Whereas decades of research have cataloged striking errors in physical reasoning, a resurgence of interest in intuitive physics has revealed humans’ remarkable ability to successfully predict the unfolding of physical scenes. A leading interpretation intended to resolve these opposing results is that physical reasoning recruits a general-purpose mechanism that reliably models physical scenarios (explaining recent successes), but overly contrived tasks or impoverished and ecologically invalid stimuli can produce poor performance (accounting for earlier failures). But might there be tasks that persistently (...) strain physical understanding, even in naturalistic contexts? Here, we explore this question by introducing a new intuitive physics task: evaluating the strength of knots and tangles. Knots are ubiquitous across cultures and time-periods, and evaluating them correctly often spells the difference between safety and peril. Despite this, 5 experiments show that observers fail to discern even very large differences in strength between knots. In a series of two-alternative forced-choice tasks, observers viewed a variety of simple “bends” (knots joining two pieces of thread) and decided which would require more force to undo. Though the strength of these knots is well-documented, observers’ judgments completely failed to reflect these distinctions, across naturalistic photographs (E1), idealized renderings (E2), dynamic videos (E3), and even when accompanied by schematic diagrams of the knots’ structures (E4). Moreover, these failures persisted despite accurate identification of the topological differences between the knots (E5); in other words, even when observers correctly perceived the underlying structure of the knot, they failed to correctly judge its strength. These results expose a blindspot in physical reasoning, placing new constraints on general-purpose theories of scene understanding. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have a tendency to forget that they are human beings, and one of the reasons that P. F. Strawson’s 1962 essay, “Freedom and Resentment”, has been so influential is that it promises to bring discussions of moral responsibility back down to earth. Strawson encouraged us to “keep before our minds...what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary interpersonal relationships”, which is, after all, the context in which questions about responsibility arise in the first place. In this (...) essay I explore what we can learn about ordinary interpersonal relationships from three works of literature – Shakespeare’s King Lear, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. My intention is to try to heed Strawson’s advice without imposing upon the data any particular theoretical agenda, and my hope is that the data collected will prove useful for future theorizing about responsibility. (shrink)

This commentary (1) raises the question about the possible conflation of core affect with the neural representation of interoceptive changes in regard to whether biological value is subpersonal or must be experienced, and (2) proposes that Wundt’s third dimension of core affect – strain-relaxation – can be accounted for in the target model under a generalised predictive model of attention.

In this paper I try to illuminate the Rawlsian architectonic through an interpretation of what Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy say about Rousseau. I argue that Rawls’ emphasis there when discussing Rousseau on interpreting amour-propre so as to make it compatible with a life in at least some societies draws attention to, and helps explicate, an analogous feature of his own work, the strains of commitment broadly conceived. Both are centrally connected with protecting a sense of (...) self which is vital for one’s own agency. This allows us to appreciate better than much of the literature presently does the requirement for Rawls that justice and the good are congruent, that a society of justice does not disfigure citizens’ ability to live out lives relatively unmarked by relations of domination. Some comments on G. A. Cohen’s critiques of Rawls are made. (shrink)

U ovom tekstu ćemo istražiti na koji način i na kojoj osnovi je ideja napredovanja doživela svoju transformaciju u neoplatonizmu i hrišćanskoj teologiji. Pokazaćemo da se elementi ove ideje javljaju kod Plotina i pojedinih patrističkih autora, ali da je konačno uobličenje i razradu doživela prvenstveno u delu svetog Grigorija Niskog, koji je priznat kao najzaslužniji za njeno postuliranje.

This paper uses virtue ethics to discuss the COVID-19 outbreak, Hollywood science-fiction/pandemic films, and the environmental crisis. We outline the ideas of hubris and nemesis and argue that responding to the COVID-19 pandemic requires that we develop virtues. We will explore these ethical issues through an eco-reading (Hiltner 2018) of two popular films cinematic representation of pandemics, The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Contagion (2011). Fictional narratives are particularly adept at celebrating the moral and intellectual virtues of individuals (as is standard (...) in Hollywood cinema) and dramatizing the tensions inherent in human scientific and technological civilisation. Using examples from our texts and with reference to COVID-19, we begin with a discussion of virtues and vices, both individual and collective, we then explore the concept of flourishing and apply this framework to collective action problems such as climate change and COVID-19. Thus, science fiction can provoke new forms of environmental philosophising and ethical engagement, while addressing the most important challenges facing humanity at present. (shrink)

This paper examines the notion of the biopolitical body from the standpoint of Foucault’s logic of the security mechanism and the history he tells of vaccine technology. It then investigates how the increasing importance of the genetic code for determining the meaning and limits of the human in the field of 20th century cell biology has been a cause for ongoing transformation in the practices that currently extend vaccine research and development. I argue that these transformations mark the emergence of (...) a new kind of medical subject – the stabilized and infinitely reproducible human cell line – and that the practices and markets exploiting this new form of organism have had a destabilizing effect on the very biopolitical structures that engendered them and, in fact, mark a new way of conceiving the possibilities of cellular life. I call these new ways of organizing power that intervene in the logic of the security measure by mediating the relationship between populations and persons the microbiopolitical. (shrink)

Multiple drug resistant strains of HIV and continuing difficulties with vaccine development highlight the importance of psychologi- cal interventions which aim to in uence the psychosocial and emo- tional factors empirically demonstrated to be significant predictors of immunity, illness progression and AIDS mortality in seropositive persons. Such data have profound implications for psychological interventions designed to modify psychosocial factors predictive of enhanced risk of exposure to HIV as well as the neuroendocrine and immune mechanisms mediating the impact of such (...) factors on disease progression. Many of these factors can be construed as unconscious mental ones, and psychoanalytic self-psychology may be a useful framework for conceptualizing psychic and immune de- fence as well as bodily and self-integration in HIV infection. Al- though further prospective studies and cross-cultural validation of research are necessary, existing data suggest that psychoanalytic insights may be useful both in therapeutic interventions and evaluative research which would require an underlying epistemology of the complementarity of mind and matter. (shrink)

