If research works, inspired by the instrumental approach of Rabardel (1995), shone the activities instrumented by the teachers by spotting instrumental geneses (Saujat, 2000), on the other hand, none tried to consider their systems of instruments (Bourmaud, 2006). Inspired by an investigation realized in the branch of industry, we discuss the opportunity of such analysis for the training of the teachers. From a case study based on interviews investigating the redefined task (Leplat, 1997) of professionals in charge of safety in (...) company, we determine the five characteristics of a system of instruments for one of the professionals became trainer. Si des travaux de recherche, inspirés de l'approche instrumentale de Rabardel (1995), ont éclairé les activités instrumentées des enseignants en repérant des genèses instrumentales (Saujat, 2000), en revanche aucun n’a cherché à considérer leurs systèmes d'instruments (Bourmaud, 2006). Inspirés par une investigation réalisée dans le secteur industriel, nous discutons de l'opportunité d’une telle analyse pour la formation des enseignants. A partir d’une étude de cas appuyée sur des d’entretiens explorant la tâche redéfinie (Leplat, 1997) de professionnels chargés de sécurité en entreprise, nous déterminons les cinq caractéristiques d’un système d’instruments chez un des professionnels devenu formateur. (shrink)

Since Piaget (1936), the concept of development has concerned the forms of adaptation deployed by the subject within his environment. Inspired by this constructivist perspective, many approaches, such as professional didactics (Pastré, 2011), problematization (Fabre, 2009, 2011) and investigation approaches (Grangeat, 2011, 2013) have advanced the idea of training through situations. As part of the socio-constructivist expectations of the latest teaching programs, we analyze teacher activity during a “débriefing after observation” (Villeret, 2008) about Moon phases conducted in primary school classes (...) (Munoz & Villeret, 2012). In this article we examine whether “débriefing after observation” is a situation that allows for the development of teachers and pupils. We show that this activity allows pupils to learn, “problematize”, conceptualize and develop epistemologically based knowledge. It also allows the teacher to develop his skills to «do problematize» the pupils. These results allow us to discuss further the notion of «potential development situation» (Mayen, 1999) to complement it with the notions of “reactive and effective development situations”. (shrink)

After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more”—or its negation. The familiar arguments from equality to aggregation presuppose more than equality: the Kamm/Scanlon “Balancing Argument” rests on what social choice theorists call “(Positive) (...) Responsiveness,” Kamm’s “Aggregation Argument” assumes that “equal” lives are fungible, and Hsieh et al. have it that spreading goods broadly best approximates equality. In each case, the crucial premise is not equality itself but a further idea that Taurek, I argue, can safely reject. I conclude with a conjecture: there is no theory-neutral argument that settles the question of whether the numbers count. (shrink)

The theory of lower previsions is designed around the principles of coherence and sure-loss avoidance, thus steers clear of all the updating anomalies highlighted in Gong and Meng's "Judicious Judgment Meets Unsettling Updating: Dilation, Sure Loss, and Simpson's Paradox" except dilation. In fact, the traditional problem with the theory of imprecise probability is that coherent inference is too complicated rather than unsettling. Progress has been made simplifying coherent inference by demoting sets of probabilities from fundamental building blocks to secondary representations (...) that are derived or discarded as needed. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend the view that Spinoza is committed to allowing for the existence of a plurality of possible worlds, that his necessitarianism is merely moderate, not strict enough to exclude the possibility of other worlds. To show that evidence for attributing strict necessitarianism to Spinoza is lacking, we shall concentrate on Don Garrett's article, “Spinoza's Necessitarianism,” in the conviction that his case for attributing strict necessitarianism to Spinoza is the strongest one available.

