The US neutrino community gathered at the Workshop on the Intermediate Neutrino Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory February 4-6, 2015 to explore opportunities in neutrino physics over the next five to ten years. Scientists from particle, astroparticle and nuclear physics participated in the workshop. The workshop examined promising opportunities for neutrino physics in the intermediate term, including possible new small to mid-scale experiments, US contributions to large experiments, upgrades to existing experiments, R&D plans and theory. The workshop was organized into (...) two sets of parallel working group sessions, divided by physics topics and technology. Physics working groups covered topics on Sterile Neutrinos, Neutrino Mixing, Neutrino Interactions, Neutrino Properties and Astrophysical Neutrinos. Technology sessions were organized into Theory, Short-Baseline Accelerator Neutrinos, Reactor Neutrinos, Detector R&D and Source, Cyclotron and Meson Decay at Rest sessions.This report summarizes discussion and conclusions from the workshop. (shrink)

In ‘The Survival Lottery’ John Harris raises the following issue. Suppose it is possible for physicians to save the lives of two patients, Y and Z, otherwise doomed to die through no fault of their own, by taking the life of a third person, P, and using various of his organs appropriately for transplants. To provide a fair and impartial way of selecting the organ donor, a survival lottery is proposed for the society. This lottery randomly selects an organ donor (...) from the population at large. Harris, speaking from the point of view of Y and Z, defends the demand that such a lottery be established. What if anything is wrong with this scheme? (shrink)

In heterogeneous markets, one of the many consumer groups is that of green product buyers. With rising ethical values, the green market is assuming its place in a general growth trend. Given this, it is important to determine the profile of green product buyers. This study aims to find out whether there are sub-markets for green product buyers, based on their personal values and consumption values, and to determine a detailed profile for these buyers. Both personal values and consumption values (...) are basic factors guiding consumer behaviour and affecting consumption preferences. The data was collected, through surveys in Turkey, from green consumers who were members of the TEMA (the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion, for Reforestation and the Protection of Natural Habitats) council. The result of our clustering analysis indicates that green product buyers could be segmented into sub-groups according to their personal values and consumption values. (shrink)

The macaronic poem beginning “Syng y wold, butt, alas!” given the title On the Times by Thomas Wright, has not attracted much notice, but those who have chosen to comment on it do not seem seriously to have questioned Wright's dating of 1388. In what follows I hope to show that this date is wrong and that On the Times was probably written some eight years earlier. Though such redating is hardly likely to enhance the poem's literary reputation, which is (...) deservedly modest, the historical importance of its satire on contemporary abuses is considerably increased once we accept that it was composed on the eve of the Peasants' Revolt. (shrink)

Surveying developments in a quarter-century of Anglophone legal philosophy, Leslie Green argues that there has been progress in some problems, such as the understanding of rules and reasons in the law; that in other areas —in particular, in discussions of the relationship between law and morality— there has been a marked narrowing of attention; and that with respect to the relationship between law and coercion, we have advanced very little beyond HLA Hart’s 1961 argument against reductionism. Here, we have lost (...) sight of one of the reasons for attending to the coercive aspect of law in the first place: that this is the most obvious way that law exercises power. Finally, the recent ‘methodological turn’ in jurisprudence is examined. To its benefit, the subject has become more self-conscious about its own status and methods. The paper concludes by exploring Dworkin’s revival of Fuller’s idea that a theory of law must be potentially useful to a lawyer or judge. Resisting this view, Green holds that while law is practical, a theory of the nature of law must answer to the truth about law. Unlike law itself, jurisprudence must be true in order to be good.Resumen:Al sopesar los avances de la filosofía jurídica angloparlante durante 25 años, Leslie Green sostiene que ha habido progreso en algunos problemas, como el del entendimiento de las reglas y las razones en el derecho; mientras que en otras áreas —en particular, en las discusiones sobre la relación entre el derecho y la moral— ha habido un desinterés creciente; y que con respecto a la relación entre el derecho y la coacción, se ha avanzado muy poco desde aquel argumento que H. L. A. Hart presentara, en 1961, contra el reduccionismo. En este punto se ha perdido de vista una de las razones centrales para ocuparse del aspecto coactivo del derecho: que ésta es la manera más directa en que el derecho ejerce su poder. Por último, el autor examina el reciente “giro metodológico” dentro de la filosofía del derecho; por fortuna, la materia ahora tiene más conciencia en cuanto a su estatus y a sus métodos. El ensayo concluye explorando la manera en que Dworkin retoma la idea de Fuller de que la teoría del derecho debe tener la capacidad de ser útil a los abogados y a los jueces. En contraste con esta perspectiva, Green aduce que si bien el derecho es práctico, una teoría sobre la naturaleza del derecho debe elaborarse en función de la verdadera naturaleza del derecho. A diferencia del derecho, la filosofía del derecho tiene que ser verdadera para ser buena. (shrink)

