The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of somatic evolution by natural selection to our understanding of cancer development. I do so in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I ask to what extent cancer cells meet the formal requirements for evolution by natural selection, relying on Godfrey-Smith’s (2009) framework of Darwinian populations. I argue that although they meet the minimal requirements for natural selection, cancer cells are not paradigmatic Darwinian populations. In the second (...) part of the paper, I examine the most important examples of adaptation in cancer cells. I argue that they are not significant accumulations of evolutionary changes, and that as a consequence natural selection plays a lesser role in their explanation. Their explanation, I argue, is best sought in the previously existing wiring of the healthy cells. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the innovative character of the approach to metaethics underlying John Dewey’s pragmatism. Dewey's theory of evaluation is contrasted with one of the most dominant contemporary metaethical theses: constructivism. I show that the insistence placed by metaethical constructivists on the actor’s practical point of view, on the rejection of the subjective preferences model, and on a specific form of ethical antirealism and naturalism echoes some of the most crucial claims made by Dewey. This argumentation leads to my main (...) hypothesis: an analysis of Dewey's conception of evaluation allows us to highlight the groundbreaking character of its metaethical approach—an approach that will be characterized as fairly constructivist. (shrink)

Contrary to what many interpretations claim, according to Bayle faith does not completely eliminate reason. It intervenes to reveal factual truths that can only be known through revelation (for example, that God allowed Adam and Eve to sin). To these factual truths can be applied a rational principle (an axiomatic and evident one, according to Bayle, which he calls a "common notion"), namely, that "what God does is well done." God allowed sin, so we must think it was justified, even (...) if we don't understand why. This approach is what I call, cum grano salis, Pierre Bayle's theodicy. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle shows that, in order to avoid devastating objections, materialism should postulate that the property of thinking does not emerge from certain material combinations but is present in matter from the start and everywhere—a hypothesis recently revived and labelled “panpsychism”. There are reasons for entertaining the idea that Bayle actually considers this enhanced materialism to be tenable, as it might use the same line of defence that Bayle outlined for Stratonism. However, this would lead to a view similar (...) to Locke’s superaddition theory, and I contend that such cannot be Bayle’s position because he embraces the Cartesian principle that each substance has only one principal attribute. This makes untenable, in his eyes, any system that conjoins thought with matter in the same simple substance. By contrast, this makes clear which kinds of metaphysics and epistemology panpsychists need to adopt to defend their view. (shrink)

I examine Bayle's infamous statement that Christian mysteries are not only "above" human reason, but are "against" it. I put it back in the context of 16th-17th century Reformed thought. I then discuss the relation between reason and faith according to Bayle.

I first explain the scholastic (Scotist) thesis on the independence of essences Bayle alludes to in the passage of the Continuation des Pensée Diverses where he presents the Stratonicians' and the Chinese philosophers' retorsion. Then, I show that this retorsion applies to the argument of the existence of God based on "aseity", but not to the occasionalist argument based on the "quod nescis" principle. I conclude that materialism (the "Stratonician hypothesis") cannot be, for Bayle, a satisfying system.

Community has been both celebrated and demonized as a fortress that shelters and defends its members from being exposed to difference. Instead of abandoning community as an antiquated model of relationships that is ill suited for our globalized world, this book turns to the writings of Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and Jean-Luc Nancy in search for ways to rethink community in an open and inclusive manner. Greg Bird argues that a central piece of this task is found in how each (...) philosopher rearticulates community not as something that is proper to those who belong and improper to those who are excluded or where inclusion is based on one’s share in common property. We must return to the forgotten dimension of sharing, not as a sharing of things that we can contain and own, but as a process that divides us up and shares us out in community with one another. This book traces this problem through a wide array of fields ranging from biopolitics, communitarianism, existentialism, phenomenology, political economy, radical philosophy, and social theory. (shrink)

An English translation of Pierre Bayle's posthumous last book, Entretiens de Maxime et de Themiste (1707), in which Bayle defends his skeptical position on the problem of the evil. This book is often cited and attacked by G.W. Leibniz in his Theodicy (1710). Over one hundred pages of original philosophical and historical material introduce the translation, providing it with context and establishing the work's importance.

Philosophers have not been very preoccupied by the link between emotions and attention. The few that did (de Sousa, 1987) never really specified the relation between the two phenomena. Using empirical data from the study of the emotion of fear, we provide a description (and an explanation) of the links between emotion and attention. We also discuss the nature (empirical or conceptual) of these links.

