Philsophers interested in comprehending the nature of truth and knowledge have studied reference, as have psychologists and linguists interested in uncovering the relations between thought and language, and other scholars trying to describe the role of reference in literature, culture and society.

Pain perception is influenced by several factors, and among them, affect, sex, and perception of bodily signals are assumed to play a prominent role. The aim of the present study is to explore how sex, cardiac interoceptive accuracy, and the interaction of the latter two influence the perception of experimentally induced pain. We investigated a large sample of young adults, assessing current positive and negative affective state with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, cardiac interoceptive accuracy with the mental heartbeat (...) tracking task, and pain sensitivity with electrical stimulation on the back of the dominant hand, applying a repeated-measures staircase protocol. Males showed a significantly higher pain threshold and tolerance level than females, whereas cardiac interoceptive accuracy was not associated with pain sensitivity. The impact of sex × cardiac interoceptive accuracy interaction was significant for pain threshold only, while pain tolerance was predicted only by sex. According to these findings, the associations between pain sensitivity, cardiac IAc, and sex might be more complicated than it was supposed in previous studies. Interactions between factors impacting pain perception appear worthy of further investigation. (shrink)

We bring together recent discussions on data capitalism and biocapitalization by studying value flows in consumer genomics firms—an industry at the intersection between health care and technology realms. Consumer genomics companies market genomic testing services to consumers as a source of fun, altruism, belonging and knowledge. But by maintaining a multisided or platform business model, these firms also engage in digital capitalism, creating financial profit from data brokerage. This is a precarious balance to strike: If these companies’ business models consist (...) of assetizing the pool of genomic data that they assemble, then part of their work has to revolve around obscuring to consumers any uncertainties that would potentially impinge on these processes of assemblage. We reflect on the nature of these practices and the market relationships that enable them, and we relate this reflection to debates around alternative market arrangements that would potentially mitigate the extractive tendencies of these and other digital health firms. (shrink)

The Analytic of the Beautiful in Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is a text of unparalleled importance in the history of philosophical aesthetics. Its main claims are adopted by some and rejected by others. A significant number of responses, of both kinds, take the Analytic to apply to all experiences of beauty—most notably, to the beauty of both nature and fine art. Our principal claim is that this assumption is mistaken. The analysis in the misleadingly titled Analytic of the Beautiful (...) applies paradigmatically to judgments of natural beauty. The experience of the beauty of most artworks is different and requires a separate analysis. We detail the modifications required in all four moments of the Analytic and thereby explicate the experience of artistic beauty. This reveals that Kant holds an interesting and historically consequential account of the experience of artistic beauty, which is significantly different from the experience of natural beauty. The analysis further reveals that despite these significant differences, the experiences are both species of a single genus. (shrink)

Kant announces that the Critique of the Power of Judgment will bring his entire critical enterprise to an end. But it is by no means agreed upon that it in fact does so and, if it does, how. In this book, Ido Geiger argues that a principal concern of the third Critique is completing the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. This includes both Kant's analysis of natural beauty and his discussion of teleological judgments of (...) organisms and of nature generally. Geiger's original reading of the third Critique shows that it forms a unified whole - and that it does in fact deliver the final part of Kant's transcendental undertaking. His book will be valuable to all who are interested in Kant's theory of the aesthetic and conceptual purposiveness of nature. (shrink)

The evolution of a variety of important chromophore‐dependent biological processes, including microbial light sensing and mammalian color vision, relies on protein modifications that alter the spectral characteristics of a bound chromophore. Three different color opsins share the same chromophore, but have three distinct absorptions that together cover the entire visible spectrum, giving rise to trichromatic vision. The influence of opsins on the absorbance of the chromophore has been studied through methods such as model compounds, opsin mutagenesis, and computational modeling. The (...) recent development of rhodopsin mimic that uses small soluble proteins to recapitulate the binding and wavelength tuning of the native opsins provides a new platform for studying protein‐regulated spectral tuning. The ability to achieve far‐red shifted absorption in the rhodopsin mimic system was attributed to a combination of the lack of a counteranion proximal to the iminium, and a uniformly neutral electrostatic environment surrounding the chromophore. (shrink)

We suggest that policies will be less popular when individuals personally have to pay for them rather than when others have to pay (i.e., a Not Out of My Bank Account or NOMBA effect). Dual process models of persuasion suggest that personally having to pay would motivate scrutiny of persuasive messages making it essential to use effective science communication tactics when using climate science to support climate change policies. A pilot experiment (N = 186) and main study (N = 758) (...) support a NOMBA effect with less policy support (Pilot study) and lower recommended fees (Main study) for a policy that would require participants, rather than another group, to pay a fee for community solar panels. Consistent with dual process models and suggesting systematic processing, only when participants would have to pay the fee, messages using strong (vs. weak) science communication tactics increased support for policies (Pilot study), increased the favorability of thoughts about the policy (Main study) and these thoughts subsequently predicted policy support (Main study). Inconsistent with propositions that information about expert sources would be a heuristic or bolster science messages, expert consensus information did not influence thoughts or policy support in any study condition. Efforts to understand climate change policy support would benefit from attending to research on dual process models of persuasion, including understanding how different types and degree of outcome relevance can alter how people process science information used to bolster support for climate change policies. (shrink)

