Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. With rising cases in many countries, and likely further peaks in the coming colder seasons, ventilator triage guidance remains a central part of the COVID-19 policy response. The dominant model in ventilator triage guidelines prioritises the ethical principles of saving the most lives and saving the most life-years. We sought to ascertain to what extent this focus aligns, or conflicts, with the preferences of disadvantaged minority populations. We conducted (...) a bibliographical search of PubMed and Google Scholar and reviewed all ventilator rationing guidelines included in major recent systematic reviews, yielding 589 studies before screening. Post screening, we found six studies comprising a total of 10 591 participants, with 1247 from disadvantaged populations. Three studies reported findings stratified by race and age, two of which stratified by income. Studies included two to seven principles; all included ‘save the most lives’. Involvement of disadvantaged minority populations in eliciting preferences is very limited; few studies capture race and income. This is concerning, as despite relatively small numbers and framing effects there is an observable and plausible trend suggesting that disadvantaged groups worry that dominant principles reduce their chances of receiving a ventilator. To avoid compounding prior historical and structural disadvantage, policy makers need to engage more fully with these populations in designing and justifying ventilator rationing guidance and review their adequacy. Likewise, clinicians need to be aware that their implementation of dominant triage guidelines is viewed with higher levels of concern by minority populations. (shrink)

It is often argued that there are no practical reasons for belief because we could not believe for such reasons. A recent reply by pragmatists is that we can often believe for practical reasons because we can often cause our beliefs for practical reasons. This paper reveals the limits of this recently popular strategy for defending pragmatism, and thereby reshapes the dialectical options for pragmatism. I argue that the strategy presupposes that reasons for being in non-intentional states are not reducible (...) to reasons to act. Pragmatists who want to preserve a motivational constraint on reasons therefore have exactly two options: either arguing that there are irreducible reasons for being in non-intentional states ; or arguing that we can believe directly for practical reasons. I argue that the prospects for the former option are dim because irreducible reasons to be in states are hard to square with the motivational constraint on reasons. Returning to the more traditional route of arguing for pragmatism by defending a version of doxastic voluntarism therefore seems to be the more promising way for pragmatists to go. (shrink)

Withholding or withdrawing life-saving ventilators can become necessary when resources are insufficient. In the USA, such rationing has unique social justice dimensions. Structural elements of dominant allocation frameworks simultaneously advantage white communities, and disadvantage Black communities—who already experience a disproportionate burden of COVID-19-related job losses, hospitalisations and mortality. Using the example of New Jersey’s Crisis Standard of Care policy, we describe how dominant rationing guidance compounds for many Black patients prior unfair structural disadvantage, chiefly due to the way creatinine and (...) life expectancy are typically considered.We outline six possible policy options towards a more just approach: improving diversity in decision processes, adjusting creatinine scores, replacing creatinine, dropping creatinine, finding alternative measures, adding equity weights and rejecting the dominant model altogether. We also contrast these options with making no changes, which is not a neutral default, but in separate need of justification, despite a prominent claim that it is simply based on ‘objective medical knowledge’. In the regrettable absence of fair federal guidance, hospital and state-level policymakers should reflect on which of these, or further options, seem feasible and justifiable.Irrespective of which approach is taken, all guidance should be supplemented with a monitoring and reporting requirement on possible disparate impacts. The hope that we will be able to continue to avoid rationing ventilators must not stand in the way of revising guidance in a way that better promotes health equity and racial justice, both to be prepared, and given the significant expressive value of ventilator guidance. (shrink)

The author defends nonconceptualism, the claim that perceptual experience is nonconceptual and has nonconceptual content. Continuing the heated and complex debate surrounding this topic over the past two decades, she offers a sustained defense of a novel version of the view, Modest Nonconceptualism, and provides a systematic overview of some of the central controversies in the debate. -/- An explication of the notion of nonconceptual content and a distinction between nonconceptualist views of different strengths starts off the volume, then the (...) author goes on to defend participants in the debate over nonconceptual content against the allegation that their failure to distinguish between a state view and a content view of (non)conceptualism leads to fatal problems for their views. Next, she makes a case for nonconceptualism by refining some of the central arguments for the view, such as the arguments from fineness of grain, from contradictory contents, from animal and infant perception, and from concept acquisition. Then, two central objections against nonconceptualism are rebutted in a novel way: the epistemological objection and the objection from objectivity. -/- Modest Nonconceptualism allows for perceptual experiences to involve some conceptual elements. It emphasizes the relevance of concept employment for an understanding of conceptual and nonconceptual mental states and identifies the nonconceptual content of experience with scenario content. It insists on the possibility of genuine content-bearing perceptual experience without concept possession and is thus in line with the Autonomy Thesis. Finally, it includes an account of perceptual justification that relies on the external contents of experience and belief, yet is compatible with epistemological internalism. -/- . (shrink)

