This paper comments on an article by V.S. Ramachandran and William Hirstein (JCS,1999) in which they purport to be identifying the neurological principles of beauty. I draw attention to the way the problem of beauty is construed in the philosophical literature by Mary Mothersill (1984) and Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgment). I argue that Ramachandran and Hirsteins' principles do not address the problem of beauty because they do not differentiate between the experience of beauty and other closely related phenomena. I (...) then show how one might address the problem of beauty within the framework that they have adopted. (shrink)

We address Steel’s Programme to identify a ‘preferred’ universe of set theory and the best axioms extending ZFC by using his multiverse axioms MV and the ‘core hypothesis’. In the first part, we examine the evidential framework for MV, in particular the use of large cardinals and of ‘worlds’ obtained through forcing to ‘represent’ alternative extensions of ZFC. In the second part, we address the existence and the possible features of the core of MV_T (where T is ZFC+Large Cardinals). In (...) the last part, we discuss the hypothesis that the core is Ultimate-L, and examine whether and how, based on this fact, the Core Universist can justify V=Ultimate-L as the best (and ultimate) extension of ZFC. To this end, we take into account several strategies, and assess their prospects in the light of MV’s evidential framework. (shrink)

The authors developed this textbook in response to an increasing interest in ethics, and a growing number of courses on this topic that are now being offered in educational leadership programs. It is designed to fill a gap in instructional materials for teaching the ethics component of the knowledge base that has been established for the profession. The text has several purposes: First, it demonstrates the application of different ethical paradigms (the ethics of justice, care, critique, and the profession) through (...) discussion and analysis of real-life moral dilemmas that educational leaders face in their schools and communities. Second, it addresses some of the practical, pedagogical, and curricular issues related to the teaching of ethics for educational leaders. Third, it emphasizes the importance of ethics instruction from a variety of theoretical approaches. Finally, it provides a process that instructors might follow to develop their own ethics unit or course. * Part I provides an overview of why ethics is so important, especially for today's educational leaders, and describes a multiparadigm approach essential to practitioners as they grapple with ethical dilemmas. * Part II deals with the dilemmas themselves. Ethical dilemmas written by the authors' graduate students bring readers face-to-face with the kinds of dilemmas faced by practicing administrators in urban, suburban, and rural settings in an era full of complexities and contradictions. * Part III focuses on pedagogy and provides teaching notes for the instructor. The authors discuss the importance of self-reflection on the part of both instructors and students, and model how they thought through their own personal and professional ethical codes as well as reflected upon the critical incidents in their lives that shaped their teaching and frequently determined what they privileged in class. (shrink)

This paper explores how transformative experience generates decision-making problems of particular seriousness in medical settings. Potentially transformative experiences are especially likely to be encountered in medicine, and the associated decisions are confronted jointly by patients and clinicians in the context of an imbalance of power and expertise. However in such scenarios the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in guiding clinicians, is unequal to the task. We detail how the principle’s assumptions about autonomy, rationality and information handle (...) transformative experiences poorly, appealing to several difficult cases for medical decision-making to illustrate the resulting problem, and we consider how the existing literature on complications with consent fails to offer a resolution. We argue that recognition of the problem has a role to play in achieving a more effective response to transformative decisions. In Sect. 1 we introduce several representative cases of challenging patient decision-making that clinicians might face. In Sect. 2 we detail how transformative experience has been analysed in the recent literature, before outlining in Sect. 3 the theoretical basis of the principle of informed consent, which plays a central role in how clinicians are expected to support decision-making. In Sect. 4, having laid the groundwork for a clear description, we return to the cases given in Sect. 1 to confirm how their transformative nature presents a problem: either clinicians treat the decisions faced by these patients as ‘normal’, encouraging them to focus on information provision that patients may be unable to act on, or they treat them as transformative, in which case they lack the resources to recognise whether they are helping patients make (subjectively) good decisions. In Sect. 5 we argue that the existing literature does not offer any escape from this problem. We close in Sect. 6 by noting the significant impact that appreciating the problem of transformative experience could have on supporting transformative decisions in medicine and briefly suggesting how we might aim to develop new approaches to dealing with these. (shrink)

A holobiont is a composite organism consisting of a host together with its microbiome, such as a coral with its zooxanthellae. To explain the often intimate integration between hosts and their microbiomes, some investigators contend that selection operates on holobionts as a unit and view the microbiome’s genes as extending the host’s nuclear genome to jointly comprise a hologenome. Because vertical transmission of microbiomes is uncommon, other investigators contend that holobiont selection cannot be effective because a holobiont’s microbiome is an (...) acquired condition rather than an inherited trait. This disagreement invites a simple mathematical model to see how holobiont selection might operate and to assess its plausibility as an evolutionary force. This paper presents two variants of such a model. In one variant, juvenile hosts obtain microbiomes from their parents (vertical transmission). In the other variant, microbiomes of juvenile hosts are assembled from source pools containing the combined microbiomes of all parents (horizontal transmission). According to both variants, holobiont selection indeed causes evolutionary change in holobiont traits. Therefore, holobiont selection is plausibly an effective evolutionary force with either mode of microbiome transmission. The modeling employs two distinct concepts of inheritance, depending on the mode of microbiome transmission: collective inheritance whereby juveniles inherit a sample of the collected genomes from all parents, as contrasted with lineal inheritance whereby juveniles inherit the genomes from only their own parents. A distinction between collective and lineal inheritance also features in theories of multilevel selection. (shrink)

