The self-interaction spin-2 approach to GR has been extremely influential in the particle physics community. Leaving no doubt regarding its heuristic value, we argue that any view of the metric field of GR as nothing but a stand-in for a self-coupling field in at spacetime runs into a dilemma: either the view is physically incomplete in so far as it requires recourse to GR after all, or it leads to an absurd multiplication of alternative viewpoints on GR rendering any understanding (...) of the metric field as nothing but a spin-2 field in at spacetime unjustified. (shrink)

The emergence of the “4th Industrial Revolution,” i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. In the post-Covid-19 era, the entities that are best positioned to capitalize on these innovations are large firms, which use digital platforms and big data to orchestrate vast ecosystems of users and extract market share across industry sectors. Nonetheless, these technologies also have the potential (...) to democratize ownership, broaden political-economic participation, and reduce environmental harms. We articulate the potential sociotechnical pathways in this high-stakes crossroads by analyzing cellular agriculture, an exemplary 4th Industrial Revolution technology that synergizes computer science, biopharma, tissue engineering, and food science to grow cultured meat, dairy, and egg products from cultured cells and/or genetically modified yeast. Our exploration of this space involved multi-sited ethnographic research in both the cellular agriculture community and alternative economic organizations devoted to open source licensing, member-owned cooperatives, social financing, and platform business models. Upon discussing how these latter approaches could potentially facilitate alternative sociotechnical pathways in cellular agriculture, we reflect upon the broader implications of this work with respect to the 4th Industrial Revolution and the enduring need for public policy reform. (shrink)

This book has been written in the hopes of equipping teachers-in-training—that is, teacher candidates—with the skills needed for action research: a process that leads to focused, effective, and responsive strategies that help students succeed.

The American Medical Association enacted its Code of Ethics in 1847, the first such national codification. In this volume, a distinguished group of experts from the fields of medicine, bioethics, and history of medicine reflect on the development of medical ethics in the United States, using historical analyses as a springboard for discussions of the problems of the present, including what the editors call "a sense of moral crisis precipitated by the shift from a system of fee-for-service medicine to a (...) system of fee-for-system medicine, better known as 'managed care.'" The authors begin with a look at how the medical profession began to consider ethical issues in the 1800s and subsequent developments in the 1900s. They then address the sociological, historical, ethical, and legal aspects of the practice of medicine. Later chapters discuss current and future challenges to medical ethics and professional values. Appendixes display various versions of the AMA's Code of Ethics as it has evolved over time. Contributors: George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Ph.D., Robert B. Baker, Ph.D., Chester R. Burns, M.D., Ph.D., Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., Alexander Morgan Capron, J.D., Christine K. Cassel, M.D., Linda L. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Eliot L. Freidson, Ph.D., Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D., Florencia Luna, Ph.D., Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., Charles E. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Mark Siegler, M.D., Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D., Robert M. Tenery, Jr., M.D., Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., John Harley Warner, Ph.D., Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. (shrink)

Late in 1990, the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at Illinois Institute of Technology (lIT) received a grant of more than $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to try a campus-wide approach to integrating professional ethics into its technical curriculum.! Enough has now been accomplished to draw some tentative conclusions. I am the grant's principal investigator. In this paper, I shall describe what we at lIT did, what we learned, and what others, especially philosophers, can learn (...) from us. We set out to develop an approach that others could profitably adopt. I believe that we succeeded. (shrink)

In The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys and (...) other significant late twentieth-century artists. Baker's book draws parallels between the animal's place in postmodern art and poststructuralist theory, drawing on works as diverse as Jacques Derrida's recent analysis of the role of animals in philosophical thought and Julian Barnes's best-selling Flaubert's Parrot. (shrink)

Socrates provides an argument at the end of the Apology that he believes gives hope that death is a blessing. This argument, grounded on the claim that death is one of two things, has been the subject of much derision and some recent defense. In this essay, I build on the work of other sympathetic commentators to show that Socrates' argument, when taken in context, not only makes good sense, but unifies Socrates' speech into a cohesive exhortation toward virtue.

For courses in Earth Science, Physical Geology, Physical Geography, Earth System Science and Environmental Philosophy. This collection of essays by scholars in both the earth sciences and philosophy discusses the connections between the earth sciences and contemporary culture, and the changing role of the earth sciences in society.

