Meaning in life is too important not to study systematically, but doing so is made difficult by conceptual indeterminacy. An approach to meaning that is promising but, indeed, conceptually vague is Jonathan Haidt’s ‘cross-level coherence’ account. In order to remove the vagueness, I propose a concept of ‘good fit’ that a) captures central aspects of meaning as it is discussed in the literature; b) brings the subject of meaning under the survey of the dynamicist or ‘embodied-embedded’ philosophy of cognition; and (...) c) allows the theoretical discussion on meaning to become more focused and systematic. The article addresses two apparent problems with the idea of ‘good fit,’ namely the fact that both challenges and relations of an agent with the outside world are central to meaning. It is finally pointed out which implications adopting the concept of ‘good fit’ instead of ‘meaning’ would have. (shrink)

In this research, an agent-based model was developed to study the propagation of physical climate shocks through supply chain networks. By combining supply chain and financial models, the study examines the effects of climate shocks on firms’ production capacities and their subsequent impacts on firm default risk. A comprehensive mathematical framework is presented for the simulation of physical risks, their subsequent up- and downstream impacts along the supply chain, and the translation of physical impacts into an increased level of default (...) risk. The results highlight the importance of supply chains as a transmission channel for physical climate risks and emphasize the effectiveness of implementing adaptation measures. Practical examples demonstrate the model’s behavior under different hypothetical climate scenarios and identify the sectors most vulnerable to increases in the frequency and intensity of climate events. Overall, this study provides insights into the transmission dynamics of climate shocks and emphasizes the need for resilience against climate events in supply chain networks. (shrink)

De Neys (2021) argues that the debate between single- and dual-process theorists of thought has become both empirically intractable and scientifically inconsequential. I argue that this is true only under the traditional framing of the debate—when single- and dual-process theories are understood as claims about whether thought processes share the same defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments) or have two different defining properties (e.g., making mathematical judgments autonomously versus via access to a central working memory capacity), respectively. But if (...) single- and dual-process theories are understood in cognitive modeling terms as claims about whether thought processes function to implement one or two broad types of algorithms, respectively, then the debate becomes scientifically consequential and, presumably, empirically tractable. So, I argue, the correct response to the current state of the debate is not to abandon it, as De Neys suggests, but to reframe it as a debate about cognitive models. (shrink)

Milieufilosofisch Nederland wordt momenteel verdeeld door een controverse naar aanleiding vanrecente publicaties van de Wageningse filosofen Keulartz en Korthals. In dit artikel wil ik - aande hand van een analyse van het gebruik van het natuurbegrip bij Wim Zweers - laten zien dat Keulartz op een tot nu toe onderbelicht probleem wijst: het probleem van de veelheid vannatuurbeelden. Tegelijkertijd wil ik echter aantonen dat Keulartz' eigen, 'post-naturalistische' positie op een tegenspraak berust. Tenslotte geef ik aan hoe deze controverses zijn terug (...) tevoeren op een onvermijdelijke spanning in onze morele omgang met de natuur, en zoek ik naar een manier waarop deze spanning binnen de milieu-ethiek vruchtbaar kan worden gemaakt. (shrink)

De Neys argues against the exclusivity assumption: That many judgments are exclusively selected by intuition or deliberation. But this is an excessively strong formulation of the exclusivity assumption. We should aim to develop weaker, more plausible formulations that identify which judgments are likely to be selected by intuition or deliberation. This is necessary for empirical comparisons of intuition and deliberation.

