To a large extent, the evidential base of claims in the philosophy of science has switched from thought experiments to case studies. We argue that abandoning thought experiments was a wrong turn, since they can effectively complement case studies. We make our argument via an analogy with the relationship between experiments and observations within science. Just as experiments and ‘natural’ observations can together evidence claims in science, each mitigating the downsides of the other, so too can thought experiments and case (...) studies be mutually supporting. After presenting the main argument, we look at potential concerns about thought experiments, suggesting that a judiciously applied mixed-methods approach can overcome them. (shrink)

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = (...) 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries. (shrink)

Focused on the material practices of making insect specimens, I explore how shifting concepts of potential are intricately crafted on the lab bench. Different types of time—from personal histories to imagined futures—are created and entangled as butterflies are made into specimens. Transforming a butterfly into a scientific tool does not merely transform the butterfly, I suggest, but also reciprocally folds back to transform the scientist who makes it. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with scientists in the labs and workrooms at the (...) Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC and the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, California, I follow butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera) as they are collected, euthanized, pinned, genetically sampled for rewilding projects, such as reviving a Californian sand dune ecology, and frozen in biobanks for as-yet-unknown future uses. Through a comparative study of practices at these two sites, I examine how a butterfly can contain multiple types of potential: manifesting its inherent potential as it transforms from caterpillar to butterfly, the plasticity of the butterfly body as it is crafted into a scientific specimen, and the potential of that specimen to be used as a site for extracting genomic data. Perceptions of time, salvation, loss, and care emerge as specimens are prepared, sampled, and reimagined as solutions for recreating lost ecologies. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in issues about the value of knowledge and the values informing epistemic appraisal. Is knowledge more valuable that merely true belief or even justified true belief? Is truth the central value informing epistemic appraisal or do other values enter the picture? Epistemic Value is a collection of previously unpublished articles on such issues by leading philosophers in the field. It will stimulate discussion of the nature of knowledge and of directions that might be (...) taken by the theory of knowledge. The contributors are Jason Baehr, Michael Brady, Berit Brogaard, Michael DePaul, Pascal Engel, Catherine Elgin, Alvin Goldman, John Greco, Stephen Grimm, Ward Jones, Martin Kusch, Jonathan Kvanvig, Michael Lynch, Erik Olsson, Wayne Riggs and Matthew Weiner. (shrink)

Louise Brown's birth in 1978 heralded a new era not just in reproductive technology, but in the relationship between science, cells, and society. For the first time, human embryos could be created, selected, studied, manipulated, frozen, altered, or destroyed, outside the human body. But with this possibility came a plethora of ethical questions. Is it acceptable to destroy a human embryo for the purpose of research? Or to create an embryo with the specific purpose of destroying it for research? In (...) an attempt to construct ethical and legal frameworks for the new era of cellular reprogramming, legislators and ethicists have tried to distinguish between different kinds of biological entity. We treat cells differently depending on whether they are human or animal, somatic cells or gametes, and on whether they are embryos or not. But this approach to the ethics of cellular reprogramming is doomed to failure for the simple reason that cellular reprogramming in itself destroys the distinctions that the law requires to function. In this article, we explore the historical trajectory of cellular reprogramming and its relationship with ethics and society. We suggest that the early hype of embryo research has not obviously fulfilled expectations, but since new avenues of research are continuously opening, it is hard to say definitely that these promises have been broken. We explore the forthcoming challenges posed by the creation of DNA from scratch in the laboratory, and the implications of this for understandings of identity, privacy, and reproduction. We conclude that while ethics used to seek answers in biological facts, this is no longer possible, and a new approach is required. (shrink)

