We characterize a type of functional explanation that addresses why a homologous trait originating deep in the evolutionary history of a group remains widespread and largely unchanged across the group’s lineages. We argue that biologists regularly provide this type of explanation when they attribute conserved functions to phenotypic and genetic traits. The concept of conserved function applies broadly to many biological domains, and we illustrate its importance using examples of molecular sequence alignments at the intersection of evolution and cell biology. (...) We use these examples to show how the study of conserved functions can integrate knowledge of a trait’s causal effects on fitness and its history of natural selection without invoking adaptation. We also show how conserved function provides a novel basis for addressing objections against evolutionary functions raised by Robert Cummins. (shrink)

This is a draft of the introduction to a forthcoming volume that brings together all of J. G. Herder's student notes from Immanuel Kant's lectures. It is intended as a volume in Kant's gesammelte Schriften (de Gruyter). These are the earliest notes (1762-64) we have from Kant's lectures (which span from 1755 to 1796) and the only notes before his professorship began in 1770. Included are improved transcriptions of Herder's notes on metaphysics, moral philosophy, logic, physics, and mathematics, and the (...) first transcription of his notes from Kant’s physical geography lectures. (shrink)

Lorsque nous avons affaire à des objets ou des états de choses complexes, il est difficile de réduire ces objets, ces états de choses, à la somme de leurs parties. Le holisme est la thèse selon laquelle un objet ou un état de choses ne se réduit pas à la somme de ses parties. On retrouve ce phénomène partout : en sciences (les états mentaux ne semblent pas se réduire à des activations de neurones même s’ ils surviennent sur eux), (...) en sociologie (l’ OM est plus que la somme des joueurs, c’ est pourquoi l’ OM existe même après un changement de joueur), en ontologie (le tout constitué par une moto est plus que l’ ensemble de ses parties, encore faut-il qu’ elles soient assemblées correctement) et en gastronomie (dans une fondue les parties et le tout sont indistinguables). -/- Dans cet article, je vais considérer une forme particulière de holisme, peut-être la plus mystérieuse puisqu’ il s’ agit d’ un holisme de valeurs. Soit la thèse suivante : la valeur d’ un tout n’ est pas égale à la somme des valeurs de ses parties. (shrink)

The study of biodiversity spans many disciplines and includes data pertaining to species distributions and abundances, genetic sequences, trait measurements, and ecological niches, complemented by information on collection and measurement protocols. A review of the current landscape of metadata standards and ontologies in biodiversity science suggests that existing standards such as the Darwin Core terminology are inadequate for describing biodiversity data in a semantically meaningful and computationally useful way. Existing ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology and others in the Open (...) Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry library, provide a semantic structure but lack many of the necessary terms to describe biodiversity data in all its dimensions. In this paper, we describe the motivation for and ongoing development of a new Biological Collections Ontology, the Environment Ontology, and the Population and Community Ontology. These ontologies share the aim of improving data aggregation and integration across the biodiversity domain and can be used to describe physical samples and sampling processes (for example, collection, extraction, and preservation techniques), as well as biodiversity observations that involve no physical sampling. Together they encompass studies of: 1) individual organisms, including voucher specimens from ecological studies and museum specimens, 2) bulk or environmental samples (e.g., gut contents, soil, water) that include DNA, other molecules, and potentially many organisms, especially microbes, and 3) survey-based ecological observations. We discuss how these ontologies can be applied to biodiversity use cases that span genetic, organismal, and ecosystem levels of organization. We argue that if adopted as a standard and rigorously applied and enriched by the biodiversity community, these ontologies would significantly reduce barriers to data discovery, integration, and exchange among biodiversity resources and researchers. (shrink)

Our digital society increasingly relies in the power of others’ aggregated judgments to make decisions. Questions as diverse as which film we will watch, what scientific news we will decide to read, which path we will follow to find a place, or what political candidate we will vote for are usually associated to a rating that influences our final decisions.

