Traditionally Ψ is used to stand in for both the mathematical wavefunction (the representation) and the quantum state (the thing in the world). This elision has been elevated to a metaphysical thesis by advocates of the view known as wavefunction realism. My aim in this paper is to challenge the hegemony of the wavefunction by calling attention to a little-known formulation of quantum theory that does not make use of the wavefunction in representing the quantum state. This approach, called Lagrangian (...) quantum hydrodynamics (LQH), is not an approximation scheme, but rather a full alternative formulation of quantum theory. I argue that a careful consideration of alternative formalisms is an essential part of any realist project that attempts to read the ontology of a theory off of the mathematical formalism. In particular, I show that LQH undercuts the central presumption of wavefunction realism and falsifies the claim that one must represent the many-body quantum state as living in a 3n-dimensional configuration space. I conclude by briefly sketching three different realist approaches one could take toward LQH, and argue that both models of the quantum state should be admitted. When exploring quantum realism, regaining sight of the proverbial forest of quantum representations beyond the Ψ is just the first step. (shrink)

Molyneux’s question asks whether a person born blind who has learned to identify shapes tactually could, if suddenly granted sight, immediately identify shapes visually. This question has been used to structure discussions of whether there is a “rational connection” between sight and touch— whether one may rationally doubt whether the same spatial properties are both seen and felt. I distinguish two issues under this general heading. The first concerns whether the visual and haptic perception of shape is rationally (...) connected in normally sighted perceivers. The second concerns whether the visual and haptic perception of shape is rationally connected in all possible perceivers. I argue that real-world implementations of Molyneux’s question are irrelevant to the first issue, but potentially relevant to the second. However, I also argue that the second issue does not have the philosophical significance it is sometimes claimed to have. In particular, it cannot be used to adjudicate debates about whether the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is determined “externally,” by the worldly properties we perceive, or “internally,” by physiological or functional properties of our brains. (shrink)

In this article, an account of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system is offered, according to which the contamination system can generate contamination represen- tations in circumstances that do not satisfy the norms of contamination, including in cases of mere visual contact with disgusting objects. It is argued that this architecture is important for explaining the content, logic, distribution, and persistence of maternal impression beliefs – according to which fetal defects are caused by the pregnant mother’s experiences and actions (...) – which in turn provide important evidence of the architecture of the cognitive contamination system. (shrink)

The capacity of visual attention/STM can be determined by change-detection experiments. Detecting the presence of change leads to an estimate of 4 items, while detecting the absence of change leads to an estimate of 1 item. Thus, there are two magical numbers in vision: 4 and 1. The underlying limits, however, are not necessarily those of central STM.

We present colorful illustrations of particular properties of functorial diamonds, in the sense of Scholze; namely profinite reflections as categorical colors.We discuss sight as site using representable functors in the condensed formalism. We illuminate diamonds using our novel constructions of categorical Ozma and Cinderella, the site of Oz, and condensed Through the Looking-Glass.

The paper outlines a tentative genealogy of the Platonic metaphysics of sight by thematizing pre-Platonic thought, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides. By “metaphysics of sight” it understands the features of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics expressed with the help of visual metaphors. It is argued that the Platonic metaphysics of sight can be regarded as the result of a synthesis of the Heraclitean and Parmenidean approaches. In pre-Platonic thought, the visual paradigm is still marginal. For Heraclitus, the basic structure of being (...) is its discursive articulation (logos) into conceptual pairs of binary opposites, an articulation that at the same time binds differences together into a tensional unity. The fundamental grasping of this ultimate unity-in-difference is conceived primarily through acoustic terms as a non-sensory “hearing.” For Parmenides, the ultimate unity of contraries is based on the capacity of thinking (noos) to intend anything as present; in fragment B 4, the exclusive relationship of thinking to intelligible presence is finally visualized in terms of a seeing or looking (leusso). (shrink)

Nilgiri Large Burrowing Spider Haploclastus nilgirinus Pocock, 1899 recently recorded from the Nilgiris in the Western Ghats.

THIS IS A PRE-PUBLICATION VERSION OF THE PAPER. The New Testament speaks of our having faith rather than sight. This distinction is not made to distinguish faith from knowledge. Rather, it is to distinguish one kind of knowledge from another. We may know by trust in reliable authority; this knowledge is necessarily secondhand, but it is knowledge all the same. This, I argue, is the New Testament idea of faith. Another way of knowing is firsthand. Sight in the (...) New Testament, I argue, is a metonym for firsthand knowledge. In this article I consider the meaning of faith and sight in the relevant New Testament passages, with an extended exegesis of 2 Cor. 5:7 and Heb. 11:1. (shrink)

​This article considers the place of moral concerns about hospitality and welcoming in the politics of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN). I argue that the EZLN’s political model exemplifies some of what I think to be characteristic of the ideal relationship between politics, concerned with sameness and collective identities, and ethics, concerned with hospitality to those who are genuinely different.