This study aimed to determine the health practices among the secondary school teachers during the Covid-19 pandemic in Ichon National High School. This considered the socio - demographic profile of the teachers in terms of age, sex, civil status and teaching load and the extent of practice employed by the teachers in the said health dimensions. A total of 53 teachers from Ichon National High School participated as respondents in the evaluative method of research that consists in three parts questionnaires. (...) The statistical treatment used in the computation and analysis of gathered data to determine the socio-demographic profile of the respondents are the descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage. As to the significance of health practices during COVID-19 pandemic, Kruskal Wallis and Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the significant differences on the extent of practices among the different health dimensions. The very high extent of the implementation on the health practices during COVID-19 pandemic shows that the teachers are frequently practiced the health practices. The highest mean in mental aspect is conclusive that teacher during the pandemic exert effort to stay healthy on this and other areas as well. It is recommended to conduct further study regarding on the health practices among the secondary school teachers. (shrink)

The central aim of this article is to specify the ontological nature of constitutive mechanistic phenomena. After identifying three criteria of adequacy that any plausible approach to constitutive mechanistic phenomena must satisfy, we present four different suggestions, found in the mechanistic literature, of what mechanistic phenomena might be. We argue that none of these suggestions meets the criteria of adequacy. According to our analysis, constitutive mechanistic phenomena are best understood as what we will call ‘object-involving occurrents’. Furthermore, on the basis (...) of this notion, we will clarify what distinguishes constitutive mechanistic explanations from etiological ones. 1 Introduction 2 Criteria of Adequacy 2.1 Descriptive adequacy 2.2 Constitutive–etiological distinction 2.3 Constitution 3 The Ontological Nature of Constitutive Mechanistic Phenomena 3.1 Phenomena as input–output relations 3.2 Phenomena as end states 3.3 Phenomena as dispositions 3.4 Phenomena as behaviours 4 Phenomena as Object-Involving Occurrents 4.1 What object-involving occurrents are and why we need them 4.2 The object in the phenomenon 4.3 The adequacy of option 5 Conclusion. (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)

Dos filósofos dialogan sobre cómo definir en nuestros días la barbarie desde la filosofía política actual. Barajan para ello tres tipos de respuestas. La respuesta ilustrada es la que considera que la diversidad de concepciones del bien de nuestras sociedades es un hecho pernicioso para el desarrollo de la Humanidad, y que hay que imponer sobre ese batiburrillo de opiniones bárbaras la concepción sobre lo bueno más racional, la que en Occidente se propugna desde la Ilustración dieciochesca. La respuesta liberal, (...) por el contrario, acepta gustosa la pluralidad de concepciones morales y metafísicas de nuestras sociedades, y lo único que propone es evitar la barbarie haciendo que, en las cuestiones sobre cómo organizar nuestra sociedad, estas diferencias queden de lado y se intente encontrar un mínimo acuerdo entre todos. Por último, la respuesta postmetafísica sugiere aceptar que las cosmovisiones sobre el bien y el mundo no pueden quedar tan totalmente aparte de nuestros modos de organizar la sociedad como quiere el liberal; pero para evitar el conflicto bárbarico entre ellas, persigue hacer plausible sobre las demás una concepción concreta, que, a diferencia de la del ilustrado, aspiraría mucho más modestamente a sólo expandir un escepticismo para con el resto de nuestras propias creencias; autoironía que nos abriría al diálogo con las creencias de los demás y evitaría en ese juego de conversaciones la violencia de la imposición bárbara. (shrink)

Elective mathematics has been an extra mathematics subject for pilot students of Eduardo Barretto Sr. National High School for quite some time now. Through this, many alumni testified how this helped them understand senior high school and college math. However, the teachers have also been struggling with the resources for specific areas of mathematics, such as Business Math, Statistics, Analytic Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus. When the pandemic hit the Philippines, contextualized learning material aligned with the Most Essential Learning Competencies (MELC) (...) helped elective mathematics teachers. The contextualized learning material was developed from April to August 2020 and was first validated in February 2021 by the students who participated in the pilot testing. However, following the due process, it was suggested that I revalidate the IDEA-formatted Analytic Geometry and Trigonometry instructional material. It examines Eduardo Barretto Sr. National High School mathematics teachers and SDO Calamba City experts' evaluation of the content's topics, objectives, concepts, directions, and activities and the format's prints, illustrations, design, and layout. Participants' perceptions of learning material were assessed using a 4-point Likert Scale survey. Hence, descriptive quantitative design. Participants were surveyed using a 4-point Likert Scale to assess their learning content impression. The findings reveal that the participants found the format and content of the developed learning material to be very satisfactory. The indicators "localized" and "can be done independently" were viewed as Fair and Satisfactory, respectively. The learning material was enhanced by localizing the activities and giving directions that could facilitate self-learning. (shrink)