In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What (...) is Nudge? How is it different from social advertisement? Does Nudge induce genuine preference change? Does Nudge build moral character? Is there a moral difference between the use of Nudge as opposed to subliminal images to reach policy objectives? And what are the moral constraints on Nudge? (shrink)

Choice often proceeds in two stages: We construct a shortlist on the basis of limited and uncertain information about the options and then reduce this uncertainty by examining the shortlist in greater detail. The goal is to do well when making a final choice from the option set. I argue that we cannot realise this goal by constructing a ranking over the options at shortlisting stage which determines of each option whether it is more or less worthy of being included (...) in a shortlist. This is relevant to the 2010 UK Equality Act. The Act requires that shortlists be constructed on grounds of candidate rankings and affirmative action is only permissible for equally qualified candidates. This is misguided: Shortlisting candidates with lower expected qualifications but higher variance may raise the chance of finding an exceptionally strong candidate. If it does, then shortlisting such candidates would make eminent business sense and there is nothing unfair about it. This observation opens up room for including more underrepresented candidates with protected characteristics, as they are more likely to display greater variance in the selector’s credence functions at shortlisting stage. (shrink)

I investigate whether any plausible moral arguments can be made for ‘grandfathering’ emission rights (that is, for setting emission targets for developed countries in line with their present or past emission levels) on the basis of a Lockean theory of property rights.

The paper surveys the currently available axiomatizations of common belief (CB) and common knowledge (CK) by means of modal propositional logics. (Throughout, knowledge- whether individual or common- is defined as true belief.) Section 1 introduces the formal method of axiomatization followed by epistemic logicians, especially the syntax-semantics distinction, and the notion of a soundness and completeness theorem. Section 2 explains the syntactical concepts, while briefly discussing their motivations. Two standard semantic constructions, Kripke structures and neighbourhood structures, are introduced in Sections (...) 3 and 4, respectively. It is recalled that Aumann's partitional model of CK is a particular case of a definition in terms of Kripke structures. The paper also restates the well-known fact that Kripke structures can be regarded as particular cases of neighbourhood structures. Section 3 reviews the soundness and completeness theorems proved w.r.t. the former structures by Fagin, Halpern, Moses and Vardi, as well as related results by Lismont. Section 4 reviews the corresponding theorems derived w.r.t. the latter structures by Lismont and Mongin. A general conclusion of the paper is that the axiomatization of CB does not require as strong systems of individual belief as was originally thought- only monotonicity has thusfar proved indispensable. Section 5 explains another consequence of general relevance: despite the "infinitary" nature of CB, the axiom systems of this paper admit of effective decision procedures, i.e., they are decidable in the logician's sense. (shrink)

We construct a probabilistic coherence measure for information sets which determines a partial coherence ordering. This measure is applied in constructing a criterion for expanding our beliefs in the face of new information. A number of idealizations are being made which can be relaxed by an appeal to Bayesian Networks.

Considerations of objective-value freedom and status freedom do impose constraints on policies that restrict access to cigarettes. As to the objective-value freedom, something of value is lost when anti-alcohol policies lead to pub closures interfering with valued life styles, and a similar, though weaker, argument can be made for cigarettes. As to status freedom, non-arbitrariness requires consultation with vulnerable populations to learn what might aid them with smoking cessation.

In this introduction, we give a brief overview of the main concepts of modularity that have been offered in recent literature. After this, we turn to a summary of the papers collected in this volume. Our primary aim is to explain how the modularity of emotion question relates to traditional debates in emotion theory.

Belgium has recently extended its euthanasia legislation to minors, making it the first legislation in the world that does not specify any age limit. I consider two strands in the opposition to this legislation. First, I identify five arguments in the public debate to the effect that euthanasia for minors is somehow worse than euthanasia for adults—viz. arguments from weightiness, capability of discernment, pressure, sensitivity and sufficient palliative care—and show that these arguments are wanting. Second, there is another position in (...) the public debate that wishes to keep the current age restriction on the books and have ethics boards exercise discretion in euthanasia decisions for minors. I interpret this position on the background of Velleman’s “Against the Right to Die” and show that, although costs remain substantial, it actually can provide some qualified support against extending euthanasia legislation to minors. (shrink)

I examine the relationship between belief and credences and distinguish between a dogmatic, a Lockean, an agentic, and an abductive notion of belief. I conclude with some thoughts on voluntarism and evidentialism.

