Book reviewed in this article: For the Patient's Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care. By Edmund D. Pellegrino and David C. Thomasma.

A detailed multi-disciplinary analysis of Sudan in the post-colonial era with a consideration of possibilities for the future.

Book reviewed in this article: Suffering and the Beneficent Community: Beyond Libertarianism. By Erich H. Loewy. The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. By Eric J. Cassell.

Structure learning algorithms for graphical models have focused almost exclusively on stable environments in which the underlying generative process does not change; that is, they assume that the generating model is globally stationary. In real-world environments, however, such changes often occur without warning or signal. Real-world data often come from generating models that are only locally stationary. In this paper, we present LoSST, a novel, heuristic structure learning algorithm that tracks changes in graphical model structure or parameters in a dynamic, (...) real-time manner. We show by simulation that the algorithm performs comparably to batch-mode learning when the generating graphical structure is globally stationary, and significantly better when it is only locally stationary. (shrink)

One persistent challenge in scientific practice is that the structure of the world can be unstable: changes in the broader context can alter which model of a phenomenon is preferred, all without any overt signal. Scientific discovery becomes much harder when we have a moving target, and the resulting incorrect understandings of relationships in the world can have significant real-world and practical consequences. In this paper, we argue that it is common (in certain sciences) to have changes of context that (...) lead to changes in the relationships under study, but that standard normative accounts of scientific inquiry have assumed away this problem. At the same time, we show that inference and discovery methods can “protect” themselves in various ways against this possibility by using methods with the novel methodological virtue of “diligence.” Unfortunately, this desirable virtue provably is incompatible with other desirable methodological virtues that are central to reliable inquiry. No scientific method can provide every virtue that we might want. (shrink)

At the end of the most violent century in human history, it is good to take stock of our commitments to human and other life forms, as well as to examine the rights and the duties that might flow from their biological makeup. Professor Thomasma and Professor Loewy have held a long-standing dialogue on whether there are moral differences between animals and humans. This dialogue was occasioned by a presentation Thomasma made some years ago at Loewy's invitation at the University (...) of Illinois, Peoria, Medical Center. During that presentation, Thomasma argued that human beings are sufficiently distinct from other animals genetically and otherwise to justify a moral difference in rights and obligations. In effect, he argued that there are species-specific rights. This essay will pick up the threads of that dialogue. (shrink)

From time to time medical ethicists bemoan the loss of a religious perspective in medical ethics. The discipline had its origins in the thinking of explicitly religious thinkers such as Paul Ramsey and Joseph Fletcher. Furthermore, many of those who contributed to the early development of the discipline had training in theology. One thinks of Daniel Callahan, Richard McCormick, Albert Jonsen, Sam. Banks. As the discipline becomes more and more self-reflective, with attention being paid to methodological and conditional concerns, it (...) is only natural that the roots are due for a reexamination. The time has therefore come for some reassessment. The first steps here are taken in the form of a dialogue between the coauthors to clarify authentic contributions and weed out unauthentic ones. (shrink)

Erratum to: Synthese DOI 10.1007/s11229-014-0408-3Appendix 1: NotationLet \(X\) represent a sequence of data, and let \(X_B^t\) represent an i.i.d. subsequence of length \(t\) of data generated from distribution \(B\).We conjecture that the i.i.d. assumption could be eliminated by defining probability distributions over sequences of arbitrary length, though this complication would not add conceptual clarity. Let \(\mathbf{F}\) be a framework (in this case, a set of probability distributions or densities).Let any \(P(\,)\) functions be either a probability distribution function or probability density (...) function, as appropriate. Let \(M_\mathbf{F}\) be a method that takes a data sequence \(X\) as input and outputs a distribution. (shrink)

Current fears of a “reproducibility crisis” have led researchers, sources of scientific funding, and the public to question both the efficacy and trustworthiness of science. Suggested policy changes have been focused on statistical problems, such as p-hacking, and issues of experimental design and execution. However, “reproducibility” is a broad concept that includes a number of issues. Furthermore, reproducibility failures occur even in fields such as mathematics or computer science that do not have statistical problems or issues with experimental design. Most (...) importantly, these proposed policy changes ignore a core feature of the process of scientific inquiry that occurs after reproducibility failures: the integration of conflicting observations and ideas into a coherent theory. (shrink)

