Psychologists, as well as other mental health professionals, face unique demands in the workplace that create increased risk for burnout. This article discusses burnout prevalence and detection, including issues of complexity regarding diagnosis and assessment. An ethical lens is utilized to explore problems that may arise due to burnout, and the ethical responsibility of practicing self-care. Recommendations for graduate clinical training programs as well as practicing professionals are suggested, including strategies for monitoring self and others for warning signs of burnout (...) and implementing self-care. (shrink)

The fragility of the subject is a recurring issue in the work of Anne Enright, one of Ireland's most remarkable and innovative writers. It is this specific interest, together with her attempt to make women into subjects, that inevitably links her work to Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger's theory of the matrixial borderspace, a feminine sphere that coexists with the Lacanian symbolic order and that, even before our entrance into this linguistic system, informs our subjectivity. By turning to a point in time before (...) language—the encounter between “self” and “other” during pregnancy—both Enright and Ettinger test the boundaries of and the gaps within the linguistic system. It is the going before language that ultimately enables both to go beyond some of the most persistent dualisms present within the linguistic system and to create room for an alternative—a feminine—understanding of the ethical relationality between self and other. (shrink)

Prenatal ultrasound use is skyrocketing despite limited evidence of improved outcomes. One factor driving this trend is the widely recognized psychological appeal of real-time fetal imaging. Meanwhile, considering imperfect safety evidence, U.S. professional guidelines dictate that prenatal ultrasound—a screening test—should be governed by expected clinical benefits—an opportunity for intervention. However, when women’s healthcare professionals themselves are pregnant, their access to ultrasound technology permits informal, personal use that may deviate from standard-of-care, e.g., for reassurance. Highlighting a poignant case wherein a pregnant (...) obstetrician’s personal ultrasound use had unforeseen negative consequences, we explore this issue within context of professional ethics and informal medical care. We discuss how women’s health professionals’ self-care may influence and inform prenatal care at large. We advocate curtailing informal prenatal ultrasound use, but also potentially broadening accepted indications for or relaxing proscriptions against ultrasounds for patients. Further research and updated, evidence-based, ethically-sound guidelines are needed. (shrink)

La denominada “crisis ambiental” que advierte sobre los límites materiales del planeta ha dado lugar a una extensa producción teórica durante décadas. Producción que, como regla general, ha relegado la relectura de los textos clásicos de las ciencias sociales. El presente artículo rescata algunos debates contemporáneos relacionados con la lectura en clave ecológica de la obra de Marx. Obra que adquiere especial importancia al momento de comprender las formas que toma la explotación de la naturaleza bajo el sistema capitalista, problemática (...) resignificada en el marco de las discusiones actuales sobre sustentabilidad ambiental. (shrink)

Most decision-making research in economics focuses on individual decisions. Yet, we know, from psychological research in particular, that individual preferences can be sensitive to social pressures. In this paper, we study the impact of a group environment on individual preferences for risky and ambiguous prospects. In our experiment, each participant was invited to make a series of lottery-choice decisions in two different conditions. In the Alone condition, individuals made private choices, whereas in the Group condition, individuals belonged to a three-person (...) group and group members’ choices were aggregated according to either a majority or unanimity rule. This design allows us to study the impact of a group environment on individuals’ attitude towards both risky and ambiguous prospects, while controlling for the decision rule used in the group. Our experimental results show that when individuals are in the Group condition, they tend to be less risk averse and more ambiguity averse than when they are not part of a group. Our experiment also suggests that the decision rule matters as it shows that these two trends tend to be stronger when the group implements a unanimity rule. Specifically, we found that individuals who belong to a group implementing a unanimity rule are significantly less risk averse than individuals who belong to a group that relies on the majority rule. We obtained a similar—but non-significant—result under ambiguity. (shrink)

Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary hypotheses about the cognitive and epistemic roles of emotions, is able to (...) explain key characteristics of body checking, including how body checking behavior becomes habitual and compulsive. (shrink)

A number of authors have recently developed and defended various versions of ‘normative essentialism’ about the mental, i.e. the claim that propositional attitudes are constitutively or essentially governed by normative principles. I present two arguments to the effect that this claim cannot be right. First, if propositional attitudes were essentially normative, propositional attitude ascriptions would require non-normative justification, but since this is not a requirement of folk-psychology, propositional attitudes cannot be essentially normative. Second, if propositional attitudes were essentially normative, propositional (...) attitude ascriptions could not support normative rationality judgments, which would remove the central appeal of normative essentialism. (shrink)

Disparities in maternal morbidity and mortality for Latinx populations are a paradigmatic example of the now widely acknowledged structural racism in U.S. health care that predisposed minorities to...

