When a chimpanzee stockpiles rocks as weapons or when a frog sends out mating calls, we might easily assume these animals know their own motivations--that they use the same psychological mechanisms that we do. But as Beyond the Brain indicates, this is a dangerous assumption because animals have different evolutionary trajectories, ecological niches, and physical attributes. How do these differences influence animal thinking and behavior? Removing our human-centered spectacles, Louise Barrett investigates the mind and brain and offers an alternative (...) approach for understanding animal and human cognition. Drawing on examples from animal behavior, comparative psychology, robotics, artificial life, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, Barrett provides remarkable new insights into how animals and humans depend on their bodies and environment--not just their brains--to behave intelligently. Barrett begins with an overview of human cognitive adaptations and how these color our views of other species, brains, and minds. Considering when it is worth having a big brain--or indeed having a brain at all--she investigates exactly what brains are good at. Showing that the brain's evolutionary function guides action in the world, she looks at how physical structure contributes to cognitive processes, and she demonstrates how these processes employ materials and resources in specific environments. Arguing that thinking and behavior constitute a property of the whole organism, not just the brain, Beyond the Brain illustrates how the body, brain, and cognition are tied to the wider world. (shrink)

We propose a new metric for evaluating the informativeness of a set of ratings from a single rater on a given scale. Such evaluations are of interest when raters rate numerous comparable items on the same scale, as occurs in hiring, college admissions, and peer review. Our exposition takes the context of peer review, which involves univariate and multivariate cardinal ratings. We draw on this context to motivate an information-theoretic measure of the refinement of a set of ratings – entropic (...) refinement – as well as two secondary measures. A mathematical analysis of the three measures reveals that only the first, which captures the information content of the ratings, possesses properties appropriate to a refinement metric. Finally, we analyse refinement in real-world grant-review data, finding evidence that overall merit scores are more refined than criterion scores. (shrink)

Ever since Heidegger lectured on Nietzsche, philosophers have stressed the active side of the Übermensch, the self who aggressively consumes and exploits value. Sheridan Hough, however, argues that there is a distinctly receptive and passive side to the Nietzschean self, and thus a pervasive doubleness in Nietzsche's thought that hasn't been explored before. This doubleness is the focus of Hough's attention here. Hough argues that Nietzsche's favorite way to describe the self is to use opposed pairs of metaphors. The (...) sea and the land, the pursuit of archaeology and the "granite stratum" of the self, the child and pregnancy are tropes he uses to show the self as both an active critic of culture and a creation of that culture. Noon and shadow exemplify this dual thinking. The free spirit, according to Nietzsche, is dogged by a shadow, a shadow cast by the free spirit's efforts to overcome himself. Perfect noon—emblematic of the Übermensch—is the moment of ecstatic release for the free spirit. Thus the Übermensch is not a separate "superhuman" being but rather an ecstatic moment in the experience of free spirits. Hough succeeds in showing that the doubleness motif strikes deeper into the heart of Nietzsche's thinking than has been realized. Favorite Nietzschean images, such as that of pregnancy, suddenly take on new meaning when considered in this light. Careful to avoid a reductionist view, Hough adds significantly to our understanding of Nietzsche's contribution to modern thought. (shrink)

At the end of ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ Heidegger offers a brief sentence, ‘Keiner stirbt für blosse Werte’ (No one dies for mere values.). This sentence underscores one of the central themes of Heidegger’s later essays, the nihilism that results from living in an economy of value. This way of life is lived by a certain kind of human being, one who treats a culture’s embedded habits and practices as value systems to be exploited and exhausted. A more (...) difficult problem presents itself: what is it like to be a person who has mastered this economy of value? This paper sets out to examine this question, and to propose another perspective: no one dies for mere values, but how does Heidegger’s rendition of the Übermensch manage to live? How does one live for mere values? I argue that Heidegger’s technological examples (e.g., the hydroelectric plant) have two salient features: each is ‘infectious’ and ‘exhaustible,’ features that are not consonant with the appropriative use of our habits and practices. I will focus on the condition Heidegger describes, and the person who makes this condition manifest, and conclude with a proposal for a ‘Nietzschean corrective.’. (shrink)

