A Sceptical Theory of Scientific Inquiry: Problems and Their Progress presents a distinctive re-interpretation of Popper's 'critical rationalism', displaying the kind of spirit found at the L.S.E. before Popper's retirement. It offers an alternative to interpretations of critical rationalism which have emphasised the significance of research programmes or metaphysics (Lakatos; Nicholas Maxwell), and is closer to the approach of Jagdish Hattiangadi. Briskman gives priority to methodological argument rather than logical formalisms, and takes further his own work on creativity. In (...) addition to offering an important contribution to the understanding of critical rationalism, the book contains interesting engagements with Michael Polanyi and the Meno Paradox. This volume also contains an introduction by the editor, which situates Briskman's work in the history of the interpretation of 'critical rationalism'. (shrink)

Despite their common core in statistics, insurance and epidemiology propel two different forms of solidarity. In insurance, the collective is a source of protection, thanks to the pooling of risks; in epidemics by contrast, the group remains the source of danger for the individual. The aim of this paper is to highlight the conceptions of community and solidarity at play in epidemics in contradistinction to insurance, with a focus on the shift introduced by big data and algorithms. Paradoxically, while the (...) new technologies and epidemiology share a common view on the relation between the individual and the collective, tracing apps were not widely adopted in the Covid-19 crisis. This reluctance to use current technologies for the sake of epidemic containments highlights, beyond legitimate interrogations, a confusion between two imaginaries of the social: insurance solidarity where the interdependence is a source of rights, and epidemic solidarity that imposes duties. (shrink)

While it is often claimed that the emerging digital governmentality functions as a new apparatus of surveillance, the aim of this paper is to characterise this regime in relation to Foucault’s disc...

The recent proliferation of new data and technologies enables increasingly finer personalization of products and prices in every domain. In insurance, this revives and enlarges old debates around fairness that have never been completely settled. We will argue that the commonly accepted “actuarial fairness” as based on the “individual cost of risk” derives in fact from a conflation: while it indicates the average cost for a group of insureds from the perspective of an insurance company—and is therefore sound from a (...) business profitability viewpoint—it is arguable whether it represents the “fair price” for the individual insured. We first show in a historical perspective the intertwinement of conceptions of fairness with knowledge, in order to point to the alternative to actuarial fairness for insurance. We then describe the intrinsic difference between the insured and the insurer when underwriting an insurance contract. Finally, we build on this distinction to discuss the meaning of fairness in insurance prices. We thus hope to re-center the debate around insurance fairness on its underlying solidarity mechanisms rather than technical and actuarial considerations. (shrink)

With their intensive use of data to classify and price risk, insurers have often been confronted with data-related issues of fairness and discrimination. This paper provides a comparative review of discrimination issues raised by traditional statistics versus machine learning in the context of insurance. We first examine historical contestations of insurance classification, showing that it was organized along three types of bias: pure stereotypes, non-causal correlations, or causal effects that a society chooses to protect against, are thus the main sources (...) of dispute. The lens of this typology then allows us to look anew at the potential biases in insurance pricing implied by big data and machine learning, showing that despite utopic claims, social stereotypes continue to plague data, thus threaten to unconsciously reproduce these discriminations in insurance. To counter these effects, algorithmic fairness attempts to define mathematical indicators of non-bias. We argue that this may prove insufficient, since as it assumes the existence of specific protected groups, which could only be made visible through public debate and contestation. These are less likely if the right to explanation is realized through personalized algorithms, which could reinforce the individualized perception of the social that blocks rather than encourages collective mobilization. (shrink)

This work examines the various implications of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the sanctity of life.

In this book, controversial topics such as the morality of abortion, withdrawing treatment from handicapped newborns, the role of ethics committees, diagnosing death, withdrawing food and fluids and giving lethal injections are discussed. It proposes model legislation to prevent abuse and neglect of the medically vulnerable and dependent, and in a piercing and insightful manner, Fr. Barry critically evaluates many contemporary views on these topics, arguing forcefully for a reappraisal of many popular views on these topics.