For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of events acting as cause and effect are specified. In recent (...) years, philosophers have extended the contrastive theory of causation to encompass singular causation as well. In this article, I argue that this extension of the theory was a mistake. Although general causation and causal explanation may well be contrastive in nature, singular causation is not. (shrink)

Should nurses have their own ethics to match specific problems met in their daily routines? How do nurses act in a society that is changing from a 'monocultural' to an 'intercultural' structure? What are the ethical consequences of these changes for their many tasks? How can the ethical aspects be taught to nurses? This article describes the current status of nursing ethics in the curriculum taught in schools of higher education for nurses in The Netherlands. Aspects of the debate on (...) nursing ethics are outlined and ideas about its future as a subject and discipline in nurse education are offered. Est-ce que le personnel infirmier doit avoir son éthique à soi pour faire face aux problèmes spécifiques dans la routine journalière? Et comment les infirmiers/ères se comportent-ils dans une société qui est en train de changer de la 'monoculture' en 'interculture'? Quels sont les conséquences éthiques de leur tâches? Comment peuvent ces aspets éthiques être enseignés aux infirmiers/ères? Cet article parle de l'état courant de l'éthique infirmier dans l'enseignement dans les écoles de l'education supérieure pour infirmiers/ères en Hollande. En plus, il donne une esquisse de la discussion sur l'éthique infirmier et donne quelques idées pour le futur de l'éthique infirmier comme sujet et discipline en soi dans l'éducation des infirmiers/ères. Sollte das Pflegepersonal seine eigene Ethik haben um den spezifischen Problemen seiner täglichen Routine gewachsen zu sein? Wie soll das Pflegepersonal in einer Gesellschaft handeln, die im Wechsel ist von einer 'Monokultur' zu einer 'Interkultur'? Was sind die ethischen Konsequenzen ihres handeln? Wie können diese ethischen Aspekte dem Pflegepersonal gelehrt werden? Dieser Artikel beschreibt den gegenwärtigen Zustand der Krankenpflege-Ethik im Lehrplan der Schulen für Höhere Ausbildung für Pflegepersonal in Holland. Er gibt auch einen Umriss über die Debatte über Krankenpflege-Ethik und formuliert einige Ideen für die Zukunft der Krankenpflege- Ethik als ein Thema und eine Disziplin in der Ausbildung des Pflegepersonals. (shrink)

This paper seeks to find possibilities forreconciliation of the implementation of theprecautionary principle and the promotion ofinternational trade of genetically modified organisms,based on the assumption that a sustainabledevelopment is a right objective to strive for. Itstarts with an explanation of the background and therole of the precautionary principle, and describes inwhat way measures based on the precautionary principlecan easily lead to the creation of trade barriers. Thearticle then examines to what extent the WTO (WorldTrade Organisation) Agreements allow theimplementation of the (...) precautionary principle. Inaddition, structural conflicts between the perceptionof the precautionary principle and the concept oftrade liberalisation will be evoked. The last sectionof the paper analyses to what extent the WTO rulesprovide possibilities to avoid or solve theseconflicts in order to attempt to answer the mainquestion: are the precautionary principle and theinternational trade of genetically modified organismsreconcilable? (shrink)

Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss argue that any truth norm for belief, linking the correctness of believing p with the truth of p, is bound to be uninformative, since applying the norm to determine the correctness of a belief as to whether p, would itself require forming such a belief. I argue that this conflates the condition under which the norm deems beliefs correct, with the psychological state an agent must be in to apply the norm. I also show that (...) since the truth norm conflicts with other possible norms that clearly are informative, the truth norm must itself be informative. (shrink)

