El presente artículo hace un recorrido histórico de los procesos lógicos para lograr una formalización rigurosa del lenguaje. Desde sus inicios en Grecia hasta las propuestas contemporáneas de la lógica simbólica o matemática. Se realiza una ubicación general de los avances en las diferentes épocas para luego explicar el proceso de formalización lógico del lenguaje cotidiano a partir de la lógica clásica; luego de ello se postulan algunas limitaciones de la formalización clásica y se procede a explicar el proceso moderno (...) de formalización; en un tercer momento, se hace referencia a la importancia del manejo formal del lenguaje en el análisis del discurso y la validación de teorías cientí cas, valorando el lenguaje formal de la lógica y de la matemática como sistemas para la construcción de la ciencia. La formalización del lenguaje apoya con veracidad los manejos de la argumentación cientí ca y que luego se puede traducir en aplicaciones tecnológicas. El objetivo del artículo es analizar los procesos de formalización del lenguaje a través de un análisis histórico de la lógica, para la determinación de los elementos lógicos que aportan a la formalización del lenguaje y a la construcción de argumentos cientí cos válidos; y, se alcanzará por medio del planteamiento de las preguntas: ¿Qué aportes losó cos constituyen los postulados más relevantes para la evolución del análisis lógico? ¿Cuáles son las limitaciones que presenta la lógica clásica o aristotélica ante la lógica simbólica estructurada por Frege? ¿Cuáles son los aportes a partir de la formalización lógica del lenguaje para el análisis del discurso y la estructuración de la ciencia? (shrink)

En la concepción estructuralista de teoría científica se afirma que sus tesis son neutrales respecto a compromisos epistemológicos, puesto que su análisis es estructural (Diederich, 1996). En el presente texto nos proponemos mostrar que no existe tal neutralidad epistemológica en una de las piezas clave del estructuralismo metateórico, nos referimos a la noción “aplicaciones intencionales”, y que de lo anterior se deriva un compromiso epistémico relacionado con la justificación de teorías científicas, según el cual, la ciencia es una “red” de (...) relaciones lógicas entre teorías. Para lograr lo anterior nos proponemos analizar las implicaciones semánticas y epistemológicas de esa noción y el rol que juega en la contrastación teórica. Una de las consecuencias más radicales del análisis propuesto es que la noción anterior (aplicaciones intencionales) implica que unas teorías están justificadas por otras; en otras palabras, la justificación de teorías científicas caería en un coherentismo interteórico, que precisaremos más adelante. Naturalmente, es importante advertir que esta tesis y esta implicación coherentista la aceptan los defensores del estructuralismo metateórico (Balzer, Moulines & Sneed, 1987) y (Díez & Moulines, 1997). Sin embargo, el punto realmente problemático, y lo novedoso del presente artículo, es que el coherentismo compromete la justificación de las teorías en cuanto implica un regressus ad infinitum en la reconstrucción formal. Además, este defecto del estructuralismo conlleva a otras dos réplicas adicionales, una desde el punto de vista pragmático y otra desde el punto de vista semántico. El primero consiste en que, si aceptamos la tesis del regressus la reconstrucción puede ser infructuosa para efectos pragmáticos, i.e. la corrección formal de una teoría nos obliga a corregir el conjunto de teorías ya presupuestas que intervienen en ella. De la misma manera, la dependencia semántica de una teoría respecto a sus antecesoras implica que si uno de sus conceptos fundamentales es corregido o modificado, entonces habría que hacer una revisión general de todas las teorías relacionadas en las que el concepto en cuestión es relevante. El trabajo, es pues, un avance en esta dirección. (shrink)

Sexual boundary violations can negatively impact the culture of safety within a medical practice or healthcare institution and severely compromise the covenant of care and physician objectivity. Lack of education and training is one factor associated with physician misconduct that leads to high financial and personal cost. This paper presents a follow-up study of physicians referred to a professional development course in 2001 and presents demographic data from 2001 to present. The paper focuses on the education and remediation progress regarding (...) sexual misconduct by physicians. (shrink)

