The tripartite model of militant extremist mind-set proposed by Stankov et al. (2010b) includes three components: War (justification of violent acts); God (extremist acts are moral because they are done in the name of God/Allah); and West (violence against Western countries is justified because they are perceived as evil). There is a lack of conceptual framework regarding psychological mechanism that underlie radicalization and extremism, and there is little evidence regarding risk factors for radicalization in the scientific literature. In the present (...) study, it is hypothesized that irrational beliefs and a constellation of personality factors are two possible psychological mechanisms that put adolescents in a vulnerable position and could influence them to develop an extremist mind-set. The sample consists in 295 Romanian adolescents, ages 15-18 years, and the mean age being 16.41. The present study was conducted in several schools from Bihor County located in the north-western part of Romania. Adolescents took part on a voluntary basis in the study after the written, informed consent was obtained from their parents. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the structure of Militant Extremist Mind-Set Scale confirmed the three-factor model of the extremist mind-set. Two confirmatory factor analyses were also conducted for the other two administered scales: CASI and Mini-IPIP. The results support the previous models for both subscales, including items loading on factors. SEM analysis was performed with AMOS 23 statistical package on a final sample size of 242 participants and there were no missing data. Fifth structural models were specified. The fifth model had adequate fit based on all three indices including the RMSEA (0.054), CFI (0.958), and SRMS (0.047). Global evaluation of self seems to be the only irrational belief that was somewhat related with the extremis mind-set, being part of it. Neuroticism was not identified as being a variable that could have a direct influence on mind-set extremism, or an indirect influence through personality. Religious adherence is a good predictor of extremist ideology. A global personality factor consisting in low Intellect/Imagination, low Extraversion and high Agreeableness seems to be a vulnerability factor that influences people to believe in extremist ideology. (shrink)

Multiple studies show that periodic reanalysis of genomic test results held by clinical laboratories delivers significant increases in overall diagnostic yield. However, while there is a widespread consensus that implementing routine reanalysis procedures is highly desirable, there is an equally widespread understanding that routine reanalysis of individual patient results is not presently feasible to perform for all patients. Instead, researchers, geneticists and ethicists are beginning to turn their attention to one part of reanalysis—reinterpretation of previously classified variants—as a means of (...) achieving similar ends to large-scale individual reanalysis but in a more sustainable manner. This has led some to ask whether the responsible implementation of genomics in healthcare requires that diagnostic laboratories routinely reinterpret their genomic variant classifications and reissue patient reports in the case of materially relevant changes. In this paper, we set out the nature and scope of any such obligation, and analyse some of the main ethical considerations pertaining to a putative duty to reinterpret. We discern and assess three potential outcomes of reinterpretation—upgrades, downgrades and regrades—in light of ongoing duties of care, systemic error risks and diagnostic equity. We argue against the existence of any general duty to reinterpret genomic variant classifications, yet we contend that a suitably restricted duty to reinterpret ought to be recognised, and that the responsible implementation of genomics into healthcare must take this into account. (shrink)

In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and (...) the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations--such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools--and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general. (shrink)

The use of genomic testing in pregnancy is increasing, giving rise to questions over how the information that is generated should be offered and returned in clinical practice. While these tests provide important information for prenatal decision-making, they can also generate information of uncertain significance. This paper critically examines three models for approaching the disclosure of variants of uncertain significance (VUS), which can arise from forms of genomic testing such as prenatal chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA). Contrary to prevailing arguments, we (...) argue that respect for reproductive autonomy does not justify adopting a model on which an offer to disclose VUS is a routine part of genetic counselling. Instead, we contend that a commitment both to solidarity between healthcare providers and pregnant women and to the acceptance of a novel principle of caution under normative uncertainty means that we should instead adopt a model of VUS disclosure that imposes a strong presumption against offering to disclose VUS. The upshot of this is that it should be standard practice to only offer to disclose VUS when this is requested by the woman undergoing CMA. We defend our position against claims that arise from an alleged right to such information and that a presumption against an offer will lead to inequity. (shrink)