Occupy Wall Street, Indignés, Nuit Debout - plus que jamais la question est posée de définir la vie que nous souhaitons choisir et vivre. Une vie vécue est inséparable de ses formes, de ses modalités, de ses régimes, de ses gestes, de ses façons, de ses allures... qui sont déjà des idées. Le monde, tel que nous le partageons et lui donnons sens, ne se découpe pas seulement en individus, en classes ou en groupes, mais aussi en "styles", qui sont (...) autant de phrasés du vivre, animé de formes attirantes ou repoussantes, habitables ou inhabitables, c'est-à-dire de formes qualifiées : des formes qui comptent, investies de valeurs et de raisons d'y tenir, de s'y tenir, et aussi bien de les combattre. C'est sur ce plan des formes de la vie que se formulent aujourd'hui beaucoup de nos attentes, de nos revendications, et surtout de nos jugements. C'est toujours d'elles que l'on débat, et avec elles ce sont des idées complètes du vivre que l'on défend ou que l'on accuse. Une forme de vie ne s'éprouve que sous l'espèce de l'engagement, là où toute existence, personnelle ou collective, risque son idée. Vouloir défendre sa forme de vie, sans tapage, en la vivant, mais aussi savoir en douter et en exiger de tout autres, voilà à quoi l'histoire la plus contemporaine redonne de la gravité. Bien au-delà du champ de l'art, Marielle Macé propose la construction critique d'une véritable stylistique de l'existence. Cela suppose de s'intéresser sans préjugé à tout ce qu'engagent les variations formelles de la vie sur elle-même - styles, manières, façons - et de ne pas traiter forcément de vies éclatantes, triomphantes, d'apparences prisées ou de corps élégants. Ce n'est pas seulement la littérature mais bien toutes les sciences humaines qui, pour comprendre le monde immédiat, sous nos yeux, doivent s'y rendre vraiment attentives. (shrink)

According to the thesis of pragmatic encroachment, practical circumstances can affect whether someone is in a position to know or rationally believe a proposition. For example, whether it is epistemically rational for a person to believe that the bank will be open on Saturdays, can depend not only on the strength of the person’s evidence, but also on how practically important it is for the person not to be wrong about the bank being open on Saturdays. In recent years, philosophers (...) have argued that moral considerations can also affect the epistemic rationality of belief, thus giving rise to moral encroachment. In previous work (Steglich-Petersen, forthcoming a), I have developed an explanation of pragmatic encroachment grounded in an instrumentalist theory of epistemic reasons. Here, I argue that this explanation extends to moral encroachment as well, including so-called “radical” moral encroachment. I also show how this explanation dispels the worry raised by Gerken (2019), that pragmatic encroachment might give rise to morally adverse consequences in the form of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the plausibility of a certain position in the philosophical literature within which the Repugnant Conclusion is treated, not as repugnant, but as an acceptable implication of the total welfare principle. I will confine myself to focus primarily on Törbjörn Tännsjö’s presentation. First, I reconstruct Tännsjö’s view concerning the repugnance of the RC in two arguments. The first argument is criticized for (a) addressing the wrong comparison, (b) relying on the controversial claim that (...) the privileged people in our actual world only have lives barely worth living and (c) that Tännsjö’s identification between Z-lives and privileged lives is restricted to certain versions of the notion ‘barely worth living’ – a restriction that weakens the force of the argument. The second argument is criticized because some of it premises entailed (b) and (d) for its implausible claim that non-imaginable outcomes cannot be compared. (shrink)

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the (...) surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Decentralized biobanking “de-bi” applies blockchain technology and web3 values to embed the procedural principles of transparency, accountability, and inclusion into the biomedical research ecosyst...

Many have found it plausible that practical circumstances can affect whether someone is in a position to know or rationally believe a proposition. For example, whether it is rational for a person to believe that the bank will be open tomorrow, can depend not only on the person’s evidence, but also on how practically important it is for the person not to be wrong about the bank being open tomorrow. This supposed phenomenon is known as “pragmatic encroachment” on knowledge and (...) rational belief. Assuming that the phenomenon is real, I ask what explains it. I argue that a variant of instrumentalism about epistemic reasons offers a natural explanation, that at the same time is able avoid commitment to a more radical form of pragmatism. (shrink)

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

The assumption in current U.S. mainstream medicine is that birthing requires hospitalization. In fact, while the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists supports the right of every birthing person to make a medically informed decision about their delivery, they do not recommend home birth owing to data indicating greater neonatal morbidity and mortality. In this article, we examine the evidence surrounding home birth in the United States and its current limitations, as well as the ethical considerations around birth setting.

