Six leading scholars--representing Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and secular perspectives--formulate their variant models of an ideal Jewish education for the contemporary world. This book addresses the multiple challenges of the open society to Jewish continuity by considering different versions of Jewish education appropriate for our time. It emphasizes the continuity of theory and practice, translating theory into practice as well as articulating theory embodied in practice. The book shows how all religious and ethnic communities might deepen the impact of their educational (...) programs. (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

It was, until recently, accepted that the two classes of acetylcholine (ACh) receptors are distinct in an important sense: muscarinic ACh receptors signal via heterotrimeric GTP binding proteins (G proteins), whereas nicotinic ACh receptors (nAChRs) open to allow flux of Na+, Ca2+, and K+ ions into the cell after activation. Here we present evidence of direct coupling between G proteins and nAChRs in neurons. Based on proteomic, biophysical, and functional evidence, we hypothesize that binding to G proteins modulates the activity (...) and signaling of nAChRs in cells. It is important to note that while this hypothesis is new for the nAChR, it is consistent with known interactions between G proteins and structurally related ligand‐gated ion channels. Therefore, it underscores an evolutionarily conserved metabotropic mechanism of G protein signaling via nAChR channels.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Book Reviews Melissa Seymour Fahmy, Kantian Review, FirstView Article.

In 1956, the mathematician John McCarthy coined the term "Artificial Intelligence" for a new discipline that was emerging from some of the more imaginative and playful explorations of the new mind-tool, the computer. A few years later he developed a radically new sort of programming language, Lisp, which became the lingua franca of AI. Unlike the sturdier, stodgier computer languages created by and for business and industry, Lisp was remarkably open-ended and freewheeling. Instead of concentrating on numbers, it was designed (...) to take any symbols or symbol strings (lists) as its objects, and since its own machinery consisted of just such lists (and lists of lists . . . ), Lisp creations easily inhabited the very world they acted upon, and hence could reflect upon themselves and their own reflections indefinitely, revising and reinventing themselves, breaking down the artificial barrier between program and data. Seymour Papert was one of the most playful of the AI pioneers, and more than any of the others, his own reflections turned to the nature of that very playfulness and its role in learning and discovery. In 1980, he published Mindstorms, in which he presented his utopian vision of computers in the classroom, centering on Logo, a dialect of Lisp that he and others had developed specifically for very young children. The key design element was Turtle graphics, an inspired interface which made the children's interactions with Logo not just visible, but instantly comprehensible--feelable, you might say. The tales he told of those early encounters were compelling. They became an important ingredient in the barrage of persuasions that led teachers and schools all over America, and indeed all over the world, to invest huge sums in "computerizing the classroom." Thousands of teachers tried their hand at Logo in the classroom, with mixed results. (shrink)

A new term, "the new conservatism," has recently appeared in the American sociopolitical lexicon. The meaning given it does not resolve merely to a description of the current conservative trends in the United States , which until recently were termed neoconservative in the critical literature. A number of American writers have begun to employ the term "new conservatism" in a narrower sense: to denote the evolution of the sociopolitical views of those ideologists of capitalist reformism who were, until recently, known (...) as neoliberals. The term "new conservatism" was first employed in that sense by the American radical sociologist Michael Harrington in analyzing the evolution, in the realm of political ideas and social policy, of the views of such prominent bourgeois ideologists as Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and others. To those listed, this identification appeared so well chosen and reflective of the essence of the matter that subsequently they themselves began to speak of themselves as new conservatives. This term has become firmly established in the American sociological literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the "legitimacy" of the use of this term and the points of contact between this group and the conservatives or neoconservatives and the lines of demarcation between them. (shrink)

Sidney Hook is considered by many to be America's most influential philosopher today. An earlier defender of Marxism, he became its most persistent critic, especially of its totalitarian and revolutionary manifestations. A student of John Dewey's pragmatism, Sidney Hook has written extensively about most of the live moral, social and political issues of the day. He has known and debated many of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Max Eastman, Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Jacques Maritain, Mortimer Adler, (...) Robert Hutchins, Paul Tillich, Noam Chomsky, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Throughout his career, which spans a half a century, Sidney Hook has been a stalwart defender of the social democratic philosophy of freedom. At a time when secular humanism has been under heavy criticism from the New Right, he stands out as the leading philosophical representative of the position. Virtually all of the essays in this volume were written especially for it. The list of contributors includes Irving Kristol, Antony Flew, Nathan Glazer, Lewis Feuer, Daniel Bell, Richard Rorty, Ernest Nagel, Edward Shils, Seymour Martin Lipset, Ernest van den Haag, and others, all of whom testified that their thinking has been profoundly influenced by Sidney Hook's wisdom and insight. These original essays are wide-ranging in scope, but all are focused on Hook's philosophy or on subjects in which he has shown an abiding interest: socialism, democracy, equality, quotas, higher education, academic freedom, humanism, liberal education, natural and human rights, and pragmatism. The book also contains a complete up-to-date bibliography of the writings of Sidney Hook. (shrink)

