Initial responses to questionnaires used to assess participants' understanding of informed consent for malaria vaccine trials conducted in the United States and Mali were tallied. Total scores were analyzed by age, sex, literacy (if known), and location. Ninety-two percent (92%) of answers by United States participants and 85% of answers by Malian participants were correct. Questions more likely to be answered incorrectly in Mali related to risk, and to the type of vaccine. For adult participants, independent predictors of higher scores (...) were younger age and female sex in the United States, and male sex in Mali. Scores in the United States were higher than in Mali (P = 0.005). Despite this difference participants at both sites were well informed overall. Although interpretation must be qualified because questionnaires were not intended as research tools and were not standardized among sites, these results do not support concerns about systematic low understanding among research participants in developing versus developed countries. (shrink)

It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be (...) false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate. (shrink)

This paper defends stage theory against the argument from diachronic counting. It argues that stage theorists can appeal to quantifier domain restriction in order to accommodate intuitions about diachronic counting sentences. Two approaches involving domain restriction are discussed. According to the first, domains of counting are usually restricted to stages at the time of utterance. This approach explains intuitions in many cases, but is theoretically costly and delivers wrong counts if diachronic counting is combined with fission or fusion. On the (...) second approach, domains of counting are usually restricted in an indeterminate way, so as to include at most one member of any maximal class of counterpart-interrelated stages (with respect to a certain utterance). This view can accommodate all the relevant intuitions about counting sentences, and it fits well with a new stage-theoretic view of reference that allows speakers to refer to both present and past stages. (shrink)

A predominância dos temas literários e fenomenológicos nos textos sartrianos dos anos 1930 já chamou atenção de vários especialistas e comentadores da obra do autor. É notável, entretanto, como os exames dos textos dessa época contentam-se, no mais das vezes, em apontar o paralelismo ou a contemporaneidade entre fenomenologia e literatura ali presente, sem realçar a fundamentação que uma parece conferir à outra e que constitui uma das questões mais interessantes que a filosofia sartriana levanta. Há que se incluir, na (...) verdade, a estética literária de Sartre na compreensão de suas teses fenomenológicas; teses estas que, por outro lado, fornecem o solo filosófico da literatura sartriana, em termos tanto de autoria quanto de crítica. O propósito deste artigo é demonstrar, assim, uma dependência ou, se quisermos, implicação mútua entre literatura e fenomenologia não apenas central em relação àquele período da produção de Sartre como, também, determinante para seus projetos teóricos e ficcionais ulteriores. (shrink)

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes a polemic of Italian Humanism around Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In that period, intellectuals such as Cristoforo Landino (1424-1498) and Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) interpreted Dante’s writing through the platonic prism of the Phaedrus, that is, as someone who was granted the grace to contemplate the divine and the power to describe it. Decades earlier, however, Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406) and Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) had already attributed to Dante the merit of focusing on formal studies and, with that, being (...) able to develop expressive artifices to his poetry on its own. For the analysis of the different readings, excerpts in which Dante gives evidence of his path and intellectual maturity will be observed, as well as those in which it is possible to observe the poet’s role in the dissemination of formal knowledge in line with his ethical values. (shrink)

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the second direction of (...) the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

Pictures are notably absent from the current debate about how to define lying. Theorists in this debate tend to focus on linguistic means of communication and do not consider the possibility of lying with photographs, drawings and other kinds of pictures. The aim of this paper is to show that such a narrow focus is misguided: there is a strong case to be made for the possibility of lying with pictures and this possibility allows for insights concerning the question of (...) how lying should be defined. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that demonstratives, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, modals and other context‐sensitive expressions are intention‐sensitive: their semantic value on a given use is fixed by speaker intentions. The first aim of this paper is to defend Intentionalism against three recent objections, according to which speakers at least sometimes do not have suitable intentions when using supposedly intention‐sensitive expressions. Its second aim is to thereby shed light on the so far little‐explored question of which kinds of intentions can be semantically (...) relevant. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

ABSTRACT Copredication, as exhibited by sentences such as ‘That book is heavy but informative,’ is commonly seen as a phenomenon that is tied to sentences featuring polysemous expressions. David Liebesman and Ofra Magidor have recently attacked this view by arguing that ‘book’ has a single context-sensitive sense. The first aim of the present paper is to show that Liebesman and Magidor are wrong to claim that ‘book’ is univocal, but that they may nonetheless be right to question that copredication requires (...) polysemy. Its second aim is to consider implications of this result for the debates on copredication and on semantic variability. (shrink)

Where should we meet? This may seem like a trivial decision, mostly focused on convenience. However, location can represent integral values, attitudes, and priorities. Especially when the meeting i...

