Thomas Elsaesser’s recent scholarship has examined the “mind-game film”, a phenomenon in Hollywood that is broadly characterised by multi-platform storytelling, paratextual narrative feedback loops, nonlinear storytelling, and unreliable character perspectives. While “mind-game” or “puzzle” films have become a contentious subject amongst post-cinema scholars concerned with Hollywood storytelling, what is to be said of contemporary European independent cinema? Elsaesser’s timely publication, European Cinema and Continental Philosophy, examines an amalgam of politically inclined European auteurs to resolve this query. Elsaesser concedes that (...) there exists a phenomenological confluence between the mind-game film and contemporary European cinema. For instance, both produce characters afflicted by productive pathologies, designating new socially useful forms of agency and identity. One only needs to consult the amnesiac protagonist M (Markku Peltola) in Aki Kaurismäki’s The Man Without a Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä, 2002) or, as regards Lars von Trier’s cinema, Beth (Emily Watson) in Breaking the Waves (1996), Selma (Björk) in Dancer in the Dark (2000), “She” (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Antichrist (2009) or Joe (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in Nymphomaniac (2013) to evince this overlap. However, this book is more concerned with performative self-contradictions, whereby cinema-as-enunciator is put under erasure, thus aggravating the inherent discrepancies troubling Europe today. Elsaesser, indeed, evaluates a growing general disaffection with politics, the rise of populist nationalism and far-right fringe parties, as well as an increasing population of economic migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. (shrink)

I argue that normative formal epistemology (NFE) is best understood as modelling, in the sense that this is the reconstruction of its methodology on which NFE is doing best. I focus on Bayesianism and show that it has the characteristics of modelling. But modelling is a scientific enterprise, while NFE is normative. I thus develop an account of normative models on which they are idealised representations put to normative purposes. Normative assumptions, such as the transitivity of comparative credence, are characterised (...) as modelling idealisations motivated normatively. I then survey the landscape of methodological options: what might formal epistemologists be up to? I argue the choice is essentially binary: modelling or theorising. If NFE is theorising it is doing very poorly: generating false claims with no clear methodology for separating out what is to be taken seriously. Modelling, by contrast, is a successful methodology precisely suited to the management of useful falsehoods. Regarding NFE as modelling is not costless, however. First, our normative inferences are less direct and are muddied by the presence of descriptive idealisations. Second, our models are purpose-specific and limited in their scope. I close with suggestions for how to adapt our practice. (shrink)

Whilst much has been said about the implications of predictive processing for our scientific understanding of cognition, there has been comparatively little discussion of how this new paradigm fits with our everyday understanding of the mind, i.e. folk psychology. This paper aims to assess the relationship between folk psychology and predictive processing, which will first require making a distinction between two ways of understanding folk psychology: as propositional attitude psychology and as a broader folk psychological discourse. It will be argued (...) that folk psychology in this broader sense is compatible with predictive processing, despite the fact that there is an apparent incompatibility between predictive processing and a literalist interpretation of propositional attitude psychology. The distinction between these two kinds of folk psychology allows us to accept that our scientific usage of folk concepts requires revision, whilst rejecting the suggestion that we should eliminate folk psychology entirely. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw attention to several important tensions between Kant’s account of moral education and his commitment to transcendental idealism. Our main claim is that, in locating freedom outside of space and time, transcendental idealism makes it difficult for Kant to both provide an explanation of how moral education occurs, but also to confirm that his own account actually works. Having laid out these problems, we then offer a response on Kant’s behalf. We argue that, while it might (...) look like Kant has to abandon his commitment to either moral education or transcendental idealism, there is a way in which he can maintain both. (shrink)

