In this paper, we examine the problems facing a policy maker who observes inconsistent choices made by agents who are boundedly rational. We contrast a model-less and a model-based approach to welfare economics. We make the case for the model-based approach and examine its advantages as well as some problematic issues associated with it.

Humanity’s self-ordained mandate to subdue and dominate nature is part of the cognitive foundation of the modern world—a perspective that remains deeply ingrained in science and technology. Marine biology has not been immune to this anthropocentric bias. But this needs to change, and the gaps between basic scientific disciplines and the global conservation imperatives of our time need to be bridged. In the face of a looming ecological and climate crisis, marine biologists must upgrade their values and professional standards and (...) help foster the radical transformation needed to avert a climate and ecological breakdown. To prevent some of the damage, they must cross the imaginary line that separates science from science-based activism and consciously pursue the health and durability of human and natural communities. To this end, they can (1) develop compelling narratives that engage human society, with emphasis on care for the wild living world; (2) move beyond marine conservation on paper and avoid self-serving complaisance; (3) advocate constructive changes in market and human behaviour, not only by documenting damage but also by clarifying how the extraction, production and consumption system can be steered away from practices that harm nature; (4) push for systemic change in politics through individual and collective efforts, supporting environmental activism and those who demand biosphere-saving policies; and (5) endorse a more ecocentric and holistic world vision, relinquishing contempt for spiritual wisdom and liaising with (or at least not dismissing) spiritual traditions that encourage equality, self-restraint and environmental sustainability. (shrink)

"L'autorité d'Aristote n'a pas grand poids pour moi" déclare Spinoza à Hugo Boxel. Mais cette défiance à l'égard d'une autorité déclinante n'empêche pas qu'Aristote se trouve être, après Descartes, le deuxième auteur le plus cité par Spinoza. La mise au jour de l'édition des Oeuvres complètes d'Aristote utilisée par Spinoza ayant, pour la première fois, permis de conclure à l'existence d'une lecture de première main, Frédéric Manzini montre avec cet outil la nécessité de réévaluer les rapports entre les deux (...) philosophes dans toute leur complexité par la confrontation systématique des deux systèmes. Depuis l'éthique jusqu'à la métaphysique en passant par la théorie de la connaissance, Aristote est un interlocuteur avec lequel Spinoza ne cesse de polémiquer. L'Ethique se présente ainsi comme la nouvelle Ethique à Nicomaque, que Spinoza espère rendre enfin universelle, première et vraie en la démontrant à partir de principes certains. (shrink)

Predictive genetic testing for susceptibility to psychiatric conditions is likely to become part of standard practice. Because the onset of most psychiatric diseases is in late adolescence or early adulthood, testing minors could lead to early identification that may prevent or delay the development of these disorders. However, due to their complex aetiology, psychiatric genetic testing does not provide the immediate medical benefits that current guidelines require for testing minors. While several authors have argued non-medical benefits may play a crucial (...) role in favour of predictive testing for other conditions, little research has explored such a role in psychiatric disorders. This paper outlines the potential non-medical benefits and harms of psychiatric genetic testing in minors in order to consider whether the non-medical benefits could ever make such testing appropriate. Five non-medical themes arise in the literature: psychological impacts, autonomy/self-determination, implications of the biomedical approach, use of financial and intellectual resources, and discrimination. Non-medical benefits were prominent in all of them, suggesting that psychiatric genetic testing in minors may be appropriate in some circumstances. Further research needs to empirically assess these potential non-medical benefits, incorporate minors in the debate, and include normative reflection to evaluate the very purposes and motivations of psychiatric genetic testing in minors. (shrink)

We study preferences over lotteries which do not necessarily satisfy completeness. We provide a characterization which generalizes Expected Utility theory. We show in particular that various sure-thing axioms are needed to guaranteee the representability in terms of utility intervals rather than numbers, and to provide a linear interval order representation which is very much in the spirit of Expected Utility theory.

