This paper re-evaluates W.K. Clifford on the ethics of belief in light of criticism due to William James and replies to James from David A. Hollinger.

I argue that some of the most prominent interpretations of Reid's response to skepticism marginalize a crucial aspect of his thought: namely, that our common sense beliefs meet whatever normative standards of rationality the skeptic might fairly demand of them. This should be seen as supplementary to reliabilist or proper functionalist interpretations of Reid, which often ignore this half of the story. I also show how Reid defends the rationality of believing first principles by appealing to their naturalness and irresistibility. (...) The resulting interpretation supplies Reid with a more satisfying and formidable response to the skeptic than interpretations currently offer. (shrink)

: Responding to the paper by Miller and Joffe, we review the development of the concept of therapeutic misconception (TM). Our concerns about TM's impact on informed consent do not derive from the belief that research subjects have poorer outcomes than persons receiving ordinary clinical care. Rather, we believe that subjects with TM cannot give an adequate informed consent to research participation, which harms their dignitary interests and their abilities to make meaningful decisions. Ironically, Miller and Joffe's approach ends (...) up largely embracing the very position that they inaccurately attribute to us: the belief that, with some exceptions, it is only the prospect of poorer outcomes that should motivate efforts to dispel TM. In the absence of empirical studies on the steps required to dispel TM and the impact of such procedures on subject recruitment, it is premature to surrender to the belief that TM must be widely tolerated in clinical research. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I will examine the problem of theological fatalism in St. Augustine and, specifically, whether or not Augustine was philosophically justified in his belief that his views on divine grace and human freedom could be harmonized. As is well-known, beginning with his second response To Simplician (ca. 396) and continuing through his works against the semi-Pelagians (ca. 426-429), Augustine espoused the Pauline doctrine of all-inclusive grace: that the fallen will’s ability to accomplish the good is totally a (...) function of God’s elective grace. What, then, does the fallen will do to work out its own salvation? There is the further issue of how to reconcile Augustine’s rather extreme emphasis on grace in his later works with the more balanced picture we receive in his sermones ad populum, written throughout his forty-year preaching career. In many of these sermons, even those written during the Pelagian controversy, Augustine is careful to leave space for both divine and human initiative in the process of our justification within the totus Christus, or ‘whole Christ.’ How we can understand Augustine in his role as doctor gratiae and as preacher of human freedom will be a major inquiry of this dissertation.The most serious obstacle to moving forward on these problems has been and remains the essentialist interpretation of Augustine’s Trinitarian theology by most commentators. On their interpretation, Augustine thought that there were no real distinctions within the Trinity, with each of the three divine persons and their actions sharing in the absolute unity of the divine essence. Holding this interpretation not only does away with the distinctness of each of the persons, but also requires all of God’s different powers and attributes, including willing and foreknowing, to be coalesced into one another without distinction in the divine essence. God’s foreknowledge is thereby identified with God’s will, which necessarily leads to theological fatalism: God would have to will everything that He foreknows, and God would have to foreknow everything that He wills. Since God is omniscient, He wills everything that will happen, including the future willings of the fallen human will.It cannot be denied that there are texts in the Augustinian corpus that seem to point to a reading of the Trinity as absolutely simple. But this study will endeavor to show that there are also other largely overlooked texts in On the Trinity, the Confessions, and his Commentaries on the Literal Interpretation of Genesis (among others) that argue for various distinctions within the Trinity to make sense of the relation between Creator and creature, and the differences between the divine processions of generation/spiration, and the act of creation. These texts will be shown to parallel very closely the position of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition, which consistently uses the real distinction between God’s essential being and energetic activities (also known as the essence-energy distinction) to avoid the problem of theological fatalism. This rich theological and philosophical tradition, from the time of the fourth-century Greek Fathers to the Byzantine tradition that followed, differs less with Augustine concerning the essentials of Trinitarian theology and its practical implications for solving the problem of making human freedom and divine grace compatible than has been hitherto thought. (shrink)

This paper interprets von Trier’s Dogville as a suspension of belief that provokes a re-evaluation of contemporary moral values. Reading Dogville through the Stoic concept of phantasms and Nietzsche’s perspectivism, I analyze the plot and visual techniques as revealing how we form, evaluate, and re-evaluate our beliefs based on changing impressions and shifting perspectives. The philosophy of the Stoics and Nietzsche and the visual techniques of Dogville demonstrate that the recognition of the artificiality of appearances serves a moral (...) purpose by forcing us to examine our beliefs more deeply. In this way, von Trier presents film as a powerful art form for suspending and evaluating how we see and understand the world. (shrink)

This chapter examines the simultaneous rejection and endorsement of natural theology within Protestantism, focusing on two contentious issues representing the tensions within Protestant perspectives on natural theology. Firstly, it considers the historical theological question of the attitude to natural theology amongst the Reformers and the post-Reformation Protestant Orthodoxy. The chapter engages with the established consensus that the increasingly positive evaluation of the possibility and value of natural theology within Protestant Orthodoxy represents a regrettable discontinuity with the ‘original’ rejection of (...) natural theology by the early Reformers. Secondly, it explores the place of natural theology within contemporary Protestant philosophical theology, looking in particular at Alvin Plantinga's ‘Reformed objection to natural theology’. The chapter disputes Plantinga's argument that the Reformers' rejection of classical foundationalism, in favour of a Reformed epistemology in which belief in God can be properly basic, entails a Reformed objection to natural theology. Rather, it suggests the possibility of an alternative Reformed natural theology consistent with the epistemological framework characteristic of Reformed dogmatic theology. (shrink)

