We recently described a novel form of stress‐associated bidirectional plasticity at GABA synapses onto hypothalamic parvocellular neuroendocrine cells (PNCs), the apex of the hypothalamus‐pituitary‐adrenal axis. This plasticity may contribute to neuroendocrine adaptation. However, this GABA synapse plasticity likely does not translate into a simple more and less of inhibition because the ionic driving force for Cl−, the primary charge carrier for GABAA receptors, is dynamic. Specifically, stress impairs a Cl− extrusion mechanism in PNCs. This not only renders the steady‐state GABA (...) response less hyperpolarizing but also makes PNCs susceptible to the activity‐dependent accumulation of Cl−. Accordingly, GABA synapse plasticity impacts both the robustness of GABA voltage response and dynamic Cl− loading, imposing nonlinear influences on PNC excitability during circuit activities. This theoretical consideration predicts roles for GABA transmission far more versatile than canonical inhibition. We propose potential impacts of GABA synapse plasticity on the experience‐dependent fine‐tuning of neuroendocrine stress responses. (shrink)

A collection, edited by David Bain, Michael Brady, and Jennifer Corns, originating in our Value of Suffering Project. Table of Contents: Michael Wheeler - ‘How should affective phenomena be studied?’; Julien Deonna & Fabrice Teroni – ‘Pleasures, unpleasures, and emotions’; Hilla Jacobson – ‘The attitudinal representational theory of painfulness fleshed out’; Tim Schroeder – ‘What we represent when we represent the badness of getting hurt’; Hagit Benbaji – ‘A defence of the inner view of pain’; Olivier Massin – ‘Suffering pain’; (...) Frederique de Vignemont – ‘The value of threat’; Colin Leach – ‘Bad feelings can be good and good feelings can be bad’; Tasia Scrutton – ‘Mental suffering and the experience of beauty’; Brock Bastian – ‘From suffering to satisfaction: why we need pain to feel pleasure’; Marilyn McCord Adams – ‘Pain and moral agency’; Jennifer Corns – ‘Hedonic rationality’; Jonathan Cohen & Matthew Fulkerson – ‘Suffering and rationality’; Tom McClelland – ‘Suffering invites understanding’; Michael Brady – ‘Suffering as a virtue’; Glen Pettigrove TBA. Further authors TBA. (shrink)

I will argue that there are difficulties with the application of the four principles approach to incompetent children. The most important principle – respect for autonomy – is not directly applicable to incompetent children and the most appropriate modification of the principle for them is not clear. The principle of beneficence – that one should act in the child’s interests – is complicated by difficulties in assessing what a child’s interests are and to which standard of interests those choosing for (...) children should be held. A further problem with the four principles approach is that parental authority does not follow clearly from the four principles. (shrink)

Over recent decades, pain has received increasing attention as – with ever greater sophistication and rigour – theorists have tried to answer the deep and difficult questions it poses. What is pain’s nature? What is its point? In what sense is it bad? The papers collected in this volume are a contribution to that effort ...

The Dutch humanist scholar Hadriaan Beverland (1650–1716) famously argued in De Peccato Originali (DPO) that the original sin was sex, in the process challenging the authenticity of God’s command t...

Accounts of the nature of unpleasant pain have proliferated over the past decade, but there has been little systematic investigation of which of them can accommodate its badness. This paper is such a study. In its sights are two targets: those who deny the non-instrumental disvalue of pain's unpleasantness; and those who allow it but deny that it can be accommodated by the view—advanced by me and others—that unpleasant pains are interoceptive experiences with evaluative content. Against the former, I argue (...) that pain's unpleasantness does indeed have noninstrumental disvalue; against the latter I argue both that my critics’ own desire-theoretic accounts of pain's unpleasantness cannot accommodate such disvalue, and that my evaluativist view can—either by appealing to “anti-unpleasantness” desires or by exploiting pain's perceptuality. (shrink)

The unpleasantness of pain motivates action. Hence many philosophers have doubted that it can be accounted for purely in terms of pain’s possession of indicative representational content. Instead, they have explained it in terms of subjects’ inclinations to stop their pains, or in terms of pain’s imperative content. I claim that such “noncognitivist” accounts fail to accommodate unpleasant pain’s reason-giving force. What is needed, I argue, is a view on which pains are unpleasant, motivate, and provide reasons in virtue of (...) possessing content that is indeed indicative, but also, crucially, evaluative. (shrink)

