Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

Feminism is sensational -- On being directed -- Willfulness and feminist subjectivity -- Trying to transform -- Being in question -- Brick walls -- Fragile connections -- Feminist snap -- Lesbian feminism -- Conclusion 1: A killjoy survival kit -- Conclusion 2: A killjoy manifesto.

In _Willful Subjects_ Sara Ahmed explores willfulness as a charge often made by some against others. One history of will is a history of attempts to eliminate willfulness from the will. Delving into philosophical and literary texts, Ahmed examines the relation between will and willfulness, ill will and good will, and the particular will and general will. Her reflections shed light on how will is embedded in a political and cultural landscape, how it is embodied, and how will and (...) willfulness are socially mediated. Attentive to the wayward, the wandering, and the deviant, Ahmed considers how willfulness is taken up by those who have received its charge. Grounded in feminist, queer, and antiracist politics, her sui generis analysis of the willful subject, the figure who wills wrongly or wills too much, suggests that willfulness might be required to recover from the attempt at its elimination. (shrink)

Free will, if such there be, involves free choosing: the ability to mentally choose an outcome, where the outcome is 'free' in being, in some substantive sense, up to the agent of the choice. As such, it is clear that the questions of how to understand free will and mental causation are connected, for events of seemingly free choosing are mental events that appear to be efficacious vis-a-vis other mental events as well as physical events. Nonetheless, the free will and (...) mental causation debates have proceeded largely independently of each other. Here we aim to make progress in determining how the free will and mental causation debates bear on one another. We first argue that the problems of free will and of mental causation can be seen as special cases of a more general problem, concerning whether and how mental events of a given type may be efficacious, qua the types of event they are---qualitative, intentional, freely deliberative---given their apparent causal irrelevancy for effects of the type in question; here we generalize what Horgan 1989 identifies as "the problem of mental quausation" (S1). We then build on this result to identify fruitful parallels between hard determinism and eliminative physicalism (S2) and soft determinism and non-reductive physicalism (S3). (shrink)

Advancements in novel neurotechnologies, such as brain computer interfaces and neuromodulatory devices such as deep brain stimulators, will have profound implications for society and human rights. While these technologies are improving the diagnosis and treatment of mental and neurological diseases, they can also alter individual agency and estrange those using neurotechnologies from their sense of self, challenging basic notions of what it means to be human. As an international coalition of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners, we examine these challenges and make (...) recommendations to mitigate negative consequences that could arise from the unregulated development or application of novel neurotechnologies. We explore potential ethical challenges in four key areas: identity and agency, privacy, bias, and enhancement. To address them, we propose democratic and inclusive summits to establish globally-coordinated ethical and societal guidelines for neurotechnology development and application, new measures, including “Neurorights,” for data privacy, security, and consent to empower neurotechnology users’ control over their data, new methods of identifying and preventing bias, and the adoption of public guidelines for safe and equitable distribution of neurotechnological devices. (shrink)

_The Promise of Happiness_ is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happiness conditional on the happiness of others: “I just want you to be happy”; “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Combining philosophy and feminist cultural studies, Sara Ahmed reveals the affective and moral work performed by the “happiness duty,” the expectation that we will be made happy by taking part in that which (...) is deemed good, and that by being happy ourselves, we will make others happy. Ahmed maintains that happiness is a promise that directs us toward certain life choices and away from others. Happiness is promised to those willing to live their lives in the right way. Ahmed draws on the intellectual history of happiness, from classical accounts of ethics as the good life, through seventeenth-century writings on affect and the passions, eighteenth-century debates on virtue and education, and nineteenth-century utilitarianism. She engages with feminist, antiracist, and queer critics who have shown how happiness is used to justify social oppression, and how challenging oppression causes unhappiness. Reading novels and films including_ Mrs. Dalloway_, _The Well of Loneliness_, _Bend It Like Beckham_, and _Children of Men_, Ahmed considers the plight of the figures who challenge and are challenged by the attribution of happiness to particular objects or social ideals: the feminist killjoy, the unhappy queer, the angry black woman, and the melancholic migrant. Through her readings she raises critical questions about the moral order imposed by the injunction to be happy. (shrink)

Structural proof theory is a branch of logic that studies the general structure and properties of logical and mathematical proofs. This book is both a concise introduction to the central results and methods of structural proof theory, and a work of research that will be of interest to specialists. The book is designed to be used by students of philosophy, mathematics and computer science. The book contains a wealth of results on proof-theoretical systems, including extensions of such systems from logic (...) to mathematics, and on the connection between the two main forms of structural proof theory - natural deduction and sequent calculus. The authors emphasize the computational content of logical results. A special feature of the volume is a computerized system for developing proofs interactively, downloadable from the web and regularly updated. (shrink)

In this paper I will show the problems that are encountered when dealing with uniqueness of connectives in a bilateralist setting within the larger framework of proof-theoretic semantics and suggest a solution. Therefore, the logic 2Int is suitable, for which I introduce a sequent calculus system, displaying - just like the corresponding natural deduction system - a consequence relation for provability as well as one dual to provability. I will propose a modified characterization of uniqueness incorporating such a duality of (...) consequence relations, with which we can maintain uniqueness in a bilateralist setting. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a bi-intuitionistic sequent calculus and to give proofs of admissibility for its structural rules. The calculus I will present, called SC2Int, is a sequent calculus for the bi-intuitionistic logic 2Int, which Wansing presents in [2016a]. There he also gives a natural deduction system for this logic, N2Int, to which SC2Int is equivalent in terms of what is derivable. What is important is that these calculi represent a kind of bilateralist reasoning, since they (...) do not only internalize processes of verifcation or provability but also the dual processes in terms of falsifcation or what is called dual provability. In [Wansing, 2017] a normal form theorem for N2Int is stated, here, I want to prove a cut-elimination theorem for SC2Int, i.e., if successful, this would extend the results existing so far. (shrink)

