BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

What we believe depends on more than the purely intrinsic facts about us: facts about our environment or context also help determine the contents of our beliefs. 1 This observation has led several writers to hope that beliefs can be divided, as it were, into two components: a "core" that depends only on the individual?s intrinsic properties; and a periphery that depends on the individual?s context, including his or her history, environment, and linguistic community. Thus Jaegwon Kim suggests that "within (...) each noninternal psychological state that enters into the explanation of some action or behavior we can locate an ?internal core state? which can assume the causal-explanatory role of the noninternal state."2 In the same vein, Stephen Stich writes that "nonautonomous" states, like belief, are best viewed as "conceptually complex hybrids" made up of an autonomous component together with historical and contextual features.3 John Perry, whose term I have adopted, distinguishes between belief states, which are determined by an individual?s intrinsic properties, and objects of belief, which are not.4 And Daniel Dennett makes use of the same notion when he asks:5. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Epistemological Warfare and Hope in Critical Dystopia by Emrah AtasoyClaire P. CurtisEmrah Atasoy. Epistemological Warfare and Hope in Critical Dystopia. Ankara: Nobel Bilimsel Eserler, 2021. vii+ 167 pp. ISBN: 978-625-7589-04-8This book is an application of the idea of critical dystopia to three understudied novels and the beginning of an argument about utopian desire itself. Emrah Atasoy, a prolific author who reviewed Turkish speculative fiction in a well-received 2021 (...) Utopian Studies article, is modeling a search for hope in dystopian texts. In this book, derived from his dissertation, he examines three British novels written in three different eras of the twentieth century: Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night (1937), Anthony Burgess's The Wanting Seed (1962), and P. D. James's The Children of Men (1992). In each novel, Atasoy argues, the protagonists move from an ignorance that served the interest of the dystopian forces to a resistant knowledge that should be read as offering hope, both as resistance and as knowledge.The book is organized in a straightforward way, with an introduction, conclusion, and then three analytical chapters, one for each of the novels. The introduction is expansive, offering both brief surveys of the nature of utopia and dystopia and a recounting of a number of themes taken up by dystopian texts: education, politics, gender roles, family life, and more. Layered onto this is a discussion of theorizing around knowledge and power and the transition from ignorance to understanding. The chapters focused on the individual novels are all similarly expansive. Atasoy offers biographical information about the authors along with considerations of the primary social and political events to which the authors might be responding. The analyses of the novels focus primarily on the motivations of the protagonists, but interspersed in the plot summaries are narrative cul-de-sacs explaining particular textual details (for example, the discussion of Theo's choice of the Greek statue of Diadoumenos as allocation to leave a note for the Warden [James, 37]). These [End Page 519] little detours are often interesting but can be distracting from the primary analytic focus.The analyses themselves also cover a lot of territory. The middle section of the chapter on The Children of Men (118–34) includes discussions of power, eugenics, religion, sexuality, punishment, assisted suicide, and immigration. Each of these is used to elucidate modes of social and political control wielded by the Warden, but the sheer number of issues included in the fast-moving analysis left me wanting more. Atasoy's analysis of Quietus nicely captures the ways in which James has created a world where the elderly are both encouraged and manipulated to end their lives for the good of the whole. This discussion fits especially well with the larger focus of his analysis on modes of social engineering. Fewer themes and more close readings like this one would have deepened the reading experience. But for anyone beginning a project on one of these novels, this book is a good place to start.This book begins and ends with the interesting contention that times of catastrophe diminish the literary production of utopia, and potentially the capacity for hope itself. While the point of this book is not to defend this claim empirically, it is one worth considering for any scholar of utopia, or any person interested in the potential of future change for the better. The book may underplay the fact of twentieth-century literary utopias (there is a brief discussion of the feminist utopias written in the 1970s and 1980s), but it is surely correct that there is an imbalance in the production of utopia in favor of dystopia. Utopias are more challenging to construct and potentially (especially in this day and time) less formulaic than dystopia, which is an increasingly popular (and marketable) genre.Kim Stanley Robinson noted in a recent interview that "[utopias] shape people's conception of what's possible that could be good in the future."1 Atasoy's book offers the possibility that a close reading of dystopian texts might well help us uncover other ways of finding out what future good is possible. By extolling the value of finding the... (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that engineering ethics education does have moral implications. More specifically, practices in engineering ethics education can lead to negative moral consequences if not conducted appropriately. Engineering ethics educators are often passionate about teaching students ways to examine the ethical implications of engineering and technology. However, ethics educators may overlook the moral significance of their instructional classroom practices. In this paper, we discuss two issues: First, we discuss the moral impacts of ethics curriculum and pedagogies on (...) students’ learning experiences. Then we discuss the professional responsibilities of educators who are involved in designing ethics learning experiences for engineering students. The reflections presented in this paper will serve as catalysts for more comprehensive discussions regarding the impact of engineering ethics education on the ethical development of engineering students. (shrink)