In this article we engage with and against Foucault's provocation to think about diagrams of subjectivation. With Foucault we take up his meditation on spirituality and propose a Buddhist alternative to Greco-Roman technologies of self. Against Foucault's notion of an ‘arts of existence’ we suggest instead ‘cultivation of virtue’, drawing on, as an example, a famous Buddhist meditation on compassion. We conclude the article by proposing rethinking doctoral supervision in terms of a cultivation of virtue.

ABSTRACTDrawing on the work of Raimond Gaita, the paper considers the role that may be played by the lives of the saints, both in alerting us to the moral standing of other human beings, and in helping us to articulate the concept of “humanity” understood in a morally rich sense. The paper considers whether Gaita's treatment of these themes presents something like a natural law ethic, in the sense of supplying arguments which favour broadly Christian conclusions without depending upon explicitly (...) Christian premises. It also considers whether Gaita's view, contrary to his own belief, invites extrapolation in the direction of a more religiously engaged stance. In these ways, the paper aims to address the question of the relationship between religious and moral understanding in terms that are arguably more fruitful than those suggested by the dominant ethical theories. (shrink)

Galen Strawson (2004) has championed an influential argument against the view that a life is, or ought to be, understood as a kind of story with temporal extension. The weight of his argument rests on his self-report of his experience of life as lacking the form or temporal extension necessary for narrative. And though this argument has been widely accepted, I argue that it ought to have been rejected. On one hand, the hypothetical non-diachronic life Strawson proposes would likely be (...) psychologically fragmented. On the other, it would certainly be morally diminished, for it would necessarily lack the capacity for integrity. (shrink)

Recently Díaz, Hössjer and Marks (DHM) presented a Bayesian framework to measure cosmological tuning (either fine or coarse) that uses maximum entropy (maxent) distributions on unbounded sample spaces as priors for the parameters of the physical models (https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2021/07/020). The DHM framework stands in contrast to previous attempts to measure tuning that rely on a uniform prior assumption. However, since the parameters of the models often take values in spaces of infinite size, the uniformity assumption is unwarranted. This is known as (...) the normalization problem. In this paper we explain why and how the DHM framework not only evades the normalization problem but also circumvents other objections to the tuning measurement like the so called weak anthropic principle, the selection of a single maxent distribution and, importantly, the lack of invariance of maxent distributions with respect to data transformations. We also propose to treat fine-tuning as an emergence problem to avoid infinite loops in the prior distribution of hyperparameters (common to all Bayesian analysis), and explain that previous attempts to measure tuning using uniform priors are particular cases of the DHM framework. Finally, we prove a theorem, explaining when tuning is fine or coarse for different families of distributions. The theorem is summarized in a table for ease of reference, and the tuning of three physical parameters is analyzed using the conclusions of the theorem. (shrink)

To thousands of young people, Marx is the prophet, Mao the sword, and Marcuse the ideological spokesman of the Radical New Left. In The Meaning of Marcuse, Dr. Robert W. Marks, Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research, provides a detailed analysis of Marcuse's most important books--Reason and revolution, Eros and civilization, One-dimensional man, An essay on liberation--and offers the first comprehensive overview of this major 20th century thinker.

Drawing on the work of Raimond Gaita, the paper considers the role that may be played by the lives of the saints, both in alerting us to the moral standing of other human beings, and in helping us to articulate the concept of "humanity" understood in a morally rich sense. The paper considers whether Gaita's treatment of these themes presents something like a natural law ethic, in the sense of supplying arguments which favour broadly Christian conclusions without depending upon explicitly (...) Christian premises. It also considers whether Gaita's view, contrary to his own belief, invites extrapolation in the direction of a more religiously engaged stance. In these ways, the paper aims to address the question of the relationship between religious and moral understanding in terms that are arguably more fruitful than those suggested by the dominant ethical theories. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the issue of choosing the best computer model for simulating a real-world phenomenon through the process of validating the model’s output against the historical, real-worldData data. Four families of techniques are discussed that are used in the context of validation. One is based on the comparisonComparison of statistical summaries of the historical dataData and the model output. The second is used where the models and dataData are stochastic, and distributions of variables must be compared, and a metricMetric (...) is used to measure their closeness. After exploring the desirable properties of such a measure, the paper compares the third and fourth methods of measuring closeness ofPattern patterns, using an example from strategic market competition. The techniques can, however, be used for validating computer models in any domain. (shrink)

Is your mind the same thing as your brain, or are there aspects of mind beyond the brain's biology? This is the mind-body problem, and it has captivated curious minds since the dawn of human contemplation. Today many insist that the mind is completely reducible to the brain. But is that claim justified? In this stimulating anthology, twenty-five philosophers and scientists offer fresh insights into the mind-brain debate, drawing on psychology, neurology, philosophy, computer science, and neurosurgery. Their provocative conclusion? The (...) mind is indeed more than the brain. (shrink)