Soren Kierkegaard (b. 1813–d. 1855), widely regarded as the father of existentialism, distinguishes three stages of authentic personhood: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. Kierkegaard seems to suggest that people progress through these stages in life. Steve Pavlina, on the other hand, argues that people can create their meaning through conscious actions that require reflection. Using the analytic method, this paper explores Kierkegaard’s theory of stages and man’s path to authentic personhood, comparing and contrasting it with Steve Pavlina's path to (...) enlightenment. An endeavor will be made to show how Kierkegaard's authentic personhood is similar in many ways to Steve Pavlina’s path to enlightenment and also reconcile the struggle for truth found in both of these individuals' philosophies. The conclusion reached is that these two ideologies prove fruitful in other fields of research, e.g. in understanding the stages in the development of the child. -/- . (shrink)

This paper presents a close analysis of Steve Pyke’s famous series of portraits of philosophers. By comparing his photographs to other well-known series of portraits and to other portraits of philosophers we will seek a better understanding of the distinctiveness and fittingness of Pyke’s project. With brief nods to Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, G.W.F. Hegel, and Arthur Schopenhauer and an extensive critical investigation of Cynthia Freeland’s ideas on portraiture in general and her reading of Steve Pyke’s portraits in (...) particular, this paper will also aim to make a contribution to the philosophical debate on portraiture. (shrink)

Allan Gibbard maintains that his plan-based expressivism allows for a particular type of innocent mistake: I can agree that your plan to X makes sense (say, because it was based on advice from someone you trust), while nonetheless insisting that it is incorrect (e.g., because you chose a bad advisor). However, Steve Daskal has recently argued that there are significant limitations in Gibbard’s account of how we can be mistaken about the normative judgments we make. This essay refines Gibbard’s (...) account in order to show--contra Daskal--that expressivists can deliver a surprisingly robust form of normative objectivity. (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to intuition, it would be both possible and permissible to design people - whether artificial or organic - who by their nature desire to do tasks we find unpleasant.

Nick Bostrom's book *Superintelligence* outlines a frightening but realistic scenario for human extinction: true artificial intelligence is likely to bootstrap itself into superintelligence, and thereby become ideally effective at achieving its goals. Human-friendly goals seem too abstract to be pre-programmed with any confidence, and if those goals are *not* explicitly favorable toward humans, the superintelligence will extinguish us---not through any malice, but simply because it will want our resources for its own purposes. In response I argue that things might not (...) be as bad as Bostrom suggests. If the superintelligence must *learn* complex final goals, then this means such a superintelligence must in effect *reason* about its own goals. And because it will be especially clear to a superintelligence that there are no sharp lines between one agent's goals and another's, that reasoning could therefore automatically be ethical in nature. (shrink)

I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...) their fusion, because the first two have a kind of internal organizational coherence that their putative fusion lacks. Kolmogorov complexity theory supplies the needed rigorous sense of “internal organizational coherence”. (shrink)

Soofi1 aims to develop an account of dignity in dementia care based on Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. He does this by drawing on the Kitwood and Bredin2 list of well-being indicators, in order to fill out her account of human flourishing to cover aspects such as practical reasoning that appear beyond the reach of those with relatively severe dementia. As Soofi points out, Nussbaum’s claim that such lost abilities can be compensated through guardianship measures is implausible. He asserts in response that (...) his account of dignity is sufficient to address the desiderata he sets out at the start, including especially the problem of exclusionary implications any putative account should address. So far, so good, but an objection Soofi raises for his own account is that it seems unable to cover cases of severe late-stage dementia. His response is, > …that there is insufficient factual evidence to suggest that people at the very advanced stages of dementia lose all capabilities. But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that this is true. This, however, still does not undermine the conceptual rigour of the modified version of Nussbaum’s account. This is because the list of the dementia-specific capabilities that I …. (shrink)

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...) first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