Many philosophers have argued that prosthetic limbs are the subjects of some of the same rights as traditional body parts. This is a strong argument in favour of respecting the rights of users of prosthetics. I argue that all of the reasons to consider paradigm prosthetics the subjects of body-like rights apply to the relationship between some emotional support animals and their handlers. ESAs are integrated into the functioning of their handlers in ways that parallel the ways that paradigm prosthetics (...) are integrated into the functioning of their users. ESAs are also phenomenologically integrated into their handler’s lives in ways that parallel the phenomenological integration that prosthetic users experience. These parallels provide a strong reason to take the rights of ESA handlers much more seriously than we do now. I will highlight that the current treatment of ESA handlers presumes that they have no rights to ESAs at all. Even if ESAs are the subject of very minimal body-like rights, ESA handlers are having their rights violated. There are of course disanalogies between ESAs and paradigm prosthetics. Most notably, ESAs are alive and separate from their handlers. However, none of these disanalogies are relevant to the question of body-like rights. The differences between ESAs and paradigm prosthetics are in terms of what treatment is owed to them, not in terms of what rights their handlers and users should have. ESAs are not prosthetics, but they deserve some of the rights prosthetics do. (shrink)

Neoplatonism is a term used to designate the form of Platonic philosophy that developed in the Roman Empire from the third to the fifth century AD and that based itself on the corpus of Plato's dialogues. Sara Rappe's challenging study analyses Neoplatonic texts themselves using contemporary philosophy of language. It covers the whole tradition of Neoplatonic writing from Plotinus through Proclus to Damascius. Addressing the strain of mysticism in these works, the author shows how these texts reflect actual meditational (...) practices, methods of concentrating the mind, and other mental disciplines that informed the tradition as a whole. In providing such a broad survey of Neoplatonic writing, the book will appeal to classical philosophers classicists as well as students of religious studies. (shrink)

This paper argues that neuroscience has great potential to increase free will rather than condemn us to determinism. If human freedom depends on such factors as: having the intelligence and rationality to understand the physical, social and moral consequences of one’s actions; being aware of what choices are available and viable; being without emotional illness and compulsion; etc., then brain based treatments can expand human freedom. We present several hypothetical cases in which treatments appear to increase experienced free will. In (...) the fi rst case, a prescription for Epistemidol increases the IQ and information-seeking drive of a woman with initially low normal intelligence. In the second case, a man with Dysthymia is treated with Optimistimine and becomes more outgoing and receptive to others. These and other cases suggest that experiential freedom can be pharmaceutically enhanced by an expanded ability to deliberate and understand the nature of choices and their consequences. (shrink)

Many biologists appeal to the so-called Krogh principle when justifying their choice of experimental organisms. The principle states that “for a large number of problems there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which it can be most conveniently studied”. Despite its popularity, the principle is often critiqued for implying unwarranted generalizations from optimal models. We argue that the Krogh principle should be interpreted in relation to the historical and scientific contexts in which it has (...) been developed and used. We interpret the Krogh Principle as a heuristic, i.e., as a recommendation to approach biological problems through organisms where a specific trait or physiological mechanism is expected to be most distinctively displayed or most experimentally accessible. We designate these organisms “Krogh organisms.” We clarify the differences between uses of model organisms and non-standard Krogh organisms. Among these is the use of Krogh organisms as “negative models” in biomedical research, where organisms are chosen for their dissimilarity to human physiology. Importantly, the representational scope of Krogh organisms and the generalizability of their characteristics are not fixed or assumed but explored through experimental studies. Research on Krogh organisms is steeped in the comparative method characteristic of zoology and comparative physiology, in which studies of biological variation produce insights into general physiological constraints. Accordingly, we conclude that the Krogh principle exemplifies the advantages of studying biological variation as a strategy to produce generalizable insights. (shrink)

Background Families whose child has unexplained intellectual or developmental differences often hope that a genetic diagnosis will lower barriers to community-based therapeutic and support services. However, there is little known about efforts to mobilize genetic information outside the clinic or how socioeconomic disadvantage shapes and constrains outcomes.Methods We conducted an ethnographic study with predominantly socioeconomically disadvantaged families enrolled in a multi-year genomics research study, including clinic observations and in-depth interviews in English and Spanish at multiple time points. Coding and thematic (...) development were used to collaboratively interpret fieldnotes and transcripts.Results Thirty-two families participated. Themes included familial expectations that a genetic diagnosis could be translated into information, understanding, and assistance to improve the quality of a child’s day-to-day life. After sequencing, however, genetic information was not readily converted into improved access to services beyond the clinic, with families often struggling to use a genetic diagnosis to advocate for their child.Conclusion Families’ ability to use a genetic diagnosis as an effective advocacy tool beyond the clinic was limited by the knowledge and resources available to them, and by the eligibility criteria used by therapeutic service providers’ – which focused on clinical diagnosis and functional criteria more than etiologic information. All families undertaking genomic testing, particularly those who are disadvantaged, need additional support to understand the limits and potential benefits of genetic information beyond the clinic. (shrink)