The capacities required for both peace and war predate 100,000 years ago in the genus Homo are deeply entangled in the modes by which humans physically and perceptually construct their worlds and communities, and may not be sufficiently captured by economic models.

This article advertises a new account of computational implementation. According to the resemblance account, implementation is a matter of resembling a computational architecture. The resemblance account departs from previous theories by denying that computational architectures are exhausted by their formal, mathematical features. Instead, they are taken to be permeated with causality, spatiotemporality, and other nonmathematical features. I argue that this approach comports well with computer scientific practice and offers a novel response to so-called triviality arguments.

In 1952, two well-known characters called ‘A’ and ‘B’ met for the first time to argue about the Identity of Indiscernibles (Black, 1952). A argued that the principle is true, and B that it is false. By all accounts A took a bit of a beating and came out worst-off. Forty-three years later John O’Leary-Hawthorne offered a response on behalf of A that looked as if it would work so long as A was willing to accept the universal-bundle theory of (...) substance (Hawthorne, 1995). In 1997, A and B met again (Zimmerman, 1997). A took Hawthorne’s advice and revealed himself as a universal-bundle theorist. But B was well-prepared, and once more A took a beating. Since then Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (2004) has put the boot in, offering further criticism of A’s position. In recent years A has been rather quiet, leaving B to reign as the undisputed champion. However, it turns out that A is down, but not out. And now it’s time for A’s revenge. (shrink)

The challenges of higher education can be stressful, anxiety-producing, and sometimes depressing for students. Such negative emotions may influence students’ attitudes toward assessment, such as whether it is perceived as acceptable to engage in plagiarism. However, it is not known whether any impact of negative emotions on attitudes toward plagiarism translate into actual plagiarism behaviours. In two studies conducted at two universities, we examined whether negative emotionality influenced plagiarism behaviour via attitudes, norms, and intentions as predicted by the theory of (...) planned behaviour. In both studies, negative affect predicted plagiarism intentions mediated by perceived norms, and intentions predicted plagiarism behaviour. These findings suggest that students’ negative emotionality is a risk for plagiarism engagement and that higher education institutions should support students’ emotional well-being, especially regarding assessment practices. (shrink)

This paper is about the moral status of those human beings with profound intellectual disabilities (PIDs). We hold the common sense view that they have equal status to ‘normal’ human beings, and a higher status than any non-human animal. We start with an admission, however: we don’t know how to give a fully satisfying theoretical account of the grounds of moral status that explains this view. And in fact, not only do we not know how to give such an account, (...) but the most satisfying account of moral status that we know (which we call ‘the standard account’) entails that our view is false. It entails that those with PIDs have a lower status than ordinary human beings and an equal status to non-human animals. Now, in this paper, we do absolutely nothing to try to show where the standard account goes wrong, and we do absolutely nothing to resolve the difficulties we see in developing an alternative account that supports our view. Indeed, we do not give any argument against the standard account or in favour of our own view. Instead, we raise the following question: in order to be justified in continuing to hold our view, are we obliged to give such an account? Our answer will be that we are not. (shrink)

