Standard Type Theory, STT, tells us that b^n(a^m) is well-formed iff n=m+1. However, Linnebo and Rayo have advocated the use of Cumulative Type Theory, CTT, has more relaxed type-restrictions: according to CTT, b^β(a^α) is well-formed iff β > α. In this paper, we set ourselves against CTT. We begin our case by arguing against Linnebo and Rayo’s claim that CTT sheds new philosophical light on set theory. We then argue that, while CTT ’s type-restrictions are unjustifiable, the type-restrictions imposed by (...) STT are justified by a Fregean semantics. What is more, this Fregean semantics provides us with a principled way to resist Linnebo and Rayo’s Semantic Argument for CTT. We end by examining an alternative approach to cumulative types due to Florio and Jones; we argue that their theory is best seen as a misleadingly formulated version of STT. (shrink)

Inflicting harm is generally preferable to inflicting death. If you must choose between the two, you should generally choose to harm. But prenatal harm seems different. If a mother must choose between harming her fetus or aborting it, she may choose either, at least in many cases. So it seems that prenatal harm is particularly objectionable, sometimes on a par with death. This paper offers an explanation of why prenatal harm seems particularly objectionable by drawing an analogy to the all-or-nothing (...) problem. It then argues that this analogy offers independent support for the ‘voluntarist’ view that at least some parental role obligations are grounded in the choice to be a parent. (shrink)

I propose and defend a novel view called “de se consequentialism,” which is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it demonstrates—contra Doug Portmore, Mark Schroeder, Campbell Brown, and Michael Smith, among others—that agent-neutral consequentialism is consistent with agent-centered constraints. Second, it clarifies the nature of agent-centered constraints, thereby meriting attention from even dedicated nonconsequentialists. Scrutiny reveals that moral theories in general, whether consequentialist or not, incorporate constraints by assessing states in a first-personal guise. Consequently, de se consequentialism enacts constraints through the (...) very same feature that nonconsequentialist theories do. (shrink)

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We (...) take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant—arguably, primary—role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the “missing source” of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief. (shrink)

Applied ontologies have been used more and more frequently to enhance systems engineering. In this paper, we argue that adopting principles of ontological realism can increase the benefits that ontologies have already been shown to provide to the systems engineering process. Moreover, adopting Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), an ISO standard for top-level ontologies from which more domain specific ontologies are constructed, can lead to benefits in four distinct areas of systems engineering: (1) interoperability, (2) standardization, (3) testing, and (4) data (...) exploitation. Reaping these benefits in a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) context requires utilizing an ontology’s vocabulary when modeling systems and entities within those systems. If the chosen ontology abides by the principles of ontological realism, a semantic standard capable of uniting distinct domains, using BFO as a hub, can be leveraged to promote greater interoperability among systems. As interoperability and standardization increase, so does the ability to collect data during the testing and implementation of systems. These data can then be reasoned over by computational reasoners using the logical axioms within the ontology. This, in turn, generates new data that would have been impossible or too inefficient to generate without the aid of computational reasoners. (shrink)

Convergence research is driven by specific and compelling problems and requires deep integration across disciplines. The potential of convergence research is widely recognized, but questions remain about how to design, facilitate, and assess such research. Here we analyze a seven-year, twelve-million-dollar convergence project on sustainable climate risk management to answer two questions. First, what is the impact of a project-level emphasis on the values that motivate and tie convergence research to the compelling problems? Second, how does participation in convergence projects (...) shape the research of postdoctoral scholars who are still in the process of establishing themselves professionally? We use an interview-based approach to characterize what the project specifically enabled in each participant’s research. We find that (a) the project pushed participants’ research into better alignment with the motivating concept of convergence research and that this effect was stronger for postdoctoral scholars than for more senior faculty. (b) Postdocs’ self-assessed understanding of key project themes, however, appears unconnected to metrics of project participation, raising questions about training and integration. Regarding values, (c) the project enabled heightened attention to values in the research of a large minority of participants. (d) Participants strongly believe in the importance of explicitly reflecting on values that motivate and pervade scientific research, but they question their own understanding of how to put value-focused science into practice. This mismatch of perceived importance with poor understanding highlights an unmet need in the practice of convergence science. (shrink)