This is a paper about the methodology of normative ethics. I claim that much work in normative ethics can be interpreted as modelling, the form of inquiry familiar from science, involving idealised representations. I begin with the anti-theory debate in ethics, and note that the debate utilises the vocabulary of scientific theories without recognising the role models play in science. I characterise modelling, and show that work with these characteristics is common in ethics. This establishes the plausibility of my interpretation. (...) Taking methodological inspiration from modelling in science gives us new tools for managing idealisations, and a new perspective on pluralism. I demonstrate why this interpretation is a fruitful way of interpreting ethics, by looking at three case studies. First, I return to the anti-theory debate and argue that modelling opens up a new middle ground. Second, I argue that a modelling lens offers a new way of understanding impossibility theorems in population ethics, and their bearing on ethics as a whole. Finally, I show how viewing our work as modelling can be deployed in debates within ethics, using the debate over prioritarianism as an example. I close with further methodological suggestions for those who choose to see themselves as modellers. I discuss the role of counterexamples, our responses to moral disagreement, and the training of new ethicists. (shrink)

Bermúdez argues for rational framing effects in the form of quasi-cyclical preferences. This is supposed to refute the extensionality principle in standard decision theory. In response, I argue that it is better to analyze seemingly quasi-cyclical preferences as ceteris paribus preferences. Furthermore, if frames are included as objects of choice, we can acknowledge rational framing effects without rejecting extensionality.

Freedom lies at the heart of Kant’s philosophy. Three recent edited collections explore this key idea in different ways, alongside other related concep...

There are two popular views regarding the origin of critical thinking: (1) The concept of critical thinking began with Socrates and his Socratic method of questioning. (2) The term ‘critical thinking’ was first introduced by John Dewey in 1910 in his book How We Think. This paper argues that both claims are incorrect. Firstly, critical reflection was a distinguishing characteristic of the Presocratic philosophers, setting them apart from earlier traditions. Therefore, they should be recognized as even earlier pioneers of critical (...) thinking. Secondly, John Dewey not only used the term ‘critical thinking’ before 1910, but there were also other authors who used it before him. The meaning of ‘critical thinking’ at the turn of the twentieth century was shaped by various traditions of linguistic usage, including literary criticism, science and medicine, and Kantian philosophy. (shrink)

What is the proper role for scientists in policymaking? This paper explores various roles that scientists can play, with an eye to questions that these roles raise about value-neutrality and technocracy. Where much philosophical literature is concerned with the conduct of research or the transmission of research results to policymakers, I am interested in various non-research roles that scientists take on in policymaking. These include raising the alarm on issues, framing and conceptualising problems, formulating potential policies, assessing policy options for (...) expected efficacy, and more. I consider examples from climate change and Covid-19 policymaking. My intention is to encourage philosophers to expand their interest in values in science out from the conduct of research to the wide array of roles that scientists play in policymaking. The paper is therefore an overview of the landscape of potential research questions, rather than a presentation of a single argument. (shrink)

While we agree in broad strokes with the characterisation of rationalization as a “useful fiction,” we think that Fiery Cushman's claim remains ambiguous in two crucial respects: the reality of beliefs and desires, that is, the fictional status of folk-psychological entities and the degree to which they should be understood as useful. Our aim is to clarify both points and explicate the rationale of rationalization.

Nussbaum’s theory of the emotions draws heavily on the Stoic account. In her theory, emotions are a kind of value judgment or thought. This is in stark contrast to the well-known proposal from William James, who took emotions to be bodily feelings. There are various motivations for taking emotions as judgments. One main reason is that emotions are intentional mental states. They are always about something, directed at particular objects or state of affairs. For example, fear seems to involve the (...) anticipation of danger. To grief for the passing of a loved one involves the thought that someone dear to us is now gone. In Upheavals of Thought and also in her Hochelaga Lecture, Nussbaum analyzed compassion as a set of judgments, including for example the judgment that someone is experiencing serious suffering, and that the person in question does not deserve the suffering. (shrink)

When an agent learns of an expert's credence in a proposition about which they are an expert, the agent should defer to the expert and adopt that credence as their own. This is a popular thought about how agents ought to respond to (ideal) experts. In a Bayesian framework, it is often modelled by endowing the agent with a set of priors that achieves this result. But this model faces a number of challenges, especially when applied to non-ideal agents (who (...) nevertheless interact with ideal experts). I outline these problems, and use them as desiderata for the development of a new model. Taking inspiration from Richard Jeffrey's development of Jeffrey conditioning, I develop a model in which expert reports are taken as exogenous constraints on the agent's posterior probabilities. I show how this model can handle a much wider class of expert reports (for example reports of conditional probabilities), and can be naturally extended to cover propositions for which the agent has no prior. (shrink)

Evidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation”. But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language of (...) which it is a part and that all knowledge is empirical knowledge. This paper is a survey of what evidential holism is, how plausible it is, and what consequences it has. Section 1 will distinguish a range of different holistic claims, Sections 2 and 3 explore how well motivated they are and how they relate to one another, and Section 4 returns to the arguments listed above and uses the distinctions from the previous sections to identify holism's role in each case. (shrink)

This paper purports to provide a fresh cashing out of Debasing Scepticism: the type of Scepticism put on the map in a recent article by Jonathan Schaffer, with a view to demonstrating that the Debasing Sceptic’s argument is not so easily dismissed as many of Schaffer’s commentators have thought. After defending the very possibility of the Debasing Sceptic’s favoured sceptical scenario, I lay out a framework for thinking of the agent’s power to hold their beliefs in the light of reasons (...) which I argue has initial plausibility. I then attempt to show that with this framework in tow, the Debasing Sceptic has an argument for their sceptical conclusion available to them which Schaffer’s commentators have failed to undermine, and which is independently interesting. (shrink)

Emmanuel Levinas’s work seemingly places a great emphasis on language leading some commentators towards a Kantian reading of him where moral consideration would be based on the moral patient’s capacity for reason with language functioning as a proxy for this. Although this reading is possible, a closer look at Levinas’s descriptions of language reveal that its defining characteristic is not reason but the capacity to express beyond any thematized contents we would give to the Other. This expressivity (which Levinas calls (...) face) would confront me with their singularity, infinity, and interiority tying me to them in a relation of responsibility. And the “content” of such an expression is a vulnerability and exposure tied to their mortality which continually entreats me though I cannot take it away. It is by means of this bare expression of an exposure to death as the core of language that it will become possible for non-human mortal beings to have what Levinas calls language. This possibility, although not explicitly addressed by Levinas, is at least left open by his account of Bobby the dog as well as his agnosticism over a snake’s face. (shrink)

In this chapter, we compare Kant and James’ accounts of freedom. Despite both thinkers’ rejecting compatibilism for the sake of practical reason, there are two striking differences in their stances. The first concerns whether or not freedom requires the possibility of an open future. James holds that morality hinges on the real possibility that the future can be affected by our actions. Kant, on the other hand, seems to maintain that we can still be free in the crucial sense, even (...) if none of our actions can have any effect on the future. The second difference between them is related, and concerns the location of freedom. Kant views experience as determined by natural necessity, and locates freedom outside of it, in things-in-themselves. James, on the other hand, has a richer conception of experience than Kant, and holds that we can locate our freedom within experience alone. In the end, we contend that James has a better account of how freedom relates to our experience, but this comes at a cost. For while Kant's account struggles with the relationship between freedom and experience, it has the advantage of insulating our freedom from potential empirical challenges. (shrink)

Kant worries that if we are not free, morality will be nothing more than a phantasm for us. In the final section of the Groundwork, he attempts secure our freedom, and with it, morality. Here is a simplified version of his argument: -/- 1. A rational will is a free will 2. A free will stands under the moral law 3. Therefore, a rational will stands under the moral law -/- In this paper, I attempt to defuse two prominent objections (...) to this argument. Commentators often worry that Kant has not managed to establish that we are rational beings with wills in the first place, and that he equivocates in his use of ‘free’ between premise 1 and 2. I argue that both of these objections can be overcome, and thus seek to offer some hope for Kant’s approach in Groundwork III. (shrink)