This long-awaited study of the most enigmatic figure of Greek philosophy reclaims Socrates' ground-breaking originality. Written by a leading historian of Greek thought, it argues for a Socrates who, though long overshadowed by his successors Plato and Aristotle, marked the true turning point in Greek philosophy, religion and ethics. The quest for the historical figure focuses on the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues, setting him in sharp contrast to that other Socrates of later dialogues, where he is used as a (...) mouthpiece for Plato's often anti-Socratic doctrine. At the heart of the book is the paradoxical nature of Socratic thought. But the paradoxes are explained, not explained away. The book highlights the tensions in the Socratic search for the answer to the question 'How should we live?' Conceived as a divine mandate, the search is carried out through elenctic argument, and dominated by an uncompromising rationalism. The magnetic quality of Socrates' personality is allowed to emerge throughout the book. Clearly and forcefully written, philosophically sophisticated but entirely accessible to non-specialists, this book will be of major importance and interest to all those studying ancient philosophy and the history of Western thought. (shrink)

This is a book about the nature of film: about the nature of moving images, about the viewer's relation to film, and about the kinds of narrative that film is capable of presenting. It represents a very decisive break with the semiotic and psychoanalytic theories of film which have dominated discussion. The central thesis is that film is essentially a pictorial medium and that the movement of film images is real rather than illusory. A general theory of pictorial representation is (...) presented, which insists on the realism of pictures and the impossibility of assimilating them to language. It criticizes attempts to explain the psychology of film viewing in terms of the viewer's imaginary occupation of a position within the world of film. On the contrary, film viewing is nearly always impersonal. (shrink)

(Updated 5/23/24) This unpublished paper, which readers should feel free to cite, is posted primarily for the historical record. In recent work that has, deservedly, received some attention, Paul R. Daniels presents and defends a non-standard theory of persistence that he dubs transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. This is exactly what I do in work dating back to Spring 2004. (This work includes this version of this paper, as well as later version that was presented (...) to the University of Rochester's Philosophy Department in 2005.) While this might be a total coincidence, I doubt that it is, especially given that 'transdurantism' appears as a name for a theory of persistence associated with me in at least two places in the literature, one of which includes a citation of this paper. The paper begins with a discussion of what I call 'locative relations' (the relations borne by material objects to the regions of space and time they occupy), which draws relevant distinctions that others have failed to draw. The results of this discussion are then used in constructing spatial analogues for the three established theories of persistence--endurantism, perdurantism, and exdurantism--as well as for transdurantism. Next, these four views concerning persistence are explicitly formulated and a defense of their formulation is offered. Finally, transdurantism's advantages and disadvantages relative to the other theories are discussed. The main goal of the paper is to challenge the trichotomy between the established theories by arguing that transdurantism is also a viable view concerning persistence through time. [Note: Befitting its status as a historical document, with the exception of some light editing to fix typos that might impede understanding, no changes have been made to the paper.]. (shrink)

The article examines the effects of non-financial disclosure on corporate social responsibility. We conceptualise trade-offs between two ideal types in relation to CSR. Whereas self-regulation is associated with greater flexibility for businesses to develop best practices, it can also lead to complacency if firms feel no external pressure to engage with CSR. In contrast, government regulation is associated with greater stringency around minimum standards, but can also result in rigidity owing to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Given these potential trade-offs, we ask (...) how mandatory non-financial disclosure has been shaping CSR practices and examine its potential effectiveness as a regulatory instrument. Our analysis of 24 OECD countries using the Asset4 database shows that firms in countries that require non-financial disclosure adopt significantly more CSR activities. However, we also find that NFD regulation does not lead to lower levels of corporate irresponsibility. Furthermore, our analysis demonstrates that, over time, the variation in CSR activities declines as firms adopt increasingly similar practices. Our study thereby contributes to understanding the impact of government regulation on CSR at firm level. We also discuss the limits of mandatory NFD in addressing regulatory trade-offs between stringency and flexibility in the field of corporate social responsibility. (shrink)