This paper considers the question of whether predictions of wrongdoing are relevant to our moral obligations. After giving an analysis of 'won't' claims, the question is separated into two different issues: firstly, whether predictions of wrongdoing affect our objective moral obligations, and secondly, whether self-prediction of wrongdoing can be legitimately used in moral deliberation. I argue for an affirmative answer to both questions, although there are conditions that must be met for self-prediction to be appropriate in deliberation. The discussion illuminates (...) an interesting and significant tension between agency and prediction. (shrink)

Many children and adults experience significant breakdown in the use of language. The resulting pragmatic disorders present a considerable barrier to effective communication. This book is the first critical examination of the current state of our knowledge of pragmatic disorders and provides a comprehensive overview of the main concepts and theories in pragmatics. It examines the full range of pragmatic disorders that occur in children and adults and discusses how they are assessed and treated by clinicians. Louise Cummings attempts (...) to integrate the fields of pragmatics, language pathology and cognitive science by examining the ways in which pragmatics can make a useful contribution to debates about cognitive theories of autism. The reader is encouraged to think in a critical fashion about how clinicians, experimentalists and theorists deal with pragmatic issues. (shrink)

This essay examines Catharine Cockburn's moral philosophy as it is developed in her Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. In this work, Cockburn argues that Locke's epistemological principles provide a foundation for the knowledge of natural law. Sheridan suggests that Cockburn's objective in defending Locke's moral epistemology was conditioned by her own prior commitment to a significantly un-Lockean theory of morality. In exploring Cockbum's views on morality in terms of their divergence from Locke's, the author hopes to (...) underscore the extent of Cockburn's intellectual independence and her philosophical creativity. (shrink)

: This essay examines Catharine Cockburn's moral philosophy as it is developed in her Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. In this work, Cockburn argues that Locke's epistemological principles provide a foundation for the knowledge of natural law. Sheridan suggests that Cockburn's objective in defending Locke's moral epistemology was conditioned by her own prior commitment to a significantly un-Lockean theory of morality. In exploring Cockburn's views on morality in terms of their divergence from Locke's, the author hopes (...) to underscore the extent of Cockburn's intellectual independence and her philosophical creativity. (shrink)

This book is an analysis of Kierkegaard's account of the self from a unique perspective, that of a character introduced by one of Kierkegaard's pseudonymous authors, Johannes de silentio. This character is seen once in a brief vignette in Fear and Trembling, but Hough argues that this character is a necessary lens for looking across Kierkegaard's vast authorship, both the pseudonymous works as well as the works that Kierkegaard himself signed. This character sketch, often overlooked in Kierkegaard scholarship, is crucial (...) to understanding what Kierkegaard calls the life of faith, and, therefore, the nature of a fully realized human self. (shrink)

This article argues that, rather than thinking that our ethics has to fall back on Kantian and proto-Christian claims, Sellars should have appealed to the framework of Buddhist ethics.

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question of whether certain experiences that originate in causes other than bereavement are properly termed ‘grief’. To do so, we focus on widespread experiences of grief that have been reported during the Covid-19 pandemic. We consider two potential objections to a more permissive use of the term: grief is, by definition, a response to a death; grief is subject to certain norms that apply only to the case of bereavement. Having shown that these objections are unconvincing, (...) we sketch a positive case for a conception of grief that is not specific to bereavement, by noting some features that grief following bereavement shares with other experiences of loss. (shrink)

The first truly multidisciplinary text of its kind, this book offers an original analysis of the current state of linguistic pragmatics. Cummings argues that no study of pragmatics can reasonably neglect the historical and contemporary influences on this.

In this paper, I consider the implications of grief for philosophical theorising about absence experience. I argue that whilst some absence experiences that occur in grief might be explained by extant philosophical accounts of absence experience, others need different treatment. I propose that grieving subjects' descriptions of feeling as if the world seems empty or a part of them seems missing can be understood as referring to a distinctive type of absence experience. In these profound absence experiences, I will argue, (...) the absence of a person as a condition on various possibilities is made manifest in the structure of experience over time. Thus, by paying close attention to grief, we can see that even accounts of absence experience that are presented as in competition with one another may not be so, and that to explain all kinds of absence experience we sometimes need to appeal to something overlooked in other accounts, and which is neither straightforwardly perceptual or cognitive. I also suggest that we would have good reason to take such experiences to be part of and not merely psychological effects of grief. (shrink)