Viewing Vermeer with Merleau-Ponty's eyes.

All interpretations of the Portland Vase frieze to date have failed to see, much less explain, a crucial figural attribute in the frieze, one that proves to be both explicit and explicatory, and whose location and appearance secures the identification of not one but, indeed, three figures. Furthermore, the attribute lies at the heart of a distinct schema of figural grouping and arrangement which has also gone unheeded in previous treatments of the Portland Vase frieze. By dint of this previously (...) unknown attribute, one can straightforwardly read the opening scene of the frieze using the attributes therein provided, but the opening scene only. To complete the task, a second methodology–that which I laid out in Arion in 1992–is a categorical sine qua non. One can, as I have already shown, successfully navigate the entire frieze using the second methodology alone but, as so many others have shown, not contrariwise. These new findings–the attribute and figural plan–are clear proof that the artistic vision of the Portland Vase was purposefully executed in a two-part program. (shrink)

Adelson & Pentland (Chapter 11) use an engaging metaphor to illustrate their position on scene analysis: interpretations are produced by a workshop that employs a set of specialists, each concerned with a single aspect of the scene. The authors argue that it is too expensive to have a supervisor co-ordinate the specialists and that it is too expensive to let them operate independently. They then show that a careful sequencing of the specialists leads to solutions of minimum cost, at least (...) for their world of Mondrian panels. (shrink)

There has been an important artist in our midst. Her work is about gender, race, and the internal structures of the artworld, and it predated the current popularity of those topics in theoretical circles by three decades.... Piper's volumes serve two functions. Volume I, Selected writings in Meta-Art, 1968-1992, provides an intimate history of the development of her own creative art making, while Volume 2, Selected writings in Art Criticism, 1967-1992, chronicles her more public responses to art-critical writings. Together they (...) form an intense document of a practicing, successful artist who is exceptionally articulate and hence interesting to read. It is no coincidence that her deep commitment to making political art--in which the artist is an agent of social change--functions in tandem with her scholarly pursuits in Kantian ethics. (shrink)

This chapter explores how our understanding of Molyneux’s question, and of the possibility of an experimental resolution to it, should be affected by recognizing the complexity that is involved in reidentifying shapes and other spatial properties across differing sensory manifestations of them. I will argue that while philosophers today usually treat the question as concerning ‘the relations between perceptions of shape in different sensory modalities’ (Campbell 1995, 301), in fact this is only part of the question’s real interest, and that (...) the answer to the question also turns on how shape is perceived within each of sight and touch individually. (shrink)

Sight is a capacity, and seeing is its exercise. Reflection on the sense in which sight is for the sake of seeing reveals distinct relations of dependence between sight and seeing, the capacity and its exercise. Moreover, these relations of dependence in turn reveal the nature of our perceptual capacities and their exercise. Specifically, if sight is for the sake of seeing, then sight will depend, in a certain sense, upon seeing, in a manner inconsistent (...) with experiential monism. Thus reflection on the power of perception forms the basis of an argument for experiential pluralism. (shrink)

If the sight of cortically blind people were restored, could they visually recognize a cube or a sphere? This is Molyneux’s question. I argue that the answer to this question depends on the specificities of the mental setup of these cortically blind people. Some cortically blind people have (sometimes quite vivid) visual imagery. Others don’t. The answer to Molyneux’s question depends on whether the blind subjects have had visual imagery before their sight was restored. If they did, the (...) answer to Molyneux’s question is yes, if they didn’t, the answer is no. There is no generic answer to Molyneux’s question. (shrink)

Is it wrong to create a blind child, for example by in vitro fertilization, if you could create a sighted child instead? Intuitively many people believe it is wrong, but this belief is difficult to justify. When there is a possibility to create and select either ‘blind’ or ‘sighted’ embryos choosing a set of ‘blind’ embryos seems to harm no-one since choosing ‘sighted’ embryos would create a different child altogether. So when the parents choose ‘blind’ embryos, they give some specific (...) individual a life that is the only option for her. Because her life is worth living (as blind peoples’ lives are), the parents have not wronged the child by creating her. This is the reasoning behind the famous non-identity problem. I suggest that the non-identity problem is based on a misunderstanding. I claim that when choosing a ‘blind’ embryo, prospective parents harm ‘their child’, whoever she or he will be. Put another way: parents harm their child in the de dicto sense and that is morally wrong. (shrink)