The aim of this article is to assess the impact of Big Data technologies for insurance ratemaking, with a special focus on motor products.The first part shows how statistics and insurance mechanisms adopted the same aggregate viewpoint. It made visible regularities that were invisible at the individual level, further supporting the classificatory approach of insurance and the assumption that all members of a class are identical risks. The second part focuses on the reversal of perspective currently occurring in data analysis (...) with predictive analytics, and how this conceptually contradicts the collective basis of insurance. The tremendous volume of data and the personalization promise through accurate individual prediction indeed deeply shakes the homogeneity hypothesis behind pooling. The third part attempts to assess the extent of this shift in motor insurance. Onboard devices that collect continuous driving behavioural data could import this new paradigm into these products. An examination of the current state of research on models with telematics data shows however that the epistemological leap, for now, has not happened. (shrink)

This textbook is intended for ethics courses in engineering and science. It can be used either in a one-credit-hour semester course or as a set of drop-in modules in a core engineering or science course. The text avoids a detailed treatment of the ins and outs of philsophical ethics - a complex subject not needed for most ethical judgements. The approach to ethical problem solving used is one that focuses on analysing the consequences rather than rules to be obey in (...) making decisions. An Instructor's Manual will be available; it will offer a set of "cookbook" lectures to greatly reduce preparation time. (shrink)

Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species, but there is substantial variation in the extent of cooperation across societies. Understanding the sources of this variability may provide insights about the forces that sustain cooperation. We examined the ontogeny of prosocial behavior by studying 326 children 3–14 y of age and 120 adults from six societies (age distributions varied across societies). These six societies span a wide range of extant human variation in culture, geography, and subsistence strategies, including foragers, herders, horticulturalists, and (...) urban dwellers across the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. When delivering benefits to others was personally costly, rates of prosocial behavior dropped across all six societies as children approached middle childhood and then rates of prosociality diverged as children tracked toward the behavior of adults in their own societies. When prosocial acts did not require personal sacrifice, prosocial responses increased steadily as children matured with little variation in behavior across societies. Our results are consistent with theories emphasizing the importance of acquired cultural norms in shaping costly forms of cooperation and creating cross-cultural diversity. (shrink)

I was commissioned by Barry Smith, Editor of The Monist , to act as Advisory Editor for issue 88.1, January 2005 on the topic Humor, and we drafted the appended description. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2004, and you are welcome to submit an article to me for consideration (word limit 7,500 words, including footnotes). What the Editor and I are, hoping for, is some serious and seriously good philosophical writing on this topic.

Un petit nombre de femmes-auteurs du Moyen Age se sont montrées particulièrement intéressées par l'Histoire, notamment locale, et, dans l'aire germanique, trois d'entre elles se distinguent par l'originalité de leur apport en ce domaine : Hrotsvita de Gandersheim au Xe siècle, et Hildegarde de Bingen et Herrade de Hohenbourg au XIIe. Toutes trois religieuses, elles ont livré à la postérité le récit de la fondation de leur monastère, l'une par le biais de la poésie métrique, la seconde via l'hagiographie et (...) la dernière au moyen de l'image. (shrink)

We present a novel methodology for calculating the improvements obtained in successive versions of biomedical ontologies. The theory takes into account changes both in reality itself and in our understanding of this reality. The successful application of the theory rests on the willingness of ontology authors to document changes they make by following a number of simple rules. The theory provides a pathway by which ontology authoring can become a science rather than an art, following principles analogous to those that (...) have fostered the growth of modern evidence-based medicine. Although in this paper we focus on ontologies, the methodology can be generalized to other sorts of terminology-based artifacts, including Electronic Patient Records. (shrink)

