THEODOR GOMPERZ AND JOHN STUART MILL The subject of this essay is the little known episode of an unusual friendship. To the writer its fascination lies as ...

In this paper we propose to argue for two claims. The first is that a sizeable group of epistemological projects – a group which includes much of what has been done in epistemology in the analytic tradition – would be seriously undermined if one or more of a cluster of empirical hypotheses about epistemic intuitions turns out to be true. The basis for this claim will be set out in Section 2. The second claim is that, while the jury is (...) still out, there is now a substantial body of evidence suggesting that some of those empirical hypotheses are true. Much of this evidence derives from an ongoing series of experimental studies of epistemic intuitions that we have been conducting. A preliminary report on these studies will be presented in Section 3. In light of these studies, we think it is incumbent on those who pursue the epistemological projects in question to either explain why the truth of the hypotheses does not undermine their projects, or to say why, in light of the evidence we will present, they nonetheless assume that the hypotheses are false. In Section 4, which is devoted to Objections and Replies, we’ll consider some of the ways in which defenders of the projects we are criticizing might reply to our challenge. Our goal, in all of this, is not to offer a conclusive argument demonstrating that the epistemological projects we will be criticizing are untenable. Rather, our aim is to shift the burden of argument. (shrink)

Ethical concerns about randomising persons to a no-treatment arm in the context of Ebola epidemic led to consideration of alternative designs. The stepped wedge design, in which participants or clusters are randomised to receive an intervention at different time points, gained popularity. Common arguments in favour of using this design are when an intervention is likely to do more good than harm, all participants should receive the experimental intervention at some time point during the study and the design might be (...) preferable for practical reasons. We examine these assumptions when considering Ebola vaccine research. First, based on the claim that a stepped wedge design is indicated when it is likely that the intervention will do more good than harm, we reviewed published and ongoing SW trials to explore previous use of this design to test experimental drugs or vaccines, and found that SW design has never been used for trials of experimental drugs or vaccines. Given that Ebola vaccines were all experimental with no prior efficacy data, the use of a stepped wedge design would have been unprecedented. Second, we show that it is rarely true that all participants receive the intervention in SW studies, but rather, depending on certain design features, all clusters receive the intervention. Third, we explore whether the SW design is appealing for feasibility reasons and point out that there is significant complexity. In the setting of the Ebola epidemic, spatiotemporal variation may have posed problematic challenges to a stepped wedge design for vaccine research. Finally, we propose a set of points to consider for scientific reviewers and ethics committees regarding proposals for SW designs. (shrink)

The nature of the relationship between the two types of meiotic recombination outcomes, exchange (crossing‐over) and simple gene conversion, has been debated for years. I here propose that these two types of events are not necessarily causally related and hypothesize that the primary role of events detected as simple gene conversion is in the recognition of homology during synapsis.

Although radical forms of relativism are perhaps beyond the epistemological pale, I argue here that a more moderate form may be plausible, and articulate the conditions under which moderate epistemic relativism could well serve our epistemic goals. In particular, as a result of our limitations as human cognizers, we find ourselves needing to investigate the dappled and difficult world by means of competing communities of highly specialized researchers. We would do well, I argue, to admit of the existence of unresolvable (...) disputes between such communities, but only so long as there is a sufficient amount of fruitful exchange between them as well. I close with some speculation about when it is or is not legitimate to make an “appeal to discipline”: responding to another’s argument by saying something like, “we should do it this way, because we are philosophers (/linguists/psychologists/…), and that’s just what we do”. (shrink)

In Italy, consent for health treatment, aside from being an ethical and deontological obligation, constitutes an essential requirement for any medical treatment according to articles 13 and 32 of the National Constitution and also in accordance with the Council of Europe's ‘Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine’. An essential requirement for the validity of consent is that clear, exhaustive and adequate information be provided to the patient himself: the practice of informed consent is a communicative relationship in which the patient (...) can express doubts, perplexities and clarification requests to the dentist. Furthermore, dental treatment has specific peculiarities: the relationship between dentistry and aesthetics, the concomitant presence of pathologies requiring different treatments, the elongated care process and the establishment of a trustworthy relationship and familiarity with the patient represent important aspects in the configuration of the dentist-patient relationship and in the process of acquiring informed consent. The dentist must offer correct information on diagnosis, prognosis, the therapeutic perspective and the likely consequences of therapy, alternative therapy and refusal of therapy, as well as eventual commitments for the period after treatment. Particular consideration must be given to minors and patients of unsound mind: the dentist's approach to these patients needs to be clear and appropriate to the person's age and understanding ability, even if the decisional power for sanitary treatment may be in the hands of a third person. (shrink)

A partir da implantação da República, surgiu um movimento de intelectuais que procurou congregar e dinamizar num esforço comum os pensadores de várias áreas do conhecimento, através da revista A Águia, tendo em vista uma nova ordem moral e cívica dentro do ideal democrático. Procurámos dar a conhecer as linhas principais que consubstanciaram o espaço aberto pela revista, as influências recebidas e os debates que a animaram.