Evaluativism is best thought of as a way of enriching a perceptual view of pain to account for pain’s unpleasantness or painfulness. Once it was common for philosophers to contrast pains with perceptual experiences (McGinn 1982; Rorty 1980). It was thought that perceptual experiences were intentional (or content-bearing, or about something), whereas pains were representationally blank. But today many of us reject this contrast. For us, your having a pain in your toe is a matter not of your sensing “pain-ly” (...) or encountering a sense-datum, but of your having an interoceptive experience representing (accurately or inaccurately) that your toe is in a particular experience-independent condition, such as undergoing a certain “disturbance” or being damaged or in danger (Armstrong 1962; Tye 1995). But even if such representational content makes an experience a pain, a further ingredient seems required to make the pain unpleasant. According to evaluativism, the further ingredient is the experience’s possession of evaluative content: its representing the bodily condition as bad for the subject. In this chapter, I elaborate evaluativism, locate it among alternatives, and explain its attractions and challenges. (shrink)

Pain, crucially, is unpleasant and motivational. It can be awful; and it drives us to action, e.g. to take our weight off a sprained ankle. But what is the relationship between pain and those two features? And in virtue of what does pain have them? Addressing these questions, Colin Klein and Richard J. Hall have recently developed the idea that pains are, at least partly, experiential commands—to stop placing your weight on your ankle, for example. In this paper, I reject (...) their accounts. Against Klein, I use dissociation cases to argue that possession of ‘imperative content’ cannot wholly constitute pain. Against them both, I further claim that possession of such content cannot even constitute pain’s unpleasant, motivational aspect. For, even if it were possible to specify the relevant imperative content—which is far from clear—the idea of a command cannot bear the explanatory weight Klein and Hall place on it. (shrink)

COVID-19 continues to dominate 2020 and is likely to be a feature of our lives for some time to come. Given this, how should health systems respond ethically to the persistent challenges of responding to the ongoing impact of the pandemic? Relatedly, what ethical values should underpin the resetting of health services after the initial wave, knowing that local spikes and further waves now seem inevitable? In this editorial, we outline some of the ethical challenges confronting those running health services (...) as they try to resume non-COVID-related services, and the downstream ethical implications these have for healthcare professionals’ day-to-day decision making. This is a phase of recovery, resumption and renewal; a form of reset for health services.1 This reset phase will define the ‘new normal' for healthcare delivery, and it offers an opportunity to reimagine and change services for the better. There are difficulties, however, healthcare systems are already weakened by austerity and the first wave of COVID-19 and remain under stress as the pandemic continues. The reset period is operating alongside, rather than at the end, of the pandemic and this creates difficult ethical choices. ### Balancing the greater good with individual care Pandemics—and public health emergencies more generally—reinforce approaches to ethics that emphasise or derive from the interests of communities, rather than those grounded in the claims of the autonomous individual. The response has been to draw on more public health focused ethics, ‘if demand outstrips the ability to deliver to existing standards, more strictly utilitarian considerations will have to be applied, and decisions about how to meet the individual's need will give way to decisions about how to maximise overall benefit’.2 Alongside this, effective …. (shrink)

Gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, are being heralded as powerful new tools for delivering agricultural products and foods with a variety of beneficial traits quickly, easily, and cheaply. Proponents are concerned, however, about whether the public will accept the new technology and that excessive regulatory oversight could limit the technology’s potential. In this paper, we draw on the sociotechnical imaginaries literature to examine how proponents are imagining the potential benefits and risks of gene editing technologies within agriculture. We derive (...) our data from a content analysis of public comments submitted to the Food and Drug Administration’s 2017 docket titled “Genome Editing in New Plant Varieties Used for Food.” Our sample frame consists of 26 comments representing 30 agriculture and biotech companies, organizations, and trade associations. Our findings reveal three key sociotechnical imaginaries, including that gene editing technologies in agriculture: are not GMO but instead equivalent to traditional plant breeding; have the potential to usher in a new Green Revolution; and could facilitate the democratization of agricultural biotechnologies. We argue that forming and projecting these collective interpretations of the potential of gene editing technologies for crops and foods plays an important role in efforts by proponents to influence regulatory oversight, modes of governance, and build public acceptance. This research contributes to calls by science and technology studies scholars to investigate emergent concerns and imaginaries for novel technoscientific advances to help inform upstream models of public engagement and governance decisions. (shrink)

