The use of black box algorithms in medicine has raised scholarly concerns due to their opaqueness and lack of trustworthiness. Concerns about potential bias, accountability and responsibility, patient autonomy and compromised trust transpire with black box algorithms. These worries connect epistemic concerns with normative issues. In this paper, we outline that black box algorithms are less problematic for epistemic reasons than many scholars seem to believe. By outlining that more transparency in algorithms is not always necessary, and by explaining that (...) computational processes are indeed methodologically opaque to humans, we argue that the reliability of algorithms provides reasons for trusting the outcomes of medical artificial intelligence. To this end, we explain how computational reliabilism, which does not require transparency and supports the reliability of algorithms, justifies the belief that results of medical AI are to be trusted. We also argue that several ethical concerns remain with black box algorithms, even when the results are trustworthy. Having justified knowledge from reliable indicators is, therefore, necessary but not sufficient for normatively justifying physicians to act. This means that deliberation about the results of reliable algorithms is required to find out what is a desirable action. Thus understood, we argue that such challenges should not dismiss the use of black box algorithms altogether but should inform the way in which these algorithms are designed and implemented. When physicians are trained to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, and collaborate with medical informatics and data scientists, black box algorithms can contribute to improving medical care. (shrink)

Despite countless anecdotes and the historical significance of insight as a problem solving mechanism, its nature has long remained elusive. The conscious experience of insight is notoriously difficult to trace in non-verbal animals. Although studying insight has presented a significant challenge even to neurobiology and psychology, human neuroimaging studies have cleared the theoretical landscape, as they have begun to reveal the underlying mechanisms. The study of insight in non-human animals has, in contrast, remained limited to innovative adjustments to experimental designs (...) within the classical approach of judging cognitive processes in animals, based on task performance. This leaves no apparent possibility of ending debates from different interpretations emerging from conflicting schools of thought. We believe that comparative cognition has thus much to gain by embracing advances from neuroscience and human cognitive psychology. We will review literature on insight and discuss the consequences of these findings to comparative cognition. (shrink)

One of the major arenas for debate within generative grammar is the nature of paradigmatic relations among words. Intervening in key debates at the interface between syntax and semantics, this book examines the relation between structure and meaning, and analyses how it affects the internal properties of words and corresponding syntactic manifestations. Adapting notions from the Evo-Devo project in biology (the idea of 'co-linearity' between structural units and behavioural manifestations) Juan Uriagereka addresses a major puzzle: how words can be (...) both decomposable so as to be acquired by children, and atomic, so that they do not manifest themselves as modular to adults. (shrink)

In this paper we don’t intend to show, against the sceptic, that most of our everyday beliefs about the external world are cases of knowledge. What we do try to show is that it is more rational to hold that most of such beliefs are actually cases of knowledge than to deny them this status, as the external world sceptic does. In some sense, our point of view is the opposite of Hume’s, who held that reason clearly favours scepticism about (...) the independent existence of an external world rather than common sense belief in such an independent existence. In arguing for the superior rationality of this common sense, Moorean view, we also take a fallibilist conception of knowledge to be rationally preferable to an infallibilist view of it. (shrink)

El Principio de Posibilidades Alternativas supone un problema para las posiciones compatibilistas respecto de la responsabilidad moral. Desde que Harry Frankfurt diseñara uno, los contraejemplos al PPA se conocen como casos Frankfurt. Una de las mejores líneas de defensa de este principio frente a los nuevos casos Frankfurt es la que se ofrece en Moya. En este artículo me propongo mostrar que su estrategia no es satisfactoria y, al mismo tiempo, argumentar que para la atribución de responsabilidad moral por una (...) acción es suficiente con que existan alternativas epistémicas. (shrink)