This article examines the doctrinal status of just war in the contemporary teaching of the Catholic magisterium. Some passages from Pope Francis’s 2020 encyclical Fratelli tutti, On Fraternity and Social Friendship appear to exclude the just war idea from the social doctrine of the Catholic Church. To gauge whether this is so, the article establishes a baseline comparison to the seminal teaching of Thomas Aquinas on peace and just war. Both St. Thomas and Pope Francis proceed from the assumption that (...) “war” designates a sinful violation of peace. They appear to differ, however, on the question whether a positive meaning should be ascribed to the Roman term bellum justum. To understand if this divergence is purely verbal or involves a substantive disagreement, I consider why Pope Francis’s predecessors have (since the mid-twentieth century) abstained from employing the expression “just war” in their official documents. Finally, Pope Francis’s emphatic statement that St. Augustine ‘forged a concept of “just war” that we no longer uphold in our own day’ is interpreted in light of the passage from his Epistle 229 to Darius that Francis references in Fratelli tutti. (shrink)

The field of of imprecise probability has matured, in no small part because of Teddy Seidenfeld’s decades of original scholarship and essential contributions to building and sustaining the ISIPTA community. Although the basic idea behind imprecise probability is (at least) 150 years old, a mature mathematical theory has only taken full form in the last 30 years. Interest in imprecise probability during this period has also grown, but many of the ideas that the mature theory serves can be difficult to (...) apprehend to those new to the subject. Although these fundamental ideas are common knowledge in the ISIPTA community, they are expressed, when they are expressed at all, obliquely, over the course of years with students and colleagues. -/- A single essay cannot convey the store of common knowledge from any research community, let alone the ISIPTA community. But, this essay nevertheless is an attempt to guide those familiar with the basic Bayesian framework to appreciate some of the elegant and powerful ideas that underpin the contemporary theory of lower previsions, which is the theory that most people associate with the term ‘imprecise probabilities’. (shrink)

Cet article remet en question les fondements théoriques et pédagogiques de la notion de compétence éthique ainsi que la conception de l’éthique qu’elle préfigure. Après une analyse du contexte d’émergence de cette notion, notamment dans le champ de la santé, nous verrons en quoi l’approche socioconstructiviste de l’apprentissage, à laquelle se réfèrent de nombreux dispositifs de formation, fait de l’éthique une ressource d’action visant l’adaptation passive des professionnels au contexte organisationnel et socioprofessionnel. Nous proposerons dès lors de revisiter l’apprentissage de (...) l’éthique dans une approche pragmatiste plus critique et plus émancipatrice. Nous en exposerons les principales orientations pédagogiques et insisterons, pour conclure, sur la responsabilité des environnements socioprofessionnels. Ces derniers sont appelés à devenir plus capacitants, c’est-à-dire à créer les conditions favorables au développement de cet apprentissage de l’éthique. (shrink)

This chapter is a work in applied metaphysics. Recent discussions of monism and metaphysical dependence are deployed to develop a view—the doctrine of divine priority (DDP)—that is a viable alternative to the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS). DDS and the traditional motivation for it are discussed, then DDP is introduced by way of an analogy involving Jonathan Schaffer’s distinction between two forms of monism. It is argued that DDP is an alternative to DDS by showing that it is consistent with (...) the traditional motivation for the latter view, and argued that DDP is a viable alternative by showing that objections to its peculiar implications rest on assumptions that can reasonably be rejected. In the concluding section, the findings of the main discussion are summarized and DDP’s potential theological import is illustrated with a brief discussion of a possible solution to the Problem of the Trinity it affords. (shrink)