Hegel’s political philosophy regards the “corporation” as both a civil society association and an institution guaranteed under the constitution. The present article focuses on the concept of corporation as an institution of the ‘internal constitution’ by analysing some of the writings which go back to Hegel’s Heidelberg and Berlin phases, namely the Heidelberg review of the Proceedings of the Estates Assembly of the Kingdom of Württemberg, 1815–1816, his first lectures on the Philosophy of Rights, and the Elements of the Philosophy (...) of Rights. Notwithstanding the analysis shows that Hegel’s sophisticated constitutional culture is informed directly by, and developed along with, his involvement in the Württemberg’s political debates, yet his idea of State administration is far more elaborate than the constitutions of nineteenth-century German States which it does not, in fact, intend to merely reproduce. I shall argue that Hegel’s account of corporation is based on his specific understanding of European history and the related conceptualization of institution as a guarantee of freedom. Both history and theory are necessary tools to frame and comprehend the philosopher’s discussion of corporation, whose civil and institutional nature is essential to conceive the connection established between the government of civil society and legislative power. I contend that the role that Hegel attributes to corporations cannot be interpreted as an idea reflecting or inherited from the history of the German states, and that rather it represents the key to understanding his concept of patriotism and model of political representation via the assemblies of estates. From this perspective, it appears clear that the Hegelian theory of corporation is at the center of the philosopher’s diagnosis on the crisis and evolution of the modern State. (shrink)

In 1877 Erwin Rohde suggested the conjecture Argino instead of the manuscript reading argiro in Ampelius 8, 16. His conjecture did not find approval among editors of the late antique author and is virtually forgotten. A fresh look at Rohde’s suggestion shows, however, that it is convincing with regards to palaeography and consents with literary and epigraphical evidence. With Argino instead of a conjecture like Bargyliis, the passage is no more a testimony for the Carian city of Bargylia, but for (...) the Ionian Erythrae and its religious history (Aphrodite, Heracles, and the Sibyl). (shrink)

In the past few years, machine learning (ML) tools have been implemented with success in the medical context. However, several practitioners have raised concerns about the lack of transparency—at the algorithmic level—of many of these tools; and solutions from the field of explainable AI (XAI) have been seen as a way to open the ‘black box’ and make the tools more trustworthy. Recently, Alex London has argued that in the medical context we do not need machine learning tools to be (...) interpretable at the algorithmic level to make them trustworthy, as long as they meet some strict empirical desiderata. In this paper, we analyse and develop London’s position. In particular, we make two claims. First, we claim that London’s solution to the problem of trust can potentially address another problem, which is how to evaluate the reliability of ML tools in medicine for regulatory purposes. Second, we claim that to deal with this problem, we need to develop London’s views by shifting the focus from the opacity of algorithmic details to the opacity of the way in which ML tools are trained and built. We claim that to regulate AI tools and evaluate their reliability, agencies need an explanation of how ML tools have been built, which requires documenting and justifying the technical choices that practitioners have made in designing such tools. This is because different algorithmic designs may lead to different outcomes, and to the realization of different purposes. However, given that technical choices underlying algorithmic design are shaped by value-laden considerations, opening the black box of the design process means also making transparent and motivating (technical and ethical) values and preferences behind such choices. Using tools from philosophy of technology and philosophy of science, we elaborate a framework showing how an explanation of the training processes of ML tools in medicine should look like. (shrink)

