Picture a simple scenario: a worm, in its modest way, traces a trail of paint as it moves across a sheet of paper. Now shift your imagination to a more complex scene, where a chimpanzee paints on another sheet of paper. A simple question arises: Do you perceive an identical creative process in these two animals? Can both of these animals be designated as authors of their creation? If only one, which one? This paper delves into the complexities of authorship, (...) consciousness, and agency, unpacking the nuanced distinctions between such scenarios and exploring the underlying principles that define creative authorship across different forms of life. It becomes evident that attributing authorship to an animal hinges on its intention to create, an aspect intertwined with its agency and awareness of the creative act. These concepts are far from straightforward, as they traverse the complex landscapes of animal ethics and law. But our exploration does not stop there. Now imagine a robot, endowed with artificial intelligence, producing music. This prompts us to question how we should evaluate and perceive such creations. Is the creative process of a machine fundamentally different from that of an animal or a human? As we venture further into this realm of human-made intelligence, we confront an array of ethical, philosophical, and legal quandaries. This paper provides a platform for a reflective discussion: ethologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, and bioinformaticians converge in a multidisciplinary dialogue. Their insights provide valuable perspectives for establishing a foundation upon which to discuss the intricate concepts of authorship and appropriation concerning artistic works generated by non-human entities. (shrink)

"The enterprise initiative is probably the most significant political and cultural influence to have affected Western and Eastern Europe in the last decade. In this book, academics from a range of disciplines debate Mary Douglas's distinctive Grid Group cultural theory and examine how it allows us to analyse the complex relation between the culture of enterprise and its institutions. Mary Douglas, Britain's leading cultural anthropologist, contributes several chapters."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Durant la pandémie, le numérique s’est révélé un outil précieux pour assurer une continuité de la vie professionnelle, de l’éducation, de la vie familiale et amicale, et assurer une appétence pour la vie culturelle disponible en ligne. La bataille contre le coronavirus grâce au numérique se joue également sur d’autres plans : des gouvernements, avec l’appui d’entreprises privées, développent de nouvelles politiques de surveillance de l’épidémie et des personnes infectées. Ces usages technologiques sont des gages d’efficacité mais également des facteurs (...) de risques pour les libertés des citoyens. (shrink)

The fact that Internet companies may record our personal data and track our online behavior for commercial or political purpose has emphasized aspects related to online privacy. This has also led to the development of search engines that promise no tracking and privacy. Search engines also have a major role in spreading low-quality health information such as that of anti-vaccine websites. This study investigates the relationship between search engines’ approach to privacy and the scientific quality of the information they return. (...) We analyzed the first 30 webpages returned searching “vaccines autism” in English, Spanish, Italian, and French. The results show that not only “alternative” search engines but also other commercial engines often return more anti-vaccine pages (10–53%) than Google (0%). Some localized versions of Google, however, returned more anti-vaccine webpages (up to 10%) than Google. Health information returned by search engines has an impact on public health and, specifically, in the acceptance of vaccines. The issue of information quality when seeking information for making health-related decisions also impact the ethical aspect represented by the right to an informed consent. Our study suggests that designing a search engine that is privacy savvy and avoids issues with filter bubbles that can result from user-tracking is necessary but insufficient; instead, mechanisms should be developed to test search engines from the perspective of information quality (particularly for health-related webpages) before they can be deemed trustworthy providers of public health information. (shrink)

Several of the most compelling anti-materialist arguments are motivated by the supposed existence of an unbridgeable epistemic gap between first-person subjective knowledge about one’s own conscious experience and third-personally acquired knowledge. The two with which this paper is concerned are Frank Jackson’s ‘knowledge argument’ and David Chalmers’s ‘modal argument’. The knowledge argument and the modal argument are often taken to function as ‘two sides of the same coin … in principle each succeeds on its own, but in practice they work (...) best in tandem’. This paper disagrees with the above claim, and argues that when considered together the knowledge argument and modal arguments illuminate each other’s weaknesses. These weaknesses become apparent when we acknowledge the epistemic richness of the cognitive aspect of perceptual experience, and question the epistemic role that any non-cognitive aspect might play. Closer examination of judgments about what it’s like to have a perceptual experience reveals fundamental problems with the knowledge argument, and when these problems are exposed, the two arguments can no longer ‘buttress each other where help is needed’. It becomes clear that neither is likely to succeed on its own, and when taken together both are destabilized. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)