Claims pertaining to understanding are made in a variety of contexts and ways. As a result, few in the philosophical literature have made an attempt to precisely characterize the state that is y understanding x. This paper builds an account that does just that. The account is motivated by two main observations. First, understanding x is somehow related to being able to manipulate x. Second, understanding is a mental phenomenon, and so what manipulations are required to be an understander must (...) only be mental manipulations. Combining these two insights, the paper builds an account (URM) of understanding as a certain representational capacity—specifically, understanding x involves possessing a representation of x that could be manipulated in useful ways. By tying understanding to representation, the account correctly identifies that understanding is a fundamentally cognitive achievement. However, by also demanding that which representations count as understanding-conferring be determined by their practical effects, URM captures the insight that understanding is vitally connected to practice. URM is fully general, and can apply equally well to understanding states of affairs, understanding events, and even understanding people and works of art. The ultimate test of URM is its applicability in actual scientific and philosophical discourse. To that end the paper discusses the importance of understanding in the philosophy of science, psychology, and computer science. (shrink)

Clark has recently suggested that predictive processing advances a theory of neural function with the resources to put an ecumenical end to the “representation wars” of recent cognitive science. In this paper I defend and develop this suggestion. First, I broaden the representation wars to include three foundational challenges to representational cognitive science. Second, I articulate three features of predictive processing’s account of internal representation that distinguish it from more orthodox representationalist frameworks. Specifically, I argue that it posits a resemblance-based (...) representational architecture with organism-relative contents that functions in the service of pragmatic success, not veridical representation. Finally, I argue that internal representation so understood is either impervious to the three anti-representationalist challenges I outline or can actively embrace them. (shrink)

Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...) avoiding these objections and I argue that both confront formidable challenges. (shrink)

What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...) can accommodate much of the data that has motivated theories of understanding in philosophy of science, and can also be generally applicable in epistemology and daily life as well. (shrink)

Functional localization has historically been one of the primary goals of neuroscience. There is still debate, however, about whether it is possible, and if so what kind of theories succeed at localization. I argue for a contextualist approach to localization. Most theorists assume that widespread contextual variability in function is fundamentally incompatible with functional decomposition in the brain, because contextualist accounts will fail to be generalizable and projectable. I argue that this assumption is misplaced. A properly articulated contextualism can ground (...) successful theories of localization even without positing completely generalizable accounts. Via a case study from perceptual neuroscience, I suggest that there is strong evidence for contextual variation in the function of perceptual brain areas. I then outline a version of contextualism that is empirically adequate with respect to this data, and claim that it can still distinguish brain areas from each other according to their functional properties. Finally, I claim that the view does not fail the norms for good theory in the way that anticontextualists suppose. It is true that, on a contextualist view, we will not have theories that are completely generalizable and predictive. We can, however, have successful partial generalizations that structure ongoing investigation and lead to novel functional insight, and this success is sufficient to ground the project of functional localization. (shrink)

Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit anthropological arguments put forward by seven leading postwar theorists: self-transcendence, adaptation, responsibility, language, strong evaluations, reflexivity and reproduction of life. Genuinely interdisciplinary and boldly argued, (...) Daniel Chernilo has crafted a novel philosophical sociology that defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life. (shrink)

In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, (...) Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community. (shrink)

A large body of research in political science claims that the way in which democratic citizens think about politics is motivationally biased by partisanship. Numerous critics argue that the evidence for this claim is better explained by theories in which party allegiances influence political cognition without motivating citizens to embrace biased beliefs. This article has three aims. First, I clarify this criticism, explain why common responses to it are unsuccessful, and argue that to make progress on this debate we need (...) a more developed theory of the connections between group attachments and motivated reasoning. Second, I develop such a theory. Drawing on research on coalitional psychology and the social functions of beliefs, I argue that partisanship unconsciously biases cognition by generating motivations to advocate for party interests, which transform individuals into partisan press secretaries. Finally, I argue that this theory offers a superior explanation of a wide range of relevant findings than purely non-motivational theories of political cognition. (shrink)