Collaborative remembering, in which two or more individuals cooperate to remember together, is an ordinary occurrence. Ordinary though it may be, it challenges traditional understandings of remembering as a cognitive process unfolding within a single subject, as well as traditional understandings of memory knowledge as a justified memory belief held within the mind of a single subject. Collaborative memory has come to be a major area of research in psychology, but it has so far not been investigated in epistemology. In (...) this chapter, we attempt an initial exploration of the epistemological implications of collaborative memory research, taking as our starting point the “extended knowledge” debate which has resulted from the recent encounter between extracranialist theories of cognition and externalist theories of knowledge (Carter et al., 2014; Carter et al., forthcoming). Various forms of socially and technologically augmented memory have played important roles in the extended knowledge debate, but the debate has so far not taken collaborative memory, in particular, into account. We will argue that collaborative memory supports a novel externalist theory of knowledge: distributed reliabilism. Distributed reliabilism departs in two important respects from both traditional reliabilism (Goldman, 2012) and updated theories such as extended (Goldberg, 2010) and social reliabilism (Goldman, 2014). First, it acknowledges that belief-forming processes may extend extracranially to include processing performed both by other subjects and by technological artifacts. Second, it acknowledges that distributed sociotechnical systems themselves may be knowing subjects. Overall, then, the main aim of the chapter is to draw out the philosophical implications of psychological research on collaborative memory. But our argument will also suggest that it may be useful to broaden the standard conception of collaborative memory to include not only the sorts of direct interactions among subjects that have been the focus of psychological research so far but also a range of more indirect, technology-supported and -mediated interactions, and it thus has implications for psychology as well. (shrink)

In this paper I consider the prospects for a skeptical version of infallibilism. For the reasons given above, I think skeptical invariantism has a lot going for it. However, a satisfactory theory of knowledge must account for all of our desiderata, including that our ordinary knowledge attributions are appropriate. This last part will not be easy for the infallibilist invariantist. Indeed, I will argue that it is much more difficult than those sympathetic to skepticism have acknowledged, as there are serious (...) problems with regarding paradigmatic, typical knowledge attributions as loose talk, exaggerations, or otherwise practical uses of language. So, I do not think the pragmatic story that skeptical invariantism needs is one that works without a supplemental error theory of the sort left aside by purely pragmatic accounts of knowledge attributions. In its place, I will offer a compromise pragmatic and error view that I think delivers everything that skeptics can reasonably hope to get. (shrink)

Introduction: the paradox of Socrates, by G. Vlastos.--Our knowledge of Socrates, by A. R. Lacey.--Socrates in the Clouds, by K. J. Dover.--Elenchus, by R. Robinson.--Elenchus: direct and indirect, by R. Robinson.--Socratic definition, by R. Robinson.--Elenctic definitions, by G. Nakhnikian.--Socrates on the definition of piety: Euthyphro 10A-11B, by S. M. Cohen.--Socrates at work on virtue and knowledge in Plato's Laches, by G. Santas.--Virtues in action, by M. F. Burnyeat.--The Socratic denial of Akrasia, by J. J. Walsh.--Plato's Protagoras and explanations of weakness, (...) by G. Santas.--Socrates on disobeying the law, by A. D. Woozley.--Plato's earlier theory of forms, by R. E. Allen.--Selected bibliography (p. 336-339). (shrink)

This essay presents results about a deviation from independence measure called focused correlation . This measure explicates the formal relationship between probabilistic dependence of an evidence set and the incremental confirmation of a hypothesis, resolves a basic question underlying Peter Klein and Ted Warfield's ‘truth-conduciveness’ problem for Bayesian coherentism, and provides a qualified rebuttal to Erik Olsson's claim that there is no informative link between correlation and confirmation. The generality of the result is compared to recent programs in Bayesian epistemology (...) that attempt to link correlation and confirmation by utilizing a conditional evidential independence condition. Several properties of focused correlation are also highlighted. Introduction Correlation Measures 2.1 Standard covariance and correlation measures 2.2 The Wayne–Shogenji measure 2.3 Interpreting correlation measures 2.4 Correlation and evidential independence Focused Correlation Conclusion Appendix CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this timely study, Dawes defends the methodological naturalism of the sciences. Though religions offer what appear to be explanations of various facts about the world, the scientist, as scientist, will not take such proposed explanations seriously. Even if no natural explanation were available, she will assume that one exists. Is this merely a sign of atheistic prejudice, as some critics suggest? Or are there good reasons to exclude from science explanations that invoke a supernatural agent? On the one hand, (...) Dawes concedes the bare possibility that talk of divine action could constitute a potential explanation of some state of affairs, while noting that the conditions under which this would be true are unlikely ever to be fulfilled. On the other hand, he argues that a proposed explanation of this kind would rate poorly, when measured against our usual standards of explanatory virtue. (shrink)

