Artificial intelligence (AI) has attracted an increasing amount of attention, both positive and negative. Its potential applications in healthcare are indeed manifold and revolutionary, and within the realm of medical imaging and radiology (which will be the focus of this paper), significant increases in accuracy and speed, as well as significant savings in cost, stand to be gained through the adoption of this technology. Because of its novelty, a norm of keeping humans “in the loop” wherever AI mechanisms are deployed (...) has become synonymous with good ethical practice in some circles. It has been argued that keeping humans “in the loop” is important for reasons of safety, accountability, and the maintenance of institutional trust. However, as the application of machine learning for the detection of lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS) in this paper’s case study reveals, there are some scenarios where an insistence on keeping humans in the loop (or in other words, the resistance to automation) seems unwarranted and could possibly lead us to miss out on very real and important opportunities in healthcare—particularly in low-resource settings. It is important to acknowledge these opportunity costs of resisting automation in such contexts, where better options may be unavailable. Using an AI model based on convolutional neural networks developed by a team of researchers at NUH/NUS medical school in Singapore for automated detection and classification of the lumbar spinal canal, lateral recess, and neural foraminal narrowing in an MRI scan of the spine to diagnose LSS, we will aim to demonstrate that where certain criteria hold (e.g., the AI is as accurate or better than human experts, risks are low in the event of an error, the gain in wellbeing is significant, and the task being automated is not essentially or importantly human), it is both morally permissible and even desirable to kick the humans out of the loop. (shrink)

James O. Young seeks to explain why we value music so highly. He draws on the latest psychological research to argue that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. The representation of emotion in music gives it the capacity to provide psychological insight--and it is this which explains a good deal of its value.

Almost all of us would agree that the experience of art is deeply rewarding. Why this is the case remains a puzzle; nor does it explain why many of us find works of art much more important than other sources of pleasure. Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. The view that art is a (...) source of knowledge can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Horace. Artists as various as Tasso, Sidney, Henry James and Mendelssohn have believed that art contributes to knowledge. As attractive as this view may be, it has never been satisfactorily defended, either by artists or philosophers. Art and Knowledge reflects on the essence of art and argues that it ought to provide insight as well as pleasure. It argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as available from the sciences. Once we recognise that works of art can contribute to knowledge we can avoid thorough relativism about aesthetic value and we can be in a position to evaluate the avant-garde art of the past 100 years. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics. (shrink)

The lack of concrete guidance provided by managerial moral standards and the ambiguity of the expectations they create are discussed in terms of the moral stress experienced by many managers. It is argued that requisite clarity and feelings of obligation with respect to moral standards derive ultimately from public discussion of moral issues within organizations and from shared public agreement about appropriate behavior. Suggestions are made about ways in which the moral dimension of an organization's culture can be more effectively (...) managed. This is the third in a research series of three papers. (shrink)

We still ask the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Every generation seems to offer new and contradictory answers to the question. In the last thirty or so years, the most interesting characterisations of Enlightenment have been by historians. They have told us that there is one Enlightenment, that there are two Enlightenments, that there are many Enlightenments. This has thrown up a second question, ‘How Many Enlightenments?’ In the spirit of collaboration and criticism, I answer both questions by arguing in this (...) article that there are in fact three Enlightenments: Radical, Sceptical and Liberal. These are abstracted from the rival theories of Enlightenment found in the writings of the historians Jonathan Israel, John Robertson and J.G.A. Pocock. Each form of Enlightenment is political; each involves an attitude to history; each takes a view of religion. They are arranged in a sequence of increasing sensitivity to history, as it is this which makes it possible to relate them to each other and indeed propose a composite definition of Enlightenment. The argument should be of interest to anyone concerned with ‘the Enlightenment’ as a historical phenomenon or with ‘Enlightenment’ as a philosophical abstraction. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ and _Philosophical Investigations_ are among the most influential philosophical books of the twentieth century, and also among the most perplexing. Wittgenstein warned again and again that he was not and would not be understood. Moreover, Wittgenstein's work seems to have little relevance to the way philosophy is done today. In _Wittgenstein in Exile_, James Klagge proposes a new way of looking at Wittgenstein -- as an exile -- that helps make sense of this. Wittgenstein's exile (...) was not, despite his wanderings from Vienna to Cambridge to Norway to Ireland, strictly geographical; rather, Klagge argues, Wittgenstein was never at home in the twentieth century. He was in exile from an earlier era -- Oswald Spengler's culture of the early nineteenth century. Klagge draws on the full range of evidence, including Wittgenstein's published work, the complete Nachlaß, correspondence, lectures, and conversations. He places Wittgenstein's work in a broad context, along a trajectory of thought that includes Job, Goethe, and Dostoyevsky. Yet Klagge also writes from an analytic philosophical perspective, discussing such topics as essentialism, private experience, relativism, causation, and eliminativism. Once we see Wittgenstein's exile, Klagge argues, we will gain a better appreciation of the difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein and his work. (shrink)