At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, two policy aims are imperative: avoiding the need for a general lockdown of the population, with all its economic, social and health costs, and preventing the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by the unchecked spread of infection. Achieving these two aims requires the consideration of unpalatable measures. Julian Savulescu and James Cameron argue that mandatory isolation of the elderly is justified under these circumstances, as they are at increased risk of becoming severely ill (...) from COVID-19, and are thus likely to put disproportionate strain on limited healthcare resources. However, their arguments for this strategy are contingent on the lack of viable alternatives. We suggest that there is a possible alternative: a mandatory, centralised contact-tracing app. We argue that this strategy is ethically preferable to the selective isolation of the elderly, because it does not target members of a certain group, relying instead on the movements of each individual, and because it avoids the extended isolation of certain members of the society. Although this type of contact-tracing app has its drawbacks, we contend that this measure warrants serious consideration. (shrink)

The essential difficulty about Computer Ethics' (CE) philosophical status is a methodological problem: standard ethical theories cannot easily be adapted to deal with CE-problems, which appear to strain their conceptual resources, and CE requires a conceptual foundation as an ethical theory. Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical foundational counterpart of CE, can be seen as a particular case of environmental ethics or ethics of the infosphere. What is good for an information entity and the infosphere in general? This is the ethical (...) question asked by IE. The answer is provided by a minimalist theory of deseerts: IE argues that there is something more elementary and fundamental than life and pain, namely being, understood as information, and entropy, and that any information entity is to be recognised as the centre of a minimal moral claim, which deserves recognition and should help to regulate the implementation of any information process involving it. IE can provide a valuable perspective from which to approach, with insight and adequate discernment, not only moral problems in CE, but also the whole range of conceptual and moral phenomena that form the ethical discourse. (shrink)

In psychology, stress is a feeling of emotional strain and pressure. Stress is a type of psychological pain. Small amounts of stress may be beneficial, as it can improve athletic performance, motivation and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however, can increase the risk of strokes, heart attacks, ulcers, and mental illnesses such as depression and also aggravation of a pre-existing condition. Psychological stress can be external and related to the environment but may also be caused by internal (...) perceptions that cause an individual to experience anxiety or other negative emotions surrounding a situation, such as pressure, discomfort, etc., which they then deem stressful. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, there have been many attempts to bring together Critical Theory of Frankfurtian strain and French theories generally referred to as poststructuralist. The present text seeks to readdress the problem of their tricky articulation by taking a look at some vicissitudes those two currents of thought underwent in Brazil. In addition to the risk – embedded in the Parisian passion for dissolution – of positivizing atrocious aspects of Brazilian society related to the country’s multi-secular informality and backwardness, what (...) is at stake is the adequate understanding of the meaning and relevance of dialectical criticism in a peripheral country, in other words, the capacity to weigh the influx and gravitation of foreign ideas and forms in a society of inorganic culture, the possibility, finally, of critically verifying the supposed universality of hegemonic theories and categories in light of a cultural experience amassed under a heterodox modernization. (shrink)

Tesón's “humanitarian rationales” for the war in Iraq strain the traditional understanding of humanitarian intervention: The first, that the war was fought to overthrow a tyrant. The second, that it was a defense strategy establishing democratic regimes peacefully, but by force if necessary.

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, proponents of digital psychiatry were touting the promise of various digital tools and techniques to revolutionize mental healthcare. As social distancing and its knock-on effects have strained existing mental health infrastructures, calls have grown louder for implementing various digital mental health solutions at scale. Decisions made today will shape the future of mental healthcare for the foreseeable future. We argue that bioethicists are uniquely positioned to cut through the hype surrounding digital mental health, which can (...) obscure crucial ethical and epistemic gaps that ought to be considered by policymakers before committing to a digital psychiatric future. Here, we describe four such gaps: The evidence gap, the inequality gap, the prediction-intervention gap, and the safety gap. (shrink)

We can illustrate the phenomenon of model-induced escape by examining the phenomenon of spam filters. Spam filter A is, we can assume, very effective at blocking spam. Indeed it is so effective that it motivates the authors of spam to invent new types of spam that will beat the filters of spam filter A. -/- An example of this phenomenon in the realm of philosophy is illustrated in the work of Nyíri on Wittgenstein's political beliefs. Nyíri writes a paper demonstrating (...) convincingly that there are strong signals of a conservative strain of thought in the writings of Wittgenstein. This has initially a tiny effect; but then a more significant effect sets in as the authors of Wittgenstein secondary literature, consciously or unconsciously, draw attention to features of Wittgenstein which cast the conservatism thesis in a negative light. This is an example of what I call model-induced escape: the Nyíri model of Wittgenstein initiates a process which undermines the Nyíri model of Wittgenstein. -/- Wittgenstein, as obiectum philosophiae, is reduced to a constantly mutating set of interpretations of a certain body of work. -/- Perhaps this is what makes philosophy so problematic when viewed from the perspective of results, or in other words of signs of progress commonly accepted across the discipline. There are just too many ways of inducing escape from any given putative discovery; too many dimensions along which an interpretative or definitional arms race can be triggered. (shrink)

In this article, we propose the Fair Priority Model for COVID-19 vaccine distribution, and emphasize three fundamental values we believe should be considered when distributing a COVID-19 vaccine among countries: Benefiting people and limiting harm, prioritizing the disadvantaged, and equal moral concern for all individuals. The Priority Model addresses these values by focusing on mitigating three types of harms caused by COVID-19: death and permanent organ damage, indirect health consequences, such as health care system strain and stress, as well as (...) economic destruction. It proposes proceeding in three phases: the first addresses premature death, the second long-term health issues and economic harms, and the third aims to contain viral transmission fully and restore pre-pandemic activity. -/- To those who may deem an ethical framework irrelevant because of the belief that many countries will pursue "vaccine nationalism," we argue such a framework still has broad relevance. Reasonable national partiality would permit countries to focus on vaccine distribution within their borders up until the rate of transmission is below 1, at which point there would not be sufficient vaccine-preventable harm to justify retaining a vaccine. When a government reaches the limit of national partiality, it should release vaccines for other countries. -/- We also argue against two other recent proposals. Distributing a vaccine proportional to a country's population mistakenly assumes that equality requires treating differently situated countries identically. Prioritizing countries according to the number of front-line health care workers, the proportion of the population over 65, and the number of people with comorbidities within each country may exacerbate disadvantage and end up giving the vaccine in large part to wealthy nations. (shrink)