Proponents of the emerging field of P4 medicine argue that computational integration and analysis of patient-specific “big data” will revolutionize our health care systems, in particular primary care-based disease prevention. While many ambitions remain visionary, steps to personalize medicine are already taken via personalized genomics, mobile health technologies and pilot projects. An important aim of P4 medicine is to enable disease prevention among healthy persons through detection of risk factors. In this paper, we examine the current status of P4 medicine (...) in light of historical and current challenges to predictive and preventive medicine, including overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Moreover, we ask whether it is likely that in silico integration of patient-specific data will be able to better deal such challenges and to turn risk predictions into disease-preventive actions in a wider social context. Given the lack of evidence that P4 medicine can tip the balance between benefits and harms in preventive medicine, we raise concerns about the current promotion of P4 medicine as a solution to the current challenges in public health. (shrink)

What does it mean to hold a belief? Some of our ways of speaking in English suggest that to hold a belief is to have something in your mind: beliefs are things we acquire, defend, recover, and so on (Abelson, 1986). That is, believing is a matter of being in a state of having a thing. In this paper, I will argue for an alternative: believing is something we do. This is not a new suggestion. For instance, Matthew Boyle (2011) (...) defends a theory of belief as an activity, which he traces back to Aristotle. This paper, however, makes two new contributions: first, I argue for an analogy between belief and planning that fleshes out what it would mean to understand belief as an activity, and second, I aim to show how the resulting view can help sense of a variety of theories in cognitive psychology that suggest cognitive information storage is dynamic and reconstructive. (shrink)

Just as we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of objects composes a single object, we may ask whether, and under what conditions, a collection of actions composes a single action. In the material objects literature, this question is known as the "special composition question," and I take it that there is a similar question to be asked of collections of actions. I will call that question the "special composition question in action," and argue that the correct (...) answer to this question depends on a particular kind of consequence produced by the individual constituent actions. (shrink)

This article looks at the film A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick 1971) through the lenses of the free will debate. The main argument proposed is that the film exemplifies a view of free will that I call polythetic. This view says that free will needs to be understood as containing several criteria that allow us to see an action as more or less free, but none of the characteristics is essential for an action to be classified as free. In this view, (...) free will is not an on or off function, but should be understood on a spectrum. A Clockwork Orange illustrates this view. This story is a philosophical work of fiction. As the story progresses, the main character, Little Alex, is free in certain aspects and not others, touching on several important and different elements of free will. The film’s story is an ideal way to illustrate the idea of free will as something we can have more or less of, rather than something we have or do not have. The film is seen as a philosophical work in that it illustrates a polythetic view of free will, and the traditional philosophical discussions on free will can also be used to enrich the understanding of the film. (shrink)

Prevention of age-related disorders is increasingly in focus of health policies, and it is hoped that early intervention on processes of deterioration can promote healthier and longer lives. New opportunities to slow down the aging process are emerging with new fields such as personalized nutrition. Data-intensive research has the potential to improve the precision of existing risk factors, e.g., to replace coarse-grained markers such as blood cholesterol with more detailed multivariate biomarkers. In this paper, we follow an attempt to develop (...) a new aging biomarker. The vision among the project consortium, comprising both research and industrial partners, is that the new biomarker will be predictive of a range of age-related conditions, which may be preventable through personalized nutrition. We combine philosophical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork to explore the possibilities and challenges of managing aging through bodily signs that are not straightforwardly linked to symptomatic disease. We document how the improvement of measurement brings about new conceptual challenges of demarcating healthy and unhealthy states. Moreover, we highlight that the reframing of aging as risk has social and ethical implications, as it is generative of normative notions of what constitutes successful aging and good citizenship. (shrink)

Obstetric violence – psychological and physical violence by medical staff towards women giving birth – has been described as structural violence, specifically as gender violence. Many women are affected by obstetric violence, with awful consequences. The phenomenon has so far been mainly investigated by the health and social sciences, yet fundamental theoretical and conceptual questions have gone unnoticed. Until now, the phenomenon of obstetric violence has been understood as one impeding autonomy and individual agency and control over the body. In (...) this article I will argue that the phenomenon of obstetric violence occurs in a specific state of embodied vulnerability and that might be destructive for subjectivity since it fails to recognize that state and instead disallows support and demolishes relationships and interdependence. This might introduce a conceptual shift and the phenomenon might be reconceptualized as a moment where vulnerability is misrecognized and ambiguity, relations and support are banned. In this case violence is recognized as cutting the original links to our bodies and the world that constitute our phenomenological condition, instead of as hurting the autonomous subject. Obstetric violence, thus, calls to be reflected upon through de Beauvoir’s ideas on ambiguity, the embodied and situated subject and the subject as essentially construed in relations. I believe that de Beauvoir’s conception of the authentic embodied subject as necessarily ambiguous – immanent and transcendent at the same time and ineludibly linked to the world and its others – will be extremely useful for construing this new understanding of how obstetric violence happens and of what precisely constitutes its damage. (shrink)

Charles S. Peirce held a view of human reason as creative. The objective of this article is to explore more deeply the Peircean conception of imagination, indispensable for the correct functioning of reason. The connection of reason and imagination is necessary in order to be able to interpret the world, to advance towards the truth and to direct our own actions. In this paper I will explain the principal forms in which these faculties interact, and will provide examples taken from (...) the Peircean corpus. (shrink)