In this article, we sketch how theoretical neuroethics can clarify the concept of autonomy. We hope that this can both serve as a model for the conceptual clarification of other components of PIAAAS and contribute to the development of the empirical measures that Gilbert and colleagues [1] propose.

In this article, we sketch how theoretical neuroethics can clarify the concept of autonomy. We hope that this can both serve as a model for the conceptual clarification of other components of PIAAAS and contribute to the development of the empirical measures that Gilbert and colleagues [1] propose.

We posit a key goal of firms’ corporate social responsibility efforts is to influence reputation through carefully crafted communicative practices. This trend has accelerated with the rise of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, which are essentially public message networks that organizations are leveraging to engage with concerned audiences. Given the large number of messages sent on these sites, only some will be effective and achieve broad public resonance. Building on signaling theory, this paper asks whether and how messages (...) conveying CSR-related topics resonate with the public and, if so, which CSR topics and signal qualities are most effective. We test our hypotheses using data on public reactions to Fortune 500 companies’ CSR-focused Twitter feeds, using the retweeting of firms’ messages as a proxy for public resonance. We find resonance is positively associated with messages that convey CSR topics such as the environment or education, those that make the topic explicit through use of hashtags, and those that tap into existing social movement discussions. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human (...) reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching takes a rather cautious view toward the value of the ideas of Adam Smith, due to his emphasis on negative political and economic liberty. Detractors of Smith within CST point to what they consider to be deficiencies within his works: an impoverished moral anthropology, a lack of concern for the common good, and markets untethered to human needs. Defenders of Smith within CST tend to emphasize the material benefits that derive from Smithian institutions, such as economic growth, (...) improvements in standards of living, and the new opportunities that arise from cultures focused on innovation. This paper argues that Smith’s ideas have real value for CST. However, this value primarily lies in his moral psychology. While not denying the dangers of business activity for our moral lives, Smith also helps us to understand the possibility of the moral corruption of those who wield political power, thus providing an indirect defense of political and economic liberty that coheres with important Christian ethical notions found in CST. This is the case even though CST does not consistently recognize concerns surrounding the dangers of wielding political power—and thus Smith’s arguments offer real challenges to CST as well. This paper further suggests that these basic insights are relevant regardless of one’s favored institutional arrangements. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that part of what makes an event lucky concerns how probable that event is. In this paper, I argue that an epistemic probability account of luck successfully resists recent arguments that all theories of luck, including probability theories, are subject to counterexample (Hales 2016). I argue that an event is lucky if and only if it is significant and sufficiently improbable. An event is significant when, given some reflection, the subject would regard the event as significant, and (...) the event’s epistemic probability, determined by the subject’s evidence, is the only kind of probability that directly bears on whether or not the event is lucky. I conclude with some lessons that are applicable to probability theorists of luck generally, including those defending non-epistemic probability theories. (shrink)

Social media offers a platform for diffused stakeholders to interact with firms—alternatively praising, questioning, and chastising businesses for their CSR performance and seeking to engage in two-way dialogue. In 2014, 163,402 public messages were sent to Fortune 200 firms’ CSR-focused Twitter accounts, each of which was either shared, replied to, “liked,” or ignored by the targeted firm. This paper examines firm reactions to these messages, building a model of firm response to stakeholders that combines the notions of CSR communication and (...) stakeholder salience. Our findings show that firm response to a stakeholder on social media is positively and most significantly associated with what we refer to as the stakeholder’s connective power but negatively associated with the firm’s own connective power. To a lesser extent, firm response is positively associated with the stakeholder’s normative power but negatively associated with the firm’s own normative power. Firm response is also shown to be positively associated with stakeholder urgency in terms of both the originality of a stakeholder message and the expression of positive sentiment. (shrink)

