Genetic changes arising in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) upon culture may bestow unwanted or detrimental phenotypes to cells, thus potentially impacting on the applications of hPSCs for clinical use and basic research. In the 20 years since the first report of culture‐acquired genetic aberrations in hPSCs, a characteristic spectrum of recurrent aberrations has emerged. The preponderance of such aberrations implies that they provide a selective growth advantage to hPSCs upon expansion. However, understanding the consequences of culture‐acquired variants for specific (...) applications in cell therapy or research has been more elusive. The rapid progress of hPSC‐based therapies to clinics is galvanizing the field to address this uncertainty and provide definitive ways both for risk assessment of variants and reducing their prevalence in culture. Here, we aim to provide a timely update on almost 20 years of research on this fascinating, but a still unresolved and concerning, phenomenon. (shrink)

While across the animal kingdom offspring are born smaller than their parents, notable exceptions exist. Several dipteran species belonging to the Hippoboscoidea superfamily can produce offspring larger than themselves. In this essay, the blood‐feeding tsetse is focused on. It is suggested that the extreme reproductive strategy of this fly is enabled by feeding solely on highly nutritious blood, and producing larval offspring that are soft and malleable. This immense reproductive expenditure may have evolved to avoid competition with other biting flies. (...) Tsetse also transmit blood‐borne parasites that cause the fatal diseases called African trypanosomiases. It is discussed how tsetse life history and reproductive strategy profoundly influence the type of vector control interventions used to reduce fly populations. In closing, it is argued that the unusual life history of tsetse warrants their preservation in the areas where human and animal health is not threatened. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John BehrMatthew Z. ValeJohn the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology by John Behr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), xv + 388 pp.Father Behr's book defies summary. Its ambitions span several fields—patristics, contemporary biblical scholarship, speculative systematics, phenomenology—and Behr has controversial proposals in each. The book is not (expressly) a (...) work of systematic theology, but its speculative élan and its ambition to give a normative account of Christian theology's beating heart is unmistakable. If a vice of the book is vagueness on questions of burning Christological, protological, and eschatological interest, among its virtues is the verve and vividness with which it provokes such questions to begin with. Behr has written, not a book on John, but a Johannine manifesto on theology. [End Page 989]The book is a "symposium" in three parts, each inviting a different kind of reader of John's gospel. The first is predominantly "historical" (the early Fathers of the Johannine school, reconstructed by modern scholarship), the second predominantly "exegetical" (contemporary biblical studies), and the third "philosophical," with a single guest in Michel Henry. The book's heart is an argument about what "incarnation" means. When it comes to the Incarnation, we labor, Behr says, under what Quentin Skinner calls a "mythology of doctrine," the hermeneutical fallacy of projecting onto a tradition's classical writers positions and whole doctrinal categories developed only later (6–8). The mythology of doctrine Behr opposes is, in fact, a mythological notion of the Incarnation as "an episode in the biography of the Word" (a phrase from Rowan Williams), the episode when a "pre-incarnate Word" is born as Jesus (3, and throughout). To break the ice on this mythology, part 1 reconstructs an original milieu for John's Gospel—a school of John the Evangelist, centered upon an original Pascha celebration—in which "becoming flesh," "Word," and "human being" mean something other than the dogmatic meanings we project back onto them. This Johannine school is not the Johannine "community" posited by historical-critical studies, but the school of John's "hearers" that J. B. Lightfoot traced from Polycarp of Smyrna, Ignatius of Antioch, Papias of Hierapolis, and Melito of Sardis down to Irenaeus (30–31). Behr's reconstruction makes the following proposals. Our evangelist is John the Elder, the beloved disciple, not the Synoptics' son of Zebedee. This John was plausibly an eyewitness to the crucifixion—alone among the evangelists. He authored both the Gospel and the Apocalypse bearing his name, according to near unanimous second-century tradition (76). The Apocalypse was possibly written before the Gospel, perhaps before the Temple's destruction. John the Elder originated the yearly Pascha celebration, and it remained peculiar to his school until the second half of the second century. This feast originally celebrated the crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost as the single event of the Passion, just as in John's Gospel Jesus's ascension (12:32), glorification (13:31–2), and "handing down the Spirit" (19:30) are identified with the crucifixion. Only later was the Passion's simple white light refracted into the liturgical cycle's rainbow of distinct feasts (91–92, 243).This reconstruction is explicitly speculative. Its purpose is to enliven our imaginations about what the evangelist's vision may possibly be. If the mythological picture of the Incarnation is easily recognized as false, our theological traditions still have not entirely exorcised it from their standard narration. Behr proposes a Johannine narration untroubled by this [End Page 990] mythology. The Incarnation is not a novelty occurring for God at some moment. No previously fleshless divine agent undergoes change to become flesh at some time. The Incarnation must instead be understood "apocalyptically," as the eternal mystery of Jesus Christ being revealed for us in time (256-57). The Incarnation is Jesus's eternal identity as the Word being revealed and wrought in time and pro nobis by the Passion (24, 29, 257, 130). John's Gospel should be read, in John Ashton's words, as "an apocalypse—in reverse, upside down, inside out" (4, 99... (shrink)