In view of scholarly work that has explored the socio-psycho significance of national performativity, the body and the “other,” this article critically analyses newspaper representations of the Canadian-born British tennis player Greg Rusedski. Drawing on Lacanian interpretations of the body, it illustrates how Rusedski’s media framing centered on a particular feature of his body—his “smile.” In doing so, we detail how Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness—conceived as a form of “extimacy” (extimité)—complicated any clear delineation between “us” and “them,” positing instead a dialectical (...) understanding of the splits, voids and contradictions that underscore the national “us.”. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have demonstrated impressive performance across a variety of clinical tasks. However, notoriously, sometimes these systems are 'black boxes'. The initial response in the literature was a demand for 'explainable AI'. However, recently, several authors have suggested that making AI more explainable or 'interpretable' is likely to be at the cost of the accuracy of these systems and that prioritising interpretability in medical AI may constitute a 'lethal prejudice'. In this paper, we defend the value of interpretability (...) in the context of the use of AI in medicine. Clinicians may prefer interpretable systems over more accurate black boxes, which in turn is sufficient to give designers of AI reason to prefer more interpretable systems in order to ensure that AI is adopted and its benefits realised. Moreover, clinicians may be justified in this preference. Achieving the downstream benefits from AI is critically dependent on how the outputs of these systems are interpreted by physicians and patients. A preference for the use of highly accurate black box AI systems, over less accurate but more interpretable systems , may itself constitute a form of lethal prejudice that may diminish the benefits of AI to - and perhaps even harm - patients. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...) modality cannot, at least not in the way that conditional approaches to agentive modality do. We argue that this problem was present even in the classical conditional analysis. By a pessimistic induction, we suggest that, probably, no conditional approach to agentive modality will succeed. (shrink)

This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (as in (...) Condorcet's paradox) are in large electorates. (shrink)

We demonstrate how real progress can be made in the debate surrounding the enhanced indispensability argument. Drawing on a counterfactual theory of explanation, well-motivated independently of the debate, we provide a novel analysis of ‘explanatory generality’ and how mathematics is involved in its procurement. On our analysis, mathematics’ sole explanatory contribution to the procurement of explanatory generality is to make counterfactual information about physical dependencies easier to grasp and reason with for creatures like us. This gives precise content to key (...) intuitions traded in the debate, regarding mathematics’ procurement of explanatory generality, and adjudicates unambiguously in favour of the nominalist, at least as far as explanatory generality is concerned. (shrink)

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

Decisions are made under uncertainty when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and one is uncertain to which the act will lead. Decisions are made under indeterminacy when there are distinct outcomes of a given action, and it is indeterminate to which the act will lead. This paper develops a theory of (synchronic and diachronic) decision-making under indeterminacy that portrays the rational response to such situations as inconstant. Rational agents have to capriciously and randomly choose how to resolve (...) the indeterminacy relevant to a given choice-situation, but such capricious choices once made constrain how they will choose in the future. The account is illustrated by the case of self-interested action in situations where it is indeterminate whether you yourself will survive to benefit or suffer the consequences. The conclusion emphasizes some distinctive anti-hedging predictions of the account. (shrink)

While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a (...) heterodox account of both normative and motivating reasons that is inspired by Donald Davidson’s primary reasons. We should adopt the heterodox view, I argue, because it addresses an overlooked but fatal defect in the orthodox conception of reasons, of which challenges to the tempting analysis are a special case. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Derek Parfit made the bold suggestion, at various times under the heading of the "Normativity Objection," that anyone in possession of normative concepts is in a position to know, on the basis of their competence with such concepts alone, that reductive realism in ethics is not even possible. Despite the prominent role that the Normativity Objection plays in Parfit's non-reductive account of the nature of normativity, when the objection hasn't been ignored, it's been criticized and even derided. (...) We argue that the exclusively negative attention that the objection has received has been a mistake. On our reading, Parfit's Normativity Objection poses a serious threat to reductivism, as it exposes the uneasy relationship between our a priori knowledge of a range of distinctly normative truths and the typical package of semantic commitments that reductivists have embraced since the Kripkean revolution. (shrink)

A general survey of Frege's views on truth, the paper explores the problems in response to which Frege's distinctive view that sentences refer to truth-values develops. It also discusses his view that truth-values are objects and the so-called regress argument for the indefinability of truth. Finally, we consider, very briefly, the question whether Frege was a deflationist.