This is an 18,500 word bibliography of philosophical scholarship on Beauty which was published online in the Oxford Bibliographies Online. The entry includes an Introduction of 800 words, 21 x 400-word sub-themes and 168 annotated references. INTRODUCTION Philosophical interest in beauty began with the earliest recorded philosophers. Beauty was deemed to be an essential ingredient in a good life and so what it was, where it was to be found and how it was to be included in a life were (...) prime considerations. The way beauty has been conceived has been influenced by an author’s other philosophical commitments, metaphysical, epistemological and ethical and such commitments reflect the historical and cultural position of the author. For example, beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth to which we respond with love and adoration; beauty is a harmony of the soul which we achieve through cultivating feeling in a rational and tempered way; beauty is an idea raised in us by certain objective features of the world; beauty is a sentiment which can nonetheless be cultivated to be appropriate to its object; beauty is the object of a judgment by which we exercise the social, comparative and inter-subjective elements of cognition and so on. Such views on beauty not only reveal underlying philosophical commitments but also reflect positive contributions to understanding the nature of value and the relation of mind and world. One way to distinguish between beauty theories is according to the conception of the human being that they assume or imply, for example, where they fall on the continuum from determinism to free will, ungrounded notions of compatibilism notwithstanding. For example, theories at the latter end might carve out a sense of genuine innovation and creativity in human endeavours while at the other end of the spectrum authors may conceive of beauty as an environmental trigger for consumption, procreation or preservation in the interests of the individual. Treating beauty experiences as in some respect intentional, characterises beauty theory prior to the twentieth century and since, mainly in historically inspired writing on beauty. On the other hand, treating beauty as affect or sensation has always had its representatives and is most visible today in evolutionary inspired accounts of beauty (though not all evolutionary accounts fit this classification). Beauty theory falls under some combination of metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, aesthetics and psychology. While in the twentieth century beauty was more likely to be conceived as an evaluative concept for art, recent philosophical interest in beauty can again be seen to exercise arguments pertaining to metaphysics, epistemology, meta-ethics, philosophy of meaning and language in addition to philosophy of art and environmental aesthetics. (shrink)

Leuridan (2011) questions whether mechanisms can really replace laws at the heart of our thinking about science. In doing so, he enters a long-standing discussion about the relationship between the mech-anistic structures evident in the theories of contemporary biology and the laws of nature privileged especially in traditional empiricist traditions of the philosophy of science (see e.g. Wimsatt 1974; Bechtel and Abrahamsen 2005; Bogen 2005; Darden 2006; Glennan 1996; MDC 2000; Schaffner 1993; Tabery 2003; Weber 2005). In our view, Leuridan (...) misconstrues this discussion. His weak positive claim that mechanistic sciences appeal to generalizations is true but uninteresting. His stronger claim, that all causal claims require laws, is unsupported by his arguments. Though we proceed by criticizing Leuridan’s arguments, our greater purpose is to embellish his arguments in order to show how thinking about mechanisms enriches and transforms old philosophical debates about laws in biology and provides new insights into how generalizations afford prediction, explanation and control. (shrink)

Mechanisms are said to consist of two kinds of components, entities and activities. In the first half of this chapter, I examine what entities and activities are, how they relate to well-known ontological categories, such as processes or dispositions, and how entities and activities relate to each other (e.g., can one be reduced to the other or are they mutually dependent?). The second part of this chapter analyzes different criteria for individuating the components of mechanisms and discusses how real the (...) boundaries of mechanisms are. (shrink)

Preservationism is a dominant account of the justification of beliefs formed on the basis of memory. According to preservationism, a memory belief is justified only if that belief was justified when it was initially held. However, we now know that much of what we remember is not explicitly stored, but instead reconstructed when we attempt to recall it. Since reconstructive memory beliefs may not have been continuously held by the agent, or never held before at all, a purely preservationist account (...) of memory does not allow for justified reconstructed memory beliefs. In this essay, I show how a process reliabilist account can maintain preservationism about reproductive memory beliefs while accommodating the justification of reconstructive memory beliefs. I argue that reconstructive memory is an inferential process, and that therefore the beliefs it produces are justified in the same way that other inferential beliefs are justified. Accordingly, my process reliabilist account combines a preservationist account of reproductive memory with an inferential account of reconstructive memory. I end by defending this view against objections. (shrink)

Individuals of many animal species are said to have a personality. It has been shown that some individuals are bolder than other individuals of the same species, or more sociable or more aggressive. In this paper, we analyse what it means to say that an animal has a personality. We clarify what an animal personality is, that is, its ontology, and how different personality concepts relate to each other, and we examine how personality traits are identified in biological practice. Our (...) analysis shows that biologists often study specific personality traits, such as boldness, sociability or aggressiveness, rather than personalities in general. We claim that personality traits are best understood as dispositions and that they are operationally defined in terms of certain sets of behaviours, which are studied in specific experimental set-ups. Furthermore, we develop an integrative philosophical account that specifies and formalises three criteria for identifying personality traits, which are used in biological practice. For an individual animal to have a personality trait it must, first, behave differently than others. Second, these behavioural differences must be stable over a certain time, and third, they must be consistent in different contexts. (shrink)

In this chapter, Mary Whiton Calkins examines available conceptions of time and develops her own reconceptualization of it.

