This book is about the ethical issues that clinicians encounter as they care for patients and is written to assist those who serve on hospital ethics committees as they deliberate about appropriate action in difficult ethical cases.

Psychologists have emphasized children's acquisition of information through firsthand observation. However, many beliefs are acquired from others' testimony. In two experiments, most 4yearolds displayed sceptical trust in testimony. Having heard informants' accurate or inaccurate testimony, they anticipated that informants would continue to display such differential accuracy and they trusted the hitherto reliable informant. Yet they ignored the testimony of the reliable informant if it conflicted with what they themselves had seen. By contrast, threeyearolds were less selective in trusting a reliable (...) informant. Thus, young children check testimony against their own experience and increasingly recognise that some informants are more trustworthy than others. (shrink)

Philosophers agree that an important part of our knowledge is acquired via testimony. One of the main objectives of social epistemology is therefore to specify the conditions under which a hearer is justified in accepting a proposition stated by a source. Non-reductionists, who think that testimony could be considered as an a priori source of knowledge, as well as reductionists, who think that another type of justification has to be added to testimony, share a common conception about children development. Non-reductionists (...) believe that infants and children are fundamentally gullible and their gullibility could be seen as an example for justifying testimony, while reductionists believe that this gullibility is merely an exception that should be taken into account. The objective of this paper is to review contemporary literature in developmental psychology providing empirical grounds likely to clarify this philosophical debate. What emerges from current research is a more elaborated vision of children’s attitude toward testimony. Even at a very young age, children do not blindly swallow information coming from testimony; doubtful or contradictory information is automatically screened by their cognitive system. Even if they are unable to give positive reasons for the acceptance of a given testimony, young children are not gullible. Such empirical findings tend to call into question the radical opposition between reductionism and non-reductionism. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

Intellectual character education has been primarily expressed in terms of educating for intellectual virtues (EFIV). This aim of teaching intellectual virtues has received some challenges, such as how it fails to articulate adequate action guidance through exemplarist pedagogy, and how it neglects the pervasiveness of intellectual vice among students. To respond to these challenges, this paper considers the aim of educating against intellectual vices (EAIV) – teaching students not to develop intellectual vices or weakening those that they have already developed (...) – which comes with the emergence of vice epistemology. More specifically, I look at how negative epistemic exemplars can be used as a classroom strategy for EAIV, and demonstrate how this could address the aforementioned weaknesses of EFIV. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

Driven by the increasing availability and deployment of ubiquitous computing technologies across our private and professional lives, implementations of automatically processable regulation (APR) have evolved over the past decade from academic projects to real-world implementations by states and companies. There are now pressing issues that such encoded regulation brings about for citizens and society, and strategies to mitigate these issues are required. However, _comprehensive yet practically operationalizable_ frameworks to navigate the complex interactions and evaluate the risks of projects that implement (...) APR are not available today. In this paper, and based on related work as well as our own experiences, we propose a framework to support the conceptualization, implementation, and application of _responsible_ APR. Our contribution is twofold: we provide a holistic characterization of what responsible APR means; and we provide support to operationalize this in concrete projects, in the form of leading questions, examples, and mitigation strategies. We thereby provide a scientifically backed yet practically applicable way to guide researchers, sponsors, implementers, and regulators toward better outcomes of APR for users and society. (shrink)

La philosophie de Rosset n'a cessé, pendant près de soixante ans, de voir dans la morale l'un des lieux privilégiés du refus de la réalité, ou du tragique. Dès La philosophie tragique, et jusqu'à ses dernières productions, Rosset a montré comment la morale, plutôt qu'une réflexion, n'exprimait qu'une certaine affectivité. Les jugements moraux ne sont, d'après lui, que des désirs déguisés, ayant tous comme objectif commun de récuser la réalité à laquelle est confronté l'homme. Ce texte, rédigé entre 1960 et (...) 1961, offre, à l'étonnement des lecteurs de Rosset, une "éthique tragique" de la force qui s'oppose avec vigueur à la morale de la faiblesse. Cet inédit est suivi d'une réédition de Le monde et ses remèdes, publié aux Puf en 1964 et réédité en 2014, suite logique et chronologique du Dialogue avec la faiblesse."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Albert Lautman (1908-1944) was a French philosopher of mathematics whose work played a crucial role in the history of contemporary French philosophy. His ideas have had an enormous influence on key contemporary thinkers including Gilles Deleuze and Alain Badiou, for whom he is a major touchstone in the development of their own engagements with mathematics. Mathematics, Ideas and the Physical Real presents the first English translation of Lautman's published works between 1933 and his death in 1944. Rather than being (...) preoccupied with the relation of mathematics to logic or with the problems of foundation, which have dominated philosophical reflection on mathematics, Lautman undertakes to develop an understanding of the broader structure of mathematics and its evolution. The two powerful ideas that are constants throughout his work, and which have dominated subsequent developments in mathematics, are the concept of mathematical structure and the idea of the essential unity underlying the apparent multiplicity of mathematical disciplines. This collection of his major writings offers readers a much-needed insight into his influence on the development of mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