Until the beginning of the twentieth century Christianity, in order to proclaim its message, was based above all upon the word, the substance of prayer and preaching; certainly manuscripts, with the Scriptures and other fundamental texts, long secured the foundations of the faith, but before the advent of printing their diffusion and reception remained the prerogative of lettered elites, most often clerics such as the Benedictines (remember Umberto Eco's famous novel published in 1980, The Name of the Rose). Moreover, the (...) Catholic Church made extensive use of the image in the Middle Ages, above all in the gothic period, and created remarkable visual splendour in its holy places. Stained glass windows and paintings and sculptures with subjects from the Old and New Testaments reinforced the devotion and faith of the illiterate. It was only after 1450, with Gutenberg's invention of printing - which, moreover, immediately disseminated bibles, missals and prayer-books - that the text became a major means of transmitting the Christian message. From the sixteenth century onwards Protestant Calvinists (but not Lutherans or Anglicans) rejected religious imagery - even the crucifix - as a means of devotion, for they were considered idolatrous; on the other hand, the reformers, more than the Catholic Church, laid stress on the reading of biblical texts by the faithful, especially the Old Testament, henceforth much more widely distributed, thanks expressly to printing. Admittedly the word did not lose its rights; like Catholicism in its churches and cathedrals, the Reformation preached the Good Word in its temples. Yet paradoxically, the present return of the religious image - this time televisual - was to be first of all a Protestant occurrence, principally in the United States. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Persians TIMOTHEUS (Translated by John Warden)... urging on their floating bronze-beaked chariots ram by ram furrowing the waves with pointed teeth....... with humped heads stripped away arms of fir, thumped ’em on the left, mariners tumbled, smashed ’em on the right in their pinewood towers, back on their feet again. Ha! Tear off flesh to their rope-bound ribs, sink ’em with thunderbolts, rip away gilded splendour with (...) iron-helmed rams. Thonged javelins fly fire-like, shafts trembling in pierced limbs, wood slivers ablaze long-winged brazen-headed, slaughtered victims swarm. ◊♦◊ Sea with glass-green hair its furrows stained with blood; shouts of victors, screams of vanquished; the barbarous fleet borne away over the fish-crowned gleaming curves of Amphitrite’s breast. ◊♦◊ Lord of a daywide land, islander out for a sail ha! listing, tipping, arms and feet arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 96 the persians thrashing in the buffeting waves, cries to the sea god, “Father...” Winds drop and veer, smite him on the other side. No Bacchus poured that liquid into his wine jar belly. He vomits up the boiling sea flood, screaming through clenched teeth against the defiling sea: “Was once not enough to have your proud neck yoked with bonds of hemp? See, now my lord will churn you with pine trees born in the mountains, encompass your watery plains with mariners, you madcap, long-loathed, faithless plaything of the swift-surfing winds.” Gasps out the words and a disgusting stream of sour sea water comes belching from his belly. ◊♦◊ Homeward they scurry, the Persian fleet, the foreigners squadron smashing into squadron in the long-necked strait jolts from their hands their mountain feet, leap from their mouths their gleaming helpmates; bodies without breath, without light, festoon the starsprent sea, weigh down the headlands. Survivors on the shore sit naked and freezing, tears dripping from their howled laments. Possessed by the dirge-song of grief, they keen and beat their breasts: “O vales of Mysia with your trees like a woman’s hair, take me home. For the winds are carrying me away. Timotheus 97 Never will the dust of earth receive my body....... in a cave where nymphs are born, below the ocean floor. Protect me from Helle, ship-bridged bringer of war. Had my lord not built that far-travelled causeway, never would I have come from Tmolus or Lydian Sardis to keep at bay the Greek war god. But now where shall I find sweet refuge from unbending fate? Who will free me from suffering and bring me home to Troy? Could I but fall at the ivy-robed knees of the Queen, the Mountain Mother, embrace her lovely arms and pray: ‘Goddess of golden hair, mother, I beg you rescue me, rescue me from the devious steel that slits the throat, from the wave-skimming gales, ship breakers, from Boreas that freezes by night. The winds will dash me to pieces. Already the cruel waves have torn the clothing from my body. Now I shall lie wretched, my flesh a feast to the tribes of birds.’” ◊♦◊ See a Greek with a sword of iron grab a man from Celaeno, rich in flocks, bereft in battle, drag him by the hair. Arms twined around knees, he breaks the seal of his lips seeking Greek in the shrill voice of Asia: Listen Mister not me why come. Not me, no never, big master send me, me no never come fight. Stay home Sardis, Sousa, Ecbatana. Great god Artemis 98 the persians Ephesus guard me. Swift-running backward-running they pursue their flight, cast from their hands the twin-mouthed javelins, tear the flesh from their faces, rip from their breasts their sumptuous Persian gowns, raise in one voice their Asiatic wailing. Those round the King are loud in panic at the coming disaster. The King looks down at the mingled host in flight, falls to his knees, defiles his body. Tossed in fate’s waves he speaks: Root and branch my house has fallen! The flaming ships of the Greeks have slain the flower of our youth. There is no way home, our ships consumed by the blazing might of harsh... (shrink)