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non-instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I argue (...) that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire-theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti-unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality. (shrink)

This essay is my contribution to a celebratory volume for Mr Peter Ho, former head of Singapore's Civil Service, from whom I learned the phrase ‘black elephant’. I reflect on four elephants among my own interests: in other words, big things (in my estimation), in clear sight but invisible to many eyes. They are: (i) retrocausality in quantum theory; (ii) child conscription and the monarchy; (iii) AI risk; and (iv) cold fusion. As I say in the piece, my little (...) herd is big enough to make some comparisons – though this may be the only occasion on which they congregate in the same room. (shrink)

A naturalistic impulse has taken speculative analytic metaphysics in its critical sights. Importantly, the claim that it is desirable or requisite to give metaphysics scientific moorings rests on underlying epistemological assumptions or principles. If the naturalistic impulse toward metaphysics is to be well-founded and its prescriptions to have normative force, those assumptions or principles should be spelled out and justified. In short, advocates of naturalized or scientific metaphysics require epistemic infrastructure. This paper begins to supply it. The author first sketches (...) her conception of suitably naturalized or scientific metaphysics. She then lays out a number of candidate epistemic principles centring around the notion of theoretical constraint. The author offers several arguments for the principles, based on statistical likeliness, agreement, falsity avoidance, and methodological efficiency and inefficiency. Finally, she shows how scientific metaphysics satisfies the epistemic principles and is therefore preferable to its traditional rivals. (shrink)

[from the publisher's website] Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan (...) De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. -/- De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality. (shrink)

At first sight, if A is all-things-considered better than B and B is all-things-considered better than C, the judgment that A is all-things-considered better than C seems to follow. This should be a straight-forward consequence of the transitivity of the \all-things-considered better than" relation. However, if we deny that transitivity is a logical axiom of those relations involving comparatives, then it might turn out that betterness is not transitive. Following Temkin's terminology, a relation R will be de ned as (...) nontransitive i either it is intransitive (i.e. aRb and bRc yet :(aRc)) or if transitivity cannot be applied, for there is no single relation R that holds between all the alternatives. More spefici cally, this could happen in a case where the obtaining of the better-than relation depends on different factors according to the nature of the relata. As a result, there are two main strategies available to question the axiom of transitivity: the rst is by providing an effective counterexample displaying cRa as well as (aRb ^ bRc), hence yielding a cycle. The second, more general way, is to show that all-things-considered betterness is a relation that conceptually involves comparison-dependent betterness relations, so that it is likely that transitivity fails to apply across different alternatives. The aim of this paper is to investigate part of the recent attack on the transitivity of better than, to conclude that there seems to be no cogent reason why this would not be a transitive relation. (shrink)

It appears that consciousness science is progressing soundly, in particular in its search for the neural correlates of consciousness. There are two main approaches to this search, one is content-based (focusing on the contrast between conscious perception of, e.g., faces vs. houses), the other is state-based (focusing on overall conscious states, e.g., the contrast between dreamless sleep vs. the awake state). Methodological and conceptual considerations of a number of concrete studies show that both approaches are problematic: the content-based approach seems (...) to set aside crucial aspects of consciousness; and the state-based approach seems over-inclusive in a way that is hard to rectify without losing sight of the crucial conscious-unconscious contrast. Consequently, the search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of new experimental paradigms. (shrink)

At first sight the Theory of Computation i) relies on a kind of mathematics based on the notion of potential infinity; ii) its theoretical organization is irreducible to an axiomatic one; rather it is organized in order to solve a problem: “What is a computation?”; iii) it makes essential use of doubly negated propositions of non-classical logic, in particular in the word expressions of the Church-Turing’s thesis; iv) its arguments include ad absurdum proofs. Under such aspects, it is like (...) many other scientific theories, in particular the first theories of both mechanical machines and heat machines. A more accurate examination of Theory of Computation shows a difference from the above mentioned theories in its essentially including an odd notion, “thesis”, to which no theorem corresponds. On the other hand, arguments of each of the other theories conclude a doubly negative predicate which then, by applying the inverse translation of the ‘negative one’, is translated into the corresponding affirmative predicate. By also taking into account three criticisms to the current Theory of Computation a rational re-formulation of it is sketched out; to Turing-Church thesis of the usual theory corresponds a similar proposition, yet connecting physical total computation functions with constructive mathematical total computation functions. -/- . (shrink)