To identify and conceptualize research problems in science, philosophers and often scientists rely on classical accounts of problems that focus on intellectual problems defined in relation to theories. Recently, philosophers have begun to study the structures and functions of research problems not defined in relation to theories. Furthermore, scientists have long pursued research problems often labeled as practical or applied. As yet, no account of problems specifies the description of both so-called intellectual problems and so-called applied problems. This article proposes (...) a new conceptual framework of problems that accounts both for intellectual aspects of problems and for their practical or applied aspects. I illustrate the account with an example of a recent research project from evolutionary biology, and I indicate further routes by that to develop the account, especially in connection to empirical studies of science. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of libertarianism for welfare policy. There are two central arguments. First, the paper argues that if one adopts a libertarian framework, it makes most sense to be a Lockean right-libertarian. Second, the paper argues that this form of libertarianism leads to the endorsement of a fairly extensive set of redistributive welfare programs. Specifically, the paper argues that Lockean right-libertarians are committed to endorsing welfare programs under which the receipt of benefits is conditional on meeting a (...) work requirement, and also endorsing some form of publicly funded jobs of last resort for potential welfare recipients. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Key: Losing Oneself Windsurfing Performance, Psychology, and Embedded Cognition Windsurfing and Flow.

In this chapter I'd like to focus on a small corner of sexbot ethics that is rarely considered elsewhere: the question of whether and when being a sexbot might be good---or bad---*for the sexbot*. You might think this means you are in for a dry sermon about the evils of robot slavery. If so, you'd be wrong; the ethics of robot servitude are far more complicated than that. In fact, if the arguments here are right, designing a robot to serve (...) humans sexually may be very good for the robots themselves. (shrink)

Despite Kant's belief in a universal causal determinism among phenomena and his rejection of any noumenal agency in brutes, he nevertheless rejected Descartes's hypothesis that brutes are machines. Explaining Kant's response to Descartes forms the basis for this discussion of the nature of consciousness and matter in Kant's system. Kant's numerous remarks on animal psychology-as found in his lecture notes and reflections on metaphysics and anthropology-suggest a theory of consciousness and self-consciousness at odds with that traditionally ascribed to him.

Whether it would take one decade or several centuries, many agree that it is possible to create a *superintelligence*---an artificial intelligence with a godlike ability to achieve its goals. And many who have reflected carefully on this fact agree that our best hope for a "friendly" superintelligence is to design it to *learn* values like ours, since our values are too complex to program or hardwire explicitly. But the value learning approach to AI safety faces three particularly philosophical puzzles: first, (...) it is unclear how any intelligent system could learn its final values, since to judge one supposedly "final" value against another seems to require a further background standard for judging. Second, it is unclear how to determine the content of a system's values based on its physical or computational structure. Finally, there is the distinctly ethical question of which values we should best aim for the system to learn. I outline a potential answer to these interrelated puzzles, centering on a "miktotelic" proposal for blending a complex, learnable final value out of many simpler ones. (shrink)

The complexity that we observe in nature can often be explained in terms of cooperative behavior. For example, the major transitions of evolution required the emergence of cooperation among the lower-level units of selection, which led to specialization through division-of-labor ultimately resulting in spontaneous order. There are two aspects to address explaining how such cooperation is sustained: how free-riders are prevented from free-riding on the benefits of cooperative tasks, and just as importantly, how those social benefits arise. We review these (...) problems from an economic perspective, and highlight how ideas from economics can help us to better understand how the benefits of social interactions arise, how they are sustained, and how they affect the underlying social dilemmas. (shrink)

A "patternist" approach to explanation seeks to formalize unificationism using notions from algorithmic information theory. Among other advantages, this account provides both a rigorous sense of how data can admit multiple explanations, and a rigorous sense of how some of those explanations can conjoin, while others compete.

Despite being a prevalent theme in popular cinema, revenge has received little dedicated attention within film studies. The majority of research concerning the concept of revenge is located within moral philosophy, but that body of literature has been overlooked by film studies scholars. Philosophers routinely draw on filmic examples to illustrate their discussions of revenge, but those interpretations are commonly hindered by their authors’ inexperience with film studies’ analytical methods. This article seeks to bridge those gaps. The 2010 remake of (...) I Spit on Your Grave is used as a case study to illustrate the benefits of an interdisciplinary engagement with revenge. Philosophical literature on the topic has routinely posited that revenge is either appealing or appalling, and that impasse has stifled conceptual understanding. The interdisciplinary approach employed here elucidates that revenge is simultaneously appealing and appalling; this dualistic nature is evident in I Spit on Your Grave since it is built into the narrative design. I conclude that an interdisciplinary approach to revenge has the potential to advance understanding of revenge-qua-concept both within films studies and philosophy. (shrink)