Permissivism says that for some propositions and bodies of evidence, there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude that can be taken towards that proposition given the evidence. Some critics of this view argue that it condones, as rationally acceptable, sets of attitudes that manifest an untenable kind of arbitrariness. I begin by providing a new and more detailed explication of what this alleged arbitrariness consists in. I then explain why Miriam Schoenfield’s prima facie promising attempt to answer the (...) Arbitrariness Objection, by appealing to the role of epistemic standards in rational belief formation, fails to resolve the problem. Schoenfield’s strategy is, however, a useful one, and I go on to explain how an alternative form of the standards-based approach to Permissivism – one that emphasizes the significance of the relationship between people’s cognitive abilities and the epistemic standards that they employ – can respond to the arbitrariness objection. (shrink)

This paper examines two recent contributions to the hate speech literature – by Steven Heyman and Jeremy Waldron – which seek a justification for the legal restriction of hate speech in an account of the way that hate speech infringes against people’s dignity. These analyses look beyond the first-order hurts and disadvantages suffered by the immediate targets of hate speech, and consider the prospect of hate speech sustaining complex social structures whose wide-scale operations lower the social status of members of (...) targeted groups. In Heyman’s and Waldron’s accounts we find plausible insights into the nature of identity-based social hierarchies, and the harms that redound to subordinated people under the operations of such hierarchies. I argue, however, that both analyses are unsuccessful as justifications for the restriction of hate speech, because they do not ultimately provide reason to think that hate speech is responsible for creating or sustaining identity-based social hierarchies. (shrink)

The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics is the first comprehensive scholarly account of the global history of medical ethics. Offering original interpretations of the field by leading bioethicists and historians of medicine, it will serve as the essential point of departure for future scholarship in the field. The volumes reconceptualize the history of medical ethics through the creation of new categories, including the life cycle; discourses of religion, philosophy, and bioethics; and the relationship between medical ethics and the state, (...) which includes a historical reexamination of the ethics of apartheid, colonialism, communism, health policy, imperialism, militarism, Nazi medicine, Nazi "medical ethics," and research ethics. Also included are the first global chronology of persons and texts; the first concise biographies of major figures in medical ethics; and the first comprehensive bibliography of the history of medical ethics. An extensive index guides readers to topics, texts, and proper names. (shrink)

In disagreements about trivial matters, it often seems appropriate for disputing parties to adopt a ‘middle ground’ view about the disputed matter. But in disputes about more substantial controversies (e.g. in ethics, religion, or politics) this sort of doxastic conduct can seem viciously acquiescent. How should we distinguish between the two kinds of cases, and thereby account for our divergent intuitions about how we ought to respond to them? One possibility is to say that ceding ground in a trivial dispute (...) is appropriate because the disputing parties are usually epistemic peers within the relevant domain, whereas in a more substantial disagreement the disputing parties rarely, if ever, qualify as epistemic peers, and so ‘sticking to one’s guns’ is usually the appropriate doxastic response. My aim in this paper is to explain why this way of drawing the desired distinction is ultimately problematic, even if it seems promising at first blush. (shrink)

This paper explains how the practice of ‘no platforming’ can be reconciled with a liberal politics. While opponents say that no platforming flouts ideals of open public discourse, and defenders see it as a justifiable harm-prevention measure, both sides mistakenly treat the debate like a run-of-the-mill free speech conflict, rather than an issue of academic freedom specifically. Content-based restrictions on speech in universities are ubiquitous. And this is no affront to a liberal conception of academic freedom, whose purpose isn’t just (...) to protect the speech of academics, but also to give them the prerogative to determine which views and speakers have sufficient disciplinary credentials to receive a hearing in academic contexts. No platforming should therefore be acceptable to liberals, in principle, in cases where it is used to support a university culture that maintains rigorous disciplinary standards, by denying attention and credibility to speakers without appropriate disciplinary credentials. (shrink)