Este ensayo aborda el curioso desdén que muchos originalistas muestran respecto de la Enmienda Decimocuarta a la Constitución estadounidense. De acuerdo a las premisas teóricas originalistas, el análisis del texto, la historia y la estructura de esta Enmienda deberían ocupar un lugar central en las discusiones sobre derechos incorporados, acción afirmativa y federalismo; sin embargo, en estas discusiones los originalistas la minimizan, como lo hacen, en general, con el período de la Reconstrucción. El artículo sugiere que tanto la Enmienda como (...) la Reconstrucción representan para ellos una historia poco útil, en comparación con la del momento de la Fundación, por varias razones: las enmiendas de la Reconstrucción fueron en gran parte fracasos en su tiempo; el lenguaje abstracto de la Enmienda XIV no facilita la resolución de las controversias actuales sobre su significado, y la Reconstrucción se asocia en la memoria nacional con un momento doloroso de división y guerra civil. Estas limitaciones, observa el autor, sugieren que el originalismo en la práctica es un proyecto moral, tanto o más que un proyecto hermenéutico. (shrink)

While environmental claims are increasingly used by companies to appeal consumers, they also attract greater scrutiny from independent parties interested in consumer protection. Consumers are now able to compare corporate environmental claims against external, often disconfirming, information to form their brand attitudes and purchase intentions. What remains unclear is how the level of information specificity of both the environmental claims and external disconfirming information interact to influence consumer reactions. Two experiments address this gap in the CSR communication literature. When specific (...) claims are countered by specific external information, consumers report more negative brand attitudes and lower purchase intentions. The effect is serially mediated by skepticism toward the claims and lack of corporate credibility. We conclude by discussing strategies that firms can utilize to avoid information dilution and ensure that external disconfirming information percolates to consumers as specific. (shrink)

Drawing on the general ethics and social psychology literature, this study presents a model to delineate the major factors likely to affect consumers’ intentions to bring their own shopping bags when visiting a supermarket (called “bring your own bags” or “BYOB” intention). The model is empirically validated using a survey of 250 Chinese consumers. Overall, the findings support the hypothesized direct influence of teleological evaluation and habit on BYOB intention, as well as that of deontological evaluation and teleological evaluation on (...) ethical judgment about the BYOB practice. Teleological evaluation exerts a much stronger influence on ethical judgment than does deontological evaluation. In addition, the findings reveal that consumers who perceive the BYOB practice to be more important are more inclined to rely on their ethical judgment to derive their BYOB intention. Academically, these findings provide some encouraging evidence for the application of general ethics theories to explain green consumption-related practices. Practically, the findings also suggest that a utilitarian approach (i.e., emphasizing the consequences of BYOB) may represent an effective means for the Chinese government to promote BYOB practice among consumers. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers perceive retailer ethics. Based on a review of the marketing and consumer research literature, we conceptualize consumer perceptions of the ethics of retailers as a multidimensional construct and propose that its effects on consumer purchase behavior and word-of-mouth communication are more salient when consumers have strong rather than weak ethical beliefs. The model was validated using a random sample of 399 respondents in a collectivist society. The results of structural equation modeling confirmed that CPER is (...) a second-order construct comprising product fairness, price fairness, non-deception, fair trade, and green products. CPER positively predicted consumer purchase behavior and word-of-mouth communication. Moreover, ethical beliefs moderated the positive relationship between CPER and the word-of-mouth communication of consumers with strong ethical beliefs but did not moderate the relationship between CPER and purchase behavior. The implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