It might, at first sight, seem objectionable to compare Kant and Rorty in terms of their respective irony, for two reasons. First, usually, irony is not considered to be a striking stylistic feature in Kant, whereas it is a key concept in Rorty´s political philosophy. Second, Rorty's liberal ironist is the prototype of the edified individual in post-modern civil society who has overcome metaphysics of both realms: nature and morals. It just is proposed as a remedy against all forms (...) of political foundationalism. However, in his minor political works of the 90s, Kant´s style is marked by his use of irony. Irony performs several functions: it is a polemic device, a means of persuasion, and a safeguard against those who might otherwise take his critical appreciation of political custom too personal. Moreover, Kant's political foundationalism is intertwined with his philosophy of history. Arguably, Kant treats the contingency of historic events with due regard and, hence, his political outlook must not be considered to be vindicatory. Irony, therefore, might, though seemingly un-Kantian at the outset, be a clue to the differences, and, perhaps, in contrast with Rorty´s distancing himself from Kant, similarities between their respective political philosophies. A comparison of Kantian with Rortian irony might thus reveal continuities and discontinuities in political thought between the European Enlightment and American post-modernism. It, therefore, might help to better understand our time. In my paper, I perform a contrastive analysis of these two faces of irony. The analysis starts with an interpretation of these two faces as different ways to cope intellectually with the vicissitudes of the human condition. Next, I relate their irony to the way both philosophers deal with the split between the private and the public spheres, which is, in different ways, central to their political philosophies. This analysis will provide the material for an assessment of whether or not their irony can be considered as an evasive move, which allows for a safe distance from the contingent needs of mankind, and thus prohibits or supports solidarity with its fate. (shrink)

Purists think that changes in our practical interests can’t affect what we know unless those changes are truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. Impurists disagree. They think changes in our practical interests can affect what we know even if those changes aren’t truth-relevant with respect to the propositions in question. I argue that impurists are right, but for the wrong reasons, since they haven’t appreciated the best argument for their own view. Together with “Minimalism and the Limits of (...) Warranted Assertability Maneuvers,” “The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate,” and “Anti-Intellectualism” (below), this paper constitutes my attempt to refute the entire pragmatic encroachment debate. As I show in this paper, there is an argument for impurism sitting in plain sight that is considerably more plausible than any extant argument for pragmatism. (shrink)

Plato seems to have been pessimistic about how most people stand with regard to virtue. However, unlike the Stoics, he did not conclude that most people are vicious. Rather, as we know from discussions across several dialogues, he countenanced decent ethical conditions that fall short of genuine virtue, which he limited to the philosopher. Despite Plato's obvious interest in this issue, commentators rarely follow his lead by investigating in detail such conditions in the dialogues. When scholars do investigate what kind (...) of virtue, if any, Plato thinks is open to non-philosophers, they typically look to the Republic. But in the Republic Plato sets out an ideal city; therefore, the virtue available to non-philosophers there is likely different from what he thinks is available to them in the real world. If we want to determine Plato's thoughts about the virtue of actual non-philosophers, we must look elsewhere. In this paper, I set my sights on the Phaedo. (shrink)

In the De Anima, Aristotle claims that the five senses are infallible about their proper objects. I contend that this claim means that sight is infallible about its proper object in its most specific form, i. e. sight is infallible about red or green and not merely about color in general. This robust claim is justified by Aristotle’s teleological principle that nature does nothing in vain. Additionally, drawing on Aristotle’s comparison of perception and one’s understanding of the essences, (...) I defend a conception of the senses in which the structure of their contents is simple rather than predicative and show how this coheres better with the rest of my interpretation. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increase in bear sightings in Latvia, causing a change of tone in the country’s media outlets, regarding the return of “wild” animals. The unease around bear reappearance leads me to investigate the affective side of relations with beings that show strength and resilience in more-than-human encounters in human-inhabited spaces. These relations are characterized by the contrasting human feelings of alienation vis-à-vis their environments today and a false sense of security, resulting in disbelief to encounter beings (...) capable of challenging human exceptionalism. In a broader sense, the unease connects to human self-constitution and the fragility of the self, fueled by the domination of substance ontologies. This article considers bears as beings “in exile,” as potential threats to human self-pronounced exceptionality, and thus, examples of experienced abject regarding human subjectivity. The article aims to analyze the way the constitution of human selfhood is tied to the alienation of wildlife and its genealogical and biopolitical context and to question if a reconceptualization of the human/nonhuman relations via process, instead of substance ontology, is needed. (shrink)