In this article I present a theory of what it is to be fair. I take my cue from Broome’s well known 1990 account of fairness. Broome’s basic thesis is that fairness is the proportional satisfaction of claims, and with this I am in at least partial agreement. But neither Broome nor anyone else (so far as I know) has laid down a theory of precisely what one must do in order to be fair. The theory offered here does just (...) this. (shrink)

Retaliation against whistleblowers is a well-recognized problem, yet there is little explanation for why uninvolved peers choose to retaliate through ostracism. We conduct two experiments in which participants take the role of a peer third-party observer of theft and subsequent whistleblowing. We manipulate injunctive norms and descriptive norms. Both experiments support the core of our theoretical model, based on social intuitionist theory, such that moral judgments of the acts of wrongdoing and whistleblowing influence the perceived likeability of each actor and (...) ultimately influence intention to ostracize each actor and indicate more willingness to ostracize the whistleblower than the wrongdoer. When we vary norms for the wrongdoing in Experiment 1, we find that descriptive and injunctive norms indirectly influence intentions to ostracize both the wrongdoer and whistleblower. These relationships are serially mediated by the observers’ moral judgments of the act and likeability of the actor. When we vary norms for whistleblowing in Experiment 2, the injunctive norm manipulation affected moral judgment of the action of whistleblowing, and we do not observe any other significant effects of the norm manipulations on moral judgments of the actions of wrongdoing or whistleblowing. (shrink)

ArgumentFrom 1924 to 1948, developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell regularly used photographic and motion picture technologies to collect data on infant behavior. The film camera, he said, records behavior “in such coherent, authentic and measurable detail that... the reaction patterns of infant and child become almost as tangible as tissue.” This essay places his faith in the fidelity and tangibility of film, as well as his use of film as evidence, in the context of developmental psychology's professed need for legitimately scientific (...) observational techniques. It also examines his use of these same films as educational material to promote his brand of scientific child rearing. But his analytic techniques – his methods of extracting data from the film frames – are the key to understanding the complex relationship between his theories of development and his chosen research technology. (shrink)

The received view of computation is methodologically bifurcated: it offers different accounts of computation in the mathematical and physical cases. But little in the way of argument has been given for this approach. This article rectifies the situation by arguing that the alternative, a unified account, is untenable. Furthermore, once these issues are brought into sharper relief we can see that work remains to be done to illuminate the relationship between physical and mathematical computation.

A skeptical worry known as ‘the indeterminacy of computation’ animates much recent philosophical reflection on the computational identity of physical systems. On the one hand, computational explanation seems to require that physical computing systems fall under a single, unique computational description at a time. On the other, if a physical system falls under any computational description, it seems to fall under many simultaneously. Absent some principled reason to take just one of these descriptions in particular as relevant for computational explanation, (...) widespread failure of computational explanation would appear to follow. This paper advances a new solution to the indeterminacy of computation. Very roughly, I argue that the computational identity of a physical system is determinate relative to a contextually specified way of regarding that system computationally—known as a labelling scheme. When a system simultaneously implements multiple computations, it does so relative to different labelling schemes. But relative to a fixed labelling scheme, a physical system has a unique computational identity. I argue that this relativistic conception of computational identity vindicates computational explanation in the face of simultaneous implementation. (shrink)

Moral and self-conscious emotions like guilt and shame can function as internal negative experiences that punish or deter bad behaviour. Individual differences exist in people’s tendency to experience guilt and shame. Being disposed to experience guilt and/or shame may predict students’ expectations of their emotional reactions to engaging in immoral behaviour in the form of academic misconduct, and thus dissuade students from intending to engage in this behaviour. In this study, students’ (n = 459) guilt and shame proneness, their expectations (...) of feeling guilt and shame if they engaged in academic misconduct, and their intentions to engage in academic misconduct were measured. Three of the four facets of the guilt and shame proneness scale [GASP: Guilt–Negative-Behavior-Evaluation (NBE), Guilt-Repair, Shame–Negative-Self-Evaluation (NSE)] had significant negative correlations with academic misconduct intentions, and these relationships were mediated by anticipating shame and guilt related to engaging in academic misconduct. These results suggest that for some students expecting to experience negative moral emotions when engaging in academic misconduct may protect them from breaching ethical assessment rules. (shrink)