Trust in vaccination is eroding, and attitudes about vaccination have become more polarized. This is an observational study of Twitter analyzing the impact that COVID-19 had on vaccine discourse. We identify the actors, the language they use, how their language changed, and what can explain this change. First, we find that authors cluster into several large, interpretable groups, and that the discourse was greatly affected by American partisan politics. Over the course of our study, both Republicans and Democrats entered the (...) vaccine conversation in large numbers, forming coalitions with Antivaxxers and public health organizations, respectively. After the pandemic was officially declared, the interactions between these groups increased. Second, we show that the moral and non-moral language used by the various communities converged in interesting and informative ways. Finally, vector autoregression analysis indicates that differential responses to public health measures are likely part of what drove this convergence. Taken together, our results suggest that polarization around vaccination discourse in the context of COVID-19 was ultimately driven by a trust-first dynamic of political engagement. (shrink)

The standard view of academic freedom and free speech is that they play complementary roles in universities. Academic freedom protects academic discourse, while other public discourse in universities is protected by free speech. Here I challenge this view, broadly, on the grounds that free speech in universities sometimes undermines academic practices. One defense of the standard view, in the face of this worry, says that campus free speech actually furthers the university’s academic aims. Another says that universities have a secondary (...) democratic function, which cannot be fulfilled without free speech on campus. I identify shortcomings in both types of arguments. (shrink)

Some authors claim that hate speech plays a key role in perpetuating unjust social hierarchy. One prima facie plausible hypothesis about how this occurs is that hate speech has a pernicious influence on the attitudes of children. Here I argue that this hypothesis has an important part to play in the formulation of an especially robust case for general legal prohibitions on hate speech. If our account of the mechanism via which hate speech effects its harms is built around claims (...) about hate speech’s influence on children, then we will be better placed to acquire evidence that demonstrates the processes posited in our account, and better placed to ascribe responsibility for these harms to individuals who engage in hate speech. I briefly suggest some policy implications that come with developing an account of the harm of hate speech along these lines. (shrink)

When I started the book, I thought that if there are beliefs, then they are brain states. I still believe that. I express three caveats about the book.

Proponents of the view which I call ‘moral antitheodicy’ call for the theistic discourse of theodicy to be abandoned, because, they claim, all theodicies involve some form of moral impropriety. Three arguments in support of this view are examined: the argument from insensitivity, the argument from detachment, and the argument from harmful consequences. After discussing the merits of each argument individually, I attempt to show that they all must presuppose what they are intended to establish, namely, that the set of (...) premises advanced in any given theodicy will be untenable. I conclude by discussing what uses there might be for the moral critique of theodicy, if it cannot be used to ground a global rejection of theodical practice. (shrink)

Should we implement epistemically paternalistic measures outside of the narrow range of cases, like legal trials, in which their benefits and justifiability seem clear-cut? In this chapter I draw on theories of student-led pedagogy, and Jane Friedman’s work on norms of inquiry, to argue against this prospect. The key contention in the chapter is that facts about an inquirer’s interests and temperament have a bearing on whether it is better for her to, at any given moment, pursue epistemic goods via (...) outward-facing evidence-acquisition, or in a more introspective, ratiocinative fashion. This makes problems for any non-consultative approach to assisting people in inquiry, and speaks in favor of approaches which, as with student-led pedagogy, aim to ‘tap into’ the inquirer’s interests and temperament in helping them to learn. (shrink)

In free speech theory ‘speech’ has to be defined as a special term of art. I argue that much free speech discourse comes with a tacit commitment to a ‘Subtractive Approach’ to defining speech. As an initial default, all communicative acts are assumed to qualify as speech, before exceptions are made to ‘subtract’ those acts that don’t warrant the special legal protections owed to ‘speech’. I examine how different versions of the Subtractive Approach operate, and criticise them in terms of (...) their ability to yield a substantive definition of speech which covers all and only those forms of communicative action that – so our arguments for free speech indicate – really do merit special legal protection. In exploring alternative definitional approaches, I argue that what ultimately compromises definitional adequacy in this arena is a theoretical commitment to the significance of a single unified class of privileged communicative acts. I then propose an approach to free speech theory that eschews this theoretical commitment. (shrink)

In this paper we examine the ethical implications of emerging Nanotechnologically Enhanced Combat Systems (or 'NECS'). Through a combination of materials innovation and biotechnology, NECS are aimed at making combatants much less vulnerable to munitions that pose a lethal threat to soldiers protected by conventional armor. We argue that increasing technological disparities between forces armed with NECS and those without will exacerbate the ethical problems of asymmetric warfare. This will place pressure on the just war principles of jus in bello, (...) by encouraging the resort to tactics that either (i) make it more difficult to respect these principles or (ii) directly violate them, by virtue of attacking non-combatants or creating disproportionate numbers of casualties without a clear military goal. (shrink)