Virtue reliabilism provides an account of epistemic integration that explains how a reliable-belief forming process can become a knowledge-conducive ability of one’s cognitive character. The univocal view suggests that this epistemic integration can also explain how an external process can extend one’s cognition into the environment. Andy Clark finds a problem with the univocal view. He claims that cognitive extension is a wholly subpersonal affair, whereas the epistemic integration that virtue reliabilism puts forward requires personal-level agential involvement. To adjust (...) the univocal view, Clark recommends a subpersonal epistemic integration account that also paves way for a wholly subpersonal epistemology. Accordingly, an epistemic agent can take responsibility for her reliable belief-forming process by way of entirely subpersonal mechanisms. The aim of this thesis is to argue against a subpersonal epistemology and the need for it. First, I bring into question the conditions that motivate extended cognition: the so-called ‘glue and trust’ requirements and the functional parity principle. Neither of these conditions demands that extension should be understood in entirely subpersonal terms. On the contrary, the glue and trust conditions suggest that agents should personally and actively engage with their external vehicles to extend cognition. Further, I consider an important disparity between the two kinds of integration. Integration that prompts extension can happen immediately, but the integration that makes a reliable belief-forming process knowledge-conducive is almost always a slow process. In light of this and other similar inconsistencies between the two integration accounts, I conclude that a type of univocal view is difficult to defend. And, since that type of univocal view is the main reason for a subpersonal epistemology, the need for it does not arise. Next, I locate Clark’s main motivation for his subpersonal epistemology in his account of the predictive brain. While the predictive brain provides useful insight into how an external process might extend one’s cognition, I show it runs into problems when it tries to account for epistemic integration. Then, I explore how the concept of epistemic defeaters informs epistemic integration. Agents have to meet a specific no-defeater condition to be sensitive to the reliability of their belief-forming processes and to employ them responsibly. In an entirely subpersonal epistemology, defeasibility theory has no means to explain how an agent is rendered sensitive to the reliability of her process. Subpersonal mechanisms can become sensitive to the new process, but that does not allow the agent to employ said process responsibly. Finally, I use an AI case, based on Amazon Alexa, to argue that all accounts of epistemic integration ought to explicitly describe how one’s subpersonal mechanisms link to one’s whole person, even if the link is weak and indirect. Without this connection between one’s subpersonal mechanisms and one’s person, it can become difficult to ascribe beliefs to the agent. This becomes apparent when Alexa leads to ever-increasing layers of cognitive, mental, and agential extension. (shrink)

A group of seven short late Old Babylonian texts, written in Akkadian, found in the early twentieth century in a grave in Susa, form the focus of this paper. The texts, which have attracted much scholarly attention since their publication in 1916 by Jean-Vincent Scheil, have until now not been collated. They are presented here with improved readings, a new translation, and extensive commentary. The mention in two of the texts of an alleged chthonic “weigher” is philologically disproved: psychostasia, the (...) weighing of souls, did not exist in ancient Mesopotamian religion. The suggestion of some scholars that these Old Babylonian Akkadian texts are witnesses to Elamite, or even Iranian, belief in the weighing of souls is methodically refuted. The nature of the seven so-called Susa Funerary Texts is discussed, demonstrating their close contacts to two other well-known Mesopotamian genres—personal prayers and reports of oracular or prophetic visions. Finally, the question of their unusual find spot, viz., in a grave, is discussed and the possibility raised that this peculiar location is a result of the texts’ magical function. (shrink)

Our thought and talk are situated. They do not take place in a vacuum but always in a context, and they always concern an external situation relative to which they are to be evaluated. Since that is so, François Recanati argues, our linguistic and mental representations alike must be assigned two layers of content: the explicit content, or lekton, is relative and perspectival, while the complete content, which is absolute, involves contextual factors in addition to what is explicitly represented. Far (...) from reducing to the context-independent meaning of the sentence-type or, in the psychological realm, to the 'narrow' content of mental representations, the lekton is a level intermediate between context-invariant meaning and full propositional content. Recognition of that intermediate level is the key to a proper understanding of context-dependence in language and thought. Going beyond the usual discussions of indexicality and unarticulated constituents in the philosophy of language, Recanati turns to the philosophy of mind for decisive arguments in favour of his approach. He shows, first, that the lekton is the notion of content we need if we are to properly understand the relations between perception, memory, and the imagination, and second, that the psychological 'mode' is what determines the situation the lekton is relative to. In this framework he provides a detailed account of de se thought and the first person point of view. In the last part of the book, Recanati discusses the special freedom we have, in discourse and thought, to shift the situation of evaluation. He traces that freedom to a special mode - the anaphoric mode - which enables us to go beyond the egocentric stage of pre-human thought. (shrink)

A key question about the value of truth in epistemology is whether the truthfulness of some proposition is a factor in our evaluation of beliefs. The traditional view—evidenced in introductory texts and academic journals :349–369, 2002, p. 350)—is that the truth of a belief should not impact our evaluations of it. Recent work has raised empirical objections to this default position of truth-insensitivity by suggesting that our ordinary belief evaluations assign considerable weight to the truth value of (...) the believed proposition. If correct, this work grants truth a larger role in our epistemology—suggesting that it serves both as an element of our ordinary epistemic evaluations and as an intuitive norm for belief evaluation :4009–4030, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0727-z, Philos Phenomenol Res 93:348–367, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12218). However, this position is not convincing. In this paper, I argue that this empirical work, while revelatory of some interesting features of belief evaluation, falls far short of demonstrating that belief evaluation is truth-sensitive, or that truth-sensitivity is intuitive. (shrink)