Este trabajo de reflexión e investigación va a la fuente misma del pensamiento político kantiano, para mostrar cómo su concepción republicana se funda en lo que él llama el uso reflexionante de la razón. Para ello, se ha dividido en tres partes: en la primera se señala cómo el pensamiento político kantiano no se funda en el uso teórico ni práctico de la razón, sino en su uso reflexionante, al mismo tiempo que se señalan sus características. En la segunda se (...) desarrolla el pensamiento filosófico político kantiano, teniendo como eje articulador su idea de republicanismo de un pueblo de demonios. Y, finalmente, en la tercera, se muestra cómo, a partir de su concepción reflexionante, puede ser pensada una acción política en el mundo contemporáneo, insinuando su oposición a todo pensamiento revolucionario, dogmático tradicionalista o moralista, que no considere los límites “estructurales” propios de la capacidad moral particular de los seres humanos. (shrink)

This article examines emergency ambulance calls made by lay callers for patients found to be in cardiac arrest when the paramedics arrived. Using conversation analysis, we explored the trajectories of calls in which the caller, before being asked by the call-taker, said why they were calling, that is, calls in which callers pre-empted a reason-for-the-call. Caller pre-emption can be disruptive when call-takers first need to obtain an address and telephone number. Pre-emptions have further implications when call-takers reach the stage when (...) they are required to deliver the scripted turn ‘tell me exactly what happened’. When there has been a pre-emption earlier on, callers tend to treat the scripted turn as a request for more information and may not repeat their reason-for-the-call. This can occasion delays and important information can be lost. We identified an effective alternative strategy used by some call-takers, pre-emption repeat, which callers treat as a request for confirmation. (shrink)

Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records their (...) judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Experiment 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Experiment 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no effect in the English-language sample. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received the anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs were significantly associated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science. Keywords: priming; expectancy effect; retrocausation; consciousness; sociology; precognition; psi; replication Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause-effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records his or her judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Study 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Study 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no observed association between belief and experience of ESP and psi outcome. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs or expectations were significantly correlated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science. (shrink)

Dos místicos relativamente contemporáneos: Etty Hillesum y Benjamín González Buelta; dos estilos, dos contextos y una coincidencia establecida desde sus experiencias espirituales, en profunda conexión con la realidad, en medio de la vida y sus desafíos. Hillesum no habla propiamente de la experiencia mística, sin embargo, su proceso personal existencial en el duro contexto de guerra que le tocó vivir, la condujo a descubrirse profundamente habitada. Su experiencia de Dios le hizo posible comprender y gestionar el dolor en medio de (...) la guerra, así como la necesidad de ‘hacerse bálsamo sobre las heridas’ de sus hermanos judíos. Etty es una mística de ojos abiertos. Benjamín González Buelta ha profundizado en la comprensión de la mística, describiéndola y analizándola desde la experiencia de Dios en el contexto latinoamericano. Su reflexión permite hoy leer a Etty Hillesum desde la perspectiva del místico de ojos abiertos. (shrink)

Few studies exist which look at psychological factors associated with physician sexual misconduct. In this study, we explore family dysfunction as a possible risk factor associated with physician sexual misconduct. Six hundred thirteen physicians referred to a continuing medical education (CME) course for sexual misconduct were administered the FACES-II survey, a validated and reliable measure of family dynamics. The survey was part of a self-learning activity. We collected data from February 2000 to February 2009. Participants were predominantly white, middle-aged males (...) who represented the full range of medical specialties. Their results were compared against a sample of 177 physicians. The FACES-II is a self-report test that measures family of origin (the family in which one was raised) dynamics on two dimensions (1) flexibility, ranging from too flexible (chaotic) to not flexible enough (rigid) and (2) cohesion ranging from too close (enmeshed) to not close enough (disengaged). The most common family pattern observed among physicians accused of sexual misconduct was rigid flexibility paired with disengaged cohesion, indicative of unhealthy family functioning. This pattern was significantly different than the pattern observed in the comparison group. Physicians who engage in sexual misconduct are more likely to have family of origin dysfunction. Ethics is developmental and learned in one’s family of origin. Family of origin dynamics may be one risk factor predisposing one to ethical violations. These findings have important implications for screening, education, and treatment across the medical education continuum. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway's work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. Hookway's original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce's interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book-which include contributions from several of Hookway's former students and colleagues-include studies of Hookway's engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

Exceptional, or anomalous, experiences (AE), including mystical, so‐called out‐of‐body and near‐death experiences, have intrigued humanity throughout history. In William James's program for a science of psychology at the end of the 19th century, all experiences, whether usual or exceptional were within its remit, yet the scientific consideration of AE has been mostly dormant until recently. This chapter provides an overview of the field, starting with a definition of AE, descriptions of various types, a brief history of their study, and (...) a list of why they are essential to a complete psychology of human experience. Other sections cover the (incidental) relation of AE to psychopathology, the proposal of an underlying personality trait, related neuroscientific studies, and the potential beneficial effects of AE. In the final section, I argue that rather than just being oddities or malfunctions, AE are essential to a comprehensive account of consciousness and may, more arguably, provide alternative epistemological pathways to that of the ordinary state of consciousness. (shrink)

