It is widely thought that functionalism and the qualia theory are better positioned to accommodate the ‘affective’ aspect of pain phenomenology than representationalism. In this paper, we attempt to overturn this opinion by raising problems for both functionalism and the qualia theory on this score. With regard to functionalism, we argue that it gets the order of explanation wrong: pain experience gives rise to the effects it does because it hurts, and not the other way around. With regard to the (...) qualia theory, we argue that it fails to capture the sense in which pain 's affective phenomenology rationalises various bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. Representationalism, in contrast, escapes both of these problems: it gets the order of explanation right and it explains how pain 's affective phenomenology can rationalise bodily-directed beliefs, desires, and behaviours. For this reason, we argue that representationalism has a significant advantage in the debates about pain 's affective phenomenology. We end the paper by examining objections, including the question of what representationalists should say about so-called ‘disassociation cases’, such as pain asymbolia. (shrink)

Abstract: Standing half wave particles at light speed twice in expansion-contraction comprise a static universe where two transverse fields 90° out of phase are the square of distance from each other. The universe has a static concept of time since the infinite universe is a static universe without a beginning or end. The square of distance is a point of reversal in expansion-contraction between the fields as a means to conserve energy. Photons on expansion in the electric field create matter (...) energy while photons on contraction in the magnetic field create light energy and gravitational pull toward the higher frequency energy. Also, the universe with matter has a moving physical concept of time from gravitational pull on expansion-contraction. (shrink)

Abstract: Standing half wave particles at light speed twice in expansion-contraction comprise a static universe where two transverse fields 90° out of phase are the square of distance from each other. The universe has a static concept of time since the infinite universe is a static universe without a beginning or end. The square of distance is a point of reversal in expansion-contraction between the fields as a means to conserve energy. Photons on expansion in the electric field create matter (...) energy while photons on contraction in the magnetic field create light energy and gravitational pull toward the higher frequency energy. Also, the universe with matter has a moving physical concept of time from gravitational pull on expansion-contraction. (shrink)

Abstract: Standing half wave particles at light speed twice in expansion-contraction comprise a static universe where two transverse fields 90° out of phase are the square of distance from each other. The universe has a static concept of time since the infinite universe is a static universe without a beginning or end. The square of distance is a point of reversal in expansion-contraction between the fields as a means to conserve energy. Photons on expansion in the electric field create matter (...) energy while photons on contraction in the magnetic field create light energy and gravitational pull toward the higher frequency energy. Also, the universe with matter has a moving physical concept of time from gravitational pull on expansion-contraction. (shrink)

Abstract: Standing half wave particles at light speed twice in expansion-contraction comprise a static universe where two transverse fields 90° out of phase are the square of distance from each other. The universe has a static concept of time since the infinite universe is a static universe without a beginning or end. The square of distance is a point of reversal in expansion-contraction between the fields as a means to conserve energy. Photons on expansion in the electric field create matter (...) energy while photons on contraction in the magnetic field create light energy and gravitational pull toward the higher frequency energy. Also, the universe with matter has a moving physical concept of time from gravitational pull on expansion-contraction. (shrink)

Decision-making has traditionally been viewed as detached from the neural systems of sensory perception and motor function. Consequently, motor areas have played a relatively minor role in discussions surrounding the control processes and neural origins of decision-making. Empiric evidence, catalysed by technological advances in the past two decades, has proven that motor areas have an integral role in decision-making. They are involved in the generation, modulation, maintenance and execution of decisions and actions. They also take part in a complex hierarchical (...) assessment of multi-modal inputs to ensure that the most appropriate action is generated given the context presented. Clinical conditions such as, alien hand syndrome and utilisation behaviour exemplify the importance of these regulatory controls. This review charts the trajectory of our understanding of the hidden role of motor areas in decision-making and reflects upon the implications of our deepened understanding. The convergence of evidence from multiple modalities underpinning our current knowledge is discussed and the potential applications thereof considered. (shrink)