In the contemporary life sciences more and more researchers emphasize the “limits of reductionism” (e.g. Ahn et al. 2006a, 709; Mazzocchi 2008, 10) or they call for a move “beyond reductionism” (Gallagher/Appenzeller 1999, 79). However, it is far from clear what exactly they argue for and what the envisioned limits of reductionism are. In this paper I claim that the current discussions about reductionism in the life sciences, which focus on methodological and explanatory issues, leave the concepts of a reductive (...) method and a reductive explanation too unspecified. In order to fill this gap and to clarify what the limits of reductionism are I identify three reductive methods that are crucial in the current practice of the life sciences: decomposition, focusing on internal factors, and studying parts in isolation. Furthermore, I argue that reductive explanations in the life sciences exhibit three characteristics: first, they refer only to factors at a lower level than the phenomenon at issue, second, they focus on internal factors and thus ignore or simplify the environment of a system, and, third, they cite only the parts of a system in isolation. (shrink)

What are the conditions under which one biological object is a part of another biological object? This paper answers this question by developing a general, systematic account of biological parthood. I specify two criteria for biological parthood. Substantial Spatial Inclusionrequires biological parts to be spatially located inside or in the region that the natural boundary of t he biological whole occupies. Compositional Relevance captures the fact that a biological part engages in a biological process that must make a necessary contribution (...) to a condition that is minimally sufficient to one or more of the characteristic behaviors of the biological whole. Instead of emphasizing the diversity of part-whole relations in the biological world, this paper asks what biological part-whole relations have in common and what constrains their existence, in general. After presenting the two criteria for biological parthood I discuss in how far my account can cope with hard cases (e.g., redundant parts) and I reveal the merits and limits of monism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes what it means for philosophy of science to be normative. It argues that normativity is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than a general feature that a philosophical theory either has or lacks. It analyzes the normativity of philosophy of science by articulating three ways in which a philosophical theory can be normative. Methodological normativity arises from normative assumptions that philosophers make when they select, interpret, evaluate, and mutually adjust relevant empirical information, on which they base their philosophical theories. (...) Object normativity emerges from the fact that the object of philosophical theorizing can itself be normative, such as when philosophers discuss epistemic norms in science. Metanormativity arises from the kind of claims that a philosophical theory contains, such as normative claims about science as it should be. Distinguishing these three kinds of normativity gives rise to a nuanced and illuminating view of how philosophy of science can be normative. (shrink)

In the contemporary biomedical literature, every disease is considered genetic. This extension of the concept of genetic disease is usually interpreted either in a trivial or genocentrist sense, but it is never taken seriously as the expression of a genetic theory of disease. However, a group of French researchers defend the idea of a genetic theory of infectious diseases. By identifying four common genetic mechanisms (Mendelian predisposition to multiple infections, Mendelian predisposition to one infection, and major gene and polygenic predispositions), (...) they attempt to unify infectious diseases from a genetic point of view. In this article, I analyze this explicit example of a genetic theory, which relies on mechanisms and is applied only to a specific category of diseases, what we call “a regional genetic theory.” I have three aims: to prove that a genetic theory of disease can be devoid of genocentrism, to consider the possibility of a genetic theory applied to every disease, and to introduce two hypotheses about the form that such a genetic theory could take by distinguishing between a genetic theory of diseases and a genetic theory of Disease. Finally, I suggest that network medicine could be an interesting framework for a genetic theory of Disease. (shrink)

Cet article se base sur des résultats d’enquête récents montrant que, chez des adolescents marocains âgés de dix à dix-huit ans, les manifestations de pensée critique dialogique se si-tuent majoritairement dans une « perspective épistémologique » appelée « relativisme » par un modèle développemental élaboré dans les quinze dernières années avec la méthode de la théorie ancrée. Pour comprendre ces résultats de recherche, qui contrastent avec ceux obte-nus auprès d’adolescents québécois et français appartenant aux mêmes groupes d’âge, nous décrivons, dans (...) un premier temps, le modèle développemental dans lequel ils prennent sens. Nous illustrons ensuite les manifestations de « perspective épistémologique relativiste » chez les adolescents marocains à l’aide d’extraits de verbatim. Les élèves ont tendance à se décen-trer de leur vécu personnel, à se représenter le point de vue d’autrui en général et à co-construire des points de vue convergents avec les pairs. Dans un deuxième temps, prenant appui sur une approche de la représentation sociale en tant que « scène », et sur la littérature touchant aux rôles des aînés dans les sociétés africaines, nous éclairons ces résultats de re-cherche par l’analyse d’une représentation sociale fréquemment mobilisée par les jeunes Ma-rocains interviewés : celle de la hiérarchie des âges et du devoir d’écoute envers les plus âgés. L’analyse de cette « scène » met en lumière des attitudes sociales inculquées aux adolescents en contexte culturel marocain, susceptibles de favoriser le développement d’une « perspective épistémologique relativiste » en matière de pensée critique dialogique. (shrink)

This paper examines the adequacy of causal graph theory as a tool for modeling biological phenomena and formalizing biological explanations. I point out that the causal graph approach reaches it limits when it comes to modeling biological phenomena that involve complex spatial and structural relations. Using a case study from molecular biology, DNA-binding and -recognition of proteins, I argue that causal graph models fail to adequately represent and explain causal phenomena in this field. The inadequacy of these models is due (...) to their failure to include relevant spatial and structural information in a way that does not render the model non-explanatory, unmanageable, or inconsistent with basic assumptions of causal graph theory. (shrink)

Descartes claims that the passions of the soul are “all in their nature good” even though they exaggerate the value of their objects, have the potential to deceive us, and often mislead us. What, then, can he mean by this? In this paper, I argue that these effects of the passions are only problematic when we incorrectly take their goodness to consist in their informing us of harms and benefits to the mind-body composite. Instead, the passions are good in their (...) motivational function, which they carry out by representing objects and situations as having various properties and thereby appearing to be “reasons of goodness.” Further, I argue that the main way in which the passions are problematic is merely an occasional physiological byproduct of a well- functioning system. I show, therefore, that the passions’ motivational function, representationality, and accompanying physiology are all significant and interrelated aspects of their goodness. (shrink)

This essay presents the nature of aesthetic judgment, the significance of aesthetic judgment and finally, the relevance of art to understanding aesthetic judgment.

