The proposal to create a chamber selected by sortition would extend this democratic procedure into the legislative branch of government. However, there are good reasons to believe that, as currently conceived by John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright, the proposal will fail to realize sufficiently two fundamental democratic goods, namely, political equality and deliberative reasoning. It is argued through analysis of its historic and contemporary application that sortition must be combined with other institutional devices, in particular, rotation of membership and (...) limited mandate, in order to be democratically effective and to realize political equality and deliberative reasoning. An alternative proposal for a responsive sortition legislature is presented as more realistic and utopian: one that increases substantially the number of members, makes more extensive use of internal sortition and rotation, and recognizes the importance of establishing limited mandates. (shrink)

Functional MRI shows promise as a candidate prognostication method in acutely comatose patients following severe brain injury. However, further research is needed before this technique becomes appropriate for clinical practice. Drawing on a clinical case, we investigate the process of obtaining informed consent for this kind of research and identify four ethical issues. After describing each issue, we propose potential solutions which would make a patient’s participation in research compatible with her rights and interests. First, we defend the need for (...) traditional proxy consent against two alternative approaches. Second, we examine the impact of the intensive care unit environment on the informed consent process. Third, we discuss the therapeutic misconception and its potential influence on informed consent. Finally, we deal with issues of timing in recruiting participants and related factors which may affect the risks of participation. (shrink)

Recent advances in brain imaging methods as well as increased sophistication in neuroscientific modeling of the brain’s reward systems have facilitated the study of neural mechanisms associated with addiction such as processes associated with motivation, decision-making, pleasure seeking, and inhibitory control. These scientific activities have increased optimism that the neurological underpinnings of addiction will be delineated, and that pharmaceuticals that target and change these mechanisms will by themselves facilitate early intervention and even full recovery. In this paper, we argue that (...) it is misguided to construe addiction as just or primarily a brain chemistry problem, which can be adequately treated by pharmaceutical interventions alone. (shrink)

Patient outcome after serious brain injury is highly variable. Following a period of coma, some patients recover while others progress into a vegetative state (unresponsive wakefulness syndrome) or minimally conscious state. In both cases, assessment is difficult and misdiagnosis may be as high as 43%. Recent advances in neuroimaging suggest a solution. Both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have been used to detect residual cognitive function in vegetative and minimally conscious patients. Neuroimaging may improve diagnosis and prognostication. These techniques (...) are beginning to be applied to comatose patients soon after injury. Evidence of preserved cognitive function may predict recovery, and this information would help families and health providers. Complex ethical issues arise due to the vulnerability of patients and families, difficulties interpreting negative results, restriction of communication to “yes” or “no” answers, and cost. We seek to investigate ethical issues in the use of neuroimaging in behaviorally nonresponsive patients who have suffered serious brain injury. The objectives of this research are to: (1) create an approach to capacity assessment using neuroimaging; (2) develop an ethics of welfare framework to guide considerations of quality of life; (3) explore the impact of neuroimaging on families; and, (4) analyze the ethics of the use of neuroimaging in comatose patients. (shrink)

Predatory journals and conferences are an emerging problem in scientific literature as they have financial motives, without guaranteeing scientific quality and exposure. The main objective of the ASGLOS project is to investigate the predatory e‐email characteristics, management, and possible consequences and to analyse the extent of the current problem at each academic level. To collect the personal experiences of physicians’ mailboxes on predatory publishing, a Google Form® survey was designed and disseminated from September 2021 to April 2022. A total of (...) 978 responses were analysed from 58 countries around the world. A total of 64.8% of participants indicated the need for 3 or fewer emails to acquire a criticality view in distinguishing a real invitation from a spam, while 11.5% still have doubt regardless of how many emails they get. The AGLOS Study clearly highlights the problem of academic e‐mail spam by predatory journals and conferences. Our findings signify the importance of providing academic career‐oriented advice and organising training sessions to increase awareness of predatory publishing for those conducting scientific research. (shrink)