The use of philosophical phenomenology for conceptual debates in psychiatric nosology and psychopathology is beginning to be recognized. In this paper, we extend this trajectory to include Tourette Syndrome, focusing on so-called premonitory urges (PU) preceding Tourettic tics. We clarify some inconsistencies around typology in both phenomenological description and medical classification (i.e., in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, Text Revision, International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition [World Health Organization, 2004], and the scales that elicit PU). (...) We show how a less typological approach might be usefully deployed in the field, that being the dimensional approach developed by Fernandez (2019a; 2019b). We test both the typological and dimensional approaches in relation to the experience and etiological role of PU in Tourette’s syndrome. Based on our synthesis of existing studies and new information garnered through phenomenological interviews (using an approach associated with “micro-phenomenology”), we argue that the role of PU in nosology challenges both the current “operational” criteria favored by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, Text Revision, that are focused on behaviorally observed symptoms, as well as essential and prototypical phenomenological descriptions about a given “type” of experience. (shrink)

Historians should not use their own up-to-date methodologies to judge the rationality or correctness of the research strategies of scientists in history. For the history of science is, in part, the history of the rational growth of methodology and the historian's own up-to-date methodology is, in part, a product of the scientific revolutions of the past. Historians who use their own methodologies to judge the rationality of past research strategies are being too wise after the event. I show, using the (...) case of Charles Darwin, how we can judge the rationality and correctness of research strategies and revolutions without being too wise after the event. I do this by rejecting the idea that methodologies double as rationality theories and by drawing instead on Popper's competing view of rationality as critical debate. (shrink)

Porpora offers an a priori argument for the conclusion that there are infinitely many thoughts that it is physically possible for us to think. That there should be such an a priori argument is astonishing enough. That the argument should be simple enough to teach to a first-year undergraduate class in about 20 min, as Porpora’s is, is more astonishing still. Porpora’s main target is Max Tegmark’s recent argument for the claim that if current physics is right, then there are (...) mental duplicates of us in far flung regions of the Universe. His argument is directed against Tegmark’s assumption that mental facts supervene upon physical facts. So, if Porpora’s argument is sound then not only is Tegmark’s argument unsound, but physicalism is also false. So, Porpora’s argument is powerful indeed. Who would have thought that a simple a priori argument, together with the physical facts, could solve the issue of whether physicalism is true?. Not I. In this paper I take a closer look at Porpora’s argument and show that it is fallacious. I also consider the other reasons Porpora gives for thinking there are infinitely many thinkable thoughts and find them similarly lacking. (shrink)

The forensic use of Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) is demonstrating significant success as a crime-solving tool. However, numerous concerns have been raised regarding the potential for DNA use to contravene cultural, ethical, and legal codes. In this article the expectations and level of knowledge of the New Zealand public of the DNA data-bank and the surrounding processes are discussed. A questionnaire was developed in consultation with key stakeholders, comprising a combination of open and closed questions. The ensuing survey comprised a sample (...) of 100 participants. Although participants initially appeared in favor of the forensic use of DNA, particularly in regard to the collection of DNA from sex offenders, perceptions and attitudes were based on limited knowledge of processes, policies, and implications. Upon further discussion and reflection a number of concerns were raised, such as ownership of DNA samples and the potential for misuse. (shrink)

