An exploration of the nexus between ecology, evolutionary biology and molecular biology, via the concept of phenotypic plasticity.

With the increasing professionalization of clinical ethics, some hospitals and health systems utilize both ethics committees and professional clinical ethicists to address their ethics needs. Drawing upon historical critiques of ethics committees and their own experiences, the authors argue that, in ethics programs with one or more professional clinical ethicists, ethics committees should be dissolved when they fail to meet minimum standards of effectiveness. The authors outline several criteria for assessing effectiveness, describe the benefits of a model that places primary (...) responsibility for ethics work with professional clinical ethicists—the PCE-primary model, and offer suggestions for alternative ethics program structures that empower healthcare professionals to contribute to ethics work in ways more tailored to their strengths and skills while minimizing the shortcomings of ethics committees. (shrink)

This casebook features ten distinctive and provocative essays in addition to a generous sampling of Ellison's comments on the novel. A number of the latter are from letters never before published; also published here for the first time is Part II of Ellison's "Working Notes on Invisible Man," an undated exposition of his authorial intentions, probably written in 1946 or 1947. The ten essays are a selection of the most perceptive and comprehensive essays written on Invisible Man during the last (...) thirty-five years, including an essay by Kenneth Burke, which began as a letter to Ellison about the novel, written before its publication in 1952. Also among the essays is Larry Neal's "Ellison's Zoot Suit," in which he finds the novel an exemplary enactment in fiction of the "black aesthetic." The essays explore topics of narrative form, classical and vernacular points of reference, and the relationship between the themes of love and politics. Taken together with Ellison's "Working Notes" and later commentary on the novel, these essays account for the continuing appeal of Invisible Man more than fifty years after its publication. An editor's introduction and a full bibliography accompany the essays, selections from Ellison's writings, and informal statements on his novel. The volume offers a rich variety of interpretations of Invisible Man for students and scholars of Ellison. (shrink)

Population axiology is the study of the conditions under which one state of affairs is better than another, when the states of affairs in ques- tion may differ over the numbers and the identities of the persons who ever live. Extant theories include totalism, averagism, variable value theories, critical level theories, and “person-affecting” theories. Each of these the- ories is open to objections that are at least prima facie serious. A series of impossibility theorems shows that this is no coincidence: (...) it can be proved, for various sets of prima facie intuitively compelling desiderata, that no axiology can simultaneously satisfy all the desiderata on the list. One’s choice of population axiology appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam, one of America’s most distinguished philosophers, surveys an astonishingly wide range of issues and proposes a new, clear-cut approach to philosophical questions—a renewal of philosophy. He contests the view that only science offers an appropriate model for philosophical inquiry. His discussion of topics from artificial intelligence to natural selection, and of reductive philosophical views derived from these models, identifies the insuperable problems encountered when philosophy ignores the normative or attempts to reduce it to something else.

This essay is a response to Myles Burnyeat’s paper that attacks an interpretation of the credibility and acceptability of Aristotle’s views of the body and soul. It begins with a discussion of Aristotle’s motivating problems. An interpretation is defended against Burnyeat, which distinguishes Aristotle from both materialist reductionism, and from the Burnyeat interpretation that perceiving etc. does not require concomitant material change, and that awareness is primitive. Aristotle’s position is then defended as tenable, even in the context of a modern (...) theory of matter. (shrink)

In this brief book one of the most distinguished living American philosophers takes up the question of whether ethical judgments can properly be considered objective--a question that has vexed philosophers over the past century. Reviewing what he deems the disastrous consequences of ontology's influence on analytic philosophy--in particular, the contortions it imposes upon debates about the objective of ethical judgments--Putnam proposes abandoning the very idea of ontology.

In response to growing concerns of bias, discrimination, and unfairness perpetuated by algorithmic systems, the datasets used to train and evaluate machine learning models have come under increased scrutiny. Many of these examinations have focused on the contents of machine learning datasets, finding glaring underrepresentation of minoritized groups. In contrast, relatively little work has been done to examine the norms, values, and assumptions embedded in these datasets. In this work, we conceptualize machine learning datasets as a type of informational infrastructure, (...) and motivate a genealogy as method in examining the histories and modes of constitution at play in their creation. We present a critical history of ImageNet as an exemplar, utilizing critical discourse analysis of major texts around ImageNet’s creation and impact. We find that assumptions around ImageNet and other large computer vision datasets more generally rely on three themes: the aggregation and accumulation of more data, the computational construction of meaning, and making certain types of data labor invisible. By tracing the discourses that surround this influential benchmark, we contribute to the ongoing development of the standards and norms around data development in machine learning and artificial intelligence research. (shrink)

