For many decades, researchers have explored the true potential of human achievement. The expertise field has come a long way since the early works of de Groot (1965) and Chase and Simon (1973). Since then, this inquiry has expanded into the areas of music, science, technology, sport, academia and art. Despite the vast amount of research to date, the capability of study methodologies to truly capture the nature of expertise remains questionable. Some considerations include (i) the individual bias in the (...) retrospective recall of developmental activities, (ii) the ability to develop ecologically valid tasks, and (iii) difficulties capturing the influence of confounding factors on expertise. This article proposes that expertise research in electronic sports (esports) presents an opportunity to overcome some of these considerations. Esports involves individuals or teams of players that compete in video game competitions via human-computer interaction. Advantages of applying the expert performance approach in esports include (i) developmental activities are objectively tracked and automatically logged online, (ii) the constraints of representative tasks correspond with the real-world environment of esports performance, and (iii) expertise has emerged without the influence of guided systematic training environments. Therefore, this article argues that esports research provides an ideal opportunity to further advance research on the development and assessment of human expertise. (shrink)

This thesis, titled ‘Across May ’68; Reading friendships in Jacques Derrida’s Dissemination and Glas’, challenges the claims of a ‘political turn’ occurring for only the first time in Jacques Derrida’s writings in the 1980s, with many citing his ordeal in Prague in 1981 as catalysing this turn. While his writings may be thought to become more explicit in the 1980s and 1990s—a turbulent decade that indeed encompassed polemics against and, even within, the coterie of Deconstruction, over the Paul de Man (...) and Martin Heidegger revelations —Politics of Friendship, and Spectres of Marx being examples, this leaves much of his earlier work unconsidered in terms of its impact on Derrida’s later political outlook. The thesis rereads and contextualises two texts, 1972’s Dissemination and 1974’s Glas, in conjunction with a selection of contemporaneous essays, reading these retrospectively through Politics of Friendship and Spectres of Marx, and traces Derrida’s diverging relationships with Philippe Sollers and the journal Tel Quel, against the intense political period in France now known as ‘May 1968’. My thesis reads in chronological order each essay from Dissemination as representing stages of a developing written praxis Derrida will call ‘dissemination’, arguing that, in the context of his relationship with Sollers and Tel Quel, the text Dissemination marks the political hinge in his writings, constitutive of a radical supplementary political praxis that, ultimately, did not finish even with his departure from Tel Quel in early-1972 but continued some years after in his work in providing a vital impetus to the writing of Glas. My thesis provides a socio-historical and political context to Derrida’s philosophy—from the time of his working in tandem with Sollers, through to writing as a supplementary political praxis to Tel Quel following his departure. In ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’. My thesis traces, in the Polis, a link between writing and political friendships and ‘phallogocentrism’. The thesis connects ‘Double Session’ and its discussions of Mallarmé’s ‘mimicry without referent’ to Derrida’s interrogation into then-current modes of philosophico-literary writing; especially those of Tel Quel. The thesis then reads ‘Dissemination’ and its review/rereading of Sollers’ 1968 novel Numbers—which is itself a text informed by the intellectual reactions and reflections to the politicised context of 1960s Paris. Derrida ‘opens’ Numbers, dissipating its ideological fervour for a political community that is inherently homogeneous and closed to the ‘other’, by placing key motifs in the text under chiasma, opening up its writing to the infinite ‘otherness’ of metaphysics. My thesis reads ‘Outwork’ as a discussion of writing that unravels demarcations and limits between inside and out. In doing so, I argue, Dissemination anticipates the multi-surfaces and margins of Glas and its discussion of stratified politics limits. My thesis reads Glas as a culmination and perpetuation of the praxis developed in Dissemination that proposes a political encounter of the ‘other’ based upon distance as well as proximity, and dialogue through its paratextual and symbolic typography. Glas is read as antecedent of a deconstructed political community, an ethics, and a responsibility that gestures an openness to dialogue with Sollers and Tel Quel, while also disproving Derrida’s purported political silence around May 1968. My thesis argues Glas is open to futurity, hopeful for a renewed political encounter, even if this involves a betrayal of the very notion of friendship for the sake of an-other friendship not tied by bonds of political solidarity, and ultimately reactionary aspirations for a shared communitarian project that, inevitably, represses difference. The thesis argues that this period initiates the emergence of a deconstructed politics by Derrida based upon a profound understanding of the structures underpinning the popularist riots—particularly as a re-evaluation of the Marxist and Maoist discussions that were prevalent in the intellectual reactions to the period. (shrink)

