Consider someone whom you know to be an expert about some issue. She knows at least as much as you do and reasons impeccably. The issue is a straightforward case of statistical inference that raises no deep problems of epistemology. You happen to know the expert’s opinion on this issue. Should you defer to her by adopting her opinion as your own? An affirmative answer may appear mandatory. But this paper argues that a crucial factor in answering this question is (...) the description under which you identify the expert. Experts may be identified under various descriptions (e.g., “the expert appearing on Channel 7 at 5 pm”). Section 2 provides cases that illustrate how deference to a known expert may be appropriate under some descriptions, but not others. Section 3 proposes that, in these cases, the differentiating factor is self-identification: deference to an expert under a given description is appropriate when the expert self-identifies under that description. Section 4 presents a formal framework that demonstrates the sufficiency of self-identification for appropriate deference within a significant class of cases. Section 5 notes a way in which this phenomenon allows for a form of “agreeing to disagree” in Robert Aumann’s sense. Section 6 illustrates the practical application of these results to the case of testimonials. (shrink)

While there are many issues to be raised in using lethal autonomous robotic weapons (beyond those of remotely operated drones), we argue that the most important question is: should the decision to take a human life be relinquished to a machine? This question is often overlooked in favor of technical questions of sensor capability, operational questions of chain of command, or legal questions of sovereign borders. We further argue that the answer must be ?no? and offer several reasons for banning (...) autonomous robots. (1) Such a robot treats a human as an object, instead of as a person with inherent dignity. (2) A machine can only mimic moral actions, it cannot be moral. (3) A machine run by a program has no human emotions, no feelings about the seriousness of killing a human. (4) Using such a robot would be a violation of military honor. We therefore conclude that the use of an autonomous robot in lethal operations should be banned. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

Polarization is a topic of intense interest among social scientists, but there is significant disagreement regarding the character of the phenomenon and little understanding of underlying mechanics. A first problem, we argue, is that polarization appears in the literature as not one concept but many. In the first part of the article, we distinguish nine phenomena that may be considered polarization, with suggestions of appropriate measures for each. In the second part of the article, we apply this analysis to evaluate (...) the types of polarization generated by the three major families of computational models proposing specific mechanisms of opinion polarization. (shrink)

This discussion responds to important questions raised about my theory of fairness in the global economy by Christian Barry, Charles Beitz, A.J. Julius and Kristi Olson. I further elaborate how moral argument can be ‘internal’ to a social practice, how my proposed principles of fairness depend on international practice, how I can admit several relevant conceptions of ‘harm’ and why my account does not depend on a problematic conception of societal ‘endowments’.

New and distinctive approaches to five central topics in musical aesthetics are provided in this outstanding book. The topics are: understanding, representation, expression, performance and profundity.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Nietzsche claims that we are fated to be as we are. He also claims, however, that we can create ourselves. To many commentators these twin commitments have seemed self-contradictory or paradoxical. The argument of this paper, by contrast, is that, despite appearances, there is no paradox here, nor even a tension between Nietzsche's two claims. Instead, when properly interpreted these claims turn out to be intimately related to one another, so that our fatedness emerges as integral to our capacity to (...) become self-creators. The paper also offers, in the course of undermining a false alternative that is deeply entrenched in the philosophical tradition, a reading of Nietzsche's doctrine of amor fati that actually – and perhaps uniquely – makes full sense of section 276 of The Gay Science, the chief source for this aspect of his thought. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this article Aaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of (...) “deliberative friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools. (shrink)

Svirsky, Howard, and Berman address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ’s oversight of tobacco products, the newest major area of regulation Congress assigned to the FDA. They discus...

This article focuses on how aesthetic values permeate Nietzsche’s philosophy. Artistry is not confined to the creation of conventional works of art but occurs in the form-giving that is essential to all human forms of life. Since Nietzsche was committed to the view that the world is in some basic sense chaotic and meaningless, he held that only by imposing forms can we create a cognizable world. This close association between the conditions of life itself and the aesthetic activity of (...) giving form belies that Kantian conception that any appreciation of aesthetic phenomena is essentially disinterested. (shrink)