This paper investigates connections between procreative ethics and the ethics of suicide and euthanasia. While there are good reasons for distinguishing between lives worth starting and lives worth continuing, I argue that those reasons provide no reason for denying that there is a relationship between procreative and end of life ethics. Regarding euthanasia/assisted suicide, we might think it too demanding to ask parents to help euthanize their terminally ill, suffering child, but had the parents not procreated, thereby exposing their child (...) to life's risks, their child wouldn't need euthanizing. If you need help killing yourself, shouldn't your parents, who got you into life in the first place – without your consent – help you out of it? Yet knowing that your parents would help you kill yourself may increase your desire to die. A conundrum. Regarding suicide, the fact that we are forced into life should bolster the right to suicide, even for reasons that others might find wanting. The ways in which we are brought into life have moral implications for the ways in which we are entitled to get out of it. (shrink)

Facial information is a powerful channel for human-to-human communication. Characteristically, faces can be defined as biological objects that are four-dimensional (4D) patterns, whereby they have concurrently a spatial structure as well as temporal dynamics. The spatial characteristics of facial objects possess three dimensions (3D), namely breadth, height and importantly, depth. The temporal properties of facial objects are defined by how a 3D facial structure evolves dynamically over time; where time is referred to as the fourth dimension (4D). Our entire perspective (...) of another’s face, whether it be social, affective or cognitive perceptions, is therefore built on a combination of 3D and 4D visual cues. Counterintuitively, over the past few decades of experimental research in psychology, facial stimuli have largely been presented to participants as a spatial pattern that has been flattened into two dimensions (2D), while remaining largely static. The following review aims to advance and update facial researchers, on the recent revolution in computer-generated, realistic 4D facial models produced from real-life human subjects. We delve in-depth to summarize recent studies which have utilized facial stimuli that possess 3D structural cues (geometry and depth) and 4D temporal cues (3D structure + dynamic viewpoint and movement). In sum, we have found that higher-order perceptions such as identity, gender, ethnicity, emotion and personality, are critically influenced by the 4D characteristics embedded within natural human faces. In future, it is recommended that facial stimuli incorporate the 4D space-time perspective with the proposed time-resolved methods. (shrink)

The processing of sensitive information in the health field is subject to rigorous standards that guarantee the protection of information confidentiality. Recently, the Italian Data Protection Authority (Garante per la Protezione dei Dati Personali) stated their formal opinion on a standard procedure in dental offices involving the submission of a questionnaire that includes the patient's health status. HIV infection status is included on the form. The Authority has stated that all health data collection must be in accordance with the current (...) Italian normative framework for personal data protection and respect the patient's freedom. This freedom allows the patient to decide, in a conscious and responsible way, whether to share health information with health personnel without experiencing any prejudice in the provision of healthcare requested. Moreover, data collection must be relevant and cannot exceed the principles of treatment goals with reference to the specific care of the concerned person. However, the need for recording information regarding HIV infection at the first appointment, regardless of the clinical intervention or therapeutic plan that needs to be conducted, should not alter the standard protection measures of the healthcare staff. In fact, these measures are adopted for every patient. (shrink)

