COVID-19 is unique in that it is the first global pandemic occurring amidst a crowded information environment that has facilitated the proliferation of misinformation on social media. Dangerous misleading narratives have the potential to disrupt ‘official’ information sharing at major government announcements. Using an interrupted time-series design, we test the impact of the announcement of the first UK lockdown on short-term trends of misinformation on Twitter. We utilise a novel dataset of all COVID-19-related social media posts on Twitter from the (...) UK 48 hours before and 48 hours after the announcement. We find that while the number of tweets increased immediately post announcement, there was no evidence of an increase in misinformation-related tweets. We found an increase in COVID-19-related bot activity post-announcement. Topic modelling of misinformation tweets revealed four distinct clusters: ‘government and policy’, ‘symptoms’, ‘pushing back against misinformation’ and ‘cures and treatments’. (shrink)

We investigate and extend the notion of a good approximation with respect to the enumeration ${({\mathcal D}_{\rm e})}$ and singleton ${({\mathcal D}_{\rm s})}$ degrees. We refine two results by Griffith, on the inversion of the jump of sets with a good approximation, and we consider the relation between the double jump and index sets, in the context of enumeration reducibility. We study partial order embeddings ${\iota_s}$ and ${\hat{\iota}_s}$ of, respectively, ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm e}}$ and ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm T}}$ (the Turing degrees) (...) into ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm s}}$ , and we show that the image of ${{\mathcal D}_{\rm T}}$ under ${\hat{\iota}_s}$ is precisely the class of retraceable singleton degrees. We define the notion of a good enumeration, or singleton, degree to be the property of containing the set of good stages of some good approximation, and we show that ${\iota_s}$ preserves the latter, as also other naturally arising properties such as that of totality or of being ${\Gamma^0_n}$ , for ${\Gamma \in \{\Sigma,\Pi,\Delta\}}$ and n > 0. We prove that the good enumeration and singleton degrees are immune and that the good ${\Sigma^0_2}$ singleton degrees are hyperimmune. Finally we show that, for singleton degrees a s < b s such that b s is good, any countable partial order can be embedded in the interval (a s, b s). (shrink)

In October 2003 the Supreme Court of the United States allowed Arkansas officials to force Charles Laverne Singleton, a schizophrenic prisoner convicted of murder, to take drugs that would render him sane enough to be executed. On January 6 2004 he was killed by lethal injection, raising many ethical questions. By reference to the Singleton case, this article will analyse in both moral and legal terms the controversial justifications of the enforced medical treatment of death-row inmates. Starting (...) with a description of the Singleton case, I will highlight the prima facie reasons for which this case is problematic and merits attention. Next, I will consider the justification of punishment in Western society and, in that context, the evolution of the notion of insanity in the assessment of criminal responsibility during the past two centuries, both in the US and the UK. In doing so, I will take into account the moral justification used to enforce treatment, looking at the conflict between the prisoner’s right to treatment and his right to refuse medication where not justified by outcomes that can be reasonably expected to be positive for the individual. Finally, in contrast with some retributivist arguments in favour of enforced treatment to enable execution, I will propose a possible alternative, necessary if we are to consistently uphold the notion of autonomy. (shrink)

In The Gift of Jesus, beloved pastor and teacher Dr. Charles Stanley takes a deeply personal and inspiring look at how God gave us Himself through the birth of Christ. When He sent Jesus, He closed the separation between us, showing Himself to be intimately involved in every detail that concerns us. This book will usher you into Jesus' presence, reveal His compassionate heart, and help you treasure the best parts of the Advent season. --Amazon.com.

Non-factive representing is what makes room for truth and falsehood. In the ontologically central aspect of the verb it comes in two forms: allorepresenting (saying-that), and autorepresenting (taking-that). Each form relates thinkers to thinkables in its proprietary way. Autorepresenting invites a certain sort of misunderstanding. It may seem to call for enabling in a particular determinate way. Just here psychologism despite oneself may strike. Allorepresenting rests on capacities of a different sort. It relates itself, and thereby its author, to a (...) thinkable in what seems at first sight a manifestly different way than does autrorepresenting, one perhaps less likely to invite psychologism. In doing this it throws light on autorepresenting which, if rightly understood, I suggest, may undo the compulsion to psychologise this last. Armed with this tool I suggest a better picture of what autorepresenting is. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic touched off an unprecedented search for vaccines and treatments. Without question, the development of vaccines to prevent COVID-19 was an enormous scientific accomplishment. Further, the RECOVERY and Solidarity trials identified effective treatments for COVID-19. But all was not success. The urgent need for COVID-19 prevention and treatment fueled an embrace of risks—to research participants and to the reliability of the science itself—as allegedly necessary costs to speed scientific progress. Scientists and (even) ethicists supported overturning longstanding norms protecting (...) healthy volunteers in human challenge trials to speed vaccine development, but these trials led to no vaccines. Physicians, with the approval of research ethics committees, designed hundreds of unblinded, single-center clinical trials at high risk of bias to speed the identification of new treatments. But these clinical trials led to no treatments. The lesson for future pandemics is that the acceptance of greater risks to participants or science does not reliably lead to progress. We are better served by science that upholds the highest ethical and methodological standards. (shrink)

"This is a marvelous book, full of subtle, thoughtful, and original argument.