In international law and the ethics of war, there are a variety of actions which are seen as particularly problematic and presumed to be always or inherently wrong, or in need of some overwhelmingly strong justification to override the presumption against them. One of these actions is assassination, in particular, assassination of heads of state. In this essay I argue that the presumption against assassination is incorrect. In particular, I argue that if in a given scenario war is justified, then (...) assassination of the enemy state's leader is also justified, and in fact ought to be pursued as a means short of war. I defend this position on both consequential and deontic grounds, arguing that assassination is both more discriminate than war and serves to harm only those most responsible for the situation which justifies war in the first place. I conclude by arguing that a norm of assassination, far from being a destabilizing force, as some have argued, would in fact serve to reinforce international norms of rights and respect for persons by making clear that tyrants and would-be oppressors cannot hide behind military forces or notions of sovereignty to protect themselves from judgment and retribution. (shrink)

The principle of proportionality demands that a war (or action in war) achieve more goods than bads. In the philosophical literature there has been a wealth of work examining precisely which goods and bads may count toward this evaluation. However, in all of these discussions there is no mention of one of the most certain bads of war, namely the psychological harm(s) likely to be suffered by the combatants who ultimately must fight and kill for the purposes of winning in (...) conflict. This paper argues that harms to one’s own soldiers must be included in proportionality judgments, and goes on to argue that one of the most significant harms one’s soldiers face are the psychological stresses and traumas associated with combat. The arguments draw on a growing wealth of psychological literature exploring the connections between combatancy and psychological trauma, and highlight, in particular, the uniquely negative impact which killing has on a combatant’s mental well-being. The paper concludes that these factors place an almost certain and rather weighty negative weight in any proportionality calculations concerning wars with ground combatants who must fight “up close and personal”, and that for more remote warfighters, there is also evidence to show that they may suffer deep psychological harm as a result of their combat roles as well. The argument, however, does not attempt to demonstrate that these factors render war impermissible. Rather, it merely shows that these harms, or bads, which can be quite significant, must be factored into our considerations of proportionality. The arguments themselves are rather uncontroversial, but they bring to light an element in the moral calculus which is sadly overlooked in most discussions of the ethics of war. (shrink)

This discussion of pride, shame, and guilt centers on the beliefs involved in the experience of any of these emotions. Through a detailed study, the author demonstrates how these beliefs are alike--in that they are all directed towards the self--and how they differ. The experience of these three emotions are illustrated by examples taken from English literature. These concrete cases supply a context for study and indicate the complexity of the situations in which these emotions usually occur.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become nearly ubiquitous in modern society, from components of mobile applications to medical support systems, and everything in between. In societally impactful systems imbued with AI, there has been increasing concern related to opaque AI, that is, artificial intelligence where it is unclear how or why certain decisions are reached. This has led to a recent boom in research on “explainable AI” (XAI), or approaches to making AI more explainable and understandable to human users. In the (...) military domain, numerous bodies have argued that autonomous and AI-enabled weapon systems ought not incorporate unexplainable AI, with the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United States Department of Defense both explicitly including explainability as a relevant factor in the development and use of such systems. In this article, I present a cautiously critical assessment of this view, arguing that explainability will be irrelevant for many current and near-future autonomous systems in the military (which do not incorporate any AI), that it will be trivially incorporated into most military systems which do possess AI (as these generally possess simpler AI systems), and that for those systems with genuinely opaque AI, explainability will prove to be of more limited value than one might imagine. In particular, I argue that explainability, while indeed a virtue in design, is a virtue aimed primarily at designers and troubleshooters of AI-enabled systems, but is far less relevant for users and handlers actually deploying these systems. I further argue that human–machine teaming is a far more important element of responsibly using AI for military purposes, adding that explainability may undermine efforts to improve human–machine teamings by creating a prima facie sense that the AI, due to its explainability, may be utilized with little (or less) potential for mistakes. I conclude by clarifying that the arguments are not against XAI in the military, but are instead intended as a caution against over-inflating the value of XAI in this domain, or ignoring the limitations and potential pitfalls of this approach. (shrink)

