As synthetic biology develops into a promising science and engineering field, we need to have clear ideas and priorities regarding its safety, security, ethical and public dialogue implications. Based on an extensive literature search, interviews with scientists, social scientists, a 4 week long public e-forum, and consultation with several stakeholders from science, industry and civil society organisations, we compiled a list of priority topics regarding societal issues of synthetic biology for the years ahead. The points presented here are intended to (...) encourage all stakeholders to engage in the prioritisation of these issues and to participate in a continuous dialogue, with the ultimate goal of providing a basis for a multi-stakeholder governance in synthetic biology. Here we show possible ways to solve the challenges to synthetic biology in the field of safety, security, ethics and the science-public interface. (shrink)

As part of the SYNBIOSAFE project, we carried out an open electronic conference (e-conference), with the aim to stimulate an open debate on the societal issues of synthetic biology in a proactive way. The e-conference attracted 124 registered participants from 23 different countries and different professional backgrounds, who wrote 182 contributions in six different categories: (I) Ethics; (II) Safety; (III) Security; (IV) IPR; (V) Governance and regulation; (VI) and Public perception. In this paper we discuss the main arguments brought up (...) during the e-conference and provide our conclusions about how the community thinks, and thinks differently on the societal impact of synthetic biology. Finally we conclude that there is a chance for an open discourse on the societal issues of synthetic biology happening, and that the rules to govern such a discourse might be set up much easier and be respected more readily than many would suggest. (shrink)

The recent controversy about misinformation has moved a question into the focus of the public eye that has occupied philosophers for decades: Under what conditions is it appropriate to assert a certain claim? When asserting a claim that x, must one know that x? Must x be true? Might it be normatively acceptable to assert whatever one believes? In the largest cross-cultural study to date (total n = 1,091) on the topic, findings from the United States, Germany, and Japan suggest (...) that, in order to claim that x, x need not be known, and it can be false. However, the data show, we do expect considerable epistemic responsibility on the speaker’s behalf: In order to appropriately assert a claim, the speaker must have good reasons to believe it. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward the triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not (...) stem from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels–but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favoured utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas–and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarisation surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how the dominant methods in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) may deliver insights that do not generalise to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Contextualism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims (involving e.g. predicates of personal taste or epistemic modals) depends on the context of utterance. Relativism is the view that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of assessment. Both views make concrete, empirically testable predictions about how such claims are used by ordinary English language speakers. This chapter surveys some of the recent empirical literature on the topic and presents four new experiments (total N=724). Consistent with contextualism (...) and inconsistent with relativism, the results suggest that the extension of perspectival claims depends on the context of utterance, not the context of assessment. (shrink)

In a series of ten preregistered experiments (N=2043), we investigate the effect of outcome valence on judgments of probability, negligence, and culpability – a phenomenon sometimes labelled moral (and legal) luck. We found that harmful outcomes, when contrasted with neutral outcomes, lead to increased perceived probability of harm ex post, and consequently to increased attribution of negligence and culpability. Rather than simply postulating a hindsight bias (as is common), we employ a variety of empirical means to demonstrate that the outcome-driven (...) asymmetry across perceived probabilities constitutes a systematic cognitive distortion. We then explore three distinct strategies to alleviate the hindsight bias and its downstream effects on mens rea and culpability ascriptions. Not all are successful, but at least some prove promising. They should, we argue, be taken into consideration in criminal jurisprudence, where distortions due to the hindsight bias are likely considerable and deeply disconcerting. (shrink)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, frontline medical professionals at intensive care units around the world faced gruesome decisions about how to ration life-saving medical resources. These events provided a unique lens through which to understand how the public reasons about real-world dilemmas involving trade-offs between human lives. In three studies (total N = 2298), we examined people’s moral attitudes toward triage of acute coronavirus patients, and found elevated support for utilitarian triage policies. These utilitarian tendencies did not stem (...) from period change in moral attitudes relative to pre-pandemic levels--but rather, from the heightened realism of triage dilemmas. Participants favored utilitarian resolutions of critical care dilemmas when compared to structurally analogous, non-medical dilemmas—and such support was rooted in prosocial dispositions, including empathy and impartial beneficence. Finally, despite abundant evidence of political polarization surrounding Covid-19, moral views about critical care triage differed modestly, if at all, between liberals and conservatives. Taken together, our findings highlight people’s robust support for utilitarian measures in the face of a global public health threat, and illustrate how hypothetical scenarios in moral psychology (e.g. trolley cases) should strive for more experiential and psychological realism, otherwise their results might not generalize to real-world moral dilemmas. (shrink)