Die im Reader versammelten Beiträge verstehen sich als Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Visuellen. Sie untersuchen am Beispiel des Mediums Stadtfilm, welche Rolle die dorterzeugten Bilder großer Städte bei der Produktion urbanistischer Repräsentanten spielen. Aus diesem Grund werden insbesondere Übergänge analysiert, die Spielfilme einerseits und urbanistische Diskurse andererseits miteinander verknüpfen. Gemeinsamer Ausgangspunkt ist die These, daß es vor allem Bilder sind, die solche Verknüpfungen gewährleisten. Es wird unterstellt, daß es das Medium Film erlaubt, gerade über den Einsatz von Bildern "näher" (...) an soziale Wirklichkeiten heranzukommen, als dies textzentrierter Praxis empirischer Sozialforschung möglich ist. Stadtfilme erzeugen wirkmächtige Bilder, auf die dann unter bestimmten Bedingungen in urbanistischen Kontexten zurückgegriffen wird. Die Autoren präsentieren konzeptionelle Überlegungen und Filminterpretationen zu Moebius (1991, Regie: Matti Geschonneck), Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, Regie: Wim Wenders), In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993, Regie: Wim Wenders), Der Bauch des Architekten (1987, Regie: Peter Greenaway) und Hass (1995, Regie: Mathieu Kassovitz). Sie bedienen sich dabei sehr unterschiedlicher Verfahren. Gemeinsam sind ihnen allerdings die Anliegen, die größere Nähe der Filme zu sozialen Welten hervorzuheben und die Übergänge zwischen Stadtfilmen und Urbanistik herauszuarbeiten. -/- City and Film. Attempts at a 'Visual Sociology' Summary The contributions collected in this reader present attempts at a Visual sociology'. Based on a study on the medium 'city film' the author s determine which role the images of big cities evoked in such films can play for urbanistic representations. Therefore the analysis is, in particular, focussed on points of transition marking a connection of movies, on the one hand, and urbanistic discourse, on the othe r. The common point of departure is the hypothesis that images, more than anything else, do guarantee such connections. The authors assume that the medium film may lead 'closer' to social realities than the text- centered practices of empirical social research. City films produce powerful images which, under certain cond itions, can be utilized in urbanistic contexts. The authors present conceptual considerations and interpretations of the following films: Moebius (1991, director: Matti Geschonneck); Der Himmel über Berlin (1987, director: Wim Wenders); In weiter Ferne, so nah! (1993, director: Wim Wenders); The Belly of the Architect (1987, director: Peter Greenaway); and quite different methods they aim at the same goals: emphasizing the greater closeness of films to social worlds and bringing out the points of transition between city films and urbanistics. (shrink)

It is often claimed that the many worlds theory is to be preferred over other realist interpretations of quantum mechanics for its ability to avoid the kind of action at a distance that plagues both hidden variables and collapse models. The aim of this paper is address the question of whether branching should be viewed as a causal process that spreads out from a localized region as some authors (Wallace (2012), Blackshaw, Huggett, and Ladyman (manuscript)) have such suggested, or whether (...) it occurs globally across the total quantum state at an instant as others insist (Sebens and Carroll (2018), McQueen and Vaidman (2019)). An appeal of the local branching model is it that it ensures that branching never involves superluminal influences. After clarifying these two models, the paper will consider the argument in favor of local branching, and then four concerns one might have about that model, that speak in favor of regarding branching as global and instantaneous. Ultimately, although the first three concerns may be addressed by advocates of local branching, the fourth is shown to be more convincing, and speaks in favor of regarding branching as a global, instantaneous change, even if it is a change that is triggered by a local, causal process (decoherence). The last part of paper clarifies the proposed model of branching as global, and explains how it is not in tension with relativity or the many worlds interpretations’ claim to avoid spooky action at a distance. (shrink)

People generally accept that there is causation by omission—that the omission of some events cause some related events. But this acceptance elicits the selection problem, or the difficulty of explaining the selection of a particular omissive cause or class of causes from the causal conditions. Some theorists contend that dependence theories of causation cannot resolve this problem. In this paper, we argue that the appeal to norms adequately resolves the selection problem for dependence theories, and we provide novel experimental evidence (...) for it. (shrink)

I investigate why Frege rejected the theory of types, as Russell presented it to him in their correspondence. Frege claims that it commits one to violations of the law of excluded middle, but this complaint seems to rest on a dogmatic refusal to take Russell’s proposal seriously on its own terms. What is at stake is not so much the truth of a law of logic, but the structure of the hierarchy of the logical categories, something Frege seems to neglect. (...) To come to a better understanding of Frege’s response, I proceed to investigate his conception of the nature of the logical categories, and how it differs from Russell’s. I argue that, for Frege, our grasp of the logical categories cannot be severed from our grasp of the Begriffsschrift notation itself. Russell, on the other hand, attaches no such importance to notation. From Frege’s point of view, Russell has not succeeded in presenting an alternative conception of the logical hierarchy, since such a conception must go in tandem with the development of a notation. Moreover, Frege has good reasons to think that Russell’s proposal does not admit of a suitable notation. (shrink)