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

How far should philosophical accounts of the value and interpretation of art be sensitive to the scientific approaches used by psychologists, sociologists, and evolutionary thinkers? A team of experts urge different answers to this question, and explore how empirical inquiry can shed light on problems traditionally regarded as philosophical.

Musical listening, looking at paintings and literary creation are activities that involve perceptual and cognitive activity and so are of interest to psychologists and other scientists of the mind. What sorts of interest should philosophers of the arts take in scientific approaches to such issues? Opinion currently ranges across a spectrum, with 'take no notice' at one end and 'abandon traditional philosophical methods' at the other. This collection of essays, originating in a Royal Institute of Philosophy conference at the Leeds (...) Art Gallery in 2012, represents many of the most interesting positions along that spectrum. Contributions address issues concerning aesthetic testimony, the processing and appreciation of poetry, the aesthetics of disgust, imagination, genre, evolutionary constraints on art appreciation, creativity, musical cognition and the limitations or productiveness of empirical enquiry for philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Musical listening, looking at paintings and literary creation are activities that involve perceptual and cognitive activity and so are of interest to psychologists and other scientists of the mind. What sorts of interest should philosophers of the arts take in scientific approaches to such issues? Opinion currently ranges across a spectrum, with 'take no notice' at one end and 'abandon traditional philosophical methods' at the other. This collection of essays, originating in a Royal Institute of Philosophy conference at the Leeds (...) Art Gallery in 2012, represents many of the most interesting positions along that spectrum. Contributions address issues concerning aesthetic testimony, the processing and appreciation of poetry, the aesthetics of disgust, imagination, genre, evolutionary constraints on art appreciation, creativity, musical cognition and the limitations or productiveness of empirical enquiry for philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

We believe that the professional responsibility of bioscience and biotechnology professionals includes a social responsibility to contribute to the resolution of ethically fraught policy problems generated by their work. It follows that educators have a professional responsibility to prepare future professionals to discharge this responsibility. This essay discusses two pilot projects in ethics pedagogy focused on particularly challenging policy problems, which we call “fractious problems”. The projects aimed to advance future professionals’ acquisition of “fractious problem navigational” skills, a set of (...) skills designed to enable broad and deep understanding of fractious problems and the design of good policy resolutions for them. A secondary objective was to enhance future professionals’ motivation to apply these skills to help their communities resolve these problems. The projects employed “problem based learning” courses to advance these learning objectives. A new assessment instrument, “Skills for Science/Engineering Ethics Test”, was designed and administered to measure the success of the courses in doing so. This essay first discusses the rationale for the pilot projects, and then describes the design of the pilot courses and presents the results of our assessment using SkillSET in the first pilot project and the revised SkillSET 2.0 in the second pilot project. The essay concludes with discussion of observations and results. (shrink)

Population-level biomedical research offers new opportunities to improve population health, but also raises new challenges to traditional systems of research governance and ethical oversight. Partly in response to these challenges, various models of public involvement in research are being introduced. Yet, the ways in which public involvement should meet governance challenges are not well understood. We conducted a qualitative study with 36 experts and stakeholders using the World Café method to identify key governance challenges and explore how public involvement can (...) meet these challenges. This brief report discusses four cross-cutting themes from the study: the need to move beyond individual consent; issues in benefit and data sharing; the challenge of delineating and understanding publics; and the goal of clarifying justifications for public involvement. The report aims to provide a starting point for making sense of the relationship between public involvement and the governance of population-level biomedical research, showing connections, potential solutions and issues arising at their intersection. We suggest that, in population-level biomedical research, there is a pressing need for a shift away from conventional governance frameworks focused on the individual and towards a focus on collectives, as well as to foreground ethical issues around social justice and develop ways to address cultural diversity, value pluralism and competing stakeholder interests. There are many unresolved questions around how this shift could be realised, but these unresolved questions should form the basis for developing justificatory accounts and frameworks for suitable collective models of public involvement in population-level biomedical research governance. (shrink)

The authors in this edited volume reflect on their experiences with culturally relevant pedagogy-as students, as teachers, as researchers-and how these experiences were often at odds with their backgrounds and/or expectations.