There have recently been novel applications of medical systematic review guidelines to economic policy interventions which contain controversial methodological assumptions that require further scrutiny. A landmark 2017 Cochrane review of unconditional cash transfer (UCT) studies, based on the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE), exemplifies both the possibilities and limitations of applying medical systematic review guidelines to UCT and universal basic income (UBI) studies. Recognizing the need to upgrade GRADE to incorporate the differences between medical and policy interventions, (...) the GRADE Public Health Project Group (PHPG) was convened to enumerate and address these methodological challenges. However, in light of our analysis of additional methodological challenges that arise for UCT and UBI studies, we argue that the adaptation of medical systematic review guidelines to economic methodology is far from straightforward and is in fact more challenging than claimed by the PHPG. (shrink)

We need modal imagination in order to extend our conception of reality - and, in particular, of human beings - beyond our immediate experience in the indexical present; and we need to do this in order to preserve the significance of human interaction. To make this leap of imagination successfully is to achieve not only insight but also an impartial perspective on our own and others' inner states. This perspective is a necessary condition of experiencing compassion for others. This is (...) the primary thesis I will try to defend in this discussion. (shrink)

Abstract‘Behavioural modernity’ isn’t what it used to be. Once conceived as an integrated package of traits demarcated by a clear archaeological signal in a specific time and place, it is now disparate, archaeologically equivocal, and temporally and spatially spread. In this paper we trace behavioural modernity’s empirical and theoretical developments over the last three decades, as surprising discoveries in the material record, as well the reappraisal of old evidence, drove increasingly sophisticated demographic, social and cultural models of behavioural modernity. We (...) argue, however, that some approaches to identifying and categorizing modernity have not kept up with this new picture. This is due to what we term ‘Rubicon expectations’: classificatory and interpretive practices which look for or assume clear demarcations in behavioural and cultural processes. We develop a philosophical account of ‘investigative disintegration’ to capture how our understanding of behavioural modernity has changed, and how Rubicon-based practices have become inadequate. Disintegration, in the form we analyse, occurs when scientists’ conception of a phenomenon shifts sufficiently to reshape an investigation’s epistemic structure. For behavioural modernity, the explanatory weight which once lay on identifying ‘switch-points’ in the innate suite of hominin cognitive capacities, lies now in understanding the social and demographic environments that were capable of sustaining and nourishing more complex material cultures. Finally, we argue that the phenomenon itself has not disintegrated to the point that we are left with no interesting explanandum: for all its mosaic, disparate nature, there are still good reasons for behavioural modernity to retain its central place in investigation of our species' origins. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether humans are more likely to trust people who are coordinated with them. We examined a well-known type of linguistic coordination, lexical entrainment, typically involving the elaboration of “conceptual pacts,” or partner-specific agreements on how to conceptualize objects. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical entrainment in a referential communication task and measured the effect of this manipulation on epistemic and practical trust. Our results showed that participants were more likely to trust a coordinated partner than an (...) uncoordinated one, but only when the latter broke previously established conceptual pacts. (shrink)

Most moral theories share certain features in common with other theories. They consist of a set of propositions that are universal, general, and hence impartial. The propositions that constitute a typical moral theory are (1) universal, in that they apply to all subjects designated as within their scope. They are (2) general, in that they include no proper names or definite descriptions. They are therefore (3) impartial, in that they accord no special privilege to any particular agent's situation which cannot (...) be justified under (2) and (3). These three features do not distinguish moral theories from other theories, nor indeed from most general categorical propositions we assert. Yet, in recent years, these features of moral theories have been the target of a certain concerted and sustained criticism, namely, that to be committed to such a moral theory, or to aspire to act in accordance with its requirements, results in what has come to be known as moral alienation. Moral alienation, according to this criticism, consists in (i) viewing one's ground projects from an impersonal, "moral point of view" engendered by one's acceptance of the theory; (ii) being prepared to sacrifice these projects to the requirements of moral principle; and (iii) making such a sacrifice specifically and self-consciously in order to conform to these requirements. Moral alienation is said to manifest itself in one (or both) of two ways, depending on the nature of the project thus susceptible to sacrifice. One may be alienated from oneself, if the project consists of tastes, convictions, or aspirations that are centrally definitive of one's self. In this case one's commitment to the project can be at best conditional on its congruence with one's moral theory. It is claimed that this must make for a rather tepid and unenthusiastic commitment indeed. Alternatively, one may be alienated from others, if the project is an interpersonal relationship such as a friendship, marriage, or collegial relationship. In this case one's responses to the other are motivated by one's awareness of what one's moral theory requires. It is claimed that this obstructs a genuine and unmediated emotional response to the other as such. My aim here will be to argue that this very compelling criticism - call it the moral-alienation criticism - is nevertheless misdirected. The real culprit is not any particular moral theory, but rather a certain familiar personality type that may or may not adopt it. (shrink)