Recently, an increasing number of researchers in different parts of the world have been studying childhood from a point of view that highlights children who are considered “peripheral” – far from the ideal model associated with Western countries. We began with the intention of getting to know African children in Angola, informed by the belief that the preservation of languages is important in maintaining social knowledge and traditions. This text describes a preliminary study carried out in a culturally rich location (...) with strong traditions, but which is also marked by processes of cultural denial and devaluation. According to Ndombele and Timbane (2020), most Angolan children learn Portuguese at age seven, when they start school, especially in rural areas. This fact hinders the literacy learning process, and presents the risk of the disappearance of some native languages. Many schools teach children only in Portuguese. When visiting a school in Ganda, a rural area of Benguela, we found a group of children who, primarily through the games they played, keep the Umbundu language alive, and with that the identity and culture of their ancestors. Building on this, these children and their teachers created a syllable association game based on the music sung as they played. The game had two modalities - in the Umbundu language and in the Portuguese language – and functioned as a bilingual pedagogical tool. In the initial moment of offering the game for testing with the children, it was discovered that by singing the song of the game and discussing the possible solutions by themselves, they were able to make correct associations of the syllables in Umbundu, which they then translated into Portuguese. Thus, a resource was created together with the teachers, which, in addition to valuing the native language of the population, allowed the use of children's knowledge to create a didactic resource. In addition, it was possible to encounter the concept of childhood in the current world, deconstructing the idea of a single and ideal model, especially in light of those children who bring habits from home that do not always harmonize with the school routine, and often clash with Euro/Western model, which is based on age separation of classes as a requirement to guarantee learning, and tend to devalue other exchanges that help children learn. (shrink)

It has been standard philosophical practice in analytic philosophy to employ intuitions generated in response to thought-experiments as evidence in the evaluation of philosophical claims. In part as a response to this practice, an exciting new movement—experimental philosophy—has recently emerged. This movement is unified behind both a common methodology and a common aim: the application of methods of experimental psychology to the study of the nature of intuitions. In this paper, we will introduce two different views concerning the relationship that (...) holds between experimental philosophy and the future of standard philosophical practice (what we call, the proper foundation view and the restrictionist view), discuss some of the more interesting and important results obtained by proponents of both views, and examine the pressure these results put on analytic philosophers to reform standard philosophical practice. We will also defend experimental philosophy from some recent objections, suggest future directions for work in experimental philosophy, and suggest what future lines of epistemological response might be available to those wishing to defend analytic epistemology from the challenges posed by experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Our interest in this paper is to drive a wedge of contention between two different programs that fall under the umbrella of “experimental philosophy”. In particular, we argue that experimental philosophy’s “negative program” presents almost as significant a challenge to its “positive program” as it does to more traditional analytic philosophy.

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries worldwide have put lockdowns in place to prevent the virus from spreading. Evidence shows that lockdown measures can affect mental health; it is, therefore, important to identify the psychological characteristics making individuals more vulnerable. The present study aimed, first, to identify, through a cluster analysis, the psychological attributes that characterize individuals with similar psychological responses to the COVID-19 home confinement; second, to investigate whether different psychological characteristics, such as personality traits, alexithymia, and resilience, specifically (...) influence anxiety, stress, and depression, depending on the scope of the confinement. We analyzed data from 393 participants who completed an online survey on their experiences during two different phases of the Italian lockdown, characterized by more or less strict measures of confinement. Two clusters were identified which included participants reporting a better and worse emotional response to the lockdown, respectively. Individuals in the −ER group showed lower emotional stability, resilience, and higher alexithymia. Moreover, even if lifting part of the restrictions decreased psychological distress among all participants, a reduction in perceived stress was observed only among individuals with high resilience. Finally, personality traits, alexithymia, and resilience differently affected depression, anxiety, and stress. Our results suggest that different psychological interventions should be planned depending on the context: mental health professionals should focus on enhancing the individuals’ coping strategies to alleviate stress in emergencies, while long-term intervention aiming at alleviating anxiety and depressive symptoms should focus on alexithymic tendencies and personality constructs. (shrink)

Aēr in Homer has rarely been discussed; the few studies that do exist focus on the word's semantics and scope of reference. This article proposes that we focus instead on how aēr works and what aēr does, both to characters within the Iliad and the Odyssey and, especially, for the poet responsible for composing them. First, I argue that aēr offers the poet a stratagem for navigating complex narrative demands and that it is best understood primarily in terms of the (...) phenomenological effects it produces on Homeric characters. Next, I consider the implications of this argument for discussions of Homeric things and objects, particularly those influenced by New Materialism. Finally, I explore the consequences of this argument for our understanding of the Presocratic thinker most associated with aēr, Anaximenes. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that Parmenides invented extended deductive argumentation and the practice of demonstration, a transformative event in the history of thought. But how did he manage this seminal accomplishment? In this book, Benjamin Folit-Weinberg finally provides an answer. At the heart of this story is the image of the hodos, the road and the journey. Brilliantly deploying the tools and insights of literary criticism, conceptual history, and archaeology, Folit-Weinberg illuminates how Parmenides adopts and adapts this image (...) from Homer, especially the Odyssey, forging from it his pioneering intellectual approaches. Reinserting Parmenides into the physical world and poetic culture of archaic Greece, Folit-Weinberg reveals both how deeply traditional and how radical was Parmenides' new way of thinking and speaking. By taking this first step toward providing a history of the concept method, this volume uncovers the genealogy of philosophy in poetry and poetic imagery. (shrink)