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We (...) take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant—arguably, primary—role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the “missing source” of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief. (shrink)

What makes political power legitimate? Without legitimation, subjects will not accept power, and, since religion permeated medieval society, religion became foundational to philosophical legitimations of political power. In 2013, the XIX Annual Colloquium of the International Society for the Study of Medieval Philosophy took place in Alcalá de Henares, one of the medieval centers of political debate within and between Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. The members of these communities all shared the common belief that God constitutes the remote or (...) proximate cause of legitimation. Yet, beyond this common belief, they differed significantly in their points of departure and how their arguments evolved. For instance, the debate among Western Christians in the conflict between secular power and Papal authority sowed the seeds for a secular basis of legitimacy. The volume reflects the results of the colloquium. Many contributions focus on key Christian thinkers such as Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Aquinas, John Quidort of Paris, Giles of Rome, Dante, and William of Ockham; other studies focus on major authors from the Jewish and Muslim traditions, such as Maimonides and Alfarabi. Finally, several papers focus on lesser-known but no less important figures for the history of political thought: Manegold of Lautenbach, Ptolemy of Lucca, Guido Terrena, John of Viterbo, Pierre de Ceffons, John Wyclif and Pierre de Plaoul. The contributions rely on original texts, giving the readers a fresh insight into these issues. (shrink)

Axel Honneth, em O direito da liberdade, apresenta uma crítica aos elementos problemáticos da liberdade jurídica desde sua primeira formulação, no século XVII, de caráter negativo, até um segundo momento, marcado pela ampliação dos direitos subjetivos, que transforma o espaço privado em um lugar de reflexão ética de onde derivam juízos de “bem” e de “justiça”. Como exemplo desde segundo momento, Honneth se vale do pensamento de John Stuart Mill. Ocorre que, mesmo reconhecendo a importância das teorizações millianas, (...) Honneth insiste em afirmar que a liberdade jurídica implica na constituição do sujeito como ator solitário dotado de objetivos estratégicos. Nossa proposta aqui é sugerir que ao se valer do pensamento de Mill para ilustrar sua reconstrução da noção de liberdade jurídica, e concluir por sua limitação, Honneth não alcança a extensão da proposta de filosofia social do autor inglês. A imbricação entre as noções de liberdade e igualdade em Mill permeia a esfera privada garantida pelos direitos individuais e introduz questões intersubjetivas no momento de reflexão ética. Ou seja, há claros elementos de influência do outro na determinação dos juízos morais legitimadores da ação social milliana. Visando explorar esta questão, procuramos, em um primeiro momento, identificar a crítica à insuficiência do reconhecimento de obrigações recíprocas entre os sujeitos que gozam de seus direitos individuais, para, em seguida, confrontarmos seus argumentos com as formulações de John Stuart Mill sobre o assunto. (shrink)

Nella nuova Italia gli interpreti e i difensori delle civili libertà (l'espressione è di Romagnosi) furono pochi e poco considerati. Tra essi, gli amici e i seguaci radicali e federalisti di Carlo Cattaneo, ma anche un moderato come Pasquale Villari, il maestro di Gaetano Salvemini. Tutti ebbero in comune la condivisione del pensiero filosofico e politico di John Stuart Mill e il proposito di favorirne la diffusione nella cultura del loro tempo. Mill fu uno degli autori più tradotti nell'Italia (...) dell'Ottocento. Se la sua filosofia ebbe pochissima fortuna, il suo liberalismo attraversò invece tutta la classe politica ed intellettuale italiana: fu come un crocevia di strade diverse per provenienza e destinazione. Ciò vale per Francesco Ferrara e per Vilfredo Pareto, per Marco Minghetti e per Luigi Luzzatti, per i liberisti della Società Adamo Smíth e per i vincolisti del Giornale degli economisti. Il confronto con Mill permette di individuare i caratteri della filosofia civile del liberalismo post-unitario, le sue aspirazioni di buon governo e di giustizia, la sua fiducia nella cultura della modernità. La ricostruzione dei dibattiti e delle polemiche che si susseguirono tra gli anni sessanta e settanta sul decentramento, sulla rappresentanza proporzionale, sul suffragio femminile, sui rapporti fra stato e società civile, sul metodo dell'economia politica, sul socialismo e sull'utilitarismo i temi essenziali del liberalismo milliano aiuta a cogliere il significato storico del complesso rapporto tra liberalismo e positivismo in Italia. Ne viene fuori, come mette in rilievo Norberto Bobbio nella prefazione al volume, il carattere tortuoso e difficile del liberalismo italiano; la sua difficoltà a divenire una base effettiva di riferimento del nuovo stato, dei suoi ceti dirigenti, delle sue elite intellettuali. (shrink)