Within the Computer Science community, many ethical issues have emerged as significant and critical concerns. Computer ethics is an academic field in its own right and there are unique ethical issues associated with information technology. It encompasses a range of issues and concerns including privacy and agency around personal information, Artificial Intelligence and pervasive technology, the Internet of Things and surveillance applications. As computing technology impacts society at an ever growing pace, there are growing calls for more computer ethics content (...) to be included in Computer Science curricula. In this paper we present the results of a survey that polled faculty from Computer Science and related disciplines about teaching practices for computer ethics at their institutions. The survey was completed by respondents from 61 universities across 23 European countries. Participants were surveyed on whether or not computer ethics is taught to Computer Science students at each institution, the reasons why computer ethics is or is not taught, how computer ethics is taught, the background of staff who teach computer ethics and the scope of computer ethics curricula. This paper presents and discusses the results of the survey. (shrink)

Hobbes’s science of politics rests on a dual analysis of human beings: humans as complex material bodies in a network of mechanical forces, prone to passions and irrationality; and humans as subjects of right and obligation, morally exhortable by appeal to the standards of reason. The science of politics proposes an absolutist model of politics. If this proposal is not to be idle utopianism, the enduring functioning of the model needs to be compatible with the materialist analysis of human behaviour. (...) In this paper, I argue that Hobbes's attempts to render his science of politics compatible with his materialism are only partly successful; a fuller compatibility is achieved in the political writings of Spinoza. -/- Published with reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 221-224. Reprinted as: Sandra Field (2015), 'Hobbes and human irrationality', in T. Nardin (ed.) Rationality in Politics and its Limits, Abingdon: Routledge, 31-44. With reply: Luke O'Sullivan, 'Sovereigns and citizens: a response to Field', ibid., 45-48. (shrink)

As the war in Syria and the destruction of the Calais camp in France in 2016 bitterly demonstrate, declarations of human rights and asylum devolve into empty promises without a common sense of solidarity and an implicit understanding that we share responsibility for the world and one another. Today’s refugee crisis demonstrates that many of the problems that Hannah Arendt identified during the first half of the twentieth century are still with us. National security and the state of exception increasingly (...) place refugees and migrants at the borders of international law. This article argues that Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace and Arendt’s postwar reflections on the stateless as modern pariahs continue to frame current debates on hospitality, human rights, and responsibility. Without a recognition of our common humanity and shared world, sovereign states will continue to find exceptions to the legal status of refugees and migrants, thus enabling their exclusion from political life and the very laws that should protect them. Falling outside human rights law and the rights of refugees leads to the uncertainty of the pariah. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of an account of explanatory integration that claims that explanations of cognitive capacities by functional analyses and mechanistic explanations can be seamlessly integrated. It is shown that achieving such explanatory integration requires that the terms designating cognitive capacities in the two forms of explanation are stable but that experimental practice in the mind-brain sciences currently is not directed at achieving such stability. A positive proposal for changing experimental practice so as to promote such stability is (...) put forward and its implications for explanatory integration are briefly considered. (shrink)

With the rise of populism, European solidarity risks being eroded by a clash of solidarities based on nation and religion. Ranging from hospitality to hostility, ‘refugees welcome’ to ‘close the borders’, asylum seekers from Syria and other war-torn countries test the very ideas upon which the EU was founded: human rights, tolerance and the free movement of people. European solidarity is not only rooted in philosophical ideas of equality and freedom but also in the memory of nationalism, war and violence. (...) The response to refugees seeking asylum into Europe cannot only be resolved by appealing to emotions, moral sentiments and a politics of pity. Disenchantment with government, fear of terrorism and resentment towards foreigners weaken European solidarity at a time when it is needed most. (shrink)

The phrase ‘Never Again,’ ‘plus jamais, ‘nie wieder,’ ‘nunc más’ and ‘nunca mais’ promises to end the atrocities of the 20th century and warns of their return if individuals and governments remain indifferent to injustices in the world. Never Again is based on the moral claim that active remembrance is central to learning from the past and to preventing violence in the future. Indeed, as President Volodymyr Zelensky argued in his speech on May 8th commemorating the end of World War (...) II, ‘Never Again’ is ‘the anthem of the civilized world.’ While the promise of Never Again was undermined by genocide in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the bombing of civilians in Syria and war in Afghanistan, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine tests the ethics of Never Again on a larger scale with its looming specter of nuclear war and growing list of war crimes. In an effort to understand how the very institutions that were created in the aftermath of World War II could not prevent war from returning to Europe, my argument proceeds in three parts: (1) Never Again is based on a paradox between the universal and the particular, as well as between the historical experience of individuals in the past and the universal promise to avert its reoccurrence. (2) Never Again refers to a break in historical time that links the living with memories of the dead and promises not to repeat the violence of the past in the future. At issue is the kind of intergenerational responsibility implied in the ethics of Never Again. (3) The imperative of Never Again is weakened when memory is reduced to a melancholic gaze of catastrophe that privileges a tragic understanding of history. (shrink)