There are two ways of understanding experimental philosophy's process of appealing to intuitions as evidence for or against philosophical claims: the positive and negative programs. This chapter deals with how the positivist method of conceptual analysis is affected by the results of the negative program. It begins by describing direct extramentalism, semantic mentalism, conceptual mentalism, and mechanist mentalism, all of which argue that intuitions are credible sources of evidence and will therefore be shared. The negative program challenges this view by (...) questioning if there can be in fact a shared intuition about a specific hypothetical case, as conflicting intuitions are as likely to arise. The chapter then discusses other issues raised by the negativists such as the limits of surveys and the proper domain problem. (shrink)

Throughout the 20th century, an enormous amount of intellectual fuel was spent debating the merits of a class of skeptical arguments which purport to show that knowledge of the external world is not possible. These arguments, whose origins can be traced back to Descartes, played an important role in the work of some of the leading philosophers of the 20th century, including Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, and they continue to engage the interest of contemporary philosophers. (e.g., Cohen 1999, DeRose 1995, (...) Hill 1996, Klein 1981, Lewis 1996, McGinn 1993, Nozick 1981, Schiffer 1996, Unger 1975, Williams 1996) Typically, these arguments make use of one or more premises which the philosophers proposing them take to be intuitively obvious. Beyond an appeal to intuition, little or no defense is offered, and in many cases it is hard to see what else could be said in support of these premises. A number of authors have suggested that the intuitions undergirding these skeptical arguments are universal – shared by everyone (or almost everyone) who thinks reflectively about knowledge. In this paper we will offer some evidence indicating that they are far from universal. Rather, the evidence suggests that many of the intuitions epistemologists invoke vary with the cultural background, socioeconomic status and educational background of the person offering the intuition. And this, we will argue, is bad news for the skeptical arguments that rely on those intuitions. The evidence may also be bad news for skepticism itself – not because it shows that skepticism is false, but rather because, if we accept one prominent account of the link between epistemic intuitions and epistemic concepts, it indicates that skepticism may be much less interesting and much less worrisome than philosophers have taken it to be. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to map the relationship between the main words that comprise the Homeric lexicon of roads, journeys, paths and travel. The central task is to explore the relationship between the words hodos and keleuthos; along the way, the article will also address other terms that appear less frequently, such as atarp(it)os and poros. The article first teases out a difference in sense between keleuthos in the singular and in the plural. The discussion of keleuthos provides (...) a key distinction, namely between ‘object-concepts’ and ‘activity-concepts’, that proves valuable in discussing different senses of the word hodos. Rather than differentiating the words keleuthos and hodos as others have suggested, however, this distinction should be used to differentiate domains of meaning within each word. The result will be what might be conceived of as a four-part grid, with the two words hodos and keleuthos split into two distinct parts along the ‘activity-concept’/‘object-concept’ axis. Finally, concepts drawn from discussions of verbal aspect and philosophy of action are deployed heuristically to develop further the analysis of this semantic field. (shrink)

The liar paradox is widely conceived as a problem for logic and semantics. On the basis of empirical studies presented here, we suggest that there is an underappreciated psychological dimension to the liar paradox and related problems, conceived as a problem for human thinkers. Specific findings suggest that how one interprets the liar sentence and similar paradoxes can vary in relation to one’s capacity for logical and reflective thought, acceptance of certain logical principles, and degree of philosophical training, but also (...) as a function of factors such as religious belief, gender, and whether the problem is treated as theoretical or practical. Though preliminary, these findings suggest that one reason the liar paradox resists a final resolution is that it engages both aspects described by so-called dual process accounts of human cognition. (shrink)