Many countries currently invest in technologies and data infrastructures to foster precision medicine (PM), which is hoped to better tailor disease treatment and prevention to individual patients. But who can expect to benefit from PM? The answer depends not only on scientific developments but also on the willingness to address the problem of structural injustice. One important step is to confront the problem of underrepresentation of certain populations in PM cohorts via improved research inclusivity. Yet, we argue that the perspective (...) needs to be broadened because the (in)equitable effects of PM are also strongly contingent on wider structural factors and prioritization of healthcare strategies and resources. When (and before) implementing PM, it is crucial to attend to how the organisation of healthcare systems influences who will benefit, as well as whether PM may present challenges for a solidaristic sharing of costs and risks. We discuss these issues through a comparative lens of healthcare models and PM-initiatives in the United States, Austria, and Denmark. The analysis draws attention to how PM hinges on—and simultaneously affects—access to healthcare services, public trust in data handling, and prioritization of healthcare resources. Finally, we provide suggestions for how to mitigate foreseeable negative effects. (shrink)

Decolonial/anti-colonial Black, Indigenous and Mestiza feminist movements and scholar-activists foreground how the oft-touted apocalypse that the Covid-19 pandemic heralds is not new, nor does it signify the great rupture into chaos that those from within modernity-coloniality often claim it to be. Rather Covid-19 is preceded by and will be out-lived by the apocalyptic anti-life onto-epistemological logics that are foundational to the production of hetero-patriarchal capitalist- coloniality. However, one would commit the violence of reproduction of the epistemological logics and rationalities constitutive (...) of the current system if the story ended there. We have survived and our survival points to the urgent necessity and responsibility of social theory to listen to the story of the pandemic from a Black/Indigenous genealogy and to begin the sense-making of the Covid-19 pandemic, from prior to this particular virus, outside, against and beyond the politics of knowledge of critical social theory itself. Thus, I invite you to journey to an affirmative re-enfleshment of reason and theory-making in relation to and dialogue with Black, Indigenous, and subaltern Mestiza feminist movements in southwest Colombia and in southeast so-called Australia in the unceded lands of the Awabakal and the Worimi. I explore this through the metaphor, the materiality, the cosmology and the herstory of the mangrove swamps a knowing-being otherwise visible to the dehumanising gave of Whiteness and bring to thought three stories of a politics of knowledge of/as the Black/racialised and feminised body/flesh. To do this is to suggest that the co-creation of pathways which are life affirming and life making beyond and out of the post-Covid 19 conjuncture involves an epistemological-political project which decolonises and feminises the containments of reason and knowing being of coloniality/modernity. (shrink)

In this paper I will develop a lambda-term calculus, lambda-2Int, for a bi-intuitionistic logic and discuss its implications for the notions of sense and denotation of derivations in a bilateralist setting. Thus, I will use the Curry-Howard correspondence, which has been well-established between the simply typed lambda-calculus and natural deduction systems for intuitionistic logic, and apply it to a bilateralist proof system displaying two derivability relations, one for proving and one for refuting. The basis will be the natural deduction system (...) of Wansing's bi-intuitionistic logic 2Int, which I will turn into a term-annotated form. Therefore, we need a type theory that extends to a two-sorted typed lambda-calculus. I will present such a term-annotated proof system for 2Int and prove a Dualization Theorem relating proofs and refutations in this system. On the basis of these formal results I will argue that this gives us interesting insights into questions about sense and denotation as well as synonymy and identity of proofs from a bilateralist point of view. (shrink)

Formal representations drawn from rational choice theory have been used in a variety of ways to fruitfully model the way in which actual agents are approximately rational. This analysis requires bridging between ideal normative theory, in which the mechanisms, representations, and other such internal parts are in an important sense interchangeable, and descriptive psychological theory, in which understanding the internal workings of the agent is often the main goal of the entire inquiry. In this paper, I raise a problem brought (...) on by this gap: for almost every theory of approximate rationality, there will be an empirically indistinguishable alternative that individuates the parts of the agent in a significantly different way. (shrink)

In his late reflections on values and forms of life from the 1920s and 1930s, Husserl develops the concept of personal value and argues that these values open two kinds of infinities in our lives. On the one hand personal values disclose infinite emotive depths in human individuals while on the other hand they connect human individuals in continuous and progressive chains of care. In order to get at the core of the concept, I will explicate Husserl’s discussion of personal (...) values of love by distinguishing between five related features. I demonstrate that values of love (1) are rooted in egoic depts and define who we are as persons, (2) differ from objective values in being absolute and non-comparative, (3) ground vocational lives as organizing principles, (4) are endlessly self-disclosing and self-intensifying, and (5) establish transitive relations of care between human beings. On the basis of my five-partite distinction, I argue that Husserl’s concepts of love and value of love reveal the dynamic character of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity. (shrink)