In our dealings with young children, we often get them to do or think things by arranging their environments in certain ways; by dissembling, simplifying, or ambiguating the facts in answer to their queries; by carefully selecting the states of affairs, behavior of others, and utterances to which they shall be privy. We rightly justify these practices by pointing out a child's malleability, and the necessity of paying close attention to formative influences during its years of growth. This filtering of (...) influences is necessary, we point out, if children are ever to reach a degree of maturity and inner stability that will enable them to understand and cope adequately with the complexities, contradictions, and difficulties of the world from which we now seek to shield them. Thus a child's eventual state of competence, maturity, and autonomy adequately justifies our current practices of manipulation and selection of his environment: such practices are rightly held to be ultimately in the child's best interests as an adult. There is no future state of things with reference to which the Utilitarian night justify his policy of secrecy and manipulation, and in light of which this policy night eventually be dispensed with and commonly validated, in retrospect, as a means to the worthwhile goal of moral maturity. That is, there is no point at which the attitude of the Utilitarian to the rest of the community can develop past the analogous attitude of the parent towards the child; no point at which the Utilitarian might eventually bear to others a relationship of mutual acknowledgement and respect as mature, autonomous, moral adults. The consistent Utilitarian, then, largely regards himself as if he were the only adult in a community of children. (shrink)

Son vastas y múltiples las dimensiones éticas del uso de la energía (dimensiones ético-políticas, poliéticas, para quienes pensamos que hay continuidad entre ética y política). Tras esbozar un mapa de este campo de problemas, nos centramos en las dificultades que afrontan las transiciones energéticas y argumentamos que solo encarando una profunda transformación de las formas de producción y los modos de vida se podrían evitar, quizá, los escenarios peores. Las técnicas humildes deberían desplegarse en marcos de ecofeminismo de subsistencia o (...) ecosocialismo descalzo. (shrink)

This edited collection presents the latest cutting-edge research in the philosophy and cognitive science of temporal illusions. Illusion and error have long been important points of entry for both philosophical and psychological approaches to understanding the mind. Temporal illusions, specifically, concern a fundamental feature of lived experience, temporality, and its relation to a fundamental feature of the world, time, thus providing invaluable insight into investigations of the mind and its relationship with the world. The existence of temporal illusions crucially challenges (...) the naïve assumption that we can simply infer the temporal nature of the world from experience. This anthology gathers eighteen original papers from current leading researchers in this subject, covering four broad and interdisciplinary topics: illusions of temporal passage, illusions and duration, illusions of temporal order and simultaneity, and the relationship between temporal illusions and the cognitive representation of time. (shrink)

_ Thinking and Being _, by KimhiIrad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. xx + 166.

I want to argue that self-deception is a species of a more general phenomenon, which I shall call pseudorationality, which in turn is necessitated by what I shall describe as our highest-order disposition to literal self-preservation. By "literal self-preservation," I mean preservation of the rational intelligibility of the self, in the face of recalcitrant facts that invariably threaten it.