Charles Beitz rejects two highly influential conceptions of international theory as empirically inaccurate and theoretically misleading. In one, international relations is a Hobbesian state of nature in which moral judgments are entirely inappropriate, and in the other, states are analogous to persons in domestic society in having rights of autonomy that insulate them from external moral assessment and political interference. Beitz postulates that a theory of international politics should include a revised principle of state autonomy based on the justice (...) of a state's domestic institutions, and a principle of international distributive justice to establish a fair division of resources and wealth among persons situated in diverse national societies. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic caused university education to transition from face-to-face contacts to virtual learning environments. Young adults were forced to live an entirely new life online, without valuable and enjoyable social interaction. We examined subjective perspectives towards life online during the pandemic. We identified four viewpoints about life mediated by computers. Two viewpoints express “struggling”: Viewpoint 1 (Angry, Depressed and Overwhelmed), and Viewpoint 3 (Restricted to and Overwhelmed by Virtuality). A third feeling-state conveys experiences of “surviving”: Viewpoint 4 (Isolated and (...) Powerless in Convenience). Surprisingly, Viewpoint 2 is about “thriving” (Comfortable and Convenient Routine with Computers). The research shows that virtualization, confinement, and anxiety are taking a toll on the mental health of some members of the younger generation, while at the same time other members feel they are thriving in a situation of limited resources, virtuality, and reduced face-to-face human interaction. (shrink)

There is a view abroad on which perceptual experience has representational content in this sense: in it something is represented to the perceiver as so. On the view, a perceptual experience has a face value at which it may be taken, or which may be rejected. This paper argues that that view is mistaken: there is nothing in perceptual experience which makes it so that in it anything is represented as so. In that sense, the senses are silent, or, in (...) Austin's term, dumb. Perceptual experience is not as such either veridical or delusive. It may mislead, but it does not take representation to accomplish that. (shrink)

The Explanation of Behaviour was the first book written by the renowned philosopher Charles Taylor. A vitally important work of philosophical anthropology, it is a devastating criticism of the theory of behaviourism, a powerful explanatory approach in psychology and philosophy when Taylor's book was first published. However, Taylor has far more to offer than a simple critique of behaviourism. He argues that in order to properly understand human beings, we must grasp that they are embodied, minded creatures with purposes, (...) plans and goals, something entirely lacking in reductionist, scientific explanations of human behaviour. Taylor's book is also prescient in according a central place to non-human animals, which like human beings are subject to needs, desires and emotions. However, because human beings have the unique ability to interpret and reflect on their own actions and purposes and declare them to others, Taylor argues that human experience differs to that of other animals. Furthermore, the fact that human beings are often directed by their purposes has a fundamental bearing on how we understand the social and moral world. Taylor's classic work is essential reading for those in philosophy and psychology as well as related areas such as sociology and religion. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new Preface by the author and a new Foreword by Alva No, setting the book in philosophical and historical context. (shrink)

Many organisms possess multiple sensory systems, such as vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The possession of multiple ways of sensing the world offers many benefits. However, combining information from different senses also poses many challenges for the nervous system. In recent years there has been dramatic progress in understanding how information from the different senses gets integrated in order to construct useful representations of external space. This volume brings together the leading researchers from a broad range of scientific approaches (...) to present the first overview of this central topic in cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Anti-racist debate today remains polarised between ‘class reductionist’ (any attempt to address racial disparities reinforces capitalist class relations) and ‘liberal identity’ (disparities in racial representation can be resolved without questioning class inequality) politics. Both positions share a common perspective – racial oppression and class exploitation are the products of distinctive social dynamics whose relationship is historically contingent. This essay is an initial step toward characterising a structurally necessary relationship between capitalism and racial oppression. The essay draws upon Anwar Shaikh and (...) Howard Botwinick’s elaboration of Marx’s political economy, and Ellen Wood’s analysis of the specificity of capitalist imperialism. (shrink)