A welcome addition to the Routledge Critical Thinkers series, Judith Butler is the first guidebook on this renowned feminist and queer theory scholar, which will help not only students of literary criticism but also students of law, sociology, philosophy, film and cultural studies. Examining Butler's work through a variety of contexts, including the formation of gender performativity, identity and subjecthood, Sarah Salih address Butler's crucial ideas on the gender agenda, the body, pornography, race, gay self-expression and power and psychoanalysis. Concluding (...) with an annotated bibliography, this book will be the ideal starting point for all new to Butler. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that many women lack the epistemic resources that would allow them to recognise the practice of vaginal examinations during childbirth as violent or as unnecessary and potentially declinable. I address vaginal examinations during childbirth as a special case of obstetric violence, in which women frequently lack the epistemic resources necessary to recognise the practice as violent not only because of the inherent difficulty of recognising violence that happens in an ‘essentially benevolent’ setting such as the (...) medical one, but also, and mainly, due to the pervasive sexual reification of women under patriarchy and the pervasive shame to which women are subjected. My argument is that the practice of vaginal examinations is indeed experienced – bodily apprehended – as violent by many women, but that full epistemic recognition of this violence is frequently obstructed because the experience perfectly coincides with the normal phenomenological situation of women within patriarchy and thus cannot really be framed as violent. A phenomenological analysis presenting the embodied experience of women under patriarchy as always already essentially tied to sexual availability and commodification, and to shame, will explain this epistemological impairment. A phenomenological take on Judith Butler’s distinction between ‘recognition’ and ‘apprehension’ informs my analysis: I deploy it to provide a richer, more nuanced response to the question of why vaginal examinations are not fully recognised and expressed as violent – even when they are, frequently, apprehended as such. Furthermore, Butler’s ideas about the epistemic ‘framings’ through which we make sense of different kinds of lives (grievable versus ungrievable) will help me to explain how the patriarchal sexual reification of women in fact already frames sexual violence as not-violence – which ultimately also prevents labouring women (and obstetrics staff) from recognising vaginal examinations during labour as violence. (shrink)

In What's the Use? Sara Ahmed continues the work she began in The Promise of Happiness and Willful Subjects by taking up a single word--in this case, use--and following it around. She shows how use became associated with life and strength in nineteenth century biological and social thought and considers how utilitarianism offered a set of educational techniques for shaping individuals by directing them toward useful ends. Ahmed also explores how spaces become restricted to some uses and users with (...) specific reference to universities. She notes, however, the potential for queer use: how things can be used in ways that were not intended or by those for whom they were not intended. Ahmed posits queer use as way of reanimating the project of diversity work as the ordinary and painstaking work of opening up institutions to those who have historically been excluded from them. (shrink)

We have investigated attitudes towards the use of health data among the Swedish population by analyzing data from a survey answered by 1645 persons. Health data are potentially useful for a variety of purposes. Yet information about health remains sensitive. A balance therefore has to be struck between these opposing considerations in a number of contexts. The attitudes among those whose data is concerned will influence the perceived legitimacy of policies regulating health data use. We aimed to investigate what views (...) are held by the general public, and what aspects matter for the willingness to let one’s data be used not only for one’s own care but also for other purposes. We found that while there is a broad willingness to let one’s data be used, the possibility to influence that use is considered important. The study also indicated that when respondents are required to balance different interests, priority is typically given to compulsory schemes ensuring that data are available where needed, rather than voluntary participation and data protection. The policy implications to be drawn from this are not self-evident, however, since the fact that a majority has a certain attitude does not by itself determine the most adequate policy. (shrink)

In recent years, the philosophical focus of the modeling literature has shifted from descriptions of general properties of models to an interest in different model functions. It has been argued that the diversity of models and their correspondingly different epistemic goals are important for developing intelligible scientific theories. However, more knowledge is needed on how a combination of different epistemic means can generate and stabilize new entities in science. This paper will draw on Rheinberger’s practice-oriented account of knowledge production. The (...) conceptual repertoire of Rheinberger’s historical epistemology offers important insights for an analysis of the modelling practice. I illustrate this with a case study on network modeling in systems biology where engineering approaches are applied to the study of biological systems. I shall argue that the use of multiple means of representations is an essential part of the dynamic of knowledge generation. It is because of – rather than in spite of – the diversity of constraints of different models that the interlocking use of different epistemic means creates a potential for knowledge production. (shrink)

I will argue the free market in babies or in women's bodies created by an institution of paid surrogate motherhood is contrary to Kantian principles of personhood and to the feminist principle that men do not have-and cannot gain through contract, marriage, or payment of money-a right to the sexual or reproductive use of women's bodies.

In this paper we will consider the existing notions of bilateralism in the context of proof-theoretic semantics and propose, based on our understanding of bilateralism, an extension to logical multilateralism. This approach differs from what has been proposed under this name before in that we do not consider multiple speech acts as the core of such a theory but rather multiple consequence relations. We will argue that for this aim the most beneficial proof-theoretical realization is to use sequent calculi with (...) multiple sequent arrows satisfying some specific conditions, which we will lay out in this paper. We will unfold our ideas with the help of a case study in logical tetralateralism and present an extension of Almukdad and Nelson’s propositional constructive four-valued logic by unary operations of meaningfulness and nonsensicality. We will argue that in sequent calculi with multiple sequent arrows it is possible to maintain certain features that are desirable if we assume an understanding of the meaning of connectives in the spirit of proof-theoretic semantics. The use of multiple sequent arrows will be justified by the presence of congruentiality-breaking unary connectives. (shrink)