In 1922 in The Principle of Relativity, Whitehead presented an alternative theory of gravitation in response to Einstein’s general relativity. To the latter, he objected on philosophical grounds—specifically, that Einstein’s notion of a variable spacetime geometry contingent on the presence of matter (a) confounds theories of measurement, and, more generally, (b) is unacceptable within the bounds of a reasonable epistemology. Whitehead offered instead a theory based within a comprehensive philosophy of nature. The formulal Whitehead adopted for the gravitational field has (...) been described as involving both the flat metric nu, of Minkowski spacetime and a dynamic metric gu, dependent on the presence of source masses. The ontological relationship between the two must be fleshed out in the context of Whitehead’s philosophy of nature. The relationship is of some importance, not only in casting Whitehead’s theory within its proper metaphysical context vis-d—vis Einstein, but also in judging how the theory has faired empirically with respect to general relativity (GR hereafter). It makes the same predictions as GR with respect to the perihelion advance, the deflection of light rays and the gravitational red-shift; indeed, Eddington (1924) has shown that it is equivalent to the Schwarzschild solution of Einstein’s held equations for the one-body problem. However, it also appears to predict an anisotropy in the locally measured gravitational constant y that is in conflict.. (shrink)

In this article we examine Kant’s understanding of toleration by including a study of all instances in which he directly uses the language of toleration and related concepts. We use this study to resolve several key areas of interpretative dispute concerning Kant’s views on toleration. We argue that Kant offers a nuanced and largely unappreciated approach to thinking about toleration, and related concepts, across three normative spheres: the political, the interpersonal and the personal. We examine shortcomings in earlier interpretations and (...) conclude by arguing that the theme of toleration in Kant’s work, while coherent and important, is neither as central nor as peripheral as suggested by previous interpretations. Further, while Kant is critical of the arrogance of toleration in the political sphere, he is more positive toward the role of toleration in the interpersonal and personal spheres since it promotes virtue. (shrink)

I will consider how we can assess the interests of critically ill children who will survive only while aggressive medical support is continued. If aggressive medical support is withdrawn, the child will die shortly afterwards. This is important because when the courts are asked to decide treatments, the standard is that decisions should be made in the best interests of the child. My claim is that this is not a coherent way to consider how some children in this situation should (...) be treated. I will consider two separate aspects of this problem. First, I will argue that there is no objective best interests test and no immediate prospect that we will be able to develop one. Secondly, I will argue that best interests are not a coherent way to consider the interests of children who will die shortly after treatment is withdrawn. To reinforce this claim, I will describe an example of two children where acting in the child's best interests produces counter-intuitive conclusions. (shrink)

It can seem natural to say that, when in pain, we undergo experiences which present to us certain experience-dependent particulars, namely pains. As part of his wider approach to mind and world, John McDowell has elaborated an interesting but neglected version of this account of pain. Here I set out McDowell’s account at length, and place it in context. I argue that his subjectivist conception of the objects of pain experience is incompatible with his requirement that such experience be presentational, (...) rationalizing, and classificatory. (shrink)

According to a Received View, relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs) do not admit particle interpretations. This view requires that particles be localizable and countable, and that these characteristics be given mathematical expression in the forms of local and unique total number operators. Various results (the Reeh-Schlieder theorem, the Unruh Effect, Haag's theorem) then indicate that formulations of RQFTs do not support such operators. These results, however, do not hold for nonrelativistic QFTs. I argue that this is due to the absolute (...) structure of the classical spacetimes associated with such theories. This suggests that the intuitions that underlie the Received View are non-relativistic. Thus, to the extent that such intuitions are inappropriate in the relativistic context, they should be abandoned when it comes to interpreting RQFTs. (shrink)

We have now celebrated the centenary of J. J. Thomson’s famous paper (1897) on the electron and have examined one hundred years of the history of our first fundamental particle. What should philosophers of science learn from this history? To some, the fundamental moral is already suggested by the rapid pace of this history. Thomson’s concern in 1897 was to demonstrate that cathode rays are electrified particles and not aetherial vibrations, the latter being the “almost unanimous opinion of German physicists” (...) (p. 293) But were these German physicists so easily vanquished? De Broglie proposed in 1923 that electrons are a wave phenomenon after all and his proposal was soon multiply vindicated, even by the detection of the diffraction of the electron waves. Should we not learn from such a reversal? Should we not dispense with the simple-minded idea that Thomson discovered our first fundamental particle and admit that the very notion of discovery might well be ill-suited to science? (shrink)

In this volume his object is to fully examine his friend's writings and characters and draws upon his own personal recollections to do so.