Social media is changing social accountability practices. The release of the Panama Papers on April 3, 2016 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) unleashed a tsunami of over 5 million tweets decrying corrupt politicians and tax-avoiding business elites, calling for policy change from governments, and demanding accountability from corporate and private tax avoiders. The current study uses 297,000+ original English-language geo-codable tweets with the hashtags #PanamaGate, #PanamaPapers, or #PanamaLeaks to examine the trajectory of Twitter-based social accountability conversations and (...) the potential for the emergence of a longer-term social accountability user network. We propose that it is the combination of financial inscriptions and evaluative ethical utterances that incite and sustain social accountability conversations and social accountability networks. Financial inscriptions simultaneously remind audiences of both the information event that fomented the initial public reaction and the monetary magnitude of the event. Value-based ethical messaging, in turn, enunciates an ethical stance that simultaneously evaluates existing practices and emphasizes the need for accountability. It is the combining of these two types of messaging that helps to construct and sustain a normative narrative about social accountability. The results illustrate how the repetition and re-working of these two forms of messaging facilitated the construction of a normative narrative that coalesced into a social accountability network which persisted beyond the initial Panama Paper information event and which was re-activated in 2017 when the ICIJ published the Paradise Papers. (shrink)

In the age of big data and a machine epistemology that can anticipate, predict, and intervene on events in our lives, the problem once again is that a few individuals possess the knowledge of how to regulate these activities. But the question we face now is not how to share such knowledge more widely, but rather of how to enjoy the public benefits bestowed by this knowledge without freely sharing it. It is not merely personal privacy that is at stake (...) but a range of unsung benefits that come from ignorance and forgetting, traits that are inherently human and integral to the functioning of our society. (shrink)

How do words stand for things? Taking ideas from philosophical semantics and pragmatics, this book offers a unique, detailed, and critical survey of central debates concerning linguistic reference in the twentieth century. It then uses the survey to identify and argue for a novel version of current 'two-dimensional' theories of meaning, which generalise the context-dependency of indexical expressions. The survey highlights the history of tensions between semantic and epistemic constraints on plausible theories of word meaning, from analytic philosophy and modern (...) truth-conditional semantics, to the Referentialist and Externalist revolutions in theories of meaning, to the more recent reconciliatory ambition of two-dimensionalists. It clearly introduces technical semantical notions, theses, and arguments, with easy-to-follow, step-by-step guides. Wide-ranging in its scope, yet offering an accessible route into literature that can seem complex and technical, this will be essential reading for advanced students, and academic researchers in semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Resumen: Casablanca la bella de Fernando Vallejo continúa el diálogo que el narrador sostiene con la muerte en sus textos anteriores. La novela evidencia y despliega las obsesiones del autor a partir de la compra y restauración de Casablanca, antigua casa ubicada en el barrio Laureles, Medellín, y cifra de un antiguo esplendor, ahora devastado y vencido por el paso del tiempo. La refacción de la casona constituye una empresa utópica que, aunque condenada al fracaso, trasciende el plano arquitectónico y (...) alcanza alturas revolucionarias, políticas, en el delirio narrativo. La entronización del Corazón de Jesús cuando la casa es inaugurada se erige como la posibilidad de reunir a las presencias amadas en una fiesta heterotópica y soñar con ganarle la batalla no solo a Colombia, la mala patria, sino fundamentalmente a la destrucción y a la muerte. Así, la escritura deviene funeraria, poblada de los vestigios y de la irreductible presencia de los otros, los muertos y los animales, quienes encuentran un espacio hospitalario en el recuerdo y la memoria.: Casablanca la bella, the latest novel by Fernando Vallejo, is a continuation of the dialogue the writer has with Death in earlier works. The novel shows and displays the writer’s obsession from the moment he buys Casablanca, an old house in the Laureles neighbourhood, Medellin, and begins its restoration. The refurbishment of the large house, a symbol of long gone and devastated splendour, becomes a utopian enterprise that, though doomed to fail, transcends the architectural scope and reaches revolutionary, political, heights in the narrative delusion. The enthronement of the Sacred Heart when the house is reopened rises as the possibility to reunite the ghosts of loved ones in a heterotopic party and to dream of winning the battle not only over Colombia, the bad mother country, but most importantly over destruction and death. Thus, the writing becomes funerary, inhabited by remnants and the insurmountable presence of the others, the dead and the animals, who find a welcoming place in remembrance and memory. (shrink)

