This book presents an exploration of the idea of the common or social good, extended so that alternatives with different populations can be ranked. The approach is, in the main, welfarist, basing rankings on the well-being, broadly conceived, of those who are alive. The axiomatic method is employed, and topics investigated include: the measurement of individual well-being, social attitudes toward inequality of well-being, the main classes of population principles, principles that provide incomplete rankings, principles that rank uncertain alternatives, best choices (...) from feasible sets, and applications. The chapters are divided, with mathematical arguments confined to the second part. The first part is intended to make the arguments accessible to a more general readership. Although the book can be read as a defense of the critical-level generalized-utilitarian class of principles, comprehensive examinations of other classes are included. (shrink)

The essays in this book discuss the originally proposed Baldwin effect, how it was modified over time, and its possible contribution to contemporary empirical...

A collection of 37 essays surveying the state of the art on metaphysical ground. -/- Essay authors are: Fatema Amijee, Ricki Bliss, Amanda Bryant, Margaret Cameron, Phil Corkum, Fabrice Correia, Louis deRosset, Scott Dixon, Tom Donaldson, Nina Emery, Kit Fine, Martin Glazier, Kathrin Koslicki, David Mark Kovacs, Stephan Krämer, Stephanie Leary, Stephan Leuenberger, Jon Litland, Marko Malink, Michaela McSweeney, Kevin Mulligan, Alyssa Ney, Asya Passinsky, Francesca Poggiolesi, Kevin Richardson, Stefan Roski, Noel Saenz, Benjamin Schnieder, Erica Shumener, Alexander Skiles, (...) Olla Solomyak, Tuomas Tahko, Naomi Thompson, Kelly Trogdon, Jennifer Wang, Tobias Wilsch, and Justin Zylstra. (shrink)

In this seminal work, acclaimed philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels deals with the problem of the nature of order after the “shattering of the world,” and the loss of the idea of a universal or fundamental order._ _ Order in the Twilight__ unites phenomenological methodology with recent work on the theory of order, normativity, and dialogue, as well as structuralism and Gestalt theory. Philosophically stringent, it expresses a more optimistic attitude than much modern philosophy, especially deconstruction._ Waldenfels passes the question of order (...) through numerous defining aspects, and concludes that there is not one global order, but rather various conflicting domains of order. Whenever the boundary of a vital or experiential domain is crossed, a discourse speaks at the boundary, not about it, and across a threshold without abolishing it. The rest is rationalization, i.e., an attempt to find a place in the respective order for what is to-be-ordered. But why, the author concludes, should a theory be more unambiguous than reality? _ Order in the Twilight__ is an important book at this time, because it may help lift the humanities out of the skeptical, relativistic disarray in which they have been embroiled in recent decades. Waldenfels does not attempt to dictate what reality should be; rather, he is open to any valid evidences. His book offers a solid footing to the human and social sciences as they seek to escape from deconstructive irrationalism. (shrink)

This study explored calibrating a large item bank for use in multidimensional health measurement with computerized adaptive testing, using both item responses and response time (RT) information. The Activity Measure for Post-Acute Care is a patient-reported outcomes measure comprised of three correlated scales (Applied Cognition, Daily Activities, and Mobility). All items from each scale are Likert type, so that a respondent chooses a response from an ordered set of four response options. The most appropriate item response theory model for analyzing (...) and scoring these items is the multidimensional graded response model (MGRM). During the field testing of the items, an interviewer read each item to a patient and recorded, on a tablet computer, the patient’s responses and the software recorded RTs. Due to the large item bank with over 300 items, data collection was conducted in four batches with a common set of anchor items to link the scale. Van der Linden’s (2007) hierarchical modeling framework was adopted. Several models, with or without interviewer as a covariate and with or without interaction between interviewer and items, were compared for each batch of data. It was found that the model with the interaction between interviewer and item, when the interaction effect was constrained to be proportional, fit the data best. Therefore, the final hierarchical model with lognormal model for RT and the MGRM for response data was fitted to all batches of data via a concurrent calibration. Evaluation of parameter estimates revealed that (1) adding response time information did not affect the item parameter estimates and their standard errors significantly; (2) adding response time information helped reduce the standard error of patients’ multidimensional latent trait estimates, but adding interviewer as a covariate did not result in further improvement. Implications of the findings for follow up adaptive test delivery design are discussed. (shrink)