Part I: The Life of Cognitive Science:. William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen, and George Graham. Part II: Areas of Study in Cognitive Science:. 1. Analogy: Dedre Gentner. 2. Animal Cognition: Herbert L. Roitblat. 3. Attention: A.H.C. Van Der Heijden. 4. Brain Mapping: Jennifer Mundale. 5. Cognitive Anthropology: Charles W. Nuckolls. 6. Cognitive and Linguistic Development: Adele Abrahamsen. 7. Conceptual Change: Nancy J. Nersessian. 8. Conceptual Organization: Douglas Medin and Sandra R. Waxman. 9. Consciousness: Owen Flanagan. 10. Decision Making: J. Frank (...) Yates and Paul A. Estin. 11. Emotions: Paul E. Griffiths. 12. Imagery and Spatial Representation: Rita E. Anderson. 13. Language Evolution and Neuromechanisms: Terrence W. Deacon. 14. Language Processing: Kathryn Bock and Susan M. Garnsey. 15. Linguistics Theory: D. Terence Langendoen. 16. Machine Learning: Paul Thagard. 17. Memory: Henry L. Roediger III and Lyn M. Goff. 18. Perception: Cees Van Leeuwen. 19. Perception: Color: Austen Clark. 20. Problem Solving: Kevin Dunbar. 21. Reasoning: Lance J. Rips. 22. Social Cognition: Alan J. Lambert and Alison L. Chasteen. 23. Unconscious Intelligence: Rhianon Allen and Arthur S. Reber. 24. Understanding Texts: Art Graesser and Pam Tipping. 25. Word Meaning: Barbara C. Malt. Part III: Methodologies of Cognitive Science:. 26. Artificial Intelligence: Ron Sun. 27. Behavioral Experimentation: Alexander Pollatsek and Keith Rayner. 28. Cognitive Ethology: Marc Bekoff. 29. Deficits and Pathologies: Christopher D. Frith. 30. Ethnomethodology: Barry Saferstein. 31. Functional Analysis: Brian Macwhinney. 32. Neuroimaging: Randy L. Buckner and Steven E. Petersen. 33. Protocal Analysis: K. Anders Ericsson. 34. Single Neuron Electrophysiology: B. E. Stein, M.T. Wallace, and T.R. Stanford. 35. Structural Analysis: Robert Frank. Part IV: Stances in Cognitive Science:. 36. Case-based Reasoning: David B. Leake. 37. Cognitive Linguistics: Michael Tomasello. 38. Connectionism, Artificial Life, and Dynamical Systems: Jeffrey L. Elman. 39. Embodied, Situated, and Distributed Cognition: Andy Clark. 40. Mediated Action: James V. Wertsch. 41. Neurobiological Modeling: P. Read Montague and Peter Dayan. 42. Production Systems: Christian D. Schunn and David Klahr. Part V: Controversies in Cognitive Science:. 43. The Binding Problem: Valerie Gray Hardcastle. 44. Heuristics and Satisficing: Robert C. Richardson. 45. Innate Knowledge: Barbara Landau. 46. Innateness and Emergentism: Elizabeth Bates, Jeffrey L. Elman, Mark H. Johnson, Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Domenico Parisi, and Kim Plunkett. 47. Intentionality: Gilbert Harman. 48. Levels of Explanation and Cognition Architectures: Robert N. McCauley. 49. Modularity: Irene Appelbaum. 50. Representation and Computation: Robert S. Stufflebeam. 51. Representations: Dorrit Billman. 52. Rules: Terence Horgan and John Tienson. 53. Stage Theories Refuted: Donald G. Mackay. Part VI: Cognitive Science in the Real World:. 54. Education: John T. Bruer. 55. Ethics: Mark L. Johnson. 56. Everyday Life Environments: Alex Kirlik. 57. Institutions and Economics: Douglass C. North. 58. Legal Reasoning: Edwina L. Rissland. 59. Mental Retardation: Norman W. Bray, Kevin D. Reilly, Lisa F. Huffman, Lisa A. Grupe, Mark F. Villa, Kathryn L. Fletcher, and Vivek Anumolu. 60. Science: William F. Brewer and Punyashloke Mishra. Selective Biographies of Major Contributors to Cognitive Science: William Bechtel and Tadeusz Zawidzki. (shrink)