We examine the notion of conditionals and the role of conditionals in inductive logics and arguments. We identify three mistakes commonly made in the study of, or motivation for, non-classical logics. A nonmonotonic consequence relation based on evidential probability is formulated. With respect to this acceptance relation some rules of inference of System P are unsound, and we propose refinements that hold in our framework.

We appreciate Meynen’s examination of ethical implications of using neurotechnologies to decode neural data and make inferences about cognitive processes. Here, we address three issues that we beli...

The desirable gambles framework offers the most comprehensive foundations for the theory of lower pre- visions, which in turn affords the most general ac- count of imprecise probabilities. Nevertheless, for all its generality, the theory of lower previsions rests on the notion of linear utility. This commitment to linearity is clearest in the coherence axioms for sets of desirable gambles. This paper considers two routes to relaxing this commitment. The first preserves the additive structure of the desirable gambles framework and (...) the machinery for coherent inference but detaches the interpretation of desirability from the multiplicative scale invariance axiom. The second strays from the additive combination axiom to accommodate repeated gambles that return rewards by a non-stationary processes that is not necessarily additive. Unlike the first approach, which is a conservative amendment to the desirable gambles framework, the second is a rad- ical departure. Yet, common to both is a method for describing rewards called discounted utility. (shrink)

Suppose that Paul, while looking at a tree, sees that that thing over there is a red bird. Paul is having what we may call a ‘singular’ perceptual experience. How should we characterise the representational content of his perceptual experience? I will sketch an original answer to this question, building on the internalist accounts propounded by Searle (1983. Intentionality. Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2) and Recanati (2007. Perspectival Thought. Oxford University Press. Ch. 17). Pace Searle, the content of Paul's experience (...) is not a (general) proposition. Pace Recanati, whose account draws on Lewis’s (1979. “Attitudes De Dicto and De Se.” Philosophical Review 88 (4): 513–543) internalist view of de se attitudes, it is not a property of the perceiving subject. Instead, I submit, it is a property of the perceived object. The content is the property of being a red bird, which determines a set of centred worlds whose centre (an object taken at a time) is a red bird; the object (here, the bird) is part of the relevant situation of evaluation for the experience; and the experience is veridical only if the actual world centred on the object belongs to the set of centred worlds determined by that property. I will argue that this view retains the benefits of Searle's and Recanati's accounts while improving on them. (shrink)

Logic is a celebrated representation language because of its formal generality. But there are two senses in which a logic may be considered general, one that concerns a technical ability to discriminate between different types of individuals, and another that concerns constitutive norms for reasoning as such. This essay embraces the former, permutation-invariance conception of logic and rejects the latter, Fregean conception of logic. The question of how to apply logic under this pure invariantist view is addressed, and a methodology (...) is given. The pure invariantist view is contrasted with logical pluralism, and a methodology for applied logic is demonstrated in remarks on a variety of issues concerning non-monotonic logic and non-monotonic inference, including Charles Morgan’s impossibility results for non-monotonic logic, David Makinson’s normative constraints for non-monotonic inference, and Igor Douven and Timothy Williamson’s proposed formal constraints on rational acceptance. (shrink)

