I apply the notion of truthmaking to the topic of fundamentality by articulating a truthmaker theory of fundamentality according to which some truths are truth-grounded in certain entities while the ones that don't stand in a metaphysical-semantic relation to the truths that do. I motivate this view by critically discussing two problems with Ross Cameron's truthmaker theory of fundamentality. I then defend this view against Theodore Sider's objection that the truthmaking approach to fundamentality violates the purity constraint. Truthmaker theorists (...) can have a trouble-free theory of fundamentality. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a philosophical elucidation of the concept of divine atemporality (i.e. divine timelessness and immutability), found within the theological trajectory of Classical Theism, and a philosophical model – termed Aspectival Pluralism – that demonstrates its compatibility with the further notion of Divine Preservation. To achieve this end, an original interpretation of the concept is formulated within the Aspectival Account and the thesis of Theistic Ontological Pluralism, as extended by the temporal ontology of Priority Presentism, introduced by (...) Sam Baron, and the Exdurantist view of persistence, introduced by Theodore Sider, which will ultimately enable the notion to be elucidated in a clear and consistent manner and help to answer an important conceptual question concerning it. (shrink)

This paper examines the differences and affinities between Karl Popper’s critical rationalism and Theodor Adorno’s critical theory through renewed attention to the original documents of their 1961 debate. While commentaries often describe the Popper-Adorno encounter as a theoretical disappointment, I reveal a confrontation between conceptually opposed programs of social research. Though both theorists are committed to critique as a political and epistemological struggle for human freedom, their conceptions of this struggle are starkly different. In the original seminar papers, we find (...) a conflict between critique as a practice of social rationality (Popper) and a critique of social rationality itself (Adorno). The versions of critical rationalism and critical theory meeting in this debate thus emphasize opposite dimensions of a reflexive practice of immanent critique. In closing, I suggest dissolving this conceptual tension by recovering the educational orientation of critique. (shrink)

Our gender identity is our sense of ourselves as a woman, a man, as genderqueer, or as another gender. Our gender is the property we have of being a woman, being a man, being non-binary, or being another gender. What is the relationship between our gender identity and our gender? Recently, much work has been done on ameliorative accounts of the gender concepts that we should accept and on the metaphysics of gender properties. From this work 4 views of the (...) relationship between having gender identity G (e.g. having a female gender identity) and being a gender G (e.g. being a woman) have emerged. A first, the no connection view, says that gender identity and gender are entirely distinct; Sally Haslanger’s ameliorative account of gender, as well as Theodore Bach’s account of gender properties, are instances of this view. A second, the gender-identity-first view, says that all there is to our gender is our gender identity; this view is at least similar to views that Talia Bettcher and R.A. Briggs and B.R. George have argued for. A third, contextualist view, says that in some contexts and relative to certain standards, our gender identity determines our gender, and that in others it does not; Ásta and Robin Dembroff have proposed and defended views along these lines. A fourth view, the two gender properties view, says that there are two properties that can make it the case that one is gender G (in any context), one’s having gender identity G and one’s being socially classed as a G; Katharine Jenkins and Elizabeth Barnes have proposed views along these lines. This article explains these 4 different views and spells out their prospects, and the problems they face, as both ameliorative and as metaphysical views. (shrink)

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

Thomas Reid (1710–96) is increasingly being seen as a highly significant philosopher and a central figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. This new edition of Reid's classic philosophical text in the philosophy of mind at long last gives scholars a complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry. The critical text is based on the fourth life-time edition (1785). A selection of related documents showing the development of Reid's thought, textual notes, bibliographical details of previous editions and a full introduction by the (...) editor makes this an important contribution to the study of this increasingly respected philosopher. -/- Key Features - Complete, critically edited text of the Inquiry accompanied by a judicious selection of manuscript evidence relating to its composition - Comprehensive Introduction providing an historical and philosophical account of the formation of the Inquiry - Detailed textual notes which include bibliographical details and allusions, translations, references to secondary literature and selected passages from Reid's manuscripts. (shrink)

A fiction may prescribe imagining that a pig can talk or tell the future. A fiction may prescribe imagining that torturing innocent persons is a good thing. We generally comply with imaginative prescriptions like the former, but not always with prescriptions like the latter: we imagine non-evaluative fictions without difficulty but sometimes resist imagining value-rich fictions. Thus arises the puzzle of imaginative resistance. Most analyses of the phenomenon focus on the content of the relevant imaginings. The present analysis focuses instead (...) on the character of certain kinds of imaginings, arguing that we resist in such cases given the rich evaluative character of the imaginings prescribed, and the agent-dependent constraints on imagining in such ways. (shrink)