We propose a descriptive version of the classical multi-attribute utility model; to that end, we add a new parameter, momentary salience, to the customary formulation. The addition of this parameter allows the theory to accommodate changes in the decision maker’s mood and circumstances, as the saliencies of anticipated consequences are driven by concerns of the moment. By allowing for the number of consequences given attention at the moment of decision to vary, the new model mutes the criticism that SEU models (...) call for an omniscient decision maker. Use of the model is illustrated with a large-scale longitudinal study showing that adolescent smokers have higher utility for smoking than nonsmokers. We also propose to use the model hierarchically to describe everyday decisions that people deal with repeatedly. Big decisions, which set policy, guide a host of nested little decisions, which in turn lead to action. For a little decision, one of the options will be consistent with the policy, and will inherit its high utility. Accordingly, most little decisions will be made quickly and will follow the policy. However, people do sometimes decide to violate their own policies, and we describe how these lapses can lead to collapse of the policy. (shrink)

Sometimes it feels as though we can control our minds. We catch ourselves looking out the window when we should be paying attention to someone talking, for example, and we purposefully return our attention to the conversation. Or we wrest our minds away from the bothersome thought of an upcoming dental appointment to focus on anything we can find that makes us less nervous. Control attempts such as these can meet with success, leaving us feeling the masters of our consciousness. (...) Yet at other times.. (shrink)

Pax6 is a transcription factor essential for the development of tissues including the eyes, central nervous system and endocrine glands of vertebrates and invertebrates. It regulates the expression of a broad range of molecules, including transcription factors, cell adhesion and short‐range cell–cell signalling molecules, hormones and structural proteins. It has been implicated in a number of key biological processes including cell proliferation, migration, adhesion and signalling both in normal development and in oncogenesis. The mechanisms by which Pax6 regulates its downstream (...) targets likely involve the use of different splice variants and interactions with multiple proteins, allowing it to generate different effects in different cells. Extrapolation to developmental transcription factors in general suggests that variation in the nature of individual factors is likely to contribute to the emergence of differences between tissues. BioEssays 24:1041–1051, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

The paper by Susan M. Wolf and Jeffrey P. Kahn published in this issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics notes that we are members of the Working Group on Genetic Testing in Disability Insurance and that the members of the Working Group do not necessarily subscribe to its recommendations. Although we agree with some of Wolf and Kahn's recommendations, we do not agree with recommendations 1, 3, 4, and 5 for individual disability insurance and recommendations 1, 2, (...) and 3 for group disability insurance. We use this paper to delineate our areas of disagreement, but we do not discuss areas such as employment law as they are not our areas of expertise.First, understanding our roles on the Working Group is important. As members, we provided technical expertise on disability insurance. Our input to the Working Group represents our individual opinions. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making. By David J. Rothman.

Book reviewed in this article: The Willowbrook Wars: A Decade of Struggle for Social Justice. By David J. Rothman and Sheila M. Rothman.

In response to concern over the numeracy skills deficit displayed by student nurses, an online computer programme, ?Authentic World??, which aims to simulate a real-life clinical environment and improve the medication dosage calculation skills of users, was developed (Founded in 2004 Authentic World Ltd is a spin out company of Glarmorgan and Cardiff Universities, Cardiff, Wales UK.). Two randomised controlled trials were conducted, each at a UK University, in order to investigate the impact of Authentic World? on student nurses? general (...) numeracy abilities. All first year nursing students who gave consent were randomised equally into an intervention or control group. The intervention group were given access to Authentic World?. The primary outcome measure was the students? scores on a general numeracy test. The Intention to Treat (ITT) analysis in both trials revealed a small negative effect of Authentic World? on general numeracy, which was statistically significant in one trial. However, compliance with the intervention was very low in both trials, with only 24 and 12% of students allocated to the intervention groups spending more than 15 minutes using the programme. Providing nursing students with access to Authentic World? is not an effective use of resources since use of the programme appears to be very low. (shrink)