Since the first lockdown in March 2020, time seems to have slowed to a continuous present tense. The Greek language has three words to express different experiences of time: aion, chronos and kairos. If aion is the boundless and limbo-like time of eternity, chronos represents chronological, sequential, and linear time. Kairos, however, signifies the rupture of ordinary time with the opportune moment, epiphany and redemption, revolution, and most broadly, crisis and emergency. This paper argues that the pandemic is impacting how (...) individuals perceive time in two ways: first, as a distortion of time in which individuals are caught between linear time (chronos) and rupture (kairos) invoking the state of emergency and second, as an extended present that blurs the passing of chronological time with its seeming eternity (aion). As a result of the perceived suspension of ordinary time, temporal understandings of the future are postponed, while the past hovers like a ghost over the present. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the kinds of changes that psychiatric kinds undergo when they become explanatory targets of areas of sciences that are not “mature” and are in the early stages of discovering mechanisms. The two areas of science that are the targets of my analysis are cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology.

In this article, I explain why stabilizing constructs is important to the success of the Research Domain Criteria Project and identify one measure for facilitating such stability.

This paper argues that the concept of paternalism is currently overextended to include a variety of actions that, while resembling paternalistic actions, are importantly different. I use the example of Japanese physicians’ non-disclosures of cancer diagnoses directly to patients, arguing that the concept of maternalism better captures these actions. To act paternalistically is to substitute one's own judgement for that of another person and decide in place of that person for his/her best interest. By contrast, to act maternalistically is to (...) decide for another person based on a reasonable understanding of that person's own preferences. The concept of maternalism allows for a more thorough assessment of the moral justification of these types of actions. I conclude that it is possible, at least in principle, to justify Japanese physicians’ non-disclosures, and that this justification must be based on an understanding of these actions as maternalistic. (shrink)

In 2007, ten world-renowned neuroscientists proposed “A Decade of the Mind Initiative.” The contention was that, despite the successes of the Decade of the Brain, “a fundamental understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind [was] still lacking” (2007, 1321). The primary aims of the decade of the mind were “to build on the progress of the recent Decade of the Brain (1990-99)” by focusing on “four broad but intertwined areas” of research, including: healing and protecting, understanding, enriching, (...) and modeling the mind. These four aims were to be the result of “transdisciplinary and multiagency” research spanning “across disparate fields, such as cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, mathematics, engineering, and computer science.” The proposal for a decade of the mind prompted many questions (See Spitzer 2008). In this chapter, I address three of them: (1) How do proponents of this new decade conceive of the mind? (2) Why should a decade be devoted to understanding it? (3) What should this decade look like? (shrink)

Neuroscience is a laboratory-based science that spans multiple levels of analysis from molecular genetics to behavior. At every level of analysis experiments are designed in order to answer empirical questions about phenomena of interest. Understanding the nature and structure of experimentation in neuroscience is fundamental for assessing the quality of the evidence produced by such experiments and the kinds of claims that are warranted by the data. This article provides a general conceptual framework for thinking about evidence and experimentation in (...) neuroscience with a particular focus on two research areas: cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology. (shrink)

What role does the concept of representation play in the contexts of experimentation and explanation in cognitive neurobiology? In this article, a distinction is drawn between minimal and substantive roles for representation. It is argued by appeal to a case study that representation currently plays a role in cognitive neurobiology somewhere in between minimal and substantive and that this is problematic given the ultimate explanatory goals of cognitive neurobiological research. It is suggested that what is needed is for representation to (...) instead play a more substantive role. (shrink)