Is calculation possible without language? Or is the human ability for arithmetic dependent on the language faculty? To clarify the relation between language and arithmetic, we studied numerical cognition in speakers of Mundurukú, an Amazonian language with a very small lexicon of number words. Although the Mundurukú lack words for numbers beyond 5, they are able to compare and add large approximate numbers that are far beyond their naming range. However, they fail in exact arithmetic with numbers larger than 4 (...) or 5. Our results imply a distinction between a nonverbal system of number approximation and a language-based counting system for exact number and arithmetic. (shrink)

The Distribution View provides a model that integrates four distributional concerns in the evaluation of risky prospects. Starting from these concerns, we can generate an ordering over a set of risky prospects, or, starting from an ordering, we can extract a characterization of the underlying distributional concerns. Separability of States and/or Persons for multiple-person risky prospects, for single-person risky prospects and for multiple-person certain prospects are discussed within the model. The Distribution View sheds light on public health policies and provides (...) a framework for the discussion of Parfit's Priority View for risky prospects. (shrink)

I argue that by constructing an identity of Bohemian whim and spontaneity one can make what was previously an akratic action into a fully rational action, since in performing the action, one asserts one identity.

We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the interconnections (...) between them. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that there are two considerations which govern the dynamics of a two-person bargaining game, viz. relative proportionate utility loss from conceding to one's opponent's proposal and relative non-proportionate utility loss from not conceding to one's opponent's proposal, if she were not to concede as well. The first consideration can adequately be captured by the information contained in vNM utilities. The second requires measures of utility which allow for an interpersonal comparison of utility differences. These considerations (...) respectively provide for a justification of the Nash solution and the Kalai egalitarian solution. However, none of these solutions taken by themselves can provide for a full story of bargaining, since, if within a context of bargaining one such consideration is overriding, the solution which does not match this consideration will yield unreasonable results. I systematically present arguments to the effect that each justification from self-interest for respectively the Nash and the Kalai egalitarian solution is vulnerable to this kind of objection. I suggest that the search for an integrative model may be a promising line of research. (shrink)

Utilitarianism, it has been said, is not sensitive to the distribution of welfare. In making risky decisions for others there are multiple sensitivities at work. I present examples of risky decision-making involving drug allocations, charitable giving, breast-cancer screening and C-sections. In each of these examples there is a different sensitivity at work that pulls away from the utilitarian prescription. Instances of saving fewer people at a greater risk to many is more complex because there are two distributional sensitivities at work (...) that pull in opposite directions from the utilitarian calculus. I discuss objections to these sensitivities and conclude with some reflections on the value of formal modelling in thinking about societal risk. (shrink)

In this commentary on Yashar Saghai's article "Salvaging the Concept of Nudge" (JME 2013) I discuss his distinction between a 'prod' (which is 'substantially controlling') and a 'nudge' (which is ‘substantially non-controlling’).

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic (...) mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education. (shrink)

"The Personal is Political": This was an often-heard slogan of feminist groups in the late sixties and early seventies. The slogan is no doubt open to many interpretations. There is one interpretation which touches on the epistemology of social facts, viz. the slogan claims that in assessing the features of a political system, personal experiences have privileged evidentiary value. For instancte, in the face of third person reports about political corruption, I may remain unmoved in my belief that the political (...) powers are morally upstanding, and it is only when I myself am adversely affected, that I come to change my views. There are two standard patterns of explanation of this type of belief formation: (i) We know that third-person reports may be lessreliable than first-person experiences; (ii) If the third-person reports are no less reliable than first-person experiences, we may just be dealing with a standard pattern of epistemic irrationality. However, we argue that there is also a much more surprising pattern of explanation: under certain conditions, a Bayesian argument can be proffered to the effect that it is rational to change one's beliefs in the face of personal experiences and not in the face of third-person reports, even if these experiences and reports are equally reliable. Hence, the feminist slogan (at least on one particular interpretation of it) receives unexpected support from Bayesian comers. We also show that this pattern of explanation has surprising repercussions on the question of the evidentiary value of miracles in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Socrates’ eros model, St. Paul’s agape model, and Aristophanes’ shared-identity model have different takes on the constancy of love and on the loss of love. I illustrate how these models and themes find expression within literature, music, and film through the ages.