Proponents of the reasoning view analyze normative reasons as premises of good reasoning and explain the normativity of reasons by appeal to their role as premises of good reasoning. The aim of this paper is to cast doubt on the reasoning view by providing counterexamples to the proposed analysis of reasons, counterexamples in which premises of good reasoning towards φ‐ing are not reasons to φ.

Recently, there has been a lot of enthusiasm for mindfulness practice and its use in healthcare, businesses and schools. An increasing number of studies give us ground for cautious optimism about the potential of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) to improve people's lives across a number of dimensions. This paper identifies and addresses some of the main ethical and political questions for larger-scale MBIs. First, how far are MBIs compatible with liberal neutrality given the great diversity of lifestyles and conceptions of the (...) good characteristic of modern societies? It will be argued that the potential benefits of contemporary secular mindfulness practice are indeed of a sufficiently primary or all-purpose nature to qualify as suitable goals of liberal public policy. Second, what challenges are brought up if mindfulness is used in contexts and applications—such as military settings—whose goals seem incompatible with the ethical and soteriological views of traditional mindfulness practice? It will be argued that, given concerns regarding liberal neutrality and reasonable disagreement about ethics, MBIs should avoid strong ethical commitments. Therefore, it should, in principle, be applicable in contexts of controversial moral value. Finally, drawing on recent discussions within the mindfulness community, it is argued that we should not overstate the case for mindfulness and not crowd out discussion of organisational and social determinants of stress, lowered well-being, and mental illness and the collective measures necessary to address them. (shrink)

In these replies, I react to comments on my paper “Facts about Incoherence as Non-Evidential Epistemic Reasons”, provided by Aleks Knoks, Sebastian Schmidt, Keshav Singh, and Conor McHugh. I discuss potential counterexamples to my claim that the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason for her to suspend; whether such incoherence-based reasons bear on individual attitudes or only on combinations of attitudes; the prospects of restricting evidentialism about epistemic reasons to reasons to believe; whether (...) incoherence-based reasons are truly epistemic; the alleged normative and motivational expendability of incoherence-based reasons; the possibility of incoherence-based reasons to suspend without actual belief in the incoherent propositions; the relationship between suspension, inquiry, and incoherence; and the nature of suspension of judgment. (shrink)

Mazzino Montinari nannte Die Geburt der Tragödie "Nietzsches schwierigstes Werk". Es greift auf antike Traditionen zurück und orientiert sich weltanschaulich an Schopenhauer und Wagner, dessen,Musikdrama' Nietzsche als "Wiedergeburt der Tragödie"darstellt. Bei Nietzsche selbst und in der Kulturkritik wirkte vor allem das Konzept des Dionysischen nach. Gegen die Décadence gerichtet, wurde es zum Ideogramm eines rauschhaften Lebenskults.

Instrumentalism is the view that all requirements of practical reason can be derived from the instrumental principle, that is, from the claim that one ought to take the suitable means to one's ends. Rationalists, by contrast, hold that there are requirements of practical reason that concern the normative acceptability of ends. To the extent that rationalists put forward these requirements in addition to the instrumental principle, rationalism might seem to go beyond instrumentalism in its normative commitments. This is why it (...) is sometimes thought that rationalism is stronger than instrumentalism in a way that entails that instrumentalism is the default view, while rationalists carry the burden of proof. In this paper, I explore and discuss different ways of spelling out this idea. I argue that rationalism is not stronger than instrumentalism in a way that has implications for matters of justification and differences in prima facie defensibility of the two sorts of views. (shrink)