Rapid advances in AI-based automation have led to a number of existential and economic concerns. In particular, as automating technologies develop enhanced competency they seem to threaten the values associated with meaningful work. In this article, we focus on one such value: the value of achievement. We argue that achievement is a key part of what makes work meaningful and that advances in AI and automation give rise to a number achievement gaps in the workplace. This could limit people’s ability (...) to participate in meaningful forms of work. Achievement gaps are interesting, in part, because they are the inverse of the (negative) responsibility gaps already widely discussed in the literature on AI ethics. Having described and explained the problem of achievement gaps, the article concludes by identifying four possible policy responses to the problem. (shrink)

Human values seem to vary across time and space. What implications does this have for the future of human value? Will our human and (perhaps) post-human offspring have very different values from our own? Can we study the future of human values in an insightful and systematic way? This article makes three contributions to the debate about the future of human values. First, it argues that the systematic study of future values is both necessary in and of itself and an (...) important complement to other future-oriented inquiries. Second, it sets out a methodology and a set of methods for undertaking this study. Third, it gives a practical illustration of what this ‘axiological futurism’ might look like by developing a model of the axiological possibility space that humans are likely to navigate over the coming decades. (shrink)

The idea that technologies can change moral beliefs and practices is an old one. But how, exactly, does this happen? This paper builds on an emerging field of inquiry by developing a synoptic taxonomy of the mechanisms of techno-moral change. It argues that technology affects moral beliefs and practices in three main domains: decisional (how we make morally loaded decisions), relational (how we relate to others) and perceptual (how we perceive situations). It argues that across these three domains there are (...) six primary mechanisms of techno-moral change: (i) adding options; (ii) changing decision-making costs; (iii) enabling new relationships; (iv) changing the burdens and expectations within relationships; (v) changing the balance of power in relationships; and (vi) changing perception (information, mental models and metaphors). The paper also discusses the layered, interactive and second-order effects of these mechanisms. (shrink)

Centuries ago, Descartes and Locke initiated a foundational debate in epistemology over the relationship between knowledge, on the one hand, and practical factors, on the other. Descartes claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally separate. Locke claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally united. After a period of dormancy, their disagreement has reignited on the contemporary scene. Latter-day Lockeans claim that knowledge itself is essentially connected to, and perhaps even constituted by, practical factors such as how much is at stake, (...) how important the situation is, or how one should act. Latter-day Cartesians claim, by contrast, that knowledge is entirely constituted by truth-related factors such as truth, belief, and evidence. Each side has supported its case with claims about patterns in ordinary behavior and knowledge judgments. Lockeans argue that these patterns are best explained by positing a fundamental and direct link between knowledge and practical factors. Cartesians argue that the patterns can be equally well explained by positing an indirect link, entirely mediated by the traditional factors of truth, belief, and evidence, thereby rendering the Lockean hypothesis unnecessary. We argue that Cartesians are right about some practical factors, in particular stakes and how important a situation is, which have, at best, a modest indirect relationship to knowledge. However, Lockeans are right about actionability: whether a person should pursue a course of action is unquestionably very powerfully and directly connected to knowledge. (shrink)

This book presents the framework for a new, comprehensive approach to cognitive science. The proposed paradigm, enaction, offers an alternative to cognitive science's classical, first-generation Computational Theory of Mind. _Enaction_, first articulated by Varela, Thompson, and Rosch in _The Embodied Mind_, breaks from CTM's formalisms of information processing and symbolic representations to view cognition as grounded in the sensorimotor dynamics of the interactions between a living organism and its environment. A living organism enacts the world it lives in; its embodied (...) action in the world constitutes its perception and thereby grounds its cognition. _Enaction_ offers a range of perspectives on this exciting new approach to embodied cognitive science. Some chapters offer manifestos for the enaction paradigm; others address specific areas of research, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, neuroscience, language, phenomenology, and culture and cognition. Three themes emerge as testimony to the originality and specificity of enaction as a paradigm: the relation between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science; the ambition to provide an encompassing framework applicable at levels from the cell to society; and the difficulties of reflexivity. Taken together, the chapters offer nothing less than the framework for a far-reaching renewal of cognitive science. Contributors: Renaud Barbaras, Didier Bottineau, Giovanna Colombetti, Diego Cosmelli, Hanne De Jaegher, Ezequiel A. Di Paolo. Andreas K. Engel, Olivier Gapenne, Véronique Havelange, Edwin Hutchins, Michel Le Van Quyen, Rafael E. Núñez, Marieke Rohde, Benny Shanon, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Adam Sheya, Linda B. Smith, John Stewart, Evan Thompson. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Notes References.