Within the field of quantum gravity, there is an influential research program developing the connection between quantum entanglement and spatiotemporal distance. Quantum information theory gives us highly refined tools for quantifying quantum entanglement such as the entanglement entropy. Through a series of well-confirmed results, it has been shown how these facts about the entanglement entropy of component systems may be connected to facts about spatiotemporal distance. Physicists are seeing these results as yielding promising methods for better understanding the emergence of (...) (the dynamical) spacetime (of general relativity) from more fundamental quantum theories, and moreover, as promising for the development of a nonperturbative theory of quantum gravity. However, to what extent does the case for the entanglement entropy-distance link provide evidence that spacetime structure is nonfundamental and emergent from nongravitational degrees of freedom? I will show that a closer look at the results lends support only to a weaker conclusion, that the facts about quantum entanglement are constrained by facts about spatiotemporal distance, and not that they are the basis from which facts about spatiotemporal distance emerge. (shrink)

Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they (...) do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions. (shrink)

There is a standard way of interpreting physicalism. This is as a completeness thesis of some kind. Completeness physicalists believe there is or in principle could be some future physics that provides a complete explanatory or ontological basis for our universe. And this provides a sense in which physics is special among the sciences, the sense in which it is fundamental. This paper contrasts this standard completeness physicalism with what is a more plausible maximality physicalism. Maximality physicalists believe physics is (...) special only in its providing an epistemic framework that is ontologically or explanatorily superior in some respect. This paper shows how completeness physicalists cannot, while maximality physicalists can, provide an adequate explanation of the empirical support for and the pragmatic usefulness of physicalism. It also shows how maximality physicalism is better supported in light of several developments from late twentieth century philosophy of science. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

What justifies the allocation of funding to research in physics when many would argue research in the life and social sciences may have more immediate impact in transforming our world for the better? Many of the justifications for such spending depend on the claim that physics enjoys a kind of special status vis-a-vis the other sciences, that physics or at least some branches of physics exhibit a form of fundamentality. The goal of this paper is to articulate a conception of (...) fundamentality that can support such justifications. I argue that traditional conceptions of fundamentality in terms of dynamical or ontic completeness rest on mistaken assumptions about the nature and scope of physical explanations. (shrink)

I defend an account of Moore's conception of Common Sense—as it figures in "A Defence of Common Sense"—according to which it is based in a vision of the community of human beings as bound and unified by a settled common understanding of the meaning of our words and statements. This, for Moore, is our inalienable starting point in philosophy. When Moore invokes Common Sense against idealist (and skeptical) philosophers, he is reminding them that they too are bound by this common (...) understanding, which cannot just be left behind as they confusedly believe. On Moore's conception, Common Sense becomes nothing other than the affirmation that there is such a common understanding—that there is Common Sense—which yields a specific body of Common Sense knowledge. This yields a more principled account of Common Sense than a mere tallying of what contingently happens to be believed (or known) by all. (shrink)

Providing equitable food security for a growing population while minimizing environmental impacts and enhancing resilience to climate shocks is an ongoing challenge. Here, we quantify the resource intensity, environmental impacts and nutritional output of a small (0.075 ha) low-input subsistence Mediterranean agroecological farm in a developed nation that is based on intercropping and annual crop rotation. The farm provides one individual, the proprietor, with nutritional self-sufficiency (adequate intake of an array of macro- and micro-nutrients) with limited labor, no synthetic fertilizers (...) or herbicides, and zero waste, effectively closing a full farm-table-farm cycle. We find that the agroecological farm outperforms conventional farming as practiced in the same country in terms of both lower environmental burdens, across all examined environmental metrics (63% lower on average) per kg produce, and higher nutritional score (66% higher on average). Per equal farmland, the environmental lopsidedness was even higher (79% lower than conventional farming on average), with nearly the same nutritional score (3% lower on average). Moreover, when considering total land area, which includes farmland and supporting non-agricultural lands, as well as postgate impacts and food losses, the advantage of the agroecological system over conventional farming is even more pronounced. Situated within a Mediterranean region that is undergoing rapid climate change, this food system is a unique case study of nutrition- and environment-oriented food production system. While its deployment potential is limited by lack of supportive policies, it nonetheless represents one of the most starkly bold alternatives to current food systems. (shrink)