This article investigates several consequences of a recent trend in philosophy of mind to shift the relata of realization from mental state–physical state to function‐mechanism. It is shown, by applying both frameworks to the neuroscientific case study of memory consolidation, that, although this shift can be used to avoid the immediate antireductionist consequences of the traditional argument from multiple realizability, what is gained is a far more modest form of reductionism than recent philosophical accounts have intimated and neuroscientists themselves have (...) claimed. (shrink)

Sullivan surveys the philosophical problem-areas surrounding multiculturalism as an ideology of group-identity. While endorsing the claims of underrepresented minorities for recognition, the article sides with traditionalists in prioritizing the autonomy of the self-fashioning individual over ethnic or cultural affiliations. The multicultural challenge to Western logocentrism, its assertion of the implicit power structures embedded in truth claims, and the excesses of postmodern relativism are all subjected to measured criticism. Finally, the essay examines Habermas' role in postwar Germany's embrace of multiculturalism as (...) a national platform of reinvention, and as a means to negate the trauma of the monocultural chauvinism of the Nazi era. However, Sullivan argues, it has taken cosmopolitanism too far. While post-national strategies such as Habermas' Verfassungspatriotismus are well-intentioned, they are ultimately too sterile, universalist and abstract, to satisfy a deep human need for belonging, rooted in a common cultural heritage. -/- All rights reserved. For permission to reprint please contact Rowman & Littlefield. (shrink)

Bioethics seeks to answer questions and resolve problems that change along with developments in medicine and biology. Ethical justification plays a crucial role in bioethical analysis by clarifying the reasons that support complex judgments about particular actions and general policies.1 It helps bioethicists to determine what to allow, forbid, support, and minimize. When there is disagreement, it can also aid understanding of competing positions. However, at times, disagreement on particular issues becomes so entrenched that understanding seems impossible. In such circumstances, (...) how might bioethicists proceed? In answering this question, this paper considers a particularly significant area of.. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that scientific practice in the neurosciences of cognition is not conducive to the discovery of natural kinds of cognitive capacities. The “neurosciences of cognition” include cognitive neuroscience and cognitive neurobiology, two research areas that aim to understand how the brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. Some philosophers of neuroscience have claimed that explanatory progress in these research areas ultimately will result in the discovery of the underlying mechanisms of cognitive capacities. Once such mechanistic understanding (...) is achieved, cognitive capacities purportedly will be relegated into natural kind categories that correspond to real divisions in the causal structure of the world. I provide reasons here, however, in support of the claim that the neurosciences of cognition currently are not on a trajectory for discovering natural kinds. As I explain, this has to do with how mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities are developed. Mechanistic explanations and the kinds they explain are abstract representational byproducts of the conceptual, experimental and integrative practices of neuroscientists. If these practices are not coordinated towards developing mechanistic explanations that mirror the causal structure of the world, then natural kinds of cognitive capacities will not be discovered. I provide reasons to think that such coordination is currently lacking in the neurosciences of cognition and indicate where changes in these practices appropriate to the natural kinds ideal would be required if achieving this ideal is indeed the goal. However, I suggest that an evaluation of current practices in these research areas is suggestive that discovering natural kinds of cognitive capacities is not the goal. (shrink)

This paper is a response to a commentary by Walter Glannon (2016, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience) on my paper "Stabilizing Constructs Across Research Fields as a Way to Foster the Integrative Approach of the Research Domain Criteria Project".

In this volume, leading philosophers of psychiatry examine psychiatric classification systems, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, asking whether current systems are sufficient for effective diagnosis, treatment, and research. Doing so, they take up the question of whether mental disorders are natural kinds, grounded in something in the outside world. Psychiatric categories based on natural kinds should group phenomena in such a way that they are subject to the same type of causal explanations and respond similarly to (...) the same type of causal interventions. When these categories do not evince such groupings, there is reason to revise existing classifications. The contributors all question current psychiatric classifications systems and the assumptions on which they are based. They differ, however, as to why and to what extent the categories are inadequate and how to address the problem. Topics discussed include taxometric methods for identifying natural kinds, the error and bias inherent in DSM categories, and the complexities involved in classifying such specific mental disorders as "oppositional defiance disorder" and pathological gambling. -/- Contributors George Graham, Nick Haslam, Allan Horwitz, Harold Kincaid, Dominic Murphy, Jeffrey Poland, Nancy Nyquist Potter, Don Ross, Dan Stein, Jacqueline Sullivan, Serife Tekin, Peter Zachar. (shrink)

