Increasing prevalence of depression poses a huge challenge to the healthcare systems, and the success rates of current standard therapies are limited. While 30% of treated patients do not experience a full remission after treatment, more than 75% of patients suffer from recurrent depressive episodes. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy represents an emerging treatment option of depression, and preliminary studies show promising effects with a probably higher remission rate when compared to control-therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy. In the (...) present study, 49 patients with severe depression were treated with an integrated systemic treatment approach including EMDR therapy that followed a specific protocol with a treatment algorithm for depression in a naturalistic hospital setting. Following their discharge from the hospital, the patients were followed up by a structured telephone interview after 3 and 12 months. 27 of the 49 patients fulfilled the Beck’s depression criteria of a full remission when they were discharged. At the follow-up interview, 12 months after discharge, 7 of the 27 patients reported a relapse, while the remaining 20 patients had stayed relapse-free. The findings of our observational study confirm reports of earlier studies in patients with depression, showing that EMDR therapy leads to a high rate of remission, and is associated with a decreased number of relapses. Patients with depression receiving EMDR treatment may be more resilient to stressors. (shrink)

In order to illustrate the nature of the indeterminacy of meaning, Donald Davidson sometimes compares it to the fact that we can measure length or temperature on different scales. In the following paper I try to explain first why we are supposed to expect such an analogy, given the semantics of the word meaning and of the word length or temperature. In the second part I examine how close the analogy is by distinguishing different forms of indeterminacy of meaning (viz., (...) the indeterminacy of reference and the indeterminacy of truth) and ask whether both forms have an equivalent in a theory of measurement. I shall conclude that this is indeed the case. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss how Causal Decision Theory should be modified to handle a class of problematic cases involving deterministic laws. Causal Decision Theory, as it stands, is problematically biased against your endorsing deterministic propositions (for example it tells you to deny Newtonian physics, regardless of how confident you are of its truth). Our response is that this is not a problem for Causal Decision Theory per se, but arises because of the standard method for assessing the truth of (...) certain counterfactuals. The truth of deterministic laws is `modally fragile' on the standard semantics for counterfactuals: if determinism is true and you were to do otherwise, the laws would be different. We provide two ways of avoiding this problem: 1) supplement the standard semantics for counterfactuals with impossible worlds, or 2) introduce rigid designators into the description of problematic decision situations. We argue that both of these approaches are well-motivated and can be readily incorporated into Lewisian Causal Decision Theory. (shrink)

The belated but formal acknowledgment of medical errors and their impact has been well documented. Curiously, the topic of management or executive mistakes in healthcare is not raised in professional meetings nor, until recently, addressed by an article in health administration journals.

Our ethics committee is revising the organization's policy on forgoing life-sustaining treatment. The current policy now includes the statement, “When life-sustaining treatment is forgone, supportive care will be provided to relieve pain and ensure the patient's comfort, unless the patient or surrogate refuses those measures.” Is it reasonable, however, for the surrogate to have the authority to refuse consent for pain medication and/or other supportive care?

Two sources of possible disagreement in bioethics may be associated with pessimism about what bioethics can achieve. First, pluralism implies that bioethics engages with interlocutors who hold divergent moral beliefs. Pessimists might believe that these disagreements significantly limit the extent to which bioethics can provide normatively robust guidance in relevant areas. Second, the interdisciplinary nature of bioethics suggests that interlocutors may hold divergent views on the nature of bioethics itself—particularly its practicality. Pessimists may suppose that interdisciplinary disagreements could frustrate the (...) goals of bioethics. In this article, I explore how wonder may alleviate the concerns of the first group of pessimists regarding problems associated with pluralism, provided that we are willing to accept some interdisciplinary frustrations. Then, I invite readers of this issue of The Journal of Medicine & Philosophy to test these intuitions by considering the role of wonder in these articles. (shrink)