This paper critically discusses Hacker’s reading of nonsense in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus in terms of his notion of misuse, which is taken to consist in the violation of rules of logical syntax. I argue that Hacker’s reading relies on an equivocation between sign and symbol: what is ‘misused’ is a mere sign, but the verdict of nonsensicality relies on seeing it as a symbol. Although Hacker seeks to distance himself from resolute readings – according to which nonsense always consists in nothing (...) but a failure to assign meaning to one’s sentences – I argue that his own verdicts of nonsensicality have their ultimate grounds in exactly the same sort of assessment, i.e. whether meaning has been assigned to a sentence. The rules of logical syntax, contrary to his own intentions, do no real work in determining whether a sentence is nonsensical or not. (shrink)

One motivation for preferring the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics over realist rivals, such as collapse and hidden variables theories, is that the interpretation is able to preserve locality (in the sense of no action at a distance) in a way these other theories cannot. The primary goal of this paper is to make this argument for the many worlds interpretation precise, in a way that does not rely on controversial assumptions about the metaphysics of many worlds.

I argue that no successful version of Williamson's anti‐luminosity‐argument has yet been presented, even if Srinivasan's further elaboration and defence is taken into account. There is a version invoking a coarse‐grained safety condition and one invoking a fine‐grained safety condition. A crucial step in the former version implicitly relies on the false premise that sufficient similarity is transitive. I show that some natural attempts to resolve this issue fail. Similar problems arise for the fine‐grained version. Moreover, I argue that Srinivasan's (...) defence of the more contentious fine‐grained safety condition is also unsuccessful, again for similar reasons. (shrink)

Among the arguments that have been proposed for physicalism, the “causal argument” is widely taken to be the most compelling. Justin Tiehen (2015) has raised an interesting objection to this argument that takes the form of a dilemma. Tiehen’s ultimate conclusion is that at best, the causal argument is circular and so its premises cannot provide support for its conclusion, physicalism. The aim of the present paper is to respond to Tiehen’s objection in order to provide a defense of the (...) causal argument. (shrink)

This is a commentary on Mathias Frisch's book Causal Reasoning in Physics (Cambridge 2014). This commentary was presented at the 2016 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in a session sponsored by the Society for the Metaphysics of Science.

Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behaviors are considered important factors in the investing activities of the retail investors. This study seeks to determine the relationship between Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behavior of Generation Z retail investors. The study is a correlational research and purposive sampling was used to select the respondents for this study. Cochran’s formula was utilized to determine the total sample size or total number of respondents. Spearman’s Rank-Order Correlation was employed to assess the significant relationship of (...) Risk Management Strategies and Investment Behaviors. Based on the results, it showed that risk management strategies have a significant relationship with one or more of the investment behaviors. Risk avoidance has a significant relationship with confirmation bias. Risk reduction has a significant relationship with all of the investment behaviors such as overconfidence, loss-aversion, recency bias, and confirmation bias. Risk transfer shows a significant relationship with only loss-aversion and confirmation bias. And lastly, risk acceptance also has a significant relationship with all of the investment behaviors. This study recommends exploring other types of behavioral biases under cognitive bias and emotional bias to determine their correlation with risk management strategies. Also, broadening the sample size, demographic scope, and geographic scope of the study can improve the generalizability of the study and provide a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between investment behavior and risk management strategies. The researchers also recommend to utilize interviews and focus group discussions to gain an in-depth understanding of the underlying values and attitudes concerning investment behavior. (shrink)

Frege's conception of the logical categories has vexed commentators for decades. In this dissertation, I argue that it revolves around two forms of internality. The first is the internality of its use in the expression of judgment to the sign. A proper understanding of that internality reveals how Frege's philosophical logic cannot be fit into the framework given by the contemporary syntax/semantics distinction. The second is the internality that obtains between the way in which Begriffsschrift signs stratify into different categories, (...) on the one hand, and the way in which the realm of Bedeutungen stratifies into logical categories, on the other hand. A proper understanding of this internality reveals how Frege's conception of the relation between language and the world is neither a form of realism nor a form of linguistic idealism. To come to understand Frege's conception of the logical categories, is to come to understand both these forms of internality by coming to understand how they hang together. (shrink)