This paper presents an attempt to integrate theories of causal processes—of the kind developed by Wesley Salmon and Phil Dowe—into a theory of causal models using Bayesian networks. We suggest that arcs in causal models must correspond to possible causal processes. Moreover, we suggest that when processes are rendered physically impossible by what occurs on distinct paths, the original model must be restricted by removing the relevant arc. These two techniques suffice to explain cases of late preëmption and other cases (...) that have proved problematic for causal models. (shrink)

In Part One of Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, Kant repeatedly refers to a “proof” that human nature has a necessary and universal “evil propensity,” but he provides only obscure hints at its location. Interpreters have failed to identify such an argument in Part One. After examining relevant passages, summarizing recent attempts to reconstruct the argument, and explaining why these do not meet Kant's stated needs, I argue that the elusive proof must have a transcendental form (called quasi‐transcendental (...) because Kant never uses “transcendental” in Religion). With deceptive simplicity, the section titles of Part One, viewed as components in an architechtonic system of religion, constitute steps in just such a proof. (shrink)

Color-vision defects constitute a spectrum of disorders with varying degrees and types of departure from normal human color vision. One form of color-vision defect is dichromacy; by mixing together only two lights, the dichromat can match any light, unlike normal trichromatic humans, who need to mix three. In a philosophical context, our titular question may be taken in two ways. First, it can be taken at face value as a question about visible properties of external objects, and second, it may (...) be interpreted as the more intangible question of “what it’s like” to be color-blind. (shrink)

Liberalism is today under attack. This attack is being fought along two fronts, and so appears to be coming from different directions, but it is actually coming exclusively from the right. One source is Islamic fundamentalism, and the other is American neo-conservatism, which in turn unites elements of Christian fundamentalism with elements of neo-Platonic political philosophy and neo-Aristotelian moral theory. Both Islamic fundamentalism and American neo-conservatism are perfectionist views, and while perfectionist attacks on liberalism are nothing new, there is a (...) special danger in the position that liberalism currently finds itself. Although bitterly opposed to each other and divided by utterly incompatible substantive views, these two sources of attack share many similarities at a more fundamental level of political theory. The purpose of this paper is accordingly to focus our attention on the similarities between these seemingly opposing perfectionist views, and to defend liberalism against one of the most serious accusations that perfectionists from both camps make against it—the claim that liberalism leads to nihilism. (shrink)

Attempts have been made to prove God's non-existence. Often this takes the form of an appeal to the so-called Argument from Evil: if God were to exist, then he would not permit as much suffering in the world as there actually is. Hence the fact that there is so much suffering constitutes evidence for God's non-existence. In this essay I propose a variation which I shall call ‘The Argument from Non-belief’. Its basic idea is that if God were to exist, (...) then he would not permit as much non-belief in the world as there actually is. Hence the fact that there is so much non-belief constitutes evidence for God's non-existence. (shrink)

Many scholars of organizations see social enterprise as a promising approach to advancing social justice but neglect to scrutinize the normative foundations and limitations of this optimism. This article draws on Rawlsian political philosophy to investigate whether and how social enterprises can support social justice. We propose that this perspective assigns organizations a duty to foster institutional capacity, a concept we define and elaborate. We investigate how this duty might apply specifically to social enterprises, given their characteristic features. We theorize (...) six different mechanisms through which social enterprises might successfully discharge this duty. These results affirm the value of conversation between organizational studies and political philosophy and shed new light on debates regarding social enterprise, institutional theory, and several other topics. (shrink)

Mental health among students is one of the major concerns amidst the pandemic. Employing a correlational design, this study investigates the relationship between emotional intelligence and mental health among 152 senior high school students. Based on the statistical analysis, the r coefficient of 0.82 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between emotional intelligence and mental health (...) among senior high school. Implications were discussed in the study. (shrink)

This short article aims to strengthen Hume's case against the rationality of believing in religious miracles by incorporating certain lessons borrowed from the growing literature on the history and psychology of magic tricks.