What do humility, intellectual humility, and open-mindedness mean in the context of inter-group conflict? We spend most of our time with ingroup members, such as family, friends, and colleagues. Yet our biggest disagreements —— about practical, moral, and epistemic matters —— are likely to be with those who do not belong to our ingroup. An attitude of humility towards the former might be difficult to integrate with a corresponding attitude of humility towards the latter, leading to smug tribalism that masquerades (...) as genuine virtue. These potentially conflicting priorities have recently come to the fore because “tribal epistemology” has so thoroughly infected political and social discourse. Most research on these dispositions focuses on individual traits and dyadic peer-disagreement, with little attention to group membership or inter-group conflict. In this chapter, we dilate the social scale to address this pressing philosophical and social problem. (shrink)

Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.

Clinical psychology is characterized by persistent disagreement about fundamental aspects of the discipline ranging from what mental disorders are to what constitutes effective treatment. Attempts to address the problem of epistemic disagreement have been frequently based on establishing the correct answer by fiat without identifying and addressing the sources of the disagreement. We argue that this strategy has not worked very well and the result is frequently ongoing and intractable disagreement, with each side in an argument convinced they are correct. (...) In this paper, we outline an epistemic disagreement procedural model intended to assist researchers and clinicians in the field of clinical psychology to identify, explore, and develop inquiry strategies that capitalize on situations where competing knowledge claims are made. The result is a flexible conceptual framework committed to a defensible epistemic pluralism, fallibilism, and contextualism, across the various research tasks constituting the field of clinical psychology. (shrink)

In 'On the nature of truth and falsehood' Russell offers both a multiple relation theory of judgment and a correspondence theory of truth. It has been a prevailing understanding of the Tractatus that Wittgenstein rejects Russell’s multiple relation idea but endorses the correspondence theory. Ramsey took the opposite view. In his 'Facts and Propositions', Ramsey endorses Russell’s multiple relation idea, rejects the correspondence theory, and then asserts that these moves are both due to Wittgenstein. This chapter will argue that Ramsey’s (...) ascriptions are both correct. The extent of the agreement between Ramsey and Wittgenstein will be argued, moreover, to count definitively against standard understandings of Ramsey as a redundancy theorist of truth. Wittgenstein is no correspondence theorist and Ramsey is no redundancy theorist; rather, both philosophers offer identity theories of truth. (shrink)

Given the plethora of books on nearly every aspect of Hannah Arendt’s work since the collapse of communism in 1989, it is often difficult to sort through the growing amount of secondary literature about her. The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt is neither an overview nor critical introduction to her ideas. Rather this timely volume offers a perspective on her work from within the very discipline that she held is such low esteem – sociology. Skilfully edited by Peter Baehr and (...) Philip Walsh, The Anthem Companion to Hannah Arendt offers a refreshing focus on the connection between her work and ‘fundamental sociological problems’ (p. 2). Divided into two parts, authors in Part I address books written by Arendt germane to sociology: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Revolution and The Life of the Mind. Part II reflects on selected themes within her work and draws from a wider range of publications including her early book review of Karl Mannheim’s Ideology and Utopia, On Violence and Responsibility and Judgment. (shrink)

Scientists represent their world, grouping and organizing phenomena into classes by means of concepts. Philosophers of science have historically been interested in the nature of these concepts, the criteria that inform their application and the nature of the kinds that the concepts individuate. They also have sought to understand whether and how different systems of classification are related and more recently, how investigative practices shape conceptual development and change. Our aim in this paper is to provide a critical overview of (...) some of the key developments in this philosophical literature and identify some interesting issues it raises about the prospects of the so-called “special sciences”, including psychiatry, psychology, and the mind-brain sciences more generally, to discover natural kinds. (shrink)