The notion of aesthetic ideas is of great importance to Kant's thinking about art. Despite its importance, he says little about it. He characterizes aesthetic ideas as representations of the imagination and says that the gift of artistic genius is the inscrutable capacity to envision them. Furthermore, they are counterparts of rational ideas. Works of art thus sensibly present rational ideas; the pleasure they occasion is a consequence of the enriching process of reflection upon the wealth of content they sensibly (...) present. The purpose of this article is to ask whether all rational ideas have aesthetic ideas as counterparts, and so can be presented in art, or whether only some do and which. The answer should reveal what, for Kant, is the subject-matter of art. I argue that for Kant art is concerned with the range and variety of human freedom as well as with its highest fulfillment in morality. (shrink)

How should we think about the beginnings and endings of humans' biological lives? Is an ethical system based on natural law the only way to safeguard the value of individual human life? Does holding a secular perspective on the boundaries of human life necessarily leave one on a slippery slope? With Peter Caws and Sr. Regina Geiger.

In light of Jaswal & Akhtar's compelling argument, we argue there should instead be more focus on deficits in socio-emotional abilities. However, current research is limited by the psychometric problems with most measures. We discuss specific problems, outlining examples for theory of mind. We conclude with recommendations for new lines of research derived from findings in the individual differences literature.

The recent sociobiology debate has raised fundamental and previously unresolved conceptual problems. Evolutionary Instability - Logical and Material Aspects of a Unified Theory of Biosocial Evolution - offers ap- proaches for their solution. The scientific applications comprise the dynamics and evolutionary instability of hierarchically organized systems, especially systems of interacting behavioural phenotypes in animals and man. The technical apparatus is thoroughly explained in intuitive terms within the text, and illustrated by numerous familiar examples and graphical representations, supplemented by an informal (...) summary and discussion. The analyses offer new theoretical perspectives to such diverse fields as philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, general system theory and sociology. (shrink)

This paper problematises the notions of public or common good as weighed against individual sovereignty in the context of medical research by focusing on genetic research. We propose the notion of collective good as the good of the particular collective in which the research was conducted. We conducted documentary and interview-based research with participant representatives and research leaders concerned with participant involvement in leading genetic research projects and around two recent genetic data controversies: the case of the UK Wellcome Sanger (...) Institute, accused of planning unauthorised commercialisation of African DNA samples, and the case of the company Genuity Science, which planned genetic research on brain tumour samples in Ireland with no explicit patient consent. We advocate for greater specificity in circumscribing the collective to which genetic research relates and for greater efforts in including representatives of this collective as research coleaders in order to enable a more inclusive framing of the good arising from such research. Such community-based participant cogovernance and coleadership in genetic research is vital especially when minorities or vulnerable groups are involved, and it centrally requires community capacity building to help collectives articulate their own notions of the collective good. (shrink)

This article outlines and compares current and proposed global institutional mechanisms to increase equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, focusing on their institutional and operational complementarities and overlaps. It specifically considers the World Health Organization's (WHO’s) COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) model as part of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) initiative, the WHO’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) initiative, the proposed TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement) intellectual property waiver and other proposed WHO and World Trade Organization technology (...) transfer proposals. We argue that while various individual mechanisms each have their specific individual merits—and in some cases weaknesses—overall, many of these current and proposed mechanisms could be highly complementary if used together to deliver equitable global access to vaccines. Nonetheless, we also argue that there are risks posed by the proliferation of proposals in this context, including the potential to disperse stakeholder attention or to delay decisive action. Therefore, we argue that there is now a clear need for concerted global multilateral action to recognise the complementarities of specific models and to provide a pathway for collaboration in attaining global equitable access to vaccines. The institutional infrastructure or proposals to achieve this amply exist at this point in time—but much greater cooperation from industry and clear, decisive and coordinated action from states and international organisations are urgently needed. (shrink)

According to Korsgaard’s very influential interpretation, moral normativity follows from a commonly accepted conception of rational agency, namely, the capacity to set ends and pursue them or humanity. The paper argues that humanity is not the source of moral normativity. Taking the exercise of your freedom in pursuit of your ends to be justified commits you to acknowledging the equal claim of others to see themselves as justified in the pursuit of their ends. This entails the equal restriction of the (...) freedom of each to ensure maximal freedom for all. But this is precisely what Kant thinks of as the state of right. In contrast, the paper claims that the second formula of the categorical imperative commands making the humanity of rational beings who are assumed to possess the capacity to act morally or personality, into our end, precisely because they are assumed to possess this distinct rational capacity. (shrink)

Many of its students are first drawn to Kant's practical philosophy because it seems to promise a theory of morality both objective and practicable. Moral theory, as Kant conceives of it, must abst...