This chapter defends the account of metaphysical indeterminacy of Barnes and Williams against Eklund's objections.

The question of the cognitive role of fictionality is this: what is the correct cognitive attitude to take to p, when it is fictional that p? We began by considering one answer to this question, implicit in the work of Kendall Walton, that the correct response to a fictional proposition is to imagine that proposition. However, this approach is silent in cases of fictional incompleteness, where neither p nor its negation are fictional. We argue that that Waltonians should embrace a (...) pluralistic account of the cognitive role of fictional incompleteness: in some cases of fictional incompleteness, we are permitted to resolve the incompleteness during our engagement with the target fiction, and in other cases, we are obliged not to resolve the incompleteness. But though pluralism is accommodated by Walton’s wider account of fictionality, it puts tension on his motivating idea that fictionality stands to the imagination as truth stands to belief. And so we develop a rival conception of the cognitive role of fictionality that is built around a different analogy: on this evidentialist approach, (known) fictionality stands to the imagination as evidence stands to credence. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have demonstrated impressive performance across a variety of clinical tasks. However, notoriously, sometimes these systems are “black boxes.” The initial response in the literature was a demand for “explainable AI.” However, recently, several authors have suggested that making AI more explainable or “interpretable” is likely to be at the cost of the accuracy of these systems and that prioritizing interpretability in medical AI may constitute a “lethal prejudice.” In this paper, we defend the value of interpretability (...) in the context of the use of AI in medicine. Clinicians may prefer interpretable systems over more accurate black boxes, which in turn is sufficient to give designers of AI reason to prefer more interpretable systems in order to ensure that AI is adopted and its benefits realized. Moreover, clinicians may be justified in this preference. Achieving the downstream benefits from AI is critically dependent on how the outputs of these systems are interpreted by physicians and patients. A preference for the use of highly accurate black box AI systems, over less accurate but more interpretable systems, may itself constitute a form of lethal prejudice that may diminish the benefits of AI to—and perhaps even harm—patients. (shrink)

We distinguish between two different strategies in methodology of economics. The big picture strategy, dominant in the twentieth century, ascribed to economics a unified method and evaluated this m...

This is a critical notice of Conor McHugh and Jonathan Way's <i>Getting Things Right<\i> (2022, OUP).

These essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual..

Objectives: Machine learning (ML) has the potential to facilitate “continual learning” in medicine, in which an ML system continues to evolve in response to exposure to new data over time, even after being deployed in a clinical setting. In this article, we provide a tutorial on the range of ethical issues raised by the use of such “adaptive” ML systems in medicine that have, thus far, been neglected in the literature. -/- Target audience: The target audiences for this tutorial are (...) the developers of ML AI systems, healthcare regulators, the broader medical informatics community, and practicing clinicians. -/- Scope: Discussions of adaptive ML systems to date have overlooked the distinction between 2 sorts of variance that such systems may exhibit—diachronic evolution (change over time) and synchronic variation (difference between cotemporaneous instantiations of the algorithm at different sites)—and underestimated the significance of the latter. We highlight the challenges that diachronic evolution and synchronic variation present for the quality of patient care, informed consent, and equity, and discuss the complex ethical trade-offs involved in the design of such systems. (shrink)

Suppose that you're certain that a certain sentence, e.g. "Frida is tall", lacks a determinate truth value. What cognitive attitude should you take towards it—reject it, suspend judgment, or what else? We show that, by adopting a seemingly plausible principle connecting credence in A and Determinately A, we can prove a very implausible answer to this question: i.e., all indeterminate claims should be assigned credence zero. The result is striking similar to so-called triviality results in the literature on modals and (...) conditionals. (shrink)