Marie van Loon | : In this paper, I argue that Alfred Mele’s conception of self-deception is such that it always fulfils the reasons-responsiveness condition for doxastic responsibility. This is because self-deceptive mechanisms of belief formation are such that the kind of beliefs they bring about are the kind of beliefs that fulfil the criteria for doxastic responsibility from epistemic reasons responsiveness. I explain why in this paper. Mele describes the relation of the subject to the evidence as a biased (...) relation. The subject does not simply believe on the basis of evidence, but on the basis of manipulated evidence. Mele puts forward four ways in which the subject does this. The subject could misinterpret positively or negatively, selectively focus, or gather evidence. Through these ways of manipulation, the evidence is framed such that the final product constitutes evidence on the basis of which the subject may believe a proposition that fits that subject’s desire that P. Whichever form of manipulation the subject uses, the evidence against P must be neutralized in one way or another. Successful neutralization of the evidence requires the ability to recognize what the evidence supports and the ability to react to it. These abilities consist precisely in the two parts of the reasons-responsiveness condition, reasons receptivity and reasons reactivity. In that sense, self-deceptive beliefs always fulfil the reasons-responsiveness condition for doxastic responsibility. However, given that reasons responsiveness is only a necessary condition for doxastic responsibility, this does not mean that self-deceived subjects are always responsible for their belief. | : Dans cet article, je soutiens que la conception d’auto-illusion chez Alfred Mele remplit toujours l’une des conditions de la responsabilité doxastique, à savoir la « sensibilité aux raisons ». Il en est ainsi car les mécanismes d’auto-illusion dans la formation de croyances produisent des types de croyances qui remplissent les critères pour la responsabilité doxastique quant à la sensibilité aux raisons épistémiques. J’explique pourquoi dans cet article. Mele décrit la relation du sujet à la preuve comme biaisée. Le sujet ne croit pas seulement sur la base de preuves, mais de preuves manipulées. Mele avance quatre façons qu’a le sujet de faire ceci. Le sujet peut mal interpréter positivement ou négativement, focaliser de façon sélective, ou accumuler des preuves. Par ces formes de manipulations, la preuve est formulée de sorte qu’elle produise un fondement pour la croyance en une proposition qui s’accorde avec le désir du sujet que P. Peu importe la forme de manipulation qu’emploie le sujet, la preuve contre P doit être neutralisée d’une façon ou d’une autre. Une neutralisation réussie de la preuve requiert la capacité de reconnaître ce que soutient la preuve et la capacité d’y réagir. Ces capacités consistent précisément en ces deux parties de la condition de la sensibilité aux raisons, soit la réceptivité et la réactivité aux raisons. En ce sens, les croyances d’auto-illusion remplissent toujours la condition de la sensibilité aux raisons pour la responsabilité doxastique. Toutefois, étant donné que la sensibilité aux raisons n’est une condition nécessaire que pour la responsabilité doxastique, cela ne veut pas dire que les sujets souffrant d’auto-illusion sont toujours responsables de leurs croyances. (shrink)

The reasonable person standard is of great importance to US criminal and tort law. According to the law, whether or not an agent acted reasonably does not depend on features of the outcome which are not under her control. Mock juror attributions of reasonableness, however, are shown to be outcome-dependent. A series of experiments reveals that this outcome-dependence does not constitute a bias, since the very folk concept of reasonableness is outcome-sensitive. Consequently, the law makes a mistaken assumption as to (...) what kind of concept of reasonableness lay jurors will apply in court. This conceptual misalignment, it is argued, could lead to serious injustice in US trials. This paper presents a series of studies (total N=579) which demonstrate that folk judgments concerning the reasonableness of decisions and actions depend strongly on whether they engender positive or negative consequences. A particular decision is deemed more reasonable in retrospect when it produces beneficial consequences than when it produces harmful consequences, even if the situation in which the decision was taken and the epistemic circumstances of the agent are held fixed across conditions. This finding is worrisome for the law, where the reasonable person standard plays a prominent role. The legal concept of reasonableness is outcome-insensitive: whether the defendant acted in a reasonable fashion or not depends exclusively on her context of action, no matter how things play out. Folk judgments of reasonableness are thus inconsistent with the legal concept of reasonableness. Problematically, in common law jurisdictions, the decision whether a defendant’s behavior was reasonable or not is frequently (though not necessarily) delegated to a lay jury. (shrink)

In the standard volunteer’s dilemma (VoD), a single prosocial act (i.e., volunteering) yields the optimal overall outcome. Whereas the volunteer’s outcome is certain, the defector’s outcome depends on what others do. This research addressed the confounding of prosocial responses with uncertainty avoidance in the standard VoD. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 102) considered 18 hypothetical one-shot two-person VoD scenarios with certain, risky, and uncertain outcomes when volunteering. In Experiment 2, participants (N = 496) considered three hypothetical one-shot two-person VoD (...) scenarios; a certain VoD and two uncertain VoDs of which one had a lower expected collective outcome of volunteering than the certain VoD and the other a higher one. Results suggest that volunteering does not reflect a desire to avoid uncertainty but to maximize expected collective outcomes, reinforcing the assumption that the high volunteering rates we see in a standard VoD are due to social/moral preferences and social projection. (shrink)

N Blake, P Standish; Preface, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 197–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00168.

N Blake, P Standish; Notes on Contributors, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 199–201, https://doi.org/10.1111/146.

N Blake, P Standish; Notes on Contributors, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 199–201, https://doi.org/10.1111/146.

N Blake, P Standish; Bibliography, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 203–208, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00.

N Blake, P Standish; Bibliography, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 203–208, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00.

N Blake, P Standish; Preface, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 197–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00168.

N Blake, P Standish; Preface, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 34, Issue 1, 16 December 2002, Pages 197–198, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00168.

N. Tennant; XI*—Entailment and Proofs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 167–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

N. Tennant; XI*—Entailment and Proofs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 79, Issue 1, 1 June 1979, Pages 167–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristote.

N. M. L. Nathan; VI*—Scepticism and the Regress of Justification, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 75, Issue 1, 1 June 1975, Pages 77–88, https:/.

N. M. L. Nathan; VIII*—Democracy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 123–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/.

N. M. L. Nathan; VIII*—Democracy, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 93, Issue 1, 1 June 1993, Pages 123–138, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/.

A. N. Prior; XIV—Time, Existence and Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 66, Issue 1, 1 June 1966, Pages 183–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/.

John N Andrews; General Thinking Skills: are there such things?, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 71–79, https://doi.o.

Y. N. Chopra; VIII—The Consequences of Human Actions, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 65, Issue 1, 1 June 1965, Pages 147–166, https://doi.org/1.

Notice: This PDF version was distributed by request to members of the Friends of the SEP Society and by courtesy to SEP content contributors. It is solely for their fair use. Unauthorized distribution is prohibited. To learn how to join the Friends of the SEP Society and obtain authorized PDF versions of SEP entries, please visit https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/.

D. N. MacCormick; XI*—The Obligation of Reparation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 175–194, https://doi.org/10.