Lying requires asserting a disbelieved proposition, that much is widely accepted in the debate on how to define lying. But what else is required? Does lying require a particular linguistic manner of expression, such as saying? Does the proposition asserted have to be false (and not merely disbelieved)? And does lying require an intention to deceive? The aim of this chapter is to provide an opinionated introduction to the debates on these questions that takes into account both theoretical considerations and (...) empirical data. (shrink)

Sam Berstler defends a general moral advantage for misleading over lying by arguing that liars, but not misleaders, act unfairly toward the other members of their linguistic community. This article spells out three difficulties for Berstler’s account. First, though Berstler aims to avoid an error theory, it is dubitable that her account fits with intuitions on the matter. Second, there are some lies that do not exhibit the unfairness Berstler identifies. Third, fairness is not the only morally relevant difference between (...) lying and misleading. (shrink)

In the past few years, the ethical ramifications of AI technologies have been at the center of intense debates. Considerable attention has been devoted to understanding how a morally responsible practice of data science can be promoted and which values have to shape it. In this context, ethics and moral responsibility have been mainly conceptualized as compliance to widely shared principles. However, several scholars have highlighted the limitations of such a principled approach. Drawing from microethics and the virtue theory tradition, (...) in this paper, we formulate a different approach to ethics in data science which is based on a different conception of “being ethical” and, ultimately, of what it means to promote a morally responsible data science. First, we develop the idea that, rather than only compliance, ethical decision-making consists in using certain moral abilities, which are cultivated by practicing and exercising them in the data science process. An aspect of virtue development that we discuss here is moral attention, which is the ability of data scientists to identify the ethical relevance of their own technical decisions in data science activities. Next, by elaborating on the capability approach, we define a technical act as ethically relevant when it impacts one or more of the basic human capabilities of data subjects. Therefore, rather than “applying ethics”, data scientists should cultivate ethics as a form of reflection on how technical choices and ethical impacts shape one another. Finally, we show how this microethical framework concretely works, by dissecting the ethical dimension of the technical procedures involved in data understanding and preparation of electronic health records. (shrink)

Interview by Marco Emanuele of James Brusseau. October 27, 2021, The Science of Where. Topics include: AI ethics, Accelerationism, Decentralization.

In the science and values literature, scholars have shown how science is influenced and shaped by values, often in opposition to the ‘value free’ ideal of science. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the science and values literature by showing that the relation between science and values flows not only from values into scientific practice, but also from (allegedly neutral) science to values themselves. The extant literature in the ‘science and values’ field focuses by and large on reconstructing, (...) post hoc, how values have influenced science; our reconstruction of the case studies, instead, aims to show that scientific concepts and methods _too, because of specific identifiable characteristics,_ can promote some values rather than (or at the expense of) others. We explain this bidirectional relation in analogy to debates on the normativity of technical artifacts and on feminist approaches in science, and we illustrate our claims with cases from the health sciences and machine learning. While our arguments in this paper also draw on post hoc reconstructions, we intend to show where, in the science in the making, we should engage not only with the question whether a practice is value-laden, but also how specific conceptual and methodological choices can influence values down the road. All in all, these considerations expand the ways in which philosophers can contribute to more value-aware scientific practices. (shrink)