Indispensability arguments are used as a way of working out what there is: our best science tells us what things there are. Some philosophers think that indispensability arguments can be used to show that we should be committed to the existence of mathematical objects (numbers, functions, sets). Do indispensability arguments also deliver conclusions about the modal properties of these mathematical entities? Colyvan (in Leng, Paseau, Potter (eds) Mathematical knowledge, OUP, Oxford, 109-122, 2007) and Hartry Field (Realism, mathematics and modality, Blackwell, (...) Oxford, 1989) each suggest that a consequence of the empirical methodology of indispensability arguments is that the resulting mathematical objects can only be said to exist (or not exist) contingently. Kristie Miller has argued that this line of thought doesn’t work (Miller in Erkenntnis, 77 (3), 335-359, 2012). Miller argues that indispensability arguments are in direct tension with contingentism about mathematical objects, and that they cannot tell us about the modal status of mathematical objects. I argue that Miller’s argument is crucially imprecise, and that the best way of making it clearer no longer shows that the indispensability strategy collapses or is unstable if it delivers contingentist conclusions about what there is. (shrink)

Roderich Tumulka’s GRWf theory offers a simple, realist and relativistic solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics. It is achieved by the introduction of a stochastic dynamical collapse of the wavefunction. An issue with dynamical collapse theories is that they involve an amendment to the Schrodinger equation; amending the dynamics of such a tried and tested theory is seen by some as problematic. This paper proposes an alteration to GRWf that avoids the need to amend the Schrodinger equation via (...) what might be seen as a primary set of solutions to the Schrodinger equation that satisfy a normalisation condition over space and time. The traditional Born-normalised solutions are shown to be conditionalisations of these primary solutions. (shrink)

This paper lays out two recent accounts of Hegel’s practical philosophy in order to present a challenge. According to Robert Stern and Mark Alznauer, Hegel attempts to ground our ethical practices in ontological norms. I argue that we cannot ground our ethical practices in this way. However, I also contend that Stern’s and Alznauer’s conception of reality as both conceptual and normative can still play a useful role in practical philosophy, namely, to help defuse a sceptical worry about a threat (...) to ethics. (shrink)

Epistemic modals in consequent place of indicative conditionals give rise to apparent counterexamples to Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens. Familiar assumptions of fa- miliar truth conditional theories of modality facilitate a prima facie explanation—viz., that the target cases harbor epistemic modal equivocations. However, these explana- tions go too far. For they foster other predictions of equivocation in places where in fact there are no equivocations. It is argued here that the key to the solution is to drop the assumption that (...) modal claims are inherently relational (i.e., that they ex- press a logical relation between a prejacent and a premise-set) in favor of a view that treats them as inherently quantificational. In particular it is suggested that modals are mass noun descriptions of information. We demonstrate how this approach unlocks the equivocation problem. (shrink)

In our paper, we distinguish between two forms of memory knowledge: experiential memory knowledge and stored memory knowledge. We argue that, mutatis mutandis, the case that Pritchard makes for epistemological disjunctivism regarding perceptual knowledge can be made for epistemological disjunctivism regarding experiential memory knowledge. At the same time, we argue against a disjunctivist account of stored memory knowledge.

This paper draws attention to two problems with Kant's claim that transcendental freedom is timeless. The problems are that this causes conceptual difficulties and fails to vindicate important parts of our moral practices. I then put forward three ways in which we can respond to these charges on Kant's behalf. The first is to defend Kant's claim that transcendental freedom occurs outside of time. The second is to reject this claim, but try to maintain transcendental idealism. And the third is (...) to reject both Kant's claim about the timelessness of freedom and also transcendental idealism itself. (shrink)

Prudential hedonism is a school of thought in the philosophy of welfare that says that only pleasure is good for us in itself and only pain is bad for us in itself. This dissertation concerns an especially austere form of prudential hedonism: basic prudential hedonism (BPH). BPH claims that all pleasure is good for us in itself, and all pain is bad for us in itself, without exception; that all pleasures feel fundamentally alike, as do all pains; and that the (...) amount of welfare in a person’s life can (in principle) be calculated just by adding up the amount of pleasure it contains and subtracting the amount of pain. The dissertation presents a positive argument for the claim that pleasures and pains are defined by common phenomenal properties, defends BPH against a battery of objections, and outlines an argument for accepting BPH on the grounds that it is simpler than competing views. (shrink)

