beliefs, then one is committed to many other false propositions, e.g., the conjunction of that false belief (...) with any of the true beliefs. Once we properly account for all the falsehoods that are adopted by the person who takes the bribe, it turns out that the bribe does not increase accuracy. (shrink)

In August 2021, Froese et al. published survey data collected from 2,543 respondents on their subjective experiences living under imposed social distancing measures during COVID-19 (1). The questionnaire was issued to respondents in the UK, Japan, and Mexico. By combining the authors’ expertise in phenomenological philosophy, phenomenological psychopathology, and enactive cognitive science, the questions were carefully phrased to prompt reports that would be useful to phenomenological investigation and theorizing (2–4). These questions reflected the various author’s research interests (e.g., technology, grief, (...) time). Between April 7th and July 31st, 2021, a second questionnaire with the same question set was issued to respondents of the original who had agreed to do a follow-up. This was intended to capture subjective reports of life under social distancing measures a year after the initial survey. By this time–depending on their country of residence and health status–respondents had potentially lived with repeated and prolonged lockdowns and a variety of other restrictions on their social lives. When taken together, Survey I and Survey II provide a cross-cultural and longitudinal dataset that allows for analysis of longer-term impacts of imposed social distancing measures on people’s experiences. For researchers working in diverse disciplines, this dataset offers a rich resource that reflects people’s reactions to the imposition of different social restrictions in different countries and over different time periods. (shrink)

A ‘duality’ is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world—differing in e.g. space-time structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what (...) is one to say about the ontology of the world? In this paper, we undertake a comprehensive and non-technical survey of the landscape of possible ontological interpretations of duality-related theories. We provide a significantly enriched and clarified taxonomy of options—several of which are novel to the literature. (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)

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)

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)

Gender, race, and sexuality are not just identities; they are also systems of social organization – i.e., systems of privilege and oppression. This article addresses two main ways privilege and oppression (e.g., racism, misogyny, heteronormativity) are relevant topics in and for philosophical aesthetics: (i) the role of the aesthetic in privilege and oppression, and (ii) the role of philosophical aesthetics, as a discipline and a body of texts, in constructing and naturalizing relations of privilege and oppression (i.e., white heteropatriarchy). The (...) first part addresses how systems of privilege and oppression use the aesthetic. I will discuss various ways race, gender, and sexuality, as both embodied identities and broader social institutions, work with and through “the aesthetic”. The second part addresses racism and (hetero) sexism in the discipline of aesthetics. Both in its history and its present practice aesthetics’apparent neutrality on questions of privilege and oppression is actually evidence of its investment in systems of privilege and oppression. (shrink)

In the last decade, there has been a notable upsurge in property (PD) and generic substance dualism (SD). By SD I mean the view that there is a spiritual substantial soul that is different from but variously related to its body. SD includes Cartesian, certain forms of late Medieval hylomorphic (e.g., Aquinas'), and Haskerian emergent SD. Nevertheless, some form of physicalism remains the majority view in philosophy of mind. Several fairly standard objections have been raised against SD, and SDists have (...) been preoccupied with these objections. As a result, a potent objection has not been given the attention it deserves. The purpose of this article is to fill that lacuna by raising the visibility of this objection and providing plausible responses to it. First, I shall clarify the explanatory–impotence challenge and, second, provide defeaters against it. Note that several of the issues to follow apply both to PD and SD. I will focus mostly on SD, but sometimes PD is a part of the discussion in that certain arguments for and against PD indirectly affect SD. When it is important for me to note that either SD or PD is specifically being addressed, I will notify the reader. (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)

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)

A. E. Taylor states the widely held view that Plato’s Euthyphro posed a question which figured prominently in later ethical controversies: “It amounts to asking whether acts of piety, or more generally virtuous acts, derive their character of being right from the mere fact of being commanded or are commanded because they are antecedently intrinsically right.” I argue against this characterization of the Euthyphro. The argument Socrates deploys against Euthyphro’s third and most serious definition of holiness or piety (to hosion) (...) is not the opening round in the debate over divine command theory nor is a discussion of the nature of holiness ipso facto an exercise in ethical theory. (shrink)

A review of David E. Cooper's book, "Animals and Misanthropy", which argues that reflection on awful treatment of animals justifies a negative critical judgment on human life and culture.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to social restrictions that often prevented us from hugging the ones we love. This absence helped some realize just how important these interactions are to our sense of care and connection. Many turned to digitally mediated social interactions to address these absences, but often unsatisfactorily. Some theorists might blame this on the disembodied character of our digital spaces, e.g., that interpersonal touch is excluded from our lives online. However, others continued to find care and connection in (...) their digitally mediated interactions despite not being able to touch. Inspired by such contrasting cases, we ask if ‘digital hugs’ can work? We use the Mixed Reality Interaction Matrix to examine hugging as a social practice. This leads us to several claims about the nature of our embodied social interactions and their digital mediation: (1) all social interaction is mediated; (2) all virtual experiences are embodied; (3) technology has become richer and more supportive of embodiment; and (4) expertise plays a role. These claims help make the case that quality social connections online are substantially dependent upon the dynamic skilful resourcing of multiple mediating components, what we term digital tact. By introducing and developing this concept, we hope to contribute to a better understanding of our digital embodied sociality and the possibilities for caring connections online. (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.