Gabriel Richardson Lear presents a bold new approach to one of the enduring debates about Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: the controversy about whether it coherently argues that the best life for humans is one devoted to a single activity, namely philosophical contemplation. Many scholars oppose this reading because the bulk of the Ethics is devoted to various moral virtues--courage and generosity, for example--that are not in any obvious way either manifestations of philosophical contemplation or subordinated to it. They argue that (...) Aristotle was inconsistent, and that we should not try to read the entire Ethics as an attempt to flesh out the notion that the best life aims at the "monistic good" of contemplation. In defending the unity and coherence of the Ethics, Lear argues that, in Aristotle's view, we may act for the sake of an end not just by instrumentally bringing it about but also by approximating it. She then argues that, for Aristotle, the excellent rational activity of moral virtue is an approximation of theoretical contemplation. Thus, the happiest person chooses moral virtue as an approximation of contemplation in practical life. Richardson Lear bolsters this interpretation by examining three moral virtues--courage, temperance, and greatness of soul--and the way they are fine. Elegantly written and rigorously argued, this is a major contribution to our understanding of a central issue in Aristotle's moral philosophy. (shrink)

A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent (...) proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics. (shrink)

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. (...) While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed. (shrink)

Innovation is a key driver of care provision in assisted reproductive technologies (ART). ART providers offer a range of add‐on interventions, aiming to augment standard in vitro fertilization protocols and improve the chances of a live birth. Particularly in the context of commercial provision, an ever‐increasing array of add‐ons are marketed to ART patients, even when evidence to support them is equivocal. A defining feature of ART is hope—hope that a cycle will lead to a baby or that another test (...) or intervention will make a difference. Yet such hope also leaves ART patients vulnerable in a variety of ways. This article argues that previous attempts to safeguard ART patients have neglected how the use of add‐ons in commercial ART can exploit patients’ hopes. Commercial providers of ART should provide add‐ons only free of charge, under a suitable research protocol. (shrink)

The results of tests carried out using next-generation genomic sequencing (NGS) possess a peculiar and perhaps unique ‘diagnostic durability’. Unlike most other forms of testing, if genomic results or data are stored over time, then it remains possible to interrogate that information indefinitely, without having to retest the patient. Another peculiar property of genomic results is that their interpretations are subject to change within relatively short time frames. For instance, a genomic variant that is of uncertain significance (VUS) at the (...) time of testing may shortly afterwards come to be understood as pathogenic (P) or benign (B). Moreover, variant classifications might be downgraded from likely pathogenic to VUS or B, or regraded from B to VUS. These two properties of genomic testing have important implications for the responsible implementation of genomic testing in healthcare. One of these is that they prompt the question whether diagnostic laboratories are morally required to routinely reinterpret their genomic variant classifications and reissue patient reports in the case of materially relevant changes. We take up this question in our paper, in which we argue against the existence of any general duty to reinterpret genomic variant classifications (as had been argued for by Appelbaum et al 1). Still, we maintain that a restricted duty to reinterpret ought to be recognised.2 We thank the authors of the commentaries on our paper for their attention to our argument and for their thoughtful responses to (and expansions of) our position. Oerlemans et al address …. (shrink)