The partnership between a visually impaired runner (VIR) and sighted guide runner (SGR) constitutes a unique sporting dyad. The quality of these partnerships may profoundly impact the sport and physical activity (PA) experiences of visually impaired (VI) people, yet little is known about the experiences of VIRs and SGRs. This study aimed to explore qualitatively the running experiences of VIRs and SGRs. Five VIRs and five SGRs took part in in-depth, semi-structured interviews (M length = 62 minutes) exploring their running (...) journeys and perceptions of running-together. We analysed the dataset using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes were generated, comprising: becoming and being a running team; a multifaceted intercorporeal experience; running-together promotes change; and disabling social interaction within running. Participants were generally positive about their running experiences, highlighting a range of benefits derived from the activity. Nevertheless, some examples of barriers to participation were also identified. Although the positive experiences described by the runners suggest guided running holds promise to increase PA in VI people, our findings illustrate the importance of directing attention towards developing high-quality relationships between VIRs and guides, alongside reinforcing the need for further change to promote inclusivity. (shrink)

Online therapy sessions and other forms of digital mental health services (DMH) have seen a sharp spike in new users since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Having little access to their social networks and support systems, people have had to turn to digital tools and spaces to cope with their experiences of anxiety and loss. With no clear end to the pandemic in sight, many of us are likely to remain reliant upon DMH for the foreseeable future. As (...) such, it is important to articulate some of the specific ways in which the pandemic is affecting our self and world-relation, such that we can identify how DMH services are best able to accommodate some of the newly emerging needs of their users. In this paper I will identify a specific type of loss brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic and present it as an important concept for DMH. I refer to this loss as loss of perceptual world-familiarity. Loss of perceptual world-familiarity entails a breakdown in the ongoing effortless responsiveness to our perceptual environment that characterizes much of our everyday lives. To cash this out I will turn to insights from the phenomenological tradition. Initially, my project is descriptive. I aim to bring out how loss of perceptual world-familiarity is a distinctive form of loss that is deeply pervasive yet easily overlooked-hence the relevance of explicating it for DMH purposes. But I will also venture into the space of the normative, offering some reasons for seeing perceptual world-familiarity as a component of well-being. I conclude the paper with a discussion of how loss of perceptual world-familiarity affects the therapeutic setting now that most if not all therapeutic interactions have transitioned to online spaces and I explore the potential to augment these spaces with social interaction technologies. Throughout, my discussion aims to do justice to the reality that perceptual world-familiarity is not an evenly distributed phenomenon, that factors like disability, gender and race affect its robustness, and that this ought to be reckoned with when seeking to incorporate the phenomenon into or mitigate it through DMH services. (shrink)

Although the theory of the assertoric syllogism was Aristotle's great invention, one which dominated logical theory for the succeeding two millenia, accounts of the syllogism evolved and changed over that time. Indeed, in the twentieth century, doctrines were attributed to Aristotle which lost sight of what Aristotle intended. One of these mistaken doctrines was the very form of the syllogism: that a syllogism consists of three propositions containing three terms arranged in four figures. Yet another was that a syllogism (...) is a conditional proposition deduced from a set of axioms. There is even unclarity about what the basis of syllogistic validity consists in. Returning to Aristotle's text, and reading it in the light of commentary from late antiquity and the middle ages, we find a coherent and precise theory which shows all these claims to be based on a misunderstanding and misreading. (shrink)

Molyneux's Question (MQ) concerns whether a newly sighted man would recognize/distinguish a sphere and a cube by vision, assuming he could previously do this by touch. We argue that (MQ) splits into questions about (a) shared representations of space in different perceptual systems, and about (b) shared ways of constructing higher dimensional spatiotemporal features from information about lower dimensional ones, most of the technical difficulty centring on (b). So understood, MQ resists any monolithic answer: everything depends on the constraints faced (...) by particular perceptual systems in extracting features of higher dimensionality from those of lower. Each individual question of this type is empirical and must be investigated separately. We present several variations on MQ based on different levels of dimensional integration—some of these are familiar, some novel adaptations of problems known elsewhere, and some completely novel. Organizing these cases in this way is useful because it unifies a set of disparate questions about intermodal transfer that have held philosophical and psychological interest, suggests a new range of questions of the same type, sheds light on similarities and differences between members of the family, and allows us to formulate a much-augmented set of principles and questions concerning the intermodal transfer of spatiotemporal organization. (shrink)

This text proposes an analysis of the phenomenon of faith in the tradition and spirituality of the Eastern Church. Starting from the relationship between phenomenology and theology, the article uses a theo-phenomenological method to depict the phenomenon of faith both theologically and phenomenologically. This article also argues that non-religious faith—either natural or philosophical—is the foundation of religious faith. According to Orthodox spirituality, faith is not reduced to a set of theoretical teachings and dogmas; they constitute only the first type of (...) faith, “simple faith”. At the same time, faith is also a form of experience, which has ascetical, ethical, and mystical dimensions; they characterize the second type of faith, faith as contemplative sight and knowledge. (shrink)