In this essay I examine a recent argument by Steven Weinberg that seeks to establish local quantum field theory as the only type of quantum theory in accord with the relevent evidence and satisfying two basic physical principles. I reconstruct the argument as a demonstrative induction and indicate it's role as a foil to the underdetermination argument in the debate over scientific realism.

Pauly'sReal-Encyclopädieknows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish,c⋯λπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as anobstetrix, while the second features in theDeipnosophistaeof Athenaeus as a writer of πα⋯γνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's πα⋯γνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or frivolous verse, but of a compilation (...) of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed πα⋯γνια Δημοκρ⋯του. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

Since 2010, demand for non-GMO food products has grown dramatically. Two non-GMO labels dominate the market: USDA Organic and the Non-GMO Project Verified. However, the non-GMO status of Organic is not obvious from the label and many consumers are unaware of this. As sales of products carrying the Project’s non-GMO label have exploded, concern has increased among some Organic proponents that demand for non-GMO threatens the organic market. In response, both sides are seeking to build legitimacy and authority for their (...) label by emphasizing the value of their standards for determining a food product’s non-GMO status within a GMO contaminated agrifood system. Drawing on in-depth interviews with key informants with knowledge of non-GMO standards and labels, we examine the knowledge systems, discourses and actors that proponents of the Project and USDA Organic privilege in their effort to legitimize their standards. Here, the Project emphasizes its application of technoscientific norms, especially thresholds and testing, which they argue provide the best means for preventing GMO contamination and helping consumers find non-GMO ‘purity’. In contrast, proponents of Organic favor a process standard that excludes GMOs, arguing that non-GMO ‘purity’ is unrealistic in today’s agrifood system that is widely contaminated by GMOs and where mandatory testing would unnecessarily harm organic producers. We conclude that tensions between the two groups are unlikely to be easily reconciled since these two distinct marketing labels rely on different knowledge and verification claims to vie for consumers and increase market share. (shrink)

Pauly's Real-Encyclopädie knows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish, cλπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as an obstetrix, while the second features in the Deipnosophistae of Athenaeus as a writer of παγνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's παγνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or (...) frivolous verse, but of a compilation of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed παγνια Δημοκρτου. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

Pauly'sReal-Encyclopädieknows of two women named after the attractive looking,but allegedly unappetising fish,c⋯λπη. The first is mentioned several times in theelder Pliny, who on one occasion refers to her as anobstetrix, while the second features in theDeipnosophistaeof Athenaeus as a writer of πα⋯γνια. In a recent issue of this journal J. N. Davidson has made the suggestion that they were one and the same person. Salpe's πα⋯γνια, Davidson argues, would not have consisted of light or frivolous verse, but of a compilation (...) of prose recipes of a kind that is to be found in a section of a London magical papyrus which is headed πα⋯γνια Δημοκρ⋯του. Such recipes might well have cohabited with the kind of practicalmedical advice reportedly given by the Salpe referred to in Pliny. His case is superficially attractive since, as will be seen, such a collocation of practical help and frivolity is easy to parallel in magical and other subliterary texts. It needs to be scrutinized, however, in the light of a fuller presentation and consideration of the evidence than is to be found in his note. First, it is worth describing at greater length the phenomena in question, which are much more common than one would gather from a reading of Davidson and which are, I suspect, not as yet as familiar to the scholarly world as they should be. (shrink)