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

This paper examines various ways in which philosophy of science can be interdisciplinary. It aims to provide a map of relations between philosophy and sciences, some of which are interdisciplinary. Such a map should also inform discussions concerning the question “How much philosophy is there in the philosophy of science?” In Sect. 1, we distinguish between synoptic and collaborative interdisciplinarity. With respect to the latter, we furthermore distinguish between two kinds of reflective forms of collaborative interdisciplinarity. We also briefly explicate (...) how complexity triggers interdisciplinarity. In Sect. 2, we apply the distinctions of Sect. 1 to philosophy of science and analyze in which sense different styles of philosophy of science are interdisciplinary. The styles that we discuss are a synoptic-general, a reflective-general, a reflective-particular, a particular-embedded and a descriptive or normative style. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on two underlying presumptions that impinge on the effort of UNESCO to engender universal agreement on a set of bioethical norms: the conception of universality that pervades much of the document, and its disregard of structural inequalities that significantly impact health. Drawing on other UN system documents and recent feminist bioethics scholarship, we argue that the formulation of universal principles should not rely solely on shared ethical values, as the draft document affirms, but also on differences (...) in ethical values that obtain across cultures. UNESCO's earlier work on gender mainstreaming illustrates the necessity of thinking from multiple perspectives in generating universal norms. The declaration asserts the ‘fundamental equality of all human beings in dignity and rights’1 and insists that ‘the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition’2 yet it does not explicitly recognize disparities of power and wealth that deny equal dignity and rights to many. Without attention to structural (as opposed to merely accidental) inequities, UNESCO's invocation of rights is so abstract as to be incompatible with its avowed intention. (shrink)

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant to an experience of (...) beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

Reshaping our methodological research tools for adequately capturing injustice and domination has been a central aspiration of feminist philosophy and social epistemology in recent years. There has been an increasingly empirical turn in recent feminist and political theorization, engaging with case studies and the challenges arising from conducting research in solidarity with unequal partners. I argue that these challenges cannot be resolved by merely adopting a norm and stance of deference to those in the struggle for justice. To conduct philosophical (...) research in an engaged and solidaristic manner, I suggest that deference be supplemented by three methodological and normative principles: 1) epistemic humility, 2) accountability, and 3) co-producing knowledge. I situate these principles within contemporary philosophical work on solidarity, and show how they might help confront power imbalances and other methodological hazards that arise when conducting research in solidarity with others. I arrive at these principles in part by critically reflecting on my own attempt to conduct research in solidarity with women’s rights activists in Senegal. (shrink)

The standard cognitive theory of art claims that art can be insightful while maintaining that imagining is motivationally inert [Walton 1990] even when some epistemic advantage is claimed for it [Currie 1995]. However, if we assume art as art can be insightful, we also assume that the imagining it occasions has a lasting impact on belief. In this chapter, I argue that imagining of the kind occasioned by art can be held non-occurrently [Schellenberg 2013] without delusion and can motivate behaviour (...) [Gendler 2000, 2003, 2006a/b; Langland-Hassan 2016]. As such, certain features of imagination can be appreciated in a new light. (shrink)

The Pythagorean tradition dominates the understanding of beauty up until the end of the 18th Century. According to this tradition, the experience of beauty is stimulated by certain relations perceived to be between an object/construct's elements. As such, the object of the experience of beauty is indeterminate: it has neither a determinate perceptual analogue (one cannot simply identify beauty as you can a straight line or a particular shape) nor a determinate concept (there are no necessary and sufficient conditions for (...) beauty at the semantic level). By the 13th Century in the West, the pleasure experienced in beauty is characterized as disinterested. Yet, on the basis that all cultural manifestations of the pythagorean theory of beauty recognize that judgments of beauty are genuine judgments, we would want to say that judgments of beauty are lawful. In addition, from ancient times, up until after Kant, philosophers of beauty within this tradition recognize two kinds of beauty: a universal, unchanging beauty coexisting with a relative, dynamic beauty. These two kinds of beauty and the tensions discussed above, are reconciled and dissolved respectively, according to the metaphysical/religious commitments of the particular author. As yet, however, these features of beauty have not been reconciled within a physicalist worldview. This is what I set out to do. (shrink)