In the paper, a detailed analysis of some new logical aspects of Cantor’s diagonal proof of the uncountability of continuum is presented. For the first time, strict formal, axiomatic, and algorithmic definitions of the notions of potential and actual infinities are presented. It is shown that the actualization of infinite sets and sequences used in Cantor’s proof is a necessary, but hidden, condition of the proof. The explication of the necessary condition and its factual usage within the framework of Cantor’s (...) proof makes, Cantor’s proof invalid. It’s shown that traditional Cantor’s proof has a second necessary, but hidden as well, condition which is teleological by its nature, i.e., is not mathematical. The explication of the second necessary condition makes Cantor’s statement on the uncountability of continuum unprovable from the point of view of classical logic.One of the most dramatic facts in history of science is connected just with the notion of actual infinity and consists in the following. On the one hand, Aristotle, Berkeley, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Gauss, Kant, Cauchy, Kronecker, Hermite, Poincaré, Bair, Borel, Brouwer, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weyl, Luzin, and a lot of other outstanding creators of classical logic and classical mathematics, during millenniums, stated categorically and insistently warned about that the actual infinity is a self-contradictory notion and its usage in mathematics is inadmissible (e.g., according to Poincare, “There is no actual infinity. - Cantorians forgot that and fell into contradictions. Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered”). On the other hand, a lot of outstanding scientists of the XX c.c., such as Hilbert, Church, Turing, Gödel, etc., and modern axiomatic set theory as a whole ignored this (intuitive though) opinion of genii and accepted Cantor’s “transfinite paradise”, based on the actual infinity. In the paper some logical, philosophical, and psychological aspects of this historical “favorable opposition” are analyzed, and the fact that the scientific intuition of genii has won the historical battle against the mytho-’logic’ of Cantor’s transfinite ‘paradise’ is explained and logically justified. (shrink)

In the paper, a detailed analysis of some new logical aspects of Cantor’s diagonal proof of the uncountability of continuum is presented. For the first time, strict formal, axiomatic, and algorithmic definitions of the notions of potential and actual infinities are presented. It is shown that the actualization of infinite sets and sequences used in Cantor’s proof is a necessary, but hidden, condition of the proof. The explication of the necessary condition and its factual usage within the framework of Cantor’s (...) proof makes, Cantor’s proof invalid. It’s shown that traditional Cantor’s proof has a second necessary, but hidden as well, condition which is teleological by its nature, i.e., is not mathematical. The explication of the second necessary condition makes Cantor’s statement on the uncountability of continuum unprovable from the point of view of classical logic.One of the most dramatic facts in history of science is connected just with the notion of actual infinity and consists in the following. On the one hand, Aristotle, Berkeley, Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, Gauss, Kant, Cauchy, Kronecker, Hermite, Poincaré, Bair, Borel, Brouwer, Quine, Wittgenstein, Weyl, Luzin, and a lot of other outstanding creators of classical logic and classical mathematics, during millenniums, stated categorically and insistently warned about that the actual infinity is a self-contradictory notion and its usage in mathematics is inadmissible (e.g., according to Poincare, “There is no actual infinity. - Cantorians forgot that and fell into contradictions. Later generations will regard Mengenlehre (set theory) as a disease from which one has recovered”). On the other hand, a lot of outstanding scientists of the XX c.c., such as Hilbert, Church, Turing, Gödel, etc., and modern axiomatic set theory as a whole ignored this (intuitive though) opinion of genii and accepted Cantor’s “transfinite paradise”, based on the actual infinity. In the paper some logical, philosophical, and psychological aspects of this historical “favorable opposition” are analyzed, and the fact that the scientific intuition of genii has won the historical battle against the mytho-’logic’ of Cantor’s transfinite ‘paradise’ is explained and logically justified. (shrink)

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

A new speculative ontology of aesthetics. In Aesthesis and Perceptronium, Alexander Wilson presents a theory of materialist and posthumanist aesthetics founded on an original speculative ontology that addresses the interconnections of experience, cognition, organism, and matter. Entering the active fields of contemporary thought known as the new materialisms and realisms, Wilson argues for a rigorous redefining of the criteria that allow us to discriminate between those materials and objects where aesthesis (perception, cognition) takes place and those where it doesn't. (...) Aesthesis and Perceptronium negotiates between indiscriminately pluralist views that attribute mentation to all things and eliminative views that deny the existence of mentation even in humans. By recasting aesthetic questions within the framework of "epistemaesthetics," which considers cognition and aesthetics as belonging to a single category that can neither be fully disentangled nor fully reduced to either of its terms, Wilson forges a theory of nonhuman experience that avoids this untenable dilemma. Through a novel consideration of the evolutionary origins of cognition and its extension in technological developments, the investigation culminates in a rigorous reevaluation of the status of matter, information, computation, causality, and time in terms of their logical and causal engagement with the activities of human and nonhuman agents. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to analyse the value-ladenness of technology in the context of medicine. To address this issue several characteristics of technology are investigated: i) its interventive capacity, ii) its expansiveness and iii) its influence on the concept of disease, iv) its generalising character, v) its independence of the subjective experience of the patient. By this analysis I hope to unveil the double face of technology: Technology has a Janus-face in modern medicine, and the opposite of its (...) factual face is evaluative. (shrink)