Online education has become an essential component of education. Thus, several factors, such as the student’s learning strategy and motivation, generally contribute to their academic success. This study investigates the relationship between learning strategies, motivation, and online learning environment among 150 first-year college students. Employing correlational design, the statistical findings of the study reveal that the r coefficient of 0.59 indicates a moderate positive correlation between the variables. The p-value of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision (...) to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between learning strategies, motivation, and the online learning environment. (shrink)

A critique is given of the attempt by Hettema and Kuipers to formalize the periodic table. In particular I dispute their notions of identifying a naïve periodic table with tables having a constant periodicity of eight elements and their views on the different conceptions of the atom by chemists and physicists. The views of Hettema and Kuipers on the reduction of the periodic system to atomic physics are also considered critically.

Calls to hold artificial intelligence to account are intensifying. Activists and researchers alike warn of an “accountability gap” or even a “crisis of accountability” in AI. Meanwhile, several prominent scholars maintain that accountability holds the key to governing AI. But usage of the term varies widely in discussions of AI ethics and governance. This chapter begins by disambiguating some different senses and dimensions of accountability, distinguishing it from neighboring concepts, and identifying sources of confusion. It proceeds to explore the idea (...) that AI operates within an accountability gap arising from technical features of AI as well as the social context in which it is deployed. The chapter also evaluates various proposals for closing this gap. I conclude that the role of accountability in AI ethics and governance is vital but also more limited than some suggest. Accountability’s primary job description is to verify compliance with substantive normative principles—once those principles are settled. Theories of accountability cannot ultimately tell us what substantive standards to account for, especially when norms are contested or still emerging. Nonetheless, formal mechanisms of accountability provide a way of diagnosing and discouraging egregious wrongdoing even in the absence of normative agreement. Providing accounts can also be an important first step toward the development of more comprehensive regulatory standards for AI. (shrink)

Many people claim to have had direct perceptual awareness of God. William Alston, Richard Swinburne, Gary Gutting, and others have based their philosophical views on these reports. But using analogies from our encounters with humans whose abilities surpass our own, we realize that something essential is missing from these reports. The absence of this element renders it highly unlikely that these people have actually encountered a divine being. (Published Online August 11 2004).

The paper is written in response to those who fail to recognize the relation between a patient's mental competency and her state of pain. Some clinicians claim that a proper diagnosis can only be made in the absent of analgesia. Rather, the patient's state of pain directly affects her mental competency and thus her ability to give valid consent. Clinicians should rethink their approach to diagnosis when the patient is in pain.

A striking feature of post-modernism is its distrust of the subject. If the modern period, beginning with Descartes, sought in the subject a source of certainty, an Archimedian point from which all else could be derived, post- modernism has taken the opposite tack. Rather than taking the self as a foundation, it has seen it as founded, as dependent on the accidents which situate consciousness in the world. The same holds for the unity of the subject. Modernity, in its search (...) for a single foundation, held the subject to be an indissoluble unity. Post-modernism’s position, by contrast, is announced by Nietzsche: “The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general? ...My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity.” Given this, there is a natural correspondence between the success of post- modernism and the current interest in multiple personality disorder. In the latter, we actually have the experience of a “multiplicity of subjects” in their interaction and struggle. The subject stands there before us “as multiplicity.” It gives us a concrete case, one which raises some of the pressing questions associated with the post-modern denial of the subject. Confronting it, we ask: how real are the personalities composing the multiplicity of this disordered self? What, in fact, does this multiplicity tell us about the self? about its genesis and status? What does it reveal about “our thought and consciousness in general”? I plan, in the short compass of this paper, to sketch some answers to these questions. §1. A brief description of MPD. The American Psychiatric Association gives two criteria for (MPD) multiple personality disorder. First, and most obviously, there is “the existence within the person of two or more distinct personalities or personality states (each with its own relatively enduring pattern. (shrink)

This paper defines the form of prior knowledge that is required for sound inferences by analogy and single-instance generalizations, in both logical and probabilistic reasoning. In the logical case, the first order determination rule defined in Davies (1985) is shown to solve both the justification and non-redundancy problems for analogical inference. The statistical analogue of determination that is put forward is termed 'uniformity'. Based on the semantics of determination and uniformity, a third notion of "relevance" is defined, both logically and (...) probabilistically. The statistical relevance of one function in determining another is put forward as a way of defining the value of information: The statistical relevance of a function F to a function G is the absolute value of the change in one's information about the value of G afforded by specifying the value of F. This theory provides normative justifications for conclusions projected by analogy from one case to another, and for generalization from an instance to a rule. The soundness of such conclusions, in either the logical or the probabilistic case, can be identified with the extent to which the corresponding criteria (determination and uniformity) actually hold for the features being related. (shrink)