SummaryIn this article I argue that Darwin was the author, quite contrary to his original intentions, of a fundamental revolution in the theory of scientific knowledge. In 1838, in order to meet the anti-evolutionist challenge of his professional colleague, William Whewell, he began to sketch a transmutationist theory of the origin of human ideas which would explain the success of inductive science: its discovery of what Whewell and his contemporaries thought were necessary and certain truths. But though it explained how (...) scientific ideas originated, Darwin's theory implied also that theoretical certainty in science was impossible. Thus Darwin's evolutionism when combined with Whewell's a priorism led to a thorough-going fallibilism. This was worked out in detail by W. K. Clifford, a Cambridge evolutionist, Kantian and fallibilist. (shrink)

The forensic use of DNA involves the public in a number of roles. The rapid adoption of DNA identification as a part of the legal system and continuing developments have afforded little opportunity to thoroughly interrogate public understandings of issues. This article reports on a survey that explores public understanding of the forensic use of DNA: sources of knowledge, understandings of processes, and attitudes toward DNA use. Overall, knowledge about DNA use was limited, particularly around means of taking samples and (...) storage, and two thirds stated that they did not have enough information about DNA use. While the majority agreed that such use of DNA is “a great step forward,” they “would be happy to give a DNA sample if requested,” and considered DNA evidence to be important, concern was indicated about some areas, such as possible mistakes. This was particularly the case for indigenous peoples. (shrink)

Rosa Calcaterra has written an extremely learned and thoughtful book about Richard Rorty’s controversial neopragmatism. It is a worthy addition to the growing number of works that offer a more generous and balanced assessment of Rorty’s thought, in contrast to the scores of highly critical treatments it received during his career. But, as Calcaterra insists, her book is “not an apology for Rorty” (Calcaterra 2019: ix); she critically approaches what she calls Rorty’s philosophical “provocatio...

The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in scientific publications on Tourette syndrome, but the etiology of this common neurodevelopmental condition is still unknown. Many questions remain—about the unitary nature of the syndrome, and the criteria used to define it in such internationally accepted manuals as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Disorders. Meanwhile, individuals and families affected by TS remain underserviced, as pharmacological and behavioral therapies provide relief for some but (...) not all who need support. We urgently need new... (shrink)

Idealism is an ontological view, a view about what sorts of things there are in the universe. Idealism holds that what there is depends on our own mental structure and activity. Berkeley of course held that everything was mental; Kant held the more complex view that there was an important distinction between the mental and the physical, but that the structure of the empirical world depended on the activities of minds. Despite radical differences, idealists like Berkeley and Kant share what (...) Ralph Barton Perry called "the cardinal principle of idealism," namely, the principle that "being is dependent on the knowing of it."1 I believe that Hilary Putnam intends his "internal realism" to be a version of idealism in this broad sense; although many of his arguments concern semantic notions like truth and reference, he takes these semantic arguments to have ontological consequences. This is strongly suggested, for instance, by his claim that "'objects' themselves are as much made as discovered, as much products of our conceptual invention as of the 'objective' factor in experience."2 Or again there is this rather Kantian metaphor: "the mind and the world jointly make up the mind and the world."3 But just what is Putnam's ontology? (shrink)

In this paper I defend the view that a zygote is a human from the fission objection that is widely thought to be decisive against the view. I do so, drawing upon a recent discussion of this issue by John Burgess, by explaining in detail the metaphysical position the proponent of the view should adopt in order to rebut the objection.

The term “legacy effect” has been used in ecology since the early 1990s by authors studying plant succession, invasive-plant impacts, herbivory impacts, ecosystem engineering, and human land-use impacts. Although there is some variability in usage, the term is normally used to describe impacts of a species on abiotic or biotic features of ecosystems that persist for a long time after the species has been extirpated or ceased activity and which have an effect on other species. For example, human agricultural activities (...) may have a legacy effect on soil structure and vegetative communities that lasts for centuries and which alters current communities. The concept may be related to the idea of ecological inheritance in evolutionary biology but would refer only to a subset of the features of this concept. In particular, legacy effects could refer to those kinds of ecological inheritance where a physical or biological change in ecosystem state is caused by one species, where this change persists after the extirpation of the causal species and alters selection pressure of another species much later in time. (shrink)