Dieses Buch bietet die erste systematische Interpretation von Husserls Ideen für eine reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie anhand der neuen kritischen Edition von Ideen II. Es ermöglicht eine phänomenologische Auslegung des allgemein-metaphysischen Problems, wie physische, mentale und soziale Tatsachen zusammenhängen. Das Buch diskutiert und interpretiert detailliert einige von Husserls zentralen Konzeptionen und zeigt die Konsequenzen seines Denkansatzes und seiner Theorieentwicklung. Natur und Gemeingeist sind Husserl zufolge die Grundbegriffe der naturalistischen und der personalistischen Einstellungen und dienen als Leitfaden der Unterscheidung zwischen (...) Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften. In der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit diesem wissenschaftstheoretischen Dualismus führt Husserl den Habitus-Begriff methodisch ein, um das Verhältnis von Natur- und Sozialontologie aus der konkreten Erfahrung heraus phänomenologisch neu zu deuten, womit der spätere, anti-dualistische Weg der Lebensweltphänomenologie vorbereitet wird. In Husserls Studien zur Regionalontologie des Gemeingeistes rückt das konkrete Subjekt in den Vordergrund der Intentionalitätsanalyse, indem die sinntragenden Elemente der Inaktualitität auf Habitualisierungsprozesse und die Intersubjektivität auf Sozialisierungsstufen zurückgeführt werden. Dank der durch den Habitus-Begriff ermöglichten klaren Unterscheidung zwischen konstituierender Aktualität und konstitutiver Relevanz des inaktuellen Horizonts kann Husserls Philosophie des Geistes als individualistisch und holistisch zugleich gelten. Dieser ontologischen Position entspricht auch Husserls sozialepistemologische Ansicht, dass sich Wissenschaften erst im Rahmen idealisierter Sozialstrukturen entfalten können. Durch diese idealisierenden Operationen wird die Konstitution der Objektivität möglich, welche die Wissenschaften anstreben. Deren Rationalität ist deshalb in ihren konkreten und idealisierten Sozialitätsstufen und Habitualitäten zu befragen. (shrink)

In several recent papers and a monograph, Andreas Stokke argues that questions can be misleading, but that they cannot be lies. The aim of this paper is to show that ordinary speakers disagree. We show that ordinary speakers judge certain kinds of insincere questions to be lies, namely questions carrying a believed-false presupposition the speaker intends to convey. These judgements are robust and remain so when the participants are given the possibility of classifying the utterances as misleading or as deceiving. (...) The judgements contrast with judgements participants give about cases of misleading or deceptive behaviour, and they pattern with judgements participants make about declarative lies. Finally, the possibility of lying with non-declaratives is not confined to questions: ordinary speakers also judge utterances of imperative, exclamative and optative sentences carrying believed-false presuppositions to be lies. (shrink)

We analyze recent criticisms of the use of hyperreal probabilities as expressed by Pruss, Easwaran, Parker, and Williamson. We show that the alleged arbitrariness of hyperreal fields can be avoided by working in the Kanovei–Shelah model or in saturated models. We argue that some of the objections to hyperreal probabilities arise from hidden biases that favor Archimedean models. We discuss the advantage of the hyperreals over transferless fields with infinitesimals. In Paper II we analyze two underdetermination theorems by Pruss and (...) show that they hinge upon parasitic external hyperreal-valued measures, whereas internal hyperfinite measures are not underdetermined. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In the last five years Europe experienced a dramatic increase in anti-Semitic incidents. Discourse once reputed unacceptable is now routinely voiced in mainstream circles, the press, and the corridors of power. This article sets out to explain the nature of this phenomenon, the reasons for its recurrence, and its severity.

A new type of neuronal cell was discovered a few years ago: the mirror neurons. Their existence is a disturbing fact for our conceptions of intelligence and memory, giving to the whole universe of mind understanding a new logical framework. The impact of such a discovery on our concept of aesthetics and philosophy of thought makes us to recall Peirce, Lupasco, Buckminster Fuller launching ourselves to field folds, the super-string model or black holes among other non-linear time and space complexes.