A popular account of epistemic justification holds that justification, in essence, aims at truth. An influential objection against this account points out that it is committed to holding that only true beliefs could be justified, which most epistemologists regard as sufficient reason to reject the account. In this paper I defend the view that epistemic justification aims at truth, not by denying that it is committed to epistemic justification being factive, but by showing that, when we focus on the relevant (...) sense of ‘justification’, it isn’t in fact possible for a belief to be at once justified and false. To this end, I consider and reject three popular intuitions speaking in favor of the possibility of justified false beliefs, and show that a factive account of epistemic justification is less detrimental to our normal belief forming practices than often supposed. (shrink)

In his Knowledge and its Limits (2000) Timothy Williamson argues that knowledge can be causally efficacious and as such figure in psychological explanation. His argument for this claim figures as a response to a key objection to his overall thesis that knowing is a mental state. In this paper I argue that although Williamson succeeds in establishing that knowledge in some cases is essential to the power of certain causal explanations of actions, he fails to do this in a way (...) that establishes knowledge itself as a causal factor. The argument thus fails to support his overall claim that knowledge should be conceived as a state of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Respire, Con-spireMarielle Macé (bio)Translated by Alexis Ann StanleyA rather suffocating atmosphere is becoming our customary environment, ecologically, politically, and socially. It is time to affirm "a universal right to breathe"–what Achille Mbembe called the essential demand for justice that escalated during the age of the Anthropocene and is now crudely reemerging in the current pandemic's attack on the respiratory system.But the right to breathe is not "merely" the right (...) to live, to breathe in unpolluted spaces, or to share clean air; it is also the right to a breathable life, a life worth caring for. It is the right to love life, life with and among one another: the right to fraternize in and through breath, the right to detoxify our relationships and breathe with others. To respire with: to con-spire.Because in order to breathe, one needs air, but one especially needs other living beings, a world and landscapes with which to breathe, in which to breathe, and which can breathe through us. To breathe is not only to maintain one's own breath or nourish one's own organic system as if it lived an unconnected life; it is to acquiesce to the world, to the fact that there is a world—this one, precisely—and to participate in it. A person who breathes, in fact, partakes both in and of the world. Moreover, they make a gift to it, contributing to the way of the world in its entirety by a breath that tightly holds the ties binding each of our bodies to the current state of the living._______The lack of air, the feeling of a stifling age, even the fear of overwhelming suffocation—such is our current "natural" condition, the primary characteristic not only of our virtually toxic living environment, but also of our smothering, asphyxiating political condition wrought with violence and discrimination. Such also is the state of our social condition—the way we (rather poorly) create community—or rather, of our distinct social conditions. For there is a very inequitable distribution of the right to air or to breathe determined by which lives "count" and which do not.The Anthropocene is perhaps the age of a new respiratory 'condition.' Toxic fumes, pestilential odors, extensive carbon consumption, agro-chemical [End Page 177] discharge, microparticles, deforestation and soil asphyxiation, radioactive clouds with phantom trajectories and invisible powers of penetration… the history of industrial modernity is that of "the continuous and large-scale alteration of life's atmospheric conditions" (Zimmer 25). Recently, wildfires affecting America and Europe have been adding their horrifying fumes to century-old pollution. Even clouds ("the clouds up there, the marvelous clouds" of Baudelaire) are being targeted: China recently announced the country's intention to accelerate its cloud seeding program1 (in 2008, over one thousand shells loaded with silver iodide were dispersed in order to clear the skies of Beijing and prevent rain from ruining the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. This technique is also used more and more frequently to generate rainfall and avoid agricultural droughts. This type of 'sky colonization' or climate militarization is a profanation of language as much as of nature: to "sow the clouds" (or "grow meat")—even language tells us something is wrong…)It took a great amount of time and much denial before widespread bodily infection and industrial pollution's public health effects could be recognized. Industrialists may object (at times with doctors), but in the most working-class regions, bodies know: "lungs and our sense of smell protest in their own way against any conclusive evidence which would exonerate factories" (Zimmer 23).The history of pollution is, in fact, also a question of exploitation as well as a social history: that of the unequal distribution of air and the inequitable exposure (depending on one's living milieux) to what is oppressive, stifling—in a word, unbreathable. Unsanitary housing, proximity to mines or factories, and lack of access to healthcare are always factors; respiratory diseases are the most prevalent of occupational illnesses2; and the staggering surge in childhood lead poisoning in the very heart of our capitals—the weakest of bodies have... (shrink)