Bacterial plasmids are ubiquitous ‘minichromosomes’ that have major importance in clinical microbiology, as agents of pathogenicity and as carriers of antibiotic resistance, and in molecular genetics, through their role as vectors in gene manipulation. Plasmids carry a wide range of dispensable, transiently useful and often bizarre functions.1 Naturally occurring plasmids, in addition to modifying the host cell phenotype, carry genes involved in the control of their own vegetative replication, plasmid copy number2 and stable inheritance. They may also carry determinants for (...) the conjugal transfer of DNA between bacteria.3 Whereas low‐copy‐number plasmids must be partitioned by some active process during cell division, the evidence suggests that multicopy plasmids are distributed randomly between daughter cells. Two independent determinants are necessary for the stable inheritance of multicopy plasmids, and both of these appear to act by maximizing the number of independent plasmid molecules. (shrink)

Traditional scientific views of rationality are couched in economic terms; choosing an option that does not maximize expectancy is irrational. The construct has been extended metaphorically so that the term “irrational” now describes any decision deemed foolish by the evaluator. For everyday decisions that do not involve money, a decision maker’s utilities are generally not known to an onlooker. Therefore, the pejorative label may be applied inappropriately because the evaluation is distorted by incorrect assessment of the decision maker’s goals. We (...) tie this linguistic confusion to the predominance of gambling studies within decision making research. For noneconomic decisions, we propose an alternative definition, one inspired by a theory of everyday decisions. We label a decision irrational if is inconsistent with a policy previously established by the decision maker. The hierarchical structure of everyday decisions, along with the descriptive multiattribute utility model, are core elements in the theory presented by Weiss et al. (2010 Theory and Decision, 68, 101–114). The theory holds that fast changing considerations are a crucial element in the evaluation of decision options. The momentary salience attached to a consequence can change with current, often fleeting circumstances. An option that would usually be rejected can quickly become too tempting to resist. Most people exhibit this kind of irrationality, violating a personal policy, some of the time—and they are not necessarily foolish to do so. (shrink)

Randomized controlled trials in educational research tend to be small. Small trials can have large, chance, imbalances in important covariates. For studies with sample sizes greater than 50, chance imbalances can be corrected using analysis of covariance; for small trials, however, statistical power is maximized if the trial is balanced and analysis of covariance is used in the analysis. The aim of the present study was to discuss methods of improving covariate balance in trial design and to demonstrate the method (...) of minimization. Using an exemplar of a cluster or class‐randomized trial with 29 classes, we employed minimization to achieve covariate balance. Minimization achieved good balance on four prognostic variables. Many trialists in education use restricted forms of allocation, including pairing or stratified randomization. These approaches have disadvantages. Another approach rarely used in educational research is minimization. Minimization uses a simple arithmetic algorithm to produce balanced groups across a number of important covariates and should be more widely used in educational and psychological research. (shrink)

Deception has been practiced by sellers since the beginning of the marketplace. Research in marketing ethics has established benchmarks and parameters forethical behavior that include honesty, full disclosure, equity, and fairness. Deception in marketing, however, has not received the same level of attention. This paper proposes to treat deception in marketing within the context of criminology. By examining deception in marketing within the context of criminology, additional insight can be gained into identifying its antecendents and the likelihood of its occurrence. (...) To this end, deception in marketing is interpreted under the empathy/harm matrix, Cressey’s fraud triangle, and the transparency/time-lag matrix. These frameworks are then combined into a diagram detailing antecedents affecting the likelihood of marketing agents participating in deceptive marketing actions. A number of propositions are presented. (shrink)

Recognition that biological systems are stabilized far from equilibrium by self-organizing, informed, autocatalytic cycles and structures that dissipate unusable energy and matter has led to recent attempts to reformulate evolutionary theory. We hold that such insights are consistent with the broad development of the Darwinian Tradition and with the concept of natural selection. Biological systems are selected that re not only more efficient than competitors but also enhance the integrity of the web of energetic relations in which they are embedded. (...) But the expansion of the informational phase space, upon which selection acts, is also guaranteed by the properties of open informational-energetic systems. This provides a directionality and irreversibility to evolutionary processes that are not reflected in current theory.For this thermodynamically-based program to progress, we believe that biological information should not be treated in isolation from energy flows, and that the ecological perspective must be given descriptive and explanatory primacy. Levels of the ecological hierarchy are relational parts of ecological systems in which there are stable, informed patterns of energy flow and entropic dissipation. Isomorphies between developmental patterns and ecological succession are revealing because they suggest that much of the encoded metabolic information in biological systems is internalized ecological information. The geneological hierarchy, to the extent that its information content reflects internalized ecological information, can therefore be redescribed as an ecological hierarchy. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and its Alternatives in Progressive America. By David J. Rothman.