Carnap’s seminal ‘Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology’ makes important use of the notion of a framework and the related distinction between internal and external questions. But what exactly is a framework? And what role does the internal/external distinction play in Carnap’s metaontology? In an influential series of papers, Matti Eklund has recently defended a bracingly straightforward interpretation: A Carnapian framework, Eklund says, is just a natural language. To ask an internal question, then, is just to ask a question in, say, English. (...) To try to ask an external question is to try, absurdly, to ask a question in no language at all. Finding that so trivial an I/e distinction can’t help to explain Carnap’s deflationary metaontology, Eklund is led to attribute to Carnap a view he calls ontological pluralism. In this paper, I show that Eklund misreads Carnap, and I argue that this misreading obscures fundamental features of Carnap’s philosophy. I then defend an account of frameworks as what Carnap called semantical systems, and I place this account in the context of Carnap’s philosophical program of explication. Finally, I discuss the role that frameworks and the I/e distinction play in ESO, showing that ESO provides no reason to attribute the doctrine of ontological pluralism to Carnap. (shrink)

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as pathological, not only (...) his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

In this article I ask what recent moral psychology and neuroscience can and can’t claim to have discovered about morality. I argue that the object of study of much recent work is not morality but a particular kind of individual moral judgment. But this is a small and peculiar sample of morality. There are many things that are moral yet not moral judgments. There are also many things that are moral judgments yet not of that particular kind. If moral things (...) are various and diverse, then empirical research about one kind of individual moral judgment doesn’t warrant theoretical conclusions about morality in general. If that kind of individual moral judgment is a peculiar and rare thing, then it is not obvious what it tells us about other moral things. What is more, it is not obvious what its theoretical importance is to begin with—that is, why we should care about it at all. In light of these arguments, I call for a pluralism of methods and objects of inquiry in the scientific investigation of morality, so that it transcends its problematic overemphasis on a particular kind of individual moral judgment. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper I argue that Hume’s decision to include an account of curiosity within his theory of the passions is what gives Book 2 of the Treatise its distinctive shape, in which an account of what Hume calls “indirect” passions precedes an account of the nature of the will, which is itself followed by an account of the “direct” passions, then curiosity. On my reading, Hume concludes his theory of the passions with an account of curiosity because this is (...) where it ought to go, given how Hume understands the love of truth to arise in human nature. Not only this, but I contend that Hume’s need to account for the nature of curiosity within his theory of the passions can explain his decision to open Book 2 with a discussion of the indirect passions, rather than the direct passions. (shrink)

This commentary discusses the dynamic systems (DS) approach to communication over an information-processing (IP) model. The commenters suggest that the authors of the target article, in their treatment of the issue, do not identify the central failing of the IP model. Further, it is suggested that the DS approach should include examination of mechanisms in the emergence of symbolic communication.

In this paper I set out what I call a ‘conquest’ conception of Hume's experimental science of man. It is notable, I claim, that Hume regards what he calls the ‘capital’ of the sciences – ‘the science of MAN’ – as occupied territory, and that he views his ‘direct’ method of approach upon the science of human nature as a ‘conquest’. I expand upon such statements by leveraging the comparison that Hume draws between experimental moral philosophy and the experimental tradition (...) in natural philosophy inaugurated by Francis Bacon. Overall, I suggest that Hume's decision to ground his science of human nature upon experience and observation is as much about overthrowing the epistemic authority of speculative dogmas as it is about establishing a secure foundation for his system of the sciences, and I contend that Hume's application of his hypotheses to animals is central to this conception of his philosophical project in the Treatise. (shrink)

This paper provides a reception history of Book Two of the Treatise-Of the passions-as well as an attempt to reconcile Hume's ambitions to systematicity in Book Two with the distracted and distracting nature of the text. We currently have, I think, a good sense of the philosophical importance of Book Two within Hume's science of human nature. Yet we have not made much progress on understanding Book Two on its own terms, and especially why Book Two so often seems on (...) the verge of falling into an explanatory heap. I aim to rectify this situation by giving a reading of Book Two that makes sense of the philosophical importance of Hume's system of the passions, yet also explains why he encounters so many difficulties in setting out his system; such that he is often forced to stretch his explanations to the very edge of the credible. I contend that Hume's system of the passions is best viewed as an unstable explanatory compound, one that progressively dissolves as Hume's explanatory intentions become increasingly ambitious. (shrink)