This study examines the relationship between US Marine discourse and civil–military public argument. A computer-aided semantic analysis of public record speech from senior Marine officers shows a style of cohesion, marked by future-oriented, inclusive, highly certain language. An appraisal theory discourse analysis of interviews with US Marines conducted during an ethnography of communication shows their talk argues discursively for cohesion. This way of speaking may constrain Marines in public argument, as they repeat ways of talking appropriate within the community, even (...) when situationally inappropriate for civilian audiences. (shrink)

A critique of the view of "cognitive liberalism," as articulated in recent papers by Dan Lloyd , is presented. The main arguments are directed at Lloyd's claim that representational capacities may be found in organisms as simple as marine mollusks and at his formal analysis of cognitive representation as a type of information-bearing conditional dependency. An alternative interpretation-based view of cognitive representation is then briefly sketched.

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A Woman's Thought Runs Before Her Actions":Vows as Speech Acts in As You Like ItWilliam O. ScottAbout a decade ago Susanne Wofford discussed As You Like It from the viewpoint that Rosalind uses a "proxy," her guise as Ganymede, in uttering "the performative language necessary to accomplish deeds such as marriage." 1 Thus Wofford complicated and qualified the success-oriented assumptions about performative usage of language as envisioned in Austin's (...) speech-act theories. 2 Her starting point was that (as Austin himself said) these performative usages don't have the same kind of force if they are included in a play; and so she proposed to take Rosalind's uses of vows as playful, both theatrically and personally. Her notion of the proxy, which raises questions too about the binding force of the speech act through the identity and tactics of the speaker, is especially apt in describing exactly what Rosalind does. Understandably Rosalind's performative manqué may be a prelude to the perfected form. Another complication suggests itself if one is going to attend to niceties of language usage: given that for Austin a performative procedure is founded on conventions of language, shouldn't one also examine such linguistic forms historically? For this play the most relevant form to consider historically is the vow.The precise formulation of vows, in espousal or marriage (both legally enforceable in church courts), was very important in early-modern England. One may wonder, then, what the formal requirements of [End Page 528] vows were, how much the analysis of them resembled and diverged from modern speech-act philosophy, and how the vows functioned. And one might ask such questions both about this play and about real-life practice. A more exact notion of vows may enrich our notions of Rosalind's playfulness with them and broaden our sense of the uses and tactics of performatives; and to the extent that this playfulness contrasts with Rosalind's serious (re)iteration of vows at the end of the play, we should give due weight to Carol Neely's suggestion that much of the pleasure for early-modern audiences lay in the body of the play rather than its conclusion. 3The actual vows between lovers would indeed lend themselves to historicized analysis of the speech acts that constitute them. The early-modern ecclesiastical court judge Henry Swinburne made something like that in his Treatise of Spousals, with his section "By what Form of Words Spousals de futuro are contracted," and similarly on the form of words in "Spousals de praesenti." 4 The implied time of effectiveness in the commitment to marriage is crucial in church law of the time, because it determines whether the vows are, respectively, a betrothal that promises a future marriage, or a present binding (whether inside or outside church) that becomes an instant marriage upon carnal consummation. Both these declarations of commitment are performatives (once reciprocated), and they are normally established by social convention, what Swinburne calls "the Common use of Speech or Custom" (p. 83). Swinburne also concerns himself with what amount to the conditions of "felicity" that are requisite to make the speech valid—for instance, who is allowed to contract spousals (cp. Austin, pp. 14–24).Both of these issues of timing and eligibility are important to Rosalind in the pretense of wedding in Act 4, Scene 1. As it is for Swinburne, the context is important: when Celia as priest asks, "Will you, Orlando, have to wife this Rosalind?" his answer "I will" is not good enough for Rosalind until he adds at her direction, "I take thee, Rosalind, for wife." 5 Likewise Swinburne considers at length the arguments whether there is a distinction between "I will" and "I do," and whether the future-sounding verb refers only to the beginning of a process and not its completion (pp. 8–9, 57–61). Though in general he allows the distinction (so that "I will" makes a spousal and "I do" a marriage), one of his exceptions sounds like the question that Celia first puts: "The Man demanding of the Woman whether she will take him to her Husband, she answereth [I will... (shrink)