I argue that, contrary to intuition, it would be both possible and permissible to design people - whether artificial or organic - who by their nature desire to do tasks we find unpleasant.

Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency is available: transparency can be explained by the aim one necessarily adopts in deliberating about whether to (...) believe that p. To show this, I reconsider the role of the concept of belief in doxastic deliberation, and I defuse 'the teleologian's dilemma'. (shrink)

Common hospital and surgical center responses to the Covid‐19 pandemic included curtailing “elective” procedures, which are typically determined based on implications for physical health and survival. However, in the focus solely on physical health and survival, procedures whose main benefits advance components of well‐being beyond health, including self‐determination, personal security, economic stability, equal respect, and creation of meaningful social relationships, have been disproportionately deprioritized. We describe how female reproduction‐related procedures, including abortion, surgical sterilization, reversible contraception devices and in vitro fertilization, (...) have been broadly categorized as “elective,” a designation that fails to capture the value of these procedures or their impact on women's overall well‐being. We argue that corresponding restrictions and delays of these procedures are problematically reflective of underlying structural views that marginalize women's rights and interests and therefore threaten to propagate gender injustice during the pandemic and beyond. Finally, we propose a framework for triaging reproduction‐related procedures during Covid‐19 that is more individualized, accounts for their significance for comprehensive well‐being, and can be used to inform resumption of operations as well as subsequent restriction phases. (shrink)

In the USA, there are missed opportunities to diagnose hepatitis C virus in pregnancy because screening is currently risk-stratified and thus primarily limited to individuals who disclose history of injection drug use or sexually transmitted infection risks. Over the past decade, the opioid epidemic has dramatically increased incidence of HCV and a feasible, well-tolerated cure was introduced. Considering these developments, recent evidence suggests universal HCV screening in pregnancy would be cost-effective and several professional organisations have called for updated national policy. (...) Historically, universal screening has been financially disincentivised on the healthcare system level, particularly since new diagnoses may generate an obligation to provide expensive treatments to a population largely reliant on public health resources. Here, we provide ethical arguments supporting universal HCV screening in pregnancy grounded in obligations to respect for persons, beneficence and justice. First, universal prenatal HCV screening respects pregnant women as persons by promoting their long-term health outside of pregnancy. Additionally, universal screening would optimise health outcomes within current treatment guidelines and may support research on treatment during pregnancy. Finally, universal screening would avoid potential harms of risk-stratifying pregnant women by highly stigmatised substance use and sexual behaviours. (shrink)

Background: Little is known about U.S. healthcare provider views and practices regarding evidence, counseling, and shared decision-making about in-hospital versus out-of-hospital birth settings. Methods: We conducted 19 in-depth, semistructured, qualitative interviews of eight obstetricians, eight midwives, and three pediatricians from across the United States. Interviews explored healthcare providers’ interpretation of the current evidence and their personal and professional experiences with childbirth within the existing medical, ethical, and legal context in the United States. Results: Themes emerged concerning risks and benefits, decision-making, (...) and patient-provider power dynamics. Collectively, the narratives illuminated fundamental ideological tensions between in- and out-of-hospital providers arising from divergent assignment of value to described risks and benefits. The majority of physicians focused on U.S.-specific data demonstrating increased neonatal morbidity and mortality associated with delayed access to hospital-based interventions, thereby justifying hospital birth as the standard of care. By contrast, midwives emphasized data demonstrating fewer interventions and superior maternal and neonatal outcomes in high-income European countries, where out-of-hospital birth is more common for low-risk birthing people. A key gap in counseling was revealed, as no interviewees offered anticipatory counseling regarding birth setting options. Providers directly and indirectly illustrated the propensity for asymmetric power relations between birth providers and pregnant people, especially in hospital settings. Conclusions: The narratives highlight the common goal of optimizing maternal and neonatal outcomes despite tensions arising from divergent prioritization of specific maternal and neonatal risks. Our findings suggest opportunities to foster collaboration and optimize outcomes via mutual respect and improved integration of care. (shrink)