Background Our objective was to evaluate whether the description of a machine learning (ML) app or brain imaging technology to predict the onset of schizophrenia or alcohol use disorder (AUD) influences healthcare professionals’ judgments of stigma, empathy, and compassion. Methods We randomized healthcare professionals (N = 310) to one vignette about a person whose clinician seeks to predict schizophrenia or an AUD, using a ML app, brain imaging, or a psychosocial assessment. Participants used scales to measure their judgments of stigma, (...) empathy, and compassion. Results Participants randomized to the ML vignette endorsed less anger and more fear relative to the psychosocial vignette, and the brain imaging vignette elicited higher pity ratings. The brain imaging and ML vignettes evoked lower personal responsibility judgments compared to the psychosocial vignette. Physicians and nurses reported less empathy than clinical psychologists. Conclusions The use of predictive technologies may reinforce essentialist views about mental health and substance use that may increase specific aspects of stigma and reduce others. (shrink)

Book Three of George Santayana's letters covers a period of intense intellectual activity in Santayana's life, and the correspondence reflects the establishment of his mature philosophy. Santayana becomes more permanently established in Italy, but continues to travel in France, Spain, and England. The year 1927 marks the beginning of his long friendship with Daniel Cory, who became his literary secretary and eventually his literary executor. Also, with the death of Santayana's half-brother Robert, George Sturgis, Robert's son, becomes an important (...) part of Santayana's life and letters as his financial manager. Santayana continues to write to his sister Susana, as well as to numerous friends and fellow philosophers, including Bernard Berenson, Robert Seymour Bridges, Curt John Ducasse, John Erskine, Horace Meyer Kaller, Lewis Mumford, George Herbert Palmer, John Francis Stanley Russell, Herbert Wallace Schneider, Charles Augustus Strong, Paul Weiss, and Harry Austryn Wolfson. Other correspondents include Wendell T. Bush, Alys Gregory, Marianne Moore, John Middleton Murray, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in risks of societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, there exists no consensus about how collapse should be understood. In this article, we critically examine existing definitions and argue that none adequately address the challenges for conceptualizing collapse that climate change presents. We therefore propose an alternative conception, which regards collapse as a reduction of collective capacity resulting in a pervasive and difficult-to-reverse loss of basic functionality. Our conception is dynamic in that it focuses on the (...) interrelations of constituent subsystems. It also distinguishes collapse from transformations needed to address climate change and provides insight into the relationship between collapse and sustainability. [Open access]. (shrink)

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

Are human beings linked by a common nature, one that makes them see the world in the same moral way? Or are they fragmented by different cultural practices and values? These fundamental questions of our existence were debated in the Enlightenment by Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. Daniel Carey provides an important new historical perspective on their discussion. At the same time, he explores the relationship between these founding arguments and contemporary disputes over cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Our own conflicting (...) positions today reflect long-standing differences that emerged during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that (...) MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience. (shrink)

The expressivist advances a view about how we explain the meaning of a fragment of language, such as claims about what we morally ought to do. Critics evaluate expressivism on those terms. This is a serious mistake. We don’t just use that fragment of language in isolation. We make claims about what we morally, legally, rationally, and prudentially ought to do. To account for this linguistic phenomenon, the expressivist owes us an account not just of each fragment of language, but (...) of how they weave together into a broader tapestry. I argue that expressivists face a dilemma in doing so: either they fail to explain the univocality of terms like 'ought', or they fail to explain when normative statements are and aren't inconsistent. (shrink)

Business Ethics is designed to serve as a textbook for first year students of MBA and diploma students of management courses. The book provides a deep insight into the crucial role played by ethical choices in managerial decision making within an organization as well as the impact of such decisions on the world at large. Starting with a broad overview of the meaning and scope of ethics and the development of ethical thought, the book puts forward the applications of ethical (...) standards to business areas such as corporate governance, marketing and brand management, advertising, and finance. The discussion shifts to a more human level with the various issues of workplace ethics as well as consumer rights. Special focus is given to ethical choices related to the environment, cyber space and criminal intimidation. Contemporary issues like corporate code of ethics, political correctness and the role played by NPO and NGO in upholding moral values are discussed in detail. Finally, several open-ended issues like Intellectual Property. The book follows a debate-based approach where both for and against views are presented, followed by concept analysis and logical deductions. This approach is well aided with a number of caselets, case studies and end chapter review questions. This book will also serve as a useful reference for BBA faculty and professionals. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated how emotion resembling cues in the face help shape impression formation. Perhaps most notable in the literature to date, has been work suggesting that gender-related appearance cues are visually confounded with certain stereotypic expressive cues. Only a couple studies to date have used computer vision to directly map out and test facial structural resemblance to emotion expressions using facial landmark coordinates to estimate face shape. In one study using a Bayesian network classifier trained to detect emotional (...) expressions structural resemblance to a specific expression on a non-expressive face was found to influence trait impressions of others. In another study, a connectionist model trained to detect emotional expressions found different emotion-resembling cues in male vs. female faces. Despite this seminal work, direct evidence confirming the theoretical assertion that humans likewise utilize these emotion-resembling cues when forming impressions has been lacking. Across four studies, we replicate and extend these prior findings using new advances in computer vision to examine gender-related, emotion-resembling structure, color, and texture and their impact on gender-stereotypic impression formation. We show that all three are meaningfully related to human impressions of emotionally neutral faces. Further when applying the computer vision algorithms to experimentally manipulate faces, we show that humans derive similar impressions from them as did the computer. (shrink)