Political constructivism is associated with John Rawls more than any other contemporary philosopher. This chapter suggests that Rawls's political constructivism is better understood as a general method of justification which runs throughout his work as a whole, including his early work and A Theory of Justice. The chapter develops the general characterization of Rawls's political constructivism. Its main elements are taken in turn and developed with special attention to the two places where Rawls discusses the topic in depth – his (...) Dewey Lectures on Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory and its substantially revised version called “Political Constructivism” (PL, Lecture III). The main elements include social role, sources, interpretive basis, representation and conclusion. Rawls endorsed a Kantian metaethical constructivism in part because it offered a way of more deeply characterizing how his previous political constructivism could be a live and distinct possibility. (shrink)

This discussion responds to important questions raised about my theory of fairness in the global economy by Christian Barry, Charles Beitz, A.J. Julius and Kristi Olson. I further elaborate how moral argument can be ‘internal’ to a social practice, how my proposed principles of fairness depend on international practice, how I can admit several relevant conceptions of ‘harm’ and why my account does not depend on a problematic conception of societal ‘endowments’.

Nietzsche is often said to have started out as a Schopenhauerian metaphysician of some kind before leaving Schopenhauer behind him, and, by the end of his sane life, metaphysics too. His first and last thoughts about tragedy, however, sit uneasily with this narrative. The late thoughts are simply too close to the early ones for the story to accommodate them—not for their Schopenhauerianism, but for the strongly metaphysical flavour that they appear to share. The argument of the present paper is (...) that the appearance is veridical, and that attempts to explain away the metaphysical flavour of the later remarks cannot succeed. The paper concludes with a brief diagnosis of why Nietzsche's final thoughts about tragedy, in Twilight of the Idols, so unignorably recall the ones expressed in his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. (shrink)

Curiosity and creativity are expressions of the trade-off between leveraging that with which we are familiar or seeking out novelty. Through the computational lens of reinforcement learning, we describe how formulating the value of information seeking and generation via their complementary effects on planning horizons formally captures a range of solutions to striking this balance.

This paper highlights how a small group of minority students worked to take advantage of the privileges available once they were admitted to an elite school. The argument proposed is that, unlike their more privileged peers, minority students who have made it through the gateways of elite schools have to work out a salvation of privilege to level up their chances and aspirations of success. A grounded theory based on ‘working out the salvation of privilege’ is derived to examine the (...) ways in which minority students in elite schools seize individual ways of self-saving their variegated disadvantages. The study tracked three students over a five-year period to explore the development of their aspirations and individual trajectories two years after they exited their schools. Despite the students’ efforts in self-saving, their ‘envisioned future’ became limited over time. All had to modify their options and expectations because their non-privileged background hindered their aspirations. (shrink)

The practice-based method of justification requires sensitivity to social practices. This raises difficult questions: Must the practices in question be established or at least realistic? How “constructive” can we be in our interpretation of their form or aims? This paper suggests that our answers to these questions can vary with our explanatory purposes. Requirements of realism and sociological accuracy are relatively thin given purely intellectual aims of moral understanding, thicker given the aim of addressing humanity, and thicker still given the (...) aim of justifying principles as normative for us , in our current world historical situation. I suggest that we have no reason to insist on one set of animating justice concerns to the exclusion of all the others, even as normative requirements rightly take center stage. (shrink)

Discussion of the relations between ethics and aesthetics has tended to focus on issues concerning judgement: for example, philosophers have often asked whether, or to what extent, ethical considerations of one sort or another should inform aesthetic verdicts. Much less discussed, however, have been the relations between these two domains in their practical aspects. In this paper, I try to defuse a cluster of reasons for believing that practical competence in the ethical domain and practical competence in the aesthetic domain (...) must be understood as importantly, or structurally, distinct from one another. (shrink)

The Purpose of this paper is to ask how far Locke can be said to have anticipated modern theories of number, particularly the intuitionist theory of Brouwer and Heyting. It has in mind Mr Edward E. Dawson's statement that Locke's account of number was not merely ‘a good effort in his own day’ but that ‘what Locke had to say really was quite fundamental, and a good deal of modern mathematics assumes his position, either explicitly or implicitly’. Mr Dawson thinks (...) that some of the central notions of the intuitionist theory are already present in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , II, xvi, ‘Of Number’. We should like to examine the view. (shrink)