There is a controversy as to the moral status of an action in the face of uncertainty concerning a non-moral fact that is morally significant (according to an applicable moral standard): According to the objective conception, the right action is determined in light of the truth, namely the actual state of affairs (regarding the pertinent fact), whereas according to the subjective conception, the right action depends on the epistemic state of the agent, namely her (justified) belief (concerning the pertinent (...) fact). A similar debate concerns the law, with respect to uncertainty regarding a legally significant fact. In this paper, I argue that moral and legal normative concepts are ambiguous and include two aspects: The ideal aspect, which is concerned with the constitutive feature of the normative standard, and the pragmatic aspect, which determines the correct action under uncertainty . With regard to each aspect, a different conception is appropriate: The objective conception should govern the ideal aspect and the subjective conception the pragmatic aspect. And the relevant aspect (and therefore the appropriate conception) depends on the question under consideration regarding the pertinent normative standard: what is its constitutive feature or whether an action is right (according to the applicable normative standard) in the face of uncertainty. (shrink)

In several papers, I have argued for a theory of distributive justice and considered its implications. This theory includes a principle of responsibility that was endorsed by others within an account of defensive force (self-defense and defense of others). Whitley Kaufman criticizes this account which he refers to as the "distributive justice theory of self-defense" (DJ theory). In this paper, I respond to this criticism. I argue that Kaufman presents the theory inaccurately, that his standard of evaluation of the (...) theory is inadequate and that his claim that the theory should be rejected is unconvincing. (shrink)

The paper lays the foundations for a duty of sustainable property use based on Kant’s Doctrine of Right. In doing so, it contributes to the project of extending the application of Kant’s philosophy to environmental issues so as to include his legal-political philosophy. After providing some context, focusing in particular on Kant’s property argument, I present and critically evaluate a recent argument for a duty of sustainable property use, put forward by Attila Ataner. Then, I draw on Reinhard Brandt’s and (...) Katrin Flikschuh’s interpretation of Kant’s permissive law in order to develop my own argument. According to my account, the duty of sustainable property use is rooted in Kant’s property argument, it is best construed in terms of interpersonal freedom, and it has a structure resembling that of duties of distributive justice. Unlike Ataner’s, my argument proceeds entirely within the domain of interpersonal freedom; it focuses clearly on the normative sense of usability; it does not overgenerate obligations; and it categorises the duty of sustainable property use within Kant’s taxonomy of duties. It thus constitutes a promising starting point to further investigate the connection between sustainability, Kant’s property argument and its use of a permissive law, and the Universal Principle of Right. (shrink)

The question of whether a mistake of law should negate or mitigate criminal liability is commonly considered to be pertinent to the culpability of the agent, often examined in light of the (epistemic) reasonableness of the mistake. I argue that this view disregards an important aspect of this question, namely whether a mistake of law affects the rightness of the action, particularly in light of the moral significance of the mistake. I argue that several plausible premises, regarding moral rightness under (...) uncertainty, the nature of law and the moral significance of law, entail a positive answer to this question. Specifically, I consider this argument: (1) one (subjective) sense of moral rightness depends on the (epistemically justified) belief of the agent concerning a non-moral fact that is morally significant; (2) a law is (partly) a non-moral fact; (3) a legal fact might be morally significant; (4) therefore an action that is compatible with an applicable moral standard, in light of the mistaken (justified) belief of the agent concerning a morally significant law, is (subjectively) right or less wrongful; (5) the (subjective) moral rightness of an action counts against criminal liability for this action; (6) therefore an action that is compatible with the applicable moral standard, in light of the mistaken (epistemically justified) belief of the agent, counts against criminal liability for the action if the law is morally significant. (shrink)

The relationship between psychology and Christian theology has been one of the most important topics in the science and religion field. Discussions, however, are too frequently one-sided. This book takes an alternative approach, following the lead of Fraser Watts, the contributions develop various aspects of the mutual enrichment of each discipline by the other. Beyond outdated models of conflict and independence, this book highlights areas of fruitful enhancement at the interface of Christian belief and practice with psychology. Set out (...) in four sections the book's chapters first engage methodological and substantive issues in the interdisciplinarity raised by the dialogue between psychology and theology. Secondly, chapters explore a variety of areas in which psychology enriches theology, looking at both historical and contemporary themes such as psychoanalysis, embodiment and mindfulness. Chapters in the third section explore some of the theological enrichments of psychology, with topics including character strengths, wisdom, and forgiveness. The final section engages aspects of the mutual enrichment in religious life and pastoral care with an applied focus on mental health, meditation, prayer, spiritual direction and spirituality. A refreshing alternative study of the mutual enrichment of psychology and theology with theoretical and practical applications, this book reinforces the need for both disciplines to pursue creative and constructive engagement with each other. Of interest to scholars in psychology, theology, religious studies this book will also be of interest more widely as a case study of successful interdisciplinary work. (shrink)

OBJECTIVES: To review the characteristics and performance of research ethics committees in Spain in the evaluation of multicentre clinical trial drug protocols. DESIGN: A prospective study of 100 applications. SETTING: Forty-one committees reviewing clinical trial protocols, involving 50 hospitals in 25 cities. MAIN MEASURES: Protocol-related features, characteristics of research ethics committees and evaluation dynamics. RESULTS: The 100 applications involved 15 protocols (of which 12 were multinational) with 12 drugs. Committees met monthly (except one). They had a mean number (...) of 12 members, requested a mean of six complete dossiers and nine additional copies of the protocol with a mean deadline of 14 days before the meeting. All applications were approved except three (two of the three were open-label long-term safety trials rejected by the same committee), which were approved by the other committees involved. The mean time from submission to approval was 64 days. The mean time from submission to arrival of the approval document at our offices was 85 days. Twenty-five committees raised queries for 38 of the 97 finally approved applications. Impact of evaluation fee, number of members, queries raised and experience of committees on timings were not statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Obtaining ethical approval is time-consuming. There is much diversity in the research ethics committees' performance. A remarkable delay (> 20 days) exists between the decision and the arrival of the written approval, suggesting administrative or organisational problems. (shrink)