Bridges Between Virtue Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 1 Abrol Fairweather Part I Epistemic Virtue, Cognitive Science and Situationism The Function of Perception 13 Peter J Graham Metacognition and Intellectual Virtue 33 Christopher Lepock Daring to Believe: Metacognition, Epistemic Agency and Reflective Knowledge 49 Fernando Broncano Success, Minimal Agency and Epistemic Virtue 67 Carlos Montemayor Towards a Eudaimonistic Virtue Epistemology 83 Berit Brogaard Expanding the Situationist Challenge to Reliabilism About Inference 103 Mark Alfano Inferential Abilities and Common Epistemic Goods (...) 123 Abrol Fairweather and Carlos Montemayor Part II Epistemic Virtue and Formal Epistemology Curiosity, Belief and Acquaintance 143 Ilhan Inan Epistemic Values and Disinformation 159 Don Fallis Defeasibility Without Inductivism 181 Juan Comesaña Part III Virtues of Theories and Virtues of Theorists Acting to Know: A Virtue of Experimentation 195 Adam Morton Is There a Place for Epistemic Virtues in Theory Choice? 207 Milena Ivanova Bridging a Fault Line: On Underdetermination and the Ampliative Adequacy of Competing Theories 227 Guy Axtell Epistemic Virtues and the Success of Science 247 D Tulodziecki Experimental Virtue: Perceptual Responsiveness and the Praxis of Scientific Observation 269 Shannon Vallor A Matter of Phronesis: Experiment and Virtue in Physics, A Case Study 291 Marilena Di Bucchianico Part IV Understanding, Explanation and Epistemic Virtue Knowledge and Understanding 315 Duncan Pritchard Understanding as Knowledge of Causes 329 Stephen R Grimm Knowledge, Understanding and Virtue 347 Christoph Kelp. (shrink)

In an era of transition and tension in American health care, Dorothy M. Owens offers a model of empathic communication that benefits both patients and physicians. Drawing from concepts in the domains of psychology and theology, she constructs a model of empathy that is ethical and reciprocal. An integrated model of empathy recognizes the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social nature of human beings. Empathy is a clinically useful, time-effective communication skill that can be taught in medical and pastoral education. (...) Dr. Owens's unique approach to empathy is applicable to other professional and personal relationships as well. (shrink)

The hypothesis that belief aims at the truth has been used to explain three features of belief: (1) the fact that correct beliefs are true beliefs, (2) the fact that rational beliefs are supported by the evidence and (3) the fact that we cannot form beliefs.

One way of discerning what sort of control we have over our mental lives is to look at cases where that control is not exercised. This is one reason why philosophers have taken an interest in the phenomenon of akrasia, in an agent's ability to do, freely and deliberately, something that they judge they ought not to do. Akrasia constitutes a failure of control but not an absence of control. The akratic agent is not a compulsive; an akratic agent has (...) the ability to control their action, to make it conform to their judgement, but they fail to exercise that ability. They freely and deliberately give in to temptation. (shrink)

The problem of being is central to Western metaphysics. Etched sharply in the verses of Parmenides, it took on distinctive colouring in Aristotle as the subject matter of a science expressly labelled 'theological.' For Aristotle, being could not be shared in generic fashion by other natures. As a nature it had to be found not in various species but in a primary instance only. The science specified by the primary nature was accordingly the one science that under the aspect of (...) being treated universally of whatever is: it dealt with being qua being. (shrink)