Commercial success of big data has led to speculation that big-data-like reasoning could partly replace theory-based approaches in science. Big data typically has been applied to ‘small problems’, which are well-structured cases characterized by repeated evaluation of predictions. Here, we show that in climate research, intermediate categories exist between classical domain science and big data, and that big-data elements have also been applied without the possibility of repeated evaluation. Big-data elements can be useful for climate research beyond small problems if (...) combined with more traditional approaches based on domain-specific knowledge. The biggest potential for big-data elements, we argue, lies in socioeconomic climate research. (shrink)

We provide a retrospective of 25 years of the International Conference on AI and Law, which was first held in 1987. Fifty papers have been selected from the thirteen conferences and each of them is described in a short subsection individually written by one of the 24 authors. These subsections attempt to place the paper discussed in the context of the development of AI and Law, while often offering some personal reactions and reflections. As a whole, the subsections build into (...) a history of the last quarter century of the field, and provide some insights into where it has come from, where it is now, and where it might go. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: For the Patient's Good: The Restoration of Beneficence in Health Care. By Edmund D. Pellegrino and David C. Thomasma.

© The Author [2017]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Dedekind was a contemporary of Bernhard Riemann, Georg Cantor, and Gottlob Frege, among others. Together, they revolutionized mathematics and logic in the second half of the nineteenth century. Dedekind had an especially strong influence on David Hilbert, Ernst Zermelo, Emmy Noether, and Nicolas Bourbaki, who completed that revolution in the twentieth century. With respect to mainstream mathematics, he is best known for his (...) contributions to algebra and number theory. With respect to logic and the foundations of mathematics, many of his technical results — his conceptualization of the natural and real numbers, his analysis of proofs by mathematical induction and definitions by recursion (extended to the transfinite by Zermelo, John von... (shrink)

In the tradition of Stalnaker there is a number of well-known problems that need to be addressed, because revision of iterated belief modalities is required in this case. These problems have already been investigated in detail in recent works on DDL Leitgeb/Segerberg 2007)and DEL see e.g. Ditmarsch et. Another strategy would be to maintain and revise assumptions independently of the beliefs of an agent.I will briefly discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each of these views. In both views, assumptions constitute (...) the subjective context in which an agent interprets an utterance and encounters the world. The result of an interpretation is in turn checked against the agent’s original beliefs, and if the checking operation succeeds the agent revises his beliefs by the result in the normal way described by the AGM paradigm. The second of the above questions needs to be addressed on the basis of concrete examples. Considering utterance like David is ready’ or ‘John is tall’that from a contextualist viewpoint express semantically incomplete content in the sense of Bach is needed in order to obtain a useful model of the checking step, since fortunately not everybody believes everything that other people say. These requirements put the theory of interpretation based on assumptions in the frontline of ongoing research on the implementation of belief revision and update in dynamic logics. Such a theory might also be useful for contextualist accounts of strong knowledge, as it can be argued convincingly that when a knowledge ascription appears to be context-sensitive, this is so because the embedded proposition is context-sensitive and not because knowledge itself is context-sensitive. Hence,the context-sensitivity of embedded propositions in knowledge claims and how different agents in the same situation arrive at different assessments about them may be explained by an inferential theory of interpretation similar to the one outlined here but with another underlying concept of assumptions. Literature Alchourrón, C. E. ; Gärdenfors, P. & Makinson, D., 'On the logic of theory change: partial meet contraction and revision functions', Journal of Symbolic Logic, 510-530. Bach, K., 'Minimalism for Dummies: Reply to Cappelen and Lepore', Technical report, University of San Fransisco, Department of Philosophy. Bach, K., Context ex Machina, in án Gendler Szabó, ed.,'Semantics versus Pragmatics', Oxford UP, Oxford, pp. 16-44. Ditmarsch, H. v. ; Hoek, W. v. d. & Kooi, B., Dynamic Epistemic Logic, Kluwer. Gärdenfors, P., Knowledge in Flux, MIT Press. Leitgeb, H. & Segerberg, K., 'Dynamic doxastic logic: why, how, and where to? ', Synthese155, 167-190. Stalnaker, R., Assertion, in. Cole, ed.,'Pragmatics', Academic Press, New York, pp. 315-332. Stalnaker, R., 'Common Ground', Linguistics and Philosophy25, 701- -721. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Suffering and the Beneficent Community: Beyond Libertarianism. By Erich H. Loewy. The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine. By Eric J. Cassell.