This article aims to advance the discussion of how multinational companies manage the tension between global integration and local responsiveness in their corporate social responsibility. In particular, it studies the relationships between headquarters and subsidiaries in a transnational CSR strategy and the types of coordination mechanisms used. Building on a qualitative study of a multinational bank, we find that in addition to formal and informal coordination mechanisms, a transnational CSR strategy cannot be fully understood without considering lateral learning and participatory (...) decision making. Further, we suggest that discussions about the transnational approach to CSR should not be disentangled from the question about a company's CSR orientation. Finally, we propose some characteristics of transnational CSR and discuss its theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)

We argue that generic generalizations about racial groups are pernicious in what they communicate (both to members of that racial group and to members of other racial groups), and may be central to the construction of social categories like racial groups. We then consider how we should change and challenge uses of generic generalizations about racial groups.

This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb ‘now’ and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that ‘now’ seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of (...) discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse. -/- The theme of the second part of the monograph is the semantics and pragmatics of tense. A key innovation is that the present and past tenses are treated as scalar alternatives, a view that is motivated by adopting a particular hypothesis concerning stative predication. The proposed analysis accounts for tense in both matrix clauses and in complements of propositional attitudes, where the notorious double access reading arises. This reading is explored as part of a corpus study that provides a glimpse of how tense semantics interacts with Gricean principles and at-issueness. Several cross-linguistic predictions of the analysis are considered, including their consequences for the Sequence of Tense phenomenon and the Upper Limit Constraint. Finally, a hypothesis is provided about how tense meanings compose with temporal adverbs and verb phrases. Two influential analysis of viewpoint aspect are then compared in light of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Daniel Whistler argues that Hemsterhuis' philosophy matters and that its exclusion from the canon of modern philosophy has been unjust. This is not just because of its influence on later thinkers, but is primarily because Hemsterhuis' philosophy contains a rich assemblage of ideas and philosophical practices.

Nothing was more important to Tolstoy than character development. For him, the purpose of life is to grow morally. The purpose of literature — as all art — is to aid that growth. Abstract philosophy and pedantic scholarship are therefore redundant. Indeed, even the psychological novel is a distraction. Moral truths are self-evident. They are always simple. They are expressed by the humble. They are known by the meek. To become good, all we need to do is peel back the (...) layers of hypocrisy and deceit that have overwrought us. Moral truths are known all over the world, but they are forgotten or covered up. There is nothing like a folktale, a pithy aphorism, or the words of a farm laborer or child to point this out. We may be surprised by what we already know and how deceived we were. All Tolstoy's varied endeavors, his literature, pedagogic theory and philosophy, center on moral conversion and its only legitimate motivation: love. Tolstoy's affront on modern civilization, documented vehemently in his later works sought to teach this lesson. This was a view of character development that had wide ranging impact all over the world, influencing many of the most famous thinkers, educators, and activists of the twentieth century. Tolstoy's stories continue to enthrall and inspire moral transformation. In this article Daniel Moulin explains why. (shrink)

English translation of Kant's Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (Königsberg in Prussia, 30 September 1784).