In the last decade alone, a growing body of preliminary evidence suggests that classic psychedelics (CPs) can rapidly and durably ameliorate symptoms and cognitive deficits associated with depression. However, the mechanisms by which CPs work in the brain are not well understood. Rodent translational research, in which experimental findings from rodents are translated to humans, is fundamental in achieving this goal. This chapter focuses on a representative subset of human and rodent studies investigating CPs for depression, including the various lines (...) of research that have been initiated to understand how they work. Our aim is to show that in addition to epistemic challenges that scientists face in translating findings from rodents to humans, there is also mismatch between experimental approaches used to investigate CPs in humans and rodents. We thus show current experimental practices are not conducive to mechanistic discovery. We end with a set of positive proposals to expedite the drive to translate CPs into effective treatments for depression. -/- Keywords: classic psychedelics, psychiatry, clinical trials, collaboration, extrapolation, major depressive disorder, open science, philosophy of science, rodent models, scientific practice, translation, validity . (shrink)

Knowledge is power. Knowledge about human psychology is increasingly being produced using natural language processing (NLP) and related techniques. The power that accompanies and harnesses this knowledge should be subject to ethical controls and oversight. In this chapter, we address the ethical pitfalls that are likely to be encountered in the context of such research. These pitfalls occur at various stages of the NLP pipeline, including data acquisition, enrichment, analysis, storage, and sharing. We also address secondary uses of the results (...) and tools developed through psychometric NLP, such as profit-driven targeted advertising, political campaigns, and domestic and international psyops. Along the way, we reflect on potential ethical guidelines and considerations that may help researchers navigate these pitfalls. (shrink)

David Benatar argues that coming into existence is always a harm, and that – for all of us unfortunate enough to have come into existence – it would be better had we never come to be. We contend that if one accepts Benatar’s arguments for the asymmetry between the presence and absence of pleasure and pain, and the poor quality of life, one must also accept that suicide is preferable to continued existence, and that his view therefore implies both anti-natalism (...) and pro-mortalism . This conclusion has been argued for before by Elizabeth Harman – she takes it that because Benatar claims that our lives are ‘awful’, it follows that ‘we would be better off to kill ourselves’ (Harman 2009: 784). Though we agree with Harman’s conclusion, we think that her argument is too quick, and that Benatar’s arguments for non-pro-mortalism deserve more serious consideration than she gives them. We make our case using a tripartite structure. We start by examining the prima facie case for the claim that pro-mortalism follows from Benatar’s position, presenting his response to the contrary, and furthering the dialectic by showing that Benatar’s position is not just that coming into existence is a harm, but that existence itself is a harm. We then look to Benatar’s treatment of the Epicurean line, which is important for him as it undermines his anti-death argument for non-pro-mortalism. We demonstrate that he fails to address the concern that the Epicurean line raises, and that he cannot therefore use the harm of death as an argument for non-pro-mortalism. Finally, we turn to Benatar’s pro-life argument for non-pro-mortalism, built upon his notion of interests, and argue that while the interest in continued existence may indeed have moral relevance, it is almost always irrational. Given that neither Benatar’s anti-death nor pro-life arguments for non-pro-mortalism work, we conclude that pro-mortalism follows from his anti-natalism, As such, if it is better never to have been, then it is better no longer to be. -/- . (shrink)

Simple idealized models seem to provide more understanding than opaque, complex, and hyper-realistic models. However, an increasing number of scientists are going in the opposite direction by utilizing opaque machine learning models to make predictions and draw inferences, suggesting that scientists are opting for models that have less potential for understanding. Are scientists trading understanding for some other epistemic or pragmatic good when they choose a machine learning model? Or are the assumptions behind why minimal models provide understanding misguided? In (...) this paper, using the case of deep neural networks, I argue that it is not the complexity or black box nature of a model that limits how much understanding the model provides. Instead, it is a lack of scientific and empirical evidence supporting the link that connects a model to the target phenomenon that primarily prohibits understanding. (shrink)

Recent work by Kahan et al. (2017) on the psychology of motivated numeracy in the context of intracultural disagreement suggests that people are less likely to employ their capabilities when the evidence runs contrary to their political ideology. This research has so far been carried out primarily in the USA regarding the liberal–conservative divide over gun control regulation. In this paper, we present the results of a modified replication that included an active reasoning intervention with Western European participants regarding both (...) the hierarchy–egalitarianism and individualism–collectivism divides over immigration policy (n = 746; considerably less than the preregistration sample size). We reproduce the motivated numeracy effect, though we do not find evidence of increased polarization of high-numeracy participants. (shrink)