Tirant son titre du prochain manifeste à paraître des deux auteurs, ce bref article met en relief la complicité intellectuelle entre Stefano Harney et Fred Moten au sein de nos sensibilités contemporaines. Il suggère quelques façons de les entendre dialoguer ensemble – entre eux, avec nous, parmi nous.

Conscience – a catholic anthropological vision In the catholic tradition conscience always played an important role as visible in the ‘clausula Petri’ (Ac 5,30-33) or in Paul’s belief in its wisdom (Rm 2,14-16). Conscience can break rules (‘epikeia’), but should not stand up against the church as such. Luther’s historical deed left behind a distrust in conscience in the Catholic Church; it took 400 years to restore Paul’s vision of the conscience as the highest authority – if it is formed (...) and reaches the state of maturity. By his conscience, man is called to be as God created him; he is called by others to develop and to respect their dignity. He is also called by the world to form it according to its higher possibilities which cannot be realized but by man. Conscience is God’s voice in the person where his promises can be heard. Though conscience is free, it is the place where responsibility is formed according to what someone can and should do. This is why the conscience will keep its unavoidable and undeniable role – even in a postmodern context. (shrink)

While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engaging in inquiry, and a weaker disposition to regulate curiosity in response to the cognitive and practical costs associated (...) with inquiry. Exploring this zetetic style from an epistemological perspective, we show that it is often epistemically rational and can be advantageous in important respects. We close by suggesting that the very aspects of the zetetic style that might at times render it disadvantageous from the point of view of individual subjects with ADHD, will often confer epistemic benefits to the social group that the subjects are part of. (shrink)

In a recent article, I criticized Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss's so-called “no guidance argument” against the truth norm for belief, for conflating the conditions under which that norm recommends belief with the psychological state one must be in to apply the norm. In response, Glüer and Wikforss have offered a new formulation of the no guidance argument, which makes it apparent that no such conflation is made. However, their new formulation of the argument presupposes a much too narrow understanding (...) of what it takes for a norm to influence behaviour, and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of the truth norm. Once this is taken into account, it becomes clear that the no guidance argument fails. (shrink)

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...) first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Esteban Céspedes (2015) seeks to defend the contrastive account of singular causation from my criticisms (Steglich-Petersen 2012). Céspedes objects to my argument on three counts: (1) it is circular in presupposing a principle that it seeks to establish; (2) that same principle is false; and (3) even if the principle were true, it would not speak against the contrastive account. In this note I argue that all three objections are unconvincing.

In this paper I propose a teleological account of epistemic reasons. In recent years, the main challenge for any such account has been to explicate a sense in which epistemic reasons depend on the value of epistemic properties. I argue that while epistemic reasons do not directly depend on the value of epistemic properties, they depend on a different class of reasons which are value based in a direct sense, namely reasons to form beliefs about certain propositions or subject matters. (...) In short, S has an epistemic reason to believe that p if and only if S is such that if S has reason to form a belief about p, then S ought to believe that p. I then propose a teleological explanation of this relationship. It is also shown how the proposal can avoid various subsidiary objections commonly thought to riddle the teleological account. (shrink)

The theory of belief, according to which believing that p essentially involves having as an aim or purpose to believe that p truly, has recently been criticised on the grounds that the putative aim of belief does not interact with the wider aims of believers in the ways we should expect of genuine aims. I argue that this objection to the aim theory fails. When we consider a wider range of deliberative contexts concerning beliefs, it becomes obvious that the aim (...) of belief can interact with and be weighed against the wider aims of agents in the ways required for it to be a genuine aim. (shrink)