Compared the use of unit regression weights with least squared error multiple regression weights. 100 sample correlation matrices computed from randomly drawn samples from a multivariate normal distribution were employed, with the sample size varying from 25-1,000 and number of variables from 2-10. In addition, correlation matrices were also sampled from published data. The results of comparing the efficiency of the 2 methods of weighting are presented for correlation matrices with and without the effect of suppressor variables. Use of these (...) findings is discussed. (shrink)

Hans Jonas’ anti-visionary conservation-oriented environmental philosophy—prominently articulated in his seminal book The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age —had a tremendous impact on public and philosophical debates throughout the 1980s and the 1990s. Jonas argues that the “environmental crisis” reveals an underlying fundamental “crisis” in the human-nature relation. The crisis challenges the metaphysical foundations of our Western culture—including the dominant way humans view and deal with nature. Environmental ethics, therefore, requires critical reflection on and (...) revision of the underlying philosophy of nature: ethics and philosophy of nature, Jonas argues, are twin sisters. This approach provokes severe criticism: the diagnosis objection, the origin analysis objection, the justification objection, and the problem-solution objection. Most objections are not as sound as they claim to be—although Jonas’ argumentative justification is in fact a bit weak. However, a systematic critique of the objections of the critics from an analytic perspective shows that he developed a political and practical “philosophy of nature” in which anthropology, ethics, and politics are conceptualized as a converging domain as one of the core constituents of environmentals ethics for this century. (shrink)

We respond to recent comments on our proposal to improve justice in ventilator triage, in which we used as an example New Jersey’s publicly available and legally binding Directive Number 2020-03. We agree with Bernard Lo and Doug White that equity implications of triage frameworks should be continually reassessed, which is why we offered six concrete options for improvement, and called for monitoring the consequences of adopted triage models. We disagree with their assessment that we mis-characterised their Model Guidance, as (...) included in the NJ Directive, in ways that undermine our conclusions. They suggest we erroneously described their model as a two-criterion allocation framework; that recognising other operant criterion reveals it ‘likely mitigate[s] rather than exacerbate[s] racial disparities during triage’, and allege that concerns about inequitable outcomes are ‘without evidence’. We highlight two major studies robustly demonstrating why concerns about disparate outcomes are justified. We also show that White and Lo seek to retrospectively—and counterfactually—correct the version of the Model Guideline included in the NJ Directive. However, as our facsimile reproductions show, neither the alleged four-criteria form, nor other key changes, such as dropping the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score, are found in the Directive. These points matter because our conclusions hence stand, because the public version of the Model Guidance had not been updated to reduce the risk of inequitable outcomes until June 2021 and NJ’s Directive still does not reflect these revisions, and, hence, represents a less equitable version, as acknowledged by its authors. We comment on broader policy implications and call for ways of ensuring accurate, transparent and timely updates for users of high-stakes guidelines. (shrink)

Dans cet article, on soutient que Merleau-Ponty, à la fin de sa production philosophique, réhabilite ontologiquement le naturalisme caractéristique à la psychanalyse freudienne. Le philosophe identifie, dans le naturalisme articulé par Freud dans sa théorie, une description de la Nature qui, contrairement au subjectivisme philosophique des philosophies de la conscience, et aussi contrairement au mécanisme causal des sciences naturelles modernes, ne favorise pas une « image fantastique de l’homme, de l’esprit et de l’histoire » contraposée à l’inexorable existence d’une Nature (...) en soi. Ainsi, faire une « psychanalyse de la Nature », analyser les motifs de la réévaluation positive de la théorie freudienne dans les textes ultimes de Merleau-Ponty, implique faire ce qui a été l’intention du philosophe tout au long de la critique dirigée à la psychanalyse, c’est-à-dire : extraire de la théorie psychanalytique freudienne des conséquences philosophiques d’un certain ordre, ce que Freud n’a pas été capable de faire – et qui n’était pas non plus son but.In this article we maintain that at the end of his philosophical work, Merleau-Ponty ontologically rehabilitates the naturalism characteristic of Freudian psychoanalysis. In the naturalism articulated by Freud in his theoretical work, Merleau-Ponty identifies a description of Nature that, contrary to the subjectivism of philosophies of consciousness and also contrary to the mechanistic causality of the contemporary natural sciences, does not favor the “fantastic image of man, spirit and history,” counter-posed to the inexorable existence of Nature in itself. Consequently, to do a psychoanalysis of Nature, to analyze the motifs of a positive reevaluation of Freudian theory in Merleau-Ponty’s last works, implies fulfilling the intention he held all through his critique of psychoanalysis. That is to say, it implies extracting from Freudian psychoanalytic theory particular philosophical results, which Freud himself was not able to do—and which was not his aim.In questo articolo sosteniamo che Merleau-Ponty, al termine del suo percorso filosofico, arriva a riabilitare ontologicamente il naturalismo caratteristico della psicoanalisi freudiana. Il filosofo identifica nel naturalismo articolato da Freud una descrizione della Natura che, contrariamente al soggettivismo delle filosofie della coscienza, e, simmetricamente, al meccanicismo delle moderne scienze naturali, cessa di promuovere un’“immagine fantastica dell’uomo, dello spirito e della storia” contrapposta all’esistenza inesorabile di una Natura in sé. Così, svolgere l’idea di una “psicoanalisi della Natura”, e analizzare i motivi della rivalutazione della teoria freudiana negli ultimi testi di Merleau-Ponty, significa prolungare quella che è stata l’intenzione del filosofo lungo l’intero percorso della sua critica alla psicoanalisi: e cioè estrarre dalla teoria psicoanalitica freudiana conseguenze filosofiche appartenenti a un ordine che Freud non ha saputo raggiungere né si è dato il compito di raggiungere. (shrink)