For Aristotle, a verb (ῥῆμα) is that which a) besides a proper meaning b) carry with it the notion of time; c) its parts do not significate separately and d) is a sign of something said of something else (OI ., 2, 16b6-8). This comprehensive definition distinguishes verbs from both nouns (since they do not carry the notion of time with themselves) and sentences or co-positings of words (since they have parts with independent meanings). Based on this definition, a verb (...) signifies three things: i) A main or proper meaning which is the meaning of the verb, e.g. running or sleeping; ii) time and iii) co-positing (or positing away). Although it is not asserted that one part is responsible for prossignification of time, its responsibility is given to co-positing-is. This might seem to be in contradiction with (c). However, it seems that (c) cannot include prossignifications of time and co-positing. What Aristotle means in (c) is just that parts of a verb cannot separately signify a meaning. Therefore, it is better to distinguish between signification, which is about meaning and prossignification, which is generally about anything but meaning. Hence, while the parts of the verb cannot have separate signification, they can have separate prossignification. Aristotle distinguishes between different kinds of verbs: 1) Definite verbs: those verbs that have definite nouns as their verb-name. 2) Indefinite verbs: those verbs that do not have definite nouns as their verb-name (OI., I, 3, 16b12-14; 10, 19b10-11). Aristotle’s examples of an indefinite verb are ‘is not-healthy’ and ‘is not-ill’. 3) Tenses of verbs: ‘was healthy’ and ‘will be healthy’ are tenses of the verb ‘is healthy’ because a verb indicates only the present time (OI., I, 3, 16b16-18). For Aristotle, almost all verbs either are composed of or can be analyzed to parts. An example of the former is ‘is healthy’ and of the latter is ‘runs,’ which can be analyzed to two parts: ‘is running.’ (OI., I, 10, 20a3-5; II, 12, 21b5-8). Thus, for him a verb either includes or can be analyzed to two parts: a part that includes the meaning and is, or is shown, by a name we call ‘verb-name’ (a), and a part that includes the co-positing of that meaning with the subject of the verb, which is or is shown by ‘is’, which we call ‘co-positing-is’ (d). The verb ‘runs’, for example, can be analyzed to a verb-name, ‘running’ and a co-positing-is (Note: Aristotle distinguishes between the verb ‘is’ in the sense of ‘exists’ and the co-positing ‘is’. Whereas in the former ‘is’ is a verb, having a signification of its own, which is ‘existing’, besides signifying time (OI., I, 10, 19b12-19), the ‘is’ in the latter is not a verb (Aristotle calls it ‘incidental’ is (OI., II, 11, 21a25-28) and is not sure whether to call it a verb or a noun (OI., I, 10, 19b22-24)) because it does not signify existing and, thus, need something else to be added. This something else is the meaning we are discussing. Therefore, it is only after the addition of the meaning to this ‘is’ that we have a verb. This is, I believe, the sense of the so much controversial text of OI, I, 3, 16b22-25: ‘For being and not being signify the existence of a thing not τὸ ὄν εἴπῃς αὐτὸ καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸ ψιλόν. For it does not indicate anything but prossignifies some co-positing (σύνθεσίν). Aristotle’s words at 16b24 about co-positing-is that it ‘prossignifies some co-positing’ (προσσημαίνει δὲ σύνθεσίν τινα) is an explicit evidence that she cannot be right.) and is not a concept apart from the things co-posited (συγκειμένων).’ This text, however, is so controversial. Originating from Ammonius and Boethius after him, who used the verb ‘copular’ for ‘est’ and Abelard, some commentators like Weidemann, Oehler, Francisco Ademollo take ‘is’ as having a copulative function. Allen Bāck notes that Aristotle does not separate off ‘is’ from other verbs as a mere copula but takes it ‘as the basic, paradigmatic form of the verb.’ He believes that in his interpretation of Aristotle (in: OI., 55, 19-24) Ammonius also took it as the paradigm for all verbs. Francisco Ademollo criticizes the standard view of taking ‘is’ as copula here and is inclined to take it as essential. David Ross thinks that although Aristotle is aware of the distinction between the existential and the copulative is, he has as yet no very clear idea of their relation. Although Jonathan Barnes agrees that the copula is surely present in de Interpretation, he thinks that at 16b22-25 Aristotle ought to be talking of existential εἶναι. Marie De Rijk Lambartus believes that there is no copula in Aristotle’s philosophical analysis of the elementary sentences and it is a mere corpus alienum in Aristotle’s semantics. Allan Bȃck believes that the copulative theory is not Aristotle’s and ‘may have come to dominate as a result of the neoPlatonizing interpretations of Aristotle’s works by Proclus, Ammonius and Boethius, which is the sign of the relation of running with a subject, e.g. Socrates in ‘Socrates runs’. Nonetheless, none of these parts significate separately. This is supposed to mean that a verb is a single signification. However, it is evident that each of the parts can signify if we use them in a different context as both of ‘running’ and ‘is’ in ‘runs’ or both of ‘is’ and ‘healthy’ in ‘is healthy’ can do. It might seem now that the first mentioned definition of verb might be contradictory. While Aristotle asserts that the parts of verb do not signify separately (d), he considers two other significations for a verb: the signification of time and relation. As it is obvious, both of these significations are done by one part of the verb, that is the co-positing-is. Therefore, in a verb e.g. ‘is healthy’ we have three significations: the significations of meaning, time and co-positing. Aristotle uses prossignification both for time (προσσημαῖνον χρόνον, OI., 2, 16b4) and co-positing (προσσημαίνει δἑ σύνθεσὶν τινα, OI, I, 3, 16b23-24). Since the copula part of a verb has no signification and does not form any conception, a verb is indeed its verb-name. Thus we see Aristotle saying that ‘verbs are in and by themselves names and signify something’ and like names, he adds, they arrest the hearer’s mind and fix his attention (OI., I, 3, 16b19-22). We can conclude then that verbs are names said of something else and carrying time. In other words, verbs are words that though have one single signification, as names have, they also have two other prossignifications: time and relation. (shrink)

