Para Ockham, todo animal posee un alma sensitiva, en virtud de la cual, puede tener deseos sensitivos, cogniciones intuitivas sensitivas y cogniciones abstractivas sensitivas. Entre estas últimas, tenemos representaciones sensibles, actos del sentido común y recuerdos. El objetivo de este artículo es el de reconstruir la teoría de Ockham sobre la cognición animal sensitiva. Esta reconstrucción muestra que Ockham adscribe a los animales, en general, una capacidad de representar diferentes propiedades de las cosas singulares, una memoria episódica, una memoria procedimental (...) y cierto tipo de ilusiones. Debido a que ciertas representaciones sensibles son equivalentes a proposiciones mentales, según Ockham, los animales no-humanos pueden juzgar y formar silogismos. (shrink)

Adam of Wodeham and William of Ockham ascribe different properties to intuitive apprehensions. The properties that Wodeham ascribes to intuitive cognitions concur with his reading of one of the four scenarios that Ockham proposes in order to test the idea that an intuitive apprehension serves as an epistemic warrant. In this article, I explain that Wodeham avoids skepticism through his account of intuitive cognitions; even though, like Ockham, he accepts that God can cause us to undergo various sorts of mental (...) acts in virtue of which we could believe that something exists when really it does not exist. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the recent secondary literature on Ockham’s philosophy of mind, it has been debated whether Ockham proposed an externalist or an internalist view of the intentional contents of intuitive...

En el siglo XIV se propusieron dos teorías principales para explicar el aumento y la reducción de las cualidades, entendidas éstas como formas accidentales. Quienes defendían alguna de estas dos teorías sostenían que una cualidad aumenta o se reduce debido a que se añaden o se substraen partes de sí misma, o bien, que una cualidad aumenta o se reduce debido a que una nueva forma más o menos perfecta sustituye a la forma ya inherente en una cierta substancia. Ockham (...) defendió la primera teoría con respecto a los estados mentales, entendidos como cualidades. Chatton defendió en sus primeros escritos ambas teorías y después sólo defendió la segunda. Las teorías de Ockham y Chatton están basadas en dos perspectivas distintas sobre la naturaleza del cambio o el movimiento. Ambas teorías, además, implican mecanismos distintos para regular la mayor o menor perfección de un estado mental. (shrink)

According to Ockham and Chatton, every cognitive process through which one genuinely cognizes a mental state involves a reflexive act of the will. They think that such an act is necessary to explain why we do not genuinely cognize every present mental act. With respect to a present extra-mental thing, an act of the will can only be elicited once such thing has been intuitively apprehended, because according to both authors one cannot voluntarily desire something whose existence one does not (...) know. However, with respect to mental acts, Ockham and Chatton maintain the opposite: an act of the will precedes the simple apprehension of a straight or direct act. As a consequence, in both theories of consciousness the same problem arises: how can the will want something that it does not know? This article presents Chatton’s and Ockham’s responses to this question. (shrink)

Ernst Mach’s defense of relativist theories of motion in Die Mechanik involves a well-known criticism of Newton’s theory appealing to absolute space, and of Newton’s “bucket” experiment. Sympathetic readers (Norton 1995) and critics (Stein 1967, 1977) agree that there’s a tension in Mach’s view: he allows for some constructed scientific concepts, but not others, and some kinds of reasoning about unobserved phenomena, but not others. Following Banks (2003), I argue that this tension can be interpreted as a constructive one, springing (...) from Mach’s approach to scientific reasoning. Mach’s “economy of science” allows for a principled distinction to be made, between natural and artificial hypothetical reasoning, and Mach defends a division of labor between the sciences in a 1903 paper for The Monist, “Space and Geometry from the Point of View of Physical Inquiry”. That division supports counterfactual reasoning in Mach’s system, something that’s long been denied is possible for him. (shrink)

Scientists working within a paradigm must play by the rules of the game of that paradigm in solving problems, and that is why incommensurability arises when the rules of the game change. If we deny the thesis of the priority of paradigms, then there is no good argument for the incommensurability of theories and thus for taxonomic incommensurability, because there is no invariant way to determine the set of results provable, puzzles solvable, and propositions cogently formulable under a given paradigm.