The sublime is an aspect of experience that has attracted a great deal of scholarship, not only for scholarly reasons but because it connotes aspects of experience not exhausted by what Descartes once called clear distinct perception. That is, the sublime is an experience of the world which involves us in orientating ourselves within it, and this orientation, our human orientation, elevates us in comparison to the non-human world according to traditional accounts of the sublime. The sublime tells us something (...) about our relation to the world rather than anything about the world per se. Nonetheless there is an objective sense of the sublime in that the narratives involved are culturally endorsed rather than invented by an individual. This means that objects can be judged worthy or not of evoking experiences of the sublime. In other words, it is not an idiosyncratic matter. Immanuel Kant’s formulation of this involved explaining how such an experience is possible in terms of his system of the mind. Jane Forsey notes that Kant takes the features of the sublime as given and extrapolates from them certain features of the mind as if any concept of the sublime must implicate the mental architecture of his account (2007). Further to this she argues that in fact the concept of the sublime does implicate a particular system of the mind but neither Kant nor anyone else can successfully formulate it because the concept itself frames certain contradictions. According to Forsey, two consequences follow. First she argues that Kant’s system of the mind does not support the features of the sublime; and secondly that no system could as the very concept is incoherent. If Forsey can show that Kant was mistaken in presenting his account as coherent given his commitments, this would be of interest in its own right. However, her stronger claim is that we cannot separate any concept of the sublime out from Kant’s theoretical underpinnings. That the way the features of the mind are meant to operate in experiences of the sublime are contradictory simply points to the fatal flaws in the whole concept. Her conclusion is that there is no coherent account of the sublime available to us. I will argue that Forsey bases her reasoning on the assumption that a foundational empiricist or direct perception holds; and she interprets Kant’s notions of imagination, understanding and reason as though they are grounded in just such an account of perception. This is revealed in her interpretation of Kant’s phrase “beyond cognition”. Once this foundationalism is replaced with an account of perception more aligned with current research on perception, both philosophical and empirical, then an account of the sublime is available. Further to this however, I argue that what constitutes the narrative of the sublime is historically contingent. Before setting out my arguments, I consider Forsey’s argument in more detail. (shrink)

Comentaba en el Prólogo a la 1ª edición que nos cuesta distinguir las técnicas de los métodos y aceptar que la buena investigación clínica es la que se realiza con método riguroso. Este método reposa en cuatro pilares: que la pregunta o cuestión formulada sea relevante, que esté enunciada de manera precisa y operativa, que sea abordada o respondida con el mejor medio disponible en cada circunstancia, y que evite redundancias o repeticiones de cuestiones que ya han sido examinadas por (...) otros investigadores. Añadía que es imprescindible una dosis de curiosidad y de entusiasmo por lo que se examina. Como se ha dicho con frecuencia, el ensayo clínico es, entre los métodos de investigación clínica, el "patrón oro", el que, gracias a su característica inherente (la distribución aleatoria), está sujeto a menores posibilidades de sesgos. Esta consideración no ha cambiado. Sin embargo, mayor validez interna del método no implica mayor relevancia de los resultados obtenidos. Actualmente es común examinar protocolos de ensayos clínicos bien diseñados, cuyo "único" problema es que pretenden evaluar aspectos de escaso interés farmacológico, terapéutico, epidemiológico o sanitario. ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación del quinto fármaco de una serie en una indicación para la que ya hay cuatro análogos que le han precedido en su desarrollo? ¿Qué interés tiene la evaluación de un nuevo hipocolesterolemiante o de un nuevo fármaco para la osteoporosis si no se conocen, respectivamente, el impacto de la hipercolesterolemia como factor de riesgo de cardiopatía isquémica o la epidemiología de las fracturas en mujeres postmenopáusicas en nuestro medio? En relación con estos ejemplos, tendría mucho más interés conocer los determinantes epidemiológicos y la historia natural de la cardiopatía isquémica en nuestro medio y conocer la epidemiología de las fracturas "espontáneas" y su impacto sobre la demanda asistencial; para ello serían de mucha utilidad métodos de investigación cuya validez intrínseca podría ser considerada "subóptima" en comparación con el ensayo clínico. En los últimos años ha irrumpido con fuerza en numerosísimas publicaciones el concepto de la "medicina basada en pruebas". Esta moda refleja en parte la importancia que de manera creciente reguladores e industria farmacéutica han concedido a los ensayos clínicos: se ha alcanzado un consenso global sobre la necesidad de demostrar la "eficacia" de los nuevos medicamentos por medio de ensayos clínicos controlados. De este modo, los organismos reguladores y autoridades sanitarias exigen ensayos clínicos como uno de los elementos necesarios para obtener el registro de un nuevo medicamento. Como consecuencia, se realizan y publican muchos más ensayos clínicos que antaño, y actualmente se pueden encontrar ensayos que sustentan la eficacia de la mayoría de los medicamentos disponibles en indicaciones específicas. Si hace unos años bastaba con examinar si había ensayos clínicos que demostraran la eficacia de un determinado medicamento antes de adoptarlo como uno de los de uso común (o de incluirlo en el formulario de un hospital), en la actualidad estas decisiones son más complejas, y se basan sobre todo en una consideración atenta de los objetivos, los métodos y los resultados de cada ensayo o de otros estudios destinados a evaluar eficacia, seguridad, conveniencia o comodidad y coste. Un buen clínico debe saber a la vez leer críticamente las publicaciones científicas y producir información relevante. Leer críticamente significa evaluar la pertinencia de los problemas investigados, los métodos aplicados y la interpretación de los resultados obtenidos. Producir información relevante implica saber identificar los problemas que deben y pueden ser objeto de investigación, formularlos, y ser protagonista (generalmente como parte de un equipo) de la elaboración del plan de investigación. En los últimos años se han publicado varios textos similares al que tiene en sus manos, todos ellos de gran calidad. El presente no pretende ser el más exhaustivo, sino sobre todo interesar a los profesionales sanitarios en el apasionante campo de la investigación clínica, en su sentido más amplio, estimulando la autonomía del lector para investigar un problema o una situación, y para aprender a leer las publicaciones científicas clínicas. Su lectura debe contribuir a que términos como "doble ciego", "p<0,05", "casos y controles", etc. dejen de ser fetiches-misterios, para convertirse en herramientas conceptualmente sencillas, útiles para la evaluación de la actividad asistencial. Esta nueva edición está muy ampliada respecto a la anterior. Se han reorganizado las generalidades sobre los objetivos y métodos de la investigación clínica, se han ampliado algunos aspectos del ensayo clínico, como el análisis de subgrupos, los aspectos estadísticos y éticos y las publicaciones sobre ensayos clínicos, se han añadido cuatro nuevos capítulos, sobre efectividad y eficacia, metaanálisis, ensayos en un solo paciente y farmacoeconomía, y el Glosario ha sido revisado y ampliado (sobre todo con términos de farmacocinética, desarrollo preclínico de fármacos, estadística y biotecnología genética), e incluye casi 750 términos. Para su elaboración me he basado en numerosos textos y diccionarios,a aunque he reformulado la mayoría de las definiciones y he optado por añadir en ocasiones algún comentario personal a muchas de ellas. Carles Vallvé ha escrito el capítulo sobre Normas de Buena Práctica Clínica. Agradezco asimismo las precisones y comentarios de Eulalia Dalmau, Javier Jiménez, Josep Maria Castel y Xavier Vidal, así como los comentarios a versiones anteriores de Fernando Antezana y Jorleny Rojas. Eduard Diogène me sugirió la idea de la portada, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, que Goya comentaba así: " La fantasía abandonada de la razón produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas" La 1ª edición de este libro, que fue promovida por Zeneca, tuvo una amplia difusión, en España y en América Latina. AstraZeneca me propuso preparar esta 2ª edición del mismo modo abierto que en ocasión de la primera; su actual Director Médico Ramón Estiarte me ha ayudado en la selección de términos para el Glosario. A él y al anterior Director Médico de Zeneca, Manuel Martín, agradezco su idea inicial, su estímulo y ayuda, y las facilidades que han dado para la difusión de este libro. Joan-Ramon Laporte. (shrink)