After a seven-year hiatus, the Saw franchise returned. Critics overwhelming disapproved of the franchise’s reinvigoration, and much of that dissention centred around a label that is synonymous with Saw: ‘torture porn’. Numerous critics pegged the original Saw (2004) as torture porn’s prototype. Accordingly, critics characterised Jigsaw’s release as heralding an unwelcome ‘torture porn comeback’. This chapter investigates the legitimacy of this concern in order to determine what ‘torture porn’ is and means in the Jigsaw era.

Though famously Derek Parfit is known for his reductionism about persons, he does, in fact, also profess a form of realism about persons based on the way the language of persons and personal identity is used. We might say that Parfit is an ontological reductionist about persons but not a conceptual reductionist. In this discussion note I try to bring out a difficulty for this kind of hybrid view by showing that there are many ways – too many in fact (...) – in which we use the language of persons and personal identity that cannot be reconciled with the core of Parfitian ontological reductionism. If it is true that the kind of reconciliation Parfit and his followers assent to is untenable, then a stark choice is presented between reductionism and a repudiation of most, if not all vestiges of realism. A genuine reductionist ought to choose against the latter. (shrink)

There are writers in both metaphysics and algorithmic information theory (AIT) who seem to think that the latter could provide a formal theory of the former. This paper is intended as a step in that direction. It demonstrates how AIT might be used to define basic metaphysical notions such as *object* and *property* for a simple, idealized world. The extent to which these definitions capture intuitions about the metaphysics of the simple world, times the extent to which we think the (...) simple world is analogous to our own, will determine a lower bound for basing a metaphysics for *our* world on AIT. (shrink)

Jeffrey conditioning allows updating in Bayesian style when the evidence is uncertain. A weighted average, essentially, over classically updating on the alternatives. Unlike classical Bayesian conditioning, this allows learning to be unlearned.

Arthur Falk has proposed a new construal of faith according to which it is not a mere species of belief, but has essential components in action. This twist on faith promises to resurrect Pascal’s Wager, making faith compatible with reason by believing as the scientist but acting as the theist. I argue that Falk’s proposal leaves religious faith in no better shape; in particular, it merely reframes the question in terms of rational desires rather than rational beliefs.

‘Torture porn’ films centre on themes of abduction, imprisonment and suffering. Within the subgenre, protagonists are typically placed under relentless surveillance by their captors. CCTV features in more than 45 contemporary torture-themed films (including Captivity, Hunger, and Torture Room). Security cameras signify a bridging point between the captors’ ability to observe and to control their prey. Founded on power-imbalance, torture porn’s prison-spaces are panoptical. Despite failing to encapsulate contemporary surveillance’s complexities (see Haggerty, 2011), the panopticon remains a dominant paradigm within (...) surveillance studies because it captures essential truths about the psychologies of self-governance and interdependency. This chapter will use torture porn’s panoptical spaces and captor-captive relationships as a springboard into examining those broader philosophical issues regarding selfhood. In the torture-space, cameras signify the control to which captives must submit. Since they are threatened with death, the surveillance dynamic appears to entirely subjugate these prisoners. However, the captive must undertake some agency in the oppression. Much of the captor’s implied threat is enacted by the captives, who brutalise one another to save themselves. The captor’s apparent omniscience is translated into omnipotence only because the captives forsake self-control – opting to engage in violent, contra-social behaviours – out of fear. Thus, it is implied that self-ownership is the bedrock of stable, interdependent sociality. To inspire horror, the opposite is depicted: fractured groups comprised of paranoid, self-invested individuals. By submitting to external pressure, these “weak” individuals empower their tormentor. Captives are not only encouraged to enact their own suppression, but also to internalise culpability for the suffering they undergo. Despite being threatened with erasure, torture porn’s protagonists are spotlighted in these films. Abductees dominate the screen-time, and their suffering drives the narrative forward. Torturers are often motivated solely by their victims’ agony. In many cases, torture is designed specifically for each hyper-individualised captive. These forms of emphasis imply that captives are the stimulus for their own victimisation. The captor’s exaggerated interest in the prisoners is perversely flattering: captives are implied to be worthy of the captor’s maniacal attention, which is reified by the CCTV cameras. In torture porn’s scenarios, it is not immediately clear who has greater control over the individual: the captor or the captive themselves. By dissecting how self-preservation, self-governance, and self-centredness manifest in torture porn, this chapter seeks to examine the dialectical qualities of liberty, interdependency and autonomy. (shrink)