According to ‘orthodox’ epistemology, it has recently been said, whether or not a true belief amounts to knowledge depends exclusively on truth-related factors: for example, on whether the true belief was formed in a reliable way, or was supported by good evidence, and so on. Jason Stanley refers to this as the ‘intellectualist’ component of orthodox epistemology, and Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath describe it as orthodox epistemology’s commitment to a ‘purely epistemic’ account of knowledge — that is, an account (...) of knowledge where only truth-related factors figure in whether or not a person knows. In the first part of this paper I try to clarify the intellectualist thesis and to distinguish what I take to be its two main strains. In the remainder of the paper I then take a more critical turn and argue that even if, as a matter of fact, traditional epistemology has endorsed intellectualism in both of its strains, this is a mistake on the part of the tradition. At least one way of understanding intellectualism should be rejected and its practicalist counterpart should be accepted instead. (shrink)

Staphylococcus aureus ST45 is a major global MRSA lineage with huge strain diversity and a high clinical impact. It is one of the most prevalent carrier lineages but also frequently causes severe invasive disease, such as bacteremia. Little is known about its evolutionary history. In this study, we used whole-genome sequencing to analyze a large collection of 451 diverse ST45 isolates from 6 continents and 26 countries. De novo-assembled genomes were used to understand genomic plasticity and to perform coalescent analyses. (...) The ST45 population contained two distinct sublineages, which correlated with the isolates’ geographical origins. One sublineage primarily consisted of European/North American isolates, while the second sublineage primarily consisted of African and Australian isolates. Bayesian analysis predicted ST45 originated in northwestern Europe about 500 years ago. Isolation time, host, and clinical symptoms did not correlate with phylogenetic groups. Our phylogenetic analyses suggest multiple acquisitions of the SCCmec element and key virulence factors throughout the evolution of the ST45 lineage. (shrink)

Definitions of animal welfare often invoke consciousness or sentience. Marian Stamp Dawkins has argued that to define animal welfare this way is a mistake. In Dawkins’s alternative view, an animal with good welfare is one that is healthy and “has what it wants.” The dispute highlights a source of strain on the concept of animal welfare: consciousness-involving definitions are better able to capture the normative significance of welfare, whereas consciousness-free definitions facilitate the validation of welfare indicators. I reflect on how (...) the field should respond to this strain, ultimately recommending against splitting the concept and in favor of consciousness-involving definitions. (shrink)

Standard accounts of civil disobedience include nonviolence as a necessary condition. Here I argue that such accounts are mistaken and that civil disobedience can include violence in many aspects, primarily excepting violence directed at other persons. I base this argument on a novel understanding of civil disobedience: the special character of the practice comes from its combination of condemnation of a political practice with an expressed commitment to the political. The commitment to the political is a commitment to engaging with (...) others as co-members in the on-going political project of living together. I show how such an understanding of civil disobedience is superior to the Rawlsian strain of thought, which focuses on fidelity to law. Rawls was concerned with civil disobedience solely in the context of overriding political obligation. The project of characterizing a contestatory political practice that can be distinguished and used in a wider variety of contexts than Rawls is concerned with, including under illegitimate regimes, beyond the nation-state, or on behalf of anarchism, requires a different understanding of civil disobedience. (shrink)

This article discusses the triage response to the COVID-19 delta variant surge of 2021. One issue that distinguishes the delta wave from earlier surges is that by the time it became the predominant strain in the USA in July 2021, safe and effective vaccines against COVID-19 had been available for all US adults for several months. We consider whether healthcare professionals and triage committees would have been justified in prioritising patients with COVID-19 who are vaccinated above those who are unvaccinated (...) in first-order or second-order triage. Given that lack of evidence for a correlation between short-term survival and vaccination, we argue that using vaccination status during first-order triage would be inconsistent with accepted triage standards. We then turn to notions of procedural fairness, equity and desert to argue that that there is also a lack of justification for using vaccination status in second-order triage. In planning for future surges, we recommend that medical institutions base their triage decisions on principles meant to save the most lives, minimise inequity and protect the public’s trust, which for the time being would not be served by the inclusion of vaccination status. (shrink)

We argue that political propaganda is a negative phenomenon, against a recent strain of philosophical theorizing that argues that political propaganda can sometimes be neutral or even positive. After an exploration of the sense and connotation of the word ‘propaganda’ in ordinary use and in the scholarly literature, we discuss Ross’s (2002) account of propaganda as an epistemically defective form of political communication. We claim that, with some refinements, it is an explanatorily useful analysis. We then assess two prominent attempts (...) that aim at classifying legitimate cases of public communication as cases of propaganda, namely Ross’s (2013) revision of her previous model, and Stanley’s (2015) influential account. We show that some of the cases in contention are problematic and that the arguments the authors offer for classifying other non-problematic cases as propaganda are inconclusive. We also argue that the idea of considering legitimate public communication as propaganda is unmotivated. (shrink)

Common mental health disorders are rising globally, creating a strain on public healthcare systems. This has led to a renewed interest in the role that digital technologies may have for improving mental health outcomes. One result of this interest is the development and use of artificial intelligence for assessing, diagnosing, and treating mental health issues, which we refer to as ‘digital psychiatry’. This article focuses on the increasing use of digital psychiatry outside of clinical settings, in the following sectors: education, (...) employment, financial services, social media, and the digital well-being industry. We analyse the ethical risks of deploying digital psychiatry in these sectors, emphasising key problems and opportunities for public health, and offer recommendations for protecting and promoting public health and well-being in information societies. (shrink)