The “born this way” narrative remains a popular way to defend nonnormative genders and sexualities in the United States. While feminist and queer theorists have critiqued the narrative's implicit ahistorical and essentialist understanding of sexuality, the narrative's incorporation by the state as a way to regulate gender identity has gone largely underdeveloped. I argue that transgender accounts of this narrative reorient it amid questions of temporality, race, colonialism, and the nation-state, thereby allowing for a critique that does justice to the (...) enmeshment of categories of difference. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that it is finally time to move beyond the Nagelian framework and to break new ground in thinking about epistemic reduction in biology. I will do so, not by simply repeating all the old objections that have been raised against Ernest Nagel’s classical model of theory reduction. Rather, I grant that a proponent of Nagel’s approach can handle several of these problems but that, nevertheless, Nagel’s general way of thinking about epistemic reduction in terms of (...) theories and their logical relations is entirely inadequate with respect to what is going on in actual biological research practice. (shrink)

AI systems that demonstrate significant bias or lower than claimed accuracy, and resulting in individual and societal harms, continue to be reported. Such reports beg the question as to why such systems continue to be funded, developed and deployed despite the many published ethical AI principles. This paper focusses on the funding processes for AI research grants which we have identified as a gap in the current range of ethical AI solutions such as AI procurement guidelines, AI impact assessments and (...) AI audit frameworks. We highlight the responsibilities of funding bodies to ensure investment is channelled towards trustworthy and safe AI systems and provides case studies as to how other ethical funding principles are managed. We offer a first sight of two proposals for funding bodies to consider regarding procedures they can employ. The first proposal is for the inclusion of a Trustworthy AI Statement’ section in the grant application form and offers an example of the associated guidance. The second proposal outlines the wider management requirements of a funding body for the ethical review and monitoring of funded projects to ensure adherence to the proposed ethical strategies in the applicants Trustworthy AI Statement. The anticipated outcome for such proposals being employed would be to create a ‘stop and think’ section during the project planning and application procedure requiring applicants to implement the methods for the ethically aligned design of AI. In essence it asks funders to send the message “if you want the money, then build trustworthy AI!”. (shrink)