A primary challenge from the relativist to the contextualist about epistemic modals is to explain eavesdropping data—i.e., why the eavesdropper is inclined to judge the speaker as having uttered an epistemic modal falsehood (when she is so inclined), even though the speaker’s utterance is true according to reasonable contextualist truth conditions. The issue turns in large part on the strength and shape of the data, both of which are in dispute. One complaint is that an eavesdropper’s truth value judgments fluctuate (...) with variations of non- epistemic fact (even after the relevant epistemic/information states are determined). The project here is to strengthen and reframe this complaint in a debate-neutral way, and to show how a sober contextualism can uniformly accommodate it and the standard eavesdropping data. Along the way we reject John Hawthorne’s danger-theoretic explanation of these subtleties. (shrink)

Political advertising is changing. This chapter considers some of the implications of this for the democratic process. I begin with recent reports of online political advertising. From this, two related concerns emerge. The first is that online political advertisements sometimes occur in the dark, and the second is that they can involve sending different messages to different groups. I consider these issues in turn. This involves an extended discussion of the importance of publicity and discussion in democracy, and a comparison (...) between dog whistles and dark advertisements. Through this, I look to outline some of the ways in which online political advertisements can undermine the democratic process. (shrink)

This paper explores the political campaigning strategies of Lynton Crosby, and argues that they pose a threat to democracy. In doing so, I looks to shed light on Crosby’s tactics, but also to elucidate exactly what is anti-democratic about them. I argue that there are two worrying aspects to this. The first involves Crosby’s lack of respect for voters’ beliefs, interests and values, whereas the second concerns his propensity for avoiding debate.

This chapter draws an analogy between computing mechanisms and autopoietic systems, focusing on the non-representational status of both kinds of system (computational and autopoietic). It will be argued that the role played by input and output components in a computing mechanism closely resembles the relationship between an autopoietic system and its environment, and in this sense differs from the classical understanding of inputs and outputs. The analogy helps to make sense of why we should think of computing mechanisms as non-representational, (...) and might also facilitate reconciliation between computational and autopoietic/enactive approaches to the study of cognition. (shrink)

Pietroski (1993) offers a semantics for belief sentences that is supposed to address the problem of equivalence. This paper argues that his proposal fails to solve the problem.

This paper discusses three relevant logics that obey Component Homogeneity - a principle that Goddard and Routley introduce in their project of a logic of significance. The paper establishes two main results. First, it establishes a general characterization result for two families of logic that obey Component Homogeneity - that is, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their consequence relations. From this, we derive characterization results for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Second, the paper establishes complete sequent calculi (...) for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Among the other accomplishments of the paper, we generalize the semantics from Bochvar, Hallden, Deutsch and Daniels, we provide a general recipe to define containment logics, we explore the single-premise/single-conclusion fragment of S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fdeand the connections between crossS*fde and the logic Eq of equality by Epstein. Also, we present S*fde as a relevant logic of meaninglessness that follows the main philosophical tenets of Goddard and Routley, and we briefly examine three further systems that are closely related to our main logics. Finally, we discuss Routley's criticism to containment logic in light of our results, and overview some open issues. (shrink)

By definition, pain is a sensory and emotional experience that is felt in a particular part of the body. The precise relationship between somatic events at the site where pain is experienced, and central processing giving rise to the mental experience of pain remains the subject of debate, but there is little disagreement in scholarly circles that both aspects of pain are critical to its experience. Recent experimental work, however, suggests a public view that is at odds with this conceptualisation. (...) By demonstrating that the public does not necessarily endorse central tenets of the “mental” view of pain (subjectivity, privacy, and incorrigibility), experimental philosophers have argued that the public holds a more “body-centric” view than most clinicians and scholars. Such a discrepancy would have important implications for how the public interacts with pain science and clinical care. In response, we tested the hypothesis that the public is capable of a more “mind-centric” view of pain. Using a series of vignettes, we demonstrate that in situations which highlight mental aspects of pain the public can, and does, recognize pain as a mental phenomenon. We also demonstrate that the public view is subject to context effects, by showing that the public’s view is modified when situations emphasizing mental and somatic aspects of pain are presented together. (shrink)