This book focuses primarily on a critique of the thought of Richard Rorty, who, according to Bhaskar, provides an excellent commentary on the epistemological problem of contemporary philosophy. This commentary, however, is partial. This is because, as Bhaskar sees it, Rorty fails to reject the "positivist instrumentalist and Humean-Hempelean bias" of contemporary thought.

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not entail (...) that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

Bentham's dictum, ‘everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one’, is frequently noted but seldom discussed by commentators. Perhaps it is not thought contentious or exciting because interpreted as merely reminding the utilitarian legislator to make certain that each person's interests are included, that no one is missed, in working the felicific calculus. Since no interests are secure against the maximizing directive of the utility principle, which allows them to be overridden or sacrificed, the dictum is not usually (...) taken to be asserting fundamental rights that afford individuals normative protection against the actions of others or against legislative policies deemed socially expedient. Such non-conventional moral rights seem denied a place in a utilitarian theory so long as the maximization of aggregate happiness remains the ultimate standard and moral goal. (shrink)

There is a long tradition in philosophy of using a priori methods to draw conclusions about what is possible and what is necessary, and often in turn to draw conclusions about matters of substantive metaphysics. Arguments like this typically have three steps: first an epistemic claim , from there to a modal claim , and from there to a metaphysical claim.

Fechner's conception of psychophysics included both “outer psychophysics” the relation between stimulus intensity and the response reflecting sensation strength, and “inner psychophysics” the relation between neurelectric responses and sensation strength. In his own time outer psychophysics focussed on the form of the psychophysical law, with Fechner espousing a logarithmic law, Delboeuf a variant of the logarithmic law incorporating a resting level of neural activity, and Plateau a power law. One of the issues on which the dispute was focussed concerned the (...) appearance of contrasts if the overall illumination was increased or decreased; another issue was the question of whether a sensation of a “just noticeable difference” established for one value of a sensory dimension appeared the same for a value elsewhere on the dimension. The development of “inner psychophysics” led through the works of Delboeuf, Solomons, Jastrow, and Thurstone to modern signal detection theory. A third line of research, devoted to the question of what was meant by the “measurement” of sensation strength, stemmed from the criticism of Fechner's work by von Kries (1882) and others. Although a valid body of science could be built up without the intervening variable called “sensation strength,” such a science might be a cumbersome representation of reality. When an optical contrast is set up, and its overall illumination is increased or decreased, subjective contrasts involving medium levels of lightness vary little as illumination varies (as a power law based on sensation ratios or a logarithmic law based on sensation differences predict), but subjective contrasts involving extreme levels of lightness might be subject to the effects of other variables. (shrink)

For over half a century there have been concerns about increases in the occurrence of academic misconduct by higher education students and this is now claimed to have reached crisis proportions (e.g. Mostrous & Kenber, 2016a ). This study explores the extent to which multi-national faculty judge the effectiveness of higher education institutions in dealing with such misconduct. A survey of multi-national higher education faculty was conducted to explore the perceived barriers to the implementation of academic integrity processes. It asked (...) faculty how likely some hypothetical scenarios of failures of such processes were to occur in the real world of higher education institutions. 63% of our participants perceived there to be institutional and/or faculty barriers to effectively dealing with academic misconduct. Mostly, they blamed the higher education model for this which, in the interests of mass education, has come to prioritise the need for institutions to focus more on their quantity of output as corporate business enterprises than on the integrity of their output as educators. In discussing participants’ comments, about the relationship of faculty to their employing institutions, Schein and Scheins’ ( 2016 ) theory of three levels of organisational culture was used. Participants’ comments suggested that, at the deepest level of organisational culture i.e. basic underlying taken-for-granted assumptions about beliefs and values, inadequate integrity measures have tended to become normalised. Despite the often considerable, efforts of the institutions, organisational barriers were noted which mitigate against faculty behaving professionally i.e. from doing a ‘good job’ in respect of student academic misconduct. Some blame was also placed on faculty. We argue that apparent institutional inability to effectively manage the integrity process, has potentially significant consequences for wider society. We discuss ways in which this situation might be improved including a recommendation that governments regulate this aspect of the corporate social responsibility of higher education institutions as they do other aspects, requiring that it be managed effectively. (shrink)