Reber and Alcock have recently made a sharp attack on the entire psi literature, and in particular a recent overview by Cardeña of the meta-analyses across various categories of psi. They claim the data are inherently fl awed because of their disconnect with our current understanding of the world. As a result, they ignore the data and identify key scientific principles that they argue clash with psi. In this Commentary, I argue that these key principles are diffi cult to apply (...) in areas where our understanding remains poor, especially quantum mechanics and consciousness. I also explore how the psi data may fi t within these two domains. (shrink)

A critical commentary is offered on a skeptical rebuttal made by Arthur Reber and James Alcock in the July/August 2019 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, which came in response to an article by Etzel Cardeña (published in the mainstream journal American Psychologist in 2018) that reviewed the extensive evidence from parapsychological experiments which seems to collectively offer support for the existence of psychic (or psi) phenomena. At the heart of their rebuttal, Reber and Alcock seek to make the counterargument that this (...) evidence cannot be meaningful because psi phenomena are "impossible," appearing to violate four fundamental principles of physics. It is shown here that rather than being based on any kind of substantial evidence, the criticisms that Reber and Alcock put forth in support of this counterargument are instead based on a combination of narrow personal opinion, unfounded assumption, and superficial rhetoric, leaving their claims unsound and ultimately unconvincing. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor ColeridgeWilliam E. CainCritical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Leonard Orr; vi & 194 pp. New York: Twayne, 1994, $42.00.“Coleridge, as you doubtless hear, is gone,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, August 12, 1834, to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “How great a Possibility, how small a realized Result.” There is now a huge Coleridge industry in the academy, engaged in producing editions of his writings (...) and examinations of his literary career. Yet Carlyle’s judgment continues to carry weight with many nonspecialist readers, who know Coleridge only as Wordsworth’s estimable friend and as the author of a handful of superb lyrics and radiant critical speculations in the Biographia Literaria (1817). These texts are indeed rich and suggestive: readers wish that there were more like them and that Coleridge’s achievement had somehow been greater, more monumental, like Wordsworth’s. Coleridge’s “misfortune,” concluded Carlyle’s friend, John Sterling, in January 1842, “was to appear at a time when there was a man’s work to do—and he did it not.”But the wish that Coleridge had been more than he was is misplaced, in large measure for the reason that it neglects the vast amount of significant work that he did accomplish—not only in poetry and criticism, but in philosophy, political journalism, social theory, and other disciplines and areas of thought. Experts in Romanticism know this work (or, at least, know of it), yet it has not [End Page 151] been excerpted in anthologies, contextualized and explained for students, or brought forward for analysis, beyond the circle of avid Coleridgeans, to extend and complicate the commonplaces about this writer that still enjoy wide circulation.In this respect, Leonard Orr, editor of Critical Essays on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, perhaps has missed an opportunity. His collection is valuable as far as it goes; it reprints eight excellent essays along with two new ones, and Orr’s own concise, informed Introduction, with footnotes packed with bibliography, provides a lucid overview of Coleridge studies. But the focus is strangely limited, the conception of the writer’s career is dated and conventional, and the selection of essays is too restricted.One is grateful for this collection’s strengths even as one regrets its gaps and omissions. John Beer gives a good account of the Coleridge/Wordsworth relationship; Stuart Peterfreund nicely shows how “Coleridge’s failed political vision of European history” is redeemed “as part of his critical vision of the imagination”; James C. McKusick, Paul Magnuson, Andrew M. Cooper, James Engell, and Anne K. Mellor explore Coleridge’s poetry—though oddly there is no essay devoted primarily to “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; and Kathleen M. Wheeler, Lawrence Buell, and Jerome Christensen form a helpful unit of pieces on the Biographia Literaria. But readers will not find here anything more than brief mentions of, for example, Coleridge’s writings for The Watchman and The Friend, his striking interpretations of Shakespeare, Aids to Reflection, letters, notebooks, two Lay Sermons, and On the Constitution of the Church and State.This failure to supply broader, more innovative coverage is puzzling, given that the general aim of the series in which Orr’s book appears (Critical Essays on British Literature, gen. ed. Zack Bowen) is “to develop a new overall perspective on its particular subject.” Even more, Orr himself says in his Introduction that scholarship of the past two decades has prompted us to be “less likely to ignore the prose works beyond the Biographia” and has drawn attention to Coleridge’s marginalia and notebooks. Orr displays a sharp sense of the new Coleridge, yet has designed his book in a way that reflects the old one and that will tend for many readers simply to reinforce Carlyle’s adverse judgment.William E. CainWellesley CollegeCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Microbial ecology is flourishing, and in the process, is making contributions to how the ecology and biology of large organisms is understood. Ongoing advances in sequencing technology and computational methods have enabled the collection and analysis of vast amounts of molecular data from diverse biological communities. While early studies focused on cataloguing microbial biodiversity in environments ranging from simple marine ecosystems to complex soil ecologies, more recent research is concerned with community functions and their dynamics over time. Models and concepts (...) from traditional ecology have been used to generate new insight into microbial communities, and novel system-level models developed to explain and predict microbial interactions. The process of moving from molecular inventories to functional understanding is complex and challenging, and never more so than when many thousands of dynamic interactions are the phenomena of interest. We outline the process of how epistemic transitions are made from producing catalogues of molecules to achieving functional and predictive insight, and show how those insights not only revolutionize what is known about biological systems but also about how to do biology itself. Examples will be drawn primarily from analyses of different human microbiota, which are the microbial consortia found in and on areas of the human body, and their associated microbiomes (the genes of those communities). Molecular knowledge of these microbiomes is transforming microbiological knowledge, as well as broader aspects of human biology, health and disease. (shrink)