I argue for patternism, a new answer to the question of when some objects compose a whole. None of the standard principles of composition comfortably capture our natural judgments, such as that my cat exists and my table exists, but there is nothing wholly composed of them. Patternism holds, very roughly, that some things compose a whole whenever together they form a “real pattern”. Plausibly we are inclined to acknowledge the existence of my cat and my table but not of (...) their fusion, because the first two have a kind of internal organizational coherence that their putative fusion lacks. Kolmogorov complexity theory supplies the needed rigorous sense of “internal organizational coherence”. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD (Taylor 2022), we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argue instead that the irrationality of OCD is located in the emotions that are (...) characteristic of OCD, such as anxiety or fear. In particular, we propose to understand the irrationality of OCD as a matter of harboring recalcitrant emotions. We argue that this account not only solves the puzzle about insight, but also makes better sense of how OCD sufferers experience and describe their condition and helps explain some otherwise puzzling features of compulsive behavior. (shrink)

Metaphysics: 5 Questions is a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent philosophers in the field. We hear their views on metaphysics, the aim, the scope, the future direction of research and how their work fits in these respects. Interviews with Lynne Rudder Baker, Helen Beebee, Thomas Hofweber, Hugh Mellor, Peter Menzies, Stephen Mumford, Daniel Nolan, Eric T.Olson, L. A. Paul, Lorenz B. Puntel, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra, Gideon Rosen, Jonathan Schaffer, Peter (...) Simons, Barry Smith, Michael Tooley, Peter van Inwagen, Dean Zimmerman. (shrink)

Pasteur, théologien, philosophe cartésien et éditeur d’ouvrages spirituels, Pierre Poiret occupe un statut particulier et original dans l’histoire des idées religieuses : il incarne le rôle du « passeur spirituel », celui dont la mission est de transmettre à la postérité l’héritage des auteurs mystiques. Poiret n’est pas un mystique, mais un spécialiste de la « théologie mystique ». Mais qu’est-ce que le mot mystique désigne pour un protestant français du Refuge résidant en Hollande? Par quels moyens, selon Poiret, la (...) théologie mystique peut sortir de sa niche et s’adresser à un public élargi, toute confession confondue? Et encore, en quelle mesure son activité d’éditeur s’inscrit dans le cadre des querelles sur la mystique qui ont marqué la fin du xviie siècle? Telles sont les questions auxquelles cet article tentera de répondre. (shrink)

When one has both epistemic and practical reasons for or against some belief, how do these reasons combine into an all-things-considered reason for or against that belief? The question might seem to presuppose the existence of practical reasons for belief. But we can rid the question of this presupposition. Once we do, a highly general ‘Combinatorial Problem’ emerges. The problem has been thought to be intractable due to certain differences in the combinatorial properties of epistemic and practical reasons. Here we (...) bring good news: if we accept an independently motivated version of epistemic instrumentalism—the view that epistemic reasons are a species of instrumental reasons—we can reduce The Combinatorial Problem to the relatively benign problem of how to weigh different instrumental reasons against each other. As an added benefit, the instrumentalist account can explain the apparent intractability of The Combinatorial Problem in terms of a common tendency to think and talk about epistemic reasons in an elliptical manner. (shrink)

The predominant view in developmental psychology is that young children are able to reason with the concept of desire prior to being able to reason with the concept of belief. We propose an explanation of this phenomenon that focuses on the cognitive tasks that competence with the belief and desire concepts enable young children to perform. We show that cognitive tasks that are typically considered fundamental to our competence with the belief and desire concepts can be performed with the concept (...) of desire in the absence of competence with the concept of belief, whereas the reverse is considerably less feasible. (shrink)

Cet article se penche sur la question des préférences de Gérard Genette, et chez Gérard Genette : sur ses objets de prédilection, c’est-à-dire sur ses « choses » préférées (œuvres, musiques, formes d’art, figures, paysages, personnes) ; mais surtout sur la préférence comme catégorie de la perception, du goût et du jugement, forme sensible de la relationnalité ou de la transcendance esthétique, et sur ce que cette affaire de préférences dit d’un certain rapport sensible aux généralités et aux catégories de (...) l’esprit, qui anime son œuvre et la porte vers nous. (shrink)