Introduction. The book is a study in Adam Smith's system of ideas; its aim is to reconstruct the peculiar framework that Adam Smith’s work provided for the shaping of a semi-autonomous new discipline, political economy; the approach adopted lies somewhere in-between the history of ideas and the history of economic analysis. My two claims are: i) The Wealth of Nations has a twofold structure, including a `natural history' of opulence and an `imaginary machine' of wealth. The imaginary machine is a (...) kind of Newtonian theory, whose connecting links are principles; provided either by `partial' characteristics of human nature or by analoga of physical mechanisms transferred to the social world; ii) a domain of the economic, understood as a self-standing social sub-system, was discovered first by Adam Smith. His `discovery' of the new continent of the economic was an `unintended result' of a deviation in his voyage to the never-found archipelago of natural jurisprudence. -/- 1. Imaginary machines and invisible chains: natural philosophy and method. The first chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in natural philosophy, presented primarily in the History of Astronomy (HA). The peculiar kind of semi-sceptical Newtonianism which permeates the essay is highlighted. Its reconstruction of the history of one natural science is shown to be based on the assumptions of Hume’s epistemology, and to lead to a self-aware deadlock. Smith's dilemma is between an essentialist realism and sceptical instrumentalism; the Cartesian presuppositions he shares with Hume and with the 18th century as a whole make it impossible for him to overcome his dilemma. The following chapters will show how, on the one hand, Smith's skeptical methodology encourages him in the enterprise to `carve off' a new self-contained discipline and how, on the other hand, his epistemological dilemma is reflected in the inner tensions of his moral and political theory as well as in a number of basic oscillations concerning the status of the new discipline. -/- 2. Chessboards and clocks: moral philosophy and method. -/- The second chapter reconstructs Smith's views on the method in the parallel field of moral philosophy, including the theory of moral sentiments and natural jurisprudence. I argue that The Theory of Moral Sentiments, when considered together with with the Lectures on Jurisprudence, where Smith's peculiar version of a `weaker' form of natural law is presented, wins special interest, not only for the history of ethics but even more for the history of political theory and the social sciences. The two most striking features of Smith's work in this area are highlighted. First, his effort at reformulating the `practical science' is a methodologically self-aware attempt at applying the Newtonian method to moral subjects. Secondly, this attempt ends in a stalemate as two distinguished kinds of normative order are introduced: one ultimate order of Reason, ultimately justifiable but inaccessible, and one weaker order of our `natural sentiments', to which we have empirical access, but which is so variable as to lack any ultimate value as a basis for grounding our normative claims. These two parallel conundrums may arguably account for the author's inability to publish during his lifetime both The History of Astronomy and the projected history and theory of law and government. -/- 3. Wheels, dams, and gravitation: the structure of scientific argument in The Wealth of Nations. -/- The third chapter provides the core of the book, dealing with the structure of the argument in WN. I argue that the main presupposition that makes the shift possible from a `natural history' to a `system' approach is the Newtonian contrast of `mathematical' with `physical' explanation; that is, Smith drops any discussion of the "original qualities" of human nature that could account for economic behaviour, while introducing, as `principles' for the system, a set of `hypothetical' statements of `observed' regularities in human behaviour and of `observed' super-individual self-regulating mechanisms. In bringing this presupposition to light, the coexistence of a teleological with a mechanistic approach is clarified; fresh light is shed on the notion of the invisible hand by a comparison of its occurrence in Smith with the occurrence of the same expression (until now overlooked) in the correspondence between Newton and Cotes. Finally, the peculiar semi-prescriptive and semi-descriptive character of political economy are highlighted, and the consistency of Smith's `impure' semi-prescriptive social science, when understood in his own terms, is defended against familiar charges with inconsistency and against even more familiar strained modernizations. -/- 4. Apples, deer, and frivolous trinkets: the construction of the economic. -/- The fourth chapter draws consequences from the third, examining how Smith's achievement in political economy, marking its transition to scientific status, carried a re-description of the phenomena, creating the comparatively independent and unified field of the economic. Smith's achievement is interpreted not as the `discovery' of an autonomous character already possessed by the economy out there, so much as a Gestalt-switch by which our perception of social phenomena is modified making us `see' the partial order of the economy as an isolated system. To sum up, the autonomy of the economic in social reality and the autonomy of the economic in social consciousness are shown to be two sides of one process. -/- 5. Concluding considerations: Political economy and the Enlightenment halved. -/- A few suggestions on the status of economic theory two centuries after The Wealth of Nations in its relationship to ‘practical philosophy’ are illustrated. (shrink)

There has been a surge of interest over cases where a subject sincerely endorses P while displaying discordant strains of not-P in her behaviour and emotion. Cases like this are telling because they bear directly upon conditions under which belief should be ascribed. Are beliefs to be aligned with what we sincerely endorse or with what we do and feel? If belief doesn’t explain the discordant strains, what does? T.S. Gendler has recently attempted to explain all the discordances (...) by introducing a controversial new cognitive category—associative clusters called ‘alief’. Others think that belief explains all the discordancy cases, while others argue that in-between belief does the trick, and so on. Most advocates of the different positions, indeed, assume that their favoured analysis will explain the whole range of discordancy cases. This paper defends what I call the ‘contextual view’, where I argue that overturning this assumption of uniformity leads to more nuanced account of belief-ascription. On the contextual view, which analysis applies to which case depends on the discordancy case at hand. Perhaps a height-phobic stepping on a glass platform deserves different treatment to a hesitant stepper. I ground the contextual view in a biologically functional account of the alief/belief distinction, which construes alief as a real cognitive category but without the explanatory reach Gendler gives it. This functional distinction yields a principled strategy for determining the correct application of analysis to discordancy case. (shrink)