BackgroundSevere brain injury is a leading cause of death and disability. Diagnosis and prognostication are difficult, and errors occur often. Novel neuroimaging methods can improve diagnostic and prognostic accuracy, especially in patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDoC). Yet it is currently unknown how family caregivers understand this information, raising ethical concerns that disclosure of neuroimaging results could result in therapeutic misconception or false hope.MethodsTo examine these ethical concerns, we conducted semi-structured interviews with caregivers of patients with PDoC who were (...) enrolled in a concurrent neuroimaging research program designed to detect covert consciousness following severe brain injury. Caregivers held surrogate decision-making status for a patient. Interviews were conducted at two time points for each caregiver. The first interview occurred before the disclosure of neuroimaging results. The second occurred after disclosure. Descriptive analysis was applied to the data of four interview topics: (1) expectations for neuroimaging; (2) reactions to evidence of preserved cognition; (3) reactions to null results; and (4) understanding of the results and study.ResultsTwelve caregivers participated in the study; two caregivers shared surrogate decision-making status for one patient with PDoC. Twenty-one interviews were completed; one caregiver declined to participate in the post-disclosure interview. Three patients with PDoC associated with the study displayed evidence of covert consciousness. Overall, caregivers understood the neuroimaging research and results. Caregivers who received results of covert consciousness were generally pleased. However, there was some variation in expectations and reactions to these data and null results.ConclusionThis study, for the first time, reveals caregiver expectations for and reactions to neuroimaging evidence of covert consciousness in patients with PDoC. Caregivers understood the neuroimaging research and results, casting doubt on speculative ethical concerns regarding therapeutic misconception and false hope. However, disclosure of neuroimaging result could be improved. Pre-disclosure consultations might assist professionals in shaping caregiver expectations. Standardization of disclosure might also improve comprehension of the results. (shrink)

The purpose of this discussion is twofold. First, I want to shed some light on Kant's concept of personhood as rational agency, by situating it in the context of the first Critique's conception of the self as defined by its rational dispositions. I hope to suggest that this concept of personhood cannot be simply grafted onto an essentially Humean conception of the self that is inherently inimical to it, as I believe Rawls, Gewirth, and others have tried to do. Instead (...) I will try to show how deeply embedded this concept of personhood is in Kant's conception of the self as rationally unified consciousness. Second, I want to deploy this embedded concept of personhood as the basis for an analysis of the phenomenon of xenophobia. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

When someone thanks someone for something, or advises him against something, or refuses something from him, his action is directed not merely at but to the other. He addresses the other. But is it only actions that exemplify this mode of directedness? This essay argues that it is not.

In this paper, I report new empirical data on folk semantic intuitions concerning color adjectives in so-called context-shifting experiments. Contextualists present such experiments — that is, they describe different conversational contexts in which a given sentence is uttered — in order to argue that context can shape meaning and truth conditions to such a degree that competent speakers would give opposite truth evaluations of the same sentence in different contexts. The initial findings of Hansen and Chemla (2013) suggest that laypersons’ (...) semantic judgments are sensitive to context in the same way that is predicted by contextualists. In this paper, I focus on context-shifting experiments that involve color adjectives; also, I present experiments that are a partial replication and methodological extension of Hansen and Chemla’s study. One aim of my study was to corroborate these authors’ findings using a bigger sample (total N = 1128), but the main goal was to test the stability of results in different methodological variants of empirical adaptations of context-shifting experiments. This part of the study addresses the issues pointed out in my earlier paper (Ziółkowski 2017), where I argued that certain experimental settings (within-subjects) might bring data that is more favorable to contextualism than other settings (between-subjects). My study compares three different experimental settings: within-subjects (with randomized order of context presentation), between-subjects (where participants evaluating different contexts aredistinct groups), and “contrastive design” (where both contexts are presented side by side on the same screen). My results are highly consistent across the methodological variants I employed, but while they show some of the effects expected by contextualists, it is disputable whether they bring strong support to contextualism with respect to color adjectives. (shrink)