"We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty (...) contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history." -Excerpt from Introduction. ... ... To read full introduction, (1) download attached file or (2) follow wiley_dot_com link below, click "Read An Excerpt", then click :Excerpt 3:(pdf)". (shrink)

The work of Thomas White represents a systematic attempt to combine the best of the new science of the seventeenth century with the best of Aristotelian tradition. This attempt earned him the criticism of Hobbes and the praise of Leibniz, but today, most of his attempts to navigate between traditions remain to be explored in detail. This paper does so for his ontology of accidents. It argues that his criticism of accidents in the category of location as entities over (...) and above substances was likely aimed at Francisco Suárez, and shows how White’s worries about the analysis of location were linked with his broader cosmological views. White rejects real qualities, but holds that the quantity of a substance is somehow distinct from its bearer. This reveals a common ground with some of his scholastic interlocutors, but lays bare a deep disagreement with thinkers like Descartes on the nature of matter. (shrink)

Climate change and decarbonization raise complex justice questions that researchers and policymakers must address. The distributions of greenhouse gas emissions rights and mitigation efforts have dominated justice discourses within scenario research, an integrative element of the IPCC. However, the space of justice considerations is much larger. At present, there is no consistent approach to comprehensively incorporate and examine justice considerations. Here we propose a conceptual framework grounded in philosophical theory for this purpose. We apply this framework to climate mitigation scenarios (...) literature as proof of concept, enabling a more holistic and multidimensional investigation of justice. We identify areas of future research, including new metrics of service provisioning essential for human well-being. [Can be freely read by clicking the ReadCube link below.]. (shrink)

We examine some of Connes’ criticisms of Robinson’s infinitesimals starting in 1995. Connes sought to exploit the Solovay model S as ammunition against non-standard analysis, but the model tends to boomerang, undercutting Connes’ own earlier work in functional analysis. Connes described the hyperreals as both a “virtual theory” and a “chimera”, yet acknowledged that his argument relies on the transfer principle. We analyze Connes’ “dart-throwing” thought experiment, but reach an opposite conclusion. In S , all definable sets of reals are (...) Lebesgue measurable, suggesting that Connes views a theory as being “virtual” if it is not definable in a suitable model of ZFC. If so, Connes’ claim that a theory of the hyperreals is “virtual” is refuted by the existence of a definable model of the hyperreal field due to Kanovei and Shelah. Free ultrafilters aren’t definable, yet Connes exploited such ultrafilters both in his own earlier work on the classification of factors in the 1970s and 80s, and in Noncommutative Geometry, raising the question whether the latter may not be vulnerable to Connes’ criticism of virtuality. We analyze the philosophical underpinnings of Connes’ argument based on Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and detect an apparent circularity in Connes’ logic. We document the reliance on non-constructive foundational material, and specifically on the Dixmier trace −∫ (featured on the front cover of Connes’ magnum opus) and the Hahn–Banach theorem, in Connes’ own framework. We also note an inaccuracy in Machover’s critique of infinitesimal-based pedagogy. (shrink)

This paper puts forward two claims about funding carbon capture and storage. The first claim is that there are moral justifications supporting strategic investment into CO2 storage from global and regional perspectives. One argument draws on the empirical evidence which suggests carbon capture and storage would play a significant role in a portfolio of global solutions to climate change; the other draws on Rawls' notion of legitimate expectations and Moellendorf's Anti-Poverty principle. The second claim is that where to pursue this (...) strategic investment poses a morally non-trivial problem, with considerations like near-term global distributive justice and undermining legitimate expectations favouring investing in developing regions, especially in Asia, and considerations like long-term climate impacts and best uses of resources favouring investing in the relatively wealthy regions that have the best prospects for successful storage development. [Open access]. (shrink)

In this paper we will demonstrate that a computational system can meet the criteria for autonomy laid down by classical enactivism. The two criteria that we will focus on are operational closure and structural determinism, and we will show that both can be applied to a basic example of a physically instantiated Turing machine. We will also address the question of precariousness, and briefly suggest that a precarious Turing machine could be designed. Our aim in this paper is to challenge (...) the assumption that computational systems are necessarily heteronomous systems, to try and motivate in enactivism a more nuanced and less rigid conception of computational systems, and to demonstrate to computational theorists that they might find some interesting material within the enactivist tradition, despite its historical hostility towards computationalism. (shrink)