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social–technical environment. Today, the organizational culture of Wikipedia is deeply intertwined with various data-driven algorithmic systems, which Wikipedians rely on to help manage (...) and govern the “anyone can edit” encyclopedia at a massive scale. These bots, scripts, tools, plugins, and dashboards make Wikipedia more efficient for those who know how to work with them, but like all organizational culture, newcomers must learn them if they want to fully participate. I illustrate how cultural and organizational expertise is enacted around algorithmic agents by discussing two autoethnographic vignettes, which relate my personal experience as a veteran in Wikipedia. I present thick descriptions of how governance and gatekeeping practices are articulated through and in alignment with these automated infrastructures. Over the past 15 years, Wikipedian veterans and administrators have made specific decisions to support administrative and editorial workflows with automation in particular ways and not others. I use these cases of Wikipedia’s bot-supported bureaucracy to discuss several issues in the fields of critical algorithms studies; critical data studies; and fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning—most principally arguing that scholarship and practice must go beyond trying to “open up the black box” of such systems and also examine sociocultural processes like newcomer socialization. (shrink)

The article defends three claims regarding the relation between the different formulas of the categorical imperative. On its prevailing reading, FUL gives different moral guidance than FH; left answered, this problem is an argument for adopting a competing perspective on FUL. The prohibitions and commands of the formulas should be taken to be extensionally the same; but FKE adds a dimension missing from the others, gained by uniting their perspectives, namely, bringing the variety of moral laws into systematic unity. The (...) grammatically ambiguous phrase inGMS, 4: 436.9–10 claims that FA alone unites the other formulas in itself. (shrink)

In the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant claims that the Critique of Pure Reason accounted for the necessary conditions of experience and knowledge in general, but that it was not a complete transcendental account of the possibility of a particular empirical experience of objects and knowledge of empirical laws of nature. To fill this gap the third Critique puts forward, as an additional transcendental condition, the regulative principle of the purposiveness of nature. In this paper, (...) I will attempt to show how Kant’s account of pure aesthetic judgment can be read as articulating an aesthetic non-conceptual condition of the search for the conceptual order of nature and so as constituting an essential part of the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. (shrink)

Many of its students are first drawn to Kant's practical philosophy because it seems to promise a theory of morality both objective and practicable. Moral theory, as Kant conceives of it, must abst...

There is a notion, cataleptic in its effects, that discussion in ethics and values must ultimately be blocked by the “naturalistic fallacy.” We can go so far in analyzing the categories of “good,” “right,” “ought,” “valuable,” and the like, but never so far as to embark from the field of logic or general philosophy and enter the alien provinces of science—at least with a visa. To think to reduce moral problems to those of psychology or biology or to those of (...) “culture,” is The Fallacy, insensitivity to which brands one as a positivist, a dupe of “scientism,” or at least a sympathetic fellow-traveller. Though the vocabulary of The Fallacy is not old—G. E. Moore and his earnest commentators will date it—the idea is almost as antique as philosophy itself; indeed, it is one of the prime devices whereby philosophy has managed to rationalize its subject-matter as something more than an historical accident. (shrink)

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Martin Sticker's discussion of the common moral agent contains much that I find insightful, true and significant. As a response to his paper, I focus on two important issues that nevertheless separate us: Sticker claims that knowing our duty can be mere passive awareness and that it indeed is passive as awareness of the special status of humanity. I deny that knowing our duty is ever passive. He further claims that the common universalization test is the paradigmatic way active agents (...) acquire moral knowledge. I argue that Sticker appears to construe universalization as a formal test that presupposes no moral knowledge and that so construed the test cannot serve for acquiring moral knowledge. (shrink)

Using the mathematical frameworks of economic preference ranking, subjective probability, and rational learning through empirical evidence, the epistemological implications of teleological ethical intuitionism are pointed out to the extent to which the latter is based on cognitivist and objectivist concepts of value. The notions of objective value and objective norm are critically analysed with reference to epistemological criteria of intersubjectively shared valuative experience. It is concluded that one cannot meaningfully postulate general material theories of morality that could be tested, confirmed (...) or refuted by intersubjective empirical evidence of preferences and values, however loosely the empirical evidence of values may be interpreted. This situation is explained with reference to the ways in which preceived values become systematically influenced by the concomitants of individual valuative experience, but which have nothing to do with contingent subjective interests. (shrink)

This book argues that an essential part of Hegel's historical-political thinking has escaped the notice of its interpreters. It is well known that Hegel conceives of history as the gradual progress of rational thought and of forms of political life. But he is usually thought to place himself at the end of this process—his philosophical end is to give a rational account of the end of this process, namely, modern ethical life. This overlooks the question of how a new shape (...) of ethical life is founded. Hegel holds that the founding act of a new form of life is the act of an unwitting agent, and it necessarily meets with the violent incomprehension of the society it transforms. The tragedy of Antigone, the French Revolution and its aftermath (the Terror and the Napoleonic Wars), and wars generally are all examples of the tragically violent foundation of a new form of life. Moreover, Hegel does not claim that the foundation of modern ethical life is a fact of the past—it lies in the future. (shrink)