This essay updates Aaron Smuts', 2009 Philosophy Compass piece, “Art and Negative Affect” in light of recent work on the topic. The “paradox of painful art” is the general problem of how it is possible to enjoy or value experiences of art that involve painful emotions. It encompasses both the paradox of tragedy and the paradox of horror. Section 2 lays out a taxonomy of solutions to the paradox of painful art and argues that we should opt for a (...) pluralistic approach rather than seeking a unified solution. Section 3 surveys recent work on the topic, with an emphasis on views holding that it is possible for an experience of art to be pleasant partly in virtue of involving painful emotion. Section 4 suggests a range of phenomena that are not usually considered under the umbrella of the paradox of painful art but that offer promising directions for further research. (shrink)

This study examines two recent cases of ethical responses to crisis management; the 1995 fire at Malden Mills and Aaron Feuerstein''s response, and a 1998 fire at Cole Hardwoods, followed by the response of CEO Milt Cole. The authors describe these crises, the responses of Feuerstein and Cole, their motivations and the impact on crisis stakeholders using the principles of virtue ethics and effective crisis management. What emerges is set of post-crisis virtues grounded in values of corporate social responsibility (...) and entrepreneurial ethics. These include virtues of immediacy of response, supportiveness of victims, and rebuilding and renewal. (shrink)

The four case studies below were designed as a workshop in a research setting. They could also be used as a lesson plan for college students. The material is divided into four case studies. One can use any of the case studies independently. One can change the order in which the case studies are used. If you want to share with me how you plan to use these case studies, communicate to me at [email protected] • Case 1: Does the Bible (...) require that marriage be limited to one man and one woman? • Case 2: Matthew Vines, a fervent believer wrestling with loneliness • Case 3: Does the Bible support the contention that marriage rules never change? • Case 4: The Emergence and Disappearance of Levirate Marriages . (shrink)

This paper presents the data gathering of Matthew Fontine Maury at the U.S. Naval Observatory as pushing an epistemic boundary outside traditional laboratory walls. Maury's use and control of civilian navigators explicates the development of an astronomic epistemology deeply embedded in nineteenth century American society. In conclusion, following the movement of epistemic boundaries is offered as a guide to crucial moments in the development of a multifaceted modernity.

According to Louis Sass, Josef Parnas, and Dan Zahavi (2011), the account of current developments in "phenomenological clinical neuroscience" offered by Aaron Mishara (2007) is "not only confusing but highly inaccurate." Their critique is harsh, but I can find nothing to disagree with. Mishara's distinction between "neo-phenomenology" and "existential phenomenology" does not apply to current work in the field; I do not recognize the two camps he describes. Neither do I find it helpful to distinguish two separate historical traditions (...) in phenomenological psychiatry. As for allegedly conflicting phenomenological claims, Sass, Parnas, and Zahavi rightly point out that an emphasis on involuntary hyperreflexivity is .. (shrink)

In this paper I critically evaluate the Devil Simulation Argument for cognitive immoralism—the position that moral flaws with a work of art can be cognitively virtuous, and thereby artistically valuable. I focus on Matthew Kieran's version of the argument. Kieran holds that by simulating the attitudes of fictional devils we can come to gain important moral insights. In response, I argue that we have no reason to believe that we can effectively adopt immoral attitudes, that any successful narrative artworks ask (...) us to do so, or that it would be an effective means of moral instructions. (shrink)