It is sometimes assumed in the Bayesian coherentist literature that the project of finding a truth-conducive measure of coherence of testimonial contents will, if successful, be helpful to the coherentist theory of justification. Various impossibility results in the Bayesian coherentist literature are consequently taken to be prima facie detrimental to the coherentist theory of justification. These attempts to connect Bayesian coherentism to the coherentist/ foundationalist debate in classical epistemology rest upon a confusion between the justification of a proposition and the (...) credibility that a proposition has for some other proposition. Foundationalism requires a class of beliefs that have non- inferential justification, not beliefs that have credibility by themselves for others. Coherentists insist that beliefs can be justified only via inferential relations with others, but this does not mean that coherentists must deny that individual propositions can have credibility for other propositions. I analyze and respond to both Erik Olsson's and Michael Huemer's arguments concerning the alleged connection between the Bayesian coherentist project and the coherentist theory of justification. Finally, I argue that Bayesian coherentism as represented in the literature, so far from being a version of coherentism, is implicitly foundationalist because of its treatment of “witness reports”, especially the reports of memory and sensation, as given evidence. The impossibility results, based on the assumption of given reports, are therefore not targeted at classical coherentism in epistemology at all. (shrink)

Work in the field of health has been distorted over the years, with the emergence of new health systems that have made the delivery of services a real business. As a result, the field has lost not only the motivation with which it originated, but also the human quality of providing health care. It is not new to say that exercise of the medical profession is in crisis. The causes of this predicament can be found in policies and health systems (...) that are poorly imitated, poorly administered, mismanaged, and poorly regulated. However, there is no denying the crisis is also due to the loss of the Hippocratic spirit that gave force and vitality to the medical profession from its beginning. Several aspects of work in health and health care, namely, scientific and technical competence (knowledge and knowhow) and human skills (knowing “how to be”), are examined in this chapter, based on a brief look at the patients and the professionals who serve them. The author goes on to discuss three fields of professional activity where these competencies play out: the Hippocratic tradition, social responsibility, and constructive dialogue. In conclusion, and in light of the above, several initiatives and strategies to humanize health services are suggested. They involve example, communication, accompaniment, correction, purpose, and professionalism. (shrink)

The Lewis-Sider argument from vagueness is one of the most powerful objections against restricted composition. Many have resisted the argument by rejecting its key premise, namely that existence is not vague. In this paper, I argue that this strategy is ineffective as a response to vagueness-based objections against restricted composition. To that end, I formulate a new argument against restricted composition: the argument from determinate vagueness. Unlike the Lewis-Sider argument, my argument doesn’t require accepting that existence is not vague, but (...) only that it is not vague in a specific way, which, I argue, is entailed by restricted composition. I show that the rejection of this species of vague existence follows from assumptions even friends of vague existence should be happy to accept. (shrink)

This paper investigates the semantics of implicit comparatives (Alice is tall compared to Bob) and its connections to the semantics of explicit comparatives (Alice is taller than Bob) and sentences with adjectives in plain positive form (Alice is tall). We consider evidence from two experiments that tested judgments about these three kinds of sentence, and provide a semantics for implicit comparatives from the perspective of degree semantics.

We provide two programmatic frameworks for integrating philosophical research on understanding with complementary work in computer science, psychology, and neuroscience. First, philosophical theories of understanding have consequences about how agents should reason if they are to understand that can then be evaluated empirically by their concordance with findings in scientific studies of reasoning. Second, these studies use a multitude of explanations, and a philosophical theory of understanding is well suited to integrating these explanations in illuminating ways.

Apresentação do n.1 da Revista Filosfia e Educação, dedicado à temática Educação e epistemologias. A organização deste número temático contou com a colaboração do Prof. Dr. Marcelo Donizete da Silva da |Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. A seleção de trabalhos inclui nove artigos diretamente relacionados com a temática proposta e que compõem a seção do dossiê e seis artigos da seção de fluxo contínuo da revista Filosofia e Educação.

La "posición original" es un aspecto fundamental de la teoría de la justicia de John Rawls, así como el concepto del "velo de ignorancia". El análisis se divide en tres momentos: en el primero, se expone la posición original de Rawls, en el segundo se contrasta la teoría de la razonabilidad de Scanlon con el papel que tiene la razonabilidad en la teoría de Rawls y en el tercero se exploran los señalamientos de Habermas y Benhabib al velo de ignorancia.