The history of the field of business ethics in the U.S. remains understudied and misunderstood. In this article I begin to remedy this oversight about the past, and I suggest how it can be beneficial in the present. Using both published and unpublished primary sources, I argue that the business ethics field emerged in the early twentieth century, against the backdrop of the establishment of business schools in major universities. I bring to light four important developments: business ethics lectures at (...) the University of California and Yale University, Leon Marshall’s curriculum at the College of Commerce of the University of Chicago, and the William A. Vawter Foundation on Business Ethics at Northwestern University. Then, I consider the payoffs of my historical account for business ethics theory, pedagogy, and practice. Specifically, I present four implications of my account under these headings: business ethics as a public problem; the place of ethics in business schools; historicizing business ethics; and historical self-knowledge. (shrink)

Everyday visual experience constantly confronts us with things we can interact with in the real world. We literally feel the outside presence of physical objects in our environment via visual perceptual experience. The visual feeling of presence is a crucial feature of vision that is largely unexplored in the philosophy of perception, and poorly debated in vision neuroscience. The aim of this article is to investigate the feeling of presence. I suggest that visual feeling of presence depends on the visual (...) representation of a very particular spatial relation with the object we interact with: the visual representation of absolute egocentric depth, which is due to stereoscopic vision. (shrink)

O presente texto tem por objetivo compreender a pintura de Wassily Kandinsky a partir da metafísica do belo de Arthur Schopenhauer, especialmente a partir da relação entre pintura e música estabelecida pelo pintor.

Gabriele Taylor presents a philosophical investigation of the "ordinary" vices traditionally seen as "death to the soul": sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. In the course of a richly detailed discussion of individual and interrelated vices, which complements recent work by moral philosophers on virtue, she shows why these "deadly sins" are correctly so named and grouped together.

Philosophers have suggested that, in order to understand the particular visual state we are in during picture perception, we should focus on experimental results from vision neuroscience—in particular, on the most rigorous account of the functioning of the visual system that we have from vision neuroscience, namely, the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’. According to the initial version of this model, our visual system can be dissociated, from an anatomo-functional point of view, into two streams: a ventral stream subserving visual recognition, (...) and a dorsal stream subserving the visual guidance of action. Following this model, philosophers have suggested that, since the two streams have different functions, they represent different properties of a picture. However, the original view proposed by the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’ about the presence of a strong anatomo-functional dissociation between the two streams has recently been questioned on both philosophical and experimental grounds. Indeed, the analysis of several new pieces of evidence seems to suggest that many visual representations in our visual system, related to different tasks, are the result of a deep functional interaction between the streams. In the light of the renewed status of the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’, also our best philosophical model of picture perception should be renewed, in order to take into account a view of the process of picture perception informed by the new evidence about such interaction. Despite this, no account fulfilling this role has been offered yet. The aim of the present paper is precisely to offer such an account. It does this by suggesting that the peculiar visual state we are in during picture perception is subserved by interstream interaction. This proposal allows us to rely on a rigorous philosophical account of picture perception that is, however, also based on the most recent results from neuroscience. Unless the explanation offered in this paper is endorsed, all the recent evidence from vision neuroscience will remain unexplained under our best empirically informed philosophical theory of picture perception. (shrink)