SummaryScholars of international relations generally invoke Hobbes as the quintessential theorist of international anarchy. David Armitage challenges this characterisation, arguing that Hobbes is regarded as a foundational figure in international relations theory in spite of as much as because of what he wrote on the subject. Thus, for Armitage, Hobbes is not the theorist of anarchy that he is made out to be. This article agrees with the general thrust of Armitage's critique while maintaining that it is still possible to (...) imagine Hobbes as a theorist of anarchy. Hobbes is a theorist of anarchy, not in a political sense, but in a metaphysical sense. This conception of anarchy is a reflection of a comprehensive theological account of reality that is grounded in an omnipotent God. Any historical inquiry into the foundations of modern international thought must take account of theology, because theology defines the ultimate coordinates of reality in terms of which the concepts of international thought are intelligible. (shrink)

CPT invariance and the spin-statistics connection are typically taken to be essential properties in relativistic quantum field theories (RQFTs), insofar as the CPT and Spin-Statistics theorems entail that any state of a physical system characterized by an RQFT must possess these properties. Moreover, in the physics literature, they are typically taken to be properties of particles. But there is a Received View among philosophers that RQFTs cannot fundamentally be about particles. This essay considers what proofs of the CPT and Spin-Statistics (...) theorems suggest about the ontology of RQFTs, and the extent to which this is compatible with the Received View. I will argue that such proofs suggest the Received View’s approach to ontology is flawed. (shrink)

Recent research exposing environmental and social externalities of biofuels has undermined the earlier national consensus that they would provide climate mitigation and rural development benefits, but support for ethanol remains strong in Iowa. The objective of this paper is to understand how stakeholder groups in Iowa have framed the benefits and risks associated with ethanol’s impact on the local economy and environment. Our case study draws on in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with key informants from agricultural organizations, environmental organizations, and government (...) departments in the state. We find that in Iowa, widespread support for ethanol production exists among government, energy, and farm groups, and that they frame ethanol production as economically beneficial to rural communities and agriculture, while minimizing the possibility of associated environmental risks. Although participants from environmental organizations in Iowa express apprehension about the environmental impacts of expanded corn ethanol production, their unease is muted in relation to economic benefits and in relation to other environmental issues, and few have publicly voiced their concerns. To understand these findings, we draw from the environmental sociology literature that examines the role of powerful natural resource interests in framing the importance of resource extraction and commodity production to community identity and economy and in delegitimizing and naturalizing associated environmental issues and problems. We argue that powerful natural resource interests in Iowa both naturalize environmental problems related to ethanol production and engage in diversionary reframing to emphasize the economic benefits while minimizing or rejecting the potential environmental risks. (shrink)

I defend externalism about color experiences and color thoughts, which I argue color objectivism requires. Externalists face the following question: would a subject's wearing inverting lenses eventually change the color content of, for instance, those visual experiences the subject reports with “red”? From the work of Ned Block, David Velleman, Paul Boghossian, Michael Tye, and Fiona Macpherson, I extract problems facing those who answer “Yes” and problems facing those who answer “No.” I show how these problems can be overcome, leaving (...) externalism available to the color objectivist. (shrink)

In an earlier paper I argued that we do not have an objective conception of best interests and that this is a particular problem because the courts describe that they use an ‘…objective approach or test. That test is the best interests of the patient’ when choosing for children. I further argued that there was no obvious way in which we could hope to develop an objective notion of best interests. As well as this, I argued that a best-interest-based approach (...) was a particular problem around the time of death of some children. A response from a legal perspective argued that, while there is not a clear conception of objective best interests, the courts have a well-described approach to finding a child's objective best interests. In this paper, I argue that without clear agreement on an objective conception of best interests, the courts are unable to locate an objective sense of best interests and that the solutions do not solve the problems that were identified in the initial paper ‘Death and best interests’. (shrink)

Medical decisions for children are usually justified by the claim that they are in a child's best interests. More recently, following criticisms of the best interests standard, some advocate that the family's interests should influence medical decisions for children, although what is meant by family interests is often not made clear. I argue that at least two senses of family interests may be discerned. There is a ‘weak’ sense of family interests and a ‘strong’ sense. I contend that there are (...) problems with both approaches in making medical decisions for children but that the weak sense is more plausible. Despite this, I argue that claims for family interests are not helpful in making medical decisions for children. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn objects that Wittgenstein's private language argument overlooks the possibility that a private linguist can equip himself with a criterion of correctness by confirming generalizations about the patterns in which his private sensations occur. Crispin Wright responds that appropriate generalizations would be too few to be interesting. But I show that Wright's calculations are upset by his failure to appreciate both the richness of the data and the range of theories that would be available to the private linguist.