This paper canvasses the various dimensions along which theories of truth may disagree about the extent to which truth is minimal.

Biomedical diagnostic science is a great deal less successful than we've been willing to acknowledge in bioethics, and this fact has far-reaching ethical implications. In this article I consider the surprising prevalence of medically unexplained symptoms, and the term's ambiguous meaning. Then I frame central questions that remain answered in this context with respect to informed consent, autonomy, and truth-telling. Finally, I show that while considerable attention in this area is given to making sure not to provide biological care to (...) patients without a need, comparatively little is given to the competing, ethically central task of making sure never to obstruct access to biological care for those with diagnostically confusing biological conditions. I suggest this problem arises from confusion about the philosophical value of vagueness when it comes to the line between biological and psychosocial needs. (shrink)

The paper considers whether psychiatric kinds can be natural kinds and concludes that they can. This depends, however, on a particular conception of ‘natural kind’. We briefly describe and reject two standard accounts – what we call the ‘stipulative account’ (according to which apparently a priori criteria, such as the possession of intrinsic essences, are laid down for natural kindhood) and the ‘Kripkean account’ (according to which the natural kinds are just those kinds that obey Kripkean semantics). We then rehearse (...) a more permissive account: Richard Boyd’s ‘homeostatic property cluster’ (HPC) account. We argue that psychiatric kinds can in principle count as natural kinds on the HPC account. Moreover, specific psychiatric kinds (Tourette’s, schizophrenia, etc.) can be natural kinds even if the category psychiatric disorder is not itself a natural kind. (shrink)

We generally accept that medicine’s conceptual and ethical foundations are grounded in recognition of personhood. With patients in vegetative state, however, we’ve understood that the ethical implications of phenomenal consciousness are distinct from those of personhood. This suggests a need to reconsider medicine’s foundations. What is the role for recognition of consciousness (rather than personhood) in grounding the moral value of medicine and the specific demands of clinical ethics? I suggest that, according to holism, the moral value of medicine is (...) secured when conscious states are recognized in everyday medical science. Moreover, consciousness fully motivates traditional principles of clinical ethics if we understand respect for autonomy as respect for the dominion of an experiencer in the private, inescapable realm of bodily experience. When medicine’s foundations are grounded in recognition of consciousness, we understand how patients fully command respect even when they lack capacity to exercise their bodily dominion through decision-making. (shrink)

The giant strides to be taken in becoming an academic do not just entail acquiring knowledge through formal education but demand further steps to master, philosophize and profess knowledge. Apart from the credentials to show that quality conditions were fulfilled in a higher education, volumes of well researched publications in peer review academic journals are vital. In Nigeria, when this form of learning came through colonial education women were not as privileged as men to acquire it immediately. So, men become (...) educated first, hence were the first set of academics. Subsequently, women joined this league of educated men in the academic world. The utilization of this knowledge by both men and women in academic community encroached on culture, its administration and expression. In this instance, issues in various endeavours, including academics are expressed through culture of criticism and criticism of culture. This study examines women’s academic world and their efforts in criticizing Nigerian culture with a focus on Mabel Evwierhoma’s involvement using theatre scholarship. The theory of Cultural Studies as it relates to cultural criticism specifically feminist criticism will be adopted to explore cultural feminist thoughts of Nigerian women in the academics with Evwierhoma’s input as a focus. The study finds that since the inception of feminism in Nigeria, women have deployed its scholarship, to criticise culture. Women in the theatre have used every available tool including creative writing, critical writing, research, pedagogy and philosophy to highlight cultural values that favour women. Evwierhoma has made a robust impact in this regard. (shrink)