Objectives: To review the performance of research ethics committees in Spain in assessing multicentre clinical trial drug protocols, and to evaluate if they would comply with the requirements of the new EU Directive to be implemented by May 2004.Design and setting: Prospective study of applications of MCT submitted to RECs.Main measurements: Protocol related features and evaluation process dynamics.Results: 187 applications to be performed in 114 centres, were reviewed by 62 RECs. RECs had a median number of 14 members, of (...) which three were lay members. All applications were approved except four which were however approved by the other RECs involved. The median times from submission to approval and from submission to reception at the sponsor’s offices were 48 and 62 days, respectively. In 55% of all applications approved, 41 RECs raised 307 queries, 40% of these were protocol related issues, and 38% related to the patients’ information sheets. RECs charging an evaluation fee in advance and applications with no queries raised were statistically significantly associated with shorter evaluation times. However, there is a gap of at least 1.5 weeks between the date of the meeting and the reception of the approval letter in the sponsor’s office.Conclusions: Evaluating MCT protocols by RECs is a time consuming process. Needing 1.5 weeks for communicating the decision taken by RECs to the sponsor suggests serious administrative shortcomings within most RECs. By significantly reducing the time for communication of their decisions, the majority of RECs would comply with the Directive requirement of a maximum 60 day period for the assessment of MCT. (shrink)

The essence of the moral luck question is whether the responsibility of persons is determined only in light of actions that are within their control or also in light of factors, such as the consequences of their actions, which are beyond their control. Most people seem to have contrasting intuitions regarding this question. On the one hand, there is a common intuition that the responsibility of persons should be judged only in light of what is within their control. On the (...) other hand, there is a strong intuition that the consequences of actions sometimes affect the responsibility of agents even when these consequences depend on factors that are beyond their control. A parallel dilemma is present in the law. Legal rules, particularly criminal law rules and tort rules, often differentiate between agents in light of factors that are beyond their control, and in this sense involve legal luck. Of course, factors beyond the control of persons, including the consequences of their actions, can be significant, with respect to the evaluation of the responsibility of persons for instrumental or epistemic reasons. The question is thus only with respect to the independent significance of factors beyond the control of agents, and particularly the consequences of actions, to the evaluation of the (extent of the) responsibility of agents. Benjamin Zipursky offers an interesting argument in order to support the intuition in favor of moral and legal luck, particularly with regard to consequences, especially the rule according to which the punishment of completed offences is more severe than the punishment of attempts and the rule that tort liability applies only to actions that have caused harm. The aim of this Comment is to evaluate this argument. I will try to consider to what extent Zipursky's explanation merely reiterates the familiar intuition that the normative evaluation of the conduct of persons should be influenced by consequential luck, and to what extent it provides new insights that might appeal also to those who are more forcefully drawn to the contrasting intuition that we should judge people only in light of factors that are within their control. I argue that while Zipursky's suggestions might appeal to those who already share the intuition in favor of (consequential) moral and legal luck, they would not convince those who have doubts regarding moral and legal luck. (shrink)

In the context of non-classical logics, many philosophers have been particularly interested in the paraconsistent logics. In addition to traditional definitions, in recent years, new ways of characterizing the notion of paraconsistency have been proposed. In all of these definitions the rule or the meta-rule of explosion is abandoned. In this article, I present those definitions and evaluate the role that the negation and the transitivity play in each of them. Finally, I propose a new definition of paraconsistency which I (...) call total paraconsistency and show that the rule of weakening plays a crucial role in all of the characterizations of such a concept. (shrink)

In the context of non-classical logics, many philosophers have been particularly interested in the paraconsistent logics. In addition to traditional definitions, in recent years, new ways of characterizing the notion of paraconsistency have been proposed. In all of these definitions the rule or the meta-rule of explosion is abandoned. In this article, I present those definitions and evaluate the role that the negation and the transitivity play in each of them. Finally, I propose a new definition of paraconsistency which I (...) call total paraconsistency and show that the rule of weakening plays a crucial role in all of the characterizations of such a concept. (shrink)

Au-dela des idees convenues, comment penser les fondements d'une crise sociale inscrite dans le temps long? La guerre civile perpetuelle evalue dans plusieurs domaines les ravages politiques de la philosophie de la modernite. Cette etude examine d'abord sa capacite a detruire a la racine la possibilite du lien social naturel, pour tenter par la suite de le recreer au moyen de divers artifices. Loin de se limiter au simple constat d'echec, l'originalite et la force de cet ouvrage resident dans l'analyse (...) des causes d'un processus logique qui tend a imposer sa violence intrinseque au coeur de la relation sociale. Avec les contributions de: Miguel Ayuso Torres, Guillaume Bernard, Jacques Bonnet, Danilo Castellano, Bernard Dumont, Gilles Dumont, Jose Miguel Gambra, Carlo Gambescia, Isabelle Huten, Aude de Kerros, Teodoro Katte Klitsche de la Grange, Marc de Launay, Pierre de Lauzun, Alain Mescheriakoff, Dalmacio Negro Pavon, Monica Papazu, Claude Polin, Christophe Reveillard, Giovanni Turco. (shrink)

The article explores the Israeli Supreme Court main judgment regarding the legality of the use of special interrogation methods in order extract information concerning future acts of terror. The Judgment's main conclusion was that while there might be a justification for using exceptional interrogation measures in order to save lives, based on the concept of lesser evil as embedded in the criminal defense of necessity, the government is nevertheless not authorized to use such means in the absence of explicit legislation (...) to that effect. The article presents and evaluates the Judgment, particularly the relation between the substantive moral questions involved and the aspect of authorization. (shrink)