Unlike many other animals, human beings enjoy freedom of action. They are capable of acting freely because they have certain psychological capacities which other animals lack. In this paper, I argue that the crucial capacity here is our ability to make practical judgements; to make judgements about what we ought to do. A number of other writers share this view but they treat practical judgement as a form of belief. Since, as I argue, we don't control our beliefs, that undermines (...) this model of human freedom. I suggest a different account of practical judgement, according to which they are cognitive states but not beliefs and I show how this provides us with a better model of practical freedom. (shrink)

There is a growing acceptance of the idea that the explanatory states of folk psychology do not supervene on the physical. Even Fodor (1987) seems to grant as much. He argues, however, that this cannot be true of theoretical psychology. Since theoretical psychology offers causal explanations, its explanatory states must be taxonomized in such a way as to supervene on the physical. I use this concession to invert his argument and cast doubt on the received model of folk psychological explanation (...) as causal explanation by intentionally individuated states. This in turn undermines the central model of cognitive theory--causal explanation by representational states. (shrink)

Kripke's Pierre puzzle undermines some of the central epistemic intuitions that underlie traditional defences of the Fregean assumption that sentences'S believes that Fa ‘and'S believes that Fb’ can differ in truth value, even though a = b. Millian theorists have seized on this and employed the puzzle to reject the Fregean assumption itself. I argue that Millians are correct in rejecting traditional defences of the Fregean assumption, but they are wrong in rejecting the Fregean assumption itself. To this end, I (...) offer a different argument kr the assumption, one that is not open to Kripkean/millian objections. (shrink)

Philosophers like Shoemaker and Burge argue that only self-conscious creatures can exercise rational control over their mental lives. In particular they urge that reflective rationality requires possession of the I-concept, the first person concept. These philosophers maintain that rational creatures like ourselves can exercise reflective control over belief as well as action. I agree that we have this sort of control over our actions and that practical freedom presupposes self-consciousness. But I deny that anything like this is true of belief.

This monograph reappraises the role of Bertrand Russell's philosophical works in establishing the analytical tradition in philosophy. It's main aims are to: * improve our understanding of the history of analytical philosophy * engage in the important disputes surrounding the interpretation of Russell's philosophy * make a contribution to central issues in current analytical philosophy. Drawing extensively from Russell's less well known and unpublished works, this book is a welcome addition to the literature and will undoubtedly find a place on (...) the bookshelves of philosophers around the world. (shrink)

Reports of children participating in hunger strikes while detained in offshore detention centres raise interrelated ethical issues and recognizable challenges for the medical decision-makers at these sites. A composite case study, informed by reports in the public domain, is employed to explore the unique challenges of consent and decision-making in these circumstances and the perennial issues inherent in adolescents’ developing capacity and autonomy. We present an amalgamated case of a fourteen-year-old adolescent who refused to consent to medical reversal of her (...) hunger strike protest. The medical team became the final arbiter when her parents, who were also in detention, could not agree with each other even after mediation. The case explores the complexity of evaluating the adolescent’s capacity to provide informed consent while influenced by the opinions of co-detainees in this extreme setting. We argue that the parents and the child had compromised decisional capacity due to the effects of detention. The challenges to the medical team are recognized and discussed. The team members faced a difficult dilemma and considered the competing values of the multiple cultural and ethical factors. Each team member integrated his or her own roles, duties, and discipline-specific professional guidelines with the primary goal of mitigating potential harms. (shrink)

Two models of assertion are described and their epistemological implications considered. The assurance model draws a parallel between the ethical norms surrounding promising and the epistemic norms which facilitate the transmission of testimonial knowledge. This model is rejected in favour of the view that assertion transmits knowledge by expressing belief. I go on to compare the epistemology of testimony with the epistemology of memory.