Throughout his diverse and highly influential career, Hilary Putnam was famous for changing his mind. As a pragmatist he treated philosophical "positions" as experiments in deliberate living. His aim was not to fix on one position but to attempt to do justice to the depth and complexity of reality. In this new collection, he and Ruth Anna Putnam argue that key elements of the classical pragmatism of William James and John Dewey provide a framework for the most progressive and (...) forward-looking forms of philosophy in contemporary thought. The Putnams present a compelling defense of the radical originality of the philosophical ideas of James and Dewey and their usefulness in confronting the urgent social, political, and moral problems of the twenty-first century. This collection brings together almost all of the Putnams' pragmatist writings--essays they wrote as individuals and as coauthors. The pragmatism they endorse, though respectful of the sciences, is an open experience-based philosophy of our everyday lives that trenchantly criticizes the fact/value dualism running through contemporary culture. Hilary Putnam argues that all facts are dependent on cognitive values, while Ruth Anna Putnam turns the problem around, illuminating the factual basis of moral principles. Together, they offer a shared vision which, in Hilary's words, "could serve as a manifesto for what the two of us would like philosophy to look like in the twenty-first century and beyond. (shrink)

Firms located in communities in which people are, on average, more trusting enjoy some benefits in terms of the power of CEO contracts. We present two pieces of empirical evidence to support this claim: (1) higher average trust in a county is associated with “flatter” executive contracts and (2) when an exogenous shock occurs (such as a scandal involving an important social institution), both trust and contracting move in similar directions. We obtain the first result in a panel specification and (...) the second in a “difference-in-difference” specification that uses the revelation of sex scandals involving the Catholic Church across different U.S. localities. (shrink)

An important objection to preference-satisfaction theories of well-being is that they cannot make sense of interpersonal comparisons. A tradition dating back to Harsanyi :434, 1953) attempts to solve this problem by appeal to people’s so-called extended preferences. This paper presents a new problem for the extended preferences program, related to Arrow’s celebrated impossibility theorem. We consider three ways in which the extended-preference theorist might avoid this problem, and recommend that she pursue one: developing aggregation rules that violate Arrow’s Independence of (...) Irrelevant Alternatives condition. (shrink)

First published in 1978, this reissue presents a seminal philosophical work by professor Putnam, in which he puts forward a conception of knowledge which makes ethics, practical knowledge and non-mathematic parts of the social sciences just as much parts of 'knowledge' as the sciences themselves. He also rejects the idea that knowledge can be demarcated from non-knowledge by the fact that the former alone adheres to 'the scientific method'. The first part of the book consists of Professor Putnam's John Locke (...) lectures, delivered at the University of Oxford in 1976, offering a detailed examination of a 'physicalist' theory of reference against a background of the works of Tarski, Carnap, Popper, Hempel and Kant. The analysis then extends to notions of truth, the character of linguistic enquiry and social scientific enquiry in general, interconnecting with the great metaphysical problem of realism, the nature of language and reference, and the character of ourselves. (shrink)

The decline in the interest in ethical theory is first outlined, as a background to the author’s discussion of principlism. The author’s own stance, that of a communitarian philosopher, is then described, before the subject of principlism itself is addressed. Two problems stand in the way of the author’s embracing principlism: its individualistic bias and its capacity to block substantive ethical inquiry. The more serious problem the author finds to be its blocking function. Discussing the four scenarios the author finds (...) that the utility of principlism is shown in the two scenarios about Jehovah’s Witnesses but that when it comes to selling kidneys for transplantation and germline enhancement, principlism is of little help. (shrink)

First published in 1971, Professor Putnam's essay concerns itself with the ontological problem in the philosophy of logic and mathematics - that is, the issue of whether the abstract entities spoken of in logic and mathematics really exist. He also deals with the question of whether or not reference to these abstract entities is really indispensible in logic and whether it is necessary in physical science in general.

Recipes from the Garden of Contentment. By Yuan Mei, translated and annotated by Sean J. S. Chen. Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire, 2019. Pp. xxxiii + 428. $125.

One of the foremost objections to theological voluntarism is the contingency objection. If God’s will fixes moral facts, then what if God willed that agents engage in cruelty? I argue that even unrestricted theological voluntarists should accept some logical constraints on possible moral systems—hence, some limits on ways that God could have willed morality to be—and these logical constraints are sufficient to blunt the force of the contingency objec­tion. One constraint I defend is a very weak accessibility requirement, related to (...) (but less problematic than) existence internalism in metaethics. The theo­logical voluntarist can maintain: Godcouldn’t have loved cruelty, and even though he could have willed behaviors we find abhorrent, he could only have done so in a world of deeply alien moral agents. We cannot confidently declare such a world unacceptable. (shrink)