The complex philosophical theology of Paul Tillich, increasingly studied today, was influenced by thinkers as diverse as the Romantics and Existentialists, Hegel and Heidegger. A Lutheran pastor who served as a military chaplain in World War I, he was dismissed from his university post at Frankfurt when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and emigrated to the United States, where he continued his distinguished career. This authoritative Companion provides accessible accounts of the major themes of Tillich's diverse theological writings (...) and draws upon the very best of contemporary Tillich scholarship. Each chapter introduces and evaluates its topic and includes suggestions for further reading. The authors assess Tillich's place in the history of twentieth-century Christian thought as well as his significance for current constructive theology. Of interest to both students and researchers, this Companion reaffirms Tillich as a major figure in today's theological landscape. (shrink)

À la lumière de cas concrets impliquant des universités du Sud comme du Nord et sur la base de l'expérience d'évaluation du réseau international PRELUDE, les auteurs analysent des pratiques de constitution, de capitalisation et de partage des...

We often evaluate belief-forming processes, agents, or entire belief states for reliability. This is normally done with the assumption that beliefs are all-or-nothing. How does such evaluation go when we’re considering beliefs that come in degrees? I consider a natural answer to this question that focuses on the degree of truth-possession had by a set of beliefs. I argue that this natural proposal is inadequate, but for an interesting reason. When we are dealing with all-or-nothing belief, (...) high reliability leads to high levels of truth-possession. However, when it comes to degrees of belief, reliability and truth-possession part ways. The natural answer thus fails to be a good way to evaluate degrees of belief for reliability. I propose and develop an alternative method based on the notion of calibration, suggested by Frank Ramsey, which does not have this problem and consider why we should care about such assessments of reliability even if they are not tied directly to truth-possession. (shrink)

BackgroundChronic airway diseases are prevalent and costly conditions. Interdisciplinary rehabilitation programs that include Acceptance and Commitment-based components could be important to tackle the vicious circle linking progression of the disease, inactivity, and psychopathological symptoms.MethodsA retrospective evaluation of routinely collected data of an interdisciplinary rehabilitation program was performed. The program included group sessions including patient education, breathing exercise, occupational therapy and an ACT-based psychological treatment, and individual sessions of physical therapy. Demographic data, clinical characteristics of the patients and the values (...) of outcome variables before treatment, at discharge, at 3 months, and at 6 months were extracted from medical records. Multiple imputation was employed to address missing data. Linear mixed models were employed to assess changes over time. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to assess predictors of a minimum clinically important change of health status from baseline to the 6-months follow-up.ResultsData from 31 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and 12 patients with bronchiectasis were extracted. Health status improved from baseline to discharge to the 3 months follow-up, but not to the 6 months follow-up. Anxiety and depression improved across all the time points. Quality of life did not improve over time. Having a worse health status at baseline and fewer depressive symptoms were significantly associated with achieving a minimum clinically important change of health status at 6 months. The effects of the interdisciplinary program were not different for patients with COPD or with bronchiectasis.DiscussionInterdisciplinary programs including ACT-based components are promising treatments for the rehabilitation of patients with chronic airway diseases. (shrink)

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms (...) of transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

What is a philosophy class like? What roles do teachers and students play? Questions like these have been answered time and again by philosophers using images and metaphors. As philosophers continue to develop pedagogical approaches in a more conscious way, it is worth evaluating traditional metaphors used to understand and structure philosophy classes. In this article, we examine two common metaphors—the sage on the stage, and philosophy as combat—and show why they fail pedagogically. Then we propose five metaphors—teaching philosophy as (...) world-traveling, wondering, conducting an orchestra, storytelling, and coaching—that can better respond to the needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. Further, these metaphors find their ground in long-standing beliefs about what philosophy is, how it is done, and what it can do for those willing to engage in it. While no single one of them is comprehensive, we think that these models can help us enliven our own thinking about our teaching and the roles we and our students play in our classrooms. (shrink)