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the (...) motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences. (shrink)

The Tree of Life has traditionally been understood to represent the history of species lineages. However, recently researchers have suggested that it might be better interpreted as representing the history of cellular lineages, sometimes called the Tree of Cells. This paper examines and evaluates reasons offered against this cellular interpretation of the Tree of Life. It argues that some such reasons are bad reasons, based either on a false attribution of essentialism, on a misunderstanding of the problem of lineage identity, (...) or on a limited view of scientific representation. I suggest that debate about the Tree of Cells and other successors to the traditional Tree of Life should be formulated in terms of the purposes these representations may serve. In pursuing this strategy, we see that the Tree of Cells cannot serve one purpose suggested for it: as an explanation for the hierarchical nature of taxonomy. We then explore whether, instead, the tree may play an important role in the dynamic modeling of evolution. As highly-integrated complex systems, cells may influence which lineage components can successfully transfer into them and how they change once integrated. Only if they do in fact have a substantial role to play in this process might the Tree of Cells have some claim to be the Tree of Life. (shrink)

The kinds of real or natural kinds that support explanation and prediction in the social sciences are difficult to identify and track because they change through time, intersect with one another, and they do not always exhibit their properties when one encounters them. As a result, conceptual practices directed at these kinds will often refer in ways that are partial, equivocal, or redundant. To improve this epistemic situation, it is important to employ open-ended classificatory concepts, to understand when different research (...) programs are tracking the same real kind, and to maintain an ongoing commitment to interact causally with real kinds to focus reference on those kinds. A tempting view of these non-idealized epistemic conditions should be avoided: that they signal an ontological structure of the social world so plentiful that it would permit ameliorated classificatory schemes to achieve their normative aims regardless of whether they defer to real-kind classificatory schemes. To ground these discussions, the essay appeals to an overlooked convergence in the systematic naturalistic frameworks of Richard Boyd and Ruth Millikan. (shrink)

In domains like stock brokerage, clinical psychiatry, and long‐term political forecasting, experts generally fail to outperform novices. Empirical researchers agree on why this is: experts must receive direct or environmental learning feedback during training to develop reliable expertise, and these domains are deficient in this type of feedback. A growing number of philosophers resource this consensus view to argue that, given the absence of direct or environmental philosophical feedback, we should not give the philosophical intuitions or theories of expert philosophers (...) greater credence than those of novice philosophers. This article has three objectives. The first is to explore several overlooked issues concerning the strategy of generalizing from empirical studies of non‐philosophical expertise to the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. The second is to explain why empirical research into a causal relationship between direct learning feedback and enhanced expert performance does not provide good grounds for abandoning a default optimism about the epistemic superiority of expert philosophical theories. The third is to sketch a positive characterization of learning feedback that addresses developmental concerns made salient by the empirical literature on expert performance for specifically theory‐driven or “armchair” domains like philosophy. (shrink)

Milgram’s experiments, subjects were induced to inflict what they believed to be electric shocks in obedience to a man in a white coat. This suggests that many of us can be persuaded to torture, and perhaps kill, another person simply on the say-so of an authority figure. But the experiments have been attacked on methodological, moral and methodologico-moral grounds. Patten argues that the subjects probably were not taken in by the charade; Bok argues that lies should not be used in (...) research; and Patten insists that any excuse for Milgram’s conduct can be adapted on behalf of his subjects. (Either he was wrong to conduct the experiments or they do not establish the phenomenon of immoral obedience). We argue a) that the subjects were indeed taken in b) that there are good historical reasons for regarding the experiments as ecologically valid, c) that lies (though usually wrong) were in this case legitimate, d) that there were excuses available to Milgram which were not available to his subjects and e) that even if he was wrong to conduct the experiments this does not mean that he failed to establish immoral obedience. So far from ‘disrespecting’ his subjects, Milgram enhanced their autonomy as rational agents. We concede however that it might (now) be right to prohibit what it was (then) right to do. (shrink)