The right to a dignified death is largely overlooked by Brazilian law. This neglect of the end-of-life process and its ramifications is the focus of this study, which aims at an exploratory survey to identify pertinent aspects requiring development to ensure a dignified end-of-life experience. In total, 50 publications were examined with online and physical surveys of works published up to March 2023. They express concerns regarding ethical dilemmas in caring for individuals nearing the end of life, yet they do (...) not delve into existing mechanisms for safeguarding end-of-life dignity or identify areas that still lack standardization to ensure effective care. This study should contribute to the enhancement of critical perspectives on the issue of end-of-life experiences, considering current safeguards, the legal boundaries set by the State, and potential future strides toward advancing studies aimed at the practical update of the Brazilian legal system. (shrink)

Casgevy, the world’s first approved CRISPR-based cell therapy, has been priced at $2.2 million per patient. Although this hefty price tag was widely anticipated, the extremely high cost of this and other cell and gene therapies poses a major ethical issue in terms of equitable access and global health. In this Perspective, we argue that lowering the prices of future CRISPR therapies is an urgent ethical imperative. Although we focus on Casgevy as a case study, much of our analysis can (...) be extrapolated to the controversies over affordable access to other gene and cell therapies. First, we explain why this first-of-its-kind CRISPR therapy might be so expensive. We then analyze the ethical issues of equity and global health of early CRISPR treatments. Next, we discuss potential solutions to lower the prices of CRISPR gene therapies. We conclude that the approval of CRISPR transforms our obligations of justice and compels us to bring future gene therapies to the maximum possible number of patients with serious genetic diseases at affordable prices. (shrink)

People suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) do things they do not want to do, and/or they think things they do not want to think. In about 10 percent of OCD patients, none of the available treatment options is effective. A small group of these patients is currently being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Deep brain stimulation involves the implantation of electrodes in the brain. These electrodes give a continuous electrical pulse to the brain area in which they are implanted. (...) It turns out that patients may experience profound changes as a result of DBS treatment. It is not just the symptoms that change; patients rather seem to experience a different way of being in the world. These global effects are insufficiently captured by traditional psychiatric scales, which mainly consist of behavioural measures of the severity of the symptoms. In this article we aim to capture the changes in the patients’ phenomenology and make sense of the broad range of changes they report. For that we introduce an enactive, affordance-based model that fleshes out the dynamic interactions between person and world in four aspects. The first aspect is the patients’ experience of the world. We propose to specify the patients’ world in terms of a field of affordances, with the three dimensions of broadness of scope (‘width’ of the field), temporal horizon (‘depth’), and relevance of the perceived affordances (‘height’). The second aspect is the person-side of the interaction, that is, the patients’ self-experience, notably their moods and feelings. Thirdly, we point to the different characteristics of the way in which patients relate to the world. And lastly, the existential stance refers to the stance that patients take towards the changes they experience: the second-order evaluative relation to their interactions and themselves. With our model we intend to specify the notion of being in the world in order to do justice to the phenomenological effects of DBS treatment. (shrink)

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a relatively new, experimental treatment for patients suffering from treatment-refractory Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The effects of treatment are typically assessed with psychopathological scales that measure the amount of symptoms. However, clinical experience indicates that the effects of DBS are not limited to symptoms only: patients for instance report changes in perception, feeling stronger and more confident, and doing things unreflectively. Our aim is to get a better overview of the whole variety of changes that (...) OCD patients experience during DBS treatment. For that purpose we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 OCD patients. In this paper, we present the results from this qualitative study.We list the changes grouped in four domains: with regard to (a) person, (b) (social) world, (c)characteristics of person-world interactions, and (d) existential stance. We subsequently provide an interpretation of these results. In particular, we suggest that many of these changes can be seen as different expressions of the same process; namely that the experience of anxiety and tension gives way to an increased basic trust and increased reliance on one’s abilities. We then discuss the clinical implications of our findings, especially with regard to properly informing patients of what they can expect from treatment, the usefulness of including CBT in treatment, and the limitations of current measures of treatment success. We end by making several concrete suggestions for further research. (shrink)