Why have philosophers since Hume regarded promising as problematic? I distinguish two problems raised by Hume. The problem of the bare wrong is the problem of how it can make sense to avoid a wrong when the wrong does not affect any intelligible human interest. The problem of normative power is the problem of how something can be a wrong simply because it has been declared to be a wrong. I argue that the problem of the bare wrong is more (...) basic. I then examine the attempts of practice theorists like Hume and Rawls to overcome the problem of the bare wrong by arguing that whenever breach of promise seems like a bare wrong, in fact human interests are adversely affected because a socially valuable practice is damaged. I argue that their various explanations cannot cover all the cases. I then formulate an assumption which is shared by all practice theorists (and others) namely the assumption that we take promises seriously because they serve our interest in social co-ordination. I argue that if this assumption were true, there need be no practice of promise-keeping for promises to bind. Furthermore, were this assumption true, promising would be a social tool that we could largely do without. And so long as promising intelligibility is in doubt (because of the problem of the bare wrong) an adherent of the social co-ordination hypothesis should assume that we largely do do without it. So anyone who gives promising a key role in human social life must reject the social co-ordination hypothesis. (shrink)

Chapter One THE PROBLEM OF BEING IN THE METAPHYSICS TO determine whether the notion of Being in Alexander of Hales is Aristotelian or Platonic, a recent historian seeks his criterion in "the gradual separation of the Aristotelian ...

Do we control what we believe? Are we responsible for what we believe? In a series of ten essays David Owens explores various different forms of control we might have over belief, and the different forms of responsibility these forms of control generate.

In this major new assessment of Hannah Arendt's writings on International Relations Patricia Owens provides a compelling case for Arendt's continued relevance to debates about suicide bombing; genocide; the ethics of war; civilian casualties; and the dangers of lies and hypocrisy in wartime.

An invalid promise is one whose breach does not wrong the promisee. I describe two different accounts of why duress and deception invalidate promises. According to the fault account duress and deception invalidate a promise just when it was wrong for the promisee to induce the promisor to promise in that way. According to the injury account, duress and deception invalidate a promise just when by inducing the promise in that way the promisee wrongs the promisor. I demonstrate that the (...) injury account is superior. I then argue that in this respect promising is like any exercise of a normative power. I conclude by distinguishing two theories of promissory obligation, a widely held view which I call the information interest theory and an alternative which I call the authority interest theory. I argue that the points established earlier support the authority interest theory over its rival. (shrink)

Attention to individual choice is a valuable dimension of public health policy; however, the creation of effective public health programmes requires policy makers to address the material and social structures that determine a person’s chance of actually achieving a good state of health. This statement summarizes a well understood and widely held view within public health practice. In this article, we (i) argue that advocates for public health can and should defend this emphasis on ‘structures’ by reference to citizen autonomy (...) and not simply by emphasizing concern for counter-balancing values such as ‘population health’ or ‘fairness’, (ii) map and critically explore the contrasting conceptions of autonomy that feature in such debates, with particular attention to conceptions of autonomy that might feature in the defence of an emphasis on structures. We draw on (i) a relational conception of autonomy and (ii) the distinction that can be made between autonomous deliberation and autonomous action to suggest that offering people the opportunity to make choices about their health without also supporting their capability to achieve the object of these choices falls short of what is often considered to be morally and politically important about promoting autonomy in relation to health. (shrink)

Worries about the possibility of consent recall a more familiar problem about promising raised by Hume. To see the parallel here we must distinguish the power of consent from the normative significance of choice. I'll argue that we have normative interests, interests in being able to control the rights and obligations of ourselves and those around us, interests distinct from our interest in controlling the non-normative situation. Choice gets its normative significance from our non-normative control interests. By contrast, the possibility (...) of consent depends on a species of normative interest that I'll call a permissive interest, an interest in its being the case that certain acts wrong us unless we declare otherwise. In the final section, I'll show how our permissive interests underwrite the possibility of consent. (shrink)

Why do human beings make and accept promises? What human interest is served by this procedure? Many hold that promising serves what I shall call an information interest, an interest in information about what will happen. And they hold that human beings ought to keep their promises because breaches of promise threaten this interest. On this view human beings take promises seriously because we want correct information about how other human beings are going to act. Some such view is taken (...) for granted by most philosophical accounts of promissory obligation.1 I agree that human beings do want such information and that they often get it by accepting promises. But I doubt that promising exists because it serves this information interest. (shrink)