What is the difference between a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the symphony itself? What does it mean for musicians to be faithful to the works they perform? To answer this question, Goehr combines philosophical and historical methods of enquiry. She describes how the concept of a musical work emerged as late as 1800, and how it subsequently defined the norms, expectations, and behavior characteristic of classical musical practice. Out of the historical thesis, Goehr draws philosophical conclusions about the (...) normative functions of concepts and ideals. She also addresses current debates amongst conductors, early-music performers, and avant-gardists. (shrink)

El artículo reflexiona sobre las políticas de la memoria que deberían desarrollarse en sociedades donde han ocurrido masivas violaciones de derechos humanos, y cuyos procesos se guían por los principios normativos de la justicia transicional. Se analizan primero los conceptos de memoria e historia, y la forma como el Holocausto transformó sus tareas en el siglo xx; luego se examinan dos modelos de responsabilidad propuestos por Iris Marion Young, y se propone cómo usarlos en la justicia transicional. Finalmente, se explican (...) las tareas de la política de la memoria en estos contextos. (shrink)

A presente edição de Filosofia e Educação, a primeira de 2018, apresenta algumas novidades com relação às anteriores. A primeira delas é a mudança de datas na organização dos três números que correspondem a 2018, mantendo sua periodização quadrimestral. Esta edição que na sequência anterior correspondia aos meses de outubro-janeiro sofre um ajuste neste 1º número do décimo volume. Assim, a atual edição corresponde aos quatro primeiros meses de 2018. Na sequência, a 2ª edição deve corresponder aos meses de maio-agosto (...) e a 3ª aos meses de setembro-dezembro. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, and (...) British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

The study of corpography (corpographèse) in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians establishes a symptomatology of the body -linked to the experiences of torture and eroticism- that associates the illness with somnolence in the fictional text and the parasitization of the represented historical text. The tortured and undesired bodies of the protagonists undergo a process of objectification that manifests the acceleration of the fall of the Empire and the fragmentation of its discursive body as well as reinforces the secrecy and (...) illegibility of the text inscribed in the body of barbarism. This indecipherable text/body is defined by the paradox of the border labyrinth whose specularity gives rise to the illusion of control at the frontier between empire and barbarism. We will study, first of all, the writing of torture on the bodies, focusing on two organs - the eyes and the feet. Then, we will be interested in the erotic experience between the two protagonists. Finally, we will see how these vacuous bodies establish, at the border, a suspensive temporary bond with the historical and the memorial text. (shrink)

Resumen: El objetivo de este trabajo es describir la situación actual y las proyecciones de la comparación forense de la voz en Chile, a la luz de los estándares internacionales que se enfocan en la producción de evidencia confiable, que pueda ser utilizada en los tribunales de justicia. Para ello, en principio, se dan a conocer los fundamentos científicos que caracterizan esta rama de las ciencias forenses y, luego, sobre esa base se analiza y comenta la situación de Chile y (...) sus proyecciones, tanto en la práctica como en la investigación forense. Abstract: The objective of this work is to describe the current situation and the projections of forensic voice comparison in Chile, in the light of international standards that focus on the production of reliable evidence that can be used in the courts of justice. To do this, first, the scientific foundations that characterize this branch of forensic sciences are disclosed and, then, on that basis, the situation in Chile and its projections are analyzed and discussed, both in practice and in the forensic research. (shrink)

.As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also used her editorial position to philosophize. Her column entitled “Letters from New York” is particularly philosophical, including considerations of infinity, free will, time, nature, art, and history. She especially turned to German philosophers and intellectuals such as Kant, Schiller, Bettina von Arnim, Karoline von Günderrode, Jean Paul, Herder, and (...) Hegel in an attempt to guide her readers to a rejection of slavery for the right philosophical reasons. I consider the influence of German philosophy on three particular themes in her writings: a Romantic-Spinozistic view of humans and nature; a Kantian conception of conscience; and a Hegelian description of the philosophy of history. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic swept through New York City swiftly and with devastating effect. The crisis put enormous pressure on all hospital services, including the clinical ethics consultation team. This report describes the recent experience of the ethics consultants and Columbia University Irving Medical Center during the COVID-19 surge and compares the case load and characteristics to the corresponding period in 2019. By reporting this experience, we hope to supplement the growing body of COVID-19 scientific literature and provide details of the (...) human toll the virus took on our hospitals and communities. We also aim to highlight the role of the clinical ethics consultant as well as areas of policy and law that may need to be addressed in order to be better prepared for a future public health crisis. (shrink)

This article brings to light how AI research has benefited from post-Wittgensteinian philosophy. My research shows that Wittgenstein’s work began to engage the attention of AI researchers not only in the 1970s down to the present but right from the early beginnings of computational research in the 1950s. More specifically, his later philosophy inspired a group of researchers called the Cambridge Language Research Unit (CLRU) to start one of the first programs in machine translation, information retrieval, mechanical abstracting, and knowledge (...) representation technologies in the early 1950s, all of which have later been claimed for AI and cognitive science. I focus on the philosophical work of CLRU founder Margaret Masterman and her extraordinary but forgotten contributions to ordinary language philosophy. (shrink)