The two kinds of discrimination I want to talk about are political discrimination and cognitive discrimination. By political discrimination, I mean what we ordinarily understand by the term "discrimination" in political contexts: A manifest attitude in which a particular property of a person which is irrelevant to judgments of that person's intrinsic value or competence, for example his race, gender, class, sexual orientation, or religious or ethnic affiliation, is seen as a source of disvalue or incompetence; in general, as a (...) source of inferiority.By cognitive discrimination, I mean what we ordinarily understand by the term "discrimination" in cognitive contexts: A manifest capacity to distinguish veridically between one property and another, and to respond appropriately to each. I want to explore the relation between these two kinds of discrimination, and to argue that the first type of discrimination depends upon a failure of the second. (shrink)

We bring together two ideas that are widely accepted in the literature: (i) conditionals with modal consequents are systematically ambiguous between a reading on which the if-clause restricts the modal, and a reading on which the if-clause introduces an epistemic supposition and the modal is unrestricted; (ii) ‘will’ is a modal. Together, (i) and (ii) imply that ‘will’-conditionals are systematically ambiguous between a reading as restricted historical claims, and one as unrestricted historical claims made under a supposition. We argue that (...) this prediction is correct and that the existence of the relevant ambiguity has far-reaching repercussions for several important debates concerning conditionals. (shrink)

Many observers claim that business has become a powerful force in medicine and that the future of health care cannot escape that reality, even though some scholars lament it. The U.S. recently experienced the most devastating recession since the Great Depression. As health care costs rise, we face additional pressure to rein in health care spending. We also have important new legislation that could well mark a significant shift in how health care is provided and who has access to care, (...) namely the Affordable Care Act. These changes underscore the need to bring new thinking to the conversation about health care and to move beyond conceptual and practical obstacles that inhibit our progress.In this paper we do not to claim to have solutions. Rather, our aim is to try to identify some obstacles to fostering a better conversation about the future of health care and to envisioning a better health care system. (shrink)

Kant identifies what are in fact Free Riders as the most noxious species of polemicists. Kant thinks polemic reduces the stature and authority of reason to a method of squabbling that destabilizes social equilibrium and portends disintegration into the Hobessian state of nature. In the first Critique, Kant proposes two textually related solutions to the Free Rider problem.

In this paper, we extend Michel Foucault’s final works on the ‘care of the self’ to an empirical examination of research practice in community-based research (CBR). We use Foucault’s ‘morality of behaviors’ to analyze interview data from a national sample of Canadian CBR practitioners working with communities affected by HIV. Despite claims in the literature that ethics review is overly burdensome for non-traditional forms of research, our findings suggest that many researchers using CBR have an ambivalent but ultimately productive relationship (...) with institutional research ethics review requirements. They understand and use prescribed codes, but adapt them in practice to account for the needs of participating community members, members of their research teams and the larger communities with whom they work. Complying with ethics protocols was seen as only the beginning, a minimum standard; our research suggests that the real ethical work happens in the field, where CBR practitioners encounter community members in diverse public roles and must forge ethical consensus across communities. CBR represents an ethical terrain in which practitioners challenge themselves to work differently, and as a result they care for themselves—and others—in ways that often resist the propensity for domination through public health research.‘…there are different ways to “conduct oneself” morally, different ways for the acting individual to operate, not just as an agent, but as an ethical subject of action.’ (Foucault, 1985: 26). (shrink)

Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793) ist bekannt als Autor des Anton Reiser und als Ästhetiker der Klassik. Heute vergessen hingegen ist der Arbeitsbereich, der ihm neben seiner Beschäftigung mit dem Schönen der wichtigste war: seine Auseinandersetzung mit der Sprache. Das vorliegende Buch zeigt Moritz als originellen Grammatiker und Sprachphilosophen vor dem Hintergrund der europäischen Geistesgeschichte. Und es beleuchtet, wie sich in den Sprachreflexionen diejenigen Denkfiguren entwickeln, die er später seiner Ästhetik zu Grunde legt: So wird das Theorem des "in sich selbst (...) vollendeten Schönen" auf die Erklärung der Verba neutra zurückgeführt, die Figur des "Gesichtspunktes] auf die Erkenntnisse über die Taubstummensprache und das zentrale Theorem der "bildenden Nachahmung des Schönen" auf die Sprachursprungshypothese. Das Buch ergänzt damit die Disziplingeschichte der Linguistik um einen eigenwilligen Sprachforscher und erfüllt, indem es Moritz' Sprachschriften in den Kontext des Gesamtwerkes stellt, eine seit 20 Jahren erhobene Forderung der Moritzforschung. "Die Sprache und das Schöne" zeigt Moritz in einem neuen Licht. (shrink)

This paper develops a way of understanding G. E. M. Anscombe's essay “The First Person” at the heart of which are the following two ideas: first, that the point of her essay is to show that it is not possible for anyone to understand what they express with “I” as an Art des Gegebenseins—a way of thinking of an object that constitutes identifying knowledge of which object is being thought of; and second, that the argument through which her essay seeks (...) to show this is itself first personal in character. Understanding Anscombe's essay in this light has the merit of showing much of what it says to be correct. But it sets us the task of saying what it is that we understand ourselves to express with “I” if not an Art des Gegebenseins, and in particular what it is that we understand ourselves to express with sentences with “I” as subject that might seem to express identity judgments, such as “I am NN”, and “I am this body”. (shrink)

Critical commentaries on the burgeoning industry of sports betting have focused on either its potential (i) to promote problem gambling or (ii) to encourage betting-related corruption. In this paper we explore a third and distinct line of inquiry according to which sports betting is of considerable moral concern insofar as it undermines the ideals of sport by transforming the manner and modes in which spectators engage with and value sports. Technological, cultural and legal changes have led to greater integration between (...) many sporting leagues and gambling practices. Elite sport has long been commodified; however, we argue that such integration should be understood as a form of ‘hypercommodification’. By analysing sports betting as a form of hyper-commodification, we argue that it may promote objectionable instrumental modes of regard towards sport among individual spectators and fans. We also argue that increasing integration between sports and gambling practices may undermine the social conditions required to express appropriate modes of valuation towards sport. (shrink)

Los marcos de argumentación son modelos de argumentación derrotable desarrollados en el campo de la inteligencia artificial para analizar la justificación de argumentos según su interacción por medio de ataques. Las semánticas de extensiones para los marcos de argumentación son criterios para sancionar uno (punto de vista escéptico) o varios (punto de vista crédulo) subconjuntos de argumentos justificados. Una forma de evaluar diferentes semánticas de extensiones es considerando si satisfacen o no algunos “principios” (es decir, propiedades razonables o deseables). Además (...) de estas semánticas, también se han propuesto enfoques de la argumentación como juegos de diálogos, a modo de teorías de prueba para encontrar argumentos justificados a través de las estrategias ganadoras de un proponente, y se han demostrado correspondencias entre juegos y extensiones. Como consecuencia, los juegos de diálogos argumentativos se pueden poner en correspondencia con los principios de las semánticas de extensiones. Sin embargo, esas correspondencias no siempre se muestran explícitamente. El objetivo de este trabajo es poner de manifiesto tales correspondencias con casos de juegos simples, uno escéptico y dos variantes de crédulos. (shrink)

The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...) Brandt, Frankfurt, Nagel and Williams have taken it for granted, and have made use of it to supply metaethical foundations for a wide variety of normative moral theories. But the Humean conception of the self also leads to seemingly insoluble problems about moral motivation, rational final ends, and moral justification. Can it be made to work? (shrink)