What position on dualism does medicine require? Our understanding of that ques- tion has been dictated by holism, as defined by the biopsychosocial model, since the late twentieth century. Unfortunately, holism was characterized at the start with con- fused definitions of ‘dualism’ and ‘reductionism’, and that problem has led to a deep, unrecognized conceptual split in the medical professions. Some insist that holism is a nonreductionist approach that aligns with some form of dualism, while others insist it’s a reductionist view (...) that sets out to eradicate dualism. It’s important to consider each version. Nonreductive holism is philosophically consistent and clinically unprob- lematic. Reductive holism, however, is conceptually incoherent—yet it is the basis for the common idea that the boundary between medical and mental health disorders must be vague. When we trace that idea through to its implementation in medical practice, we find evidence that it compromises the safety of patient care in the large portion of cases where clinicians grapple with diagnosis at the boundary between psychiatry and medicine. Having established that medicine must embrace some form of nonreduc- tionism, I argue that Chalmers’ naturalistic dualism is a stronger prima facie candidate than the nonreductive alternatives. Regardless of which form of nonreductionism we prefer, some philosophical corrections are needed to give medicine a safe and coherent foundation. (shrink)

In states where Physician Assisted Dying (PAD) is legal, physicians occasionally receive requests for this form of end-of-life care. Here, I describe the ethically ambiguous sphere and why PAD falls into it. I argue that, given the ethical ambiguity of PAD, physicians should consider patient autonomy as the highest value in the four principles approach and act as informers and educators.

This paper uses virtue ethics to discuss the COVID-19 outbreak, Hollywood science-fiction/pandemic films, and the environmental crisis. We outline the ideas of hubris and nemesis and argue that responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires that we develop virtues. We will explore these ethical issues through an eco-reading (Hiltner 2018) of two popular films cinematic representation of pandemics, The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Contagion (2011). Fictional narratives are particularly adept at celebrating the moral and intellectual virtues of individuals (as is standard (...) in Hollywood cinema) and dramatizing the tensions inherent in human scientific and technological civilisation. Using examples from our texts and with reference to COVID-19, we begin with a discussion of virtues and vices, both individual and collective, we then explore the concept of flourishing and apply this framework to collective action problems such as climate change and COVID-19. Thus, science fiction can provoke new forms of environmental philosophising and ethical engagement, while addressing the most important challenges facing humanity at present. (shrink)

Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al., 2014; Porter & Schumann, 2018), one might reasonably expect them to be (...) less polarized. -/- We ran two studies designed to explore the relationship between various forms of humility and polarization. Our chief finding is that people who value humility are prone to what we are calling epistemic polarization—that is, judging the epistemic traits of contrapartisans negatively—which in turn plays a role in polarization more generally. Not only are contrapartisans deemed to have the wrong moral and political beliefs, they are also viewed as less humble and more arrogant, close-minded, and irrational. This makes matters even worse when it comes to the growing partisan divide. In light of our findings, we believe that the novel concept of epistemic polarization that we introduce is a promising target for further investigation. (shrink)

Emotional Intelligence (EI) has been conceptualized in the literature either as a dispositional tendency, in line with a personality trait (trait EI; Petrides and Furnham, 2001), or as an ability, moderately correlated with general intelligence (ability EI; Mayer and Salovey, 1997). Surprisingly, there have been few empirical attempts conceptualizing how the different EI approaches should be related to each other. However, understanding how the different approaches of EI may be interwoven and/or complementary is of primary importance for clarifying the conceptualization (...) of EI and organizing the literature around it. We introduce a theoretical framework explaining how trait EI, ability EI, and emotion information processing – a novel component related to EI recently introduced in the literature (e.g., Fiori and Vesely Maillefer, 2018) – may contribute to effective emotion-related performance and provide initial evidence supporting its usefulness in predicting EI-related outcomes. More specifically, we show that performance in a task in which participants had to infer the mental and emotional states of others, namely a Theory of Mind task, was predicted jointly (e.g., interaction effects) by trait EI, ability EI, and emotion information processing, after controlling for personality and IQ (N = 323). Our results argue for the importance of investigating the joint contribution of different aspects of EI in explaining variability in emotionally laden outcomes. (shrink)