O objetivo deste artigo é fazer uma discussão apontando para o enfraquecimento de Estados Democráticos como resultado de uma _Predação Estatal_. Predação estatal é utilizada aqui para designar um sucateamento e desordens no Estado como resultados de má administração, corrupção, entre outros fatores. Para tal, fez-se uma discussão/síntese inicial sobre a concepção de Estado/sociedade em John Rawls, buscando relacionar sua ideia de estado ideal com a concepção de Estado Democrático de Direito de autores como Rubens Casara, que, a princípio, (...) dialoga de forma a concordar com a teoria da justiça de Rawls. Se percebeu, nesse sentido, que as concepções desses dois autores vão na contramão da predação estatal, pois esta última consiste na ausência de elementos como democracia, organização do Estado, garantia de direitos, entre outros, apontados por Rawls e Casara. Assim o trabalho foi escrito a partir de análise bibliográfica que versam sobre os temas em questão. A relevância do trabalho consiste na contribuição para a construção do conceito de predação estatal e _Estado Fraco_, possibilitando, dessa forma, uma ampliação da bibliografia a respeito desses conceitos, sendo este trabalho uma dessas fontes bibliográficas. Isso porque, por estarem ainda em construção, sobretudo a ideia de estado fraco, a bibliografia é rara, e praticamente não existe no Brasil. Vale ressaltar que Estado fraco não é Estado fracassado, que dispõe de maior bibliografia e tem uma concepção distinta de Estado fraco. (shrink)

A standard view in contemporary philosophy is that belief is involuntary, either as a matter of conceptual necessity or as a contingent fact of human psychology. We present seven experiments on patterns in ordinary folk-psychological judgments about belief. The results provide strong evidence that voluntary belief is conceptually possible and, granted minimal charitable assumptions about folk-psychological competence, provide some evidence that voluntary belief is psychologically possible. We also consider two hypotheses in an attempt to understand why many philosophers have been (...) tempted to view belief as involuntary: that belief is a prototype concept and that belief is a dual character concept. Altogether, our findings contribute to longstanding philosophical debates about the relationship between the will and the intellect, while also advancing scientific understanding of important social judgments. (shrink)

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute (...) physical particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Introductory Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion Of Individuality, as one of the Elements of Well‐being Of the Limits to the Authority of Society over the Individual Applications.

This monograph examines truth in fiction by applying the techniques of a naturalized logic of human cognitive practices. The author structures his project around two focal questions. What would it take to write a book about truth in literary discourse with reasonable promise of getting it right? What would it take to write a book about truth in fiction as true to the facts of lived literary experience as objectivity allows? It is argued that the most semantically distinctive feature of (...) the sentences of fiction is that they are unambiguously true and false together. It is true that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221B Baker Street and also concurrently false that he did. A second distinctive feature of fiction is that the reader at large knows of this inconsistency and isn't in the least cognitively molested by it. Why, it is asked, would this be so? What would explain it? Two answers are developed. According to the no-contradiction thesis, the semantically tangled sentences of fiction are indeed logically inconsistent but not logically contradictory. According to the no-bother thesis, if the inconsistencies of fiction were contradictory, a properly contrived logic for the rational management of inconsistency would explain why readers at large are not thrown off cognitive stride by their embrace of those contradictions. As developed here, the account of fiction suggests the presence of an underlying three - or four-valued dialethic logic. The author shows this to be a mistaken impression. There are only two truth-values in his logic of fiction. The naturalized logic of Truth in Fiction jettisons some of the standard assumptions and analytical tools of contemporary philosophy, chiefly because the neurotypical linguistic and cognitive behaviour of humanity at large is at variance with them. Using the resources of a causal response epistemology in tandem with the naturalized logic, the theory produced here is data-driven, empirically sensitive, and open to a circumspect collaboration with the empirical sciences of language and cognition. (shrink)

Our self-conception derives mostly from our own experience. We believe ourselves to be conscious, rational, social, ethical, language-using, political agents who possess free will. Yet we know we exist in a universe that consists of mindless, meaningless, unfree, nonrational, brute physical particles. How can we resolve the conflict between these two visions? In _Freedom and Neurobiology_, the philosopher John Searle discusses the possibility of free will within the context of contemporary neurobiology. He begins by explaining the relationship between human (...) reality and the more fundamental reality as described by physics and chemistry. Then he proposes a neurobiological resolution to the problem by demonstrating how various conceptions of free will have different consequences for the neurobiology of consciousness. In the second half of the book, Searle applies his theory of social reality to the problem of political power, explaining the role of language in the formation of our political reality. The institutional structures that organize, empower, and regulate our lives-money, property, marriage, government-consist in the assignment and collective acceptance of certain statuses to objects and people. Whether it is the president of the United States, a twenty-dollar bill, or private property, these entities perform functions as determined by their status in our institutional reality. Searle focuses on the political powers that exist within these systems of status functions and the way in which language constitutes them. Searle argues that consciousness and rationality are crucial to our existence and that they are the result of the biological evolution of our species. He addresses the problem of free will within the context of a neurobiological conception of consciousness and rationality, and he addresses the problem of political power within the context of this analysis. A clear and concise contribution to the free-will debate and the study of cognition, _Freedom and Neurobiology_ is essential reading for students and scholars of the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Stephen Law developed a challenge to theism, known as the evil-god challenge (Law (2010) ). The evil-god challenge to theism is to explain why the theist’s responses to the problem of evil are any better than the diabolist’s – who believes in a supremely evil god – rejoinders to the problem of good, when all the theist’s ploys (theodicy, sceptical theism, etc.) can be parodied by the diabolist. In the first part of this article, I extend the evil-god challenge by (...) showing that additional theist replies to the problem of evil (more theodicies, the privation view of evil, and others) also may be appropriated, with just as much plausibility, in support of the diabolist position. In the second part of the article, I defend the evil-god challenge against several objections. (shrink)