It is widely believed that the “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge comes into serious conflict with mainstream epistemology. I argue that the programme has two aspects—one modest, and the other less so. The programme’s modest aspect—best represented by the “symmetry thesis”—does not contain anything to threaten much of the epistemological mainstream, but does come into conflict with a certain kind of epistemological “externalism”. The immodest aspect, however—in the form of “finitism”—pushes the programme towards a radical form of relativism (...) about truth. Accepting these points will allow us to put an end to much unnecessary debate surrounding the strong programme, and allow a more fruitful discussion to begin.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Strong programme; Epistemology; Normativity; Relativism; Finitism. (shrink)

First-year students’ literacy deficits are not the problem. They are emblematic of an overall skill set which can be scaffolded from the first year of university study. If we treat literacy deficit...

The aim of this paper is to examine the extent of the critiques that La Beaumelle gives to Voltaire in the annotated edition of the Siècle de Louis XIV, published in 1753, and his response in the Supplément au Siècle de Louis XIV, published a few months later. This, on the other hand, sheds some light on a number of tensions in the Voltaire’s historiographical project. It is shown that in the historical and historiographical works of the philosopher, there are (...) different methodology criteria and that the joint between them is problematic. (shrink)

BackgroundAustralian health and medical research funders support substantial research efforts, and incentives within grant funding schemes influence researcher behaviour. We aimed to determine to what extent Australian health and medical funders incentivise responsible research practices.MethodsWe conducted an audit of instructions from research grant and fellowship schemes. Eight national research grants and fellowships were purposively sampled to select schemes that awarded the largest amount of funds. The funding scheme instructions were assessed against 9 criteria to determine to what extent they incentivised (...) these responsible research and reporting practices: publicly register study protocols before starting data collection, register analysis protocols before starting data analysis, make study data openly available, make analysis code openly available, make research materials openly available, discourage use of publication metrics, conduct quality research, collaborate with a statistician, and adhere to other responsible research practices. Each criterion was answered using one of the following responses: “Instructed”, “Encouraged”, or “No mention”.ResultsAcross the 8 schemes from 5 funders, applicants were instructed or encouraged to address a median of 4 of the 9 criteria. Three criteria received no mention in any scheme. Importantly, most incentives did not seem strong as applicants were only instructed to register study protocols, discourage use of publication metrics and conduct quality research. Other criteria were encouraged but were not required.ConclusionsFunders could strengthen the incentives for responsible research practices by requiring grant and fellowship applicants to implement these practices in their proposals. Administering institutions could be required to implement these practices to be eligible for funding. Strongly rewarding researchers for implementing robust research practices could lead to sustained improvements in the quality of health and medical research. (shrink)

I want to examine critically a certain strategy of moral justification which I shall call instrumentalism. By this I mean the view that a moral theory is rationally justified if the actions, life-plan, or set of social arrangements it prescribes can be shown to be the best means to the achievement of an agent's final ends, whatever these may be. Instrumentalism presupposes a commitment to what I shall call the Humean conception of the self. By this I mean a certain (...) way of conceiving the motivational and structural constituents of the self. Briefly, the self on this conception is motivated by its desires for states of affairs that are temporally or spatiotemporally external to the self. And it is structured by the normative requirements of instrumental rationality: The self is conceived as rationally coherent to the extent that theoretical reason calculates and schedules the satisfaction of as many of its desires as possible, with the minimum necessary costs. The motivational and structural elements of the Humean conception of the self combine to form a familiar explanatory model of human agency: We make sense of an agent's behavior by ascribing to her the desire to achieve the ends that she does in fact achieve, and the theoretically rational belief that, given the information and resources available to her, behaving as she did was the most efficient way to do so. I shall want to argue that to the extent that instrumentalism is successful in providing an objective justification of a moral theory - and I shall contend that it cannot be completely successful - it cannot provide a moral justification. But when we attempt to modify it so as to produce a specifically moral justification, we see that either it is impossible to do this, or else the Humean notion of instrumental rationality is doing no justificatory work. (shrink)