According to Ramsey and colleagues the main constituent psychological processes of innovation are response to novelty, exploration, and the ability to recognize a novel solution. I fully support this view but point out that novelty reactions are often context-specific. I will expand on this and discuss the possible consequences of context-specific novelty reactions on the emergence of innovations.

--2. Bd. Des Sokrates Apologie. Kriton. Euthydemos. Menexenos. Gorgias. Menon. Bearb. von H. Hofmann.--3. Bd. Phaidon. Das Gastmahl. Kratylos. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--4. Bd. Politeia. Der Staat. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--5. Bd. Phaidros. Parmenides. Briefe. Bearb. von D. Kurz.--6. Bd. Theaitetos. Der Sophist. Der Staatsmann. Bearb. von P. Staudacher.--7. Bd. Timaios, Kritias. Philebos. Bearb. von K. Widdra.--8. Bd. Nomōn. Gesetze. Bearb. von K. Schöpsdau. 2 v.

The emerging concept of systems medicine (or ‘P4 medicine’—predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards ‘precision medicine’. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical (...) holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call ‘holistic medicalization’: Each person’s whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call ‘the medicalization of health and life itself’. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention). (shrink)

It is a commonly held belief among many psychological scientists that the more plausible a hypothesis, the better it is scientifically. It is also often believed that if there are two alternative theories which are equally strong in terms of explanatory power, one should choose the plausible theory over the implausible one. The goal of this article is to challenge these assumptions. Based on Popper's philosophical views, it will be argued that psychological scientists should be encouraged to formulate implausible hypotheses (...) and theories. Examples from other scientific disciplines will be presented to illustrate this argument. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

Is technology value-free or is it value-laden? How does technology affect human autonomy? These questions, viewed within the context of medicine, are the focus of attention in this article. The central argument is that we need neither to subscribe to the value-neutrality dictum nor to the all-encompassing value-ladenness thesis to explain the pertinent position of technology in medicine. Technology is constitutive of and strongly implicated in difficult questions of value. This, however, does not mean that technology is identical to (or (...) neutral to) these value-laden questions. Technology poses issues of value, but only some of these relate to technology qua technology. Hence, it makes a difference whether we discuss general questions of value posed by technology or whether we discuss the value-ladenness of technology. Admitting technological value-ladenness does not imply that we are subject to a technological imperative that reduces our autonomy, on the contrary, it explains how technology increases our responsibility. This is particularly prominent in medicine. (shrink)

For a novice this book is a mathematically-oriented introduction to modal logic, the discipline within mathematical logic studying mathematical models of reasoning which involve various kinds of modal operators. It starts with very fundamental concepts and gradually proceeds to the front line of current research, introducing in full details the modern semantic and algebraic apparatus and covering practically all classical results in the field. It contains both numerous exercises and open problems, and presupposes only minimal knowledge in mathematics. A specialist (...) can use the book as a source of references. Results and methods of many directions in propositional modal logic, from completeness and duality to algorithmic problems, are collected and systematically presented in one volume. (shrink)