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled Continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response (...) which Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history. (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qui oriente la philosophie? Depuis Platon, le philosophe est celui qui tourne son regard vers le Bien et qui adopte une manière de vivre en accord avec sa pensée. Qu'est devenue cette manière de vivre comme exigence philosophique, pour un philosophe qui se laisse inspirer par la révélation chrétienne? Faut-il la nommer "sainteté"? Cet ouvrage présente six philosophes du XXe siècle qui ont cherché à accorder leur pensée et leur manière de vivre : Maurice Blondel, Erich Przywara, Simone (...) Weil, Aimé Forest, Michel Henry, Edith Stein. Des philosophes à l'écoute d'une inspiration qui oriente leur existence. La philosophie comme un acte de résistance spirituelle. Il y a là beaucoup à apprendre. (shrink)

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Lipsey and Lancaster's "general theory of second best" is widely thought to have significant implications for applied theorizing about the institutions and policies that most effectively implement abstract normative principles. It is also widely thought to have little significance for theorizing about which abstract normative principles we ought to implement. Contrary to this conventional wisdom, I show how the second-best theorem can be extended to myriad domains beyond applied normative theorizing, and in particular to more abstract theorizing about the normative (...) principles we should aim to implement. I start by separating the mathematical model used to prove the second-best theorem from its familiar economic interpretation. I then develop an alternative normative-theoretic interpretation of the model, which yields a novel second best theorem for idealistic normative theory. My method for developing this interpretation provides a template for developing additional interpretations that can extend the reach of the second-best theorem beyond normative theoretical domains. I also show how, within any domain, the implications of the second-best theorem are more specific than is typically thought. I conclude with some brief remarks on the value of mathematical models for conceptual exploration. (shrink)

Explores the acquisition and use of knowledge for human purposes and the extent of our ability to shape the future through the design, regulation, and restructuring of the lives of human systems at all levels.

Artificial intelligence has historically been conceptualized in anthropomorphic terms. Some algorithms deploy biomimetic designs in a deliberate attempt to effect a sort of digital isomorphism of the human brain. Others leverage more general learning strategies that happen to coincide with popular theories of cognitive science and social epistemology. In this paper, I challenge the anthropomorphic credentials of the neural network algorithm, whose similarities to human cognition I argue are vastly overstated and narrowly construed. I submit that three alternative supervised learning (...) methods—namely lasso penalties, bagging, and boosting—offer subtler, more interesting analogies to human reasoning as both an individual and a social phenomenon. Despite the temptation to fall back on anthropomorphic tropes when discussing AI, however, I conclude that such rhetoric is at best misleading and at worst downright dangerous. The impulse to humanize algorithms is an obstacle to properly conceptualizing the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. (shrink)

A collection of 14 essays honoring the life and work of Oxford philosopher Wiggins touching on topics from ancient philosophy to ethics, metaphysics and the theory of meaning. The contributing scholars debate many of the seminal issues of Wiggins' work, including the determinancy of distinctness, relative identity, naturalism in ethics, logic and truth in moral judgments, and the practical wisdom of Aristotle. The collection uniquely features replies by Wiggins to each of the papers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, (...) OR. (shrink)

Drawing on work of the past decade, this volume brings together articles from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science, and many other branches of the biological sciences. The volume delves into the latest theoretical controversies as well as burning questions of contemporary social importance. The issues considered include the nature of evolutionary theory, biology and ethics, the challenge from religion, and the social implications of biology today (in particular the Human Genome Project).