In the present article, we are faced with two phenomenological philosophers who, in two different intellectual traditions, namely philosophical hermeneutics and moral phenomenology, have referred to the concept of the Other as the fundamental possibility of the individual. The other, as an ontological and common concept in the thought of Gadamer and Levinas, is the turning point of the condition for the possibility of understanding and ethics. Focusing on the concept of the other, while addressing the points of difference and (...) commonality between Gadamer and Levinas, this article will show that Levinas’s preoccupation with the other as a philosopher refers to the foundations of ethics, and the condition for the possibility of foundations of ethics is encountering the other. In Gadamer, the turning point is the determination of the possibilities of understanding in dialectical and dialogue-oriented relationships. Without the other, in Levinas’s thought, ethics, and moral matter, and in Gadamer’s thought, the process of understanding will not occur in the form of a fusion of horizons. Therefore, this article shows that the other is a common concept between these two philosophers, which both of them cannot avoid in their philosophical analyses of ethics or the process of understanding. Introduction The analysis of ethics is one of the important and innovative achievements of Levinas’s philosophical intellectual structure. Levinas’s concern is to refer to the foundations of morality itself, regardless of institutionalizing the moral in the form of law, and the foundation of morality is in face-to-face relationships with others. Regardless of Levinas’s plan about the concept of the other, Gadamer imagines the determination of understanding in a new way in the face of the other. The other is the comprehensible strain in philosophical hermeneutics, in such a way that the process of understanding is formed by the presence of the other and the face-to-face encounter with it. According to Gadamer, the other is the factor of openness in the process of understanding. The fusion of horizons is the product of openness and mutual encounters in dialogue, which is not possible without the other. The other is the condition of determining the possibility of understanding in each of the parties who are allowed to reveal a part of their being and allow the other to open up and talk. In fact, understanding is a kind of event that is revealed in a two-way conversation in an event-like way. This type of understanding depends on the presence of another. The main focus of the research is the analysis of the concept of the other, which has been done with emphasis on two important works: Truth and method, Totality and infinity. Body & discussion In general, the process of understanding is a dialogical process, whether the other side of the conversation is a text or a person, the foundation of understanding is formed in a relationship with the other. Determining the other as an independent personality and a different perspective is an ontological determination. The other thinks and becomes meaningful beyond the subject or object and even beyond my intellectual position, it belongs to its own independent world and its own experience. In conversation, it plays a significant role in the production of truth. Openness provides the possibility of dialogue and mutual agreement. In dialogue, the final product is not reproduced. The other condition for the production of the final product is dialogue According to Gadamer, facing the other is facing his world. At the moment of facing me, the other makes his abstract aspects concrete and opens his lived experience to me. He believes that the question-and-answer process is a kind of encounter with the world of experience and openness toward it. According to Gadamer, the process of understanding is the result of dialectical-hermeneutic relations between me (the interpreter) and you (the other). The dialogical relationships that allow each other to enter the other’s history are relationships that are formed based on questions and answers. From Gadamer’s point of view, questions and answers are the opening of a new horizon based on tradition and contemporary history. Levinas phenomenologically refers to the philosophical tradition of the West to reread the process of the formation of the concept of the other. Many commentators and interpreters of Levinas’s works believe that it is possible to determine the foundations of ethics from Levinas’s point of view from face-to-face relationships. The condition for the possibility of morality is to pay attention to others. To describe another concept, Levinas analyzes the negative and positive aspects of this concept. In a negative way, Levinas first answers what the other is not, and for this reason, he criticizes the history of Western metaphysics and the criticism of Husserl and Heidegger’s phenomenology. Positively, the other is relative to me and different from me. The other is beyond subject and object. The other is not subjugated by any concept and recognizes its independent identity. The other and the encounter with him are the conditions for determining fundamental ethics from Levinas’s point of view. Another condition of concreteness refers to another person. According to Levinas, it is the condition for the formation of moral form. He believes that ethics is a kind of double encounter in the context of bilateral relations. Many moral concepts are formed in relation to a concrete other. In Levinas’s genealogy of ethics, we are faced with the presence of the other in a concrete way and with the subjectivity of the subject in an abstract and a priori way. Levinas specifies two approaches with the description of the other in the form of an infinite idea. First of all, there is an infinite gap between the other and the same. This issue shows its foreignness and otherness, its independence, and being true to its essence towards me. Second, it is the determination of another in a concrete or abstract form, which in both cases evokes an identity independent of me. Conclusion According to the explanations of the concept of the other in the thought of Gadamer and Levinas, we are faced with two phenomenological philosophers who have paid attention to the ontological aspects of the concept of the other in the fields of philosophical hermeneutics and ethics. In Gadamer’s thought, the other is an ontologically dialectical relationship between I-Thou and the starting point of the conversation process. The fusion of horizons is the turning point of the formation of the relation to the other, which is manifested in another area. The other has its own history, world, tradition, and authority, regardless of the formation of dialogical relationships, and has an independent identity. The other is allowed to share his lived experience in the conversation. The other creates new worlds. The other has opened himself and in return can be self-interpreting and self-revealing. Regardless, the other is the consistency of the complex relationship between language and the world. This form of bilateral relations, which is manifested in the presence of another, is a linguistic form that is the cause of a deep connection between language and the world. The other, whether concrete or abstract, is the turning point of our connection with the world in an ontological way. Regardless of Gadamer’s point of view, Levinas returns to another concept in his new thought project entitled “How to determine the possibilities of ethics.” According to Levinas, finding the foundations of ethics and determining the condition of moral possibilities is in facing the other and in face-to-face relationships. The other is concretely a kind of bilateral encounter which is the basis of many moral events and is manifested abstractly in the form of the subject’s subjectivity. This kind of infinite aspect of the other is revealed in subjectivity is implied in sense. Encountering another in an abstract form within itself is the encounter of the subject’s subjectivity with the sense, and the sense is in the encounter with the other. Sense is the basis of the subjectivity of the subject. Sense is a kind of concrete and visual face-to-face encounter that adds to the importance of determining another. Therefore, both Gadamer and Levinas raise many possibilities about the concept of the other, which shows the importance of this concept in the Western philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, market capitalism was defended on parallel grounds. First, it promotes freedom by enabling individuals to exploit their own property and labor-power; second, it facilitates an efficient allocation and use of resources. Recently, however, both defenses have begun to unravel—as capitalism has moved into its “platform” phase. Today, the pursuit of allocative efficiency, bolstered by pervasive data surveillance, often undermines individual freedom rather than promoting it. And more fundamentally, the very idea that markets are necessary to achieve (...) allocative efficiency has come under strain. Even supposing, for argument’s sake, that the claim was true in the early 20th century when von Mises and Hayek pioneered it, advances in computing have rekindled the old “socialist calculation” debate. And this time around, markets—as information technology—are unlikely to have the upper hand. -/- All of this, we argue, raises an important set of governance questions regarding the political economy of the future. We focus on two: How much should our economic system prioritize freedom, and to what extent should it rely on markets? The arc of platform capitalism bends, increasingly, toward a system that neither prioritizes freedom nor relies on markets. And the dominant critical response, exemplified by Shoshana Zuboff’s work, has been to call for a restoration of market capitalism. Longer term, however, we believe it would be more productive to think about how “postmarket” economic arrangements might promote freedom—or better yet, autonomy—even more effectively than markets, and to determine the practical steps necessary to realize that possibility. (shrink)