Erwin Panofsky explicitly states that the first half of the opening chapter of Studies in Iconology—his landmark American publication of 1939—contains ‘the revised content of a methodological article published by the writer in 1932’, which is now translated for the first time in this issue of Critical Inquiry.1 That article, published in the philosophical journal Logos, is among his most important works. First, it marks the apogee of his series of philosophically reflective essays on how to do art history,2 that (...) reach back, via a couple of major pieces on Alois Riegl, to the 1915 essay on Heinrich Wölfflin.3 Under the influence of his colleague at Hamburg Ernst Cassirer, the principal interpreter of Kant in the 1920s, Panofsky from 1915 on exhibits in his work ever more Kantian thinking and language.4 But Logos was not an art-historical review or one dedicated to aesthetics but a principal mainstream journal of the philosophy of culture. So ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’ has a good claim to be the culmination of Panofsky's philosophical thinking in his German period under the Weimar Republic. · 1. Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance , p. xv; hereafter abbreviated SI. See Panofsky, ‘Zum Problem der Beschreibung und Inhaltsdeutung von Werken der bildenden Kunst’, Logos 21 : 103–19; trans. Jaś Elsner and Katharina Lorenz under the title ‘On the Problem of Describing and Interpreting Works of the Visual Arts’, Critical Inquiry 38 : 467–82; hereafter abbreviated ‘P’.· 2. See the discussion in Carlo Ginzburg, ‘From Aby Warburg to E. H. Gombrich: A Problem of Method’, Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi , pp. 17–59, esp. pp. 36–41.· 3. See Panofsky, ‘Das Problem des Stils in der bildenden Kunst’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, ed. Karen Michels and Martin Warnke, 2 vols. , 2:1009–18; ‘Der Begriff des Kunstwollens’,Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2:1019–34, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott and Joel Snyder under the title ‘The Concept of Artistic Volition’, Critical Inquiry 8 : 17–33; and ‘Über das Verhältnis der Kunstgeschichte zur Kunsttheorie: Ein Beitrag zu der Erörterung über die Möglichkeit kunstwissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe’, Deutschsprachige Aufsätze, 2: 1035–63, trans. Lorenz and Elsner under the title ‘On the Relationship of Art History and Art Theory: Towards the Possibility of a Fundamental System of Concepts for a Science of Art’, Critical Inquiry 35 : 43–71.· 4. On neo-Kantianism in pre-Nazi Germany, see Michael Friedman, A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger , pp. 25–37; Éric Dufour and T. Z. R. Créteil, ‘Le Statue du singulier: Kant et le néokantisme de l’École de Marbourg', Kantstudien 93 : 324–50; Edward Skidelsky, Ernst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture , pp. 22–51; and Peter E. Gordon, Continental Divide: Heidegger, Cassirer, Davos , pp. 52–86. Specifically on the Cassirerian Kantianism of Panofsky, see Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art , pp. 181–82; Michael Ann Holly, Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History , pp. 91–92, 147–52; Silvia Ferretti, Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg: Symbol, Art, and History, trans. Richard Pierce , pp. 174–77, 182–84; David Summers, ‘Meaning in the Visual Arts as a Humanistic Discipline’, in Meaning in the Visual Arts: Views from the Outside, ed. Irving Lavin , pp. 9–24; Mark A. Cheetham, Kant, Art, and Art History: Moments of Discipline , pp. 68–77; Paul Crowther, The Transhistorical Image: Philosophizing Art and Its History , pp. 70–73; Allister Neher, ‘“The Concept of Kunstwollen”, Neo-Kantianism, and Erwin Panofsky's Early Art Theoretical Essays', Word and Image 20 : 41–51; Georges Didi-Huberman,Confronting Images: Questioning the Ends of a Certain History of Art, trans. John Goodman , pp. 4–6, 90–138; and Lorenz and Elsner, ‘Translators’ Introduction', Critical Inquiry35 : 33–42, esp. pp. 38, 40–42. (shrink)