Non-naturalism – roughly the view that normative properties and facts are sui generis and incompatible with a purely scientific worldview – faces a difficult challenge with regard to explaining why it is that the normative features of things supervene on their natural features. More specifically: non-naturalists have trouble explaining the necessitation relations, whatever they are, that hold between the natural and the normative. My focus is on Stephanie Leary's recent response to the challenge, which offers an attempted non-naturalism-friendly explanation (...) for the supervenience of the normative on the natural by appealing to hybrid properties, the essences of which link them to both natural and sui generis normative properties in suitable ways. I argue that despite its ingenuity, Leary's solution fails. This is so, I claim, because there are no hybrid properties of the sort that her suggestion appeals to. If non-naturalists are to deal with the supervenience challenge, they will have to find another way of doing so. (shrink)

Reply to Stephanie Leary’s, Kris McDaniel’s, Tristram McPherson’s and David Plunkett’s articles on Choosing Normative Concepts (OUP, 2017) in book symposium in Inquiry.

Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) is currently undergoing a resurgence of clinical interest for several mental health ailments. We propose that philosophers can play a significant role in PAT in both the preparation and integration phases of PAT. Philosophers can aid in the former phase by offering philosophical preparatory insights and in the latter phase by providing the conceptual language to articulate the complex philosophical aspects of a psychedelic experience.

No two individuals with the autism diagnosis are ever the same—yet many practitioners and parents can recognize signs of ASD very rapidly with the naked eye. What, then, is this phenotype of autism that shows itself across such distinct clinical presentations and heterogeneous developments? The “signs” seem notoriously slippery and resistant to the behavioral threshold categories that make up current assessment tools. Part of the problem is that cognitive and behavioral “abilities” typically are theorized as high-level disembodied and modular functions—that (...) are assessed discretely (impaired, normal, enhanced) to define a spectral syndrome. Even as biology reminds us that organic developing bodies are not made up of independent switches, we remain often seduced by the simplicity of mechanistic and cognitive models. Developmental disorders such as autism have accordingly been theorized as due to different modular dysfunctions—typically of cortical origin, i.e., failures of “theory of mind” (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985), of the “mirror neuron system” (Ramachandran and Oberman, 2006), of “weak central coherence” (Happe and Frith, 2006) or of the balance of “empathizing” and “systemizing” (Baron-Cohen, 2009), just to list a few. -/- The broad array of autonomic (Ming et al., 2005; Cheshire, 2012) and sensorimotor (Damasio and Maurer, 1978; Maurer and Damasio, 1982; Donnellan and Leary, 1995; Leary and Hill, 1996; Donnellan and Leary, 2012; Donnellan et al., 2012) differences experienced and reported by people with autism have by such theories typically been sidelined as “co-morbidities,” possibly sharing genetic causes, but rendered as incidental and decisively behaviorally irrelevant symptoms—surely disconnected from cognition. But what if the development of cortically based mental processes and autonomous control relies on the complexities and proper function of the peripheral nervous systems? Through such an “embodied” lens the heterogeneous symptoms of autism invites new interpretations. We propose here that many behavioral-level findings can be re-defined as downstream effects of how developing nervous systems attempt to cope and adapt to the challenges of having various noisy, unpredictable, and unreliable peripheral inputs. (shrink)

In a study drawing from both evolutionary biology and the social sciences, evidence and argument is assembled in support of the comprehensive appli- cation of selfish gene theory to the human population. With a focus on genes giving rise to characteristically-human cooperation (“cooperative genes”) in- volving language and theory of mind, one may situate a whole range of pat- terned behaviour—including celibacy and even slavery—otherwise seeming to present insuperable difficulties. Crucially, the behaviour which tends to propa- gate the cooperative genes (...) may be “at cost” to the genes of some who may be party to the cooperation itself. Explanatory insights are provided by Trivers’ parent-offspring conflict theory, Lack’s principle, and Hamilton’s kin selec- tion mechanism. A primary observation is that cooperation using language and theory of mind is itself interdependent with full human conceptualization of a world of objects and of themselves as embodied beings. Human capaci- ties inhering in, or arising out of, the ability to cooperate are also responsible for a vitally important long-term process, the domestication of animals and p- lants. The approach illuminates the difference between animal and human sexual behaviour, and the emergence of kinship systems. Again, recent pat- terns of population growth become much more explicable. It is argued that the gene is the single controlling replicator; the notion of the meme as a sec- ond independent replicator is flawed. (shrink)