The VIA Classification of Strengths and Virtues is the most commonly used model of positive personality. In this study, we used two methods of model modification to develop models for two measures of the character strengths, the VIA Inventory of Strengths-Revised and the Global Assessment of Character Strengths. The first method consisted of freeing residual covariances based on modification indices until good fit was achieved. The second was residual network modeling (RNM), which frees residual partial correlations while minimizing a function (...) that penalizes more complex models. Models based on both strategies were developed for the two questionnaires. The resulting structural models were then applied to four other samples. Though both modification procedures achieved good fit in the sample used to develop the models, only RNM resulted in adequate model fit for both measures in all cross-validation samples. This finding suggests RNM is more robust against overfitting than traditional practices. Moreover, the result supports the validity of the three-factor model of character strengths with replicability. (shrink)

The automation of online social life is an urgent issue for researchers and the public alike. However, one of the most significant uses of such technologies seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the research community: religion. Focusing on Islamic Prayer Apps, which automatically post prayers from its users’ accounts, we show that even one such service is already responsible for millions of tweets daily, constituting a significant portion of Arabic-language Twitter traffic. We argue that the fact that a phenomenon (...) of these proportions has gone unnoticed by researchers reveals an opportunity to broaden the scope of the current research agenda on online automation. (shrink)

A growing body of work in free speech theory is interested in the nature of counterspeech, i.e. speech that aims to counteract the effects of harmful speech. Counterspeech is usually defined in opposition to legal responses to harmful speech, which try to prevent such speech from occurring in the first place. In this paper we challenge this way of carving up the conceptual terrain. Instead, we argue that our main classificatory division, in theorising responses to harmful speech, should be between (...) pro-discursive and anti-discursive responses. Some legal responses to harmful speech, so we argue, make a positive discursive contribution in their own right. That is, legal restrictions on harmful speech can have a function that is importantly similar to speech that aims at countering the effects of harmful speech. (shrink)

For the greater part of the last 50 years, it has been common for philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists to invoke the notion of realization in discussing the relationship between the mind and the brain. In traditional philosophy of mind, mental states are said to be realized, instantiated, or implemented in brain states. Artificial intelligence is sometimes described as the attempt either to model or to actually construct systems that realize some of the same psychological abilities that we and (...) other living creatures possess. The claim that specific psychological. (shrink)

Communicative practices in online and social media sometimes seem to amplify political conflict, and result in significant harms to people who become the targets of collective outrage. Many complaints that have been made about political correctness in the past, we argue, amount to little more than a veiled expression of resentment over the increasing influence enjoyed by progressive activists. But some complaints about political correctness take on a different complexion, in light of the technologically-driven changes to our communicative practices and (...) political discourse. Given the ways in which they are entangled in these new forms of online communication, well-meaning attempts to police the norms of political correctness may end up contributing to individual wrongs, or to destructive social patterns. In this paper we examine these worries, situate them in a broader sociological context, and offer some tentative proposals about how they might be addressed. (shrink)

Louis Pojman and Robert Westmoreland have compiled the best material on the subject of equality, ranging from classical works by Aristotle, Hobbes and Rousseau to contemporary works by John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, Michael Walzer, Harry Frankfurt, Bernard Williams and Robert Nozick; and including such topics as: the concept of equality; equal opportunity; Welfare egalitarianism; resources; equal human rights and complex equality.

For academics and students, Education Management in Managerialist Times offers a critical guide to existing educational management texts and makes a strong case for redefining educational management along more socially and politically informed lines. The book also offers practitioners alternative management strategies intended to contest, rather than support, managerialism, while being realistic about the context within which those who lead and manage schools currently have to work.

