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  1. Black-box assisted medical decisions: AI power vs. ethical physician care.Berman Chan - 2023 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 26 (3):285-292.
    Without doctors being able to explain medical decisions to patients, I argue their use of black box AIs would erode the effective and respectful care they provide patients. In addition, I argue that physicians should use AI black boxes only for patients in dire straits, or when physicians use AI as a “co-pilot” (analogous to a spellchecker) but can independently confirm its accuracy. I respond to A.J. London’s objection that physicians already prescribe some drugs without knowing why they work.
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  2. The demonstrative use of names, and the divine-name co-reference debate.Berman Chan - 2023 - International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 93 (2):107-120.
    Could Christians and Muslims be referring to the same God? Consider Gareth Evans’s causal theory of reference, on which a name refers to the dominant source of information in the name’s “dossier”. I argue that information about experiences, in which God is simply the object of acquaintance, can dominate the dossier. Thus, this "demonstrative" use of names offers a promising alternative avenue by which users of the divine names can refer to the same referent despite having different conceptions of God.
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  3. The rise of artificial intelligence and the crisis of moral passivity.Berman Chan - 2020 - AI and Society 35 (4):991-993.
    Set aside fanciful doomsday speculations about AI. Even lower-level AIs, while otherwise friendly and providing us a universal basic income, would be able to do all our jobs. Also, we would over-rely upon AI assistants even in our personal lives. Thus, John Danaher argues that a human crisis of moral passivity would result However, I argue firstly that if AIs are posited to lack the potential to become unfriendly, they may not be intelligent enough to replace us in all our (...)
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  4. A Platonic Kind-Based Account of Goodness.Berman Chan - 2021 - Philosophia 49 (4):1369-1389.
    I contend there exists a platonistic good that all other good (excellent) things must resemble, supplementing this theory with Aristotelian features. Something’s goodness holds in virtue of the thing’s own properties being such as to satisfy its kind-based standards, and those K-standards resembling the platonic good. As for the latter condition, the K-standards resemble it firstly with respect to requiring activities, and secondly also at the level of what teleology those activities are directed towards.
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  5. An Ebola-Like Microbe and The Limits of Kind-Based Goodness.Berman Chan - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (2):451-471.
    Aristotelian theory, as found in Michael Thompson and Philippa Foot, claims that to be good is to be good as a member of that kind. However, I contend that something can satisfy kind-relative standards but nonetheless be bad—I propose a hypothetical Ebola-like microbe that meets its kind-standards of being destructive for its own sake, but it would plausibly be bad for doing so. I anticipate an Aristotelian objection that evaluations should only be made from "within" the lifeform conception rather than (...)
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  6. Zabarella on Prime Matter and Extension.Berman Chan - 2022 - Philosophia 50 (5):2405-2422.
    The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed a philosophical shift that would help pave the way for modern science, a shift from metaphysical theories of material objects to other views embracing only the empirically-accessible parts of material things. One much-debated topic in the course of this shift was regarding prime matter. The late scholastic Jacobus Zabarella (1533-1589) arrived upon his views about prime matter via his version of the regressus method, a program for a sort of scientific reasoning. In his De (...)
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  7. Are Katamenia a First Potentiality or First Actuality of a Human?Berman Chan - 2022 - Filosofia Unisinos 23 (2):1-10.
    In Aristotle’s writings regarding the biology of embryology, especially in the Generation of Animals, he contends that the mother’s menstrual fluids provide the material for the generation of the offspring, and the father’s form determines its formation as a member of that species (e.g. human). The katamenia (menstrual fluids) of the mother are said to be potentially all the body parts of the offspring, though actually none of them. So, the fluids are potentially the offspring. But are they a first (...)
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  8. Improving the justice‐based argument for conducting human gene editing research to cure sickle cell disease.Berman Chan - 2019 - Bioethics 34 (2):200-202.
    In a recent article, Marilyn Baffoe-Bonnie offers three arguments for conducting CRISPR/Cas9 biotechnology research to cure sickle-cell disease (SCD) based on addressing historical and current injustices in SCD research and care. I show that her second and third arguments suffer from roughly the same defect, which is that they really argue for something else rather than for conducting CRISPR/Cas9 research in particular. For instance, the second argument argues that conducting this gene therapy research would improve the relationship between SCD sufferers (...)
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    Are katamenia a first potentiality or first actuality of a human?Berman Chan - 2022 - Filosofia Unisinos 23 (2).
    In Aristotle’s writings regarding the biology of embryology, especially in the Generation of Animals, he contends that the mother’s menstrual fluids provide the material for the generation of the offspring, and the father’s form determines its formation as a member of that species (e.g. human). The katamenia (menstrual fluids) of the mother are said to be potentially all the body parts of the offspring, though actually none of them. So, the fluids are potentially the offspring. But are they a first (...)
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