For more than a half-century, evidence scholars have been exploring whether the criminal standard of proof can be grounded in decision theory. Such grounding would require the emergence of a social consensus about the utilities to be assigned to the four outcomes at trial. Significant disagreement remains, even among legal scholars, about the relative desirability of those outcomes and even about the formalisms for manipulating their respective utilities. We attempt to diagnose the principal reasons for this dissensus and to suggest (...) ways in which a broadly shared evaluation might be forged, both with respect to the appropriate equations for defining the standard of proof and with respect to the appropriate utilities to associate with the various trial outcomes. Where consensus cannot be forged, we hold that remaining differences can probably be finessed. We also suggest ways to elicit the utilities of individuals on these matters so as to avoid the usual flaws of such surveys. Along the way, we note a). the disproportionate role that the Blackstone ratio of errors continues to play in appraisals of the utilities of trial outcomes (despite its unintelligibility in the context of utilities) and b). the persisting belief -for which there is no theoretical basis-that every plausible assignment of utilities will inevitably result in a very high standard of proof. Finally, we examine some of the technical features associated with a proposed rank ordering of the utilities of trial outcomes. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article: Nikolaj Nottelmann, ‘Belief‐Desire Explanation’. Philosophy Compass Vol/Iss : 1–10. doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2011.00446.xAuthor’s Introduction“Belief‐desire explanation” is short‐hand for a type of action explanation that appeals to a set of the agent’s mental states consisting of 1. Her desire to ψ and 2. Her belief that, were she to φ, she would promote her ψ‐ing. Here, to ψ could be to eat an ice cream, and to φ could be to walk to the ice (...) cream vendor. Adherents of belief‐desire explanation, often labelled “Humeans”, standardly assume that appeals to such belief‐desire pairs sufficiently explain many human and animal actions, and also that all actions are explainable thus, at least in so far as they are guided by the agent’s intentions. Humeans take their lead from David Hume’s famous dictum that “Reason...is only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” In its original context, this passage from the Treatise is naturally taken to convey the thesis that mental states subservient to epistemic rationality – such as beliefs – are never in themselves sufficient to motivate action. Thus, an appeal to an agent’s beliefs is never in itself sufficient to lay bare her motivations and explain her actions, but must be supplemented by an appeal to “passions” such as desires. Many philosophers, so‐called Anti‐Humeans, have sharply disagreed. Some have pointed to certain beliefs with alleged motivational force in isolation from desires, most commonly evaluative beliefs. Others have argued that belief‐desire psychology fails to cut up mental space in a way fruitful to action explanation. Instead, only appeals to other types of mental state will adequately explain many types of intentional action. The debate for and against Humeanism is a highly complex one, which is likely to persist along with any general interest in the theory of action explanation.Author RecommendsHume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 2nd ed. Edited and with an Analytical Index, by L. A. Selby‐Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.Part III. Sect. III. of the Treatise is the classical source of the Humean view. Any in‐depth understanding of contemporary Humeanism must take it as its starting point.Stroud, Barry. Hume. London: Routledge, 1977.This is an excellent introductory text. Chap. VII treats on Humeanism and the key part of the Treatise listed above.Smith, Michael. ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation.’Mind 96.381 : 36–61.This is an authoritative modern account of Humeanism. Even if a bit imprecise in some regards, the text is lucidly written and nicely captures the structure of the debate over Humeanism.Schaefer‐Landau, Russ. Moral Realism. A Defence. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.Chapt. 5 contains another fine, more recent, introduction to Humeanism and the typical arguments for and against it. This introduction is particularly recommendable in virtue of its clarity and comprehensiveness.Ratcliffe, Matthew. Rethinking Commonsense Psychology. A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.This monograph treats on a very wide number of subjects pertaining to action explanation and harbours many highly controversial theses. Still, it is a refreshing eye‐opener re the immense complexity of the topic of action explanation and the great variety of such explanations in our folk practices. On my view Ratcliffe makes plausible the view that neither our folk practices nor our scientific practices single out a unique model of action explanation as the only appropriate one. Rather our practices of action explanation constitute a rather motley family. The consequence of this to the debates over Humeanism is obvious: The combatants must get clear on the exact models of action explanation within which they discuss the place of belief‐desire references instead of pretending to fight over action explanation in general.Gendler, Tamar Szabó. ‘Alief and Belief.’Journal of Philosophy 105 : 634–63.This paper, together with Gendler’s contemporary sister paper ‘Alief in Action ’, is an engaging proponent of the view that belief‐desire psychology and its associated practice of Human action explanations gets psychological reality radically wrong. Gendler presents a number of cases where, allegedly, relevant human actions are only explicable by appeal to a type of mental state, which Gendler dubs “alief”. Aliefs are neither beliefs nor desires; but share certain characteristics with both.Online MaterialsSample SyllabusWeek I: David Hume’s viewHume, Treatise, Part III. Sect III.Stroud: Hume, Chapt. VII.Week II: Modern HumeanismSmith, ‘The Humean Theory of Motivation’.Nottelmann, ‘Belief‐Desire Explanation’.Week III: Modern Humeanism continued: The Dialectics of the DebateSchaefer‐Landau, ‘Motivational Humeanism’.Week IV: Intention, Agency and CausationDavidson, Donald. ‘Actions, Reasons, and Causes’ & ‘Freedom to Act’, both in: Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.Week V: Modern Anti‐Humeanism, The Neo‐Kantian VersionScanlon, T. M. What we Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1998, Chapt. 1. ‘Reasons’.Week VI: Modern Anti‐Humeanism, The Cognitive Science VersionGendler, Tamar Szabó. ‘Alief and Belief’, supplemented with excerpts of her ‘Alief in Action ’. Mind and Language 23.5 : 552–85.Focus Questions1 Which kinds of explanation do belief‐desire explanations belong to?2 In so far as belief‐desire explanations provide causal explanation of action, how are we to understand the causal nexus between belief‐desire pairs and successful agency?3 How are we to understand the notions of belief and desire as appealed to in belief‐desire explanations? Are they even conceptually distinct from the concept of a belief‐desire explanation of human action?4 May evaluative judgments such as moral judgments motivate and/or rationalize action in isolation from accompanying distinct co‐native states of the agent?5 Are certain types of intentional action better explained with sole reference to mental states different from belief as well as desire? (shrink)

This essay takes a critical look at Jonathan Berg’s theory of direct belief. Berg’s analysis of the concept of direct belief is considered insightful, but doubts are raised concerning his generalization of the purely extensional truth conditional semantics of direct belief ascription sentences to the truth conditional semantics of all belief ascription sentences. Difficulties are posed that Berg does not discuss, but that are implied by the proposal that the truth conditional semantics of belief ascription (...) sentences generally are those of direct belief ascription sentences, and that once mentioned must enter into an evaluation of the proposition that by implication all beliefs are direct. Another line of objection concerns Berg’s second main thesis that the pragmatics as distinct from the semantics of belief ascription sentences can explain away apparent substitution failure validity breakdowns in belief ascription sentences as inappropriate utterances according to rules of roughly Gricean conversational implicature, rather than correspondence or non-correspondence with the facts about such things as what it is that people actually believe. These two parts of Berg’s argument, that the truth conditional semantics of all belief ascription sentences are those exclusively of direct belief ascription sentences, and that apparent substitution failure is effectively salva propria rather than salva veritate, are explored within the general framework of Berg’s thought experiment, eventually arriving at diametrically opposed conclusions, reflecting on what we believe comic book character Lois Lane believes and does not believe about Superman, and what she believes and does not believe about Clark Kent. (shrink)