Much has been written about the need for trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI), but the underlying meaning of trust and trustworthiness can vary or be used in confusing ways. It is not always clear whether individuals are speaking of a technology’s trustworthiness, a developer’s trustworthiness, or simply of gaining the trust of users by any means. In sociotechnical circles, trustworthiness is often used as a proxy for ‘the good’, illustrating the moral heights to which technologies and developers ought to aspire, at (...) times with a multitude of diverse requirements; or at other times, no specification at all. In philosophical circles, there is doubt that the concept of trust should be applied at all to technologies rather than their human creators. Nevertheless, people continue to intuitively reason about trust in technologies in their everyday language. This qualitative study employed an empirical ethics methodology to address how developers and users define and construct requirements for trust throughout development and use, through a series of interviews. We found that different accounts of trust (rational, affective, credentialist, norms based, relational) served as the basis for individual granting of trust in technologies and operators. Ultimately, the most significant requirement for user trust and assessment of trustworthiness was the accountability of AI developers for the outputs of AI systems, hinging on the identification of accountable moral agents and perceived value alignment between the user and developer’s interests. (shrink)

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online.

In the paper, after clarifying terms such as ‘identity’, ‘self’ and ‘personhood’, I propose an empirical account of identity based on the notion of “whole phenotype”. This move allows one to claim the persistence of the individuals before and after their being affected by dementia. Furthermore, I show how this account permits us to address significant questions related to demented individuals’ loss of the capacity of moral decisions.

Emotions and personhood are important notions within the field of mental health care. How they are related is less evident. This book provides a framework for understanding the important and complex relationship between our emotional wellbeing and our sense of self, drawing on psychopathology, philosophy, and phenomenology.

How can we better understand and treat those suffering from schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses? This important new book takes us into the world of those suffering from such disorders. Using self descriptions, its emphasis is not on how mental health professionals view sufferers, but on how the patients themselves experience their disorder. A new volume in the International Perspectives in Philosophy and Psychiatry series, this book will be of great interest to all those working with sufferers from such disorders - (...) helping them to better understand their mental lives, and providing important insights into how best to treat them. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical debate on causation and causal explanation in the biological and biomedical sciences has focused on the notion of mechanism. Mechanisms, their nature and epistemic roles have been tackled by a range of so-called neo-mechanistic theories, and widely discussed. Without denying the merits of this approach, our paper aims to show how lately it has failed to give proper credit to processes, which are central to the field, especially of contemporary molecular biology. Processes can be summed (...) up in the notion of ‘pathway’, which is far from being just equivalent to that of ‘mechanism’ and has a profound epistemological and explanatory relevance. It is argued that an adequate consideration of pathways impels some rethinking of scientific explanation in molecular biology, namely its functional and contextual features. A number of examples are given to suggest that the focus of philosophical attention in this disciplinary field should shift from the notion of mechanism to the notion of pathway. (shrink)

Two problems related to the biological identity of living beings are faced: the who-problem (which are the biological properties making that living being unique and different from the others?); the persistence-problem (what does it take for a living being to persist from a time to another?). They are discussed inside a molecular biology framework, which shows how epigenetics can be a good ground to provide plausible answers. That is, we propose an empirical solution to the who-problem and to the persistence-problem (...) on the basis of the new perspectives opened by a molecular understanding of epigenetic processes. In particular, concerning the former, we argue that any living being is the result of the epigenetic processes that have regulated the expression of its genome; concerning the latter, we defend the idea that the criterion for the persistence of its identity is to be indicated in the continuity of those epigenetic processes. We also counteract possible objections, in particular (1) whether our approach has something to say at a metaphysical level; (2) how it could account for the passage from the two phenotypes of the parental gametes to the single phenotype of the zygote; (3) how it could account for the identity of derivatives of one living being that continue to live disjoined from that original living being; (4) how it could account for higher mental functions. (shrink)