Background: Transgender health care is a subject of much debate among clinicians, political commentators, and policy-makers. While the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC) establish clinical standards, these standards contain implied ethics but lack explicit focused discussion of ethical considerations in providing care. An ethics chapter in the SOC would enhance clinical guidelines. Aims: We aim to provide a valuable guide for healthcare professionals, and anyone interested in the ethical aspects of clinical support for gender (...) diverse and transgender people of all ages. Recognizing that the WPATH is a global association, we address broad challenges. We offer a reflection on general ethical principles, providing conceptual tools for healthcare providers, patients, and families to navigate the specific challenges they might encounter in transgender health care, in line with WPATH’s worldwide mission and scope. Method: This article employs a descriptive analysis, and our framework of reference is the four principles of biomedical ethics: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Results: The article presents a discussion on the four ethical principles as applied to transgender health care. We address issues such as respect for patient autonomy in decision-making, the role of beneficence and nonmaleficence in clinical interventions, and the importance of justice in equitable treatment and access to care. Some of the ethical concerns we address in this article pertain to the current sociopolitical climate, where there has been increasing legal interference, internationally, for transgender and nonbinary people, particularly youth, seeking medical care. Discussion: We highlight the interplay between ethical principles and clinical practice, underscoring the need for ethical guidance in addressing the diverse challenges faced by healthcare providers and patients in transgender health care. We advocate for continuous refinement of ethical thinking to ensure that transgender health care is not only medically effective but also ethically sound. (shrink)

Many fields (social choice, welfare economics, recommender systems) assume people express what benefits them via their 'revealed preferences'. Revealed preferences have well-documented problems when used this way, but are hard to displace in these fields because, as an information source, they are simple, universally applicable, robust, and high-resolution. In order to compete, other information sources (about participants' values, capabilities and functionings, etc) would need to match this. I present a conception of values as *attention policies resulting from constitutive judgements*, and (...) use it to build an alternative preference relation, Meaningful Choice, which retains many desirable features of revealed preference. (shrink)

Physical Computation is the summation of Piccinini’s work on computation and mechanistic explanation over the past decade. It draws together material from papers published during that time, but also provides additional clarifications and restructuring that make this the definitive presentation of his mechanistic account of physical computation. This review will first give a brief summary of the account that Piccinini defends, followed by a chapter-by-chapter overview of the book, before finally discussing one aspect of the account in more critical detail.

In his presidential address to the APA, Alvin Plantinga argues that the only sensible way to be an anti-realist is to be a theist. Anti-realism (AR) in this context is the epistemic analysis of truth that says, "(AR) necessarily, a statement is true if and only if it would be believed by an ideally [or sufficiently] rational agent/community in ideal [or sufficiently good] epistemic circumstances." Plantinga demonstrates, with modest modal resources, that AR entails that necessarily, ideal epistemic circumstances obtain. As (...) it is a contingent matter whether ideal epistemic circumstances obtain, Plantinga concludes that an anti-realist should be a theist. In this paper, we show that counterfactual analyses of truth as epistemic are instances of a more general problem of philosophical analysis. More specifically, without a radical revision of the logic, counterfactual analyses of truth as epistemic cannot avoid perpetrating some version of the conditional fallacy. Even so, we argue, anti-realists are not committed to the necessary existence of ideal epistemic circumstances and therefore need not be theists. (shrink)

The book answers long-standing questions on scientific modeling and inference across multiple perspectives and disciplines, including logic, mathematics, physics and medicine. The different chapters cover a variety of issues, such as the role models play in scientific practice; the way science shapes our concept of models; ways of modeling the pursuit of scientific knowledge; the relationship between our concept of models and our concept of science. The book also discusses models and scientific explanations; models in the semantic view of theories; (...) the applicability of mathematical models to the real world and their effectiveness; the links between models and inferences; and models as a means for acquiring new knowledge. It analyzes different examples of models in physics, biology, mathematics and engineering. Written for researchers and graduate students, it provides a cross-disciplinary reference guide to the notion and the use of models and inferences in science. (shrink)