The debate about the ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence dates from the 1960s :741–742, 1960; Wiener in Cybernetics: or control and communication in the animal and the machine, MIT Press, New York, 1961). However, in recent years symbolic AI has been complemented and sometimes replaced by Neural Networks and Machine Learning techniques. This has vastly increased its potential utility and impact on society, with the consequence that the ethical debate has gone mainstream. Such a debate has primarily focused on principles—the (...) ‘what’ of AI ethics —rather than on practices, the ‘how.’ Awareness of the potential issues is increasing at a fast rate, but the AI community’s ability to take action to mitigate the associated risks is still at its infancy. Our intention in presenting this research is to contribute to closing the gap between principles and practices by constructing a typology that may help practically-minded developers apply ethics at each stage of the Machine Learning development pipeline, and to signal to researchers where further work is needed. The focus is exclusively on Machine Learning, but it is hoped that the results of this research may be easily applicable to other branches of AI. The article outlines the research method for creating this typology, the initial findings, and provides a summary of future research needs. (shrink)

As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence, in particular machine learning, has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of (...) AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible or too strict. This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’. (shrink)

We suggest that the emerging field of the conservation humanities can play a valuable role in biodiversity protection in Papua New Guinea (PNG), where most land remains under collective customary clan ownership. As a first step to mobilising this scholarly field in PNG and to support capacity development for PNG humanities academics, we conducted a landscape review of PNG humanities teaching and research relating to biodiversity conservation and customary land rights. We conducted a systematic literature review, a PNG teaching programme (...) review, and a series of online workshops between the authors (10 PNG-based, 7 UK-based). We found a small but notable amount of PNG research and teaching focused on biodiversity conservation or customary land rights. This included explicit discussion of these topics in 8 of 156 PNG-authored humanities texts published 2010-2020 and related teaching content in the curricula of several different humanities-based programmes. We discuss current barriers to PNG academic development. The growth of fully fledged in-country conservation humanities will require a joint collaborative effort by PNG researchers, who are best placed to carry out such work, and researchers from abroad who can access resources to support the process. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in formal pragmatic theory, this paper shows that the manipulation of discourse structure—in particular, by way of shifting the Question Under Discussion mid-discourse—can constitute an act of epistemic injustice. I argue that the “All Lives Matter” response to the “Black Lives Matter” slogan is one such case; this response shifts the Question Under Discussion governing the overarching discourse from Do Black lives matter? to Which lives matter? This manipulation of the discourse structure systematically obscures the intended (...) meaning of “Black lives matter” and disincentivizes future utterances of it. (shrink)

We propose a pluralist account of content for predictive processing systems. Our pluralism combines Millikan's teleosemantics with existing structural resemblance accounts. The paper has two goals. First, we outline how a teleosemantic treatment of signal passing in predictive processing systems would work, and how it integrates with structural resemblance accounts. We show that the core explanatory motivations and conceptual machinery of teleosemantics and predictive processing mesh together well. Second, we argue this pluralist approach expands the range of empirical cases to (...) which the predictive processing framework might be successfully applied. This is because our pluralism is practice-oriented. A range of different notions of content are used in the cognitive sciences to explain behaviour, and some of these cases look to employ teleosemantic notions. As a result, our pluralism gives predictive processing the scope to cover these cases. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore to some extent the relationship between identity and necessity in logic and metaphysics. First, I provide a historically-based summary of proofs of the necessity of identity, highlighting the importance of the role that self-identity plays. Second, I introduce two examples of metaphysical topics where the necessity of identity has played a pivotal role: the necessary a posteriori, and the coincidence of material objects. I argue that important aspects of these debates rest on (...) how we represent identity. Third, I consider some recent work on generalized identity. This opens up new prospects for explaining why identity is necessary. (shrink)