This paper examines the effectiveness of the use of executive compensation linked to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals across US firms. Empirical analysis of a cross-industry sample of 746 listed companies for the period 2002–2013 showed that the use of CSR-linked compensation contracts for Named Executive Officers (NEOs) promotes CSR performance. More specifically, we found that linking NEOs’ compensation to CSR goals produces positive effects in the 3rd year after adoption. As firms accumulate experience and learn how to use the (...) system over the following eight periods, CSR performance increases monotonically. Furthermore, experience accumulated over time affects the different specifications of CSR performance asymmetrically, by reducing both environmental and social CSR concerns and increasing only environmental CSR strengths. Interestingly, we also found that the simultaneous use of other CSR-focused governance systems moderates the effect of a firm’s accumulated experience in using CSR-linked executive compensation on CSR performance: the existence of a CSR committee at the board level and the public release of a CSR report are likely to have a positive moderating effect, while the purchase of a CSR audit has no moderating effect. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article considers Anika Mann’s (aka Anika Simpson) arguments on race and feminist standpoint theory. Its intervention is to take up Mann’s claim that “being-in-situation is the ontological condition for achieving a standpoint.” Mann’s analysis is reformulated as an existential standpoint philosophy, rooted in experience, and aimed at the concrete, freedom, praxis, and achievement. The article uses the existential standpoint framework as a foundation to take up Mamphela Ramphele’s initial autobiography, Mamphela Ramphele: A Life (1995) to critically reflect on (...) what the actions of nonsubservient Blackwomen reveal about the lived experience of being Black and a woman under Apartheid South Africa. It argues that Ramphele’s philosophical approach to unveiling “Apartheid racism as a system” integrates a standpoint theory with existential phenomenology. (shrink)

The core of this article is a comparative analysis of the double movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the double movement of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. In both periods the movement toward allegedly self-regulating markets called forth a countermovement of protection. Nevertheless, important differences exist due, first, to differences in the nature of the hegemonic state and, second, to the greater role of subordinate forces in constraining the movement toward self-regulating markets in the (...) late twentieth century. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous examinerons quelques aspects de la syntaxe du sujet dans les dialectes occitans du Piémont occidental, dans les dialectes francoprovençaux du Piémont occidental et du Val d’Aoste, y compris les parlers de Celle di Faeto (francoprovençal) dans les Pouilles et de Guardia Piemontese (occitan) en Calabre : l’existence de clitiques sujets, l’absence de l’accord entre verbe et sujet post-posé, l’inversion du verbe et du clitique sujet dans les constructions interrogatives. Toutes ces propriétés morphosyntaxiques qui apparaissent dans les (...) dialectes occitans et francoprovençaux caractérisent également les autres dialectes de l’Italie septentrionale (Bracco, Brandi et Cordin 1985, Poletto 1993, 2000, Rizzi 1986). En revanche, les dialectes occitans et francoprovençaux ne forment pas un groupe identifiable d’une manière univoque, mais ils se subdivisent en typologies grammaticales différentes. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous examinerons quelques aspects de la syntaxe du sujet dans les dialectes occitans du Piémont occidental, dans les dialectes francoprovençaux du Piémont occidental et du Val d’Aoste, y compris les parlers de Celle di Faeto (francoprovençal) dans les Pouilles et de Guardia Piemontese (occitan) en Calabre : l’existence de clitiques sujets, l’absence de l’accord entre verbe et sujet post-posé, l’inversion du verbe et du clitique sujet dans les constructions interrogatives. Toutes ces propriétés morphosyntaxiques qui apparaissent dans les (...) dialectes occitans et francoprovençaux caractérisent également les autres dialectes de l’Italie septentrionale (Bracco, Brandi et Cordin 1985, Poletto 1993, 2000, Rizzi 1986). En revanche, les dialectes occitans et francoprovençaux ne forment pas un groupe identifiable d’une manière univoque, mais ils se subdivisent en typologies grammaticales différentes. (shrink)

According to N. Goodman, the Carnapian notion of similarity is useless in science and without interest for philosophy. In our paper we suggest that, given the current role that the notion of similarity has in managing biomedical big data, this drastic position should be revised, and similarity should be provided a scientifically useful philosophical interpretation. With the advent of the new sequencing technologies, imaging technologies and with the improvements of health records, the number of genomics, post-genomics and clinical data has (...) exponentially increased. The deluge of data has urged, among others, to devise a new way of stratifying patients. A solution has been found and it is based exactly on the notion of similarity. By discussing two examples focusing on similarity among breast cancer patients, in the paper we illustrate such a use, and analyze it from a philosophical standpoint by resorting to A. Tversky’s features matching approach. We believe that the latter can foster some better understanding of the meaning and current use of similarity in the context of biomedical big data, and that, therefore, be the focus of further reflections in the philosophy of science, in particular in the philosophy of biomedicine. (shrink)