In an earlier discussion, I argued that Kant's moral theory satisfies some of the basic criteria for being a genuine theory: it includes testable hypotheses, nomological higher-and lower-level laws, theoretical constructs, internal principles, and bridge principles. I tried to show that Kant's moral theory is an ideal, descriptive deductive-nomological theory that explains the behavior of a fully rational being and generates testable hypotheses about the moral behavior of actual agents whom we initially assume to conform to its theoretical constructs. I (...) argued that the moral "ought" is best understood as the "ought" of tentative prediction expressed in the range of uses of the German sollen; and that the degree to which such a theory is well-confirmed is a function of the degree to which we actually judge individual human agents, on a case-by-case basis, to be motivated by rationality, stupidity, or moral corruption in their actions. I assume that a similar case could be made for other major contenders, such as Utilitarianism or Aristotelianism. But there still remains unanswered the question of which of these theories is the best among the available alternatives. To answer this question, further criteria of selection must be invoked. Among these are structural elegance and explanatory simplicity, but even these do not exhaust the desiderata for an adequate moral theory. More pressing in the case of moral theory is the requirement that the theory enable us to understand all the available data of moral experience; that the theory be sufficiently inclusive that in the formulation of its descriptive laws and practical principles, it be capable of identifying as morally significant all the behavior to which moral praise, condemnation, or acquittal is a relevant and appropriate response. (shrink)

El método de la “libre investigación científica del derecho” propuesto por François Gény ha marcado toda una generación de juristas. Tratado con detenimiento a lo largo de su extensa y compleja obra, la libre investigación científica se presenta como un método completo destinado a orientar al jurista en la creación, interpretación y aplicación del derecho positivo. Por desventura, el clima ambiente en el que nació su obra y en el que tuvo que desenvolverse con posterioridad, dominado por la escuela de (...) la exégesis, no ha sabido extraer de la obra de Gény más que elementos dispares no haciendo justicia a su método. En la actualidad, el redescubrimiento de su método de la libre investigación científica permitirá combatir el anquilosamiento dogmático, evitar los excesos formalistas, y aportar elementos de interés para la investigación iusfilosófica de nuestro tiempo. El método de la “libre investigación científica del derecho” propuesto por François Gény ha marcado toda una generación de juristas. Tratado con detenimiento a lo largo de su extensa y compleja obra, la libre investigación científica se presenta como un método completo destinado a orientar al jurista en la creación, interpretación y aplicación del derecho positivo. Por desventura, el clima ambiente en el que nació su obra y en el que tuvo que desenvolverse con posterioridad, dominado por la escuela de la exégesis, no ha sabido extraer de la obra de Gény más que elementos dispares no haciendo justicia a su método. En la actualidad, el redescubrimiento de su método de la libre investigación científica permitirá combatir el anquilosamiento dogmático, evitar los excesos formalistas, y aportar elementos de interés para la investigación iusfilosófica de nuestro tiempo. (shrink)

This is the first and only dictionary dedicated to the work of Gilles Deleuze. It provides an in-depth and lucid introduction to one of the most influential figures in continental philosophy. It defines and contextualises more than 150 terms that relate to Deleuze's philosophy and explains the main intellectual influences on Deleuze as well as the influence Deleuze has had on subjects such as feminism, cinema, postcolonial theory, geography and cultural studies. In this revised edition, there are expanded entries on (...) architecture, cinema and psychoanalysis - key areas where interest in Deleuze has grown in recent years. (shrink)

Se edita, traduce, anota y comenta un texto conservado en el Ms. _Ambrosianus Graecus_ 855 y se propone que se trata de un mimo breve, representable en ámbito reducido, con intención satírica y que su autoría podría ser adjudicada a Teodoro Pródromos.

Peterson et al. (2023) identify two potential uses of psychedelic drugs in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (AD/ADRD). The first is to treat depression and anxiety that commonly occur afte...