D. N. MacCormick; XI*—The Obligation of Reparation, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 78, Issue 1, 1 June 1978, Pages 175–194, https://doi.org/10.

The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...) research. PRO (http://pir.georgetown.edu/pro) is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry. (shrink)

F N Dunlop; Education and Human Nature, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 4, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 21–44, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.197.

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09403-x.

Photo by Jonathan Ford on Unsplash ABSTRACT Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events. Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. This paper analyzes the idea of expanding a duty to rescue to climate migration. We address who should have (...) the duty and to whom the duty should extend. The paper discusses ways to define and apply the duty to rescue as well as its limitations, arguing that it may take the form of an ethical duty to prepare. INTRODUCTION Climate migration creates a special setting for a duty to rescue. A duty to rescue is a moral rather than legal duty and imposes on a bystander to take an active role in preventing serious harm to someone else. Examples of circumstances range from person-to-person intimate rescue to saving those in poverty, even in distant parts of the world.[1] Since 2008, an average of twenty million people per year have been displaced by weather events.[2] Circumstances like being thrust from homes under the threat of fire, mudslide, and flooding vary greatly from long-term changes like land becoming too arid for crops or temperatures increasing annually gradually pushing up the number of heat-related deaths, with the area slowly becoming uninhabitable. Imminence in fleeing affects resettling and need for rescue with important implications for how the duty to rescue might apply. This paper reevaluates the ethical framing of the duty to rescue and, while it is arguably a stretch, applies it to climate migration. Climate migration has become common and is expected to increase due to rises in sea level, increases in weather events that make areas uninhabitable, and changes to land that preclude farming or other necessary land uses. We argue that a duty to rescue may help highlight who has moral obligations to whom. Because the problem is so large in scope, we suggest a change in the ethical limits to humans' duty to rescue other humans who are in distress. We imagine an expansion or extension of the duty to rescue to meet some of the basic needs created by climate migration. Yet how it should expand, and how much depend on ethical framing and practical limitations. l. Expanding the Geographical Boundaries Two commonly recognized emergencies, Hurricane Katrina in the case of weather events and the current COVID-19 pandemic, provide a historical and current backdrop to evaluate ethical obligations as more disasters displace people. A significant reassessment of the ethical scope of an obligation to rescue in the case of weather events will be limited by the ability to render aid to those in distress in the case of a planet-wide weather catastrophe. The problems may overwhelm the ability to rescue or the reasonableness of attempting rescue. The extent of the moral obligation borne by humans to other humans in the case of a weather event has been largely defined by its locality and limited geographic influence. Whether we are imagining the scope of ethical obligation in the case of hurricane, flood, tornado, drought, or wildfire events, the perceived ethical obligation is significantly defined by the limited impact of these weather events on people outside the zone of the weather event's direct impact, yet close to that zone. A hurricane affecting New Orleans will not have immediate impact on the residents of California or even those on the northeast coast of the United States until a later time. Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest do not impair the ability of those in the rest of the country to come forward with assistance. But as climate migration crosses international borders, and climate events occur simultaneously in many regions, a more expansive duty to rescue may provide the ethical impulse to help those who live afar or migrate long distances. In this respect, the need for help in the event of widespread climate migration due to global warming is more like a pandemic than a weather event. Its broad impact area diminishes the capability of nearly the entire balance of the human population to help due to those populations' awareness that they will, in short order, have the same need for the same resources, from the same cause. Those living near current flood zones may find their historically safe havens are also a flood zone. Those previously best positioned to rescue may find themselves also needing to relocate. Thus, we may observe the need for new rescuers. ll. The Rule of Rescue The Rule of Rescue as defined by Al Jonsen describes the moral impetus or knee jerk reaction to save identifiable people facing death.[3] A duty to rescue has since been expanded beyond imminent death and beyond the near and identifiable. But there are limitations. For example, by most accounts, the ethical duty tends not to require extreme bodily risk or financial depletion. In comparing Good Samaritans to humanitarians, Scott M. James argues the duty to rescue arises from unique dependence, but the ethical obligation to help strangers through humanitarian aid is of a different nature.[4] The wrongness of failing to help is arguably more egregious when one is in a unique position to help. Like in the tragedy of the commons, where there is no unique positioning, when the global community is called upon to help, each individual in it may feel less obliged to do so. Climate migration falls in between—it requires helping strangers, yet it may move forward without anyone seeing themselves as uniquely positioned to help until those strangers become part of communities, at which time, there may be more moral justification to help a community member in need. Generally, arguments about Good Samaritans hinge on extraordinary acts, praiseworthy because they are acts of compassion, not obligation. Now all US states have Good Samaritan laws[5] which protect helpers from liability for help gone wrong or for a failure to succeed once engaged in an act of rescue. Extraordinary help as a moral good is thus somewhat encouraged through legal protection, but not imposed. Conversely, jobs like firefighting, search and rescue, and emergency medical care tend to oblige employees to take on risks that would be extraordinary if undertaken by the average bystander, yet they are rendered ordinary rescue as part of the job. Three states, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Vermont have a broad duty to rescue, adding legal considerations to an otherwise moral conundrum. The laws do not require bystanders to take on risk for the sake of rescuing strangers.[6] The moral duty will require looking beyond law, but it is unclear how the moral duty to rescue should be distributed in the case of climate migration. A bare minimum would prevent taking advantage of newcomers, paying sub-minimum wage, and discriminating against them. Yet such a minimum is hardly rescue. lll. An Ethical Rather than Legal Duty The difficulty in defining the duty to rescue as a legal obligation is that it is difficult to determine the extent of risk a rescuer ought to be required to take. The nature of this ethical duty is also arguably tied to the experiences of both the rescuer and the rescued. There are subjective aspects like what someone perceives as a danger that make it difficult to write enforceable laws requiring rescue. It is one thing to expect a rescuer to step into several inches of relatively warm water to lift a person lying face down in a pond and enable them to breathe. It is something altogether different to expect that rescuer to dive into frigid water and attempt to extricate someone trapped in a submerged automobile. As the legal philosopher H.L.A. Hart observed, it is always easier to define application of the core intention of any rule, whether law or ethical norm. It is more difficult to create legal certainty about how the law applies to what he described as “penumbra circumstances”. In the case of a hurricane, it is easier to define what surplus resources are available in areas geographically remote from the impact of the storm and demand, as a moral obligation, that those nearby but outside the area provide assistance. It is more difficult to obligate people, organizations, or governments to supply a quantity of medication or some number of ventilators to an adjacent community when they expect to imminently need them for their own community. In the early stages of climate migration, the ethics of extreme weather event assistance, a common