In their target article, Mikhalevich & Powell (M&P) argue that we should extend moral protection to arthropods. In this commentary, we show that there are some unforeseen obstacles to applying the sort of individualistic welfare-based ethics that M&P have in mind to certain arthropods, namely, insects. These obstacles have to do with the fact that there are often many more individuals involved in our dealings with insects than our ethical theories anticipate, and also with the fact that, in some sense, (...) some insects count as more than an individual and, in another sense, they sometimes count as less than an individual. (shrink)

The paper argues that there are resources within theories of corrective justice to make the case against the deportation of immigrants, including those accused of committing criminal actions. More specifically, the argument defended here is that a nation acts impermissibly by deporting criminal immigrants who belong to countries that the nation itself wronged in a manner that contributed to create the migratory flow that led the immigrants in question there. In that case, admission and, equally important, permanent residence in the (...) host nation must be understood as a form of compensation for past wrongs, the interruption of which represents a breach of its duties of rectification, and is therefore unjust. Put in slightly different terms, some migrants have a retributive right-claim against their host state (which they may or may not exercise) to be admitted into the host state and not be deported. (shrink)

Over the last decade, empirical research on compassion has burgeoned in the biomedical, clinical, translational, and foundational sciences. Increasingly sophisticated understandings and measures of compassion continue to emerge from the abundance of multi- and cross-disciplinary studies. Naturally, the diversity of research methods and theoretical frameworks employed presents a significant challenge to consensus and synthesis of this knowledge. To bring the empirical findings of separate and sometimes siloed disciplines into conversation with one another requires an examination of their disparate assumptions about (...) what compassion is and how it can be known. Here, we present an integrated theoretical review of methodologies used in the empirical study of compassion. Our goal is to highlight the distinguishing features of each of these ways of knowing compassion, as well as the strengths and limitations of applying them to specific research questions. We hope this will provide useful tools for selecting methods that are tailored to explicit objectives (methods matching), taking advantage of methodological complementarity across disciplines (methods-mixing), and incorporating the empirical study of compassion into fields in which it may be missing. (shrink)

Comparative thanatologists study the responses to the dead and the dying in nonhuman animals. Despite the wide variety of thanatological behaviours that have been documented in several different species, comparative thanatologists assume that the concept of death is very difficult to acquire and will be a rare cognitive feat once we move past the human species. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is based on two forms of anthropocentrism: an intellectual anthropocentrism, which leads to an over-intellectualisation of the (...) CoD, and an emotional anthropocentrism, which yields an excessive focus on grief as a reaction to death. Contrary to what these two forms of anthropocentrism suggest, we argue that the CoD requires relatively little cognitive complexity and that it can emerge independently from mourning behaviour. Moreover, if we turn towards the natural world, we can see that the minimal cognitive requirements for a CoD are in fact met by many nonhuman species and there are multiple learning pathways and opportunities for animals in the wild to develop a CoD. This allows us to conclude that the CoD will be relatively easy to acquire and, so, we can expect it to be fairly common in nature. (shrink)

This edition is designed to open the enchanting book to all readers of modern Spanish. Raymond Willis has regularized and brought the medieval text as close as possible, without falsification, to modern canons. The text is printed integrally, without annotation. Mr. Willis' English paraphrase, printed on facing pages, is written in syntactical constructions that exactly parallel the Spanish verses, and thus functions as both a glossary and a key to puzzling constructions. Originally published in 1972. The Princeton Legacy Library uses (...) the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This book studies the notions of order and universe in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. It provides an overview of an array of metaphysical concepts in Aquinas such as relation, proportion, types of order, composition, whole and part. It is claimed that Aquinas' metaphysics is mainaly a metaphysics of the order of the universe.