Despite mounting evidence that abusive supervision triggers interpersonal aggression, much remains unknown regarding the underlying causal mechanisms within this relationship. We explore the role of turnover intentions as a mediator in the relationship between abusive supervision and subsequent supervisor-rated interpersonal aggression. We use a sample of 324 supervisor–subordinate dyads from nine organizations and find support for this mediation effect. Furthermore, we find that power-distance orientation and perceived human resource support climate, as important boundary conditions, independently interact with abusive supervision to (...) weaken this positive impact on turnover intentions, thereby reducing interpersonal aggression. We also find via turnover intentions that abusive supervision intensifies interpersonal aggression among high power-distance-oriented individuals when the HR support climate is perceived to be low. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the ancients (...) than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro- domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican (...) strategy of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domination, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases of micro-domination. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to (...) take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

Bernard Williams's remarkable essay on morality confronts the problems of writing moral philosophy, and offers a stimulating alternative to more systematic accounts which seem nevertheless to have left all the important issues somewhere off the page. Williams explains, analyses and distinguishes a number of key positions, from the purely amoral to notions of subjective or relative morality, testing their coherence before going on to explore the nature of 'goodness' in relation to responsibilities and choice, roles, standards, and human nature. The (...) final chapters make a fascinating enquiry into what morality is about, looking beyond happiness to other human aims and ideals. This re-issue of a classic in moral philosophy includes a new foreword by the author. (shrink)

When people understand a counterfactual such as “if the flowers had been roses, the trees would have been orange trees,” they think about the conjecture, “there were roses and orange trees,” and they also think about its opposite, the presupposed facts. We test whether people think about the opposite by representing alternates, for example, “poppies and apple trees,” or whether models can contain symbols, for example, “no roses and no orange trees.” We report the discovery of an inference‐to‐alternates effect—a tendency (...) to make an affirmative inference that refers to an alternate even from a negative minor premise, for example, “there were no orange trees, therefore there were poppies.” Nine experiments show the inference‐to‐alternates effect occurs in a binary context, but not a multiple context, and for direct and indirect reference; it can be induced and reduced by prior experience with similar inferences, and it also occurs for indicative conditionals. The results have implications for theories of counterfactual conditionals, and of negation. (shrink)

Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

We examine two competing effects of beliefs on conditional inferences. The suppression effect occurs for conditionals, for example, “if she watered the plants they bloomed,” when beliefs about additional background conditions, for example, “if the sun shone they bloomed” decrease the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens (from “the plants did not bloom” to “therefore she did not water them”). In contrast, the counterfactual elevation effect occurs for counterfactual conditionals, for example, “if she had watered the plants they would (...) have bloomed,” when beliefs about the known or presupposed facts, “she did not water the plants and they did not bloom” increase the frequency of inferences such as modus tollens. We report six experiments that show that beliefs about additional conditions take precedence over beliefs about presupposed facts for counterfactuals. The modus tollens inference is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain additional conditions (Experiments 1a and 1b). The denial of the antecedent inference (from “she did not water the plants” to “therefore they did not bloom”) is suppressed for counterfactuals that contain alternatives (Experiments 2a and 2b). We report a new “switched‐suppression” effect for conditionals with negated components, for example, “if she had not watered the plants they would not have bloomed”: modus tollens is suppressed by alternatives and denial of the antecedent by additional conditions, rather than vice versa (Experiments 3a and 3b). We discuss the implications of the results for alternative theories of conditional reasoning. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro-domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican strategy (...) of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domination, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases of micro-domination. (shrink)