The present article is published in Proche-Orient Chrétien, N.66, VOL.3-4, JAN. 2017, USJ: Beirut, pp. 425-430. It is a philosophical review of Philippe Capelle-Dumont and Yannick Courtel book “Religion et Liberté” that fetches the records of the First International Symposium of the Francophone Society of Philosophy of Religion about the two concepts Religion and Freedom. On one hand, religion has always been considered as a pole of practices and references contrary to freedom declining a dependence on a "binding doctrine"; on (...) the other hand, religion has undergone several political representations in the many spaces of cultural, social and international life which is urgent to re-examine. The article proposes a synthesis of the conferences of Philippe Capelle-Dumont, Jean-Luc Marion, Jean Greisch, Joseph O’Leary, François Chenet, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Francis Jacques, Pierluigi Valenza, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Yannick Courtel and Jean Grondin who concludes with the “freedom to philosophize about religion”. (shrink)

The psychedelic renaissance did not emerge from a void. While a tremendous upswell of interest in psychedelics can be observed today, there is scant acknowledgment of the current spiritual crisis that has led to this burgeoning enthusiasm. Having lost our sense of the sacred, we have—with disastrous consequences—become alienated from ourselves, others, and the natural environment. Secular psychotherapy and psychiatry have failed to address the myriad mental health problems that are prevalent right now, which has compelled people to desperately look (...) for alternatives to fill the void in their lives. Sacred medicines have been used for millennia in humanity’s traditional cultures as part of their spiritual practices. Now that psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAT) is being developed, we must avoid repeating the mistakes of modern psychology, which misguidedly seeks to situate entheogenic therapy on a desacralized foundation of materialism, reductionism, and scientism. Nevertheless, although the full benefit of entheogens can likely be gained only in the context of a sacred tradition, they may still have some measure of therapeutic value even when used in conjunction with secular psychotherapy. This article examines the metaphysical foundations of sacred psychology and argues that entheogenic therapy needs to be grounded on the same basis. The framework employed here is a “transpersonal” perspective that applies the insights found in the world’s great wisdom traditions. It will be argued that the adoption of psychedelics in mental health treatment presupposes a fully integrated psychotherapy that is possible only when it is rooted in a spiritually informed ontology. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá problematickou politické korektnosti ve vztahu k feministické filosofii vědy. Zaměřuje pozornost na užší pojem politické korektnosti - hodnotově motivovanou nekorektní práci s fakty. Konstatuje, že navzdory explicitnímu soustředění feministických autorek a autorů na význam hodnot v projektu vědy nelze chápat feministickou filosofii vědy jako politicky korektní nebo jako vybízení k politicky korektní vědě. Naopak se politicky korektní argumentace v tomto užším smyslu mohou dopouštět i práce vystupující proti feministické či politicky korektní agendě ve vědě.

È una credenza diffusa che i marchi di origine (DOCG, DOC, DOP, IGT, IGP e PAT, rispettivamente: di origine controllata e garantita; di origine controllata; di origine protetta; indicazione geografica tipica; indicazione geografica protetta; prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali) siano di grande utilità sia per i consumatori che per i produttori: certificando l’origine e il metodo di produzione di un prodotto, essi ne garantiscono una certa qualità di fronte al consumatore. Ma è proprio così? Che cosa giustifica l’introduzione di un marchio di (...) origine? Quanto sostengo qui di seguito è che, sebbene non credo si possa negare che i marchi di origine segnalino anche una certa qualità di un prodotto, forse non sono il modo migliore per farlo. Di fatto, per il consumatore, i marchi non garantiscono niente che vada oltre alla qualità richiesta affinché la certificazione venga rilasciata; ma, al contempo, in quanto forme di protezionismo, favoriscono certi produttori, prevenendo l’utilizzo della denominazione a chi offre un prodotto di qualità analoga o superiore, ma provienente da una zona priva di tradizioni. In altre parole: se vi sono prodotti equiparabili per qualità e gusto ad un dato prodotto di origine, e possibilmente più economicamente vantaggiosi, il consumatore non avrà modo di accorgersene dalla sola nomenclatura. Quindi: i marchi di origine sono (talvolta) un ostacolo all’acquisto e al godimento dei prodotti migliori al miglior prezzo. Talvolta: questo deve essere ben sottolineato, poiché in certi casi (per esempio quello dei PAT) il prodotto certificato dal marchio ha un mercato talmente di nicchia da costituire un tuttuno tra qualità e origine. (Si potrebbe aggiungere che le certificazioni dei marchi non sono sempre ottenute attraverso procedure affidabili. Non insisterò oltre su questo punto, per il quale si rimanda a: Paolo Conti, La leggenda del buon cibo italiano e altri miti alimentari contemporanei, Fazi Editore, 2006; Peter Singer e Jim Mason: The Way We Eat.. (shrink)