Risky prospects represent policies that impose different types of risks on multiple people. I present an example from food safety. A utilitarian following Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem ranks such prospects according to their mean expected utility or the expectation of the social utility. Such a ranking is not sensitive to any of four types of distributional concerns. I develop a model that lets the policy analyst rank prospects relative to the distributional concerns that she considers fitting in the context at hand. (...) I name this model ‘the Distribution View’ posing an alternative to Parfit's Priority View for risky prospects. (shrink)

The aim of this master’s thesis is to analyse and highlight the interaction between science, politics and law. More precisely, our research question concerns the use of scientific arguments in social spheres (notably in politics and law) instead of legal or political arguments. In fact, we want to raise the way in which certain actors invoke scientific arguments to impose "objective" elements of fact in debate and, in this way, refrain from politically and "subjectively" discussing these same elements (or, at (...) least, their social consequences). This Master’s thesis will adopt an interdisciplinary theoretical framework (chapter 1) mobilising philosophy of science, philosophy of law, sociology of law, legal technique and analytical theories. Then, we will apply it to a case study: the European regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) after the European Court of Justice (CJEU) ruling of 25 July 2015 (chapter 2). The first chapter will provide theoretical elements to rethink the interaction between science, politics and law. The first section will propose a 'state of the art’ of the philosophical literature on the relationship between science (as a regime of truth) and politics. This master’s thesis will assess a truth under construction rather than a transcendental truth. Section 2 anticipates authoritarian claims based on science by considering the relationship science can have with power (Foucault). A solid review of philosophical, sociological and legal literature highlights the risks of giving decision-making power to an all-powerful science. Notably, the use of science to justify discriminatory policies is emphasised as these policies could not be challenged because, at the time, it was considered an objective scientific truth. Finally, section 3 offers a critique of the narratives of neutral and objective science, through the approach of science in action. This sociological approach presented all the doubts and subjectivity of science in action. The second chapter will propose a case study to illustrate the theoretical framework. We have chosen GMOs because they constitute a hybrid 'event', marked by scientific controversies, and with major socio-economic implications. The legal framework of GMOs in the European Union will be presented in the first section. In addition, the legal status of new breeding techniques (NBTs) will be examined. The second section will analyse the ruling of the European Court of Justice which made NBTs subject to GMO regulation. Finally, the third section will propose a reflection on the philosophy of law on the modes of existence of scientific, legal and political disciplines. (shrink)

In this paper, we evaluate the project of resurgence of metaphysics based on the pecularity of the quantum domain, a project that is supported by some contemporary philosophers. Beyond the general arguments against scientific realism that are still applicable here, we show that this project is faced with the three following issues that, we believe, make it unrealizable: (a) the problem raised by the realistic interpretation of the wave function, as a description of a ‘concrete physical fact’ of the independent (...) reality; (b) the lack of any experimental counterpart of the (non-local) hidden variables quantum theories, and, in some cases, their incompatibility with the quantum predictions; and (c) the fact that the key-properties of quantum phenomena, like their non-locality, essentially depend on the observables that are used for their description and cannot then be assigned to any ‘independent’ reality. (shrink)

In the novel "Het Been" by the Flemish writer Willem Elsschot. In the novel, a businessman becomes obsessive over the fact that a victim of his unscrupulous business practices refuses to forgive him. This raises the following questions: Why does one find it upsetting when the victim of one's wrongdoing refuses to accept our apologies? Why does one find it upsetting when the victim is unwilling to grant us the forgiveness that we are asking for?

In decision-theory, the notion of regret enters into the minimax decision-rule and has a determinate usage in this context. However, there are many alternative ways of conceiving of regret. The chapter constructs the einmalist- nicht-keinmal ('once is not never') game, in which a single sampling radically changes the expected value of the game in a way that is quite counterintuitive, as the basis for studying regret after a loss following the choice of an uncertain action. Crucially, the very loss affects (...) the posterior expectation of the game and the posterior credence about the objective chances of a win. Our taxonomy of regret contains regret over the action chosen and regret over the outcome obtained as its main categories, and is mirrored by a taxonomy of joy after a win following the choice of an uncertain action, and is used to critique of Krähmer and Stone's analysis of risk aversion for uncertain actions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Going Beyond Nature in Order to Explain it Technē, epistēmē and alēthēs doxa Mathematics, pure and applied Observation and Experimental Verification Bibliography.