In this essay I seek to critically evaluate some forms of holism and organicism in biological thought, as a more deflationary echo to Gilbert and Sarkar's reflection on the need for an 'umbrella' concept to convey the new vitality of holistic concepts in biology (Gilbert and Sarkar 2000). Given that some recent discussions in theoretical biology call for an organism concept (from Moreno and Mossio’s work on organization to Kirschner et al.’s research paper in Cell, 2000, building on chemistry to (...) articulate what they called “molecular vitalism,” studying the “vitalistic” properties of molecular, cellular, and organismal function, and Pepper and Herron’s suggestion in their 2008 paper that organisms define a category that evolutionary biology cannot do without), the question, what concept of organicism are they calling for? To what extent are such claims philosophically committed to a non-naturalistic concept of organism as organizing centre, as a foundational rather than heuristic concept – or possibly a “biochauvinism,” to use Di Paolo’s term (Di Paolo 2009)? My aim in this paper is to conceptually clarify the forms of holism and organicism that are involved in these cases (and I acknowledge that the study of early 20th-century holisms [Peterson 2010] indicates that not all of them were in fact ‘organicist’ or ‘biologistic’). I suggest that contemporary holists are still potentially beholden to a certain kind of vitalism or “biochauvinism”; but that when they reduce their claims to mere heuristics, conversely, they risk losing sight of a certain kind of organizational “thickness”, a “vital materiality” (Wheeler 2010) which is characteristic of biological systems (Bechtel 2007). And I ask if it is possible to articulate a concept of biological holism or organicism which is neither an empirical ‘biochauvinism’ nor a metaphysical ‘vitalism’? (shrink)

Schwenkler (2012) criticizes a 2011 experiment by R. Held and colleagues purporting to answer Molyneux’s question. Schwenkler proposes two ways to re-run the original experiment: either by allowing subjects to move around the stimuli, or by simplifying the stimuli to planar objects rather than three-dimensional ones. In Schwenkler (2013) he expands on and defends the former. I argue that this way of re-running the experiment is flawed, since it relies on a questionable assumption that newly sighted subjects will be able (...) to appreciate depth cues. I then argue that the second way of re-running the experiment is successful both in avoiding the flaw of original Held experiment, and in avoiding the problem with the first way of re-running the experiment. (shrink)

What is uncertainty? There are of course several possible definitions, offered by different fields, from epistemology to statistics, but, in the background, one usually finds some kind of relation with the lack of information, in the following sense. Suppose we define semantic or factual information as the combination of a question plus the relevant, correct answer. If one has both the question and the correct answer, one is informed: “was Berlin the capital of Germany in 2010? Yes”. If one has (...) the question but the incorrect answer, one is insipient. If one has neither, one is ignorant. And if one has only the question but not the answer, then one is uncertain. Uncertainty is what a correct answer to a relevant question erases. This is why, in information theory, the value of information is often discussed in terms of the amount of uncertainty that it decreases. And this is also why there are many things in life that we value, but uncertainty is not usually one of them. At first sight, .. (shrink)

How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we (...) care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest. (shrink)

According to ‘Strong Composition as Identity’, if an entity is composed of a plurality of entities, it is identical to them. As it has been argued in the literature, SCAI appears to give rise to some serious problems which seem to suggest that SCAI-theorists should take their plural quantifier to be governed by some ‘weak’ plural comprehension principle and, thus, ‘exclude’ some kinds of pluralities from their plural ontology. The aim of this paper is to argue that, contrary to what (...) may appear at first sight, the assumption of a weak plural comprehension principle is perfectly compatible with plural logic and the common uses of plural quantification. As I aim to show, SCAI-theorists can simply claim that their theory must be understood as formulated by means of the most ‘joint-carving’ plural quantifier, thus leaving open the possibility of other, less joint-carving, ‘unrestricted’ plural quantifiers. In the final part of the paper I will also suggest that SCAI-theorists should not only allow for singular quantification over pluralities of entities, but also for plural quantification over ‘super-pluralities’ of entities. (shrink)

At first glance there seem to be many similarities between Thomas S. Kuhn’s and Ludwik Fleck’s accounts of the development of scientific knowledge. Notably, both pay attention to the role played by the scientific community in the development of scientific knowledge. But putting first impressions aside, one can criticise some philosophers for being too hasty in their attempt to find supposed similarities in the works of the two men. Having acknowledged that Fleck anticipated some of Kuhn’s later theses, there seems (...) to be a temptation in more recent research to equate both theories in important respects. Because of this approach, one has to deal with the problem of comparing the most notable technical terms of both philosophers, namely ‘‘thought style’’ and ‘‘paradigm’’. This paper aims at a more thorough comparison between Ludwik Fleck’s concept of thought style and Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm. Although some philosophers suggest that these two concepts are essentially equal in content, a closer examination reveals that this is not the case. This thesis of inequality will be defended in detail, also taking into account some of the alleged similarities which may be responsible for losing sight of the differences between these theories. (shrink)