In this article, we propose a new account concerning the interlock between intentions and motor representations (henceforth: MRs), showing that the interface problem is not as deep as previously proposed. Before discussing our view, in the first section we report the ideas developed in the literature by those who have tried to solve this puzzle before us. The article proceeds as follows. In Sections 2 and 3, we address the views by Butterfill and Sinigaglia, and Mylopoulos and Pacherie, respectively, and (...) argue that both solutions entail a translation between representational formats, which both accounts aim to avoid. In Section 4, we present our brand‐new claim, according to which intentions and MRs partially share the same motor format, inasmuch as executable action concepts are naturally represented in the agent's motor system together with the action's outcomes. Indeed, since intentions are constituted by executable action concepts and since there is evidence that action concepts are represented (and, thus, built) in the same motor format as action outcomes, the interlock between intentions and MRs no longer constitutes a problem. Then, in Section 5, we report empirical evidence in support of our claim, and before concluding, in Section 6 we briefly clarify our relations with two very recent accounts that criticized the proposals by Mylopoulos and Pacherie and Butterfill and Sinigaglia: Shepherd's and Burnston's. Finally, in Section 7, we offer some remarks about the philosophical idea defended here. The basic insight is that interface without translation is possible because action concepts are such stuff as MRs are made on. (shrink)

Philosophers have suggested that, in order to understand the particular visual state we are in during picture perception, we should focus on experimental results from vision neuroscience—in particular, on the most rigorous account of the functioning of the visual system that we have from vision neuroscience, namely, the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’. According to the initial version of this model, our visual system can be dissociated, from an anatomo-functional point of view, into two streams: a ventral stream subserving visual recognition, (...) and a dorsal stream subserving the visual guidance of action. Following this model, philosophers have suggested that, since the two streams have different functions, they represent different properties of a picture. However, the original view proposed by the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’ about the presence of a strong anatomo-functional dissociation between the two streams has recently been questioned on both philosophical and experimental grounds. Indeed, the analysis of several new pieces of evidence seems to suggest that many visual representations in our visual system, related to different tasks, are the result of a deep functional interaction between the streams. In the light of the renewed status of the ‘Two Visual Systems Model’, also our best philosophical model of picture perception should be renewed, in order to take into account a view of the process of picture perception informed by the new evidence about such interaction. Despite this, no account fulfilling this role has been offered yet. The aim of the present paper is precisely to offer such an account. It does this by suggesting that the peculiar visual state we are in during picture perception is subserved by interstream interaction. This proposal allows us to rely on a rigorous philosophical account of picture perception that is, however, also based on the most recent results from neuroscience. Unless the explanation offered in this paper is endorsed, all the recent evidence from vision neuroscience will remain unexplained under our best empirically informed philosophical theory of picture perception. (shrink)

This article aims to show how the changes to NEPA by the Trump Administration are an act of environmental racism, defined as “[i]ntentional or unintentional racial discrimination in environmental policy‐making, enforcement of regulations and laws, and targeting of communities for the disposal of toxic waste and siting of polluting industries.”.

Patients are increasingly turning to medical crowdfunding as a way to cover their healthcare costs. In the case of Charlie Gard, an infant born with encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, crowdfunding was used to finance experimental nucleoside therapy. Although this treatment was not provided in the end, we will argue that the success of the Gard family’s crowdfunding campaign reveals a number of potential ethical concerns. First, this case shows that crowdfunding can change the way in which communal healthcare resources (...) are allocated. Second, within the UK’s National Health Service, healthcare is ostensibly not a market resource; thus, permitting crowdfunding introduces market norms that could commodify healthcare. Third, pressures inherent to receiving funds from external parties may threaten the ability of patients-cum-recipients to voluntarily consent to treatment. We conclude that while crowdfunding itself is not unethical, its use can have unforeseen consequences that may influence conceptions of healthcare and how it is delivered. (shrink)

Normative political theorists have been growing more and more aware of the many difficult questions raised by the discretionary power inevitably left to public administrators. This article aims to advance a novel normative principle, called ‘principle of restraint’, regulating reform of established administrative agencies. I argue that the ability of public administrators to exercise their power in accordance with the requirements of public reason is protected by an attitude of restraint on the part of potential reformers. Specifically, they should refrain (...) from any reform of an administrative agency that involves a switch to a considerably more loosely interconnected system of values underlying the work of that agency. To illustrate the importance of the principle of restraint, I examine a case from British health policy, showing that a recent reform of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence well exemplifies the serious problems brought by any violation of that principle. (shrink)