We discuss a recent attempt by Chris Daly and Simon Langford to do away with mathematical explanations of physical phenomena. Daly and Langford suggest that mathematics merely indexes parts of the physical world, and on this understanding of the role of mathematics in science, there is no need to countenance mathematical explanation of physical facts. We argue that their strategy is at best a sketch and only looks plausible in simple cases. We also draw attention to how frequently Daly and (...) Langford find themselves in conflict with mathematical and scientific practice. (shrink)

The idea that human beings are intellectually self-governing plays two roles in free-speech theory. First, this idea is frequently called upon as part of the justification for free speech. Second, it plays a role in guiding the translation of free-speech principles into legal policy by underwriting the ascriptive framework through which responsibility for certain kinds of speech harms can be ascribed. After mapping out these relations, I ask what becomes of them once we acknowledge certain very general and profound limitations (...) in people's capacity for intellectual self-governance. I argue that acknowledging these limitations drastically undermines the putative justifications for free speech of the type that I identify in the first part of the paper. I then show how we can reformulate an account of intellectual and doxastic responsibility on which we may still be held responsible for what we think or believe even though we lack agent-causal capacities in our thinking and believing. Then, in light of this ascriptive account of intellectual responsibility, I show how the key ideahave minds of their owncan (and should) still play a significant role in guiding the legislative outworkings of free speech. (shrink)

Bioethics and human rights were conceived in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when moral outrage reenergized the outmoded concepts of and renaming them and to give them new purpose. Originally, the principles of bioethics were a means for protecting human rights, but through a historical accident, bioethical principles came to be considered as fundamental. In this paper I reflect on the parallel development and accidental divorce of bioethics and human rights to urge their reconciliation.

The first history of American medical ethics published in more than a half century, Before Bioethics tracks the evolution of American medical ethics from colonial midwives and physicians' oaths to current bioethical controversies over abortion, AIDS, animal rights, and physician-assisted suicide.

We compare Gödel’s and Brouwer’s explorations of mysticism and its relation to mathematics.

Shills are people who endorse products and companies for pay, while pretending that their endorsements are ingenuous. Here we argue that there is something objectionable about shilling that is not reducible to its bad consequences, the lack of epistemic conscientiousness it often relies upon, or to the shill’s insincerity. Indeed, we take it as a premise of our inquiry that shilling can sometimes be sincere, and that its wrongfulness is not mitigated by the shill’s sincerity, in cases where the shill (...) is sincere. Our proposal is that the shill’s defining characteristic is their knowingly engaging in a kind of speech that obscures a certain aspect of its social status – most commonly, by pretending to speak on their own personal behalf, while in fact speaking as an employee – and that this sort of behaviour is objectionable irrespective of any other features of the shill’s conduct. This sort of obfuscation undermines a socially beneficial communicative custom, in which we conscientiously mark the distinction between personal speech and speech-for-hire. (shrink)

On scientific and moral revolutions -- Using the dead for the living: the benthamite moral revolution -- Immoralizing and criminalizing abortion: the doctors revolution -- Irredentism and counter-revolutions in geology and abortion -- The american bioethics revolution -- The structure of moral revolutions.

Bioethicists function in an environment in which their peers - healthcare executives, lawyers, nurses, physicians - assert the integrity of their fields through codes of professional ethics. Is it time for bioethics to assert its integrity by developing a code of ethics? Answering in the affirmative, this paper lays out a case by reviewing the historical nature and function of professional codes of ethics. Arguing that professional codes are aggregative enterprises growing in response to a field's historical experiences, it asserts (...) that bioethics now needs to assert its integrity and independence and has already developed a body of formal statements that could be aggregated to create a comprehensive code of ethics for bioethics. A Draft Model Aggregated Code of Ethics for Bioethicists is offered in the hope that analysis and criticism of this draft code will promote further discussion of the nature and content of a code of ethics for bioethicists. (shrink)

In the clinical setting, questions of medical ethics raise a host of perplexing problems, often complicated by conflicting perspectives and the need to make immediate decisions. In this volume, bioethicists and physicians provide a nuanced, in-depth approach to the difficult issues involved in bioethics consultation. Addressing the needs of researchers, clinicians, and other health professionals on the front lines of bioethics practice, the contributors focus primarily on practical concerns -- whether ethics consultation is best done by individuals, teams, or committees (...) how an ethics consult service should be structured the need for institutional support and techniques and programs for educating and training staff -- without neglecting more theoretical considerations, such as the importance of character or the viability of organizational ethics. (shrink)