If there is any consensus about knowledge in contemporary epistemology, it is that there is one primary kind: knowledge-that. I put forth a view, one I find in the works of Aristotle, on which knowledge-of – construed in a fairly demanding sense, as being well-acquainted with things – is the primary, fundamental kind of knowledge. As to knowledge-that, it is not distinct from knowledge-of, let alone more fundamental, but instead a species of it. To know that such-and-such, just like to (...) know a person or place, is to be well-acquainted with a portion of reality – in this case a fact. In part by comparing classic Gettier cases to cases in which one has true impressions of but fails to know a person, I argue that this account not only respects our intuitions about knowledge-that – in particular that it is or entails non-accidentally true justified belief – but also explains them, providing a compelling analysis. (shrink)

This paper identifies, develops, and argues for an interpretation of Mary Astell’s understanding of self-government. On this interpretation, what is essential to self-government, according to Astell, is an agent’s responsiveness to her own reasoning. The paper identifies two aspects of her theory of self-government: an ‘authenticity’ criterion of what makes our motives our own and an account of the capacities required for responsiveness to our own reasoning. The authenticity criterion states that when our motives arise from some external source without (...) validation by our own understanding of the reasons supporting them, then they are not our own. The capacities requisite for responsiveness to our own reasoning are those of examining and evaluating our own motives and of resisting the social pressure to conform to others’ opinions. An upshot of this interpretation of Astell’s theory of self-government is that it reveals her insights into the ways ‘custom’ can undermine an individual’s ability to govern oneself. (shrink)

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens (...) in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties. (shrink)

New scientific advances have created previously unheard of possibilities for enhancing combatants' performance. Future war fighters may be smarter, stronger, and braver than ever before. If these technologies are safe, is there any reason to reject their use? In this article, I argue that the use of enhancements is constrained by the importance of maintaining the moral responsibility of military personnel. This is crucial for two reasons: the military's ethical commitments require military personnel to be morally responsible agents, and moral (...) responsibility is necessary for integrity and the moral emotions of guilt and remorse, both of which are important for moral growth and psychological well-being. Enhancements that undermined combatants' moral responsibility would therefore undermine the military's moral standing and would harm combatants' well-being. A genuine commitment to maintaining the military's ethical standards and the well-being of combatants therefore requires a careful analysis of performance-enhancing technologies before they are implemented. (shrink)

This paper compares two alternative explanations of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge (i.e., the claim that whether an agent knows that p can depend on pragmatic factors). After reviewing the evidence for such pragmatic encroachment, we ask how it is best explained, assuming it obtains. Several authors have recently argued that the best explanation is provided by a particular account of belief, which we call pragmatic credal reductivism. On this view, what it is for an agent to believe a proposition is (...) for her credence in this proposition to be above a certain threshold, a threshold that varies depending on pragmatic factors. We show that while this account of belief can provide an elegant explanation of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, it is not alone in doing so, for an alternative account of belief, which we call the reasoning disposition account, can do so as well. And the latter account, we argue, is far more plausible than pragmatic credal reductivism, since it accords far better with a number of claims about belief that are very hard to deny. (shrink)

Multi-user online environments involve millions of participants world-wide. In these online communities participants can use their online personas – avatars – to chat, fight, make friends, have sex, kill monsters and even get married. Unfortunately participants can also use their avatars to stalk, kill, sexually assault, steal from and torture each other. Despite attempts to minimise the likelihood of interpersonal virtual harm, programmers cannot remove all possibility of online deviant behaviour. Participants are often greatly distressed when their avatars are harmed (...) by other participants’ malicious actions, yet there is a tendency in the literature on this topic to dismiss such distress as evidence of too great an involvement in and identification with the online character. In this paper I argue that this dismissal of virtual harm is based on a set of false assumptions about the nature of avatar attachment and its relation to genuine moral harm. I argue that we cannot dismiss avatar attachment as morally insignificant without being forced to also dismiss other, more acceptable, forms of attachment such as attachment to possessions, people and cultural objects and communities. Arguments against according moral significance to virtual harm fail because they do not reflect participants’ and programmers’ experiences and expectations of virtual communities and they have the unintended consequence of failing to grant significance to attachments that we take for granted, morally speaking. Avatar attachment is expressive of identity and self-conception and should therefore be accorded the moral significance we give to real-life attachments that play a similar role. (shrink)

This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. I call this the "Difference Intuition." I define lying in terms of asserting, but remain open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. I define implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. I narrow down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether (...) there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, I set out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and survey a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. I finish by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill's discussion of lying. (shrink)

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

Technologies to rapidly alert people when they have been in contact with someone carrying the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 are part of a strategy to bring the pandemic under control. Currently, at least 47 contact-tracing apps are available globally. They are already in use in Australia, South Korea and Singapore, for instance. And many other governments are testing or considering them. Here we set out 16 questions to assess whether — and to what extent — a contact-tracing app is ethically justifiable.