Concepts of decision, choice, decision-maker, and decision-making are common practical tools in both social science and natural science, on which scientific knowledge, policy implications, and moral recommendations are based. In this article I address three questions. First, I look into how present-day social scientists and natural scientists use decision/choice concepts. What are they used for? Second, scientists may differ in the application of decision/choice to X, and they may explicitly disagree about the applicability of decision/choice to X. Where exactly do (...) these disagreements lie? Third, I ask how scientists should use decision/choice concepts. What are they correctly and incorrectly used for? I argue that scientists must responsibly attend to a methodological demand: you have to have a principled, non-ad hoc, well-argued-for way of telling where decision/choice applicability ends. Thus, I aim to minimize the risk of conceptual stretching and foster responsible conceptual practices in a large body of scientific work. (shrink)

The history of Pythagoreanism is littered with different and incompatible interpretations. This observation directs this book towards a fundamentally historiographical rather than philological approach, setting out to reconstruct the way in which the tradition established Pythagoreanism s image.".

Gabriele Taylor; VIII*—Love, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 76, Issue 1, 1 June 1976, Pages 147–164, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/76.1.

This article discusses the growth of the populist radical right as a concrete example of the scenario where liberal democratic ideas are losing support in broadly liberal democratic societies. Our goal is to enrich John Rawls’ influential theory of political liberalism. We argue that even in that underexplored scenario, Rawlsian political liberalism can offer an appealing account of how to promote the legitimacy and stability of liberal democratic institutions provided it places partisanship centre stage. Specifically, we propose a brand-new moral (...) duty binding ‘reasonable’ partisans committed to pluralism. This duty establishes conditions where partisans must strategically transform society’s public reason (i.e. transform the visions for society their parties campaign on) in ways that promise to attract back support from illiberal and antidemocratic competitors. While this strategic behaviour might seem impermissible, we show that Rawls’ distinctive account of sincerity in democratic deliberation is uniquely placed to justify it as perfectly ethical. (shrink)

Because humans cannot know one another’s minds directly, every form of communication is a solution to the same basic problem: how can privately held information be made publicly accessible through manipulations of the physical environment? Language is by far the best studied response to this challenge. But there are a diversity of non-linguistic strategies for representation with external signs as well, from facial expressions and fog horns to chronological graphs and architectural renderings. The general thesis of this dissertation is that (...) there is an impressively wide spectrum of conventional systems of representation, corresponding to the many ways that the problem of communication can be solved, and that these systems can be described and explained using the tools of contemporary mathematical semantics. As a partial corrective to the countervailing norm, this work concentrates on the class of systems arguably most different from language— those governing the interpretation of pictorial images. Such representations dominate practical communication: witness the proliferation of maps, road signs, newspaper photographs, scientific illustrations, television shows, engineering drawings, and even the fleeting imagery of manual gesture. I argue that systems of depiction and languages embody a parallel technologies of communication. Both are based on semantics: systematic and conventional mappings from signs to representational content. But I also provide evidence that these semantics are profoundly divergent. Whereas the semantics of languages are based on arbitrary associations of signs and denotations, the semantics of systems of depiction are based on rules of geometrical transformation. Drawing on recent research in computer graphics and computational vision, I go on to develop a precise theory of pictorial semantics. This in turn facilitates a detailed comparison of iconic, image-based representation, and symbolic, language-based representation. A consequence of these conclusions is that the traditional, language-centric conception of semantics must be overhauled to allow for a more general semantic theory, one which countenances the wide variety of interpretive mechanisms actually at work in human communication. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle famously wrote that practical knowledge (knowing how) is distinct from propositional knowledge (knowing that). This claim continues to have broad philosophical appeal, and yet there are many unsettled questions surrounding Ryle’s basic proposal. In this article, I return to his original work in order to perform some intellectual archeology. I offer an interpretation of Ryle’s concept of action that I call ‘adverbialism’. Actions are constituted by bodily behaviours performed in a certain mode, style or manner. I present various (...) challenges to adverbialism – scenarios in which it seems we publicly behave one way, but privately feel another. And I offer a response – Ryle’s stated practice of re-describing those situations in ways that pose no threat to his adverbialism. I also present an interpretation of practical knowledge in Ryle’s work. Knowing how is a special kind of action, undertaken only when we progressively self-modify our behaviours in the presence of new challenges or opportunities. (shrink)