: The current difference in attitude toward germ-line enhancement in humans and nonhumans is unjustified. Society should be more cautious in modifying the genes of nonhumans and more bold in thinking about modifying our own genome. I identify four classes of arguments pertaining to germ-line enhancement: safety arguments, justice arguments, trust arguments, and naturalness arguments. The first three types are compelling, but do not distinguish between human and nonhuman cases. The final class of argument would justify a distinction between human (...) and nonhuman germ-line enhancement; however, this type of argument fails and, therefore, the discrepancy in attitude toward human and nonhuman germ-line enhancement is unjustified. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether search engines and other new modes of online communication should be covered by free speech principles. It criticizes the analogical reason-ing that contemporary American courts and scholars have used to liken search engines to newspapers, and to extend free speech coverage to them based on that likeness. There are dissimilarities between search engines and newspapers that undermine the key analogy, and also rival analogies that can be drawn which don’t recommend free speech protection for search engines. (...) Partly on these bases, we argue that an analogical approach to questions of free speech coverage is of limited use in this context. Credible verdicts about how free speech principles should apply to new modes of online com-munication require us to re-excavate the normative foundations of free speech. This method for deciding free speech coverage suggests that only a subset of search engine outputs and similar online communication should receive special protection against government regulation. (shrink)

This article explores the potential utility of the theory of Holism as developed by South African philosopher, British Commonwealth statesman and military leader, Jan Smuts, for philosophical counselling or practice. Central to the philosophical counseling process is philosophical counsellors or practitioners applying the work of philosophers to inspire, educate and guide their counselees in dealing with life problems. For example, Logic-Based Therapy, a method of philosophical counselling developed by Elliot Cohen, provides a rational framework for confronting problems of living, where (...) the counselor helps the counselee find an uplifting philosophy that promotes a guiding virtue that acts as an antidote to unrealistic and often self-defeating conclusions derived from irrational premises. We present the argument that Holism is one such uplifting philosophy which can be of utility to philosophical counselors or practitioners to help their counselees with confronting problems of living. Furthermore, we argue that Smuts’ articulation of freedom can act as a guiding virtue within this uplifting philosophy of Holism in accordance with the methodology of LBT. Smuts’ contribution to philosophy and psychology is arguably inadequately credited, and for this reason, and to the best of our knowledge, Smuts’ theory of Holism has yet to be discussed in the context of philosophical counseling or practice. Given these omissions, we begin this article with a discussion of his influence on 20th Century Anglo-American psychology. We then provide a brief historical context, and an introduction to the central argument of Smuts’ Holism, as well as a brief overview of the origins of Smut’s Holism and an introduction to his book Holism and Evolution. In the remainder of the article, we discuss several foundational concepts that underlie Smuts’ theory of Holism, as articulated and developed in his book Holism and Evolution, to substantiate our arguments. We conclude by highlighting the limitations of our article, limitations to Smuts’ model, and the challenges inherent in the use of a now largely antiquated theory, even by Smuts’ own admission nineteen years after its publication, for the purposes of contextualizing and substantiating the arguments and recommendations presented herein. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates, Inquiry 1:161–171, 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, (...) we evaluate Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

An investigation of Frege's various contributions to the study of language, focusing on three of his most famous doctrines: that concepts are unsaturated, that sentences refer to truth-values, and that sense must be distinguished from reference.

People sometimes use speech to interfere with other people’s speech, as in the case of a heckler sabotaging a lecture with constant interjections. Some people claim that such interference infringes upon free speech. Against this view, we argue that where competing speakers in a public forum both have an interest in speaking, free speech principles should not automatically give priority to the ‘official’ speaker. Given the ideals underlying free speech, heckling speech sometimes deserves priority. But what can we say, then, (...) about situations in which heckling clearly seems to infringe upon people’s civil liberties, in a way that intuitively justifies intervention? In such cases, we argue, heckling infringes upon people’s associative freedom. We present and defend an ethical framework for the institutional management of ‘Speech Fights’, geared around this insight. (shrink)

If people have stringent moral rights, then the doctrine of double effect is false or unimportant, at least when it comes to making acts permissible or wrong. There are strong and weak versions of the doctrine of double effect. The strong version asserts that an act is morally right if and only if the agent does not intentionally infringe a moral norm and the act brings about a desirable result (perhaps the best state of affairs available to the agent or (...) a promotion of the common good). The weak version asserts that, other things being equal, it is deontically worse to intentionally infringe a norm than to foreseeably do so. A person’s intention or mere foresight might still be relevant to his or her blameworthiness or virtue, but this is a separate issue. (shrink)