There is broad agreement among social researchers and social ontologists that the project of dividing humans into social kinds should be guided by at least two methodological commitments. First, a commitment to what best serves moral and political interests, and second, a commitment to describing accurately the causal structures of social reality. However, researchers have not sufficiently analyzed how these two commitments interact and constrain one another. In the absence of that analysis, several confusions have set in, threatening to undermine (...) shared goals for the responsible modeling of social kinds of humans. This essay first explains the source and substance of these confusions. Then, by distinguishing different value-laden investigative questions into the classification of social kinds of humans, it sets out specific relations of dependence and constraint between empirically-driven investigations and value-driven investigations into social kinds of humans. The result is a more detailed and fruitful framework for thinking about the classification of social kinds that respects both normative interests and mind-independent causal regularities. (shrink)

In some domains experts perform better than novices, and in other domains experts do not generally perform better than novices. According to empirical studies of expert performance, this is because the former but not the latter domains make available to training practitioners a direct form of learning feedback. Several philosophers resource this empirical literature to cast doubt on the quality of philosophical expertise. They claim that philosophy is like the dubious domains in that it does not make available the good, (...) direct kind of learning feedback, and thus there are empirical grounds for doubting the epistemic quality of philosophical expertise. I examine the empirical studies that are purportedly bad news for professional philosophers. On the basis of that examination, I provide three reasons why the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise does not undermine the status of philosophical expertise. First, the non-philosophical task-types from which the critics generalize are unrepresentative of relevant philosophical task-types. Second, empirical critiques of non-philosophical experts are often made relative to the performance of linear models—a comparison that is inapt in a philosophical context. Third, the critics fail to discuss findings from the empirical study of non-philosophical expertise that have more favorable implications for the epistemic status of philosophical expertise. In addition to discussing implications for philosophical expertise, this article makes progress in the philosophical analysis of the science of expertise and expert development. (shrink)

The paper discusses the active part in the process of perceiving, usually expressed by the Greek word krinein. It is argued that krinein in one of its uses means "to judge" in the sense of judging a case, i. e. deciding it. It is not used for making statements. A second meaning of the Greek word is that of discerning or discriminating, and it is this meaning that plays a central part in Aristotle's theory of perception.

There is growing support for the view that social categories like men and women refer to “objective types” (Haslanger 2000, 2006, 2012; Alcoff 2005). An objective type is a similarity class for which the axis of similarity is an objective rather than nominal or fictional property. Such types are independently real and causally relevant, yet their unity does not derive from an essential property. Given this tandem of features, it is not surprising why empirically-minded researchers interested in fighting oppression and (...) marginalization have found this ontological category so attractive: objective types have the ontological credentials to secure the reality (and thus political representation) of social categories, and yet they do not impose exclusionary essences that also naturalize and legitimize social inequalities. This essay argues that, from the perspective of these political goals of fighting oppression and marginalization, the category of objective types is in fact a Trojan horse; it looks like a gift, but it ends up creating trouble. I argue that objective type classifications often lack empirical adequacy, and as a result they lack political adequacy. I also provide, and in reference to the normative goals described above, several arguments for preferring a social ontology of natural kinds with historical essences. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy involves subjecting philosophical methods and judgments to empirical scrutiny. I begin by exploring conceptual, confirmational, and empirical factors that limit the significance of experiment-based and survey-based approaches to the evaluation of philosophical epistemic activities. I then consider specific criticisms of experimental philosophy: its experimental conditions lack ecological validity; it wrongly assumes that philosophers rely on psychologized data; it overlooks the reflective and social elements of philosophical case analysis; it misconstrues the importance of both procedural and evaluative forms of (...) philosophical expertise; it incorrectly views psychological bias as incompatible with reliability; and it generalizes to a global, self-defeating skepticism about case judgment. I explain why these criticisms should be understood as converging and interdependent. I also set out a three-level model of philosophical case judgment that frames the criticisms. (shrink)

Beauvoir’s The Second Sex stands out as a master class in the accommodation of conceptual and inferential practices to real, objective gender kinds. Or so I will argue. To establish this framing, we will first need in hand the kind of scientific epistemology that correctly reconciles epistemic progress and error, particularly as pertains to the unruly social sciences. An important goal of the paper is to develop that epistemological framework and unlock its ontological implications for the domain of gender. As (...) we will see, the real gender kinds that contemporary social scientists successfully identify and track are very much the same kinds to which Beauvoir was coordinating reference in The Second Sex. The correct identification of those kinds endures as a moral and political priority, regardless of one’s other gender-related normative agenda. (shrink)