application of the duty to rescue, will be useful and appropriate. The rising sea levels first experienced by island nations in the South Pacific[7] will not render those living in other coastal communities, those with greater available “high ground”, unable to supply resources to those in need. But when sea level rise and climate change affect more communities simultaneously, albeit in varying degree, the task of defining what response is ethically obligatory becomes increasingly complicated. Pinpointing the obligations of those communities which are resource rich to those communities which are resource deprived, and of those partly affected to those more severely affected may become necessary. The limitations of the traditional duty to rescue could expand to meet the needs. lV. Contribution to the Problem Many argue that the duty to rescue may depend on any appropriate claim of those needing rescue. One issue is whether preferential claims among those who can identify the source of the harm should call for a greater duty or whether everyone in need should be approached as like candidates for rescue, shaping the duty as equal across those on the receiving end. As climate change does have human-made causes, there are strong arguments to impose a greater ethical duty on any entity that caused the climate-related problems leading to the mass exodus. While the global north is often implicated in pollution that causes migration, industries like energy, transportation, and agriculture are tied to climate change and associated with significant greenhouse gas emissions.[8] Practices like directing agriculture to less sustainable single crop growth generally made land less farmable. Yet it is difficult to place blame and identify specific causal relationships as most migration is due to many factors. A movement toward greater accountability can be reframed as a greater duty to rescue, a duty to engage in the extraordinary. The fossil fuel industry, for example, should have a larger obligation than the average person. Similarly, some may argue anyone unjustly enriching themselves while contributing to climate change or people who over-consume have an elevated duty to rescue.[9] Climate change lawsuits demonstrate an eagerness to hold governments and corporations accountable, despite difficulty proving causation. V. The Most Vulnerable One ethical dimension of climate migration that remains unexplored is how a duty to rescue applies to vulnerable populations who stand to be left behind or unable to migrate without assistance. Researchers from the Global North working across the Global South are increasingly observing the phenomenon of ethics dumping, where the research ethics of some countries are imposed on research subjects in other countries.[10] In that vein, rescuers should be careful not to impose unwelcome cultural standards or exploit people who are in the process of migrating. There is a gap in discussions reflecting voices that have been left out. The duty to rescue is incomplete without an attempt to understand the ethical experiences of those being rescued. The actual people affected by climate migration who are the least likely to have the means to migrate, or to do so without extreme hardship, should have a voice informing the global community including those in a position to carry out rescue. People who have the means and are young and healthy may easily make decisions to avoid the catastrophic consequences that climate migration brings. However, what about those who are left behind? For example, especially recognizing cultural differences, the homeless community, disabled community, refugees, the elderly community, and women[11] and children may suffer differently and call for more attention. In some parts of the world, human rights are severely constrained. An ethical duty to rescue, with many considerations and variables, may be more justified in the case of those most in need. As climate migration continues and increases significantly, it may be reasonable to ask the local and global community to focus on those least well positioned to migrate successfully. In this context, the use of phenomenology to understand the lived experiences of those migrating, sometimes termed “ethical experiences”, may help flesh out how a duty to rescue takes shape. The discussion of duty and obligation requires an articulation of the ethical experiences (how the local community in need of rescue views the proposed rescue). Then, the obligation to interpret the duty as ‘one shall not’ or ‘one must’ can be focused on the migrants’ needs rather than the rescuers’ feelings of obligation.[12] A revised theory of the duty to rescue taking into account the asymmetrical experiences of communities involved could ensure that the needs of people whose living situations, gender, ethnicity, age, or race impact their ability to even begin the migration process are considered. In this discussion, the rescuing is directed toward communities /collectives of persons migrating, whether at once or across a period of time. Often, the climate migrant may not be in a state to articulate the nature of this event when it happens, given its subjective proximity. Yet, when communities are given the space and opportunity to articulate their shared values, the ethical action of rescue derives its meaningfulness from the community rather than the rescuers. In other words, allowing climate migrants to explain their feelings can add complexity to what some see as a binary receiver-giver (of rescue) dynamic. This is necessary because the concept of vulnerable populations is fraught with problematic assumptions. There have been various definitions and criteria to determine what would constitute vulnerable populations.[13] For example, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change[14] identifies and assesses vulnerable populations. These criteria may be helpful. However, they do not provide the full picture. Rather than identifying categorical criteria of vulnerable populations, engaging with people who are experiencing climate migration and listening to their current experiences and concerns helps determine need. Knowing what people need may prevent the kneejerk reaction to label people who are quite resilient yet have appropriate needs “vulnerable”. Proceeding with caution is important because the duty to rescue has hierarchical underpinnings of "us" and "them." Often when people swoop in to save, there are good and bad consequences of the intervention. We should proceed with caution because often the helper misses the actual needs of those in need. The only way to combat this would be to make sure that people are empowered to inform those agencies that are able to help. In addition to more practical approaches, large scale oral histories could allow those who have migrated already to share their experiences. It would be important to capture the lived experiences of people who are already experiencing the consequences of climate migration or of other migration like that due to political or economic extreme events. These experiences could shape our analysis of whether people in fact wish for rescue. If so, further conversations can determine best actions as well as give important insight into what resources might be necessary to empower people now and in the future. Vl. A Duty to Rescue as a Duty to Prepare If we view Good Samaritans as going above and beyond, then a duty to rescue, something ethically compelled, must bring rescue out of the framework of charity and place it in the context of humanity and obligations. Such a view would also support expanding the geographical reach of the otherwise more proximate duty. The duty may be stronger and take shape in a more workable way if it applies to preparing places expecting to see an influx of people due to climate migration and to helping those most in need. The duty may arise out of expectations of what type of community the place welcoming those migrating due to climate should be—does it want to offer good housing, schooling, and medical care as well as economic opportunity to new people? And if so, at what cost, or with which risks? If the newcomers are viewed as community members rather than strangers, a model of acceptance may lead to better preparation. Some considerations like whether the actions will reasonably help the persons in need of rescue[15] will shape the application of a duty to rescue in the context of climate migration. Similarly, ensuring that people have the chance to articulate their values may help communities support the newcomers. New relationships should not be defined as migrant and rescuer. Voluntariness in participation and not forcing any action deemed rescue would help ensure the human rights of those migrating. In the United States, President Biden issued an executive order addressing impending climate migration steeped in a duty to prepare by making plans for resettlement and to address the impact of climate migration.