This paper discusses the relationship between internationalisation, mobility, quality and equality in the context of recent developments in research policy in the European Research Area (ERA). Although these developments are specifically concerned with the growth of research capacity at European level, the issues raised have much broader relevance to those concerned with research policy and highly skilled mobility. The paper draws on a wealth of recent research examining the relationship between mobility and career progression with particular reference to a recently (...) completed empirical study of doctoral mobility in the social sciences (Ackers et al. Doctoral Mobility in the Social Sciences. Report to the NORFACE ERA-Network, 2007). The paper is structured as follows. The first section introduces recent policy developments including the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers and the European Commission’s Green Paper on the ERA. The discussion focuses on concerns around the definition of ‘mobility’ and the tendency (in both policy circles and academic research) to conflate different forms of mobility and to equate these with notions of excellence or quality. Scientific mobility is shaped as much by ‘push’ factors (limited opportunity) as it is by the ‘draw’ of excellence. Scientists are exercising a degree of ‘choice’ within a specific and individualised framework of constraints. The following sections consider some of the ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ factors shaping scientific mobility and the influence that these have on the relationship between mobility, internationalisation and excellence. The paper concludes that mobility is not an outcome in its own right and must not be treated as such (as an implicit indicator of internationalisation). To do so contributes to differential opportunity in scientific labour markets reducing both efficiency and equality. (shrink)

This book is a translation into English of La religion grecque by Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, described by Dr Simon Price as 'an excellent book, by far the best introduction to the subject in any language'. It is the purpose of the book to consider how religious beliefs and cultic rituals were given expression in the world of the Greek citizen - the functions performed by the religious personnel, and the place that religion occupied in individual, (...) social and political life. The chapters cover first ritual and then myth, rooting the account in the practices of the classical city while also taking seriously the world of the imagination. For this edition the bibliography has been substantially revised to meet the needs of a mainly student, English-speaking readership. The book is enriched throughout by illustrations, and by quotations from original sources. (shrink)

Among semanticists and philosophers of language, there has been a recent outburst of interest in predicates such as delicious, called predicates of personal taste (PPTs, e.g. Lasersohn 2005). Somewhat surprisingly, the question of whether or how we can distinguish aesthetic predicates from PPTs has hardly been addressed at all in this recent work. It is precisely this question that we address. We investigate linguistic criteria that we argue can be used to delineate the class of specifically aesthetic adjectives. We show (...) that there are, in fact, good motivations for keeping PPTs and aesthetic predicates apart: the semantic structure of the former, but not the latter, entails an experiencer. There are many adjectives whose semantic structure arguably also entails an experiencer, yet which are readily used in expressing aesthetic judgments. Adjectives such as provocative or moving are a case in point, since as adjectives they arguably maintain the experiencer argument from the verb they are derived from. Nevertheless, when we describe, say, a sculpture as provocative, or a theater performance as moving, we clearly make aesthetic judgments. The difficult question, then, is to articulate the relationship between an aesthetic predicate (of which beautiful and ugly are paradigms) and other predicates that just happen to be used in making an aesthetic judgment. Tightly related to this point is the more general question of the relationship between an evaluative predicate and a predicate that occurs in an evaluative judgment. One of our aims is to make some progress in addressing these questions. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that olfactory experience, like visual experience, is exteroceptive: it seems to one that odours, when one smells them, are external to the body, as it seems to one that objects are external to the body when one sees them. Where the sense of smell has been discussed by philosophers, it has often been supposed to be non-exteroceptive. The strangeness of this philosophical orthodoxy makes it natural to ask what would lead to its widespread acceptance. I (...) argue that philosophers have been misled by a visuocentric model of what exteroceptivity involves. Since olfaction lacks the spatial features that make vision exteroceptive the conclusion that olfaction is nonexteroceptive can appear quite compelling, particularly in the absence of an alternative model of exteroceptivity appropriate to olfaction. I offer a model according to which odours seem to be external to the body because they seem to be brought into the nose from without by sniffing and breathing through the nostrils. I argue that some natural-seeming objections to this model rely on substantive assumptions about how the senses are distinguished from one another, and how perceptual experience is put together out of its modality-specific parts, that require defence. (shrink)