Multiple-choice questions have an undeserved reputation for only being able to test student recall of basic facts. In fact, well-crafted mechanically gradable questions can measure very sophisticated cognitive skills, including those engaged at the highest level of Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy of outcomes. In this article, I argue that multiple-choice questions should be a part of the diversified assessment portfolio for most philosophy courses. I present three arguments broadly related to fairness. First, multiple-choice questions allow one to consolidate subjective decision making (...) in a way that makes it easier to manage. Second, multiple-choice questions contribute to the diversity of an evaluation portfolio by balancing out problems with writing-based assessments. Third, by increasing the diversity of evaluations, multiple-choice questions increase the inclusiveness of the course. In the course of this argument I provide examples of multiple-choice questions that measure sophisticated learning and advice for how to write good multiple-choice questions. (shrink)

Karl Philipp Moritz edited Gnothi Sauton, the Journal of Empirical Psychology (1783-1793), which stands as the first of numerous psychological and psychiatric periodicals. We evaluated 124 psychiatric or neurological case reports from the journal according to modern diagnostic criteria and present a brief outline of the contributors' and patients' sociodemographic characteristics, selected case reports and the surmised risk factors. A reliable diagnostic reassignment of the well-described cases was feasible; this may indicate that patients retain similar psychiatric disturbances over the centuries. (...) As in the popular literature of the period, examples of' sentimental students' and 'desperate soldiers' represented the most frequently discussed, prototypical high-risk personalities in the Journal, which marked the step from literature to empirical science. The influences of this case material upon contemporary psychiatric writing and thought are reviewed. (shrink)

The open borders view is frequently dismissed for making infeasible demands. This is a potent strategy. Unlike normative arguments regarding open borders, which tend to be relatively intractable, the charge of infeasibility is supposed to operate as what we call a "normative argument-stopper." Nonetheless, we argue that the strategy fails. Bringing about open borders is perfectly feasible on the most plausible account of feasibility. We consider and reject what we take to be the only three credible ways to save the (...) charge of infeasibility: by proposing an alternative account of feasibility; by proposing an alternative, more circumscribed interpretation of the subject-matter of feasibility claims; and by proposing a more expansive account of the addressees of the demand for open borders. The first fails to vindicate the claim that infeasibility is a normative argument-stopper. The second does not provide an argument against open borders at all. The third underestimates the power of at least some non-state actors. We conclude by drawing some lessons for the open borders view and the use of feasibility in politics more generally. (shrink)

Responsibility is impossible because there is no responsibility-maker and there needs to be one if people are morally responsible. The two most plausible candidates, psychology and decision, fail. A person is not responsible for an unchosen psychology or a psychology that was chosen when the person is not responsible for the choice. This can be seen in intuitions about instantly-created and manipulated people. This result is further supported by the notion that, in general, the right, the good, and virtue rest (...) on the exercise of a capacity rather than the capacity itself. It is also supported by the notion that negligence is not a responsibility-maker. ​ A person is not responsible for a choice that does not reflect his psychology or that does reflect it when he is not responsible for the psychology. This can be seen by considering intuitions regarding acts that are unconnected or arbitrarily connected to a person’s psychology. It can also be seen intuitions about acts that result from a manipulated psychology. The problem with choice as a foundation can be further seen in that an infinite or self-created person would not be responsible despite these superhuman choice-related features. (shrink)

Inspired by the practice of dialogue in ancient philosophical schools, the Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL) Project at the University of Notre Dame has sought to put dialogue back at the center of philosophical pedagogy. Impromptu philosophical dialogue, however, can be challenging for students who are new to philosophy. Anticipating this challenge, the Project has created a series of manuals to help instructors conduct dialogue groups with novice philosophy students. Using these guidelines, we incorporated PWOL-style dialogue groups into (...) our Spring 2021 course “The Philosophy of Race, Class, and Gender” with the hope that, through having conversations about these challenging topics, our students would both be able to practice having philosophical dialogues as well as form their views on race and gender in light of contributions from their diverse peers. This article examines several strategies for how instructors can seek to incorporate similar dialogues into their own introductory classroom. (shrink)