The present article aims to utilize some insights from behavioral and happiness economics to discuss the consequences that the introduction of an unconditional basic income to cope with technological unemployment may hold for well-being. The impact of 21st-century technological progress on employment has only just begun to make itself felt and it will take time to realize its full extent. However, the main innovation is already common knowledge: robots are finding their way into the production process. According to several recent (...) contributions, the phenomenon is radically different from past technological revolutions and could generate high levels of unemployment, calling for innovative redistributive public policies. The present article, building on Keynes’ short essay and referring to some of the principles and models of behavioral and happiness economics, focuses on the best-known of these policies, namely provision of an unconditional basic income. A series of factors – loss aversion and hedonic adaptation, the impossibility of escalating to higher-grade consumption behaviors, social interaction in the form of active and passive envy, loss of self-esteem and social stigma – are all likely to have a negative impact on well-being if an unconditional basic income that remains unchanging over time is implemented. A policy mix combining a rising basic income with other measures is therefore proposed. (shrink)

La biología utiliza múltiples criterios para individuar fenómenos biológicos. Frente a esta diversidad, los enfoques monistas proponen criterios fundamentales para el reconocimiento unívoco de individuos, esto es, formas únicas de dividir el mundo biológico en entidades individuales. El pluralismo, por otro lado, argumenta que no deberíamos restringir el estudio de la individualidad a concepciones únicas, reconociendo, en su lugar, diferentes tipos de individuos. En este artículo, analizaré cómo ciertos enfoques monistas y pluralistas enfrentan la pluralidad de criterios de individuación utilizados (...) por la práctica científica. Siguiendo las recientes aproximaciones epistemológicas y pragmáticas en filosofía de la individualidad biológica, argumentaré por qué la diversidad de individuaciones no suele representar un inconveniente para la biología y por qué contribuye a nuestro conocimiento del mundo biológico. La conclusión general será que requerimos múltiples maneras de individuar la naturaleza para poder cumplir los diversos objetivos epistémicos de la biología, una labor que las aproximaciones monistas no suelen visibilizar. Palabras clave: Individuo Biológico, Pluralidad, Pluralismo, Monismo. (shrink)

A la hora de pensar lo más inmediato a nosotros mismos es necesario acudir a lo que somos en cuanto Dasein. Sin embargo, la experiencia de lo inmediato tiene la condición de presentarse bajo la forma de un extrañamiento, un «no saber». Se verá que la corporeidad y su extrañamiento abren a la posibilidad de una hermenéutica de nuestra propia condición porque la experiencia de lo Unheimlich es una vía de epojé que «detona» (revienta) la cadena de significaciones habitual y (...) reconfigura la experiencia. Se tomará como punto de referencia cuatro casos icónicos: 1) la convalecencia de Oliver Sacks, 2) el famoso caso Paul Schreber, 3) la referencia al joven esquizofrénico en los Seminarios de Zollikon, e incluso 4) el desfallecimiento de Heidegger entre los años 1945 y 1946, todo esto a la luz del extrañamiento de lo íntimo y la posibilidad que este abre a un «reordenamiento interno». En definitiva, las patologías y lo terrorífico que las acompaña son capaces de generar las condiciones de un vitalismo inusitado, pues solo quien se ha enfrentado a la más radical convulsión de todas sus verdades, podrá «abrirse camino» en medio del exceso de donación que desborda su «realidad». (shrink)

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that genius is a talent for art, but not for science. Despite his restriction of genius to the domain of fine art, several recent interpreters have suggested that genius has a role to play in Kant’s account of cognition in general and scientific practice in particular. In this paper, I explore Kant’s reasons for excluding genius from science as well as the reasons that one might nevertheless be tempted to think that his account (...) allows room for the scientific genius. I then argue that Kant’s concerns are not only epistemic, but also moral, and together, they give us good reason for resisting the veneration of genius. (shrink)