Do spatial features appear the same whether they are perceived through vision or touch? This question is at stake in the puzzle that William Molyneux posed to John Locke, concerning whether a man born blind whose sight was restored would be able immediately to identify the shapes of the things he saw. A recent study purports to answer the question negatively, but I argue here that the subjects of the study likely could not see well enough for the result (...) to have been meaningful. I then propose a way to improve the study, by including cues from object motion. (shrink)

As the planet’s largest ecosystem, oceans stabilise climate, produce oxygen, store CO2 and host unfathomable biodiversity at a deep time-scale. In recent decades, scientific assessments have indicated that the oceans are seriously degraded to the detriment of most near-future societies. Human-induced impacts range from climate change, ocean acidification, loss of biodiversity, eutrophication and marine pollution to local degradation of marine and coastal environments. Such environmental violence takes form of both ‘spectacular’ events, like oil spills and ‘slow violence’, occurring gradually and (...) out of sight. The purpose of this paper is to show four cases of coastal and marine forms of slow violence and to provide counter-accounts of how to reinvent our consumer imaginary at such locations, as well as to develop what is here referred to as ‘low-trophic theory,’ a situated ethical stance that attends to entanglements of consumption, food, violence, environmental adaptability and more-than-human care from the co-existential perspective of multispecies ethics. We combine field-philosophical case studies with insights from marine science, environmental art and cultural practices in the Baltic and North Sea region and feminist posthumanities. The paper shows that the oceanic imaginary is not a unified place, but rather, a set of forces, which requires renewed ethical approaches, conceptual inventiveness and practical creativity. Based on the case studies and examples presented, the authors conclude that the consideration of more-than-human ethical perspectives, provided by environmental arts and humanities is crucial for both research on nature and space, and for the flourishing of local multispecies communities. This paper thus inaugurates thinking and practice along the proposed here ethical stance of low-trophic theory, developed it along the methodological lines of feminist environmental posthumanities. (shrink)

My aim here is to make sense of Plato's account of desire in the middle dialogues. To do that I need to unify or reconcile what are at first sight two quite different accounts: the doctrine of eros in the Symposium and the tripartite theory of motivation in the Republic. It may be that the two theories are after all irreconcilable, that Plato simply changed his mind on the nature of human desire after writing the Symposium and before composing (...) the Republic. But that conclusion can be justified only if attempts to reconcile the two theories end in failure. The attempt must be made first. (shrink)

A recent empirical study claims to show that the answer to Molyneux’s question is negative, but, as John Schwenkler points out, its findings are inconclusive: Subjects tested in this study probably lacked the visual acuity required for a fair assessment of the question. Schwenkler is undeterred. He argues that the study could be improved by lowering the visual demands placed on subjects, a suggestion later endorsed and developed by Kevin Connolly. I suggest that Connolly and Schwenkler both underestimate the difficulties (...) involved in rectifying the study they seek to fix. The problem is that the experimental paradigm under consideration fails to account for the role that rational inference plays in newly sighted subjects’ ability or inability to recognize spatial properties across modalities. Since answering Molyneux’s question requires establishing whether spatial properties can be recognized, across modalities, by newly sighted subjects without recourse to rational inference, this is a problem. Indeed, it is a problem that may be worsened by Schwenkler and Connolly’s suggestions regarding the lowering of visual demands on subjects in cross-modal matching tasks. (shrink)

The reports of individuals who have had their vision restored after a long period of blindness suggest that, immediately after regaining their vision, such individuals are not able to recognize shapes by vision alone. It is often assumed that the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the relationship between visual and tactile representations of shape. However, I maintain that, immediately after having their sight restored, at least some newly sighted individuals undergo visual experiences that (...) instantiate basic shape phenomenology but which do not present (that is, neither represent nor involve acquaintance with) the corresponding shape properties. Consequently, the empirical literature on sight restoration tells us something important about the role that perceptual phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties—it tells us that the properties presented by perceptual experiences are not determined by or “built into” perceptual phenomenology. In addition, I maintain that the evidence concerning sight restoration suggests an alternative theory concerning the role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of an object’s properties. Specifically, it suggests that, while not inherently representational, sensory phenomenal properties can serve as vehicles for the representation of an object’s properties. (shrink)