In this accessible book, Barry Hallen discusses the major ideas, figures, and schools of thought in African philosophy. While drawing out critical issues in the formation of African philosophy, Hallen focuses on the recent scholarship, current issues, and relevant debates that have made African philosophy an important key to understanding the rich and complex cultural heritage of Africa. Hallen builds upon Africa's connections with Western philosophical traditions and explores African contributions to cultural universalism, cultural relativism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and Marxism. (...) Hallen also examines African challenges to Western conceptions of philosophy by taking on questions such as whether philosophy can exist in cultures that are significantly based in oral traditions and what may or may not constitute philosophical texts. Among the figures whose work is discussed are Ptah-hotep, Zar'a Ya'aqob, Anton Wilhelm Amo, Paulin Hountondji, V. Y. Mudimbe, Oyeronke Oyewumi, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Kwasi Wiredu. This clearly written, highly readable, and concise work will be essential for students and scholars of African philosophy as well as readers with a wide range of interests in African studies. (shrink)

This book offers a unique synthesis of past and current work on the structure, meaning, and use of negation and negative expressions, a topic that has engaged thinkers from Aristotle and the Buddha to Freud and Chomsky. Horn's masterful study melds a review of scholarship in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics with original research, providing a full picture of negation in natural language and thought; this new edition adds a comprehensive preface and bibliography, surveying research since the book's original publication.

In this incisive new book one of Britain's most eminent philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or what they voluntarily accept? And (...) should statements and assertions be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. (shrink)

The book was planned and written as a single, sustained argument. But earlier versions of a few parts of it have appeared separately. The object of this book is both to establish the existence of the paradoxes, and also to describe a non-Pascalian concept of probability in terms of which one can analyse the structure of forensic proof without giving rise to such typical signs of theoretical misfit. Neither the complementational principle for negation nor the multiplicative principle for conjunction applies (...) to the central core of any forensic proof in the Anglo-American legal system. There are four parts included in this book. Accordingly, these parts have been written in such a way that they may be read in different orders by different kinds of reader. (shrink)

Dual loyalty issues confront health and welfare professionals in immigration detention centres in Australia. There are four apparent ways they deal with the ethical tensions. One group provides services as required by their employing body with little questioning of moral dilemmas. A second group is more overtly aware of the conflicts and works in a mildly subversive manner to provide the best possible care available within a harsh environment. A third group retreats by relinquishing employment in the detention setting. A (...) fourth group is activist in intent and actions. Derived from research and ethnography conducted in Australia, the article explores the moral dilemmas confronting those who are duty-bound by professional codes of ethics while also bound by loyalty to their employers and silenced by confidentiality statements. It provides particular focus on psychiatry, nursing and social work. We conclude by speculating whether a politics of compassion and acts of solidarity can forge a pathway through the ethical terrain. In doing so we draw upon human rights considerations as well as on the works of Joan Tronto and Elisabeth Porter. (shrink)

The main aim of this essay is to propose and develop a product?oriented, non?psychologistic, approach to scientific and artistic creativity. I first argue that the central problem is that of answering the question: how is creativity possible? Traditional approaches to this question tend to locate creativity primarily in some special psychological processes or traits, or in some special creative act. Some general arguments against such an approach are developed, and it is suggested that creativity ought primarily to be located in (...) scientific and artistic products. I then investigate the question ?what aspects of such products lead us to evaluate them as creative?? and use the results of this inquiry as a set of desiderata against which to evaluate various general views as to the nature of the creative process itself. The upshot of this procedure is the development of a kind of ?Darwinian? model whose novel feature lies in the suggestion that the process of production has, in effect, been controlled (plastically) by those very factors which can enable the product to be a creative one. (shrink)

This paper explores ethical questions arising from the work of health practitioners in immigration detention centres in Australia. It raises questions about the roles of professional disciplines and the ways in which they confront dual loyalty issues. The exploration is guided by interviews conducted with health professionals who have worked in asylum seeker detention and an examination of the outsider advocacy role undertaken by the social work profession. The paper discusses the stance taken by individuals and professional associations on participation (...) in controlled settings, including as participant, bystander and advocate, and asks when the provision of care becomes collusion with oppression. (shrink)

Johnathan Cohen's book provides a lucid and penetrating treatment of the fundamental issues of contemporary analytical philosophy. This field now spans a greater variety of topics and divergence of opinion than fifty years ago, and Cohen's book addresses the presuppositions implicit to it and the patterns of reasoning on which it relies.

Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with DonaldDavidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates inorder to account for several of the more puzzling features of ...

Epistemology as traditionally conceived seems to have fallen upon hard times. Not only has the cry arisen from diverse philosophical quarters that epistemology is dead, but we have even been offered a plethora of suggestions as to how best fill the vacuum left by her sudden demise. Thus Quine, for example, has recently urged that epistemology be “naturalized” and replaced by empirical psychology and an empirical semantics. Others suggest that epistemology be “historicized” and replaced by a study of the history (...) of ideas, and especially by a study of the history of science. Still others have argued that epistemology be “sociologized” and replaced by a sociology of scientific knowledge and/or a sociology of the scientific community. Finally, we have even been told, in a rather delightful Viennese manner, that epistemology must be “radicalized” and replaced by a kind of opportunistic anarchism, marching under the banner of “Anything Goes!” to the tune of a Dadaist waltz. (shrink)

ONE Introduction The history of psychology in the twentieth century is a story of the divorce and remarriage of psychology and philosophy. ...

Two new philosophical problems surrounding the gradation of certainty began to emerge in the 17th century and are still very much alive today. One is concerned with the evaluation of inductive reasoning, whether in science, jurisprudence, or elsewhere; the other with the interpretation of the mathematical calculus of change. This book, aimed at non-specialists, investigates both problems and the extent to which they are connected. Cohen demonstrates the diversity of logical structures that are available for judgements of probability, and explores (...) the rationale for their appropriateness in different contexts of application. Thus his study deals with the complexity of the underlying philosophical issues without simply cataloging alternative conceptions or espousing a particular "favorite" theory. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel account of achievement and I argue that, all other things being equal, the presence of this particular type of achievement in a person’s life makes that life more meaningful. In arguing for this conclusion, I explore the connections between m-achievements and a person’s self-conception and especially the idea that m-achievements provide a reason for the revision of one’s self-conception.

Acceptance of Humean Supervenience and thereductive Humean analyses that entail it leadsto a litany of inadequately explained conflictswith our intuitions regarding laws andpossibilities. However, the non-reductiveHumeanism developed here, on which law claimsare understood as normative rather than factstating, can accommodate those intuitions. Rational constraints on such norms provide aset of consistency relations that ground asemantics formulated in terms offactual-normative worlds, solving theFrege-Geach problem of construing unassertedcontexts. This set of factual-normative worldsincludes exactly the intuitive sets ofnomologically possible worlds associated witheach possible (...) set of laws. The extension ofthe semantics to counterfactual and subjunctiveconditionals is sketched. Potential objectionsinvolving subjectivity, mind-dependence, andnon-factuality are discussed. (shrink)

This book explores the impact of neuroscience research over the past 20 or more years on brain function as it affects moral decisions. Findings show that the mind and brain are very close, if not the same, and that the brain 'makes' the mind. This is bringing about a change of focus from examining mental activity to the physical activity of the brain to understand thinking and behavior. We are discovering that the physical features of the brain play the major (...) role in shaping our thoughts and emotions, including the way we deal with 'moral' issues. This book sets out the historical framework of the transition from 'mentalism' to 'physicalism', shows how the physical brain works in moral decisions and then examines three broad areas of moral decision-making - the brain in 'bad' acts, the brain in decisions involving sexual relations, and the brain in money decision-making. (shrink)

Australia has one of the harshest regimes for the processing of asylum seekers, people who have applied for refugee status but are still awaiting an answer. It has received sharp rebuke for its policies from international human rights bodies but continues to exercise its resolve to protect its borders from those seeking protection. One means of doing so is the detention of asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Health care providers who care for asylum seekers in these conditions (...) experience a conflict of “dual loyalty,” whereby their role in preserving and maintaining the health of patients can run counter to their employment in detention facilities. Many psychiatrists who have worked in the detention setting engage in forms of political activism in order to change the process of seeking refuge. (shrink)