Literary beauty was once understood as intertwining sensations and ideas, and thus as providing subjective and objective reasons for literary appreciation. However, as theory and philosophy developed, the inevitable claims and counterclaims led to the view that subjective experience was not a reliable guide to literary merit. Literary theory then replaced aesthetics as did philosophy’s focus on literary truth. Along with the demise of the relevance of sensations, literary form also took a back seat. This suggested to some that either (...) literature communicated truth like any other literal form of communication or it was a mere diversion: a springboard to harmless reverie or daydreaming. Neither response satisfactorily captured what was distinctive about literature: the love readers can have for literary texts and the edification or insight claimed of works within each culture’s respective catalogue of classics. However, a concept of literary beauty has again become viable due to developments in theories of pleasure and imagination. If the defining aspect of literature is the imaginative engagement it occasions, and if this imagining is constrained by plausibility and endorsed as effective relative to our goals, ideals, and interests, then literature is not reduced to either mere fact or wish fulfillment. An account of literary beauty is available which defines literature accordingly and explains how subjective and objective reasons for appreciation intertwine to evoke pleasure and insight. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a new account of the philosophical motivations for Descartes’s theory of judgment. The theory needs explanation because the idea that judgment, or belief, is an operation of the will seems problematic at best, and Descartes does not make clear why he adopted what, at the time, was a novel view. I argue that attending to Descartes’s conception of the will as the active, free faculty of mind reveals that a general concern with responsibility motivates his (...) theory of judgment. My account avoids some unappealing features of the standard interpretation, renders the theory more plausible than many have suggested, and explains why his theory does not fall neatly into any current-day position on the issue of the control we have over belief. (shrink)

Aesthetic autonomy has been given a variety of interpretations, which in many cases involve a number of claims. Key among them are: (i) art eludes conventional conceptual frameworks and their inherent incompatibility with invention and creativity; and (ii) art can communicate aspects of experience too fine‐grained for discursive language. To accommodate such claims one can adopt either a convention‐based account or a natural‐kind account. A natural‐kind theory can explain the first but requires some special scaffolding in order to support the (...) second, while a convention‐based account accommodates the second but is incompatible with the first. Theodor W. Adorno attempts to incorporate both claims within his aesthetic theory, but arguably in his aesthetic theory each is cancelled out by the other. Art’s independence of entrenched conceptual frameworks needs to be made compatible with its communicative role. Jürgen Habermas, in contrast, provides a solution by way of his theory of language. I draw upon the art practice of the contemporary Icelandic‐Danish artist Olafur Eliasson in order to demonstrate this. (shrink)

In the last decade, the UK Government has attempted to implement improved processes and procedures in modelling and analysis in response to the Laidlaw report of 2012 and the Macpherson review of 2013. The Laidlaw report was commissioned after failings during the Intercity West Coast Rail (ICWC) Franchise procurement exercise by the Department for Transport (DfT) that led to a legal challenge of the analytical models used within the exercise. The Macpherson review looked into the quality assurance of Government analytical (...) models in the context of the experience with the Intercity West Coast franchise competition. This paper examines what progress has been made in the 8 years since the Laidlaw report in model building and best practise in government and proposes several recommendations for ways forward. This paper also discusses the Lords Science and Technology Committees of June 2020 that analysed the failings in the modelling of COVID. Despite going on to influence policy, many of the same issues raised within the Laidlaw and Macpherson Reports were also present in the Lords Science and Technology Committee enquiry. We examine the technical and organisational challenges to progress in this area and make recommendations for a way forward. (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)

At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to private reverie or, in the (...) more contentful cases, as propaganda. The ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is that art influences surreptitiously while philosophy presents reasons that invite rational scrutiny. As such, in contrast to philosophy, art would undermine our agency. In July 2017, a group of philosophers gathered at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), in Sydney, Australia, in the presence of two AGNSW curators to explore the basis of their own experiences of selected artworks. Here, those commentaries are reproduced. Each reveal that objective grounds for an experience of art can be based in the community from which one draws one’s terms of reference. In our commentaries we see the expertise of the respective philosophical communities but other communities of culture or expertise might serve the same purpose and hence resolve the ancient quarrel. Before hearing these commentaries, I explain what is at stake when the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is understood in contemporary terms. This Issue of the Curator also includes an article on the community-based art criticism that emerges from these commentaries followed by an exhibition review which reveals the incorrigible impulse (also demonstrated in the commentaries) to find the basis for the most apt experience of an artwork. A response by the AGNSW curators completes this issue. (shrink)

Aesthetics is not an area to which the Stoics are normally understood to have contributed. I adopt a broad description of the purview of Aesthetics according to which Aesthetics pertains to the study of those preferences and values that ground what is considered worthy of attention. According to this approach, we find that the Stoics exhibit an Aesthetic that reveals a direct line of development between Plato, the Stoics, Thomas Aquinas and the eighteenth century, specifically Kant’s aesthetics. I will reveal (...) an interpretation of the aesthetic of the Stoics which has more explanatory power for the history of aesthetic theory than a history of aesthetic theory which leaves out the Stoics. (shrink)

According to the scientific image, aesthetic experience is constituted by private reverie or mindless gratification of some kind. This image fails to fully acknowledge the theoretical and hence cultural aspect of perception, which includes aesthetic experience. This chapter reframes aesthetic reflective judgment in terms of perceptual processes (section 2); intentional pleasure (section 3); non-perceptually represented perceptual properties (section 4); and intersubjectivity (section 5). By clarifying the relevant terms, the liberal naturalist account of the sublime provides the link between the sublime (...) and moral motivation (section 6). (shrink)

Is philosophy like plumbing? I have made this comparison a number of times when I have wanted to stress that philosophising is not just grand and elegant and difficult, but is also needed. It is not optional. The idea has caused mild surprise, and has sometimes been thought rather undignified. The question of dignity is a very interesting one, and I shall come back to it at the end of this article. But first, I would like to work the comparison (...) out a bit more fully. (shrink)

Call for Written evidence - Risk Assessment and Risk Planning.

This chapter is Mary Whiton Calkins’ articulation and defense of the personalistic conception of reality.