Public reason liberalism is the political theory which holds that coercive laws and policies are justified when and only when they are grounded in reasons of the public. The standard interpretation of public reason liberalism, consensus accounts, claim that the reasons persons share or that persons can derive from shared values determine which policies can be justified. In this paper, I argue that consensus approaches cannot justify fair educational policies and preserving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies about (...) teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice. But they cannot determine which culture goods, e.g., architecture, artwork, or language ought to be preserved in the education system. Consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about these kinds of disputes. -/- I propose that convergence accounts of public reason, which allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition. The convergence approach can justify a pluralist state that can advance valuable community goods. John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that there can be a shared moral vision and inquiry into the good life across deep substantive disagreements about educational values and policies, once we expand our notion of justification to be more inclusive. (shrink)

Recent theorizing argues that online communication technologies provide powerful, although precarious, means of emotional regulation. We develop this understanding further. Drawing on subjective reports collected during periods of imposed social restrictions under COVID-19, we focus on how this precarity is a source of emo-tional dysregulation. We make our case by organizing responses into five distinct but intersecting dimensions wherein the precarity of this regulation is most relevant: infrastructure, functional use, mindful design (individual and social), and digital tact. Analyzing these reports, (...) along with examples of mediating technologies (i.e., self-view) and common interactive dynamics (e.g., gaze coordination), we tease out how breakdowns along these dimensions are sources of affective dysregulation. We argue that the adequacy of available technological resources and competencies of various kinds matter greatly to the types of emotional experiences one is likely to have online. Further research into online communication technologies as modula-tors of both our individual and collective well-being is urgently needed, especially as the echoes of the digital push that COVID-19 initiated are set to continue rever-berating into the future. (shrink)

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)

While many philosophers of religion are familiar with the reconciliation of grace and freedom known as Molinism, fewer by far are familiar with that position initially developed by Molina’s erstwhile rival, Domingo Banez (i.e., Banezianism). My aim is to clarify a serious problem for the Banezian: how the Banezian can avoid the apparent conflict between a strong notion of freedom and apparently compatibilist conclusions. The most prominent attempt to defend Banezianism against compatibilism was (in)famously endorsed by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Even if (...) it were true that freedom does not require alternative possibilities, Banezians have a grounding problem. (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)

It is shown that libertarian anarchism (i.e., consistent liberalism) is unavoidably true.

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)

Diogenes Laertius reports (in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers ix 19) that Xenophanes of Colophon stated that ta polla hêssô nou (in some sense, ‘that the many give way to mind’). After reviewing four alternative but unsatisfactory ways of understanding the remark I argue that it is best understood as ‘the multitude of things (i.e. the cosmos) gives way to—is mastered by—the (divine) mind.’ When understood in this way the remark establishes Xenophanes as one of the earliest Greek thinkers to (...) hold that events throughout the cosmos take place under the control of a supremely powerful divine intelligence. (shrink)

The alienation constraint on theories of well-being has been influentially expressed thus: 'what is intrinsically valuable for a person must have a connection with what he would find in some degree compelling or attractive …. It would be an intolerably alienated conception of someone’s good to imagine that it might fail in any such way to engage him' (Railton 1986: 9). Many agree this claim expresses something true, but there is little consensus on how exactly the constraint is to be (...) understood. Here, I clarify the sense in which the quote offers a basic constraint on theories of well-being—a constraint that should be adopted by (e.g.) hedonists, desire satisfactionists, and objective list theorists alike. This constraint focuses on affective engagement, or positive affective stances in connection with a proposed good. I show that the constraint explains a near-universal intuition, and rules out a number of well-known theories of well-being. (shrink)

Context — Children and adults with psychopathic traits and conduct or oppositional defiant disorder demonstrate poor decision making and are impaired in reversal learning. However, the neural basis of this impairment has not previously been investigated. Furthermore, despite high comorbidity of psychopathic traits and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, to our knowledge, no research has attempted to distinguish neural correlates of childhood psychopathic traits and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Objective—To determine the neural regions that underlie the reversal learning impairments in children with psychopathic traits (...) plus conduct or oppositional defiant disorder. Design — Case-control study. Setting — Government clinical research institute. Participants — Forty-two adolescents aged 10 to 17 years: 14 with psychopathic traits and oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder, 14 with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder only, and 14 healthy controls. Main Outcome Measure — Blood oxygenation level–dependent signal as measured via functional magnetic resonance imaging during a probabilistic reversal task. Results — Children with psychopathic traits showed abnormal responses within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Brodmann area 10) during punished reversal errors compared with children wit hattention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and healthy children (P < .05 corrected for multiple comparisons). Conclusions — To our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence of abnormal ventromedial prefrontal cortex responsiveness in children with psychopathic traits and demonstrates this dysfunction was not attributable to comorbid attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. These findings suggest that reversal learning impairments in patients with developmental psychopathic traits relate to abnormal processing of reinforcement information. (shrink)