"Featuring seventeen original essays on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence by some of the most prominent AI scientists and academic philosophers today, this volume represents the state-of-the-art thinking in this fast-growing field and highlights some of the central themes in AI and morality such as how to build ethics into AI, how to address mass unemployment as a result of automation, how to avoiding designing AI systems that perpetuate existing biases, and how to determine whether an AI is conscious. As (...) AI technologies progress, questions about the ethics of AI, in both the near-future and the long-term, become more pressing than ever. Should a self-driving car prioritize the lives of the passengers over the lives of pedestrians? Should we as a society develop autonomous weapon systems that are capable of identifying and attacking a target without human intervention? What happens when AIs become smarter and more capable than us? Could they have greater than human moral status? Can we prevent superintelligent AIs from harming us or causing our extinction? At a critical time in this fast-moving debate, thirty leading academics and researchers at the forefront of AI technology development come together to explore these existential questions, including Aaron James, Allan Dafoe, Andrea Loreggia, Andrew Critch, Azim Shariff, Carrick Flynn, Cathy O'Neil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Eric Schwitzgebel, Frances Kamm, Francesca Rossi, Hanna Gunn, Iyad Rahwan, Jessica Taylor, JF Bonnefon, K. Brent Venable, Kate Devlin, Mara Garza, Nicholas Mattei, Nick Bostrom, Patrick LaVictoire, Peter Asaro, Peter Railton, S. Matthew Liao, Shannon Vallor, Stephen Wolfram, Steve Petersen, Stuart Russell, Susan Schneider, Wendell Wallach "--. (shrink)

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)

In this article, I shall contend that Rawlsian public reason liberalism (PRL) is in tension with non-anthropocentric environmentalism. I will argue that many reasonable citizens reject non-anthropocentric values, and PRL cannot allow them to be used as the justification for ecological policies. I will analyse attempts to argue that PRL can incorporate non-anthropocentric ideas. I shall consider the view, deployed by theorists such as Derek Bell and Mark A. Michael, that PRL can make a distinction between constitutional essentials and non-essentials, (...) and therefore ecocentric values can be employed when only non-essentials are at stake. I will also consider Simon Hailwood’s argument that PRL can incorporate concern for nature based on its ‘otherness’. I shall conclude that both positions fail to rebut the claim that PRL excludes non-anthropocentric viewpoints. I will consider the question of whether PRL’s exclusion of non-anthropocentric ethics is a problem, and I shall show that appealing to purely anthropocentric arguments leads to a variety of unpalatable conclusions. I will suggest that comprehensive liberalism can include non-anthropocentric concerns, and hence is superior from an environmental perspective. (shrink)

Lucas Matthews and I substantially revised my SEP entry on Heritability. This version includes discussion of the missing heritability problem and other issues that arise from the use of Genome Wide Association Studies by Behavioral Geneticists.

This chapter contains section titled: Further Reading Notes.

This chapter contains section titled: Standard Analysis First Alternative Analysis Second Alternative Analysis Third Alternative Analysis of Lying Fourth Alternative Analysis Further Reading.

This chapter contains section titled: Further Reading Notes.

This chapter contains section titled: Argument A Argument B Argument C Further Reading Notes.

This chapter contains section titled: Further Reading Notes.

If the global economy seems unfair, how should we understand what a fair global economy would be? What ideas of fairness, if any, apply, and what significance do they have for policy and law? Working within the social contract tradition, this book argues that fairness is best seen as a kind of equity in practice.