This Introduction to the Journal of Business Ethics 10: 559-560, 1991 provides a brief description of the proceedings of the Louise MacCraken Olmsted Symposium in Ethics that occurred on March 22 and 23, 1990 at Lafayette College, Easton, PA. This symposium gathered five scholars (Bruce Jennings, Kenneth Kipnis, Judith Swazey, Pat Woolf, and Patricia Werhane) each of whom presented a paper (with commentaries) concerning the moral evaluation of the conduct of persons acting in their capacities as working professionals. These papers (...) and commentaries appeared in the indicated issue of the Journal of Business Ethics. (shrink)

This study determined the effect of online teaching in Physics using the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) strategy on the academic achievement and conceptual understanding of Grade 9 students. One intact class was subjected to a single-group pretest/posttest pre-experimental research design. Purposive sampling was applied, and selected 48 Grade 9 students for this study. The data gathered were interpreted quantitatively from the validated physics achievement test (PAT) and from the adopted energy-momentum concept test (EMCT), while, the learning experiences survey responses were interpreted (...) thematically. This study was conducted for a period of eight (8) weeks during the 4th quarter of the school year 2020-2021 at Junior High School in District II. The study's findings using descriptive and inferential statistics revealed a significant difference in the students' physics achievement mean scores and a significant difference in the students’ energy-momentum mean scores before and after their exposure to online teaching in physics using the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) strategy. The class average normalized gain (g) of the 48 respondents on the adopted Energy-Momentum Concept Test (EMCT) resulted in statistically “high” normalized gain (g) in their conceptual understanding before and after their exposure to online teaching in physics using the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) strategy. Furthermore, the learning experiences survey responses revealed positive results and improvement on the students’ learning experiences in JiTT’s warm-up exercises. Hence, it was concluded that the online teaching in physics using the Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT) as a teaching-learning strategy might significantly improve the students' academic achievement and conceptual understanding in grade 9 physics. (shrink)

Before he reached his mature metaphysical view of being as gradual in the Republic (Allen 1961), Plato claims that neither can negative facts explain positive facts, nor vice versa (Phaedo 103b) (this is very likely a corollary of his principle of opposites according to which if A and B are of opposite ontological categories, A cannot explain B (González-Varela and Barceló 2023). Yet, it seems obvious that we explain positive facts by appealing to negative facts and vice versa, all the (...) time. We say things like "Pat must be sick, because she would not have missed the party otherwise", "The Plant died because we forgot to water it", "The suitcase was so large, it did not fit in the trunk", etc. So this seems like a strange and obviously wrong take on the limits of metaphysical explanation. Yet here I will defend that this counter-intuitive metaphysical thesis has been unjustly dismissed and will argue that, instead, it is a plausible metaphysical principle. My defense of this metaphysical principle can also be seen as part of a larger defense of an under-explored metaphysical hypothesis, Ontological Manichesim, according to which positive and negative facts, if both belong in our ontology, are separate realms of being with no interaction whatsoever. (shrink)

A discussion of the recent prominence of 'new atheism' and 'Christian nationalism' in the United States.