[16] Vll. At What Risk? As we investigate the ethical obligations to meet even basic needs, we must also ask what level of risk is ethically compelled. There is an extraordinary need to integrate newcomers successfully, but it is difficult to stretch an ethical duty to rescue to require all the prerequisites for successful climate migration. Even defining success would create deep ethical arguments. As observed in almost all migrations, extraordinary charitable acts may be the key to success, while an ethical duty to rescue must try to require the important government and community-based basics and ensuring respect for human rights. That is, the migrating people should be rescued from circumstances that contradict basic human rights. Rather than comparing communities to bystanders, mere places where people will arrive and need to hash out how to find housing, jobs, education, and opportunity, a duty of preparation may be the key to rescue those disenfranchised by migration. There are cultural, personal, physical, psycho-social, and geopolitical issues surrounding how to best help those needing to permanently relocate. Ethics arguments will certainly range from “do nothing”, which may fail people, to “do everything”, which could waste taxpayer money in futile over-preparation while failing to actually help. Communities must avoid planning exclusively for one scenario only to have it not take place. Striking the balance, a duty to rescue as it could apply to climate migration should set goals of societal integration, and providing the basics like education, housing, food, health care, and job opportunity, the precursors to flourishing. Recommending the extraordinary, morally preferred but perhaps not compulsory, when charitable actors are participating, or when wrongdoers are compensating, may be more workable than seeing the duty to rescue as compelling people or local governments to take on significant financial and personal risk for newcomers. While humanitarian ethics supports helping everyone, it is likely that people who resettle in advance of a need to flee will find themselves with more choices and opportunities. Help is warranted for those with more dire needs. Preparing for them may do just that. Vlll. Rescue Prior to Migration and Rescue in the Process of Resettlement The duty to enable the migration in the first-place hints to the inadequacy of a duty to prepare. The traditional duty to rescue perhaps steps in if rescue looks like those geographically just out of harm's way rescuing those in danger. That resembles the traditional moral requirement, or duty to rescue according to the Rule of Rescue. Humanitarian aid typically provided by many institutions makes sense and is in place, although financial support for additional humanitarian aid is always needed. Despite having moved to purportedly more capable communities, migrant communities may be able to develop more egalitarian orders of living. Rather than continually being identified as having been rescued, it is important to make sure people keep or make social ties during and after migration. Immigrants often face social isolation.[17] Small shifts in gestural language also have the potential to welcome people and show they are valued. For instance, some migrants may not like questions like “Where are you from?” and “What brings you here?” as they emphasize differences over fitting in. CONCLUSION The ethical duty to rescue should be expanded to better match those in need of relocation with a welcome environment and the resources needed to achieve success and fully integrate socially and culturally. Expanding a dialogue that includes the voices of people who have recently migrated whether due to violence, poverty, or climate, could properly frame the extent of the duty. If we are to apply the duty of rescue to climate migration, rescuers should avoid labeling people vulnerable, dependent, or needy, although there is reason to focus on those whose needs are the most dire. A soft duty to rescue people during the course of climate migration can come in the form of preparation. People will need help finding housing, education, access to food, and employment. Ultimately, to help them help themselves may be the best goal. While the obligations should be borne differently by people, whether due to a special responsibility, or a special relationship that creates a clearer duty, the global community must prepare for its role in rescuing those displaced by climate events. By helping those displaced at the start of the climate migration process according to a more commonly held notion of the duty to rescue, and by preparing to incorporate newcomers successfully according to an expanded duty to rescue, effectively a duty to prepare, countries that take on climate refugees may find themselves rewarded by the cultural diversity and workplace talents that people bring. A duty to those at a distance is a reasonable expansion of the duty to rescue. But what one ought to do in the global community varies somewhat from the traditional Rule of Rescue. - [1] Singer, P. (1972). Famine, Affluence, and Morality. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1(3): 229-43. [2] Irfan, U. (2022, March 16). Why We Still Don’t Yet Know How Bad Climate Migration Will Get. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2022/3/16/22960468/ipcc-climate-change-migration-migrant-refugee, citing the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022). Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2022, Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ [3] McKie, J., Richardson, J. (2003) The Rule of Rescue. Social Science & Medicine, 56(12): 2407-2419. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(02)00244-7. [4] James, S.M. (2007). Good Samaritans, Good Humanitarians. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 24(3):238-254. [5] Overview of Good Samaritan laws. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/good-samaritan-law-states [6] Fifield, J. (2017, Sept. 19). Why It’s Hard to Punish ‘Bad Samaritans’. Stateline Blog, Pew Charitable Trusts, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/09/19/why-its-hard-to-punish-bad- samaritans [7] Cassella, C. (2019). There’s a Climate Threat Facing Pacific Islands That’s More Dire Than Losing Land, Science Alert, https://www.sciencealert.com/pacific-islanders-are-in-a-climate-crisis-as-rising-sea-levels-threaten-wate r; Hassan, H. R., and Cliff, V. (2019). For Small Island Nations, Climate Change is not a Threat. It’s Already Here, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/island-nations-maldives-climate-change/ [8] For example, Lyons, K. (2019). Australia Coal use is Existential threat to Pacific Islanders, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/australia-coal-use-is-existential-threat-to-pacific-islands -says-fiji-pm [9] Cripps, E. (2013). Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [10] Schroeder, D., Chatfield, K., Singh, M., Chennells, R., and Herissone-Kelly, P.. Ethics Dumping and the Need for a Global Code of Conduct. In Cham. (Ed.)(2019). Equitable Research Partnerships. SpringerBriefs in Research and Innovation Governance. Springer. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15745-6_1 [11] Giudice L.C., Llamas-Clark E.F., DeNicola N., Pandipati, S., Zlatnik, M.G., Decena, D.C.D., Woodruff, T.J., Conry, J.A. (2021). Climate Change, Women’s Health, and the Role of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in Leadership, International J Gynecol Obstet, 155(3), 345-356. 10.1002/ijgo.13958 [12] See Ferrarello, S. and Zapien, N. (2020). Ethical Experience: A Phenomenology, Bloomsbury. (for understanding phenomenological determinants of ethical action). [13] McLeman, R.A., Hunter, L.M., (2010). Migration in the context of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change: insights from analogues. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Clim Change, 1(3): 450-461. [14] Least Developed Countries Expert Group. (2018). Considerations Regarding Vulnerable Groups, Communities and Ecosystems in the Context of the National Adaptation Plans: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. [15] Jecker, N.S. 2013. "The Problem with Rescue Medicine." J Med Philos, 38(1):64-81. [16] White House Report. (February 9, 2021), Executive Order (E.O.) 14013, “Rebuilding and Enhancing Programs to Resettle Refugees and Planning for the Impact of Climate Change on Migration.” (calls on the National Security Advisor to prepare a report on climate change and its impact on migration. “This report marks the first time the U.S. Government is officially reporting on the link between climate change and migration.” https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/01/27/executive-order-on-tackling-the- climate-crisis-at-home-and-abroad/ [17] Torres, J.M., Casey, J.A. (2017) The centrality of social ties to climate migration and mental health. BMC Public Health, 17: 600. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-017-4508-0. (shrink)