Abstract“Absolutely nothing,” say the radical Bayesians. “Simplifying decisions,” say the moderates. “Providing premises in practical reasoning,” say the epistemologists. “Coordinating with others,” say I. It is hard to see how to construct an adequate theory of rational behavior without using a graded notion of belief, such as credence. But once we have credence, what role is left for belief? After surveying some answers to this question, I will explore the idea that belief is in a different line of work altogether. (...) Its job is not to rationalize and explain an agent’s behavior, but to track what the agent would accept as a reason. Although some philosophers have seen the connection between belief and reasons, they have tended to see reasons as part of a theory of rational action. This locates belief in the rationalizing and explaining business, where it must vie with credence. In contrast, I argue that reasons play no essential role in an account of individual rationality; they are important because we need to coordinate with others. Credence and belief thus answer to separate needs. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the importance of spatial cognition in Bergson’s Données immédiates by engaging with Robert Watt’s reconstruction of Bergson’s argument that every idea of number involves the idea of space. We focus on the second stage of Watt’s reconstruction, where Bergson argues that only space can provide the distinction required for our counting of otherwise identical items. Watt bases his reconstruction on a premise regarding the possibility that identical objects, in the absence of spatial distinction, might remain (...) identical across different “temporal locations”. Our paper raises the prospect that Bergson is committed to a stronger thesis, namely one implying that identical objects would necessarily remain indistinguishable without the intervention of space. The paper thus concludes by emphasizing the indispensability of space for knowledge according to Bergson. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: General Remarks What Utilitarianism Is Of the Ultimate Sanction of the Principle of Utility Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible On the Connexion Between Justice and Utility.

This chapter contains sections titled: Willem A. deVries Hans Fink Christoph Halbig Stephen Houlgate Sabina Lovibond Kenneth R. Westphal Michael Williams Charles Travis.

Cohen (2023), Rahimzadeh and colleagues (2023), and Porsdam Mann and colleagues (2023) have written thorough and well-canvassed pieces about the ethical and conceptual challenges of large language...

An interpretation of Plato's earlier dialogues which argues that the few cases of self-predication contained therein are acceptable simply as statements concerning universals and that therefore Plato is not vulnerable in these cases to the "third man argument".

The book is a defence of scientific realism. Its primary aim is to argue that it is possible to establish scientific realism without Inference to the Best Explanation. The idea that plays the central role in the book is an "Eddington-inference". Arthur Eddington once considered a hypothetical ichthyologist who concluded from the fact that his net contained no fish smaller than the holes in his net that there were in the sea no fish smaller than the holes in his net. (...) Although Eddington himself defended the inference, the author of the present volume argues on probabilistic grounds that it is likely such an inference is flawed. He generalises the argument to develop a probabilistic justification for scientific realist claims about the existence of unobservable entities. (shrink)

Theories of social norms frequently define social norms in terms of individuals’ beliefs and preferences, and so afford individual beliefs and preferences conceptual priority over social norms. I argue that this treatment of social norms is unsustainable. Taking Bicchieri’s theory as an exemplar of this approach, I argue, first, that Bicchieri’s framework bears important structural similarities with the command theory of law; and second, that Hart’s arguments against the command theory of law, suitably recast, reveal the fundamental problems with Bicchieri’s (...) framework. I then draw on Hart’s critique to develop and defend an alternative approach, arguing that we should conceive of social norms as the norms internal to a “socially sanctioned representational practice.” This approach makes social norms conceptually independent of individuals’ beliefs and preferences by locating them within social practices that transcend their individual participants, structuring the social landscape even before individuals form their own beliefs and preferences. (shrink)

Many countries are looking back at the pandemic and reflecting on what could have been done better. The UK COVID-19 Inquiry rumbles on 1 and other influential groups such as the British Medical Association have already reviewed the British response to the pandemic and made recommendations about what should happen in the future. 2 The UK is not alone in looking for lessons from the pandemic with a view to preparing for the next one. Countries with a very different COVID-19 (...) experience, such as Australia and New Zealand, have also commenced national inquiries with a view to becoming better prepared for the next pandemic. 3 4 While many of the issues revolve around public health and government responses, there are also profound ethical issues that demand reflection on the conceptual resources we use when responding to new ethical challenges. The _Journal of Medical Ethics_... (shrink)

Here is an appealing position: one reason to pursue interaction with people from backgrounds that differ from our own is that doing so can improve our moral judgment. As some scholars have noticed, this position seems pedigreed by support from the famed philosophers of human sociability, David Hume and Adam Smith. But regardless of whether Hume or Smith personally held anything like the appealing position, neither might have had theoretically grounded reason to do so. In fact, both philosophers explain moral (...) judgment in ways that seem to present obstacles to the acceptance of the appealing position. This paper entertains the possibility that either of their moral theories contains resources to overcome these obstacles and implies the appealing position. I argue that Smith's theory does so more straightforwardly than Hume's does. This difference, I also argue, reveals something important about the Hume-Smith philosophical relationship. I close by sketching a way to fit the source of the appealing position in Smith's moral psychology with his focus on the desire for mutual sympathy. (shrink)