In this paper I elaborate on previous criticisms of the influential Stalnakerian account of presuppositions, pointing out that the well-known practice of informative presupposition puts heavy strain on Stalnaker’s pragmatic characterization of the phenomenon of presupposition, in particular of the triggering of presuppositions. Stalnaker has replied to previous criticisms by relying on the well-taken point that we should take into account the time at which presupposition-requirements are to be computed. In defense of a different, ‘semantic’ account of the phenomenon of (...) presupposition, I argue that that point does not suffice to rescue the Stalnakerian proposal, and I portray Lewisian ‘accommodation’ as one way in which speakers adjust themselves to one another in the course of conversation. (shrink)

This paper argues that treating James' "The Will to Believe" as a defense of prudential reasoning about belief seriously misrepresents it. Rather than being a precursor to current defenses of prudential arguments, James paper has, if anything, more affinities to certain prominent strains in contemporary naturalized epistemology.

Robinson Jeffers’ dark view of humankind is thought to owe much to Friedrich Nietzsche while his admiration for the beauty of nature has been compared to sentiments expressed by Lucretius in de rerum natura. In many respects, however, the philosopher who stands closest to Jeffers in both thought and personality is the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus of Ephesus. Jeffers’ extended poem ‘The Double Axe’ makes no fewer than five clear references to Heraclitean ideas: (1) ‘Heraclitus’ Sibyl whose voice reached over (...) ten thousand years’; (2) the opposites ‘winter and summer…rain the drought, and peace and war; (3) ‘the eternal fire-wheel; (4) ‘One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea’s cold flow/And man’s dark soul; and (5) ‘This divine outer universe is after all not at peace with itself, but full of violent strains and conflicts. The physical world is ruled by opposing tensions.’ -/- . (shrink)

Microalgae in the wild often form consortia with other species promoting their own health and resource foraging opportunities. The recent application of microalgae cultivation and deployment in commercial photobioreactors (PBR) so far has focussed on single species of algae, resulting in multi-species consortia being largely unexplored. Reviewing the current status of PBR ecological habitat, this article argues in favor of further investigation into algal communication with conspecifics and interspecifics, including other strains of microalgae and bacteria. These mutualistic species form (...) the ‘phycosphere’: the micro-environment surrounding microalgal cells, potentiating the production of certain metabolites through biochemical interaction with cohabitating microorganisms. A better understanding of the phycosphere could lead to novel PBR configurations, capable of incorporating algal-microbial consortia, potentially proving more effective than single-species algal systems. (shrink)

This paper analyzes two episodes of Foucault’s reading(s) of Hume’s philosophy. In both cases Hume is important to Foucault’s overall argument and aims. In particular, in both Foucault takes a fairly conventional philosophical description of Hume -- as a ‘skeptic’ and ‘empiricist’ -- for granted and shows that these disguise a world-historical significance. In section 1, the paper explores Hume's role in Foucault’s (1966) *The Order of Things*. The paper argues Hume stands in for the hidden role of similarity in (...) the human sciences of the so-called ‘classical period.’ The paper examines Hume’s account of relations which do not fully support Foucault’s claims about Hume. It is proposed that Foucault's reading is motivated by the role Hume plays in Husserl’s philosophy. In section 2, Foucault's treatment of Hume on March 28, 1979, during the eleventh lecture of the series known as *Birth of Biopolitics*, is analyzed. There Foucault ascribes to Hume’s account of the subject the key building blocks that allowed for the development of Benthamite radicalism and homo economicus. The paper situates Foucault’s later analysis of Hume in Foucault’s larger account of the development of the so-called radical (Benthamite) strain of liberalism that, on Foucault's telling, runs through Chicago economics. While Foucault’s account of Hume is anachronistic, this anachronism illuminates the building blocks of modern liberalism. (shrink)

“Bioconservatives” in the human enhancement debate endorse the conservative claim that we should reject the use of biotechnologies that enhance natural human capacities. However, they often ground their objections to enhancement with contestable claims about human nature that are also in tension with other common tenets of conservatism. We argue that bioconservatives could raise a more plausible objection to enhancement by invoking a strain of conservative thought developed by G.A. Cohen. Although Cohen’s conservatism is not sufficient to fully revive the (...) bioconservative objection, we argue that it can be supplemented by an account of reasonable partiality for humanity in a way that provides further support to the bioconservative position in a manner congruous with broader conservatism. We propose that the idea of partiality to humanity can buttress the bioconservative objection into its strongest possible form. However, we conclude by arguing that, even in this form, the objection cannot do all the work that bioconservatives expect of it. (shrink)