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to “experimental philosophy”. The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here.Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and (...) interested lay readers in the fields of Artificial Life, philosophy of science, ethics, agent- and individual-based modeling in ecology and the social sciences, computer simulation, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and the social sciences.Dr Steven Mascaro is a researcher in computer simulation and Artificial Life.Dr Kevin Korb is a Reader in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Dr Ann Nicholson is an Associate Professor in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Owen Woodberry is a researcher in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University. (shrink)

Functionalism as a philosophical position has been recently applied to the case of emotion research. However, a number of objections have been raised against applying such a view to scientific theorizing on emotions. In this article, I argue that functionalism is still a viable strategy for emotion research. To do this, I present functionalism in philosophy of mind and offer a sketch of its application to emotions. I then discuss three recent objections raised against it and respond to each of (...) them. These objections claim that functionalism is intractable because (i) it does not support a scientifically interesting taxonomy of emotions for experimental settings, (ii) it is inherently teleological, and (iii) it cannot be falsified. I argue that these objections either rely on a simplified version of functionalism as a philosophical position or they pose challenges that functionalists can readily address. Lastly, I conclude by drawing some lessons these objections suggest for a tractable functionalist account of emotions. (shrink)

Las guerras centroamericanas de la década de 1980 provocaron giros analíticos en las agendas intelectuales. En este trabajo estudio el caso de Ignacio Martín-Baró, psicólogo social y sacerdote jesuita de la Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) de El Salvador. Postulo que su propuesta de imprimir una perspectiva latinoamericana al pensamiento psicosocial derivó de la necesidad de comprender las crisis sociales surgidas con la guerra. Martín-Baró se interesó por el ‘mundo desgarrado de la vida cotidiana’ como lugar de análisis de los principales conflictos (...) sociales, entre los que destacó la tortura y la alta dosis de crueldad manifestada en el ejercicio de la violencia. Por último, analizo sus reflexiones sobre los impactos de la guerra en la salud mental, especialmente en la niñez, y subrayo su llamado de atención sobre el carácter cultural de la violencia y los desafíos que ello implicaba para la imaginación de un nuevo futuro de convivencia. Si bien fue un pensador en constante alerta sobre la importancia del análisis históricamente sustentado para comprender las crisis sociales, sus intervenciones intelectuales imaginaron un futuro de viabilidad histórica y de sostenibilidad de la vida para las mayorías con las que comprometió su quehacer. (shrink)

Over the last decade, numerous interventions and techniques that aim to engender, strengthen, and expand compassion have been created, proliferating an evidence base for the benefits of compassion meditation training. However, to date, little research has been conducted to examine individual variation in the learning, beliefs, practices, and subjective experiences of compassion meditation. This mixed-method study examines changes in novice meditators’ knowledge and contemplative experiences before, during, and after taking an intensive course in CBCT®, a contemplative intervention that is increasingly (...) used for both inter- and intrapersonal flourishing. The participants in this study were Christian healthcare chaplains completing a 1-year residency in Clinical Pastoral Education who learned CBCT as part of their professional chaplaincy training curriculum. Prior to and upon completion of training, we surveyed participants to assess their beliefs about the malleability of compassion, types of engagement in compassion meditation, and perceptions of the impact of taking CBCT. We also conducted in-depth interviews with a subset of participants to gain a qualitative understanding of their subjective experiences of learning and practicing compassion meditation, a key component of CBCT. We found that participants reported increases in the extent to which they believed compassion to be malleable after studying CBCT. We also found high levels of variability of individual ways of practicing and considered the implications of this for the study of contemplative learning processes. This multi-methodological approach yielded novel insights into how compassion practice and compassion-related outcomes interrelate, insights that can inform the basic scientific understanding of the experience of learning and enacting compassion meditation as a means of strengthening compassion itself. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

The De concordia, published by Juan Luis Vives in 1529 and dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, is a comprehensive analysis of the social and political problems which were then afflicting Europe. It is the only such analysis undertaken by any of the Renaissance humanists. The De concordia merits a much more important place in Vives' oeuvre than scholars have hitherto given it. It is structured around the Augustinian concept of concordia and its antithesis, discordia. As such, (...) it is an explicit attempt to understand current history in metaphysical terms. Vives' intention is not to give strategic or tactical advice to Charles V, but to examine the general disorder of Europe with a view to determining its fundamental nature and significance. This is the first critical edition of the De concordia and the first English translation. (shrink)

This article highlights two possible unnoticed acrostics in Ovid's Metamorphoses concerning the predictions of Calchas and Helenus.