The philosophical interest of verbal disputes is twofold. First, they play a key role in philosophical method. Many philosophical disagreements are at least partly verbal, and almost every philosophical dispute has been diagnosed as verbal at some point. Here we can see the diagnosis of verbal disputes as a tool for philosophical progress. Second, they are interesting as a subject matter for first-order philosophy. Reflection on the existence and nature of verbal disputes can reveal something about the nature of concepts, (...) language, and meaning. In this article I first characterize verbal disputes, spell out a method for isolating and resolving them, and draw out conclusions for philosophical methodology. I then use the framework to draw out consequences in first-order philosophy. In particular, I argue that the analysis of verbal disputes can be used to support the existence of a distinctive sort of primitive concept and that it can be used to reconstruct a version of an analytic/synthetic distinction, where both are characterized in dialectical terms alone. (shrink)

Is conceptual analysis required for reductive explanation? If there is no a priori entailment from microphysical truths to phenomenal truths, does reductive explanation of the phenomenal fail? We say yes . Ned Block and Robert Stalnaker say no.

Does consciousness collapse the quantum wave function? This idea was taken seriously by John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but is now widely dismissed. We develop the idea by combining a mathematical theory of consciousness (integrated information theory) with an account of quantum collapse dynamics (continuous spontaneous localization). Simple versions of the theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. In principle, versions of the theory can be tested by experiments with (...) quantum computers. The upshot is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes aspects of the relationship between consciousness and intentionality. It focuses on the phenomenal character and the intentional content of perceptual states, canvassing various possible relations among them. It argues that there is a good case for a sort of representationalism, although this may not take the form that its advocates often suggest. By mapping out some of the landscape, the chapter tries to open up territory for different and promising forms of representationalism to be explored in the (...) future. In particular, it argues for a nonreductive, narrow, and Fregean variety of representationalism, which contrasts strongly with more widely explored varieties. It concludes with some words about the fundamental relationship between consciousness and intentionality. (shrink)

In the carefully argued central chapters of Adapting Minds, Buller scrutinizes several of evolutionary psychology's most highly publicized "...

What happens when machines become more intelligent than humans? One view is that this event will be followed by an explosion to ever-greater levels of intelligence, as each generation of machines creates more intelligent machines in turn. This intelligence explosion is now often known as the “singularity”. The basic argument here was set out by the statistician I.J. Good in his 1965 article “Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine”: Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far (...) surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an “intelligence explosion”, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. The key idea is that a machine that is more intelligent than humans will be better than humans at designing machines. So it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than the most intelligent machine that humans can design. So if it is itself designed by humans, it will be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. By similar reasoning, this next machine will also be capable of designing a machine more intelligent than itself. If every machine in turn does what it is capable of, we should expect a sequence of ever more intelligent machines. This intelligence explosion is sometimes combined with another idea, which we might call the “speed explosion”. The argument for a speed explosion starts from the familiar observation that computer processing speed doubles at regular intervals. Suppose that speed doubles every two years and will do so indefinitely. Now suppose that we have human-level artificial intelligence 1 designing new processors. Then faster processing will lead to faster designers and an ever-faster design cycle, leading to a limit point soon afterwards. The argument for a speed explosion was set out by the artificial intelligence researcher Ray Solomonoff in his 1985 article “The Time Scale of Artificial Intelligence”.1 Eliezer Yudkowsky gives a succinct version of the argument in his 1996 article “Staring at the Singularity”: “Computing speed doubles every two subjective years of work.. (shrink)