Heidegger uses the term "Americanism" to refer to a certain technological-political trend which involves the inability to think the essence of technology. This would also involve the oblivion of the question of Being. His fear of both Americanism and Communism is what led him to support the National Socialist movement. Both the critics and followers of Heidegger gloss over his criticism of Americanism. Yet Heidegger's writings on this subject remain important for us. First, because Americanism would refer to what we (...) now call Globalization, and second, because it addresses the very possibility of philosophical thinking. This paper tries to push Heidegger's criticism to the very extreme in order to discover where its logic begins to strain, and thereby to generate new inights concerning the relationship between technology and thinking. (shrink)

Drawing on recent work in psychology, I argue that there are not one but several distinct virtues pertaining to willpower or strength of will: (1) the disposition to exercise willpower; (2) a distinctively volitional kind of modesty, or moderation in exposing oneself to volitional strain; and (3) a distinctively volitional kind of confidence, or proper inattention to the possibility of volitional failure. A multiple-virtue conception of willpower, I argue, provides a useful framework for cultivating a good relationship to one’s own (...) volitional limitations; resists an unhealthy emphasis on ‘powering through’ volitional obstacles; and avoids controversial empirical assumptions without giving up on making progress in ethical thought about willpower. I answer objections that the latter two virtues are incompatible, and that they add little of value to hope or belief in success. I then argue that combining these virtues requires a kind of flexible attention which, while difficult, is both psychologically possible and desirable. (shrink)

The world’s first COVID-19 human challenge trial using the D614G strain of SARS-CoV-2 is underway in the United Kingdom. The Wellcome Trust is funding challenge stock preparation of the Beta variant (B.1.351) for a follow-up human challenge trial, and researchers at Imperial College London are considering conducting that trial. However, little has been written thus far about the ethical justifiability of human challenge trials with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. While vaccine resistance as such does not increase risks for volunteers in (...) COVID-19 challenge trials, we explore two specific characteristics of some variants that may initially be thought to make such trials unethical and conclude that SARS-CoV-2 variant challenge trials can remain ethical. (shrink)

Climate change is an existential risk reinforced by ordinary actions in afuent societies—often silently present in comfortable and enjoyable habits. This silence is sometimes broken, presenting itself as a nagging reminder of how our habits fuel a catastrophe. As a case in point, global warming has created a state of urgency among wine makers in Spain, as the alcohol level has risen to a point where it jeopardises wine quality and thereby Spanish viticulture. Eforts are currently being made to solve (...) this problem technologically by developing (non-GMO) strains of yeast that produce less alcohol. If successful, this could help save Spanish viticulture. This kind of technological solution is routinely criticised for ofering simplistic “techno-fx” solutions to solve complex societal problems. However, it is not clear what features are criticised by the notion of techno-fx and hence how to avoid this criticism. In our interpretation, the techno-fx notion is not exclusively used as a dismissive term. The notion points to a general virtue of engineering: to create technological solutions that work silently in the background. This asset of technological solutions might sometimes be problematic and sometimes not. Hence, it needs to be analysed case-by-case by paying attention to the moral relevance of the hidden implications of the technology and of the unrefective actions and habits that they facilitate. Such moral analysis will in turn inform strategies for foregrounding this technology to counteract silencing. We discuss what this means in the case of modifying yeast as a viticultural climate resilience strategy. (shrink)

A central theme of Cheryl Misak’s important new history is that there are two markedly different strands of the pragmatist tradition. One pragmatism traces back to Peirce, she thinks, and it takes seriously the ideals of logical precision, truth, and objectivity. This tradition had its insights carried through later analytic philosophy by figures like C. I. Lewis, Quine, and Davidson, among others. The second pragmatism has its roots in James’s (allegedly) more subjectivistic outlook and after Dewey’s death was revived by (...) Goodman, Rorty, and other so-called “neo-pragmatists.”Misak recommends the Peircean strain because it is “committed to doing justice to the objective dimension of human inquiry” (Misak 2013: 3)... (shrink)

The paper reviews the foundational ideals that gave “Europe”, an integration project with continental ambitions, its initial meaning or identity. “Europe” meant reconciliation and peace, reconstruction and widespread prosperity, and the mitigation of nationalism through the creation of supranational communities. A broad cultural consensus made it easier to trust each other and work together. The enterprise received a tacit approval from Europeans throughout the initial stages. More than 60 years and 20 member states later the project is under strain in (...) the social, economic, political and cultural fields. Today, as Europeans (now continental citizens) experience not only the advantages, but also the sacrifices of belonging to “Europe” (in the form of a Union), their allegiance to, and indeed the identity of the whole project are in question. I will submit that the original identity of “Europe” should be revived, and revisited for it to evolve in response to the present challenges. If its future identity is that of an intercultural, inclusive, flexible, and analogical polity, Europe will be still worth fighting for. (shrink)

In his postapocalyptic novel, Those Who Remain, G. Michael Hopf (2016) makes an important observation about the effect crises can have on human psychology by noting that "hard times create strong [humans]" (loc. 200). While the catastrophic effects of the recent COVID-19 outbreak are incontestable, there are arguments to be made that the situation itself could be materia prima of a more grounded, and authentic generation of humanity, at least in theory. In this article I draw on Heidegger's early, implicit (...) ethic of finitude as well as his later work surrounding the nature of technology, and place them into dialogue with a global milieu contextualized by worldwide pandemic. I approach this discussion from two different angles: in the first part, I explicate the ethic of finitude, and use it as a framework to describe the observable behavior of communities worldwide in order to better understand how global crises impact the psychical welfare of individual human beings. In the second part, I apply lessons given to us by the later Heidegger, specifically those oriented around the movement away from calculative thinking, in an effort to define a loose, albeit fundamentally ennobling prescriptive aimed at easing the existential strain of the situation we have found ourselves in. *This is a pre-print of an article published in Human Arenas. The final authenticated version is available at DOI: 10.1007/s42087-020-00142-6. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer a critique of the received way of thinking about responsibility for collective inaction and propose an alternative approach that takes as its point of departure the epistemic agency exhibited by people navigating impossible situations together. One such situation is becoming increasingly common in the context of climate change: so-called “natural” disasters wreaking havoc on communities—flooding homes, collapsing infrastructures, and straining the capacities of existing organizations to safeguard lives and livelihoods. What happens when philosophical reflection begins (...) here—in places where the institutions and practices that have emerged over the last century seem incapable of addressing the problems communities face now, and where people find themselves turning to one another for the sake of their own survival? (shrink)