There has been a significant increase in the use of radiological services in the past 30 years. There are many reasons for this, but one has received little attention: the increased role of patient autonomy in healthcare. Patients demand x rays, CT scans, MRI, and positron emission tomography scans. The key question in this article is how a moral principle, such as respect for patient autonomy, can influence the extension of radiological services. A literature review reveals how patient autonomy is (...) acknowledged in radiology, and how it is used both to explain and to justify the increase in radiological examinations. Furthermore, it also shows how the premises favouring patients’ exercise of their autonomy are not always present, which makes patient autonomy subject to adverse side effects and even abuse. Patient autonomy can be used to reduce the professionals’ responsibility for radiological examinations , to increase the popularity of the profession , to increase the income of the professionals or their institutions, and to promote professional activity. Patient autonomy intended to reduce paternalism, to legitimise otherwise morally unjustifiable actions , and to protect patients, can easily be used as a moral means for opposite ends. These adverse effects are not peculiar to radiology. However, they emerge particularly clearly in explanations and justifications of the substantial increase in radiological services, as well as in debates on overuse of radiological services. (shrink)

Like some ethical dilemmas, this question has an obvious answer that may not be right. On first reflection, it seems entirely unreasonable and inappropriate to expect staff members to withhold supportive care. Legally, a designated surrogate has the authority to refuse pain medication on the patient's behalf, but is it ethically defensible? A patient lacking decisionmaking capacity is crying out in pain; can we really imagine just closing the door? What do we say to other patients, visitors, and staff members, (...) such as physicians, nurses, housekeepers, and dietary workers, who might hear the patient? Do we place a sign on the door, one noting that the surrogate has refused, on behalf of the patient, to authorize the administration of pain medication and that the hospital or nursing home must comply with the surrogate's decision? (shrink)

The following description is based upon an actual case in which a patient initiated legal action after suffering a complication subsequent to an invasive diagnostic procedure performed by a senior fellow. Named as codefendants were the senior fellow, attending physician, and the hospital. Because any hospital with house staff is potentially vulnerable to similar litigation, Ethics Committees at Work is addressing the questions raised by this dilemma.

Kant and Fichte developed the concept of a worldview as a way of reflecting on experience as a whole. But what does it mean to form a worldview? And what role did it play in the German Idealist tradition? This paper seeks to answer these questions through a detailed analysis of the form of a philosophical worldview and its historical portent, both of which remain unexplored in the literature. The dearth of attention is partially to blame on Kant’s desultory development (...) of it, as well as its place in Fichte’s understudied lectures on religion. In this paper, I first reconstruct Kant’s conception as the starting point and then trace it to Fichte who went on to evolve it further. Fichte endorses the basic conceptual shape pioneered by Kant, namely, a reflective process of positing an idea and then checking the coherence of necessary judgments relative to it. However, Fichte came to realize that its philosophical function needed expanding. Beyond recognizing the possibility for alternative worldviews, Fichte further fleshed out how worldview creation could lead to human flourishing. The common feature between both thinkers is that the formation of a worldview aims to turn philosophy into a life-orienting exercise. (shrink)

In the past decades, affective science has overwhelmingly demonstrated the unique properties of affective information to bias our attention, memory, and decisions. At the same time, accumulating evidence suggests that neutral and affective representations rely on the same working memory substrates for the selection and computation of information and that they are therefore restricted by the same capacity limitations that these substrates impose. Here, we integrate these insights into a working memory model of affective processing (WMAP). Drawing on competitive access (...) models of working memory, we discuss its role in the various stages of affective processing, from attentional selection to maintenance and memory storage, and resulting feelings and actions. We end our overview with some open questions and future directions. (shrink)

Kant’s accounts of the Highest Good and the moral argument for God and immortality are central features of his philosophy. But both involve lingering puzzles. In this entry, we first explore what the Highest Good is for Kant and the role it plays in a complete account of ethical life. We then focus on whether the Highest Good involves individuals only, or whether it also connects with Kant’s doctrines about the moral progress of the species. In conclusion, we look into (...) three ways of articulating the moral argument for God and immorality that take our commitment to the Highest Good as their point of departure. (shrink)

Systems medicine, which is based on computational modelling of biological systems, is emerging as an increasingly prominent part of the personalized medicine movement. It is often promoted as ‘P4 medicine’. In this article, we test promises made by some of its proponents that systems medicine will be able to develop a scientific, quantitative metric for wellness that will eliminate the purported vagueness, ambiguity, and incompleteness—that is, normativity—of previous health definitions. We do so by examining the most concrete and relevant evidence (...) for such a metric available: a patent that describes a systems medicine method for assessing health and disease. We find that although systems medicine is promoted as heralding an era of transformative scientific objectivity, its definition of health seems at present still normatively based. As such, we argue that it will be open to influence from various stakeholders and that its purported objectivity may conceal important scientific, philosophical, and political issues. We also argue that this is an example of a general trend within biomedicine to create overly hopeful visions and expectations for the future. (shrink)