Catastrophic climate change overshadows the present and the future. Wrenching economic transformations have devastated workers and hollowed out communities. However, those fighting for jobs and those fighting for the planet have often been at odds. Does the world face two separate crises, environmental and economic? The promise of the Green New Deal is to tackle the threat of climate change through the empowerment of working people and the strengthening of democracy. In this view, the crisis of nature and the crisis (...) of work must be addressed together-or they will not be addressed at all. This book brings together leading experts to explore the possibilities of the Green New Deal, emphasizing the future of work. Together, they examine transformations that are already underway and put forth bold new proposals that can provide jobs while reducing carbon consumption-building a world that is sustainable both economically and ecologically. Contributors also debate urgent questions: What is the value of a federal jobs program, or even a jobs guarantee? How do we alleviate the miseries and precarity of work? In key economic sectors, including energy, transportation, housing, agriculture, and care work, what kind of work is needed today? How does the New Deal provide guidance in addressing these questions, and how can a Green New Deal revive democracy? Above all, this book shows, the Green New Deal offers hope for a better tomorrow-but only if it accounts for work's past transformations and shapes its future. (shrink)

Improving the resilience of urban road networks suffering from various disruptions has been a central focus for urban emergence management. However, to date the effective methods which may mitigate the negative impacts caused by the disruptions, such as road accidents and natural disasters, on urban road networks is highly insufficient. This study proposes a novel adaptive signal control strategy based on a doubly dynamic learning framework, which consists of deep reinforcement learning and day-to-day traffic dynamic learning, to improve the network (...) performance by adjusting red/green time split. In this study, red time split is regarded as extra traffic flow to discourage drivers to use affected roads, so as to reduce congestion and improve the resilience when urban road networks are subject to different levels of disruptions. In addition, we utilize the convolution neural network as Q-network to approximate Q values, link flow distribution and link capacity are regarded as the state space, and actions are denoted as red/green time split. A small network is utilized as a numerical example, and a fixed time signal control and other two adaptive signal controls are employed for the comparisons with the proposed one. The results show that the proposed adaptive signal control based on deep reinforcement learning can achieve better resilience in most of the cases, particularly in the scenarios of moderate and severe disruptions. This study may shed light on the advantages of the proposed adaptive signal control dealing with major emergencies compared to others. (shrink)

The wedge problem, that is, the propagation of radiation or particles in the presence of a wedge, is examined in different contexts. Generally, the paper follows the historical order from Sommerfeld's early work to recent stochastic results—hindsights and new results being woven in as appropriate. In each context, identifying the relevant mathematical problem has been the key to the solution. Thus each section can be given both a physics and a mathematics title: Section 2: diffraction by reflecting wedge; boundary value (...) problem of differential equations; solutions defined on mutiply connected spaces. Section 3: geometrical theory of diffraction; identificiation of function spaces. Section 4: path integral solutions; path integration on multiply connected spaces; asymptotics on the boundaries of function spaces. Section 5: probing the shape of the wedge and the roughness of its surface; stochastic calculus. Several propagators and Green functions are given explicitly, some old ones and some new ones. They include the knife-edge propagator for Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions, the absorbing knife edge propagator, the wedge propagators, the propagator for a free particle on a μ-sheeted Riemann surface, the Dirichlet and the Neumann wedge Green function. (shrink)

Para responder a la pregunta: ¿Qué es la literatura?, Sartre propone el concepto de unidad como su característica exclusiva que la relaciona con la sociedad por la vía del compromiso. Se analiza tal exclusividad, así como las objeciones de Adorno a la noción de compromiso, para encontrar, en medio de sus grandes diferencias, algunas afinidades que permitan establecer las relaciones entre la literatura y la sociedad. In response to the question "What is literature?", Sartre proposes the concept of unity as (...) the exclusive characteristic that relates it to society by means of commitment. This exclusivity is analyzed, along with Adorno's objections to the notion of commitment. In the midst of great differences, some affinities are found that permit the establishment of the relationship between literature and society. (shrink)

Il y a trente ans, évoquant la gynécologie dans l’Antiquité, Giulia Sissa écrivait que l’utérus, « dépositaire insensé et irritable de la reproduction sociale, est le seul organe qui a forcé la connaissance médicale hippocratique à définir en son sein une véritable spécialité ». L’ouvrage de Monica H. Green reprend, en les contextualisant dans un paradigme méthodologique beaucoup plus complexe, ses études précédentes sur la figure historique et littéraire de Trotula et sur la médecine féminin...