Analysing the demands of global justice for the distribution of resources is a complex task and requires consideration of a broad range of issues. Of particular relevance is the effect that different distributions will have on global population growth and individual welfare. Since changes in the consumption and distribution of resources can have major effects on the welfare of the global population, and the rate at which it increases, it is important to establish meaningful principles to ensure a just distribution (...) of resources. In order to establish such principles we must consider the scope of any reproductive rights, and rights to other goods, such as food and health care, as well as examine the extent of duties correlating to those rights. In addition to the impact that distributions of global goods have on the welfare of current generations, it is also important to consider what duties we have, if any, to future generations. -/- The final version of this paper is available to download here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9780470015902.a0024140. (shrink)

F. N. Sibley; VIII—Colours, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 145–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/68.1.1.

F. N. Sibley; VIII—Colours, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 68, Issue 1, 1 June 1968, Pages 145–166, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristotelian/68.1.1.

G. N. A. Vesey; X—Being and Feeling, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Pages 133–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristoteli.

G. N. A. Vesey; X—Being and Feeling, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 69, Issue 1, 1 June 1969, Pages 133–148, https://doi.org/10.1093/aristoteli.

G. N. A. Vesey; XI—Berkeley and the Man Born Blind, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 61, Issue 1, 1 June 1961, Pages 189–206, https://doi.org/10.

This chapter considers what type of bioethics is necessary to address contemporary issues in global health. It explores what kind of ethics, or bioethics, is needed to adequately address such concerns, and argues that because the most pressing ethical dilemmas are global, a global framework must be adopted. Moreover, it argues that to adopt a local model of ethics (whether one community, one nation state or one area of jurisdiction) will fail to illuminate key issues of injustice and thus will (...) ultimately fail as an ethical framework. In short, the global nature of current health issues requires that ethics is global. This argument is a practical one, and one which should be uncontroversial given the clear need for this response. Thus this chapter goes on to explore why, if the need for a global ethical approach is so clearly required by the global nature of health concerns, there is still a debate about whether ethics can or should be global. Thus the chapter looks briefly at the arguments against a global approach to ethics and goes on to suggest a global model of ethics which addresses at least some of these concerns. -/- In order to make this argument the chapter begins by outlining why only a global bioethics or ethics is appropriate. It will argue that global bioethics is necessary for both practical and ethical reasons. As a matter of practicality a global approach to bioethics is necessary as health issues are essentially global; and ethically, not to recognize the global implications of health issues is to endorse the significant injustice which occurs in the arena of global health. Given this the chapter will then go on to consider why, given the overwhelming reasons for adopting a global ethical framework, that the debate about whether ethics should be local or global is still ongoing. The chapter will finish with a brief overview of the global ethics model and will suggest that it might address some of the concerns of those who are wary of global approaches. -/- This chapter is available Open Access (http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781472544582.ch-003). (shrink)