Warum existiert uberhaupt etwas, warum existiert gerade unsere Welt? Wofur soll sich der Mensch in ihr engagieren, wie soll er seinen Charakter bilden? Mit begrifflicher Prazision wird gepruft, was Leibnizens Philosophie zur Behandlung dieser unabweisbaren Fragen auch heute noch beitragen kann. Da Leibniz die Antworten letztlich aus einer Theologia Naturalis gewinnt, steht sein Gottesbegriff im Zentrum der Untersuchung. Dieser wird in seinen vielfaltigen Bezugen und Funktionen innerhalb Leibniz' System detailliert erlautert. Ergebnis ist eine kritische integrale Gesamtdarstellung der Leibnizschen Philosophie; sie (...) bietet neben einer originellen und argumentativ dichten, gleichermaaen texttreuen wie sachorientierten Interpretation von Ontologie, Psychologie, Ethik, Logik, Erkenntnis-, Wissenschafts- und Rationalitatstheorie auch eine Wurdigung der Grundzuge von Natur-, Geschichts- und Staatsphilosophie. (Franz Steiner 1996). (shrink)

The familiar Vendler-Kenny scheme of verb-types, viz., performances (further differentiated by Vedler into accomplishments and achievements), activities, and states, is too narrow in two important respects. First, it is narrow linguistically. It fails to take into account the phenomenon of verb aspect. The trichotomy is not one of verbs as lexical types but of predications. Second, the trichotomy is narrow ontologically. It is a specification in the context of human agency of the more fundamental, topic-neutral trichotomy, event-process-state.The central component in (...) this ontological trichotomy, event, can be sharply differentiated from its two flanking components by adapting a suggestion by Geoffrey N. Leech and others that the contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect in verbs corresponds to the count/mass distinction in the domain of nouns. With the help of two distinctions, of cardinal count adverbials versus frequency adverbials, and of occurrence versus associated occasion, two interrelated criteria for event predication are developed. Accordingly, Mary capsized the boat is an event predication because (a) it is equivalent to There was at least one capsizing of the boat by Mary, or (b) because it admits cardinal count adverbials, e.g., at least once, twice, three times. Ontologically speaking, events are defined as those occurrences that are inherently countable. (shrink)

In health care priority setting different criteria are used to reflect the relevant values that should guide decision-making. During recent years there has been a development of value frameworks implying the use of multiple criteria, a development that has not been accompanied by a structured conceptual and normative analysis of how different criteria relate to each other and to underlying normative considerations. Examples of such criteria are unmet need and severity. In this article these crucial criteria are conceptually clarified and (...) analyzed in relation to each other. We argue that disease-severity and condition-severity should be distinguished and we find the latter concept better reflects underlying normative values. We further argue that unmet need does not fulfil an independent and relevant role in relation to condition-severity except for in some limited situations when having to distinguish between conditions of equal severity. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in recent research on attitudes is that self-reported evaluations reflect conscious attitudes, whereas indirectly assessed evaluations reflect unconscious attitudes. The present article reviews the available evidence regarding unconscious features of indirectly assessed “implicit” attitudes. Distinguishing between three different aspects of attitudes, we conclude that people sometimes lack conscious awareness of the origin of their attitudes, but that lack of source awareness is not a distinguishing feature of indirectly assessed versus self-reported attitudes, there is no evidence that people (...) lack conscious awareness of indirectly assessed attitudes per se, and there is evidence showing that, under some conditions, indirectly assessed attitudes influence other psychological processes outside of conscious awareness. Implications for the concept of “implicit attitudes” are discussed. (shrink)

Analyzes the poem "On Nature" by Parmenides, arguing that is actually a philosophical argument disguised as Homer-like mythological journey. Original.