According to non-cognitivism, moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. This paper presents an empirical argument against this view. We begin by showing that non-cognitivism entails the prediction that after some reflection competent ordinary speakers’ semantic intuitions favor that moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. At first sight, this prediction may seem to have been confirmed by previous research on folk metaethics. However, a number of methodological (...) worries lead us to doubt this interpretation. We, therefore, conducted a psychological study that alleviates these worries as far as possible. It turned out that competent ordinary speakers’ reflective semantic intuitions dominantly fail to favor that moral sentences do not aim to represent how things morally are. This challenge to non-cognitivism is defended and supplemented by considering deflationary theories of moral truth and middle ground theories in the cognitivism/non-cognitivism debate. (shrink)

Some key political challenges today, e.g. climate change, are future oriented. The intergenerational setting differs in some notable ways from the intragenerational one, creating obstacles to theorizing about intergenerational justice. One concern is that as the circumstances of justice do not pertain intergenerationally, intergenerational justice is not meaningful. In this paper, I scrutinize this worry by analysing the presentations of the doctrine of the circumstances of justice by David Hume and John Rawls. I argue that we should accept the upshot (...) of their idea, that justice is context sensitive, even if this at first sight seems to invalidate intergenerational justice. On the basis of moral constructivism, I subsequently provide a fresh reading of the doctrine according to which it conveys the idea that justice is the solution to a practical problem. However, as the problem background is evolving, we need to properly characterize the relevant practical problem in order to make ethical theorizing relevant. Contrary to what has been claimed, the circumstances of justice do not then clash with intergenerational justice, but are the necessary presuppositions for its advancement. (shrink)

PURPOSE—A substantial fraction of the observations made by clinicians and entered into patient records are expressed by means of negation or by using terms which contain negative qualifiers (as in “absence of pulse” or “surgical procedure not performed”). This seems at first sight to present problems for ontologies, terminologies and data repositories that adhere to a realist view and thus reject any reference to putative non-existing entities. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Referent Tracking (RT) are examples of such paradigms. (...) The purpose of the research here described was to test a proposal to capture negative findings in electronic health record systems based on BFO and RT. METHODS—We analysed a series of negative findings encountered in 748 sentences taken from 41 patient charts. We classified the phenomena described in terms of the various top-level categories and relations defined in BFO, taking into account the role of negation in the corresponding descriptions. We also studied terms from SNOMED-CT containing one or other form of negation. We then explored ways to represent the described phenomena by means of the types of representational units available to realist ontologies such as BFO. RESULTS—We introduced a new family of ‘lacks’ relations into the OBO Relation Ontology. The relation lacks_part, for example, defined in terms of the positive relation part_of, holds between a particular p and a universal U when p has no instance of U as part. Since p and U both exist, assertions involving ‘lacks_part’ and its cognates meet the requirements of positivity. CONCLUSION—By expanding the OBO Relation Ontology, we were able to accommodate nearly all occurrences of negative findings in the sample studied. (shrink)

A reorientation is needed in methodological debate about the role of intuitions in philosophy. Methodological debate has lost sight of the reason why it makes sense to focus on questions about intuitions when thinking about the methods or epistemology of philosophy. The problem is an approach to methodology that focuses almost exclusively on questions about some evidential role that intuitions may or may not play in philosophers’ arguments. A new approach is needed. Approaching methodological questions about the role of (...) intuitions in philosophy with an abductive model of philosophical inquiry in mind will help ensure the debate doesn't lose sight of what motivates the debate. (shrink)

The purpose of cultural competence education for medical professionals is to ensure respectful care and reduce health disparities. Yet as Berger and Miller (2021) show, the cultural competence framework is dated, confused, and self-defeating. They argue that the framework ignores the primary driver of health disparities—systemic racism—and is apt to exacerbate rather than mitigate bias and ethnocentrism. They propose replacing cultural competence with a framework that attends to two social aspects of structural inequality: health and social policy, and institutional-system activity; (...) and two psychological aspects of structural inequality: the clinical encounter, and the epistemic. -/- We agree with the structural approach. To that end, we think it would be fruitful to include attention to physical contributors to structural inequality, namely the material artifacts used in medicine. Devices, tools, and technologies can materialize biases, perpetuate oppression, and contribute to health disparities. Granted, not everything that interests philosophers can be squeezed into medical education. Nevertheless, there are compelling reasons for including the study of material artifacts in education designed to reduce health disparities. First, devices and tools often carry forward biases from the past, and keep biases hidden from plain sight. Second, by studying these artifacts, future clinicians can begin to see themselves as part of a larger sociotechnical system. Finally, as medicine becomes increasingly tech-laden, it’s important for clinicians to see how material artifacts (including algorithms) connect individuals to structures. This will help to undermine oversimplified narratives according to which objective tools and technologies can correct for the bias and subjectivity of flawed human beings. (shrink)