Recent years have seen fresh impetus brought to debates about the proper role of statistical evidence in the law. Recent work largely centres on a set of puzzles known as the ‘proof paradox’. While these puzzles may initially seem academic, they have important ramifications for the law: raising key conceptual questions about legal proof, and practical questions about DNA evidence. This article introduces the proof paradox, why we should care about it, and new work attempting to resolve it.

Recent work takes both philosophical and scientific progress to consist in acquiring factive epistemic states such as knowledge. However, much of this work leaves unclear what entity is the subject of these epistemic states. Furthermore, by focusing only on states like knowledge, we overlook progress in intermediate cases between ignorance and knowledge—for example, many now celebrated theories were initially so controversial that they were not known. -/- This paper develops an improved framework for thinking about intellectual progress. Firstly, I argue (...) that we should think of progress relative to the epistemic position of an intellectual community rather than individual inquirers. Secondly, I show how focusing on the extended process of inquiry (rather than the mere presence or absence of states like knowledge) provides a better evaluation of different types of progress. This includes progress through formulating worthwhile questions, acquiring new evidence, and increasing credence on the right answers to these questions. I close by considering the ramifications for philosophical progress, suggesting that my account supports rejecting the most negative views while allowing us to articulate different varieties of optimism and pessimism. (shrink)

According to mainstream philosophical views causal explanation in biology and neuroscience is mechanistic. As the term ‘mechanism’ gets regular use in these fields it is unsurprising that philosophers consider it important to scientific explanation. What is surprising is that they consider it the only causal term of importance. This paper provides an analysis of a new causal concept—it examines the cascade concept in science and the causal structure it refers to. I argue that this concept is importantly different from the (...) notion of mechanism and that this difference matters for our understanding of causation and explanation in science. (shrink)

This article highlights the limitations of the tendency to frame health- and wellbeing-related digital tools (mHealth technologies) as empowering devices, especially as they play an increasingly important role in the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. It argues that mHealth technologies should instead be framed as digital companions. This shift from empowerment to companionship is advocated by showing the conceptual, ethical, and methodological issues challenging the narrative of empowerment, and by arguing that such challenges, as well as the risk (...) of medical paternalism, can be overcome by focusing on the potential for mHealth tools to mediate the relationship between recipients of clinical advice and givers of clinical advice, in ways that allow for contextual flexibility in the balance between patiency and agency. The article concludes by stressing that reframing the narrative cannot be the only means for avoiding harm caused to the NHS as a healthcare system by the introduction of mHealth tools. Future discussion will be needed on the overarching role of responsible design. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Kant has a far more communitarian theory of aesthetic life than is usually acknowledged. I focus on two aspects of Kant’s theory that might otherwise be taken to support an individualist reading, namely, Kant’s emphasis on aesthetic autonomy and his characterization of judgments of taste as involving demands for agreement. I argue that the full expression of autonomy in fact requires being a member of an aesthetic community and that within such a community, judgments (...) of taste are issued as invitations to others to engage their faculties towards the goal of shared aesthetic appreciation. (shrink)

The harmonious free play of the imagination and understanding is at the heart of Kant’s account of beauty in the Critique of the Power of Judgement, but interpreters have long struggled to determine what Kant means when he claims the faculties are in a state of free play. In this article, I develop an interpretation of the free play of the faculties in terms of the freedom of attention. By appealing to the different way that we attend to objects in (...) aesthetic experience, we can explain how the faculties are free, even when the subject already possesses a concept of the object and is bound to the determinate form of the object in perception. (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)