This essay argues for a model of pictorial representation which aims to explain the relationship between pictorial content and pictorial accuracy. Focusing on cases where pictures are intended to convey accurate information, the model distinguishes between two fundamental representational relations: on one hand, a picture expresses a content; on the other, it aims at a target scene. Such a picture is accurate when the content it expresses fits the target scene it aims at. In addition, the model follows the traditional (...) division of content into two aspects: singular content specifies the particular individuals which a picture is of, and attributive content specifies the properties and relations which the picture ascribes to those individuals. For a picture to be accurate, both aspects must be matched in the target. I call this the Three-Part Model because it distinguishes between the triad of factors, singular content, attributive content, and target, which together determine pictorial accuracy. Though previous work on depiction has not recognized the distinctive role played by target, I will argue that it is essential in order to make sense of accuracy judgements across a range of central cases. (shrink)

Studying evidence law as part of naturalized epistemology means using the tools and results of the sciences to evaluate evidence rules based on the accuracy of the verdicts they are likely to produce. In this chapter, we introduce the approach and address skeptical concerns about the value of systematic empirical research for evidence scholarship, focusing, in particular, on worries about the external validity of jury simulation studies. Finally, turning to applications, we consider possible reforms regarding eyewitness identifications and character evidence.

Molyneux’s question famously asks about whether a newly sighted subject might immediately recognize, by sight alone, shapes that were already familiar to her from a tactile point of view. This paper addresses three crucial points concerning this puzzle. First, the presence of two different questions: the classic one concerning visual recognition and another one concerning vision-for-action. Second, the explicit distinction, reported in the literature, between ocular and cortical blindness. Third, the importance of making reference to our best neuroscientific account on (...) vision, ‘the two visual systems model’, in order to better address Molyneux’s problem. Then, by offering a new, deeper analysis of the relation between, and, this paper suggests that the subjects of Molyneux’s two different questions show the same visual impairment as brain-damaged subjects with different lesions of the visual cortex. In particular, the subject of the first question shows the same impairment in visual recognition as a visual agnosic subject, while the subject of the second question shows the same visual impairment in visuomotor processing as an optic ataxic subject. These impairments still hold even if ocular processing is restored. Therefore, I suggest the following. For the first classic question, the required experimental setting cannot be properly reached. By contrast, concerning the second question, based on the interpretation we select, either the answer is negative, or, as with the first question, the experimental setting cannot be properly reached. This proposal constitutes, with the other approaches offered in the literature, a further attempt to tackle the enormous complexity of Molyneux’s puzzle. (shrink)

Sociological propositions about the workings of cognition are rarely specified or tested, but are of central relevance to studies of culture, social judgment, and social movements. This paper draws out lessons of recent work from sociological theory, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience on the embodied nature of knowledge and thought, and develops implications of these lessons for cultural and cognitive sociology. Knowledge ought to be conceived of as fundamentally embodied, because sensory information is a fundamental component of experience as it (...) is stored in long-term memory, and because bodily responses and intuitions often precede reflexive or strategic thought. I argue that the challenge of embodied knowledge for cultural sociology is threefold: to develop cultural theories of motivation; to specify the ways in which the body structures discourses endogenously; and to specify how embodied motivations and embodied discourses interact. (shrink)