The rapidly expanding universe of information, media, and learning experiences available through digital technology is creating unique opportunities and vulnerabilities for children and adolescents. These issues are particularly salient during the developmental window at the transition from childhood into adolescence. This period of early adolescence is a time of formative social and emotional learning experiences that can shape identity development in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Increasingly, many of these foundational learning experiences are occurring in on-line digital environments. These expanding (...) vulnerabilities and opportunities are being further amplified for young adolescents growing up in low resourced settings around the world. Cultural and contextual factors influence access, use, and appropriation of digital technology. Further, neurobehavioral changes associated with the onset of puberty often coincide with entry into social media and more autonomous use of technology. In low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs), disparities in access, use, and appropriation of digital media can amplify prevailing economic gaps, and compound gender inequalities during early adolescence. In LMICs, adolescents are often the early adopters of mobile technology and social media platforms. While the impact of social media on the well-being, particularly mental health, of young adolescents has been a focus of research in high-income countries (HICs), much less is known about the impacts of social media use on young adolescents in LMICs. In this paper, we review what is known about the interaction between digital media and early adolescent development. We highlight crucial gaps in the evidence in LMICs; and describe some hypotheses and areas for future research to address these compelling issues. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider two different attempts to make an end run around the experimentalist challenge to the armchair use of intuitions: one due to Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen, contending that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions, but rather to arguments, in canonical philosophical texts; the other due to Joshua Knobe, arguing that intuitions are so stable that there is in fact no empirical basis for the experimentalist challenge in the first place. We show that a closer attention (...) to philosophical practices reveal, in turn, that we cannot make sense of these philosophical texts as arguments all the way down; and that our methods are so sensitive to error that even a modest amount of instability is enough to raise deep methodological concerns. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions often involve appeals to verdicts about particular cases, sometimes actual, more often hypothetical, and usually with little or no substantive argument in their defense. Philosophers — on both sides of debates over the standing of this practice — have often called the basis for such appeals ‘intuitions’. But, what might such ‘intuitions’ be, such that they could legitimately serve these purposes? Answers vary, ranging from ‘thin’ conceptions that identify intuitions as merely instances of some fairly generic and epistemologically (...) uncontroversial category of mental states or episodes to ‘thick’ conceptions that add to this thin base certain semantic, phenomenological, etiological, or methodological conditions. As this chapter discusses, thick conceptions turn out to have their own methodological problems; some may even leave philosophers in the methodologically untenable position of being unable to determine when anyone is doing philosophy correctly. (shrink)

Controversies over the innateness of cognitive processes, mechanisms, and structures play a persistent role in driving research in philosophy as well as the cognitive sciences, but the appropriate way to understand the category of the innate remains subject to dispute. One venerable approach in philosophy and cognitive science merely contrasts innate features with those that are learned. In fact, Jerry Fodor has recently suggested that this remains our best handle on innateness.

Teleological theories of reason and value, upon which all reasons are fundamentally reasons to realize states of affairs that are in some respect best, cannot account for the intuition that victims in non-identity cases have been wronged. Many philosophers, however, reject such theories in favor of alternatives that recognize fundamentally non-teleological reasons, second-personal reasons that reflect a moral significance each person has that is not grounded in the teleologist’s appeal to outcomes. Such deontological accounts appear to be better positioned to (...) identify the wrong committed against non-identity victims because a person wrongs another on such accounts if she violates his second-personal claims -- overall benefit to victims presents no obstacle to the identification of second-personal wrongdoing. Derek Parfit argues that non-identity is a problem for these deontological theories as well because the alleged victims are properly understood as consenting to the action in question, thereby waiving any such second-personal claim. But his arguments misrepresent the role of consent on such theories by articulating it through appeal to the very teleological theory of reasons that their advocates dismiss as inadequate. Properly understood, Parfit’s appeal to consent understood as retroactive endorsement only provides the answer on such deontological accounts to the question of whether, given that the non-identity victim is second-personally wronged, he is nonetheless better off existing. Indeed, it becomes clear that it is teleological theories for which non-identity poses a particular problem: they cannot -- while their deontological counterparts can – account for the intuition that non-identity victims have been wronged. (shrink)

Relational reasoning is a complex form of human cognition involving the evaluation of relations between mental representations of information. Prior studies have modified stimulus properties of relational reasoning problems and examined differences in difficulty between different problem types. While subsets of these stimulus properties have been addressed in separate studies, there has not been a comprehensive study, to our knowledge, which investigates all of these properties in the same set of stimuli. This investigative gap has resulted in different findings across (...) studies which vary in task design, making it challenging to determine what stimulus properties make relational reasoning—and the putative formation of mental models underlying reasoning—difficult. In this article, we present the Multidimensional Relational Reasoning Task, a task which systematically varied an array of stimulus properties within a single set of relational reasoning problems. Using a mixed-effects framework, we demonstrate that reasoning problems containing a greater number of the premises as well as multidimensional relations led to greater task difficulty. The MRRT has been made publicly available for use in future research, along with normative data regarding the relative difficulty of each problem. (shrink)