This systematic review synthesises the available evidence regarding the European understanding of workplace spirituality (definitions), the importance of spirituality and religion (evidence) as well as spiritual leadership (meaning and practice) in for-profitorganizations. The search for eligible studies was conducted in OPAC Plus, SCOPUS, Science Direct, JSTOR, EBSCO, and Google Scholar from 2007/01 to 2017/07. Three independent scholars extracted the data. Twenty studies were included (two mixed-methods, eight quantitative, ten qualitative) for the final quality assessment. A study quality assessment and thematic (...) analysis was conducted. This review gives suggestions for study quality improvement and reporting. Thematically, two different approaches to religion and spirituality (R/S) were detected: a) work has a spiritual dimension and b) religious and spiritual orientation as “spiritual capital”. Studies demonstrated positive effect on job satisfaction, health, commitment, company productivity and sustainability; Christian leadership does not address personal religious orientation; the spiritual dimension may lead to a change of perspective; workplace spirituality may exploit people for profit-oriented business goals; non-white Muslims experience discrimination. This systematic review provides robust evidence and findings for evidence-informed policymaking and encourages a more rigorous research in this field of study. (shrink)

El texto se propone abordar el problema de la expresión en la filosofía de Merleau-Ponty bajo tres aspectos generales: 1. Hacia una ontología de lo sensible, 2. Expresión y diferencia corporal y 3. Cuerpo y expresión creadora. A partir de la noción de naturaleza se busca, con el primer apartado, destacar el carácter ontológico de la percepción, con el fin de comprender por qué la percepción es ya expresión. En segundo lugar, se pretende ahondar en la tesis del cuerpo como (...) expresión y de esta manera poder precisar su vínculo esencial con el lenguaje. A partir de la distinción entre el lenguaje hablante y el lenguaje hablado se precisa, finalmente, el carácter paradójico de la expresión, su sentido encarnado. (shrink)

Physicians, philosophers, and theologians consider how to address death and dying for a diverse population in a secularized century.Most of us are generally ill-equipped for dying. Today, we neither see death nor prepare for it. But this has not always been the case. In the early fifteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church published the Ars moriendi texts, which established prayers and practices for an art of dying. In the twenty-first century, physicians rely on procedures and protocols for the efficient management (...) of hospitalized patients. How can we recapture an art of dying that can facilitate our dying well? In this book, physicians, philosophers, and theologians attempt to articulate a bioethical framework for dying well in a secularized, diverse society.Contributors discuss such topics as the acceptance of human finitude; the role of hospice and palliative medicine; spiritual preparation for death; and the relationship between community, and individual autonomy. They also consider special cases, including children, elderly patients with dementia, and death in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when doctors could do little more than accompany their patients in humble solidarity.These chapters make the case for a robust bioethics—one that could foster both the contemplation of finitude and the cultivation of community that would be necessary for a contemporary art of dying well.ContributorsJeffrey P. Bishop, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Daniel Callahan, Farr A. Curlin, Lydia S. Dugdale, Michelle Harrington, John Lantos, Stephen R. Latham, M. Therese Lysaught, Autumn Alcott Ridenour, Peter A. Selwyn, Daniel Sulmasy. (shrink)

This paper investigates the claim that artificial Intelligence Systems cannot be held morally responsible because they do not have an ability for agential self-awareness e.g. they cannot be aware that they are the agents of an action. The main suggestion is that if agential self-awareness and related first person representations presuppose an awareness of a self, the possibility of responsible artificial intelligence systems cannot be evaluated independently of research conducted on the nature of the self. Focusing on a specific account (...) of the self from the phenomenological tradition, this paper suggests that a minimal necessary condition that artificial intelligence systems must satisfy so that they have a capability for self-awareness, is having a minimal self defined as ‘a sense of ownership’. As this sense of ownership is usually associated with having a living body, one suggestion is that artificial intelligence systems must have similar living bodies so they can have a sense of self. Discussing cases of robotic animals as examples of the possibility of artificial intelligence systems having a sense of self, the paper concludes that the possibility of artificial intelligence systems having a ‘sense of ownership’ or a sense of self may be a necessary condition for having responsibility. (shrink)

As editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the early 1840s, Lydia Maria Child was responsible for keeping the abolitionist movement in the United States informed of relevant news. She also...