The combination of sex and horror may be disquieting to many, but the two are natural (if perhaps gruesome) bedfellows. In fact, sex and horror coincide with such regularity in contemporary horror fiction that the two concepts appear to be at least partially intertwined. The sex–horror relationship is sometimes connotative rather than overt; examples of this relationship range from the seduction overtones of 'Nosferatu' and the juxtaposition of nudity and horror promised by European exploitation filmmakers to the sadomasochistic iconography of (...) 'Hellraiser'. In other cases, sex and horror are balanced in a manner that thoroughly blurs the distinction between porn and horror. The sustained presence of sex-horror in film suggests that these two elements fit together and the combination is a source of pleasure (entertainment, fascination, intellectual stimulation and so forth) for many. Yet sex-horror is broadly perceived to be disturbing and these negative reactions indicate that sex-horror is a source of trepidation, moral disdain or disgust for some. Thus, it appears that sex-horror inspires directly competing responses. One might conclude that sex-horror itself is paradoxical; that it holds two directly oppositional meanings simultaneously. However, as I will illustrate in this chapter, these dual responses are not as contradictory as they might first appear to be. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 22 Analysis of the concept of habit has been relatively neglected in the contemporary analytic literature. This paper is an attempt to rectify this lack. The strategy begins with a description of some paradigm cases of habit which are used to derive five features as the basis for an explicative definition. It is argued that habits are social, acquired through repetition, enduring, environmentally activated, and automatic. The enduring nature of habits is captured by their being dispositions (...) of a certain sort. This is a realist account of habits insofar as the dispositions put forward must fit into some recognizable underlying system – in the case of humans a biological system – to fill the role as set out by the definition. This role is wide-ranging; in addition to the familiar cases of habitual behavior, habitual activities also include thinking, perceiving, feeling, and willing. (shrink)

In what sense is a person addicted to drugs or alcohol incompetent, and so a legitimate object of coercive treatment? The standard tests for competence do not pick out the capacity that is lost in addiction: the capacity to properly regulate consumption. This paper is an attempt to sketch a justificatory framework for understanding the conditions under which addicted persons may be treated against their will. These conditions rarely obtain, for they apply only when addiction is extremely severe and great (...) harm threatens. It will be argued also that to widen the measures currently in place in some jurisdictions, though philosophically well-motivated, would require very strong evidence of a set of conditions disposing a person to an addictive future. It is doubtful that any such currently available evidence is strong enough to justify coercive treatment. Nevertheless, coercive treatment of addiction is already a reality, with the potential for more, and so some discussion will be presented regarding the extraordinary safeguards necessary to prevent misapplication of such treatment policies. (shrink)

On the ten year anniversary of 2Girls1Cup, this article examines the complex balance of shock, pleasure and disgust elicited by this viral video.