Is it possible for an individual that has gone out of being to come back into being again? The English Aristotelian, Thomas White, argued that it is not. Thomas Hobbes disagreed, and used the case of the Ship of Theseus to argue that individuals that have gone out of being may come back into being again. This paper provides the first systematic account of their arguments. It is doubtful that Hobbes has a consistent case against White. Still his (...) criticism may have prompted White to clarify his views on identity over time in his later work. (shrink)

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney (...) and skin. (shrink)

The UK has been ‘following the science’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in line with the national framework for the use of scientific advice in assessment of risk. We argue that the way in which it does so is unsatisfactory in two important respects. Firstly, pandemic policy making is not based on a comprehensive assessment of policy impacts. And secondly, the focus on reasonable worst-case scenarios as a way of managing uncertainty results in a loss of decision-relevant information and (...) does not provide a coherent basis for policy making. (shrink)

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic pain face significant barriers in finding clinicians to manage long-term opioid therapy (LTOT). For patients on LTOT, it is increasingly common to have them sign opioid treatment agreements (OTAs). OTAs enumerate the risks of opioids, as informed consent documents would, but also the requirements that patients must meet to receive LTOT. While there has been an ongoing scholarly discussion about the practical and ethical implications of OTA use in the abstract, little is known about how clinicians (...) use them and if OTAs themselves modify clinician prescribing practices. OBJECTIVE To determine how clinicians use OTAs and the potential impacts of OTAs on opioid prescribing. DESIGN We conducted qualitative analysis of four focus groups of clinicians from a large Midwestern academic medical center. Groups were organized according to self-identified prescribing patterns: two groups for clinicians who identified as prescribers of LTOT, and two who did not. PARTICIPANTS 17 clinicians from General Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, and Palliative Care were recruited using purposive, convenience sampling. APPROACH Discussions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed for themes using reflexive thematic analysis by a multidisciplinary team. KEY RESULTS Our analysis identified three main themes: (1) OTAs did not influence clinicians’ decisions whether to use LTOT generally but did shape clinical decision-making for individual patients; (2) clinicians feel OTAs intensify the power they have over patients, though this was not uniformly judged as harmful; (3) there is a potential misalignment between the intended purposes of OTAs and their implementation. CONCLUSION This study reveals a complicated relationship between OTAs and access to pain management. While OTAs seem not to impact the clinicians’ decisions about whether to use LTOT generally, they do sometimes influence prescribing decisions for individual patients. Clinicians shared complex views about OTAs’ purposes, which shows the need for more clarity about how OTAs could be used to promote shared decision-making, joint accountability, informed consent, and patient education. (shrink)

: New genetic technologies continue to emerge that allow us to control the genetic endowment of future children. Increasingly the claim is made that it is morally "irresponsible" for parents to fail to use such technologies when they know their possible children are at risk for a serious genetic disorder. We believe such charges are often unwarranted. Our goal in this article is to offer a careful conceptual analysis of the language of irresponsibility in an effort to encourage more care (...) in its use. Two of our more important sub-claims are: A fair judgment of genetic irresponsibility necessarily requires a thick background description of the specific reproductive choice; and there is no necessary connection between an act's being morally wrong and its being irresponsible. These are distinct judgments requiring distinct justifications. (shrink)

Principles of procreative beneficence (PPBs) hold that parents have good reasons to select the child with the best life prospects. Sparrow (2010) claims that PPBs imply that we should select only female children, unlesswe attach normative significance to “normal” human capacities. We argue that this claim fails on both empirical and logical grounds. Empirically, Sparrow’s argument for greater female wellbeing rests on a selective reading of the evidence and the incorrect assumption that an advantage for females would persist even when (...) a serious gender imbalance is obtained. Logically, PPBs cite only pro tanto reasons and allow that the good of an individual child could be outweighed by other morally relevant considerations, such as those which take collectively suboptimal outcomes into account. There is thus no need to attach value to the “normal.”. (shrink)