Inspired by early proposals in philosophy, dominant accounts of language posit a central role for mutual knowledge, either encoded directly in common ground, or approximated through other cognitive mechanisms. Using existing empirical evidence from language and memory, we challenge this tradition, arguing that mutual knowledge captures only a subset of the mental states needed to support communication. In a novel theoretical proposal, we argue for a cognitive architecture that includes separate, distinct representations of the self and other, and a cognitive (...) process that compares these representations continuously during conversation, outputting both similarities and differences in perspective. Our theory accounts for existing data, interfaces with findings from other cognitive domains, and makes novel predictions about the role of perspective in language use. We term this new account the Multiple Perspectives Theory of mental states in communication. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band enthält Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermachers (1768–1834) sämtliche erhaltenen und erschlossenen Briefe aus den Jahren 1809–1810. Bereits 1808 hatte sich Schleiermacher endgültig in Berlin niedergelassen und war in Konzeption und Berufungsfragen aktiv an der Berliner Universitätsgründung beteiligt. Im Mai 1809 heiratete Schleiermacher Henriette von Willich, die 20 Jahre jüngere Witwe eines verstorben Freundes. Aus der knapp einjährigen Verlobungszeit 1808–1809 liegen über 100 Briefe des Brautpaares vor. Die bereits im Vorfeld der Universitätsgründung begonnen Vorlesungen setzte Schleiermacher 1810 als ordentlicher (...) Professor fort – 1809 trat er seine Stelle als reformierter Prediger an der Dreifaltigkeitskirche an. Die Korrespondenz Schleiermachers mit Familie, Freundinnen und Freunden sowie zahlreichen Kollegen zeichnet ein eindringliches politisches, geistes- und alltagsgeschichtliches Panorama der Zeit und gewährt einen Einblick in die Entstehung des Schleiermacherschen Werkes. (shrink)

Der Berliner Theologe, Philosoph und Reformer Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768–1834) war weitmaschig vernetzt und führte eine umfangreiche Korrespondenz. Band 15 der 5. Abteilung der historisch-kritischen Gesamtausgabe Schleiermachers (KGA) enthält die Briefe von und an Schleiermacher der Jahre 1819 und 1820. Das Ende des zweiten Jahrzehnts ist für Berlin und für Preußen von besonderer politischer Virulenz. Es steht unter dem Vorzeichen zunehmender Repression gegen liberale Kräfte durch den Preußischen Stadt. Verhängnisvoll ist die Ermordung des Schriftstellers Kotzebue durch den Burschenschaftler Sand. (...) Der Trostbrief des Berliner Theologen De Wette an die Mutter des Täters dient der Regierung zum Anlass, Rechte und Freiheiten der Berliner Professorenschaft einzuschränken. Schleiermacher, der selbst immer wieder im Fokus der Demagogenverfolgung stand, setzt sich nachdrücklich und zugleich taktisch klug für die Freiheit der Wissenschaften und der Kirche ein. 1819/20 war Schleiermacher zum vierten und letzten Mal Dekan der Theologischen Fakultät und setzte sich u.a. für die Unterstützung bedürftiger Studenten ein. Privat ist das Jahr 1820 auch von der Geburt seines ersten und einzigen Sohns geprägt. Wissenschaftlich erweitert sich sein System der Wissenschaften um die 1819 erstmals gehaltene Vorlesungen über Ästhetik. Zugleich begann er, seine Dogmatik, der „Glaubenslehre“, in Buchform auszuarbeiten. (shrink)