Dieses Buch bietet die erste systematische Interpretation von Husserls Ideen für eine reine Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Philosophie anhand der neuen kritischen Edition von Ideen II. Es ermöglicht eine phänomenologische Auslegung des allgemein-metaphysischen Problems, wie physische, mentale und soziale Tatsachen zusammenhängen. Das Buch diskutiert und interpretiert detailliert einige von Husserls zentralen Konzeptionen und zeigt die Konsequenzen seines Denkansatzes und seiner Theorieentwicklung. Natur und Gemeingeist sind Husserl zufolge die Grundbegriffe der naturalistischen und der personalistischen Einstellungen und dienen als Leitfaden der Unterscheidung zwischen (...) Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften. In der kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit diesem wissenschaftstheoretischen Dualismus führt Husserl den Habitus-Begriff methodisch ein, um das Verhältnis von Natur- und Sozialontologie aus der konkreten Erfahrung heraus phänomenologisch neu zu deuten, womit der spätere, anti-dualistische Weg der Lebensweltphänomenologie vorbereitet wird. In Husserls Studien zur Regionalontologie des Gemeingeistes rückt das konkrete Subjekt in den Vordergrund der Intentionalitätsanalyse, indem die sinntragenden Elemente der Inaktualitität auf Habitualisierungsprozesse und die Intersubjektivität auf Sozialisierungsstufen zurückgeführt werden. Dank der durch den Habitus-Begriff ermöglichten klaren Unterscheidung zwischen konstituierender Aktualität und konstitutiver Relevanz des inaktuellen Horizonts kann Husserls Philosophie des Geistes als individualistisch und holistisch zugleich gelten. Dieser ontologischen Position entspricht auch Husserls sozialepistemologische Ansicht, dass sich Wissenschaften erst im Rahmen idealisierter Sozialstrukturen entfalten können. Durch diese idealisierenden Operationen wird die Konstitution der Objektivität möglich, welche die Wissenschaften anstreben. Deren Rationalität ist deshalb in ihren konkreten und idealisierten Sozialitätsstufen und Habitualitäten zu befragen. (shrink)

In Emanuel Adler's distinctive constructivist approach to international relations theory, international practices evolve in tandem with collective knowledge of the material and social worlds. This book - comprising a selection of his journal publications, a new introduction and three previously unpublished articles - points IR constructivism in a novel direction, characterized as 'communitarian'. Adler's synthesis does not herald the end of the nation-state; nor does it suggest that agency is unimportant in international life. Rather, it argues that what mediates (...) between individual and state agency and social structures are communities of practice, which are the wellspring and repositories of collective meanings and social practices. The concept of communities of practice casts new light on epistemic communities and security communities, helping to explain why certain ideas congeal into human practices and others do not, and which social mechanisms can facilitate the emergence of normatively better communities. (shrink)

Stories, in pictorial format, orally narrated, and later on as narrative texts, have played a key role in human evolution and to this day continue to surreptitiously teach us things and skills. In recent decades, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun documenting the role of stories, and particularly fiction, in refining our sociocognitive skills. In this essay, I focus specifically on how stories, particularly written fiction, hone our emotion recognition skills. I present a brief overview of existing theorizing and research (...) findings, and propose the less-is-more hypothesis, according to which emotion recognition skills are sharpened by stories that do not tell us, but rather show us the emotional life of fictional characters. (shrink)

Recently, biologists have argued that data - driven biology fosters a new scientific methodology; namely, one that is irreducible to traditional methodologies of molecular biology defined as the discovery strategies elucidated by mechanistic philosophy. Here I show how data - driven studies can be included into the traditional mechanistic approach in two respects. On the one hand, some studies provide eliminative inferential procedures to prioritize and develop mechanistic hypotheses. On the other, different studies play an exploratory role in providing useful (...) generalizations to complement the procedure of prioritization. Overall this paper aims to shed light on the structure of contemporary research in molecular biology. (shrink)

Summary Dugald Stewart was the first metaphysician of any significance in Britain who attempted to take account of Kantian philosophy, although his analysis appears generally dismissive. Traditionally this has been imputed to Stewart's poor understanding of Kant and to his efforts to defend the orthodoxy of common sense. This paper argues that, notwithstanding Stewart's reading, Kant's philosophy helped him in a reconsideration and reassessment of common sense philosophy. In his mature works—the Philosophical Essays (1810), the second volume of the Elements (...) of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1814), and the second part of his historical ‘Dissertation› (1815–1821)—Stewart's analysis of Kantian philosophy is far from being uniform. In the first two works, he takes a cautious approach to transcendentalism, showing some interest in the challenge it might represent for common sense; in the last, he turns to rash criticism. This change may appear confusing and inconsistent unless considered in the light of a precise ‘nationalistic’ strategy. In fact, once Stewart had taken from Kantian philosophy what he deemed useful for his own aims, he eventually dismissed it in order to show that his reworked version of common sense was the most original and most consistent outcome of the whole Anglo-Scottish philosophical tradition. (shrink)

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.