Nghiên cứu nhằm xác định các yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân trong đại đô thị Vinhomes Grand Park. Kết quả nghiên cứu chỉ ra 6 nhân tố: (1) Thái độ hướng đến bảo vệ môi trường; (2) Chuẩn chủ quan; (3) Chất lượng sản phẩm tốt; (4) Giá cả sản phẩm; (5) Truyền thông xã hội đều có ảnh hưởng đến quyết định mua các sản phẩm (...) thân thiện với môi trường. Qua đó, tác giả đề xuất hàm ý quản trị nhằm nâng cao chiến lược phát triển thị trường sản phẩm thân thiện với môi trường của cư dân. (shrink)

Descriptive accounts of the nature of explanation in neuroscience and the global goals of such explanation have recently proliferated in the philosophy of neuroscience and with them new understandings of the experimental practices of neuroscientists have emerged. In this paper, I consider two models of such practices; one that takes them to be reductive; another that takes them to be integrative. I investigate those areas of the neuroscience of learning and memory from which the examples used to substantiate these models (...) are culled, and argue that the multiplicity of experimental protocols used in these research areas presents specific challenges for both models. In my view, these challenges have been overlooked largely because philosophers have hitherto failed to pay sufficient attention to fundamental features of experimental practice. I demonstrate that when we do pay attention to such features, evidence for reduction and integrative unity in neuroscience is simply not borne out. I end by suggesting some new directions for the philosophy of neuroscience that pertain to taking a closer look at the nature of neuroscientific experiments. (shrink)

Social epistemologists should be well-equipped to explain and evaluate the growing vulnerabilities associated with filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization in social media. However, almost all social epistemology has been built for social contexts that involve merely a speaker-hearer dyad. Filter bubbles, echo chambers, and group polarization all presuppose much larger and more complex network structures. In this paper, we lay the groundwork for a properly social epistemology that gives the role and structure of networks their due. In particular, (...) we formally define epistemic constructs that quantify the structural epistemic position of each node within an interconnected network. We argue for the epistemic value of a structure that we call the (m,k)-observer. We then present empirical evidence that (m,k)-observers are rare in social media discussions of controversial topics, which suggests that people suffer from serious problems of epistemic vulnerability. We conclude by arguing that social epistemologists and computer scientists should work together to develop minimal interventions that improve the structure of epistemic networks. (shrink)

Đánh giá chất lượng công chức nói chung và công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện nói riêng là khâu mở đường quan trọng trong các hoạt động quản lý công chức và kết quả thực thi công vụ là tiêu chí cơ bản trong đánh giá. Nghiên cứu tiếp thu kết quả các nghiên cứu đi trước để xây dựng mô hình lý thuyết các nhân tố ảnh hưởng đến kết quả thực thi công vụ (...) của công chức quản lý nhà nước về kinh tế cấp huyện ở TP. Hà Nội gồm 8 nhân tố: (1) Đào tạo, bồi dưỡng công chức; (2) Chính sách đãi ngộ; (3) Đánh giá công chức; (4) Bố trí, sử dụng công chức; (5) Kỷ cương, kỷ luật; (6) Phong cách lãnh đạo; (7) Đổi mới, sáng tạo của công chức; (8) Gắn kết với công việc của công chức. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that we are answerable in a special way for our intentional actions. And it is also widely accepted that we are thus answerable because we perform intentional actions for reasons. The aim of this chapter is to argue against this ‘reasons’ view of such answerability. First, reasons are distinguished from practical standards. Then, it is argued that the best interpretation of the practices in which we treat agents as answerable is that they fundamentally concern practical standards (...) rather than reasons. This view shows that we are answerable, not just because we are deliberators, but because we are executive agents whose complex executive capacities open us to criticism. (shrink)