Les designers et théoriciens Ezio Manzini et Virginia Tassinari répondent à la question posée par le titre du dossier, Design is the answer, but what was the question? Si, d’une part, se pose la question de l’impact social et politique du design et de sa responsabilité dans les changements sociaux, de l’autre s’impose une réflexion sur les modes d’action du design et sur les fondements de cette action. Dans cette perspective, Manzini met en avant les pratiques d’ engendrement (...) et d’ engagement comme stratégies d’action communes et communautaires, alors que Tassinari explique comment la définition du designing (plus que du design) comme une action politique nécessite une remise en question du cadre épistémologique qui la fonde. (shrink)

Following recent debate on the relations between philosophy of science and the sciences, we wish to draw attention to some actual ways of training both young philosophers of science and young life scientists and clinicians. First, we recall a successful case of training philosophers of the life sciences in a strictly scientific environment. Second, after a brief review of the reasons why life scientists and clinicians are currently asking for more ethics, more methodology of science, and more philosophy of science (...) in the training of life scientists and clinicians, we present two training models that could spur the discussion on how to meet the requests coming from the scientific community. We argue that in order to reflect on mutual relations between philosophy of science and the sciences and to foster proper interactions, issues regarding the topics considered, the features of educational curricula, and the institutional organizations should be addressed jointly. (shrink)

In this paper I will compare the concept of explication à la Carnap and the concept of explication à la Kant. This essay should primarily be seen as a comparison of two different philosophical styles, but it is also intended as a vindication of what Kant wrote and what Carnap forgot to read.

The article [Title], written by [AuthorNames], was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on [date of OnlineFirst publication] without open access.

L’« aristotélisme » est resté très largement étudié tout au long du XVIIe siècle, mais certainement pas de manière uniforme. Une rupture décisive est intervenue avec l’avènement du cartésianisme qui parvient à se poser en système rival suffisamment crédible pour obliger à une nouvelle donne, à la fois dans l’enseignement prodigué à l’université et dans la pratique philosophique en général. Cet article explique la nature de ces transformations imposées que l’aristotélisme a dû subir, puis examine les différentes façons dont, chacun (...) à leur manière bien spécifique, Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche et Leibniz se sont situés par rapport à l’héritage et à la figure du Stagirite. Comment, en l’espace de quelques décennies seulement, l’aristotélisme qui avait tant dominé le paysage philosophique pendant des siècles s’est-il trouvé mis au rang de vestige de l’histoire? (shrink)

To practice philosophy is to be part of a conversation, and this autobiography is a conversation about Mabogo Percy More’s experiences as a black African philosopher in South Africa. Not only is this a conversation about philosophy, but it is also a conversation with philosophy as a profession, its interlocutors, and the philosophical canon. Moreover, it is an account of the philosophers both living and dead who have informed More’s worldview, matched with his lived experience. More specifically, as he himself (...) says, this is “an autobiography of a black philosopher in apartheid and apartheid South Africa and its academic institutions”. (shrink)

FollowingBerwick and Chomsky (2011), parameters are degrees of freedom open at the externalization (EXT) of syntactico-semantic structures (SEM) by sensorimotor systems (PHON) (Section 1). Within this framework, inSection 2I focus on a case study concerning Northern Italian subject clitics, also raising the well-known question how to reconcile observable microvariation with the desideratum of a reduced number of (macro)parameters.Sections 3reviews recent relevant models of parameterization, the Rethinking Comparative Syntax model (ReCoS,Biberauer et al. 2014) and the Parameters & Schemata model (Longobardi 2005,2017).Sections (...) 4–5return to the case study, taking the reductionist view that parameters may be just categorial cuts, such as the 1/2P vs 3P split, interacting with externalization and other general principles of grammar. (shrink)

In this paper I will compare the concept of explication à la Carnap and the concept of explication à la Kant. This essay should primarily be seen as a comparison of two different philosophical styles, but it is also intended as a vindication of what Kant wrote and what Carnap forgot to read.

In our paper, we propose a relativisticand metaphysically neutral identity criterionfor biological entities. We start from thecriterion of genidentity proposed by K. Lewinand H. Reichenbach. Then we enrich it to renderit more philosophical powerful and so capableof dealing with the real transformations thatoccur in the extremely variegated biologicalworld.

The purpose of this paper is methodological. I begin by showing the methodological frailties of both the heart and brain approach to the criteria of death used in connection with organ transplantation. I then clarify what a definition is. Finally, I propose to abandon the definition of death, and suggest a pragmatic definition of ‘explantability window’.

On the collection of points of a formal space.