The prevalence of fear of movement in persistent pain ranges from 50 to 70%, and it may hinder the subsequent rehabilitation interventions. Therefore, the evaluation of fear of movement/injury plays a crucial role in making clinical treatment decisions conducive to the promotion of rehabilitation and prognosis. In the decision-making process of pain treatment, the assessment of fear of movement/injury is mainly completed by scale/questionnaire. Scale/questionnaire is the most widely used instrument for measuring fear of movement/injury in the decision-making process (...) of pain treatment. At present, the most commonly used scale/questionnaire are the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia, the Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire, the Kinesiophobia Causes Scale, the Athlete Fear-Avoidance Questionnaire, and the Fear-Avoidance Components Scale. In order to provide necessary tools and references for related research and rehabilitation treatment, this descriptive review is designed as an introduction to the background and content, score system, available language versions, variants of the original questionnaire, and psychometric properties of these scales/questionnaries. (shrink)

This book offers a re-evaluation of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the prominent Italian Renaissance philosopher and prince of Concord. It argues that Pico is part of a history of attempted concordance between philosophy and theology, reason and faith. His contribution is a syncretist theological philosophy based on Christianity, Platonism, Aristotelianism and Jewish Kabbalism. After an introduction, Chapter 2 discusses Pico’s career, his power-relations and his work, Chapters 3 and 4 place his three pillars of Platonism, Aristotelianism and Kabbalism in (...) their historical context, examines shared histories, and introduces the scholars around Pico who contributed so much in each of these traditions (introducing, for example, Christian Kabbalism), including exploring Pico's complex relationship with Marsilio Ficino. Chapter 5 examines the problems of concordance within Pico’s cosmology and metaphysics, including the question of God and the role of the Intellect. Chapter 6 describes Pico’s ‘exceptionalist’ version of the mystical ascent as an individualized ascetic experience. Pico eschews the contemporary desire to use a renewed christian thinking or christian-classical metaphysics to change the world (towards a Golden Age or a 'second coming') to present a personal path to God, with no return to the world. (shrink)

This paper takes Cavarero’s arguments against the Homo erectus seriously and asks: how can we model an alternative to it? It proposes that a notion of the mimetically inclined subject is required, one that thickens Cavarero’s affirmative account of inclination by way of a new philosophical understanding of mimesis that includes habit and disciplinarity. Following Cavarero, the mother is positioned as a key figure to place nurturing and love at the centre of subject-making. However, they are shown to be a (...) necessary but not sufficient step for the process of re-evaluation. An account of disciplinary mimesis which draws on a Nietzschean legacy in Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, together with Simone de Beauvoir’s account of woman as a situation, demonstrate the pitfalls of idealizing the mother. I argue that to challenge the particularized universalism of the European subject with an affirmative account of mimetic inclination, other figures which embrace Cavarero’s notion of relational vulnerability alongside the mother are required. The agonistic friend who practices an open, feminist curiosity is proposed as one such exemplar and, in closing remarks, I gesture to other necessary models in feminist and Indigenous thought that are key to remaking the androcentric subject of European philosophy. (shrink)

Eyewitnesses are susceptible to recollecting that they experienced an event in a way that is consistent with false information provided to them after the event. The effect is commonly called the misinformation effect. Because jurors tend to find eyewitness testimony compelling and persuasive, it is argued that jurors are likely to give inappropriate credence to eyewitness testimony, judging it to be reliable when it is not. It is argued that jurors should be informed about psychological findings on the misinformation effect, (...) to ensure that they lower the credence that they give to eyewitness testimony to reflect the unreliability of human memory that is demonstrated by the effect. Here I present a new argument, the overcritical juror argument, to support the conclusion that eyewitnesses are likely to make inappropriate credence assignments to eyewitness testimony. Whereas previously authors have argued that jurors will tend to give too much credence to eyewitness testimony, I identify circumstances in which jurors will give too little credence to some pieces of testimony. In my view jurors should be informed by psychological findings relating to the misinformation effect to ensure that they do not lower the credence that they give to eyewitness testimony when they should not. (shrink)

Naturalistic theories of disease appeal to concepts of biological function, and use the notion of dysfunction as the basis of their definitions. Debates in the philosophy of biology demonstrate how attributing functions in organisms and establishing the function-dysfunction distinction is by no means straightforward. This problematization of functional ascription has undermined naturalistic theories and led some authors to abandon the concept of dysfunction, favoring instead definitions based in normative criteria or phenomenological approaches. Although this work has enhanced our understanding of (...) disease and illness, we need not necessarily abandon naturalistic concepts of function and dysfunction in the disease debate. This article attempts to move towards a new naturalistic theory of disease that overcomes the limitations of previous definitions and offers advantages in the clinical setting. Our approach involves a re-evaluation of concepts of biological function employed by naturalistic theories. Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of biology, we develop a contextual and evaluative account of function that is better suited to clinical medicine and remains consistent with contemporary naturalism. We also show how an updated naturalistic view shares important affinities with normativist and phenomenological positions, suggesting a possibility for consilience in the disease debate. (shrink)