In July 2020, more than 1000 companies that advertise on social media platforms withdrew their business, citing failures of the platforms (especially Facebook) to address the proliferation of harmful content. The #StopHateForProfit movement invites reflection on an understudied topic: the ethics of boycotting by corporations. Under what conditions is corporate boycotting permissible, required, supererogatory, or forbidden? Although value-driven consumerism has generated significant recent discussion in applied ethics, that discussion has focused almost exclusively on the consumption choices of individuals. As this (...) article underscores, value-driven consumerism by business corporations complicates these issues and invites further examination. We propose principles for the ethics of boycotting by corporations, indicate how these principles relate to different CSR paradigms, and show how these insights can help assess recent instances of corporate boycotting. (shrink)

This collection of papers is the fifth in a series of books from RUSHSAP, UNESCO Bangkok offering Asia and Pacific perspectives on ethics - each focusing on specific themes. The contents come from submitted papers to the UNESCO Bangkok Bioethics conferences held in 2005 and they are assembled thematically. They also include discourse from the conference, as intercultural communication is part of the essence of deliberation on bioethics.

This collection of papers were originally presented during conferences on ethics in science and technology that UNESCO’s Regional Unit for Social and Human Sciences (RUSHSAP) has been convening since 2005. Since intercultural communication and information-sharing are essential components of these deliberations, the books also provide theme-related discourse from the conferences.

Papers from the Pacific islands, India, Bangladesh and elsewhere illustrate the ethical dilemma of environmental policy, sustainable development and the needs of communities to make a living.

A compilation of 16 papers selected from two UNESCO Bangkok Bioethics Roundtables, with research and policy dialogues from different countries in the region. It includes papers on informed consent, ethics committees, communication, organ transplants, traditional medicines and sex selection.

A number of controversial topics related to bioethics and biotechnology 17 papers that deal with various aspects of release and development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), stem cells and cloning, privacy and bio-banking.

Critics of private charity often claim that the well-off should instead assist the disadvantaged through political reform. The present article explores this idea with reference to effective altruism, a powerful new paradigm in the ethics of philanthropy. Effective altruism presses the relatively affluent not only to give generously, but also to subject their practical deliberations to rigorous evaluations of impartiality and cost-effectiveness. The article contends that the movement’s sophisticated methods are not sufficient to overcome the worries of institutionalist critics. At (...) the same time, it shows that a transition from assistance to advocacy faces underappreciated and serious limitations. The measurement-based methods that allow effective altruists to identify promising assistance programs do not carry over well to political reform. In addition, unleashing greater private wealth into politics may exacerbate unequal opportunities for political influence. The article closes with preliminary suggestions for overcoming these concerns and connects them to broader developments in the politics of philanthropy. (shrink)

Analogical cognition refers to the ability to detect, process, and learn from relational similarities. The study of analogical and similarity cognition is widely considered one of the ‘success stories’ of cognitive science, exhibiting convergence across many disciplines on foundational questions. Given the centrality of analogy to mind and knowledge, it would benefit philosophers investigating topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language to become familiar with empirical models of analogical cognition. The goal of this essay is to describe (...) recent empirical work on analogical cognition as well as model applications to philosophical topics. Topics to be discussed include the epistemological distinction between implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge, the debate between empiricists and nativists, the frame problem, expertise, creativity and autism, cognitive architecture, and relational knowledge. Particular attention is given to Dedre Gentner and colleague’s structure-mapping theory – the most developed and widely accepted model of analogical cognition. (shrink)

Objective: to evaluate CANLPH score and systemic immune inflammation index (SII) in patients with symptomatic rheumatic mitral stenosis (MS) undergoing percutaneous mitral balloon valvuloplasty (PMBV). -/- Methods: 62 patients who underwent PMBV in our clinic between 2018 and 2021 were included retrospectively. The patients were divided into 2 groups according to echo score. The CANLPH score was calculated from the cut-off values of C-reactive protein to albumin ratio (CAR), neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to hemoglobin ratio (PHR), determined (...) with the Youden index and SII by the formula platelet x neutrophil/lymphocyte. P <0.05 was considered statistically significant. -/- Results: The mean age of the patients was 44.5±10.4 years (40 female, 64.5%). The mean values of SII and CANLPH scores were higher in the Echo score >8 group (p <0.001, both). The mean mitral gradient before and after PMBV was 12.6±5.7mm Hg and 5.0±2.4 mm Hg, and the mean valve area was 1.12±0.27 cm2 and 1.85±0.29 cm2. A statistically significant and negative correlation was observed between the gradient decrease after the procedure and the CANLPH score and SII (r=-0.426, p=0.001 and r=-0.418, p=0.001, respectively). In receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, it was concluded that the ability of CANPLH score to predict the higher Echo scores was noninferior to SII with an area under curve (AUC:0.820 (0.701-0.906) and AUC:0.786 (0.664-0.880), z statistics 0.576 and p=0.564. -/- Conclusion: SII and CANLPH scores are correlated with Echo score. A significant negative relationship was found with both biomarkers and gradient decrease after the PMBV. (shrink)