Recent critics of the coherence theory of truth (notably Ralph Walker) have alleged that the theory is incoherent, since its defence presupposes the correctness of the contrary correspondence theory of truth. Coherentists must specify the system of propositions with which true propositons cohere (the specified system). Generally, coherentists claim that the specified system is a system composed of propositions believed by a community. Critics of coherentism maintain that the coherentist’s assertions about which system is the specified system must be true, (...) not because they cohere with a system of beliefs, but because of facts about what a community believes. I argue that coherentists can admit that there are facts about what systems of beliefs communities accept, without being committed to the claim that these facts are the truth conditions of sentences about what communities accept. (shrink)

abstract In a number of contexts one comes across the suggestion that cultures are collective owners of cultural property, such as particularly significant works of art. Indigenous peoples are often held to be collective owners of cultural property, but they are not the only ones. Icelandic culture is said to have a claim on the Flatejarbók and Greek culture is held to own the Parthenon Marbles. In this paper I investigate the conditions under which a culture is the rightful owner (...) of cultural property. I argue against the claims that cultures inherit cultural property. I also argue that a culture's claim to own cultural property is seldom, if ever, founded on either practices employed in the culture or collective production of cultural property. I maintain, however, that the very value of cultural property for some culture can, in some instances, provide the basis for the culture's claim on the property. (shrink)

James Yerkes undertakes a systematic exploration of the full range of Hegel’s works to discover what philosophical, religious, and historical significance Hegel attributed to the Christian witness that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ.

David Hume (1711-76) is one of the greatest figures in the history of British philosophy. Of all of Hume's writings, the philosophically most profound is undoubtedly his first, A Treatise on Human Nature. Hume on Morality introduces and assesses: Hume's life and the background of the Treatise ; the ideas and text in the Treatise ; and Hume's continuing importance to philosophy. James Baillie provides us with a map to Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise, focusing on Hume's (...) theory of the passions and morality. This book sets out its principal ideas and arguments of the Treatise in a clear and readable way and is ideal for anyone coming to Hume's work for the first time. (shrink)

Bribery in international business has become a priority concern among business, government, and community leaders. While discussions among philosophers often emphasize the ethical justification for banning bribery, policy-makers around the world are challenging it on the basis of its effects for economic development. In this paper we define bribery, trace recent efforts by the public, private, and civil society sectors to curb it, and attempt to answer the question: Will bribery become less common?

Standard philosophical accounts attempt to understand physical modality either in terms of special metaphysical entities and relationships or in terms of the organization of non-modal information, as in Best Systems Analysis. This paper defends an alternative to both these approaches in which invariance and various independence conditions play a central role. The methodological importance of separating law-claims from claims about initial and boundary conditions is highlighted.

Review of James Franklin, The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

In an important and provocative paper Christopher Freiman recently has defended the view that vote-buying should be legal in democratic societies. Freiman offers four arguments in support of this claim: that vote buying would be ex ante beneficial to both the buyers and sellers of votes; that voters enjoy wide discretion in how they use their votes, and so this should extend to selling them; that vote markets would lead to electoral outcomes that better reflect voters’ preferences; and that vote-buying (...) is relevantly similar to other democratic practices that are currently legal, such as logrolling and earmarking. In this paper I will address the last of Freiman’s arguments. I will argue that there are significant disanalogies between vote buying and both logrolling and earmarking, and that these differences justify the legal prohibition of the former practice while legally permitting the latter two. (shrink)

Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is one of the great modern examinations of religion's meaning, function and impact on human affairs. In this volume, the first complete English-language commentary on the work, James J. DiCenso explains the historical context in which the book appeared, including the importance of Kant's conflict with state censorship. He shows how the Religion addresses crucial Kantian themes such as the relationship between freedom and morality, the human propensity to evil, the status (...) of historical traditions in relation to ethical principles, and the interface between individual ethics and social institutions. The major arguments are clearly and precisely explained, and the themes are highlighted and located within Kant's mature critical philosophy, especially his ethics. The commentary will be valuable for all who are interested in the continuing relevance of religion for contemporary inquiries into ethics, public institutions and religious traditions. (shrink)