BackgroundParental reflective functioning refers to parents’ mental capacity to understand their own and their children’s behaviors in terms of envisioned mental states. As part of a broader concept of parental mentalization, PRF has been identified as one of the central predictors for sensitive parenting. However, the unique contribution of PRF to the quality of various parenting behaviors has not yet been addressed systematically. Thus, the present article provides a systematic overview of current research on the associations between PRF or its (...) sub-dimensions and observed parenting behaviors in infancy and early childhood, while considering the influence of contextual factors.MethodsThe review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines. Systematic searches were carried out in five electronic databases. The eligibility and methodological quality of the identified studies were assessed using pre-defined criteria and a standardized checklist.ResultsSixteen studies with moderate to high quality on a total of 15 parenting behaviors were included, the majority of which examined positive parenting behaviors, while negative parenting behaviors were rarely investigated. Most of the associations indicated a positive effect of PRF on parenting behavior, with mostly small-sized effects. The strength and direction of the associations varied depending on the dimensionality of PRF, observation settings, sample types, socioeconomic factors, and cultural background. Moreover, five assessment instruments for PRF and 10 observation instruments for parenting behaviors were identified.ConclusionIn summary, PRF has shown a positive association with parenting quality. However, its complex interaction with further contextual factors emphasizes the need for differentiation of PRF dimensions and the consideration of the observation settings, assessment time points, psychosocial risks, and sample types in observational as well as intervention studies. Further high-quality studies with multivariate analyses and diverse study settings are required. (shrink)

Nuestro punto de partida es la concepción de Merleau-Ponty del lenguaje como "habla". Sostenemos que esta, como experiencia corporal del lenguaje -como lenguaje "en" nosotros-, permite comprender el fenómeno de la /nter-culturalidad como un fenómeno esencialmente /ntra-cultural, en el sentido de una experiencia de la cultura "desde dentro", es decir, desde la experiencia que cada quien hace del lenguaje. Este carácter endógeno e individual de pensar la cultura pone en evidencia, sin embargo, un "entre-lazamiento" recíproco originario entre lo propio y (...) lo extraño que impide de entrada privilegiar ya sea una visión universalista o totalizante o bien individualista o regionalista de la cultura. En dos momentos doy cuenta de este planteamiento: 1. Mundo de la vida y diversidad cultural y 2. El habla como lugar de acceso a las culturas. Our starting point is the conception in Merleau Ponty of language as "speech". We support this concept as corporal experience of language -as language "in" us - allows to understand the phenomenon of ¿nter-culturality as an essentially ¿ntra-cultural phenomenon, in the sense of an experience of culture "from within", that is to say; from the experience that everyone does with the language. This endogenous and individual character of thinking about culture highlights, however, a reciprocal "entanglement" originated among one's own and the strange that initially prevents to privilege, even a universal or totalizing or either an individualistic or regionalist vision of culture. Two moments I take on this approach: 1. World of life and cultural diversity. 2. Speech as an access place to the cultures. (shrink)

This is a community based research project using a case study of 20 people living in middle America who are food insecure, but do not use food pantries. The participants’ rate of actual hunger is twice that of food insecure community members who use food pantries. Since most of the participants are not poor, the Asset Vulnerability Framework is used to classify causes of food insecurity. The purpose of the study is to identify why participants are food insecure and why (...) they do not use food pantries. Findings reveal that the participants restrict the quality and quantity of food eaten as a strategy to manage their budget. Following AVF, this strategy allows them to offset lower returns to labor assets, cover rising costs of human capital investment, protect their two most important productive assets of housing and transportation, and compensate for household relationships that increase their vulnerability. In addition, food insecurity itself inhibited social capital formation, further increasing vulnerability. The main reasons the participants do not use food pantries is to protect their social capital assets: almost all of the participants hid their hunger from colleagues, friends, relatives, and even the people they lived with. The participants described fear of societal shaming and blaming as motivations for hiding their hunger. However, using food pantries could reduce their food insecurity. Therefore, there was a feedback loop between food insecurity and social capital: food insecurity reduced social capital and efforts to protect social capital prevented participants from improving food security by using food pantries. (shrink)