This essay has as a keystone the words in which Husserl identifies life with the flux of lived experiences. It attempts a phenomenological approach to primary consciousness. Starting from the reduction to the sphere of “my ownness”, it then makes reference to the issue of the “living present” ; afterwards, it goes to the notion of reason in Husserl in its relationship with life and the lived experiences of the feeling of being alive, such as “connatus” as originary intuition, and (...) the concept, stemming from Ortega y Gasset, of “living reason”. As a last issue, a description is made of those features of life expounded by Husserl that can be interpreted in reference to “the green of the golden tree”.Este estudio tiene como clave de bóveda la frase en que Husserl identifica la vida con el fluir de las vivencias. Intenta una aproximación fenomenológica a la conciencia primaria. Parte de la reducción al ámbito de ”lo mío propio”. A continuación se hace referencia al tema del “presente viviente” ; luego se pasa a la concepción de la razón en Husserl en relación con la vida y las vivencias del sen-timiento de vivir, tales como “conatus” como intuición originaria, y al concepto orteguiano de razón vital. Como última cuestión, se estudian los rasgos de la vida expuestos por Husserl que puedan ser interpretados con referencia a “el verde del árbol dorado”. (shrink)

Los ODS marcan el camino de las empresas hacia la sostenibilidad. Pero no sabemos si las empresas audiovisuales, cinematográficas o televisivas van por el mismo camino. Además, existen algunos sellos y códigos de buenas prácticas que intentan poner la sostenibilidad en el rodaje. Esta investigación trata de explicar las iniciativas más antiguas e importantes sobre rodajes sostenibles:: Green Production Guide y Albert. Mostramos si enfocan la sostenibilidad en la huella de carbono o también en acciones sociales y de gobernanza, los (...) tres ejes de la sostenibilidad. Los resultados arrojan una serie de similitudes en los procesos, en la certificación interna y en el interés en la formación; así como diferencias en algunos ámbitos de aplicación y en asuntos sociales y de gobernanza. (shrink)

This paper argues that modern virtue ethics provides a useful background against which to read the philosophical import of Christine de Pizan’s works. By recognizing the origins of much of her thought in the Medieval tradition of virtue ethics, the paper brings out the continuity between her writing and a rich stream of contemporary ethical debate. It shows how Christine’s strand of feminism was deeply indebted to Medieval virtue ethics; both as found in Boethius and in contemporary compilations on the (...) virtues, on which Christine drew. At the same time, this tradition was subtly transformed by Christine, in order to elevate the status of women, as well as the traditional practical and worldly activities of women. Indeed, Christine’s feminism can be read as a direct application of her meditation on virtue and the good life. The paper concludes with a brief sketch of the way in which, during the three centuries subsequent to Christine, the nature of virtue and the virtues continued to provide a central focus in women’s philosophical writings. (shrink)

The Trolley Problem arises from a set of moral dilemmas, most of which involve tradeoffs between causing one death and preventing several more deaths. The normative and descriptive Trolley Problems are closely related. The normative Trolley Problem begins with the assumption that authors' natural responses to these cases are generally, if not uniformly, correct. Thus, any attempt to solve the normative Trolley Problem begins with an attempt to solve the descriptive problem, to identify the features of actions that elicit their (...) moral approval or disapproval. The chapter explains an empirical research paper to provide an approximate descriptive solution to the Trolley Problem. More specifically, this research highlights the influence of two factors that exert a powerful influence when both are present. From a normative perspective, the personal force factor is notable because it is not one that the authors ordinarily regard as morally relevant. (shrink)

Older adults with age-related hearing loss often use hearing aids to compensate. However, certain challenges in speech perception, especially in noise still exist, despite today’s HA technology. The current study presents an evaluation of a home-based auditory exercises program that can be used during the adaptation process for HA use. The home-based program was developed at a time when telemedicine became prominent in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included 53 older adults with age-related symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss. (...) They were divided into three groups depending on their experience using HAs. Group 1: Experienced users. Group 2: New users. Group 3: Non-users. These three groups underwent auditory exercises for 3 weeks. The auditory tasks included auditory detection, auditory discrimination, and auditory identification, as well as comprehension with basic and more complex stimuli, presented in quiet and in noisy listening conditions. All participants completed self-assessment questionnaires before and after the auditory exercises program and underwent a cognitive test at the end. Self-assessed improvements in hearing ability were observed across the HA users groups, with significant changes described by new users. Overall, speech perception in noise was poorer than in quiet. Speech perception accuracy was poorer in the non-users group compared to the users in all tasks. In sessions where stimuli were presented in quiet, similar performance was observed among new and experienced uses. New users performed significantly better than non-users in all speech in noise tasks; however, compared to the experienced users, performance differences depended on task difficulty. The findings indicate that HA users, even new users, had better perceptual performance than their peers who did not receive hearing aids. (shrink)