There are three slogans in the history of Socialism that are very close in wording, viz. the famous Cabet-Blanc-Marx slogan: "From each according to his ability; To each according to his needs"; the earlier Saint-Simon-Pecqueur slogan: "To each according to his ability; To each according to his works"; and the later slogan in Stalin’s Soviet Constitution: "From each according to his ability; To each according to his work." We will consider the following questions regarding these slogans: a) What are the (...) earliest occurrences of each of these slogans? b) Where does the inspiration for each half of each slogan come from? c) What do the Saint-Simonians mean by “To each according to his ability”? d) What do they mean by “To each according to his works”? e) What motivates the shift from “To each according to his ability” to “From each according to his ability”? f) How should we envisage the progression toward “To each according to his needs”? g) What is the distinction between from “To each according to his works” and “To each according to his work”? (shrink)

Recent empirical and conceptual research has shown that moral considerations have an influence on the way we use the adverb 'intentionally'. Here we propose our own account of these phenomena, according to which they arise from the fact that the adverb 'intentionally' has three different meanings that are differently selected by contextual factors, including normative expectations. We argue that our hypotheses can account for most available data and present some new results that support this. We end by discussing the implications (...) of our account for folk psychology. (shrink)

At the heart of Drazen Prelec’s chapter is the distinction between outcome utility and diagnostic utility. There is a particular distinction in the literature on causal networks (Pearl 2000), namely the distinction between observing and intervening, that maps onto Prelec’s distinction between diagnostic and outcome utility. I will explore the connection between both frameworks.

Organismal death is foundational to the evolution of life, and many biological concepts such as natural selection and life history strategy are so fashioned only because individuals are mortal. Organisms, irrespective of their organization, are composed of basic functional units—cells—and it is our understanding of cell death that lies at the heart of most general explanatory frameworks for organismal mortality. Cell death can be exogenous, arising from transmissible diseases, predation, or other misfortunes, but there are also endogenous forms of death (...) that are sometimes the result of adaptive evolution. These endogenous forms of death—often labeled programmed cell death, PCD—originated in the earliest cells and are maintained across the tree of life. Here, we consider two problematic issues related to PCD (and cell mortality generally). First, we trace the original discoveries of cell death from the nineteenth century and place current conceptions of PCD in their historical context. Revisions of our understanding of PCD demand a reassessment of its origin. Our second aim is thus to structure the proposed origin explanations of PCD into coherent arguments. In our analysis we argue for the evolutionary concept of PCD and the viral defense-immunity hypothesis for the origin of PCD. We suggest that this framework offers a plausible account of PCD early in the history of life, and also provides an epistemic basis for the future development of a general evolutionary account of mortality. (shrink)

The novelty in Adam Burgess’ paper is that he assesses nudge policies in the context of the shift in the UK government’s approach to risk from the nannying policies of Labour to the nudge policies of the Conservatives. There is a wealth of ideas in this paper. I find it useful to disentangle some of these ideas focusing on the following two questions: 1. In what respects do Labour’s nannying policies and the Conservatives’ nudge policies differ? 2. What is problematic (...) about Labour’s nannying and the Conservatives’ nudge policies? Subsequently I will reflect on how a particular strand of research in the social sciences can be made relevant to designing a more responsible way of dealing with societal risk and show how this approach can evade some of Burgess’ concerns. (shrink)

Pierre Bayle’ın Tarihsel ve Eleştirel Sözlük adlı eserindeki “Spinoza” maddesi, Spinoza felsefesinin temel meselelerine dair genel bir bakış sunar. Söz konusu maddenin burada çevirisi sunduğumuz “N Çıkması”nda ise Bayle, özellikle Spinoza’nın Ethica adlı eserine odaklanarak kip, değişiklik, töz ve Tanrı gibi Spinoza metafiziğinin temel kavramlarına yönelik eleştiriler getirir.

Résumé Charles Wolfe vient de publier Lire le matérialisme (ENS Éditions, 2020), où il esquisse une histoire des différentes formes de matérialisme, y compris le matérialisme vitaliste et les versions du XXe et du XXIe siècle. Pierre-François Moreau, auteur de la préface de l’ouvrage, entame ici une discussion sur les problèmes et les ressources d’une telle histoire.

In decision-theory, the notion of regret enters into the minimax decision-rule and has a determinate usage in this context. However, there are many alternative ways of conceiving of regret. The chapter constructs the einmalist- nicht-keinmal ('once is not never') game, in which a single sampling radically changes the expected value of the game in a way that is quite counterintuitive, as the basis for studying regret after a loss following the choice of an uncertain action. Crucially, the very loss affects (...) the posterior expectation of the game and the posterior credence about the objective chances of a win. Our taxonomy of regret contains regret over the action chosen and regret over the outcome obtained as its main categories, and is mirrored by a taxonomy of joy after a win following the choice of an uncertain action, and is used to critique of Krähmer and Stone's analysis of risk aversion for uncertain actions. (shrink)