This volume dispels the idea that Platonism was an otherworldly enterprise which neglected the study of the natural world. Leading scholars examine how the Platonists of late antiquity sought to understand and explain natural phenomena: their essays offer a new understanding of the metaphysics of Platonism, and its place in the history of science.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TOWARD A GENERAL THEORY OF FICTION by James D. Parsons When nelson Goodman writes, "All fiction is literal, literary falsehood," he seems to be disregarding at least one noteworthy tradition.1 The tradition I have in mind includes works by Jeremy Bendiam, Hans Vaihinger, Tobias Dantzig, Wallace Stevens, and a host ofother writers in many fields who have been laboring for more man two centuries to clear the ground (...) for a general theory of fiction. Such a general dieory would, if its exponents are right about its relevemce, be situated at the very heart of die law, literature, religion, science, mathematics — in fact, of humem life itself. Fiction dien would be no neirrow litereiry falsehood, but a kind of pressure, eis Wedlace Stevens said, which die imagination exerts "against die pressure of reality," and which "helps us to live our lives,"2 or, in Hans Vaihingens metaphor, "a scaffolding afterwards to be demolished" 3 — that is, elfter it heis served its constructive purpose. A fiction is a vitally useful creation of die mind corresponding to nothing in the real world. Most people eire aware of some of these fictions, from the perfect geometric figures of Euclid to the black box of contemporary axiomatics. There are many odiers. The notion diat all human beings are equal before die law is a fiction that can serve opposing purposes: it can work as an instrument for securing greater justice in the courts and in society, or it can function as ceimouflage, helping to perpetuate em unjust legal system and em oppressive social order — emd probably in any actual situation it serves both purposes at once. In die science of mechanics the idea of a pure vacuum, in which moving objects meet with no resistance, was for some centuries a useful fiction diat made possible the exact mathematiced analysis of motion in memy forms — another useful fiction. The notion of normality in psychology — mat diere is a universal standard of reference for human behavior — is stdl utilized by clinical and laboratory workers in the field, in spite of the metssive sociological emd ethnographic criticisms that have been leveled against it. In science generally, the idea that 92 James D. Parsons93 diere is a community of experts who by dieir combined influence decide what the trudi is in every field is a fiction diat seems to have come to the end of its usefulness, diough some philosophers have written about it as if it were a reality and not a fiction at edl. The fictions I have cited so far are none of them literary, nor être diey fedse in the ordinetry meaning of the word. They are simply not true; they describe nothing mat exists, except in die mind, emd cem be considered false only if one forgets what they eire emd tries, illegitimately, to apply tests of trudi to them in a direct way. Among the fictions mat might be called literary are the fictions derived from mydis. Now, a myth is a story told in answer to a question or a series of questions that has never been asked, eidier about the real world or (most likely) about the perennial performance of a ritual. The mydi is designed to forestall the questioning, because the questions that might be raised would be too embarrassing or because questions about some aspects of reality ceuinot be formulated without distorting our relation to them. These are the aspects of reedity that can be viewed only out of die corner of the eye, that disappear when we focus our gaze upon diem, and mat can be identified only indirectly.4 The more explicitly fictional devices, too, of poetry, drama, and the novel develop out of the attempt to achieve some sort of cognizeuice of the seune aspects of reality that are related in mydis. I do not meetn to imply that literature, of which mydi is a part, is concerned only with such disconcerting or evanescent aspects of reality. Literature, like all the great realms of culture, is concerned with the whole of reality. It has to be, omerwise its more passionate, its more ediereed concerns would have no lodging place, no environment in which to maintain... (shrink)

Because recent contributions on world government in the international relations (IR) literature have focused on relatively nebulous issues, they are of limited usefulness for illuminating whether or not an actual world government would advance the human prospect. This question cannot be sensibly addressed unless in the light of a specific institutional proposal. Along the authority-effectiveness continuum separating the relatively ineffectual existent United Nations on the one hand, and the traditional world federalist ideal of the omnipotent world state on the other, (...) there are intermediate possibilities not subject to the respective disadvantages of the extreme endpoints of this continuum. (shrink)

When people develop dementia, their ability to make important decisions recognized by law—such as to change an estate plan, make a large purchase, or get married or divorced—is increasingly comprom...

Rather than representing a break with his earlier philosophical undertakings, The Birth of Tragedy can be seen as continuous with them and Nietzsche's later works. James Porter argues that Nietzsche's argumentative and writerly strategies resemble his earlier writings on philology in his 'staging' of meaning rather than in his advocacy of various positions. The derivation of the Dionysian from the Apollinian, and the interest in the atomistic challenges to Platonism, are anticipated in earlier works. Also the theory of the (...) all-too-human subject is a thread that runs throughout Nietzsche's oeuvre, critically undoing what his philosophy appears to erect, confirming that Nietzsche is a most unreliable witness to his own meaning. As well as studying the relation of The Birth of Tragedy to later writings, the author examines it on its own terms as a self-standing and complete piece of imagining, with close regard to the self-presentation of the work itself. (shrink)