What is computational explanation? Many accounts treat it as a kind of causal explanation. I argue against two more specific versions of this view, corresponding to two popular treatments of causal explanation. The first holds that computational explanation is mechanistic, while the second holds that it is interventionist. However, both overlook an important class of computational explanations, which I call limitative explanations. Limitative explanations explain why certain problems cannot be solved computationally, either in principle or in practice. I argue that (...) limitative explanations are not plausibly understood in either mechanistic or interventionist terms. One upshot of this argument is that there are causal and non-causal kinds of computational explanation. I close the paper by suggesting that both are grounded in the notion of computational implementation. (shrink)

One of the greatest woman intellectuals of eighteenth-century Germany is Elise Reimarus, whose contribution to Enlightenment political theory is rarely acknowledged today. Unlike other social contract theorists, Reimarus rejects a people's right to violent resistance or revolution in her philosophical dialogue Freedom (1791). Exploring the arguments in Freedom, this paper observes a number of similarities in the political thought of Elise Reimarus and Immanuel Kant. Both, I suggest, reject violence as an illegitimate response to perceived political injustice in a way (...) that opposes Locke's strong voluntarism and the absolutism of Hobbes. First, they emphasize the need to maintain the legal state as a precondition for the possibility of external right. Second, they share an optimistic view of the inherently "just" nature of the tripartite republican state. And finally, Reimarus and Kant both outline an alternative, non-violent response to political injustice that consists in the freedom of public expression and a discourse on the moral enlightenment of man. (shrink)

I argue here that the existence of hermeneutical injustice as a pervasive feature of our collective linguistic and conceptual resources undermines the originalist task at two levels: one procedural, one substantive. First, large portions of society were (and continue to be) systematically excluded from the process of meaning creation when the Constitution and its Amendments were adopted, so originalism relies on enforcement of a meaning that was generated through an undemocratic process. Second, the original meaning of some words in those (...) texts may be substantively objectionable as a result because they fail to capture the relevant experiences of affected people at the time even if they accurately capture the conceptual understanding of reasonable people at the time, and this substantive failing may infect the text’s democratic legitimacy. To the extent that it can be overcome, overcoming this epistemic problem will require originalists to take seriously the insights of critical theory, understood in this Note as a normative inquiry into the historical context of the language and meaning of statutory text. Because originalists are already committed to a nominally descriptive inquiry into this context, and because this nominally descriptive inquiry masks the inherently normative aspects of the hermeneutical landscape, the switch to an explicitly normative inquiry may prove quite painless. (shrink)

ArgumentDespite the fact that “empathy” is often simply used as a translation ofEinfühlung, the two terms have distinct meanings and distinct disciplinary affiliations. This text considers the manner in which the moving image invites spatial forms of engagement akin to those described both by historical accounts ofEinfühlung, a form of engagement that pertains not only to the activities of humans represented within images, but also to the aesthetic qualities of images in a more abstract sense and to the forms to (...) be found there. (shrink)

The use of motion pictures for research has a long history, of course, but beyond documenting a phenomenon and then projecting it for demonstration, scientists using this technology spent much energy figuring out how to extract information from a strip of film. Understanding film (or audiovisual) analysis is therefore necessary to grasping the relationship between an object of study, moving-image technology, and scientific evidence. This article explores one common technique within that history of film analysis: projecting a frame of the (...) motion picture and then tracing the object of study onto paper, which was especially important for behavioral sciences such as developmental psychology or ethology. Behavior became tangible through a variety of means, but for those who relied on film for their observations, such as developmental psychologist Arnold Gesell, behavior took form at least partly through the process of tracing. Gesell's use of this technique reveals the broader functions of tracing as well as the patterns that emerge from its interplay with other inscriptions in the creation of evidence. How does behavior take form? The practice of tracing provides one answer to this larger question. (shrink)