This chapter explores the relationship between ‘hardcore’ horror films, and the discursive context in which mainstream horror releases are being dubbed ‘extreme’. This chapter compares ‘mainstream’ and ‘hardcore’ horror with the aim of investigating what ‘extremity’ means. I will begin by outlining what ‘hardcore’ horror is, and how it differs from mainstream horror (both in terms of content and distribution). I will then dissect what ‘extremity’ means in this context, delineating problems with established critical discourses about ‘extreme’ horror. Print press (...) reviewers focus on theatrically released horror films, ignoring microbudget direct-to-video horror. As such, their adjudications about ‘extremity’ in horror begin from a limited base that misrepresents the genre. Moreover, ‘extremity’ is not a universally shared value, yet it is predominantly presented as if referring to an objective, universally agreed-upon standard. Such judgements change over time. Moreover, in contrast to marketers’ uses of ‘extreme’, press critics predominantly use the term as a pejorative. Although academics have sought to defend and contextualise particular maligned films and directors, scholars have focused on a handful of infamous examples. As I will explain, academic publishers implicitly support that narrow focus. As such, the cumulative body of scholarly work on ‘extreme’ horror inadvertently replicates print press critics’ mischaracterisation of the genre. These discursive factors limit our collective understandings of ‘horror’, its ostensible ‘extremity’. and of ‘extremity’ qua concept. Given that the discourse of ‘extremity’ is so commonly employed when censuring representations that challenge established genre conventions, it is imperative that horror studies academics attend to peripheral hardcore horror texts, and seek to develop more robust conceptual understandings of extremity. (shrink)

This article is a response to William Lynch’s, ‘Social Epistemology Transformed: Steve Fuller’s Account of Knowledge as a Divine Spark for Human Domination,’ an extended and thoughtful reflection on my Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History. I grant that Lynch has captured well, albeit critically, the spirit and content of the book – and the thirty-year intellectual journey that led to it. In this piece, I respond at two levels. First, I justify my posture towards my predecessors and contemporaries, (...) which Lynch shrewdly sees as my opposition to deference. However, most of the response concerns an elaboration of my theodicy-focussed sense of social epistemology, which is long-standing but only started to become prominent about ten years ago, in light of my involvement in the evolution controversies. Here I aim to draw together a set of my abiding interests – scientific, theological and philosophical – in trying to provide a normative foundation for the future of humanity. (shrink)

Despite the closure of virtually all original grindhouse cinemas, ‘grindhouse’ lives on as a conceptual term. This article contends that the prevailing conceptualization of ‘grindhouse’ is problematized by a widening gap between the original grindhouse context (‘past’) and the DVD/home-viewing context (present). Despite fans’ and filmmakers’ desire to preserve this part of exploitation cinema history, the world of the grindhouse is now little more than a blurry set of tall-tales and faded phenomenal experiences, which are subject to present-bias. The continuing (...) usefulness of grindhouse-qua-concept requires that one should pay heed to the contemporary contexts in which ‘grindhouse’ is evoked. (shrink)

Over the last century within the philosophy of mind, the intersubjective model of self has gained traction as a viable alternative to the oft-criticised Cartesian solipsistic paradigm. These two models are presented as incompatible inasmuch as Cartesians perceive other minds as “a problem” for the self, while intersubjectivists insist that sociality is foundational to selfhood. This essay uses the Paranormal Activity series (2007–2015) to explore this philosophical debate. It is argued that these films simultaneously evoke Cartesian premises (via found-footage camerawork), (...) and intersubjectivity (via an ongoing narrative structure that emphasises connections between the characters, and between each film). The philosophical debates illuminate premises on which the series’ story and horror depends. Moreover, Paranormal Activity also sheds light on the theoretical debate: the series brings those two paradigms together into a coherent whole, thereby suggesting that the two models are potentially compatible. By developing a combined model, scholars working in the philosophy of mind might better account for the different aspects of self-experience these paradigms focus on. (shrink)

Researchers often pursue proof of concept research, but criteria for evaluating such research remain poorly specified. This article proposes a general framework for proof of concept research that k...

A dialogue arguing that morality has an objective basis in the mathematical object describing the "tit for tat" game theory. To play the game, a contractual obligation is freely made to cooperate and to fairly distribute the gains. Failure to meet these obligations results in social punishment.