Two of the world's leading astrophysicists, James Binney and Scott Tremaine, here present a comprehensive review of the theory of galactic dynamics at a level suitable for both graduate students and researchers. Their work in this volume describes our present understanding of the structure and dynamics of stellar systems such as galaxies and star clusters. Nicknamed "the Bible of galactic dynamics," this book has become a classic treatise, well known and widely used by researchers and students of galactic astrophysics (...) and stellar dynamics. Praised for its modern approach, as well as for the rigor and exemplary clarity with which the authors handle the material in this book, Galactic Dynamics includes classic results and data while also reflecting the many recent developments in the field. The authors maintain an effective style of exposition throughout, keeping clear what is present knowledge and what is still speculation, while allowing the reader to grasp an overview of the subject before following through with the mathematical detail. Most of the astronomical community since the late 1980s was introduced to galactic dynamics through Galactic Dynamics, and it remains the most widely used graduate textbook in galactic astrophysics today. No other book gathers together and presents our current understanding of the field in such a clear and concise way. Through this approach, Binney and Tremaine succeeded in creating a classic reference of enormous pedagogic value. (shrink)

This book is a major contribution to the study of the philosopher F. H. Bradley, the most influential member of the nineteenth-century school of British Idealists. It offers a sustained interpretation of Bradley's Principles of Logic, explaining the problem of how it is possible for inferences to be both valid and yet have conclusions that contain new information. The author then describes how this solution provides a basis for Bradley's metaphysical view that reality is one interconnected experience and how this (...) gives rise to a new problem of truth. (shrink)

This is an Introduction to the special issue of Metaphilosophy entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life, giving a brief account of the genesis of the project, an overview of the topic, and a summary of the topics covered in the issue.

The recent discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs) in unicellular eukaryotes, including miRNAs known previously only from animals or plants, implies that miRNAs have a deep evolutionary history among eukaryotes. This contrasts with the prevailing view that miRNAs evolved convergently in animals and plants. We re‐evaluate the evidence and find that none of the 73 plant and animal miRNAs described from protists meet the required criteria for miRNA annotation and, by implication, animals and plants did not acquire any of their respective miRNA (...) genes from the crown ancestor of eukaryotes. Furthermore, of the 159 novel miRNAs previously identified among the seven species of unicellular protists examined, only 28 from the algae Ectocarpus and Chlamydomonas, meet the criteria for miRNA annotation. Therefore, at present only five groups of eukaryotes are known to possess miRNAs, indicating that miRNAs have evolved independently within eukaryotes through exaptation of their shared inherited RNAi machinery. (shrink)

It is a well known empirical observation that natural axiomatic theories are pre-well-ordered by consistency strength. For any natural theory $T$, the next strongest natural theory is $T+\mathsf{Con}_T$. We formulate and prove a statement to the effect that the consistency operator is the weakest natural way to uniformly extend axiomatic theories.

This paper is an investigation of the relationship between G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem and the well-foundedness of jump hierarchies. It follows from a classic theorem of Spector's that the relation $\{(A,B) \in \mathbb{R}^2 : \mathcal{O}^A \leq_H B\}$ is well-founded. We provide an alternative proof of this fact that uses G\"odel's second incompleteness theorem instead of the theory of admissible ordinals. We then derive a semantic version of the second incompleteness theorem, originally due to Mummert and Simpson, from this result. Finally, (...) we turn to the calculation of the ranks of reals in this well-founded relation. We prove that, for any $A\in\mathbb{R}$, if the rank of $A$ is $\alpha$, then $\omega_1^A$ is the $(1 + \alpha)^{\text{th}}$ admissible ordinal. It follows, assuming suitable large cardinal hypotheses, that, on a cone, the rank of $X$ is $\omega_1^X$. (shrink)

I. ONCE, SAID AN AUTHOR, WHERE I NEED NOT SAY . .

A personal story of the ways in which persistence, chance, and creativity interact in biomedical research. This first book by the author of Zen and the Brain examines the role of chance in the creative process. James Austin tells a personal story of the ways in which persistence, chance, and creativity interact in biomedical research; the conclusions he reaches shed light on the creative process in any field. Austin shows how, in his own investigations, unpredictable events shaped the outcome (...) of his research and brought about novel results. He then goes beyond this story of serendipity to propose a new classification of the varieties of chance, drawing on his own research and examples from the history of science—including the famous accidents that led Fleming to the discovery of penicillin. Finally, he explores the nature of the creative process, considering not only the environmental and neurophysiological correlates of creativity but also the role of intuition in both scientific discoveries and spiritual quests. This updated MIT Press paperback edition includes a new introduction and recent material on medical research, creativity, and spirituality. (shrink)

With great energy and clarity, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829-1894), author of History of the Criminal Law of England, and judge of the High Court from 1879-91, challenges John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and On Utilitarianism, arguing that ...