The term "fake news" ascended rapidly to prominence in 2016 and has become a fixture in academic and public discussions, as well as in political mud-slinging. In the flurry of discussion, the term has been applied so broadly as to threaten to render it meaningless. In an effort to rescue our ability to discuss—and combat—the underlying phenomenon that triggered the present use of the term, some philosophers have tried to characterize it more precisely. A common theme in this nascent philosophical (...) discussion is that contemporary fake news is not a new kind of phenomenon, but just the latest iteration of a broader kind of phenomenon that has played out in different ways across the history of human information-dissemination technologies. While we agree with this, we argue that newer sorts of fake news reveal substantial flaws in earlier understandings of this notion. In particular, we argue that no deceptive intentions are necessary for fake news to arise; rather, fake news arises when stories which were not produced via standard journalistic practice are treated as though they had been. Importantly, this revisionary understanding of fake news allows us to accommodate and understand the way that fake news is plausibly generated and spread in a contemporary setting, as much by non-human actors as by ordinary human beings. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the question of in virtue of what first-person thoughts are about what they are about. I focus on a dilemma arising from this question. On the one hand, approaches to answering this question that promise to be satisfying seem doomed to be inconsistent with the seeming truism that first-person thought is always about the thinker of the thought. But on the other hand, ensuring consistency with that truism seems doomed to make any answer to (...) the question unsatisfying. Contrary to a careful and enticing recent effort to both sharpen and escape this dilemma by Daniel Morgan, I will argue that the dilemma remains pressing both for broadly epistemic and broadly causal-acquaintance-based accounts of the aboutness of first-person thought. (shrink)

I argue that traditional views on which beliefs are subject only to purely epistemic assessment can reject demographic profiling, even when based on seemingly robust evidence. This is because the moral failures involved in demographic profiling can be located in the decision not to suspend judgment, rather than supposing that beliefs themselves are a locus of moral evaluation. A key moral reason to suspend judgment when faced with adverse demographic evidence is to promote social equality—this explains why positive profiling is (...) dubious, along with more familiar cases of negative profiling, and why profiling is suspect even when no particular action is at stake. My suspension-based view, while compatible with revisionary normative positions, does not presuppose them. Philosophers of all stripes can reject demographic profiling both in thought and deed. (shrink)

RELIGION TODAY (2nd edition) offers a refreshing introduction to the academic study of religion with a particular emphasis on critically informed analysis. The book skillfully explores diverse religious traditions and phenomena, providing readers with a comprehensive overview that encourages them to engage critically with the subject and materials. Written for an undergraduate audience, this book is accessible and well-organized, making it suitable for both students and general readers interested in sharpening their understanding of religion. Overall, Religion Today is a valuable (...) resource for anyone seeking to approach the academic study of religion. Its holistic approach, engaging writing style, and emphasis on critical thinking make it a welcome addition to various religious studies curriculums or personal libraries.” — Brad Stoddard, associate professor of Religious Studies, McDaniel College. (shrink)

Background: Use of patients’ medical data for secondary purposes such as health research, audit, and service planning is well established in the UK. However, the governance environment, as well as public understanding about this work, have lagged behind. We aimed to systematically review the literature on UK and Irish public views of patient data used in research, critically analysing such views though an established biomedical ethics framework, to draw out potential strategies for future good practice guidance and inform ethical and (...) privacy debates. Methods: We searched three databases using terms such as patient, public, opinion, and electronic health records. Empirical studies were eligible for inclusion if they surveyed healthcare users, patients or the public in UK and Ireland and examined attitudes, opinions or beliefs about the use of patient data for medical research. Results were synthesised into broad themes using a framework analysis. Results: Out of 13,492 papers and reports screened, 20 papers or reports were eligible. While there was a widespread willingness to share patient data for research for the common good, this very rarely led to unqualified support. The public expressed two generalised concerns about the potential risks to their privacy. The first of these concerns related to a party’s competence in keeping data secure, while the second was associated with the motivation a party might have to use the data. Conclusions: The public evaluates trustworthiness of research organisations by assessing their competence in data-handling and motivation for accessing the data. Public attitudes around data-sharing exemplified several principles which are also widely accepted in biomedical ethics. This provides a framework for understanding public attitudes, which should be considered in the development in any guidance for regulators and data custodians. We propose four salient questions which decision makers should address when evaluating proposals for the secondary use of data. (shrink)

Given that conspiracies exist, can we be justified in dismissing conspiracy theories without concerning ourselves with specific details? I answer this question by focusing on contrarian conspiracy theories, theories about conspiracies that conflict with testimony from reliable sources of information. For example, theories that say the CIA masterminded the assassination of John F. Kennedy, 9/11 was an inside job, or the Freemasons are secretly running the world are contrarian conspiracy theories. When someone argues for a contrarian conspiracy theory, their options (...) are to appeal to eyewitness testimony, incriminating documents, photographs, audio recordings, video recordings, allegedly scientific evidence, anomalies, or considerations of cui bono (who benefits). Most laypeople don’t know how to adequately respond to arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories, but this doesn’t mean that it’s dogmatic to reject them. I argue that many laypeople are defeasibly justified in rejecting a variety of contrarian conspiracy theories based on testimony and this justification is rarely defeated by arguments for contrarian conspiracy theories even if we don’t know how to respond to these arguments. (shrink)