Take part... and you will bear witness to the semiotic nature of human animals. This event, commented by Charbel Niño El-Hani (Federal University of Bahia) and chaired by Elma Berisha (Lyceum Institute), is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the (...) Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project. *** Jamin Pelkey is Associate Professor and Program Director in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Ryerson University, Toronto, where he is also an active faculty member in the Ryerson-York graduate program in Communication & Culture. He serves as Co-Editor of Semiotica, Vice President of the International Association for Cognitive Semiotics, and executive board member for the International Cognitive Linguistics Association, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and the Semiotic Society of America. Jamin’s research explores semiotic dimensions of language evolution and embodied cognition. He is the recipient of the 2017 Mouton d’Or Award for best article in Semiotica and has edited or co-edited twelve collections in linguistics, anthropology, and semiotics, including Tropological Thought and Action (2022), Cognitive Semiotics (2019), Applied Brand Semiotics (2018), Archaeology of Concepts (2018), Sociohistorical Linguistics in Southeast Asia (2017), Virtual Identities (2016), and The Semiotics of Paradox (2015). His authored books include Dialectology as Dialectic (2011) and The Semiotics of X (2017). He is currently editing Bloomsbury Semiotics, a major reference work in four volumes. *** Charbel N. El-Hani is full professor in the Institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Coordinator of the LEFHBio - History, Philosophy, and Biology Teaching Lab and the INCT IN-TREE - National Institute of Science and Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution. Between January 2020 and July 2021, he was visiting researcher at the CES - Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He works in the areas of philosophy of biology, ecology, ethnobiology and science education research. *** Homepage: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s Auditorium: https://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/io2s/auditorium *** Technical support assured by Robert Junqueira. The cover image for the video was designed by Zahra Soltani. (shrink)

BACKGROUND -/- The need for detailed description and modeling of cells drives the continuous generation of large and diverse datasets. Unfortunately, there exists no systematic and comprehensive way to organize these datasets and their information. CELDA (Cell: Expression, Localization, Development, Anatomy) is a novel ontology for the association of primary experimental data and derived knowledge to various types of cells of organisms. -/- RESULTS -/- CELDA is a structure that can help to categorize cell types based on species, anatomical localization, (...) subcellular structures, developmental stages and origin. It targets cells in vitro as well as in vivo. Instead of developing a novel ontology from scratch, we carefully designed CELDA in such a way that existing ontologies were integrated as much as possible, and only minimal extensions were performed to cover those classes and areas not present in any existing model. Currently, ten existing ontologies and models are linked to CELDA through the top-level ontology BioTop. Together with 15.439 newly created classes, CELDA contains more than 196.000 classes and 233.670 relationship axioms. CELDA is primarily used as a representational framework for modeling, analyzing and comparing cells within and across species in CellFinder, a web based data repository on cells (http://cellfinder.org). -/- CONCLUSIONS -/- CELDA can semantically link diverse types of information about cell types. It has been integrated within the research platform CellFinder, where it exemplarily relates cell types from liver and kidney during development on the one hand and anatomical locations in humans on the other, integrating information on all spatial and temporal stages. CELDA is available from the CellFinder website: http://cellfinder.org/about/ontology. (shrink)

The Protein Ontology (PRO; http://proconsortium.org) formally defines protein entities and explicitly represents their major forms and interrelations. Protein entities represented in PRO corresponding to single amino acid chains are categorized by level of specificity into family, gene, sequence and modification metaclasses, and there is a separate metaclass for protein complexes. All metaclasses also have organism-specific derivatives. PRO complements established sequence databases such as UniProtKB, and interoperates with other biomedical and biological ontologies such as the Gene Ontology (GO). PRO relates to (...) UniProtKB in that PRO’s organism-specific classes of proteins encoded by a specific gene correspond to entities documented in UniProtKB entries. PRO relates to the GO in that PRO’s representations of organism-specific protein complexes are subclasses of the organism-agnostic protein complex terms in the GO Cellular Component Ontology. The past few years have seen growth and changes to the PRO, as well as new points of access to the data and new applications of PRO in immunology and proteomics. Here we describe some of these developments. (shrink)