Can we reconcile the idea that we are free and responsible agents with the idea that what we do is determined according to natural laws? For centuries, philosophers have tried in different ways to show that we can. Hilary Bok takes a fresh approach here, as she seeks to show that the two ideas are compatible by drawing on the distinction between practical and theoretical reasoning.Bok argues that when we engage in practical reasoning--the kind that involves asking "what should (...) I do?" and sifting through alternatives to find the most justifiable course of action--we have reason to hold ourselves responsible for what we do. But when we engage in theoretical reasoning--searching for causal explanations of events--we have no reason to apply concepts like freedom and responsibility. Bok contends that libertarians' arguments against "compatibilist" justifications of moral responsibility fail because they describe human actions only from the standpoint of theoretical reasoning. To establish this claim, she examines which conceptions of freedom of the will and moral responsibility are relevant to practical reasoning and shows that these conceptions are not vulnerable to many objections that libertarians have directed against compatibilists. Bok concludes that the truth or falsity of the claim that we are free and responsible agents in the sense those conceptions spell out is ultimately independent of deterministic accounts of the causes of human actions.Clearly written and powerfully argued, Freedom and Responsibility is a major addition to current debate about some of philosophy's oldest and deepest questions. (shrink)

SummaryI discuss a simple case in which theories with different ontologies appear equally adequate in every way.. I contend that the appearance of equal adequacy is correct, and that what this shows is that the notion of “existence” has a variety of different but legitimate uses. I also argue that this provides a counterexample to the claim advanced by Davidson, that conceptual relativity is incoherent.RésuméJe discute un cas simple où des théories comportant des ontologies différentes apparaissent également adéquates à tout (...) point de vue.. Je prétends que ľapparence?on;égale adéquation est correcte et ceci montre que la notion?on;existence a plusieurs sens différents, mais également légitimes. Je montre aussi que cela constitue un contre‐exemple à la thèse avancée par Davidson, selon laquelle la relativité con‐ceptuelle est incoherénte.ZusammenfassungIch diskutiere einen einfachen Fall, wo Theorien mit verschiedenen Ontologien in jeder Beziehung als gleich adäquat erscheinen.. Ich behaupte, dass die Ansicht, wonach gleiche Adäquatheit bestehen soil, korrekt ist und dass entsprechend der Begriff der Existenz mehrere verschiedene Verwendungs‐weisen hat, die alle legitim sind. Ich argumentiere, dass damit ein Gegenbeispiel zu Davidsons Auffassung vorliegt, wonach die These der begrifflichen Relativität inkohärent sein soil. (shrink)

American bioethics began in the late 1960s, stimulated by a plethora of new medical technologies and biological knowledge and by a scandal-induced interest in human subject research. Although it was understood that there would be ethical debate , no one thought the disputes would be ideological in character, as if part of one's voting pattern as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. There were arguments, often sharp, but no culture wars.

Difficulties over probability have often been considered fatal to the Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics. Here I argue that the Everettian can have everything she needs from `probability' without recourse to indeterminism, ignorance, primitive identity over time or subjective uncertainty: all she needs is a particular *rationality principle*. The decision-theoretic approach recently developed by Deutsch and Wallace claims to provide just such a principle. But, according to Wallace, decision theory is itself applicable only if the correct attitude to a future (...) Everettian measurement outcome is subjective uncertainty. I argue that subjective uncertainty is not to be had, but I offer an alternative interpretation that enables the Everettian to live without uncertainty: we can justify Everettian decision theory on the basis that an Everettian should *care about* all her future branches. The probabilities appearing in the decision-theoretic representation theorem can then be interpreted as the degrees to which the rational agent cares about each future branch. This reinterpretation, however, reduces the intuitive plausibility of one of the Deutsch -Wallace axioms. (shrink)

One of the most influential contemporary philosophers, Hilary Putnam's involvement in philosophy spans philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, ontology and epistemology and logic. This specially commissioned collection discusses his contribution to the realist and pragmatist debate. Hilary Putnam comments on the issues raised in each article, making it invaluable for any scholar of his work.

O artigo visa analisar, em linhas gerais, a arqueologia do sujeito operada por Alain de Libera, o que será feito pela concentração no estudo de duas teses fundamentais: Descartes chegou ao sujeito menos por reflexão e mais por refração, em seu debate com Hobbes e Regius, ao tentar escapar da redução do indivíduo à vida corporal e, portanto, à passividade; Tomás de Aquino e Pedro de João Olivi teriam sido os responsáveis por dar certo acabamento a uma temática elaborada desde (...) a Patrística, eminentemente por Agostinho de Hipona, que teria formulado um esquema compreensivo do eu como suporte e como agente. This article aims to analyze the fundamentals of Alain de Libera’s archeology of the subject. Two central thesis will be investigated here: Descartes arrived at his theory of the subject in a controversy with Hobbes and Regius, in order to avoid the reduction of the individual to bodily life and passivity; Thomas Aquinas and Peter John Olivi were responsible for a mature approach to the theme of the subject, which had been elaborated by Patristic authors, eminently by Augustine of Hippo, who formulated a comprehensive scheme of the self as support and agent. (shrink)