An introductory text in linguistic semantics, uniquely balancing empirical coverage and formalism with development of intuition and methodology. -/- This introductory textbook in linguistic semantics for undergraduates features a unique balance between empirical coverage and formalism on the one hand and development of intuition and methodology on the other. It will equip students to form intuitions about a set of data, explain how well an analysis of the data accords with their intuitions, and extend the analysis or seek an alternative. (...) No prior knowledge of linguistics is required. After mastering the material, students will be able to tackle some of the most difficult questions in the field even if they have never taken a linguistics course before. -/- After introducing such concepts as truth conditions and compositionality, the book presents a basic symbolic logic with negation, conjunction, and generalized quantifiers, to serve as the basis for translation throughout the book. It then develops a detailed compositional semantics, covering quantification (scope and binding), adverbial modification, relative clauses, event semantics, tense and aspect, as well as pragmatic phenomena, notably deictic pronouns and narrative progression. -/- A Course in Semantics offers a large and diverse set of exercises, interspersed throughout the text; those labeled “Important practice and looking ahead” prepare students for material to come; those labeled “Thinking about ” invite students to think beyond the content of the book. (shrink)

In the last couple of years a few seemingly independent debates on scientific explanation have emerged, with several key questions that take different forms in different areas. For example, the question what makes an explanation distinctly mathematical and are there any non-causal explanations in sciences (i.e. explanations that don’t cite causes in the explanans) sometimes take a form of the question what makes mathematical models explanatory, especially whether highly idealized models in science can be explanatory and in virtue of what (...) they are explanatory. These questions raise further issues about counterfactuals, modality and explanatory asymmetries, i.e. do mathematical and non-causal explanations support counterfactuals, and how to understand explanatory asymmetries in non-causal explanations. Even though these are very common issues in the philosophy of physics and mathematics, they can be found in different guises in the philosophy of biology, where there is the statistical interpretation of the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, according to which the post-Darwinian theory of natural selection explains evolutionary change by citing statistical properties of populations and not the causes of changes. These questions also arise in philosophy of ecology or neuroscience in regard to the nature of topological explanations. The question here is whether in network models in biology, ecology, neuroscience and computer science the mathematical or more precisely topological properties can be explanatory of physical phenomena, or they are just different ways to represent causal structures. The aim of the special issue is to unify all these debates around several overlapping questions. (shrink)

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, (...) Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt). (shrink)

Plato’s Timaeus contains an argument that vice is involuntary. Here I present an interpretation of that argument and, upon doing so, relate the underlying conception of voluntariness to that found in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics. I argue that in the Timaeus, for something to be voluntary it must be caused by the agent’s intellect in a certain way. This idea, in turn, relies on an identification of the agent with her intellect: the reason that what is voluntary must be caused by (...) the agent’s intellect is that what is voluntary is what the agent herself is responsible for. The conception of the voluntary in the Eudemian Ethics differs less radically than one might think. There too Aristotle wishes to respect the idea that there is an important connection between what is voluntary and what is caused by our rational capacities, but he differs in how he fills out the relevant rational capacities. (shrink)

If a reliable testifier tells you that a song is beautiful or that an act is wrong, do you thereby have a reason to approve of the painting and disapprove of the agent's action? Many insist that we don’t: normative testimony does not give us reasons for affective attitudes like approval. This answer is often treated as a datum in the literatures on moral and aesthetic testimony. I argue that once we correct for a common methodological mistake in these literatures, (...) the answer must be Yes. I then show why this matters for the broader discussion of the puzzle(s) posed by deference to moral and aesthetic testimony. (shrink)

This paper explores the possibility of extending Locke’s theory with respect to tangible property so that it might offer a feasible theoretical basis for intellectual property too. The main conclusion is that such an attempt must fail. Locke’s theory comes in three parts: a general justification of property which serves to explain why assets ought to be under the exclusive control of individuals; a positive method of private appropriation whereby an individual acquires a prima facie exclusive claim to previously commonly (...) held natural resources; and third, a negative requirement that other individuals’ crucial interests are not harmed by such an appropriation. For each of these, the difficulties involved in applying that part of the theory to the sphere of ideas are discussed, and a central aspect of intellectual property that raises the problems of application is highlighted. (shrink)

The generally agreed upon principle that legality and ethics can come apart is frequently overlooked in our professional ethics education and decision-making procedures. The crux of the issue is that we teach in our philosophy classes that the law can sometimes be unethical, but then clearly state in nursing codes of ethics that students should always follow the law. The law could no doubt give us some reason to choose action A over action B, but in professional contexts we frequently (...) treat the law as a side-constraint that limits the logical space of choices to exclude even consideration of action B. If B is the mandatory action, this in effect forces professionals to do something unethical by preventing them from ever seeing the ethical action as an option. This is a problem. Ultimately we concede that there might be an irresolvable tension in competing normative interests in ethics and the law, though we suggest that a more nuanced approach to ethical code formation could help alleviate the issue somewhat. (shrink)