In the framework of the De Regula Aliza, Cardano paid much attention to the so-called splittings for the family of equations $$x^3 = a_1x + a_0$$ x3=a1x+a0 ; my previous article deals at length with them and, especially, with their role in the Ars Magna in relation to the solution methods for cubic equations. Significantly, the method of the splittings in the De Regula Aliza helps to account for how Cardano dealt with equations, which cannot be inferred from his other (...) algebraic treatises. In the present paper, this topic is further developed, the focus now being directed to the origins of the splittings. First, we investigate Cardano’s research in the Ars Magna Arithmeticae on the shapes for irrational solutions of cubic equations with rational coefficients and on the general shapes for the solutions of any cubic equation. It turns out that these inquiries pre-exist Cardano’s research on substitutions and cubic formulae, which will later be the privileged methods for dealing with cubic equations; at an earlier time, Cardano had hoped to gather information on the general case by exploiting analogies with the particular case of irrational solutions. Accordingly, the Ars Magna Arithmeticae is revealed to be truly a treatise on the shapes of solutions of cubic equations. Afterwards, we consider the temporary patch given by Cardano in the Ars Magna to overcome the problem entailed by the casus irreducibilis as it emerges once the complete picture of the solution methods for all families of cubic equations has been outlined. When Cardano had to face the difficulty that appears if one deals with cubic equations using the brand-new methods of substitutions and cubic formulae, he reverted back to the well-known inquiries on the shape of solutions. In this way, the relation between the splittings and the older inquiries on the shape of solutions comes to light; furthermore, this enables the splittings to be dated 1542 or later. The last section of the present paper then expounds the passages from the Aliza that allow us to trace back the origins of the substitution $$x = y + z$$ x=y+z, which is fundamental not only to the method of the splittings but also to the discovery of the cubic formulae. In this way, an insight into Cardano’s way of dealing with equations using quadratic irrational numbers and other selected kinds of binomials and trinomials will be provided; moreover, this will display the role of the analysis of the shapes of solutions in the framework of Cardano’s algebraic works. (shrink)

Some determinist approaches to free will opine that the human brain is subordinate to physical laws not fully under our control. This results in a weakening of the concept of the personal autonomy and moral responsibility of humans. Were we to acknowledge this assumption, we might consider automatic machines unable to influence the thoughts and intentions from which our actions take root. The key issue lies in the fact that an individual does not consciously engage in particular actions (automatisms), which (...) challenges the concept of free will in an individual’s complex behaviour. Despite this issue, not all automatisms that lack conscious will can be viewed as lacking free will. The paper examines whether classical philosophical concepts may weaken the strict determinist approach, which seeks to deny that individuals have free will due to the existence of automatic actions. (shrink)

Simon Szántó is known as one of the founders of the Jewish press in Vienna, the editor and main author of the Jewish periodical Die Neuzeit, and an influential educator during the high point of Austrian liberalism between the 1860s and the early 1880s. His enormously rich literary legacy covers issues such as the integration of Jews into the Austrian-Hungarian society, religious reform, gender roles, and particularly education. Szántó’s writings offer a unique opportunity to look at the Viennese liberal period (...) of the second half of the nineteenth century and its challenges through the eyes of a mostly overlooked, but highly significant and influential actor of the time. This article will first introduce Simon Szántó’s cultural and educational background that impacted his ideals and his activities, and go on to discuss one of his main concerns, namely Jewish education. Religious education, confessional schooling, and Jewish upbringing at home bore the burden of responsibility for shaping Austrian Jewish women and men. These Jews were to be integrated in an Austrian culture, while at the same time taught to retain a strong Jewish particularity. Szántó aimed to unite this dichotomous reality through the realization of his ideals of Jewish Bildung. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whiteness and the General WillDiversity Work as Willful WorkSara AhmedIn this essay I explore whiteness in relation to the general will. My starting point is that the idea of “the general will” offers us a vocabulary for thinking through the materiality of race. In his keynote address to the 40th Annual Philosophy Symposium in 2010, Charles Mills argues that race is material: it becomes part of the living human (...) body. Mills draws on recent theories of whiteness as habit, including the work of Linda Alcoff (2006) and Shannon Sullivan (2006). Quoting from Sullivan, he suggests that whiteness is in “the nose that smells, the back, neck and other muscles that imperceptibly tighten with anxiety, and the eyes that see some but not all physical differences as significant” (Sullivan 2006, 188). Whiteness is embodied; it is in bodily matter as well as affecting how bodies matter. Mills then suggests that the materiality of whiteness is its “resistance to will.” One definition of materiality could be this: resistance to will.This essay takes up the theme of the materiality of race by thinking of whiteness in relation to the will. There are clearly risks in such an undertaking: after all, the idea of whiteness as willed might seem to imply that whiteness is volitional: and can be simply “willed away.”1 I want to suggest that if whiteness is resistant to will, as that which cannot be simply willed away, then whiteness can also be understood as willed: in other words, what cannot be willed away is a willing way. Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism as “willed human work,” which as a definition has yet to be rigorously understood, could be considered an important precedent to my argument (1978, 140). The suggestion is not [End Page 1] simply that the Orient is brought into existence, or made to exist over time, but that the very labor of creating the Orient, the land of the stranger, the land far away, is what establishes a direction. Once the Orient has come to exist, there is a willing of its existence; to keep going that way is to keep that way going. Willed work is work that in willing that way creates a way that can be willed. It is not as the old English cliché says—where there’s a will there’s a way—but rather to will is to way. I think it is useful to think of whiteness in this way, as a willing way, which is of course only one way of thinking about whiteness.I pose the generality of the will as a way of reflecting on “institutional whiteness.” Whiteness becomes “the material” of an institutional body, whether that body is the nation, an organization, a neighborhood, or a street. We can consider an institution as a body with parts: it too has noses, mouths, muscles that register anxiety, as well as ears and eyes. Just think of how Neighborhood Watch, as a national or even global technology, uses the injunction that citizens should become the “eyes and ears of the police.” A good citizen is the one who accepts this injunction: the one who is willing to watch out for strangers, those who are loitering, who seem suspicious, or out of place. Institutions have “detection systems”: they have parts that register the approach of strangers. A collective body in registering those who are out of place, both creates strangers and establishes a direction toward them, as those who threaten the place of the “in place,” as those who generate anxiety.A key event in my own life was of becoming a stranger in a white neighborhood in Adelaide, Australia, in a place I called home. I was fourteen years old. I was stopped by two policemen in a car who asked me, “Are you Aboriginal?” It turned out that there had been some burglaries in the area. It was an extremely hostile address, and it was an unsettling experience at the time. It was an experience of being made into a stranger, the one who is recognized as “out of place,” as the one who does not belong, whose proximity is registered... (shrink)

Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several (...) examples of such denial as test cases, they propose six key principles that may lead individuals to reject "accepted" health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear of complexity; confirmation bias and the internet; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; causality and filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existing beliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research, as scientists continue to identify brain responses to new information that reveal deep-seated, innate discomfort with changing our minds. Denying to the Grave explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them and their loved ones, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with significant health decisions. This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Max Deutsch argues that there is no “qua problem” for purely causal theories of reference, according to which the extensions of some expressions are grounded in causal relations to members of their extensions during dubbing acts. The qua problem is the difficulty in specifying the facts in virtue of which the reference of “elephant” is grounded by causal contact with something _qua_ elephant and not _qua_ its other properties. If no such specification can be given, reference (...) remains unacceptably indeterminate. This has led many to abandon purely causal reference grounding. Deutsch’s argument for the dissolution of the problem goes as follows: we usually agree that an event can cause its effect _qua_ some of its properties and not _qua_ others. For example, a hot acidic solution causes a glass beaker to break due to its heat and not due to its acidity. Given this assumption, we can simply say that an event caused a dubbing act _qua_ the causally relevant property and not _qua_ the causally irrelevant properties, thus grounding the reference of the term; the qua problem has vanished. I will argue that causal mechanisms, and in particular the facts about causal relevance appealed to by Deutsch, are insufficient to dissolve the qua problem. It is not generally the case that a _unique_ property is causally relevant in purely physical cases of causation; but this is precisely what is required to avoid the referential indeterminacy highlighted by the qua problem. I will demonstrate that if we rely on causal relevance to dissolve the qua problem, there is no way to respect the uniqueness requirement: there are too many properties that are causally relevant to the occurrence of any single dubbing act, including the intentional states of the dubber. (shrink)

This paper provides a proof-theoretic study of quantified non-normal modal logics. It introduces labelled sequent calculi based on neighbourhood semantics for the first-order extension, with both varying and constant domains, of monotone NNML, and studies the role of the Barcan formulas in these calculi. It will be shown that the calculi introduced have good structural properties: invertibility of the rules, height-preserving admissibility of weakening and contraction and syntactic cut elimination. It will also be shown that each of the calculi introduced (...) is sound and complete with respect to the appropriate class of neighbourhood frames. In particular, the completeness proof constructs a formal derivation for derivable sequents and a countermodel for non-derivable ones, and gives a semantic proof of the admissibility of cut. (shrink)

Achieving a good clinical trial design increases the likelihood that a trial will take place as planned, including that data will be obtained from a sufficient number of participants, and the total number of participants will be the minimal required to gain the knowledge sought. A good trial design also increases the likelihood that the knowledge sought by the experiment will be forthcoming. Achieving such a design is more than good sense—it is ethically required in experiments when participants are at (...) risk of harm. This paper argues that doing a power analysis effectively contributes to ensuring that a trial design is good. The ethical importance of good trial design has long been recognized for trials in which there is risk of serious harm to participants. However, whether the quality of a trial design, when the risk to participants is only minimal, is an ethical issue is rarely discussed. This paper argues that even in cases when the risk is minimal, the quality of the trial design is an ethical issue, and that this is reflected in the emphasis the Belmont Report places on the importance of the benefit of knowledge gained by society. The paper also argues that good trial design is required for true informed consent. (shrink)

In this paper I will compare Hertz and Wittgenstein in order to bring forth a new interpretation of the Tractatus. I shall look at Wittgenstein’s ideas about simple objects and compare them with Hertz’s material particles. I shall then claim that if one understands Hertz’s material particles as logical entities that are more co-ordinate like than physical, one can reach an interpretation of the Tractatus that is deliberately silent about the nature of reality, therefore escaping both objectivist and subjectivist interpretations (...) of the book. This, I think, is just one of the great results of re-thinking Wittgenstein’s ideas through Hertz’s. (shrink)

The emergence of Covid‐19 in the United States has revealed a critical weakness in the health care system in the United States. The majority of people in the nation receive health care via employment‐based health insurance from providers in a competitive market. However, neither employment‐based health care nor a competitive health care market can adequately provide treatment during a global pandemic. Employment‐based health care will fail to provide care for a large number of people in any destabilizing economic event, including (...) a pandemic. Competitive for‐profit health care systems distribute limited goods based on markets rather than health care needs. If a global pandemic results in unusually high demand for specific medical supplies, then these will be distributed suboptimally. The combined risk of suboptimal distribution of needed goods and a significant drop in health care access in a global pandemic indicates that the U.S. health care system has serious vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. (shrink)