Entitlement is defined as a sort of epistemic justification that one can possess by default – a sort of epistemic justification that does not need to be earned or acquired. Epistemologists who accept the existence of entitlement generally have a certain anti-sceptical role in mind for it – entitlement is intended to help us resist what would otherwise be compelling radical sceptical arguments. But this role leaves various details unspecified and, thus, leaves scope for a number of different potential conceptions (...) of entitlement. At one extreme there are conceptions that portray entitlement as a weak, attenuated epistemic status and, at the other, we have conceptions that portray entitlement as something potent and strong. Certain intermediate conceptions are also possible. In this paper, I shall argue that the weak and intermediate conceptions of entitlement do not survive careful scrutiny, and the stronger conceptions – while they do, in a way, strain credulity – are the only conceptions that are ultimately viable. (shrink)

Nanotechnology, as with many technologies before it, places a strain on existing legislation and poses a challenge to all administrative agencies tasked with regulating technology-based products. It is easy to see how statutory schemes become outdated, as our ability to understand and affect the world progresses. In this article, we address the regulatory problems that nanotechnology posses for the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) classification structure for ‘‘drugs’’ and ‘‘devices.’’ The last major modification to these terms was in 1976, with (...) the enactment of the Medical Device Amendments. There are serious practical differences for a classification as a drug or device in terms of time to market and research. Drugs are classified, primarily, as acting by ‘‘chemical action.’’ We lay out some legal, philosophic, and scientific tools that serve to provide a useful, as well as legally and scientifically faithful, distinction between drugs and devices for the purpose of regulatory classification. These issues we raise are worth the consideration of anyone who is interested in the regulation of nano-products or other novel technologies. (shrink)

The ideological interface between Muslims and liberal educators undoubtedly is strained in the realm of sex education, and perhaps on no topic more so than homosexuality. Some argue that schools should not try to ‘undermine the faith’ of Muslims, who object to teaching homosexuality as an ‘acceptable alternative lifestyle’. In this article, I will argue against this monolithic presentation of Islam. Furthermore, I will argue that a narrow view of Islam is neglectful of gay and lesbian Muslims who are particularly (...) vulnerable to the unrepentant hostilities of their own communities. (shrink)

Abstract: The emergence of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2019 has presented the world with an unprecedented global health crisis. The rapid and widespread transmission of the virus has strained healthcare systems, disrupted economies, and challenged societies. In response to this monumental challenge, the intersection of technology and healthcare has become a focal point for innovation. This research endeavors to leverage the capabilities of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to develop an advanced predictive model for forecasting the spread of COVID-19. It (...) involves the collection, analysis, and integration of diverse datasets encompassing epidemiological, clinical, and social factors that influence the virus's dissemination. (shrink)

his article develops a set of recommendations for the psychiatric and medical community in the treatment of mental disorders in response to the recently published fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that is, DSM-5. We focus primarily on the limitations of the DSM-5 in its individuation of Complicated Grief, which can be diagnosed as Major Depression under its new criteria, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). We argue that the hyponarrativity of the descriptions of these disorders (...) in the DSM-5, defined as the abstraction of the illness categories from the particular life contingencies and personal identity of the patient (e.g., age, race, gender, socio-economic status), constrains the DSM-5's usefulness in the development of psychotherapeutic approaches in the treatment of mental disorders. While the DSM-5 is useful in some scientific and administrative contexts, the DSM's hyponarrativity is problematic, we argue, given that the DSMs are designed to be useful guides for not only scientific research, but also for the education of medical practitioners and for treatment development. our goal therefore is to offer suggestions for mental health practitioners in using the DSM-5, so that they can avoid or eliminate the problems that may stem from the limitations of hyponarrativity. When such problems are eliminated, we believe that effective psychotherapeutic strategies can be developed, which would be successful in repairing the very relationships that are strained in mental disorder: the patient's relationship to herself, her physical environment, and her social environment. (shrink)

The precondition of any feminist politics – a usable category of ‘woman’ – has proved to be difficult to construct, even proposed to be impossible, given the ‘problem of exclusion’. This is the inevitable exclusion of at least some women, as their lives or experiences do not fit into the necessary and sufficient condition(s) that denotes group membership. In this paper, I propose that the problem of exclusion arises not because of inappropriate category membership criteria, but because of the presumption (...) that categories can only be organised by identity relations or shared properties among their members. This criterion of sameness as well as the characterisation of this exclusion as essentialism attests to a metaphysics that is not conducive to resistance and liberatory projects. Following a strain of hybrid thinking in feminist and post-colonial theory, I outline an alternative pluralist logic that confronts oppressive binaries that impede theory work in gender, sexuality, and race theory, and limit political action and resistance. The problem of exclusion is neither irresolvable nor is it essentialism. Instead it is a denial of subjectivity due to pseudodualistic self/Other dichotomies that can be resisted by adopting a new categorial logic. While this paper focuses on the specific problem of formulating a category of ‘woman’, it has implications for other areas of gender, critical race, and postcolonial theory. Rather than working toward an inclusive category founded on sameness, theorists need to develop independent and positive categories grounded in difference. Our current categorial logic does not permit such a project, and therefore a new metaphysics must be adopted. (shrink)

Kant argues in the Critique of Judgment (CJ) that there are two distinct modes of the sublime. This essay will concentrate on the mathematical mode. It is helpful to begin an examination of the mathematical sublime by elucidating the difference between logical estimation and aesthetic estimation; it is aesthetic estimation under strain, so Kant argues, that instigates the moment of the sublime. Logical estimation forms the cognitive basis of scientific calculations. He argues that scientific enquiry only requires an understanding of (...) the logical relationship of numbers and so does not require an aesthetic experience of those numbers. (shrink)