Intergenerational transfers are a core feature of the practice of private philanthropy. A substantial portion of the resources committed to charitable causes comes from transfers (either during life or at death) that continue to pay out after death. Indeed, much of the power of the charitable foundation lies in its ability to extend the life of an enterprise beyond the mortal existence of its initiating agents. Despite their prevalence, whether and in what way the instruments of intergenerational philanthropy can be (...) justified is controversial. Many have argued that these instruments unfairly privilege the interests of the dead at the expense of the living and unborn. More recently, others have argued that intergenerational charitable transfers comport with the demands of distributive justice and are therefore legitimate. This paper contends that both of these perspectives fail to see the problem for what it is. Intergenerational charitable transfers may indeed promote justice in certain respects, but they do so at the cost of imposing the judgments of the dead onto the living. Respecting the wishes of the past conflicts with an interest in “generational sovereignty.” The paper concludes that properly accounting for this interest in generational sovereignty doesn’t require the abolition of intergenerational philanthropy. But it does tell in favor of a different regulatory orientation than most legal systems currently adopt. (shrink)

The theory of mind debate has reached a “hybrid consensus” concerning the status of theory-theory and simulation-theory. Extant hybrid models either specify co-dependency and implementation relations, or distribute mentalizing tasks according to folk-psychological categories. By relying on a non-developmental framework these models fail to capture the central connection between simulation and theory. I propose a “dynamic” hybrid that is informed by recent work on the nature of similarity cognition. I claim that Gentner’s model of structure-mapping allows us to understand simulation (...) as a process in which psychological representations are aligned, causing the spontaneous abstraction of theoretical generalizations about the psychological domain. (shrink)

The question as to what makes a perfect Aristotelian syllogism a perfect one has long been discussed by Aristotelian scholars. G. Patzig was the first to point the way to a correct answer: it is the evidence of the logical necessity that is the special feature of perfect syllogisms. Patzig moreover claimed that the evidence of a perfect syllogism can be seen for Barbara in the transitivity of the a-relation. However, this explanation would give Barbara a different status over the (...) other three first figure syllogisms. I argue that, taking into account the role of the being-contained-as-in-a-whole formulation, transitivity can be seen to be present in all four first figure syllogisms. Using this wording will put the negation sign with the predicate, similar to the notation in modern predicate calculus. (shrink)

Ideas for integrating AI into politics are now emerging and advancing at accelerating pace. This chapter highlights a few different varieties and show how they reflect different assumptions about the value of democracy. We cannot make informed decisions about which, if any, proposals to pursue without further reflection on what makes democracy valuable and how current conditions fail to fully realize it. Recent advances in political philosophy provide some guidance but leave important questions open. If AI advances to a state (...) where it can secure superior political outcomes, leading perspectives in political philosophy suggest that democracy may become obsolete. If we find this suggestion troubling, we need to put the case for democracy on stronger foundations. (shrink)

Hofstadter [1979, 2007] offered a novel Gödelian proposal which purported to reconcile the apparently contradictory theses that (1) we can talk, in a non-trivial way, of mental causation being a real phenomenon and that (2) mental activity is ultimately grounded in low-level rule-governed neural processes. In this paper, we critically investigate Hofstadter’s analogical appeals to Gödel’s [1931] First Incompleteness Theorem, whose “diagonal” proof supposedly contains the key ideas required for understanding both consciousness and mental causation. We maintain that bringing sophisticated (...) results from Mathematical Logic into play cannot furnish insights which would otherwise be unavailable. Lastly, we conclude that there are simply too many weighty details left unfilled in Hofstadter’s proposal. These really need to be fleshed out before we can even hope to say that our understanding of classical mind-body problems has been advanced through metamathematical parallels with Gödel’s work. (shrink)