This paper offers an alternate solution to the puzzle of transformative experience raised by Paul (2014), through an appeal to Arthur Schopenhauer’s concept of the _acquired character_, which speaks to the intuition that authenticity entails a notion of the ‘self-as-guide’ (Rivera et al., 2019 ). On Paul’s solution to the puzzle, transformative decisions may be made authentically by adopting a meta-preference concerning personal transformation, such that the self is constituted after a decision is made. Yet when comparing Paul’s account of (...) authenticity to that of Somogy Varga’s (2012), we see that the former is too formal in that it neglects certain requirements of personal identity-formation, which Varga defines as wholehearted commitment based in strong evaluation. However, in defining these requirements as such, Varga’s account of authenticity is unequipped to adequately address the puzzle of transformative experience. Varga’s account further falls short with respect to specifying sufficient criteria for personal fitness, as Rings (2017) argues. In connection with this deficiency, Varga’s account also does not fully reckon with the threat of manipulation, given the possibility of egoistically driven self-deception in conjunction with oppressive social conditions. I argue that with the aim of character acquisition via acts of subjective contemplation, the authenticity of transformative decisions can be understood at least partly in terms of self-discovery. To expand on authenticity’s ethical dimension, as first introduced by Varga, in a way that is compatible with this established dimension of self-discovery, and with the help of Christopher Gill’s (1996) analysis of an ancient Greek conception of personhood, I suggest that we conceive of authenticity also as a process of value-interpretation, while employing a concept of the self that I will refer to as the _metapersonal_. This process is congruent with a metapersonal self in so far as it is aimed at defining and clarifying the human good in general, from within a community whose fundamental ethical demand consists of maximizing mutual and reciprocal benefit. (shrink)

We hypothesize that juvenile baboons are less efficient foragers than adult baboons owing to their small size, lower level of knowledge and skill, and/or lesser ability to maintain access to resources. We predict that as resources are more difficult to extract, juvenile baboons will demonstrate lower efficiency than adults will because of their lower levels of experience. In addition, we hypothesize that juvenile baboons will be more likely to allocate foraging time to easier-to-extract resources owing to their greater efficiency in (...) acquiring those resources.We use feeding efficiency and time allocation data collected on a wild, free-ranging, non-provisioned population of chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus) in the Moremi Wildlife Reserve, Okavango Delta, Botswana to test these hypotheses. The major findings of this study are:1. Juvenile baboons are significantly less efficient foragers than adult baboons primarily for difficult-to-extract resources.We propose that this age-dependent variation in efficiency is due to differences in memory and other cognitive functions related to locating food resources, as is indicated by the greater amount of time juvenile baboons spend searching for food. There is no evidence that smaller body size or competitive disruption influences the differences in return rates found between adult and juvenile baboons in this study.2. An individual baboon’s feeding efficiency for a given resource can be used to predict the duration of its foraging bouts for that resource.These results contribute both to our understanding of the ontogeny of behavioral development in nonhuman primates, especially regarding foraging ability, and to current debate within the field of human behavioral ecology regarding the evolution of the juvenile period in primates and humans. (shrink)

In this paper, Douglas Hofstadter’s view of the self as a “strange loop” is used in order to understand how several acting techniques work. As examples of acting techniques I will use the work of Lee Strasberg, Constantin Stanislavski, Stella Adler and Sanford Meisner. I will argue that Douglas Hofstadter’s view of the self as a strange loop allows us to understand how acting works. I will furthermore argue that because Douglas Hofstadter’s view is successful in explaining how different acting (...) techniques work, that is a good indication of its adequacy as a theory of the self. (shrink)

For a computable structure \, if there is a computable infinitary Scott sentence, then the complexity of this sentence gives an upper bound for the complexity of the index set \\). If we can also show that \\) is m-complete at that level, then there is a correspondence between the complexity of the index set and the complexity of a Scott sentence for the structure. There are results that suggest that these complexities will always match. However, it was shown in (...) Knight and McCoy that there is a structure ) for which the index set is m-complete \, though there is no computable \ Scott sentence. In the present paper, we give an example of a particular equivalence structure for which the index set is m-complete \ but for which there is no computable \ Scott sentence. There is, however, a computable \ pseudo-Scott sentence for the structure, that is, a sentence that acts as a Scott sentence if we only consider computable structures. (shrink)

The emergence of systems biology raises many fascinating questions: What does it mean to take a systems approach to problems in biology? To what extent is the use of mathematical and computational modelling changing the life sciences? How does the availability of big data influence research practices? What are the major challenges for biomedical research in the years to come? This book addresses such questions of relevance not only to philosophers and biologists but also to readers interested in the broader (...) implications of systems biology for science and society. The book features reflections and original work by experts from across the disciplines including systems biologists, philosophers, and interdisciplinary scholars investigating the social and educational aspects of systems biology. In response to the same set of questions, the experts develop and defend their personal perspectives on the distinctive character of systems biology and the challenges that lie ahead. Readers are invited to engage with different views on the questions addressed, and may explore numerous themes relating to the philosophy of systems biology. This edited work will appeal to scholars and all levels, from undergraduates to researchers, and to those interested in a variety of scholarly approaches such as systems biology, mathematical and computational modelling, cell and molecular biology, genomics, systems theory, and of course, philosophy of biology. (shrink)