What if what is permissible and acceptable today is anathema tomorrow? There is a whole canon of scholarly ethics books written with the express purpose of telling you what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. This is not one such book. Juan Enriquez wants to make it easier for us to talk to one another, to prod one another, to understand and guide one another without an everlasting certainty of strict RIGHT v WRONG.

In this paper I will critically assess a very popular interpretation of Heidegger’s early thought, according to which meaning (Bedeutung) is conceived as ontologically dependent on human existence (Dasein). In order to criticize this subjectivist understanding of meaning, I will offer an interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of signs in Being and Time (§17). This will reveal two main things: first, that the ubiquity of sign-phenomena is founded on the universality of the structure known as reference (Verweisung); second, that Heidegger’s idea (...) of reference offers a non-substantialist understanding of meaning and its relation to the world. (shrink)

Epistemic violence and epistemic injustice occur when a person or collective suffers unjust harm as epistemic subjects. This article explores the role of these issues in the conflict known as “laws of dispossession”, which consists of the systematic issu- ance of regulations that legalize extractivist and capitalist procedures in the indigenous ancestral territories. Specifically, this article argues that this phenomenon generates specifically epistemic harm to Colombian indigenous communities since it prevents them from inhabiting their territories in a way that is (...) coherent with their epistemic resources; also, that this damage stems from a significant inability of the neoliberal governments of the last two decades to recognize the particularities and importance of the concept of territory in the epistemological systems of the indigenous communities which imprints a dimension of epistemic marginalization to the phenomenon of political marginalization that these communities have denounced. (shrink)

The author, after reviewing Aquinas work and the Teachings of the Catholic Church about the cognitive statute of the virtue of Faith, argues, based on Polo's proposals on Anthropology, that is the «personal knowledge», that is, the knowledge at the level of the act of being, and not simply the «rational knowledge» what is elevated by the supernatural virtue of Faith, that God infuses in the «personal kernel» of the human being.

Este volumen estudia el papel de Cristo en el dinamismo teológico de la acción. Lo hace a través de un análisis de los comentarios al Nuevo Testamento de Santo Tomás de Aquino. Con ello se pretende contribuir a la elaboración de un cristocentrismo moral dentro del proceso de renovación de la teología moral que se ha llevado a cabo en todo el siglo XX.

A relação entre o vital e o social no pensamento de Georges Canguilhem envolve uma específica reestruturação filosófica, por ele empreendida em O normal e patológico, realizando um deslocamento teórico em face das análises quantitativas da saúde quanto, ao mesmo tempo, construindo uma problemática própria a respeito da normação, fazendo com que o vital seja pensado, inexoravelmente, como a imbricação do biológico com o social, acarretando, ainda, um reposicionamento político, crítico, no que tange à consideração sobre saúde e doença.

Esta exposición posee un doble propósito: 1) se intentará sugerir una interpretación del carácter tradicional de la ciencia como una modalidad social de la habitualidad del ego, surgida de la sedimentación de adquisiciones exitosas. 2) se procurará examinar los riesgos y beneficios que derivan del carácter tradicional y habitual de la ciencia. Como beneficios, destacaremos la posibilidad de transmisibilidad de los saberes y la no-necesidad de una reconstrucción permanente de los actos fundadores de sentido. En cuanto a los riesgos, estudiaremos (...) el progresivo olvido de la fundación originaria, y consiguiente peligro de despeñamiento de una ciencia en la irracionalidad, así como también la perniciosa reificación de las formas ideales, y su tendencia a autoproclamarse como el fundamento del suelo vital, desencadenando un menosprecio del mundo de la vida, en el fenómeno llamado Substruktion. (shrink)