This paper presents statistical default logic, an expansion of classical (i.e., Reiter) default logic that allows us to model common inference patterns found in standard inferential statistics, including hypothesis testing and the estimation of a populations mean, variance and proportions. The logic replaces classical defaults with ordered pairs consisting of a Reiter default in the first coordinate and a real number within the unit interval in the second coordinate. This real number represents an upper-bound limit on the probability of accepting (...) the consequent of an applied default and that consequent being false. A method for constructing extensions is then defined that preserves this upper bound on the probability of error under a (skeptical) non-monotonic consequence relation. (shrink)

In this paper, I explain the curious role played by the Argument from Absolute Terms in Peter Unger's book Ignorance, I provide a critical presentation of the argument, and I consider some outstanding issues and the argument’s contemporary significance.

In this paper, I argue for the ethics of business based on the way that business activity may embody a vocation to partake in “the Good.” Following a Platonist framework for ethics and recent work on vocations by Robert M. Adams, I argue that understanding the ethics of vocations allows us to avoid the charges that business persons have to do something more for others—often couched in terms of social responsibility, sustainability, or consideration of stakeholders—in order to legitimize their careers (...) ethically. Rather, I claim, the ethics of a business vocation, as in any vocation, rests first and foremost in the way that a person pursues projects that answer an invitation to partake in the good things of this world. Thus, the promotion of the well-being of others, while ethically admirable and constitutive of some vocations, is not fundamental for understanding the ethics of vocations themselves, even in business. There are important implications for the ethics of markets, and I also consider a recent challenge to my approach that claims that true business vocations demand a more direct promotion of the well-being of others. (shrink)

RESUMENLa posición de i.Berlin sobre el determinismo fue recibida por muchos como un ataque al alcance de las ciencias humanas. Su argumentación, sin embargo, sugiere nuevas y sugerentes relaciones entre el conocimiento y la libertad, además de una concepción específica de la lectura de la historia. En el presente ensayo, que constituye una primera parte del trabajo, se analiza el argumento de I. Berlin sobre el determinismo, situándolo en las dos discusiones sobre la historia que se desarrollaron tras la II (...) Guerra Mundial. PALABRAS CLAVEDETERMINISMO-BERLINABSTRACTI. Berlin's position on determinism was received by many authors as an attack on the human sciences. His interpretation, however, suggests novel and stimulating relations between knowledge and freedom, together with a specific philosophy of history. This paper, wich constitutes the first part of a whole essay, assesses Berlin's argument on determinism, placing it within the two debates on history held after world war II.KEYWORDSDETERMINISM-BERLIN. (shrink)

Recent work in viral genomics has shown that bacteriophages exhibit a high degree of mosaicism, which is most likely due to a long history of prolific horizontal gene transfer (HGT). Given these findings, we argue that each of the most plausible attempts to properly classify bacteriophages into distinct species fail. Mayr's biological species concept fails because there is no useful viral analog to sexual reproduction. Phenetic species concepts fail because they obscure the mosaicism and the rich reticulated viral histories. Phylogenetic (...) species concepts, even when extended to take into account reticulation, fail because there is no non-arbitrary distinction between recombination events that create a new viral species and those that do not. There is good reason to think that bacteriophages, arguably the Earth's most abundant biological agent, evolve without forming species.1. Introduction2. The Biology of Viruses2.1. Bacteriophage life cycles2.2. Mechanisms of HGT3. The Species Problem and Species Concepts3.1. Phenetic species concepts3.2. The biological species concept3.3. Phylogenetic species concepts3.4. The ecological species concept3.5. Homeostatic property cluster species4. Viruses and Species Taxonomy5. Reticular Phylogenies6. Conclusion. (shrink)