There have been several calls from LIS researchers for practical or applied research not to ignore the epistemological assumptions underlying the systems and artifacts they design lest they showcase only the dominant theory at a given time. Others have also deplored the "epistemological promiscuity" or "eclecticism" of the field, its incessant borrowing of theories and models from elsewhere and the fact that the field has largely neglected the contributions that philosophy and epistemology could have made in its research. This problem (...) raises that of the boundaries of LIS and is all the more troublesome because boundaries between epistemological theories are fuzzy. Indeed, some epistemological theories share the same basic assumptions or are historically derived from one another. Gathering a wide array of acknowledged theorists in philosophy of science and epistemology, this panel aims to examine how research work in the LIS field can clearly articulate the epistemological assumptions underlying that research and under what constraints this can be achieved. The topic is of prime importance to Information studies as a whole and to ASIST as the scientific flag bearer of information scientists worldwide. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Naturalism is normally taken to be an ideology, censuring non-naturalistic alternatives. But as many critics have pointed out, this ideological stance looks internally incoherent, since it is not obviously endorsed by naturalistic methods. Naturalists who have addressed this problem universally foreswear the normative component of naturalism by, in effect, giving up science’s exclusive claim to legitimacy. This option makes naturalism into an empty expression of personal preference that can carry no weight in the philosophical or political spheres. In response to (...) this dilemma, I argue that on a popular (but largely unarticulated) construal of naturalism as a commitment to inference to the best explanation, methodological naturalism can be both normative and internally coherent. (shrink)

It is ordinarily thought that in Alzheimer's dementia, memory loss leads to a loss of the self. There is a familiar sense in which this is true given that there is, evidently, a close connection between episodic memory and personal identity. This view goes back to John Locke who argued that remembering our own experiences enabled the continuity of consciousness he thought constitutive of personal identity. Locke was also motivated by the idea—to be applied in "forensic" contexts—that continuity of consciousness (...) was necessary in the appropriation of past actions as one's own. As we will see there is another type of connection between a person's psychology and morality—not involving questions of... (shrink)

In this paper I develop an objection to the version of expressivism found in Allan Gibbard’s book Thinking How to Live, and I suggest that the difficulty faced by Gibbard’s analysis is symptomatic of a problem for expressivism more generally. The central claim is that Gibbard’s expressivism is unable to account for certain normative judgments that arise in the process of evaluating cases of innocent mistakes. I begin by considering a type of innocent mistake that Gibbard’s view is able to (...) capture, one that can occur in situations in which our judgments of what it makes sense to do come apart from our judgments of what it makes sense to plan to do. Whether or not such mistakes are possible is a normative question, and I argue against Gibbard that we should adopt a normative stance that rules out such mistakes. This leads me to consider a second type of innocent mistake, one that can arise when an agent is constituted in such a way as to be incapable of recognizing the appropriate course of action. I argue here that our full normative assessment of the situation incorporates judgments that cannot be captured by Gibbard’s expressivism. I conclude by suggesting that any form of expressivism that shares Gibbard’s commitment to account for an intimate tie between normative judgments and action will face a similar problem. (shrink)

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1980) may have featured both animated corpses and hardcore sex scenes, but only recently have Re-Penetrator (2004) and Porn of the Dead (2006) managed to fully eroticise the living dead, allowing these creatures to engage in intercourse. In doing so, the usually a-subjective zombie is allotted a key facet of identity - sexuality. This development within the sub-genre needs accounting for outside of the contexts of porn studies, where it has only been briefly touched (...) upon in relation to its "extremity". -/- Moreover, the gendering of the undead opens a discussion which expand the horizons of zombie studies away from the overt critiques of capitalism, race and psychoanalysis that have pervaded analyses of these narratives. The dichotomy of binary oppositions so often associated with psychoanalytic approaches dictates that "passive (non-phallic) = female", and "active (phallic) = male". In these terms, the zombies are feminine - soft-bodied and passive, despite their murderous intent (which has been accounted for, by Barabara Creed (1993) amongst others, by invoking the vagina-dentata motif). Humans (active) are deemed masculine, not least since they tend to dispatch zombies with "phallic guns". Taking this logic to an extreme, the zombie may be read as allegorising feminism: the "feminised" figures (zombies) become fearsome in their will to exert themselves despite their seeming disempowerment in the face of "masculine" hegemony. Ultimately, by grouping together as a force, they overthrow or at least significantly damage that "normality" (an ideological paradigm usually read in terms of race, class and economics). (shrink)