Lucid dreams are dreams in which a person becomes aware that they are dreaming. They are different from ordinary dreams, not just because of the dreamer's awareness that they are dreaming, but because lucid dreams are often strikingly realistic and may be emotionally charged to the point of elation. Celia Green and Charles McCreery have written a unique introduction to lucid dreams that will appeal to the specialist and general reader alike. The authors explore the experience of lucid dreaming, relate (...) it to other experiences such as out-of-the-body experiences and apparitions, and look at how lucid dreams can be induced and controlled. They explore their use for therapeutic purposes such as counteracting nightmares. Their study is illustrated throughout with many case histories. (shrink)

This text consists in the exposition of Daniel Dennett’s position on te "problem of qualia". Supposedly, the qualia are the qualitative properties that conform the conscience; a pain, the memory of a sticky sensation, a sticky sensation, the green color of the mountains I see, etc. In permanent opposition to the so-called qualophillians, an antiintuitive but coherent theory is developed, that operates through a form of reductionism.

En el debate sobre la definición de vida algunos autores consideran que vida ha de entenderse como un género natural. Sin embargo, cuando se afirma que vida es un género natural se asumen también otras ideas vinculadas con la idea de género natural que conviene explicitar, tal y como han mostrado recientemente Bich y Green aunque de manera programática, y ese es precisamente el objetivo planteado aquí; mostrar cuáles son esas implicaciones y señalar las dificultades que surgen al adoptar el (...) discurso sobre los géneros naturales para entender y analizar categorías científicas complejas como, por ejemplo, vida. En este trabajo extendemos esta crítica a las distintas formas de entender los géneros naturales y señalamos cuál es la principal causa de las dificultades que derivan de este planteamiento. In the contemporary philosophy of biology, some authors claim that life is better undertood as a natural kind. This paper questions the metaphysical commitments related to the natural kind approach in relation with the debate of defining life. The goal of this paper is to show how considering life as a natural kind carries out some difficulties and costs. Those difficulties have been partialy shown by Bich and Green concerning the essentialist view of natural kinds. In this paper we extended this criticism to other ways of understanding natural kinds and we argue that such a difficulties are due to the acceptance of an inadequate frame of reference, based on a naïve idea of naturalness and on a natural/conventional dichotomy that is not properly justified. (shrink)

RESUMENEste trabajo analizará cuáles son las posibles consecuencias que los descubrimientos de la neurociencia pueden tener sobre la reflexión ética en torno al deporte. Siguiendo los trabajos en neuroética de Jonathan Haidt y Joshua Greene, parece ser que nuestro comportamiento moral está basado en una serie de mecanismos automáticos neuronales de carácter emotivo que acontecen en nuestros cerebros. Estos mecanismos podrían ser útiles a la hora de explicar el comportamiento de los hinchas deportivos, sin embargo, convertirían en inútiles los (...) esfuerzos de la ética del deporte por establecer el principio del fair play como regulador ético de la práctica deportiva. Este trabajo ofrecerá dos contra-argumentos que mostrarán que, primero, nuestro comportamiento no está determinado por ciertos mecanismos automáticos que acontecen en el cerebro y, segundo, de hecho, la configuración de nuestro cerebro facilitaría en ciertos casos la posibilidad de que los hinchas desarrollen un comportamiento más ético. Por lo tanto, las metas de la ética del deporte no se ven socavadas completamente por los descubrimientos de las neurociencias.PALABRAS CLAVEÉTICA DEL DEPORTE, NEUROÉTICA, HINCHA DEPORTIVO, JUEGO LIMPIOABSTRACTThis work shall analyze whether or not the recent studies on neuroethics and neighbour disciplines have a critical impact on the ethical reflection on sports. Given Jonathan Haidt’s and Joshua Greene’s works on neuroethics, our moral behaviour seems to be mainly rooted in emotive mechanisms within our brain. If this is true, then sports supporters’ behaviour can easily be explained by appealing to such emotive brain mechanisms. However, they will turn the efforts to apply the moral principle that is supposed to regulate the sporting world—the fair play principle—into useless efforts. I shall give two counter-arguments that will show, firstly, that supporters’ misbehaviour cannot be totally explained by pointing out to several neural—natural—mechanisms, and, secondly, that our brains’ make-up can, nevertheless, make sports supporters more willing to abide by the fair play principle. Therefore, sport ethics’ aims are not undermined by neuroscientific knowledge.KEYWORDSSPORTS ETHICS, NEUROETHICS, SPORTS SUPPORTER, FAIR PLAY PRINCIPLE. (shrink)