In matters of distributive justice, we assume that it is important how benefits and burdens are distributed among different people. But what, precisely, is important about this? In particular, what, from the point of view of justice, is ultimately at stake in what distributions come about? T. M. Scanlon has been coy about what his contractualist moral theory might imply for justice.[ii] Yet his conception of morality bears directly on this question of stakes. The significance of distribution then depends on (...) independently valuable relations of recognition. Distribution has no fundamental importance per se. This in turn has significant implications for how philosophical reasoning about justice in distribution must proceed. In recent years, many egalitarians have proceeded as though a distribution can be just by its very nature, in and of itself. The basic aim of the theory of distributive justice is to say what this intrinsically just distribution is.[iii] What is ultimately at stake in matters of distributive justice, it is suggested, is whether or not a certain intrinsically valuable distributional pattern comes about. Scanlon ’s theory implies that this cannot be right: a distribution, taken as such, cannot be owed, and so cannot be justice. Or at least this follows given the platitude about justice, due to Aristotle, that justice is, by nature, giving each his or her due.[iv] The platitude tells us that to distribute justly is simply to give to each individual what he or she is due or owed, as determined by an independent conception of what this is. According to Scanlon ’s independent conception of “what we owe to each other,” no individual can be owed a distribution across persons, as such. We are at most each owed our respective shares—only what we can reasonably ask for on our own behalf. (shrink)

Drug Safety Communications are used by the Food and Drug Administration to inform health care providers, patients, caregivers, and the general public about safety issues related to FDA-approved drugs. To assess patient knowledge of the messaging contained in DSCs related to the sleep aids zolpidem and eszopiclone, we conducted a large, cross-sectional patient survey of 1,982 commercially insured patients selected by stratified random sampling from the Optum Research Database who had filled at least two prescriptions for either zolpidem or eszopiclone (...) between July 1, 2012 and June 30, 2013. Among the 594 respondents, two-thirds reported hearing generally about drug safety information prior to starting a new drug, with the remaining one-third “rarely” or “never” hearing such information. Providers and pharmacists were primary sources of drug safety information. Two-thirds of zolpidem users and half of eszopiclone users reported having heard about the related DSC messages, ability to accurately identify the major factual messages was limited. Respondents reacted to new drug safety information about their sleep aids by reporting that they would want to learn about alternative ways to help them sleep and seek out more information about the safety of their specific sleeping pill. Opportunities may exist for the FDA to work with providers and pharmacies to help ensure the DSC information is more widely received and is more fully understood by those taking the affected medications. (shrink)

This essay argues that R.G. Collingwood's remarks about genre are implausible, and that they stem, despite their apparent origin in his wider account of art, from his failure to take some of his own most important insights seriously enough. Some possible reasons for that failure are suggested; and it is shown that, once the relevant insights are given their proper weight, Collingwood's account commands the resources from which a plausible story about genre might have been constructed. To this extent, the (...) present essay constitutes a defence of Collingwood's philosophy of art. (shrink)

This special JLME symposium addresses ways that federal policy can incentivize innovation in medical therapeutics and make pharmaceuticals more financially accessible.

In this article, I assess the current state of neuroaesthetics by reviewing 10 recent books on neuroscientific and evolutionary aspects of aesthetic cognition. These books largely continue the main thrust of this genre since its inception. Virtually all are insightful and thought-provoking, though their individual strengths vary. Among them, Shimamura and Palmer's edited book, Aesthetic Science, provides the most useful and balanced interdisciplinary framework, making philosophy and psychology equal partners with neuroscience. This pluralistic mode, dethroning neuroscience from its usual hegemony, (...) seems best poised to address heretofore neglected issues in neuroaesthetics research. I address several dichotomous tensions—high versus low art, the drive for creative innovation versus evolutionarily canalized aesthetic biases, and explicit versus implicit aspects of aesthetic cognition—to identify promising future research directions, which can best be fulfilled though interdisciplinary cooperation and debate, with a continued emphasis on evolutionary theory. (shrink)

The US government supports drug innovation. It is therefore crucial that it distinguish between high-value and low-value innovation in purchasing expensive prescription drugs and medical devices and ensure the continued discovery of transformative drugs and that patient and taxpayer funds are not wasted.

Pullman (2023) raises some reasonable worries about the use of MAiD in Canada and outlines a plausible proposal to require patients who request MAiD but who do not meet the “reasonably foreseeable...