As a gynecologic surgeon with a focus on infertility, I frequently hold complex discussions with patients, exploring with them the risks and benefits of surgical options. In the past, we physicians may have expected our patients to simply defer to our expertise and choose from the options we presented. In our contemporary era, however, patients frequently request options not favored by their physicians and even some they've found themselves online. In reproductive endocrinology and infertility, the range of options that may (...) be offered or that patients may themselves seek out is continuously widening. Physicians certainly seek to find the option that will result in the best outcome for their patients, but the information to guide us in achieving the best outcome can be vague or conflicting. Add to this the financial and emotional pressures bearing on patients seeking assisted reproduction. In this essay, I explore the extent to which clinicians in reproductive medicine should follow patient requests with which they disagree or instead try to persuade the patient to do something else or simply refuse outright to meet the request. And if persuasion is to be used, what would be legitimate methods? Clearly, coercion is unacceptable, but the line between persuasion and coercion can be elusive. At what point can or should clinicians resist such requests—and to what degree? (shrink)

BackgroundDealing with end of life is challenging for patients and health professionals alike. The situation becomes even more challenging when a patient requests a legally permitted medical service that a health professional is unable to provide due to a conflict of conscience. Such a scenario arises when Victorian health professionals, with a conscientious objection (CO) to voluntary assisted dying (VAD), are presented with patients who request VAD or merely ask about VAD. The Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) recognizes the (...) inherent conflict of conscience that may arise for some health professionals when asked to provide VAD and responds by affording broad protection to conscientious objectors who wish to refuse to take part in the VAD process.MethodsSeventeen semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with Victorian health professionals with a self-identified CO to VAD in the lead-up to the implementation of VAD in Victoria. Interviews explored how participants anticipated they would manage their CO in practice. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed thematically.ResultsOur results reveal that the way in which health professionals claimed they would approach CO conversations is variable and was dependant on the strength of their opposition to VAD. We categorized conscientious objectors according to their approach as either dissuasive non-referrers, passive non-referrers, facilitators or negotiators. Our study also explores the perceived difficulties of exercising one’s CO as identified by our participants.ConclusionThe broad protection offered by the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic) encourages a range of behaviors from conscientious objectors, due to the minimal obligations imposed. In order to assist conscientious objectors, more policy, institutional guidance, and education needs to be available to conscientious objectors explicitly addressing how to effectively manage one’s CO. Such guidance is imperative to ensuring that their moral integrity is preserved and that they are exercising their CO appropriately. (shrink)

Abstract: In this paper I offer an account of a particular variety of perception of absence, namely, visual perception of empty space. In so doing, I aim to make explicit the role that seeing empty space has, implicitly, in Mike Martin's account of the visual field. I suggest we should make sense of the claim that vision has a field—in Martin's sense—in terms of our being aware of its limitations or boundaries. I argue that the limits of the visual field (...) are our own sensory limitations, and that we are aware of them as such. Seeing empty space, I argue, involves a structural feature of experience that constitutes our awareness of our visual sensory limitations, and thus, in virtue of which vision has a field. (shrink)

Many people accept, at least implicitly, what I call the asymmetry claim: the view that moral realism is more defensible than aesthetic realism. This article challenges the asymmetry claim. I argue that it is surprisingly hard to find points of contrast between the two domains that could justify their very different treatment with respect to realism. I consider five potentially promising ways to do this, and I argue that all of them fail. If I am right, those who accept the (...) asymmetry claim have a significant burden of proof. (shrink)

The aim of this study was to explore the influences, processes and environments that shaped the practice of European nurses for indigenous New Zealand (NZ) Māori communities who were being overwhelmed by introduced infectious diseases. Historical data were accessed from multiple archival sources and analysed through the lens of colonial theory. Through their work early last century, NZ nurses actively gained professional status and territory through their work with Māori. By living and working alongside Māori, they learned to practise in (...) new ways that influenced Māori health. By developing a new role in new professional territory, nurses extended their practice to include health promotion as well as disease prevention. Māori survival from epidemics improved, and the population grew over that period. For Māori, however, Eurocentric care alleviated their immediate health problems, but the detrimental impact of the mechanisms of colonisation overall has continued to the present day. (shrink)