Friendship, in its nature, purpose, and effects, has been an important concern of philosophy since antiquity. It was of particular significance in the life of Gilles Deleuze, one of the most original and influential philosophers of the late twentieth century. Taking L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze -- an eight-hour video interview that was intended to be aired only after Deleuze's death -- as a key source, Charles J. Stivale examines the role of friendship as it appears in Deleuze's work and (...) life. Stivale develops a zigzag methodology practiced by Deleuze himself to explore several concepts as they relate to friendship and to discern how friendship shifts, slips, and creates movement between Deleuze and specific friends. The first section of this study discusses the elements of creativity, pedagogy, and literature that appear implicitly and explicitly in his work. The second section focuses on Deleuze's friendships with Foucault, Derrida, Claire Parnet, and Félix Guattari and reveals his conception of friendship as an ultimately impersonal form of intensity that goes beyond personal relationships. Stivale's analysis offers an intimate view into the thought of one of the greatest thinkers of our time. (shrink)

Charles Travis presents a series of essays on philosophy of perception, inspired by the insights of Gottlob Frege. He engages with a range of contemporary thinkers, and explores key issues including how perception can make the world bear on what we do or think, and what sorts of capacities we draw on in representing something as (being) something.

This ancient text represents one of yoga's most influential and important works. Dating back to India of the second century B.C., the yoga sutras constitute a complete manual for the study and practice of the philosophical system. The sutras, or threads, are aphorisms of wisdom that offer guidelines to living a meaningful and purposeful life. This volume explains the eight limbs of the discipline: restraint, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal from the senses, attention, meditation, and stillness. Little is known about (...) the life of Patanjali beyond the assumption that he was a contemporary of the Buddha. Charles Johnston, an immensely learned scholar of Eastern traditions, offers modern readers a straightforward translation of Patanjali's writings. This easy-to-follow interpretation will prove a rewarding companion to yoga students, participants in teacher-training programs, and students of Eastern philosophy. (shrink)

Are conspiracy theorists epistemically vicious? That is the conventional wisdom. It has distinguished supporters, including Quassim Cassam, Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule. For me, a trait is an epistemic virtue if leads to the discovery of salient truths and the avoidance of pernicious falsehoods, and an epistemic vice the contrary. As such epistemic virtues and vices are role‐relative, context‐relative and end‐relative. I argue that that it is not necessarily or even usually vicious to be a conspiracy theorist, even if we (...) restrict the conspiracies in question to conspiracies on the part of Western government agencies, the reason being that many such theories are now known to be true. Finally I contend that the policy suggested by some polemicists of systematic skepticism towards conspiracy theories would be intellectually suicidal and hence vicious. (shrink)

I. A PORTION OF REASON Listen to the sad story of mankind, who like children lived until I gave them understanding and a portion of reason. ...

Abstract Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the beliefforming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of selfmutilation. I discuss several variations (...) of this strategy, interpreting “conspiracy theory” in different ways but conclude that on all these readings, the conventional wisdom is deeply unwise. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize the most significant recent examples of the practical knowledge analysis of knowledge-how in the philosophical literature: David Carr [1979, Mind, 88, 394–409; 1981a, American Philosophical Quarterly, 18, 53–61; 1981b, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 15(1), 87–96] and Stanley & Williamson [2001, Journal of Philosophy, 98(8), 411–444]. I stress the importance of know-how in our contemporary understanding of the mind, and offer the beginnings of a treatment of know-how capable of providing insight in to the use (...) of know-how in contemporary cognitive science. Specifically, I claim that Carr’s necessary conditions for know-how fail to capture the distinction he himself draws between ability and knowing-how. Moreover, Carr ties knowing-how to conscious intent, and to an explicit knowledge of procedural rules. I argue that both moves are mistakes, which together render Carr’s theory an inadequate account both of common ascriptions of knowledge-how and of widely accepted ascriptions of knowledge-how within explanations in cognitive science. Finally, I note that Carr’s conditions fail to capture intuitions (heshares) regarding the ascription of know-how to persons lacking ability. I then consider the position advocated by Stanley & Williamson (2001), which seems avoid Carr’s commitments to conscious intent and explicit knowledge while still maintaining that “knowledge-how is simply a species of knowledge-that" (Stanley & Williamson, 2001, p. 411). I argue that Stanley and Williamson’s attempt to frame a reductionist view that avoids consciously occurrent beliefs during exercises of knowledge-how and explicit knowledge of procedural rules is both empirically implausible and explanatorily vacuous. In criticizing these theories I challenge the presuppositions of the most pervasive response to Ryle in the philosophic literature, what might be described as “the received view." I also establish several facts about knowing-how. First, neither conscious intent nor explicit representation (much less conscious representation) of procedural rules are necessary for knowing-how given the theory of cognition current in cognitive science. I argue that the discussed analyses fail to capture the necessary conditions for knowledge-how because know-how requires the instantiation of an ability and of the capacities necessary for exploiting an ability—not conscious awareness of purpose or explicit knowledge of rules. Second, one must understand knowledge-how as task-specific, i.e., as presupposing certain underlying conditions. Conceiving of know-how as task-specific allows one to understand ascriptions of know-how in the absence of ability as counterfactual ascriptions based upon underlying competence. (shrink)