Philip Reed (2023) argues that discrimination against (non-acutely) dying patients constitutes a unique kind—which he calls terminalism—because their status as persons with terminal illness marks them with a socially salient identity which, by means of direct and indirect discrimination, limits their sets of choices and resources, such as in hospice care or organ transplant policies. 1 Importantly, Reed also argues that while terminalism is an increasingly prevalent normative phenomenon, it has been overlooked in the literature, ‘hiding in plain sight’ as (...) even though we are ‘aware of it at some level’." 1 What could explain this paradox? Drawing from Jeffrey Bishop, Giorgio Agamben, and T. Kenny Fountain, I argue that an institutional episteme and operating assumption of medicine, from the training of medical students, discursively disciplines terminally ill persons as bare life, between medicine’s dichotomy of bodies: neither ‘biovaluable’ (the surplus value of separated human bodily material... (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn described the progress of science as comprising occasional paradigm shifts separated by interludes of ‘normal science’. The paradigm that has held sway since the inception of molecular biology is that genes (mainly) encode proteins. In parallel, theoreticians posited that mutation is random, inferred that most of the genome in complex organisms is non‐functional, and asserted that somatic information is not communicated to the germline. However, many anomalies appeared, particularly in plants and animals: the strange genetic phenomena of paramutation (...) and transvection; introns; repetitive sequences; a complex epigenome; lack of scaling of (protein‐coding) genes and increase in ‘noncoding’ sequences with developmental complexity; genetic loci termed ‘enhancers’ that control spatiotemporal gene expression patterns during development; and a plethora of ‘intergenic’, overlapping, antisense and intronic transcripts. These observations suggest that the original conception of genetic information was deficient and that most genes in complex organisms specify regulatory RNAs, some of which convey intergenerational information. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/qxeGwahBANw. (shrink)

This book sets out for the first time in English and in the terms of modern logic the semantics of the Port Royal Logic of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, perhaps the most influential logic book in the 17th and 18th centuries. Its goal is to explain how the Logic reworks the foundation of pre-Cartesian logic so as to make it compatible with Descartes' metaphysics. The Logic's authors forged a new theory of reference based on the medieval notion of objective (...) being, which is essentially the modern notion of intentional content. Indeed, the book's central aim is to detail how the Logic reoriented semantics so that it centered on the notion of intentional content. This content, which the Logic calls comprehension, consists of an idea's defining modes. Mechanisms are defined in terms of comprehension that rework earlier explanations of central notions like conceptual inclusion, signification, abstraction, idea restriction, sensation, and most importantly within the Logic's metatheory, the concept of idea-extension, which is a new technical concept coined by the Logic. Although Descartes is famous for rejecting "Aristotelianism," he says virtually nothing about technical concepts in logic. His followers fill the gap. By putting to use the doctrine of objective being, which had been a relatively minor part of medieval logic, they preserve more central semantic doctrines, especially a correspondence theory of truth. A recurring theme of the book is the degree to which the Logic hews to medieval theory. This interpretation is at odds with what has become a standard reading among French scholars according to which this 16th-century work should be understood as rejecting earlier logic along with Aristotelian metaphysics, and as putting in its place structures more like those of 19th-century class theory. (shrink)

Medical necessity (claiming that a medical intervention or care is – at minimum – reasonable, appropriate and acceptable) depends on empirical evidence and on the interpretation of that evidence. Evidence and its interpretation define the standard of care. This commentary argues that both the evidence base and its interpretation are currently weak gatekeepers. Empirical meta-research suggests that very few medical interventions have high quality evidence in support of their effectiveness and very few of them also have relatively thorough assessments of (...) their potential harms. Therefore, evidence on the risk-benefit ratios carries almost always very large uncertainty. Arbitration about medical necessity is thus left to the interpretation process. Professional guidelines are notoriously unreliable and biased in this regard. Regulatory approval ends up being the key arbitrator, but over the years the regulatory process has been subverted. Regulatory approval currently does not mean that an intervention has a favourable risk-benefit ratio, but simply that it can be marketed, sold and made profit from. The process leads to a tragedy of commons where the final victim is society at large: medical necessity is invoked as an alibi for medicine to absorb societal resources. (shrink)

Patrick Todd argues for a modified Peircean view on which all future contingents are false. According to Todd, this is the only view that makes sense if we fully embrace an open future, rejecting the idea of actual future history. I argue that supervaluational accounts, on which future contingents are neither true nor false, are fully consistent with the metaphysics of an open future. I suggest that it is Todd's failure to distinguish semantic and postsemantic levels that leads him to (...) suppose otherwise. I also show how one can resist Todd's argument (with Brian Rabern) that the conceptual possibility of omniscience requires us to reject Retro‐closure (). (shrink)

In this paper, we delve into the significant impact of recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the future landscape of work. We discuss the looming possibility of mass unemployment triggered by AI and the societal repercussions of this transition. Despite the challenges this shift presents, we argue that it also unveils opportunities to mitigate social inequalities, combat global poverty, and empower individuals to follow their passions. Amidst this discussion, we also touch upon the existential question of the purpose of (...) human life in a world where machines predominantly perform work. Additionally, we explore the contentious issue of the moral status and rights of AI entities, contemplating the scenario where machines evolve to become sapient and sentient. The paper concludes with a call to action, emphasizing the necessity to acknowledge these potential outcomes and proactively seek solutions, as part of an inevitable journey through the evolution of human society shared with intelligent machines. (shrink)