This chapter is an examination of the way aporiai are employed in Aristotle’s scientific account of animal reproduction, and how they are resolved. I argue that – surprising as it may be, given what Aristotle says in Metaphysics B about the importance of going through aporiai – there seems to be nothing of much significance about his use of them, at least if we assume that genuine cases of aporiai are being tracked by use of aporia-language. I demonstrate this negative (...) thesis by systematically going through the examples. There seems to be no common purpose for which they are raised, they have no single type of structure, and they are not caused by any one sort of difficulty. (shrink)

The thesis that in order to genuinely think about a particular object one must be (in some sense) acquainted with that object has been thoroughly explored since it was put forward by Bertrand Russell. Recently, the thesis has come in for mounting criticism. The aim of this paper is to point out that neither the exploration nor the criticism have been sensitive to the fact that the thesis can be interpreted in two different ways, yielding two different principles of acquaintance. (...) One principle uses the notion of content in distinguishing genuine thinking-about things from a merely derivative kind of thinking-about things. The other principle is quiet about content, focusing instead on a distinction between satisfactional and non-satisfactional means of bringing things into thought. Most work has focused on the first, content-based principle of acquaintance. But criticisms of this principle do not apply straightforwardly to the non-content-based principle. I shall argue that the latter principle merits independent assessment as part of the broader effort to account for genuine thinking about particular objects. In the final section of the paper, I will sketch a roadmap for this assessment. (shrink)

Self-control is integral to successful human agency. Without it we cannot extend our agency across time and secure central social, moral, and personal goods. But self-control is not a unitary capacity. In the first part of this paper we provide a taxonomy of self-control and trace its connections to agency and the self. In part two, we turn our attention to the external conditions that support successful agency and the exercise of self-control. We argue that what we call moral security (...) is a critical foundation for agency. Parts three and four explore what happens to agency when moral security is lacking, as in the case of those subject to racism, and those living in poverty. The disadvantages suffered by those who are poor, in a racial minority or other oppressed group, or suffering mental illness or addiction, are often attributed to a lack of individual self-control or personal responsibility. In particular, members of these groups are often seen as irresponsibly focused on short-term pleasures over long-term good, a view underwritten by particular psychological theories of self-control. We explore how narratives about racism and poverty undermine moral security, and limit and distort the possibility of synchronic and diachronic self-control. Where moral security is undermined, the connection between self-control and diachronic goods often fails to obtain and agency contracts accordingly. We close with some preliminary reflections on the implications for responsibility. (shrink)

Criminal juries make decisions of great importance. A key criticism of juries is that they are unreliable in a multitude of ways, from exhibiting racial or gendered biases, to misunderstanding their role, to engaging in impropriety such as internet research. Recently, some have even claimed that the use of juries creates injustice on a large-scale, as a cause of low conviction rates for sexual criminality. Unfortunately, empirical research into jury deliberation is undermined by the fact that researchers are unable to (...) study live juries. The indirect sources of evidence used by researchers suffer from various problems, the most important of which is dubious levels of ecological validity. Real jury research—studying live jury deliberation—is controversial. However, as I argue, the objections to it are unconvincing. There is in fact a moral imperative to facilitate real jury research. (shrink)

This article argues for an interpretation of Aristotle’s biological account of familial resemblance that allows us to read Aristotle’s embryology as employing the same concept of “form” as he employs in his Metaphysics. The dominant view for the last several decades has been that in order to account for the phenomenon of inherited characteristics, Aristotle’s biology must appeal to a “sub-specific” form, one that includes all of the traits that parents pass on to their offspring. That view, however, is not (...) only inconsistent with Aristotle’s essentialist metaphysics, but it also renders the embryological theory internally inconsistent. The interpretation I offer avoids both inconsistencies, and better coheres with what he actually says in Generation of Animals. (shrink)

Despite playing an important role in epistemology, philosophy of science, and more recently in moral philosophy and aesthetics, the nature of understanding is still much contested. One attractive framework attempts to reduce understanding to other familiar epistemic states. This paper explores and develops a methodology for testing such reductionist theories before offering a counterexample to a recently defended variant on which understanding reduces to what an agent knows.