A presente investigação tem por objetivo responder à questão título considerando os argumentos apresentados, de um lado, pelos desenvolvimentistas e, de outro, pelos ambientalistas. Entendemos que os argumentos apresentados refletem um conflito de valores mais profundo que, se abordado por uma metodologia de solução de conflitos adequada, pode contribuir para elucidação da questão. A metodologia proposta é o personalismo ético de Scheler. A hierarquia de valores a ser aplicada na solução de conflitos traz (i) o valor pessoa como o mais (...) elevado, seguido dos (ii) valores espirituais, como a justiça, (iii) os vitais, como o bem estar e o útil, e (iv) os sensíveis. Através das ações de preferir e postergar, é possível encontrar pontos de equilíbrio numa permanente atitude crítica. O objetivo é contribuir para que as ações ocorram com a devida diligência para com os direitos humanos. A hipótese inicial é que, identificando os valores em conflito e aplicando a metodologia descrita, a solução de conflitos neste caso concreto permite pensar numa transição energética que concilie o desenvolvimento e o meio ambiente. Compreendemos que ambos têm como fim proteger o valor pessoa. Portanto, o que está em conflito de fato, sem com isso assumir uma postura ingênua, são os valores espirituais e vitais de cada uma das partes. Neste sentido, defendemos que, diante da inevitável demanda por energia da sociedade contemporânea e do alto custo da transição energética, é preciso conciliar o desenvolvimento com o meio ambiente a partir de uma programada transição energética financiada pela exploração do petróleo e gás, mas com metas definidas comprometidas com a neutralidade da emissão de GEE em 2050. Para tanto, é necessário regulamentação, monitoramento e fiscalização por parte do Estado e do governo federal com a finalidade de garantir a substituição dos combustíveis fósseis por fontes energéticas limpas. (shrink)

According to some collectivists, purposive groups that lack decision-making procedures such as riot mobs, friends walking together, or the pro-life lobby can be morally responsible and have moral duties. I focus on plural subject- and we-mode-collectivism. I argue that purposive groups do not qualify as duty-bearers even if they qualify as agents on either view. To qualify as a duty-bearer, an agent must be morally competent. I develop the Update Argument. An agent is morally competent only if the agent has (...) sufficient positive and negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. Positive control involves the general ability to update one’s goal-seeking states, whereas negative control involves the absence of other agents with the capacity to arbitrarily interfere with updating one’s goal-seeking states. I argue that even if purposive groups qualify as plural subjects or we-mode group agents, these groups necessarily lack negative control over updating their goal-seeking states. This creates a cut-off point for groups as duty-bearers: Organized groups may qualify as duty-bearers, whereas purposive groups cannot qualify as duty-bearers. (shrink)

As artefacts, the worlds of digital games are designed and developed to fulfil certain expressive, functional, and experiential objectives. During play, players infer these purposes and aspirations from various aspects of their engagement with the gameworld. Influenced by their sociocultural backgrounds, sensitivities, gameplay preferences, and familiarity with game conventions, players construct a subjective interpretation of the intentions with which they believe the digital game in question was created. By analogy with the narratological notion of the implied author, we call the (...) figure to which players ascribe these intentions ‘the implied designer’. In this article, we introduce the notion of the implied designer and present an initial account of how appreciators ascribe meaning to interactive, fictional gameworlds and act within them based on what they perceive to be the designer’s intentions. (shrink)

Religious disagreement is an emerging topic of interest in social epistemology. Little is known about how philosophers react to religious disagreements in a professional context, or how they think one should respond to disagreement. This paper presents results of an empirical study on religious disagreement among philosophers. Results indicate that personal religious beliefs, philosophical training, and recent changes in religious outlook have a significant impact on philosophers' assessments of religious disagreement. They regard peer disagreement about religion as common, and most (...) surveyed participants assume one should accord weight to the other's opinion. Theists and agnostics are less likely to assume they are in a better epistemic position than their interlocutors about religious questions compared with atheists, but this pattern only holds for participants who are not philosophers of religion. Continental philosophers think religious beliefs are more like preferences than analytic philosophers, who regard religious beliefs as fact-like. (shrink)

Speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, has a unique epistemic value. We examine similarities and differences between speculative fiction and philosophical thought experiments in terms of how they are cognitively processed. They are similar in their reliance on mental prospection, but dissimilar in that fiction is better able to draw in readers (transportation) and elicit emotional responses. By its use of longer, emotionally poignant narratives and seemingly irrelevant details, speculative fiction allows for a better appraisal of the consequences (...) of philosophical ideas than thought experiments. (shrink)

This collection addresses two different audiences: 1) historians and philosophers of the life sciences reflecting on collaborations across disciplines, especially as regards defining and addressing Grand Challenges; 2) researchers and other stakeholders involved in cross-disciplinary collaborations aimed at tackling Grand Challenges in the life and medical sciences. The essays collected here offer ideas and resources both for the study and for the practice of goal-driven cross-disciplinary research in the life and medical sciences. We organise this introduction in three sections. The (...) first section provides some background and context. The second motivates our take on this topic and then outlines the central ideas of each paper. The third section highlights the specificity and significance of this approach by considering: a) how this collection departs from existing literature on inter- and trans-disciplinarity, b) what is characteristic about this approach, and c) what role this suggests for the history and philosophy of the life sciences in addressing Grand Challenges. (shrink)

During emerging public health crises, both policymakers and members of the public are looking to scientific experts to provide guidance. Even in cases where there are significant uncertainties, there is pressure for experts to “speak with one voice” to avoid confusion, allow officials to make evidence-based decisions rapidly, and encourage public support for such decisions. This can lead experts to engage in masking of information about the state of the science or regarding assumptions involved in policy recommendations. Although experts might (...) have good reasons for masking disagreements, uncertainties, or assumptions when offering policy advice, we argue that this strategy can result in epistemic harms. Using the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that public health authorities masked two types of information necessary for laypersons to evaluate public health recommendations: (1) experts’ disagreements about the scientific evidence and (2) the role of values in making inferences from the science to policy positions. We contend that this resulted in epistemic harms against laypeople that provide a pro tanto case against masking information. We further argue that when the science is in flux and policies need to be implemented despite significant uncertainties, there is an all-things-considered case against masking the types of information discussed. (shrink)

Hume was a cognitive scientist of religion avant la lettre. His Natural History of Religion (1757 [2007]) locates the origins of religion in human nature. This paper explores similarities between some of his ideas and the cognitive science of religion, the multidisciplinary study of the psychological origins of religious beliefs. It also considers Hume’s distinction between two questions about religion: its foundation in reason (the domain of natural theology and philosophy of religion) and its origin in human nature (the domain (...) of cognitive science of religion). (shrink)

Defenders of moral perception have famously argued that seeing value is relevantly similar to seeing color. Some critics think, however, that the analogy between color-seeing and value-seeing breaks down in several crucial respects. Defenders of moral perception, these critics say, have not succeeded in providing examples of non-moral perception that are relevantly analogous to cases of moral perception. Therefore, it can be doubted whether there is such a thing as moral perception at all. I argue that, although the analogy between (...) color perception and moral perception does indeed break down in several crucial respects, that conclusion does not weaken the case of defenders of moral perception, because better analogies are available. If defenders of moral perception seek to draw support from an analogy, then seeing emotion will protect them better against criticisms than will seeing color. (shrink)

Ambiguity occurs insofar as a reasoner lacks information about the relevant physical probabilities. There are objections to the application of standard Bayesian inductive logic and decision theory in contexts of significant ambiguity. A variety of alternative frameworks for reasoning under ambiguity have been proposed. Two of the most prominent are Imprecise Bayesianism and Dempster–Shafer theory. We compare these inductive logics with respect to the Ambiguity Dilemma, which is a problem that has been raised for Imprecise Bayesianism. We develop an agent-based (...) model comparison that isolates the difference between the two inductive logics in their updating methods. We find that Dempster–Shafer theory does not avoid the Ambiguity Dilemma. We discuss the implications of this result. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide a proof-theoretic characterization of relevant logics including fusion and fission connectives, as well as Ackermann’s truth constant. We achieve this by employing the well-established methodology of labelled sequent calculi. After having introduced several systems, we will conduct a detailed proof-theoretic analysis, show a cut-admissibility theorem, and establish soundness and completeness. The paper ends with a discussion that contextualizes our current work within the broader landscape of the proof theory of relevant logics.