J. N. (Jitendra Nath) Mohanty (1928–2023). -/- Professor J. N. Mohanty has characterized his life and philosophy as being both “inside” and “outside” East and West, i.e., inside and outside traditions of India and those of the West, living in both India and United States: geographically, culturally, and philosophically; while also traveling the world: Melbourne to Moscow. Most of his academic time was spent teaching at the University of Oklahoma, The New School Graduate Faculty, and finally Temple University. Yet his (...) preeminent work in Husserlian phenomenology developed alongside his eminent work in Indian philosophy: describing his interests as “a fusion of disparate horizons.” -/- J. N. Mohanty was born September 26, 1928, in Cuttack (Odisha, East India). After graduating from high school, he went on to study both Indian and Western philosophy in Calcutta, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees. There he read Whitehead and Kant’s First Critique; although he wanted to include mathematics in his curriculum, he was led instead to include Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. On the shelves of his teacher, Ras Vihar Das, he came upon a copy of the English translation (Ideas I, 1931) of Edmund Husserl’s classic Ideen I (1913), which presented Husserl’s ground-breaking conception of phenomenology. In 1952–1954 he left India for the first time, reaching Göttingen to study mathematics and philosophy, which earned him a doctorate in mathematics and “philosophy of mathematical sciences” (in his own words). In Göttingen, Mohanty found the powerful mathematical world that Husserl himself had earlier interacted with, where several Husserl students had formed the Göttingen school of phenomenology. During these years Mohanty studied primarily mathematics, alongside Kant and also Vedic Sanskrit. From his friend Günter Patzig, interpreter of Aristotle and Frege, Mohanty was drawn to Frege in relation to mathematical logic. He attended lectures of Heidegger, intrigued by his ontological thinking. Yet, despite the Husserlian legacy, Mohanty was completely self-taught in his studies of Husserl (as he has reported). With a doctorate in mathematics, and ideas from Kant and Frege in his philosophical background, Mohanty set about crafting his own conception of philosophy grounded in phenomenology, drawing on Husserl’s extensive work, critically sifting through Husserl’s texts and their emerging concepts of intentionality, meaning, subject, intersubjectivity, and world. In between he wrote his first book-length study: on phenomenological insights in Nicolai Hartmann and A. N. Whitehead (1958). -/- Over many decades Mohanty formulated and argued, in analytical detail, for a conception of phenomenology and its place in philosophy, later presented in a clear and concise book titled Transcendental Phenomenology: An Analytic Account (1989). Over these very decades the same scholar explored classical and recent Indian philosophy, thinking through kindred ideas of consciousness, self, and knowledge drawn from the Indian philosophical contexts. While writing on Nyāya theory of truth, he also pondered whether the world and finite individual are illusory or real, and whether Marx, Arendt, Gandhi (whom he heard speak in Calcutta), or Vinoba Bhave (with whom he marched across India for the land-grant movement) could best navigate post-Independent India’s social and svarāj or self-rule reforms. The two Mohantys, thinking through a vision of self and world, turned out to be “non-different” or “non-dual” as they each practiced critical phenomenology from both inside and outside the respective philosophical and cultural traditions. Numerous students, fellows, and colleagues or collaborators have benefited immensely from this infusion and unified approach to diversity in philosophical thought. In the 2000s, moving into retirement, Mohanty wrote two long books devoted to his understanding of Husserl and phenomenology and the calling of philosophy itself. This two-volume study shows Mohanty himself thinking through Husserl, critically, in The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl: A Historical Introduction (2008), and Edmund Husserl’s Freiburg Years: 1916–1938. As Mohanty worked on Husserl, he carefully indicated where he agreed and where he rejected or changed ideas, all part of his practice in phenomenology of “description and interpretation.” It was the same pattern he used in addressing the thought of Husserl vis-à-vis Kant or Frege or even Quine. -/- As Mohanty developed his understanding of phenomenology over the years, he wrote books on theory of meaning and the concept of intentionality, developing a model of ideal meaning and its foundation in intentionality, drawing on Husserl’s results. He followed these with the book Husserl and Frege (1982), linking the thought of those foundational figures for the “continental” and “analytic” traditions, respectively, in twentieth-century Western philosophy. Over his long career Mohanty addressed both traditions in his clear and accessible writing style. While developing his views on phenomenology, Mohanty regularly looked to “Husserl and his others,” evaluating views in Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and then Derrida and others in the wake of Husserl. With his background in Kant, Mohanty also looked toward Heidegger and Hegel in relation to Husserl’s later work in the Crisis (1935–38). Similarly, he looked to contemporary analytic philosophers, adjudicating his own, oft-wise Husserlian views in relation to Frege, Nagel, and others. Amid his active scholarly career, Mohanty co-founded the journal Husserl Studies, and was editorial advisor to Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, Philosophy East & West, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Sophia, among others. -/- Yet all this while Mohanty was also thinking and writing about Indian philosophy and its relation to phenomenology. In his own retrospective, Indian philosophy is “the permanent background” of his Husserlian thinking, while Kant is the recurrent Western background of his Husserlian phenomenology. Mohanty’s form of “transcendental phenomenology” evolved, in his own perspective, against the background of his studies of Navya-Nyāya on logic and Vedānta on consciousness, in Indian philosophy, and against the background of Kant’s First Critique on the transcendental, in Western philosophy. Accordingly, Mohanty’s study of logical form and of the intentionality of consciousness seeks a fusion of East and West in the conception of transcendental phenomenology. (Cf. Mohanty’s apt response to critics in The Empirical and the Transcendental (2000).) Even in the context of North American Husserl scholarship, Mohanty has exercised an earnest fusion of East and West. For the so-called East Coast and West Coast interpretations of Husserl’s crucial notion of noema both find a sympathetic spirit in J. N. Mohanty’s careful and nuanced interpretation of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. With Mohanty the two faces of the noema are the logical (Fregean) and the phenomenal (Kantian), and these views of intentional structure join in consciousness—in a way resonant with Indian thought. -/- - David Woodruff Smith (UC Irvine) and Purushottama Bilimoria (SFSU, San Francisco; University of Melbourne) -/- For photo of Prof Mohanty visit APA online memorial_minutes2023 Courtesy of APA Memorial Minutes (& Proceedings) 2023 . (shrink)

In this paper I demonstrate that there is an explanation of the number marking we see on nouns when they combine with the numeral _zero_ which combines Martí’s (Semant. Pragmat., 2020a, https://doi.org/10.3765/sp.13.3 ) account of the morphosyntax and semantics of the numeral-noun construction with Bylinina and Nouwen’s (Glossa 3(1):98, 2018 ) semantics for _zero_ and which does not need to appeal to any further principles (e.g., agreement).

How ought you to evaluate your options if you’re uncertain about which axiology is true? One prominent response is Expected Moral Value Maximisation, the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected moral value across axiologies. EMVM raises two fundamental questions. First, there’s a question about what it should even mean. In particular, it presupposes that we can compare moral value across axiologies. So to even understand EMVM, we (...) need to explain what it is for such comparisons to hold. Second, assuming that we understand it, there’s a question about whether EMVM is true. Since there are many plausible rivals, we need an argument to defend it. In this paper, I’ll introduce a representation theorem for axiological uncertainty to answer these two questions. Roughly, the theorem shows that if all our axiologies satisfy the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms, and if the facts about which options are better than which in light of your uncertainty also satisfy these axioms as well as a Pareto condition, then these facts have a relevantly unique expected utility representation. If I’m right, this theorem at once affords us a compelling way to understand EMVM—and specifically intertheoretic comparisons—and a systematic argument for its truth. (shrink)