Imagine that only the state can meet the need for housing but decides not to do so. Unsurprisingly, participants in a vignette experiment deem this scenario unjust. Hence, justice ratings increase when the living situation improves. To a lesser extent, this also holds beyond the need threshold, understood as the minimum amount necessary for a decent life. Surprisingly, however, the justice evaluation function is highly convex below this point. The resulting S-shaped curve is akin to the value function in prospect (...) theory, with the need threshold providing the point of reference and inflection. A control treatment without needs-information supports this interpretation. Needs-information furthermore compresses the perceived injustice of arbitrary inequality. As in prospect theory, such reference dependency suggests biases in judgment and decision making. A consequence may be that the lot of the poorest in society does not receive the attention it would otherwise get. (shrink)

A large body of research has found that people judge bad foreseen side effects to be more intentional than good ones. While the standard interpretation of this Side-Effect Effect takes it to show that the ordinary concept of intentionality is influenced by normative considerations, a competing account holds that it is the result of pragmatic pressure to express moral censure and, thus, that the SEE is an experimental artifact. Attempts to confirm this account have previously been unsuccessful, but Lindauer and (...) Southwood :181–186, 2021) present a study that appears to provide support for it, by cancelling the SEE. We are not convinced. Here, we detail three studies testing their interpretation. The results indicate that it is the purported cancellation, rather than the SEE, that is an experimental artifact. (shrink)

The fact that Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin seem to disagree about the ordinary use of words such as ‘voluntary’, ‘involuntary’, ‘voluntarily’, and ‘involuntarily’ has been taken to cast doubt on the methods of ordinary language philosophy. As Benson Mates puts the worry, ‘if agreement about usage cannot be reached within so restricted a sample as the class of Oxford Professors of Philosophy, what are the prospects when the sample is enlarged?’ (Mates 1958, p. 165). In this chapter, we evaluate (...) Mates’s criticism alongside Ryle’s and Austin’s specific claims about the ordinary use of these words, assessing these claims against actual examples of ordinary use drawn from the British National Corpus (BNC). Our evaluation consists in applying a combination of methods: first aggregating judgments about a large set of samples drawn from the corpus, and then using a clustering algorithm to uncover connections between different types of use. In applying these methods, we show where and to what extent Ryle’s and Austin’s accounts of the use of the target terms are accurate as well as where they miss important aspects of ordinary use, and we demonstrate the usefulness of this new combination of methods. At the heart of our approach is a commitment to the idea that systematically looking at actual uses of expressions is an essential component of any approach to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

La dependencia epistemológica existente en los saberes que integran el quehacer académico, científico y socio-cultural actual hacía las diversas formas de conocer de occidente, han dado como resultado una fragmentación y discriminación epistémica entre el conocimiento científico experimental, las ciencias humanas y los saberes ancestrales y culturales. El presente artículo “diálogo de saberes en las ciencias humanas”, tiene como objetivo indagar acerca de los imaginarios sobre los distintos tipos de saberes que integran el quehacer académico, científico y sociocultural con la (...) finalidad de diagnosticar los estados actuales de la ciencia para su revalorización. Para cumplir con este propósito se aborda la problemática sobre la fragmentación de los saberes en el quehacer académico y científico contemporáneo, a través de un estudio bibliográfico y hermenéutico de textos de filósofos sobre el tema así como el análisis de los datos obtenidos de la encuesta elaborada especialmente para este trabajo. El problema que se aborda está relacionado con la tendencia academicista actual de considerar como conocimiento científico únicamente a aquello que puede ser comprobado experimentalmente; evidenciando con ello una clara fragmentación y discriminación epistémica entre conocimiento científico experimental, ciencias humanas y saberes ancestro culturales. (shrink)