Because the demand for health services outstrips the available resources, priority setting is one of the most difficult issues faced by health policy makers, particularly those in developing countries. Priority setting in developing countries is fraught with uncertainty due to lack of credible information, weak priority setting institutions, and unclear priority setting processes. Efforts to improve priority setting in these contexts have focused on providing information and tools. In this paper we argue that priority setting is a value laden and (...) political process, and although important, the available information and tools are not sufficient to address the priority setting challenges in developing countries. Additional complementary efforts are required. Hence, a strategy to improve priority setting in developing countries should also include: (i) capturing current priority setting practices, (ii) improving the legitimacy and capacity of institutions that set priorities, and (iii) developing fair priority setting processes. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo reflexiona sobre las políticas de la memoria que deberían desarrollarse en sociedades donde han ocurrido masivas violaciones de derechos humanos, y cuyos procesos se guían por los principios normativos de la justicia transicional. Se analizan primero los conceptos de memoria e historia, y la forma como el Holocausto trans formó sus tareas en el siglo XX; luego se examinan dos modelos de responsabilidad propuestos por Iris Marion Young, y se propone cómo usarlos en la justicia transicional. Finalmente, (...) se explican las tareas de la política de la memoria en estos contextos. ABSTRACT The article carries out a reflection on the politics of memory that should be developed in societies where massive human rights violations have occurred and whose pro cesses are being guided by the normative principles of transitional justice. It starts out by analyzing the concepts of memory and history and the manner in which the Holocaust transformed their tasks in the 20th century. Ten it goes on to examine two models of responsibility proposed by Iris Marion Young, and suggests how to use them in transitional justice. Finally, the article explains the tasks of the politics of memory in these contexts. (shrink)

Arguments for the effectiveness, and even the indispensability, of mathematics in scientific explanation rely on the claim that mathematics is an effective or even a necessary component in successful scientific predictions and explanations. Well-known accounts of successful mathematical explanation in physical science appeals to scientists’ ability to solve equations directly in key domains. But there are spectacular physical theories, including general relativity and fluid dynamics, in which the equations of the theory cannot be solved directly in target domains, and yet (...) scientists and mathematicians do effective work there (McLarty 2023, Elder 2023). Building on extant accounts of structural scientific explanation (Bokulich 2011, Leng 2021), I argue that philosophical accounts of the role of equations in scientific explanation need not rely on scientists’ ability to solve equations independently of their understanding of the empirical or experimental context. For instance, the process of formulating solutions to equations can involve significant appeal to information about experimental contexts (Curiel 2010) or of physically similar systems (Sterrett 2023). Working from a close analysis of work in fluid mechanics by Martin Bazant and Keith Moffatt (2005), I propose an account of heuristic structural explanation in mathematics (Einstein 1921, Pincock 2021), which explains how physical explanations can be constructed even in domains where basic equations cannot be solved directly. (shrink)

How should human beings and robots interact with one another? Nyholm’s answer to this question is given below in the form of a conditional: If a robot looks or behaves like an animal or a human being then we should treat them with a degree of moral consideration (p. 201). Although this is not a novel claim in the literature on ai ethics, what is new is the reason Nyholm gives to support this claim; we should treat robots that look (...) like human or non-human animals with a certain degree of moral restraint out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status. Although Danaher or Coeckelbergh also claim that we should treat robots with a degree of moral consideration, the reasons they give for making this claim focus on duties or rights attaching to the robot themselves (see J. Danaher, “Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism,” Science and Engineering Ethics, (2019): 1–27 or M. Coeckelbergh, “Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots and Human Morality,” Ethics and Information Technology, 12(3) (2010): 235–241.). Nyholm disagrees with this type of reasoning and claims that until robots develop a human or animal like inner life, we have no direct duties to the robots themselves. Rather, it is out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status that we should treat some robots with moral restraint. Gerdes, similarly inspired by Kant, focuses on the human agent to argue that we should avoid treating robots in cruel ways because this may corrupt the human agent’s character (see A. Gerdes, “The Issue of Moral Consideration in Robot Ethics,” siggas Computers and Society, 45(3) (2015): 274–279.). Nyholm’s contribution here is to extend this view such that the corruption or harm being done is against the humanity in all of us. (shrink)

The scenario is all too common: the elderly woman with end-stage dementia readmitted to the hospital for the fourth time in three months for anorexia, now static cancer progressing despite all proven chemotherapy now pursuing a toxic experimental treatment, or the patient with a rampant infection leading to multiple organ failure who requires machines, medications, and devices to filter the blood, pump the heart, exchange oxygen, facilitate clotting, and provide nutrition. Modern medical science is adept at sustaining life. The field (...) of bioethics has, since its earliest days, debated end-of-life issues; yet American society more broadly remains ill equipped for the experience of dying. This can be .. (shrink)