There is an underlying assumption in the social sciences that consciousness and social life are ultimately classical physical/material phenomena. In this ground-breaking book, Alexander Wendt challenges this assumption by proposing that consciousness is, in fact, a macroscopic quantum mechanical phenomenon. In the first half of the book, Wendt justifies the insertion of quantum theory into social scientific debates, introduces social scientists to quantum theory and the philosophical controversy about its interpretation, and then defends the quantum consciousness hypothesis against the (...) orthodox, classical approach to the mind-body problem. In the second half, he develops the implications of this metaphysical perspective for the nature of language and the agent-structure problem in social ontology. Wendt's argument is a revolutionary development which raises fundamental questions about the nature of social life and the work of those who study it. (shrink)

Pattern-based reasons are reasons for action deriving not from the features of our own actions, but from the features of the larger patterns of action in which we might be participating. These reasons might relate to the patterns of action that will actually be carried out, or they might relate to merely hypothetical patterns. In past work, I have argued that accepting merely hypothetical pattern-based reasons, together with a plausible account of how to weigh these reasons, can lead to disastrous (...) consequences. However, in this article, I argue that this problem is not limited to hypothetical pattern-based reasons: it turns out that there are analogous issues for reasons deriving from actual patterns. I then suggest that we can avoid this problem by adopting a different account of the weight of pattern-based reasons. (shrink)

A program for the simulation of rational social normative trust, predictive `trust,' and predictive reliance between agents will be introduced. It offers a tool for social scientists or a trust component for multi-agent simulations/multi-agent systems, which need to include trust between agents to guide the decisions about the course of action. It is based on an analysis of rational social normative trust (RSNTR) (revised version of M. Tuomela 2002), which is presented and briefly argued. For collective agents, belief conditions for (...) collective agency should be added. For the various forms of trust agents must have (at least) subjectively rational reasons to believe that the conditions of the trust account are fulfilled. A list of such reasons (of varied weights), e.g., given by empirical research, can manually be built into a parameter file or be generated by a calling program in a fixed format. From this list of reasons the program randomly generates a belief base for the agents of the artificial society. Reasons can be chained together so that one set of reasons satisfies several belief conditions. The program checks if the conditions are fulfilled for the artificial agents' social normative trust/predictive `trust'/`predictive reliance' in another agent that he will perform an action X. Each outcome is logged to a result file. In conclusion we discuss various aspects of the application of a trust component of the suggested kind in empirical research, social simulation, and multi-agent systems. (shrink)

Recent discussions of emergence in physics have focussed on the use of limiting relations, and often particularly on singular or asymptotic limits. We discuss a putative example of emergence that does not fit into this narrative: the case of phonons. These quasi-particles have some claim to be emergent, not least because the way in which they relate to the underlying crystal is almost precisely analogous to the way in which quantum particles relate to the underlying quantum field theory. But there (...) is no need to take a limit when moving from a crystal lattice based description to the phonon description. Not only does this demonstrate that we can have emergence without limits, but also provides a way of understanding cases that do involve limits. (shrink)

In this paper, we analyse how GPS-based navigation systems are transforming some of our intellectual virtues and then suggest two strategies to improve our practices regarding the use of such epistemic tools. We start by outlining the two main approaches in virtue epistemology, namely virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. We then discuss how navigation systems can undermine five epistemic virtues, namely memory, perception, attention, intellectual autonomy, and intellectual carefulness. We end by considering two possible interlinked ways of trying to remedy (...) this situation: [i] redesigning the epistemic tool to improve the epistemic virtues of memory, perception, and attention; and [ii] the cultivation of cognitive diligence for wayfinding tasks scaffolding intellectual autonomy and carefulness. (shrink)

Is life a purely physical process? What is human nature? Which of our traits is essential to us? In this volume, Daniel McShea and Alex Rosenberg – a biologist and a philosopher, respectively – join forces to create a new gateway to the philosophy of biology; making the major issues accessible and relevant to biologists and philosophers alike. Exploring concepts such as supervenience; the controversies about genocentrism and genetic determinism; and the debate about major transitions central to contemporary thinking about (...) macroevolution; the authors lay out the broad terms in which we should assess the impact of biology on human capacities, social institutions and ethical values. (shrink)