Gene gelten im Allgemeinen als die Essenz eines Lebewesens, die all seine charakteristischen Eigenschaften bestimmt. Aus biologischer Sicht trifft diese Vorstellung jedoch längst nicht mehr zu. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Buches steht daher die Frage, warum und wie das essentialistische Denken die gesellschaftliche Wahrnehmung biologischer Forschungsprojekte immer noch beeinflusst. Anhand aktueller Erkenntnisse der Genetik und Epigenetik geht Kirsten Schmidt auf die Suche nach einer neuen Interpretation des Genbegriffs im Zeitalter der Postgenomik. Das Verständnis von Genen als dynamischen Prozessen erweist sich (...) dabei als eine fruchtbare Alternative zum Essentialismus. (shrink)

O ensaio procura investigar a ideia de educação moral defendida por Jean Piaget em sua conferência intitulada “Os procedimentos de educação moral”, proferida em Paris, no ano de 1930. Concentra-se em reconstruir o núcleo central apresentado pelo autor, ou seja, a tensão entre a dupla moralidade e a ambiguidade entre heteronomia e autonomia que constitui a moralidade infantil e que se alicerça em sentimentos de respeito opostos, de unilateralidade e de reciprocidade. Ocupa-se também em confrontar os procedimentos típicos da educação (...) tradicional com os procedimentos próprios da educação progressiva que impulsionam a posição ativa do educando para a construção dos aspectos da internalização da lei e da possibilidade das relações de cooperação e respeito pelo outro nos grupos de convivência, especialmente no período da infância. Destaca a necessária presença do adulto, como aquele que exerce o papel de mediação na relação entre ele, a criança e o mundo, principalmente do professor na educação infantil pela compreensão do domínio psicológico da infância, para pensarmos por que a criança age, como ela age e de que forma age. Por fim, conclui procurando mostrar a atualidade desta reflexão do jovem Piaget para os nossos dias, mesmo se passando quase um século, revelando a importância da releitura dos clássicos para a reflexão, compreensão e intervenção em problemáticas educacionais atuais. Sua crítica ao autoritarismo inerente à determinada concepção de educação moral serve ainda como resistência ao conservadorismo autoritário atual e, ao mesmo tempo, para reestabelecer os laços cooperativos e solidários proporcionados pela ampla tradição da educação moral autônoma, oferecendo as condições intelectuais e psicológicas necessárias para o desenvolvimento saudável e o ingresso autônomo na sociedade adulta. (shrink)

This comment raises two worries for Crane’s view of religious beliefs and their contents. First, I argue that his appeal to inferentialism about the contents of dispositional beliefs cannot fully avoid the problem of inconsistent beliefs. For the same problem can be raised for occurrent thought, and the inferentialist solution is not available there. Second, I argue that religious beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs with respect to their justification in cases of peer disagreements. This suggests that noncognitivism about religious beliefs, (...) which Crane opposes, is the correct view after all. (shrink)

The commitment to the rational actor model of state behavior is said to be a core assumption of realist theory. This assumption is listed in most textbook accounts of realism. Yet is rationality a core supposition of realist theory, and if so, what kind of rationality is implied in these claims? Debate on the relationship between realism, and what is often labeled as rationality is replete with misunderstandings. Authors deploy terms such as rationality, rationalism, and rational actor in diverse and (...) contradictory ways. This article aims to cut through this confusion and provide an account of the different ways in which these terms are used in the field of International Relations (IR). We argue that much of the confusion surrounding rationalism/rationality in IR arises due to a failure to distinguish between rationalism as an epistemological position (the observer rationality assumption) and rationality as an ontological position (the rational actor assumption). We use this distinction to examine carefully the relationship between the concepts of rationalism/rationality in realist theory. (shrink)