Perhaps the most widely touted of GPT-4’s at-launch, zero-shot capabilities has been its reported 90th-percentile performance on the Uniform Bar Exam. This paper begins by investigating the methodological challenges in documenting and verifying the 90th-percentile claim, presenting four sets of findings that indicate that OpenAI’s estimates of GPT-4’s UBE percentile are overinflated. First, although GPT-4’s UBE score nears the 90th percentile when examining approximate conversions from February administrations of the Illinois Bar Exam, these estimates are heavily skewed towards repeat test-takers (...) who failed the July administration and score significantly lower than the general test-taking population. Second, data from a recent July administration of the same exam suggests GPT-4’s overall UBE percentile was below the 69th percentile, and $$\sim$$ ∼ 48th percentile on essays. Third, examining official NCBE data and using several conservative statistical assumptions, GPT-4’s performance against first-time test takers is estimated to be $$\sim$$ ∼ 62nd percentile, including $$\sim$$ ∼ 42nd percentile on essays. Fourth, when examining only those who passed the exam (i.e. licensed or license-pending attorneys), GPT-4’s performance is estimated to drop to $$\sim$$ ∼ 48th percentile overall, and $$\sim$$ ∼ 15th percentile on essays. In addition to investigating the validity of the percentile claim, the paper also investigates the validity of GPT-4’s reported scaled UBE score of 298. The paper successfully replicates the MBE score, but highlights several methodological issues in the grading of the MPT + MEE components of the exam, which call into question the validity of the reported essay score. Finally, the paper investigates the effect of different hyperparameter combinations on GPT-4’s MBE performance, finding no significant effect of adjusting temperature settings, and a significant effect of few-shot chain-of-thought prompting over basic zero-shot prompting. Taken together, these findings carry timely insights for the desirability and feasibility of outsourcing legally relevant tasks to AI models, as well as for the importance for AI developers to implement rigorous and transparent capabilities evaluations to help secure safe and trustworthy AI. (shrink)

Naturalistic theories of disease appeal to concepts of biological function, and use the notion of dysfunction as the basis of their definitions. Debates in the philosophy of biology demonstrate how attributing functions in organisms and establishing the function-dysfunction distinction is by no means straightforward. This problematization of functional ascription has undermined naturalistic theories and led some authors to abandon the concept of dysfunction, favoring instead definitions based in normative criteria or phenomenological approaches. Although this work has enhanced our understanding of (...) disease and illness, we need not necessarily abandon naturalistic concepts of function and dysfunction in the disease debate. This article attempts to move towards a new naturalistic theory of disease that overcomes the limitations of previous definitions and offers advantages in the clinical setting. Our approach involves a reevaluation of concepts of biological function employed by naturalistic theories. Drawing on recent insights from the philosophy of biology, we develop a contextual and evaluative account of function that is better suited to clinical medicine and remains consistent with contemporary naturalism. We also show how an updated naturalistic view shares important affinities with normativist and phenomenological positions, suggesting a possibility for consilience in the disease debate. (shrink)

Usually within the context of computer simulations in quantum chemistry practices, there is a distinction between ab initio and semi-empirical methods. Related to this, a controversy within the scientific and philosophical communities came about regarding the superiority of the ab initio methods due to their theoretical rigor. In this article we re-evaluate the condition of the semi-empirical simulations in this area of research. We examine some of the aspects of this debate that have been considered in philosophy and provide additional (...) elements to the analysis. (shrink)

Black and Wilensky (1979) have made serious methodological errors in analyzing story grammars, and in the process they have committed additional errors in applying formal language theory. Our arguments involve clarifying certain aspects of knowledge representation crucial to a proper treatment of story understanding.Particular criticisms focus on the following shortcomings of their presentation: 1) an erroneous statement from formal language theory, 2) misapplication of formal language theory to story grammars, 3) unsubstantiated and doubtful analogies with English grammar, 4) various non (...) sequiturs concerning the generation of non‐stories, 5) a false claim based on the artificial distinction between syntax and semantics, and 6) misinterpretation of the role of story grammars in story understanding.We conclude by suggesting appropriate criteria for the evaluation of story grammars. (shrink)

Causal processes can give rise to distinctive distributions in the linguistic variables that they affect. Consequently, a secure understanding of a variable's distribution can hold a key to understanding the forces that have causally shaped it. A storied distribution in linguistics has been Zipf's law, a kind of power law. In the wake of a major debate in the sciences around power-law hypotheses and the unreliability of earlier methods of evaluating them, here we re-evaluate the distributions claimed to characterize phoneme (...) frequencies. We infer the fit of power laws and three alternative distributions to 166 Australian languages, using a maximum likelihood framework. We find evidence supporting earlier results, but also nuancing them and increasing our understanding of them. Most notably, phonemic inventories appear to have a Zipfian-like frequency structure among their most-frequent members (though perhaps also a lognormal structure) but a geometric (or exponential) structure among the least-frequent. We compare these new insights the kinds of causal processes that affect the evolution of phonemic inventories over time, and identify a potential account for why, despite there being an important role for phonetic substance in phonemic change, we could still expect inventories with highly diverse phonetic content to share similar distributions of phoneme frequencies. We conclude with priorities for future work in this promising program of research. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of Nietzsche's re-evaluation of values that seeks to satisfy two desiderata, both important if Nietzsche's project is to stand a chance of success. The first is that Nietzsche's re-evaluations must be capable of being understood as authoritative by those whose values are subject to re-evaluation. The second is that Nietzsche's project must not falsify the values being re-evaluated, by, for example, misrepresenting intrinsic values as instrumental values. Given this, five possible forms of re- (...) class='Hi'>evaluation are distinguished, and, of these, four are argued both to satisfy the specified desiderata and to feature more or less prominently in Nietzsche's later work. The conclusion of the paper is therefore that Nietzsche's project has at least the right general shape to succeed, and that the reasons for this depend upon acknowledging the importance of the desiderata and of the distinctions to which the paper draws attention. (shrink)