Recently, the practice of deciding legal cases on purely statistical evidence has been widely criticised. Many feel uncomfortable with finding someone guilty on the basis of bare probabilities, even though the chance of error might be stupendously small. This is an important issue: with the rise of DNA profiling, courts are increasingly faced with purely statistical evidence. A prominent line of argument—endorsed by Blome-Tillmann 2017; Smith 2018; and Littlejohn 2018—rejects the use of such evidence by appealing to epistemic norms that (...) apply to individual inquirers. My aim in this paper is to rehabilitate purely statistical evidence by arguing that, given the broader aims of legal systems, there are scenarios in which relying on such evidence is appropriate. Along the way I explain why popular arguments appealing to individual epistemic norms to reject legal reliance on bare statistics are unconvincing, by showing that courts and individuals face different epistemic predicaments (in short, individuals can hedge when confronted with statistical evidence, whilst legal tribunals cannot). I also correct some misconceptions about legal practice that have found their way into the recent literature. (shrink)

Healthcare systems across the globe are struggling with increasing costs and worsening outcomes. This presents those responsible for overseeing healthcare with a challenge. Increasingly, policymakers, politicians, clinical entrepreneurs and computer and data scientists argue that a key part of the solution will be ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) – particularly Machine Learning (ML). This argument stems not from the belief that all healthcare needs will soon be taken care of by “robot doctors.” Instead, it is an argument that rests on the classic (...) counterfactual definition of AI as an umbrella term for a range of techniques that can be used to make machines complete tasks in a way that would be considered intelligent were they to be completed by a human. Automation of this nature could offer great opportunities for the improvement of healthcare services and ultimately patients’ health by significantly improving human clinical capabilities in diagnosis, drug discovery, epidemiology, personalised medicine, and operational efficiency. However, if these AI solutions are to be embedded in clinical practice, then at least three issues need to be considered: the technical possibilities and limitations; the ethical, regulatory and legal framework; and the governance framework. In this article, we report on the results of a systematic analysis designed to provide a clear overview of the second of these elements: the ethical, regulatory and legal framework. We find that ethical issues arise at six levels of abstraction (individual, interpersonal, group, institutional, sectoral, and societal) and can be categorised as epistemic, normative, or overarching. We conclude by stressing how important it is that the ethical challenges raised by implementing AI in healthcare settings are tackled proactively rather than reactively and map the key considerations for policymakers to each of the ethical concerns highlighted. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 63, Issue 1, pp 64 - 86 Five times in the extant corpus, Aristotle refers to a distinction between two ways of being a ‘that for the sake of which’ that he sometimes marks by using genitive and dative pronouns. Commentators almost universally say that this is the distinction between an aim and beneficiary. I propose that Aristotle had a quite different distinction in mind, namely: that which holds between something and the aim or objective it is (...) in the business of producing or achieving, and that which holds between some instrument and the user of that instrument. (shrink)

Legal epistemology has been an area of great philosophical growth since the turn of the century. But recently, a number of philosophers have argued the entire project is misguided, claiming that it relies on an illicit transposition of the norms of individual epistemology to the legal arena. This paper uses these objections as a foil to consider the foundations of legal epistemology, particularly as it applies to the criminal law. The aim is to clarify the fundamental commitments of legal epistemology (...) and suggest a way to vindicate it. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the conflict between thought and speech that is inherent in lying. This is the conflict of saying what you think is false. The chapter shows how stubbornly saying what you think is false resists analysis. In traditional analyses of lying, saying what you think is false is analyzed in terms of saying something and believing that it is false. But standard cases of unconscious or divided belief challenge these analyses. Classic puzzles about belief from Gottlob Frege and (...) Saul Kripke show that suggested amendments involving assent instead of belief do not fare better. I argue that attempts to save these analyses by appeal to guises or Fregean modes of presentation will also run into trouble. I then consider alternative approaches to untruthfulness that focus on (a) expectations for one’s act of saying/asserting and (b) the intentions involved in one’s act of saying/asserting. Here I introduce two new kinds of case, which I call “truth serum” and “liar serum” cases. Consideration of these cases reveals structural problems with intention- and expectation-based approaches as well. Taken together, the string of cases presented suggests that saying what you think is false, or being untruthful, is no less difficult and interesting a subject for analysis than lying itself. Tackling the question of what it is to say what you think is false illuminates ways in which the study of lying is intertwined with fundamental issues in the nature of intentional action. (shrink)

This paper defends the following principle: For any visually perceptible set of objects and any visual phenomenal character, there could be a veridical perception of exactly those objects with that character. This principle is rejected by almost all contemporary theories of perception, yet rarely addressed directly. Many have taken the apparent inconceivability of a certain sort of “shape inversion” — as compared to the more plausible, frequently discussed “color inversion” — as evidence that the spatial characters of our perceptions are (...) uniquely suited to and/or revelatory of the structure of their objects, such that alleged perceptions of those objects that differed radically in spatial character could not be veridical. I argue that these conclusions are unjustified: I claim that the difficulty involved in constructing coherent “shape inversion” scenarios is attributable to the complex relations among visual and tactile shape experiences, as opposed to relations between shape experiences and worldly shape properties. (shrink)