Perhaps more than any philosophy written in the past few centuries, the work of Friedrich Nietzsche has given rise to controversy, misunderstanding, and dissent. Today Nietzsche is remembered as the revolutionary author of such polemical ideas as the death of God, the revaluation of values, the will to untruth, and the Übermensch. Yet is Nietzsche’s philosophy as atheistic, relativistic, nihilistic, and immoral as some commentators have claimed? Or ought we perhaps to give more credence to Nietzsche’s own assertion that one (...) writes books “precisely to conceal what one harbors” (BGE, 9, 289)? If “whatever is profound loves masks” (BGE, 2, 40) then might Nietzsche’s more daring claims be interpreted as clever masks behind which he conceals a deeper philosophy and on which he reveals a hidden truth? Is it not possible that the standard readings of Nietzsche are in fact misreadings—that his work invites misreading, that it is intentionally unclear, deceptive, disguised? The goal of this volume is to reread Nietzsche for all that he shows and all that he hides. It is to dig deeper into his work in order to challenge misreadings of old and invite misreadings anew—as, indeed, his work itself calls for and demands. (shrink)

In medical ethics, business ethics, and some branches of political philosophy (multi-culturalism, issues of just allocation, and equitable distribution) the literature increasingly combines insights from ethics and the social sciences. Some authors in medical ethics even speak of a new phase in the history of ethics, hailing "empirical ethics" as a logical next step in the development of practical ethics after the turn to "applied ethics." The name empirical ethics is ill-chosen because of its associations with "descriptive ethics." Unlike descriptive (...) ethics, however, empirical ethics aims to be both descriptive and normative. The first question on which I focus is what kind of empirical research is used by empirical ethics and for which purposes. I argue that the ultimate aim of all empirical ethics is to improve the context-sensitivity of ethics. The second question is whether empirical ethics is essentially connected with specific positions in meta-ethics. I show that in some kinds of meta-ethical theories, which I categorize as broad contextualist theories, there is an intrinsic need for connecting normative ethics with empirical social research. But context-sensitivity is a goal that can be aimed for from any meta-ethical position. (shrink)

Para o autor, o tema das relações entre ciência e espiritualidade merece renovado espaço ante o grande público e, não menor, no ambiente escolar ou familiar. Para ele, pessoas sábias, e não apenas letradas, partem para a aventura de desbravar tanto o mundo exterior da ciência quanto o mundo interior do espírito humano. Clemente acredita que na sociedade do conhecimento e da informação em que se vive, aprendem-se tantas coisas, muitas das quais de parco sentido e propósito. Mas é preciso (...) atravessar o rio da vida com segurança. Ciência e transcendência, para o autor, quando integradas, constituem a via disponível ao ser humano para conhecer a verdade e o bem, anseios maiores que, no íntimo, todos têm. (shrink)

" Quand aurons-nous complètement "dédivinisé" la nature? Quand nous sera-t-il enfin permis de commencer à nous rendre naturels, à nous "naturiser", nous hommes, avec la pure nature, la nature retrouvée, la nature délivrée? " (Gai savoir, Nietzsche). " L'idée de nature apparaît comme un des écrans majeurs qui isolent l'homme par rapport au réel, en substituant à la simplicité chaotique de l'existence la complication ordonnée d'un monde. " Nombre de philosophes depuis l'Antiquité se sont attachés à définir la notion de (...) nature. S'inscrivant dans cette longue tradition, Clément Rosset reprend l'opposition entre nature et artifice, analyse les philosophies artificialistes, des Sophistes à Hobbes, puis les philosophies naturalistes, de Platon à Rousseau. Il termine en soulignant l'actualité philosophique du naturalisme et les aléas modernes de l'idée de nature. " D'une certaine manière, la conclusion de ce livre est de présenter l'artifice comme vérité de l'existence et l'idée de nature comme erreur et fantasme idéologique. ". (shrink)

_Time_'s 'Man of the Century', Albert Einstein is the unquestioned founder of modern physics. His theory of relativity is the most important scientific idea of the modern era. In this short book Einstein explains, using the minimum of mathematical terms, the basic ideas and principles of the theory which has shaped the world we live in today. Unsurpassed by any subsequent books on relativity, this remains the most popular and useful exposition of Einstein's immense contribution to human knowledge.

A l’opposé d’une philosophie ayant pour tâche de débrouiller le désordre apparent, de faire apparaître dans notre monde « des relations constantes et douées d’intelligibilité, se rendre maître des champs d’activité ouverts par la découverte de ces relations », il s’est trouvé, de loin en loin, des penseurs pour lesquels la philosophie se doit de dissoudre l’ordre apparent et d’affronter le chaos. « A de tels penseurs, cette tâche empoisonnée est apparue comme non seulement tâche unique mais encore tâche nécessaire (...) de la philosophie ». Réussir à penser le pire, tel est le but commun propre à ces philosophes et l’objet de ce livre est de s’interroger sur la nature de cette nécessité, sur la possibilité d’une philosophie tragique. (shrink)

In this paper, we point out that explainability is useful but not sufficient to ensure the legitimacy of algorithmic decision systems. We argue that the key requirements for high-stakes decision systems should be justifiability and contestability. We highlight the conceptual differences between explanations and justifications, provide dual definitions of justifications and contestations, and suggest different ways to operationalize justifiability and contestability.

(2003). What are the facts of the matter? A Response to Timothy Costelloe on The Lives of Animals. Philosophical Papers: Vol. 32, No. 2, pp. 133-139. doi: 10.1080/05568640309485117.

From the author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, a hugely influential book that challenged key assertions by Niels Bohr and other founders of quantum mechanics, A Guess at the Riddle provides a major metaphysical overhaul of one of physics' most intractable problems-the quest to bridge quantum and classical physics in order to understand the nature of reality.