Background Ethical challenges constitute an inseparable part of daily decision-making processes in all areas of healthcare. Ethical challenges are associated with moral distress that can lead to burnout. Clinical ethics support has proven useful to address and manage such challenges. This paper explores how prehospital emergency personnel manage ethical challenges. The study is part of a larger action research project to develop and test an approach to clinical ethics support that is sensitive to the context of emergency medicine. Methods We (...) explored ethical challenges and management strategies in three focus groups, with 15 participants in total, each attended by emergency medical technicians, paramedics, and prehospital anaesthesiologists. Focus groups were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The approach to data analysis was systematic text condensation approach. Results We stratified the management of ethical challenges into actions before, during, and after incidents. Before incidents, participants stressed the importance of mutual understandings, shared worldviews, and a supportive approach to managing emotions. During an incident, the participants employed moral perception, moral judgments, and moral actions. After an incident, the participants described sharing ethical challenges only to a limited extent as sharing was emotionally challenging, and not actively supported by workplace culture, or organisational procedures. The participants primarily managed ethical challenges informally, often using humour to cope. Conclusion Our analysis supports and clarifies that confidence, trust, and safety in relation to colleagues, management, and the wider organisation are essential for prehospital emergency personnel to share ethical challenges and preventing moral distress turning into burnout. (shrink)

The literature on the aetiology of serial killing has benefited from analyses which offer an alternative perspective to individual/psychological approaches and consider serial murder as a sociological phenomenon. The main argument brought to bear within this body of work identifies the socio-economic and cultural conditions of modernity as enabling and legitimating the motivations and actions of the serial killer. This article interrogates this work from the standpoint of a gendered reading of modernity. Using the Yorkshire Ripper case, it emphasizes how (...) in addition to the political economy, gender relations and masculinity shape the dynamics of serial murder and its representation. (shrink)

This paper explores the intellectual relationship between three eighteenth century women thinkers: Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and the Bluestockings Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot. All three share a virtue-ethical approach according to which human happiness depends on the harmonization of our essentially rational and sociable natures. The affinity between the Bluestockings and Cockburn, I show, illuminates important new avenues for thinking about the Bluestockings as philosophers in their own right and for thinking about the feminist dimensions of Cockburn's morality. Further, their (...) shared moral outlook sheds interesting light on the burgeoning feminism of the eighteenth century and the contributions of Cockburn and the Bluestockings to a new and growing discourse about women and their social and political role. (shrink)

In the past few years, scholars have been questioning whether the current approach in data ethics based on the higher level case studies and general principles is effective. In particular, some have been complaining that such an approach to ethics is difficult to be applied and to be taught in the context of data science. In response to these concerns, there have been discussions about how ethics should be “embedded” in the practice of data science, in the sense of showing (...) how ethical issues emerge in small technical choices made by data scientists in their day-to-day activities, and how such an approach can be used to teach data ethics. However, a precise description of how such proposals have to be theoretically conceived and could be operationalized has been lacking. In this article, we propose a full-fledged characterization of ‘embedding’ ethics, and how this can be applied especially to the problem of teaching data science ethics. Using the emerging model of ‘microethics’, we propose a way of teaching daily responsibility in digital activities that is connected to the higher level ethical challenges discussed in digital/data ethics. We ground this microethical approach into a virtue theory framework, by stressing that the goal of a microethics is to foster the cultivation of moral virtues. After delineating this approach of embedding ethics in theoretical detail, this article discusses a concrete example of how such a ‘micro-virtue ethics’ approach could be practically taught to data science students. (shrink)

Philosophy has a language problem. A recent study by Schwitzgebel, Huang, Higgins and Gonzalez-Cabrera (2018) found that, in a sample of papers published in elite journals, 97% of citations were to work originally written in English. 73% of this same sample didn’t cite any paper that had been originally written in a language other than English. Finally, a staggering 96% of elite journal editorial boards are primarily affiliated with an Anglophone university. This is consistent with earlier data suggesting that journal (...) submissions from countries that are outside the Anglophone world and Europe have disturbingly low chances of being accepted. The route forward is not entirely clear. What is clear, however, is that this structural disadvantage deserves closer philosophical and empirical attention. We owe this to current and future members of our philosophical community who speak English non-natively. We also need this if we want to make sure philosophy is enriched by a diverse group of thinkers who have a grasp of different languages, and of the cultures strongly associated with them. (shrink)