En este artículo se analiza una recreación quijotesca en la novela de Graham Greene Monseñor Quijote. Para ello se utilizan dos términos procedentes del Derecho romano: los conceptos de autoridad y poder. En esta obra de Greene, la autoridad surge de los libros o de autores de libros, cuya lectura permite que la vida siga teniendo sentido. En Greene encontramos la estrategia de lectura conocida como las sortes virgilianae que permite a los personajes orientarse en las dificultades (...) diarias. Sin embargo, el poder está caracterizado por su condición iletrada, la ausencia de libros y su ignorancia. In this article a novel by Graham Greene entitled Monsignor Quixote is analysed, a book that involves a recreation of the novel by Cervantes. The author of this article employs two concepts from Roman law: authority and power in his analysis. In this work by Greene, authority arises from the books or the book writers, whose reading allows life to keep making sense. In Greene, a strategy of reading known as the sortes virgilianae is found and this allows the characters to get their bearings in the daily difficulties. However, power is described as illiterate, the absence of books and ignorance. (shrink)

Jonathan Y. Tsou examines and defends positions on central issues in philosophy of psychiatry. The positions defended assume a naturalistic and realist perspective and are framed against skeptical perspectives on biological psychiatry. Issues addressed include the reality of mental disorders; mechanistic and disease explanations of abnormal behavior; definitions of mental disorder; natural and artificial kinds in psychiatry; biological essentialism and the projectability of psychiatric categories; looping effects and the stability of mental disorders; psychiatric classification; and the validity of the DSM's (...) diagnostic categories. The main argument defended by Tsou is that genuine mental disorders are biological kinds with harmful effects. This argument opposes the dogma that mental disorders are necessarily diseases that result from biological dysfunction. Tsou contends that the broader ideal of biological kinds offers a more promising and empirically ascertainable naturalistic standard for assessing the reality of mental disorders and the validity of psychiatric categories. (shrink)

This study aimed to identify the learning and business incubation processes and their impact on developing the performance of business incubators in Gaza Strip, and the study relied on the descriptive analytical approach, and the study population consisted of all employees working in business incubators in Gaza Strip in addition to experts and consultants in incubators where their total number reached (62) individuals, and the researchers used the questionnaire as a main tool to collect data through the comprehensive survey method, (...) where (55) questionnaires were retrieved with a recovery rate of (88.7%). The results of the study showed that there is a high approval of the variables of the study, where the dimension of incubation operations came with a relative weight (84.89%), followed by the learning dimension which got a relative weight (82.50%), while the performance level of the incubators got a relative weight (80.12%) and as the study results showed There is a positive relationship statistically between the two dimensions of learning and business incubation processes and performance development in business incubators, and the linear regression analysis model showed that the main effect in improving the performance of business incubators is "after business incubation operations" while it showed weak effect after learning. The study came out with several recommendations, the most important of which is that business incubators seek to reinforce the learning process and incubation processes for business, and the need to periodically evaluate their performance, and that a more effective mechanism be designed to follow up with companies after the end of the incubation period and monitor the progress of these companies. (shrink)

In psychiatry, pharmacological research has played a crucial role in the formulation, revision, and refinement of neurobiological theories of psychopathology. Besides being utilized as potential treatments for various mental disorders, pharmacological drugs play an important epistemic role as experimental instruments that help scientists uncover the neurobiological underpinnings of mental disorders (Tsou, 2012). Interventions with psychiatric patients using pharmacological drugs provide researchers with information about the neurobiological causes of mental disorders that cannot be obtained in other ways. This important source of (...) evidence for the biological causes of mental disorder is often overlooked in philosophical analyses of psychiatry, especially in skeptical analyses that debase the biological aspects of psychopathology (e.g., Szasz, 1960; Scheff, 1963; Laing, 1967). In discussing pharmacological interventions as a form of evidence for the physical basis of mental disorders, this paper aims to clarify the nature, reliability, and limitations of this evidence. In addition, it illustrates the central role that pharmacological findings in applied clinical contexts play in the acquisition of neurobiological knowledge in research contexts. (shrink)