Este artigo busca adentrar pelas questões relacionadas à biopolítica do corpo, sobretudo, daquelas ligadas à estatização do biológico e do racismo do Estado, que aparecem nos trabalhos de Michel Foucault e que aqui evocamos para analisar o corpo enquanto objeto discursivo analisável dessa biopolítica em duas produções francesas de horror, - Frontière(s) e em À l’interieur – que exibem imagens dos tumultos de Outubro de 2005, acontecimento marcado pelos protestos contra a política de perseguição aos sans-papiers que vitimou três jovens (...) de origem africana. É a partir daí que retomaremos a discussão do “quem somos nós”, em Foucault, para refletir sobre o sujeito, a menoridade e a liberdade na estatização do corpo, um lugar da memória nacional. (shrink)

In recent years, a growing discussion about how we should design our cities has emerged, particularly for the more controversial modes of design such as “defensive,” “hostile,” or “disciplinary” architecture (i.e., benches on which one cannot sleep, or metal studs on which one cannot skate). Although this debate is relatively mature, many studies have argued that these design notions are undertheorized and are, thus, challenging to study from an empirical and normative perspective. In this paper, I will defne the most (...) common terms used in the literature and show how they are interconnected by utilizing a set of “conditions of adequacy” from philosophy to facilitate a more transparent and well-grounded discussion of them. Terms such as “hostile” and “defensive” design are underlined by several diferent phenomena, not just one as is sometimes commonly assumed. I will also show that these phenomena and their conceptualizations require—and sometimes force us to use—diferent moral reasons when justifying the utilization of diferent designs. (shrink)

Resumo: O texto reconstrói as bases teleológico-morais para a constituição da moderna ciência da história. A chave dessa reconstrução é o escrutínio da idéia kantiana de plano da natureza, idéia que é investigada nas obras de Adam Smith, Hegel e Marx. Para criticar essa idéia, argui-se o pensamento de Fukuyama e defende-se que a ligação entre democracia e economia liberal é melhor explicada pela natural inclinação humana para a simetria do que pela noção de reconhecimento. O argumento é que o (...) projeto de Fukuyama não encontra amparo na seleção da espécie, ao passo que o desejo por simetria sim. A essa abordagem subjazem as teses de que feita a crítica à teleologia moral, a história tem de ser compatível com a evolução, e de que a naturalização da história implica numa naturalização da moral.Palavras-chave: teleologia - moral naturalizada - plano da natureza - teoria da história - evolucionismo.: The text reconstructs the teleological-moral foundations for the constitution of the modern science of history. The key to that reconstruction is a scrutiny of Kant's idea of "plan of nature", which is investigated in the works of Adam Smith, Hegel and Marx. In order to criticize this idea, the paper discusses the thinking of Fukuyama and argues that the connection between democracy and liberal economy is best explained by the natural human inclination towards symmetry, rather than by the notion of recognition. It also argues that Fukuyama's project finds no support in the selection of species, whereas the desire for symmetry does. The theses that underlie this approach are that, once the critique of moral teleology has been made, history must be compatible with evolution and that the naturalization of history implies a naturalization of morals. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on the moral responsibility of organized groups in light of historicism. Historicism is the view that any morally responsible agent must satisfy certain historical conditions, such as not having been manipulated. We set out four examples involving morally responsible organized groups that pose problems for existing accounts of historicism. We then pose a trilemma: one can reject group responsibility, reject historicism, or revise historicism. We pursue the third option. We formulate a Manipulation Condition and a (...) Guarding Condition as addendums to historicism that are necessary to accommodate our cases of group responsibility. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on animism and how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines. Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of philosophy of (...) religion to discuss and accommodate different perspectives means a large part of human religious beliefs, practices, and experiences remains outside its purview. As a point of focus, we examine animism in two cultures as a way to think about what sorts of questions and ideas an expansion of philosophy of religion into lesser-explored traditions could offer. (shrink)