In this introduction we set out some salient themes that will help structure understanding of a complex set of intersecting issues discussed in this special issue on the work of Marc Lewis: conceptual foundations of the disease model, tolerating the disease model given socio-political environments, and A third wave: refining conceptualization of addiction in the light of Lewis’s model.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reaching the Age of Majority:The Life Trajectory of the CIHR Institute of AgingYves Joanette, Anne Martin-Matthews, Réjean Hebert, and Joanne GoldbergThe Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) was created in 2001 under the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Act S.C. 2000, c. 6 (Government of Canada, 2000). The creation of CIHR was in follow-up to the Canadian Medical Research Council (MRC) as well as to the National Health (...) Research and Development Program of Health Canada that, up until that point in time, had supported the breadth of health research in Canada. Two important characteristics of CIHR were crucial for the development of research on aging. The first was that CIHR, unlike MRC, was entrusted with the challenge of supporting the whole spectrum of health research, from the basic biomedical perspective to clinical research, research on health services and policies as well as social aspects of health research, not to mention research on ethics and other perspectives (including the science of research). The second characteristic of the nascent CIHR that impacted the community of research on aging was the decision that a small part of the overall CIHR budget would be used to address priority-driven questions or topics (strategic competitions), while the majority of the budget would be invested in grants and awards programs that would be investigator-initiated, as in the time of the MRC (open competition). Since its inception, CIHR has included 13 institutes that are central to the priority-driven actions. Institutes not only play an important convener role within their communities and among their stakeholders, but they are also expected to listen to the needs, gaps and opportunities in their area and to introduce initiatives---most of the time involving more than one Institute---in order to tackle these needs and gaps and to seize upon the opportunities.The Institute of Aging was introduced at the same time as the other 12 Institutes and it is clear that many challenges were awaiting the new Institute since, at that time, research on aging was still in its early years. This article is about the trajectory of the CIHR Institute of Aging in its first 18 years of existence. Having now reached an age that is either the age of majority or quite close to it, it is important to be able to provide a reflection on the evolution of the priorities over this period, while also taking a peek at some of the priorities that will surely come in the near future.The Early Years (2001-2004)The founding Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging was Dr. Réjean Hébert. A well-known and prolific [End Page 1] geriatrician and researcher, Dr. Hébert was the perfect person to launch the Institute. One of his first actions was, in fact, to harmonize the French and English names of the Institute. In French, the name of the Institute focused on Aging (Institut du vieillissement) while, in English, the name of the Institute focused on Healthy Aging. The CIHR Institute of Healthy Aging thus became the CIHR Institute of Aging in all versions of its documentation. But above and beyond this important name change, the real work of Dr. Hebert, accompanied by the first Institute Advisory Board1, chaired by Prof. Dorothy Pringle, was to identify the gaps, the needs and the opportunities. After a rigorous process came the first Strategic Plan of the CIHR Institute of Aging, which was clearly influenced by Dr. Réjean Hébert's vision of the aging population as an opportunity, instead of a catastrophe, for our society that comes, of course, with its own challenges. Dr. Hébert left CIHR during his first mandate as he was called upon to become the Dean of his Faculty, and then went on to become the first CIHR Scientific Director to sit as a Minister of Health and Social Services in the Québec Government. The main outcomes of Dr. Hebert's years (2001-2004) can be summarized as follows2.• Organizing many workshops and meetings to ensure that the Institute of Aging would become the premier national convener for research on aging, bridging between disciplines... (shrink)

A strong case has been made for the role and value of mechanistic explanation in neuroscience and molecular biology. A similar demonstration in other domains of scientific investigation, however, remains an important challenge of scope for the new mechanists. This article helps answer that challenge by demonstrating one valuable role mechanisms play in phylogenetics. Using the transition/transversion rate parameter as a case example, this article argues that models embedded with mechanisms produce stronger phylogenetic tree hypotheses, as measured by maximum likelihood (...) logL values. Two important implications for the new mechanistic account of explanation are considered. (shrink)

This book was born out of two interdisciplinary seminars held in 2014. The first one was the Climate Ethics and Climate Economics workshop in April adjoined as part of the European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions 2014 in Salamanca. Spurred on by the invigorating discussions, the participants decided to put together more workshops, with Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics following in Helsinki in November that same year. Without the organisers of these workshops the collaborators of this book would not (...) have come together: Matthew Rendall, Dominic Roser, Sade Hormio, Simo Kyllonen, Aaron Maltais and Joanna Burch-Brown. We would also like to thank all the participants at the workshops for making them so enjoyable and worthwhile. The Helsinki workshop that this book was named after was organized as part of the Climate Ethics and Economics project, led by Aki Lehtinen and funded by the University of Helsinki. The three-year project is based at the Social and Moral Philosophy discipline in the Department of Political and Economic Studies. The workshop itself was made possible by funding from the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, which also helped to host the event. (shrink)

This essay constructs a picture of the meaning of life based on De Anima 2. 2-4. It shows that there are organisms that preserve their form through the exercise of identifiable functions. For an individual to be a short, living thing is for it to be one of these naturally species-preserving organisms. For an individual living thing to be actually living is for it to be able to perform one of the psychic or living functions appropriate to its species.