Under what conditions does machine learning (ML) model opacity inhibit the possibility of explaining and understanding phenomena? In this article, I argue that nonepistemic values give shape to the ML opacity problem even if we keep researcher interests fixed. Treating ML models as an instance of doing model-based science to explain and understand phenomena reveals that there is (i) an external opacity problem, where the presence of inductive risk imposes higher standards on externally validating models, and (ii) an internal opacity (...) problem, where greater inductive risk demands a higher level of transparency regarding the inferences the model makes. (shrink)

In philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive science, definitions of clinical delusions are not based on the mechanisms responsible for the formation of delusions. Some of the defining features of delusions are epistemic and focus on whether delusions are true, justified, or rational, as in the definition of delusions as fixed beliefs that are badly supported by evidence). Other defining features of delusions are psychological and they focus on whether delusions are harmful, as in the definition of delusions as beliefs that disrupt (...) good functioning. Even if the epistemic features go some way towards capturing what otherwise different instances of clinical delusions have in common, they do not succeed in distinguishing delusions as a clinical phenomenon from everyday irrational beliefs. Focusing on the psychological features is a more promising way to mark the difference between clinical and non-clinical irrational beliefs, but there is wide variability in the extent to which delusions are psychologically harmful, and some everyday irrational beliefs can affect functioning in similarly negative ways. In this chapter we consider three types of belief that share similar epistemic features and exhibit variation with respect to how psychologically harmful they are: (1) delusions of thought insertion, (2) alien abduction beliefs, and (3) self-enhancing beliefs. In the light of the similarities and differences between these cases, we highlight the difficulty in providing an answer to what makes an irrational belief delusional. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the senses and what differentiates them that is compatible with richly multisensory perception and consciousness. According to this proposal, senses are ways of perceiving. Each sense is a subfaculty that comprises a collection of perceptual capacities. What each sense shares and what differentiates one sense from another is the manner in which those capacities are exercised. Each way of perceiving involves a distinct type of information gathering, individuated by the information it functions to extract (...) and the medium from which it does so. This approach distinguishes the project of characterizing and differentiating senses from that of attributing experiences to sensory modalities. Perceptual experiences are episodes in which perceptual capacities are exer- cised. Conscious perceptual episodes may be ascribed to distinct sensory modalities, according to the manners in which perceptual capacities are deployed on an occasion. According to this account, senses are not exclusive. First, their capacities may overlap. Second, perceptual episodes, including conscious experiences, may belong to multiple senses. Indeed, some episodes require the joint use of several senses. In this account, subjects have only limited first-person knowledge of the senses they employ. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed a growing awareness of conceptual and methodological hurdles within psychology and neuroscience that must be addressed for taxonomic and explanatory progress in understanding psychological functions to be possible. In this paper, I evaluate several recent knowledge-building initiatives aimed at overcoming these obstacles. I argue that while each initiative offers important insights about how to facilitate taxonomic and explanatory progress in psychology and neuroscience, only a “coordinated pluralism” that incorporates positive aspects of each initiative will have (...) the potential for success. (shrink)

The Morris water maze has been put forward in the philosophy of neuroscience as an example of an experimental arrangement that may be used to delineate the cognitive faculty of spatial memory (e.g., Craver and Darden, Theory and method in the neurosciences, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2001; Craver, Explaining the brain: Mechanisms and the mosaic unity of neuroscience, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007). However, in the experimental and review literature on the water maze throughout the history of its use, (...) we encounter numerous responses to the question of “what” phenomenon it circumscribes ranging from cognitive functions (e.g., “spatial learning”, “spatial navigation”), to representational changes (e.g., “cognitive map formation”) to terms that appear to refer exclusively to observable changes in behavior (e.g., “water maze performance”). To date philosophical analyses of the water maze have not been directed at sorting out what phenomenon the device delineates nor the sources of the different answers to the question of what. I undertake both of these tasks in this paper. I begin with an analysis of Morris’s first published research study using the water maze and demonstrate that he emerged from it with an experimental learning paradigm that at best circumscribed a discrete set of observable changes in behavior. However, it delineated neither a discrete set of representational changes nor a discrete cognitive function. I cite this in combination with a reductionist-oriented research agenda in cellular and molecular neurobiology dating back to the 1980s as two sources of the lack of consistency across the history of the experimental and review literature as to what is under study in the water maze. (shrink)