Many of the decisions mothers face are morally intense. They're experienced as highly morally significant, and they are also often very morally complex, meaning that there aren't black-and-white, obvious answers to questions about what one morally may or must do. For example, I suggest that breastfeeding is complex in this way, despite a good deal of cultural pressure in favour of trying to do it. Acknowledging many of the decisions of motherhood as complex or as ‘grey areas’ is accurate, and (...) also good for mums. But it also burdens mums with the responsibility of researching, discussing, thinking through, and ultimately making significant, complex moral decisions for themselves. I call this the moral load, taking inspiration from Emma's ‘mental load’. In the last section I consider what we could or should do to try to lessen the moral load as a burden on mums. (shrink)

In the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words contrasting in vowel HEIGHT. Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions. In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon model, asymmetric patterns of processing (...) were found in the [su] ∼ [ʂu] word pair where both the MMN and LDN components were more negative in /su/[ʂu] than in /ʂu/[su], suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH] from the vowel [u] to [ʂ] on the surface. In the [sa] ∼ [ʂa] pair, however, symmetric negativities were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW] from [a] to [ʂ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments. (shrink)

Daniel Callahan's life time work in bioethics has again and again returned to the root problems of health, progress, technology, and death. How we think about each of them individually and in relation to each other will shape the way we approach and deal with the most common dilemmas of modern medicine. They are at the roots of the field.

As George Boole saw it, the laws of logic are the laws of thought, and by this he meant, not that human thought is actually governed by the laws of logic, but, rather, that it should be. Boole’s view that the laws of logic have normative implications for how we ought to think is anything but an outlier. The idea that violating the laws of logic involves epistemic impropriety has seemed to many to be just obvious. It has seemed especially (...) obvious to those who see propositional justification as more fundamental than doxastic justification. Whatever other principles are required for defining propositional justification, the laws of logic seem indispensable. The idea that violation of the laws of logic involves some sort of epistemic impropriety—whatever the peculiarities of our psychology may be—has served as a fixed point around which defenders of the fundamentality of propositional justification are united, whatever their other differences. This paper challenges that common thread in defenses of the fundamentality of propositional justification. It is argued that the laws of logic have no bearing whatever on epistemic justification. Once we see why this should be so, the way is paved for seeing why it is that doxastic justification is more fundamental than propositional justification. (shrink)

In “The Brokenness of Being,” Mari Ruti investigates the impact that trauma can have on being. Informed by her own experience of breast cancer, Ruti argues that there are some traumatic experiences that entirely change one’s symbolic coordinates. She calls these types of experiences benchmark traumas. Diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ruti boldly explores how encountering a benchmark trauma forced her to recognize the brokenness of her being. She theorizes that this recognition reveals the split in the subject. Encountering this brokenness, (...) as she calls it, at the heart of being can be completely debilitating. However, Ruti argues, there is a way to engage rather than repress this impossible reality. She theorizes that creativity is the one human expression that can grapple authentically with the split in the subject. To explore this idea, she collaborates with painter Dwight Smith. Smith’s twenty-two paintings respond to the benchmark trauma of the death of his twenty-two-year-old daughter. The twenty-two paintings are positioned throughout the manuscript and are in conversation with Ruti’s theory. Ruti is fascinated by both the paintings and Smith’s process, which is similar to her own. For Ruti and Smith, their creativity is how existential engagement takes shape. (shrink)

C.S. Lewis was a major public intellectual in Britain, beginning from the late 1930s and continuing to his death in 1963. In both his non-fiction, especially The Abolition of Man, and his fiction, most importantly in That Hideous Strength, he offers a critique of rationalism and scientism that is often strikingly similar to those that Michael Oakeshott penned in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This essay examines the question to what extent this similarity is merely superficial, and to what (...) extent the two writers shared a similar basis for their views. Furthermore, it examines whether there is an actual thread of influence: had Oakeshott been reading Lewis before writing his critique of rationalism, and if so, to what extent did Lewis’s work inform Oakeshott’s? (shrink)

Quine has spoken of bringing our beliefs about the world before “the tribunal of experience.” In Mind and World, McDowell agrees that this is what we must do, but he argues forcefully that Quine’s conception of experience as nothing more than a neuronal cause of verbal responses loses the whole idea that experiences can justify beliefs. McDowell’s overarching aim is to determine conditions that experience must satisfy if it is to be genuinely a tribunal.