Background: Scientific research entails systematic investigation. Publishing the findings of research in peer reviewed journals implies a high level of confidence by the authors in the veracity of their interpretation. Therefore it stands to reason that researchers should be prepared to share their raw data with other researchers, so that others may enjoy the same level of confidence in the findings. Method: In a prospective study, 29 corresponding authors of original research articles in a medical journal (the British Medical Journal) (...) were contacted to ascertain their preparedness to share the data from their research. The email contact was in one of two forms, a general request and a specific request. The type of request a researcher received was randomly allocated. Findings: Researchers receiving specific requests for data were less likely, and slower, to respond than researchers receiving general requests. Only one researcher released data. Most researchers were reluctant to release their data. Some required further information, clarification, or authorship. Interpretation: The general reluctance of researchers to consider requests for their data is of concern. It raises questions about the level of confidence that should be placed on their interpretations of the data. It also highlights an unfortunate situation where researchers are more concerned with losing an advantage than advancing science. (shrink)

CRISPR germline editing therapies hold unprecedented potential to eradicate hereditary disorders. However, the prospect of altering the human germline has sparked a debate over the safety, efficacy, and morality of CGETs, triggering a funding moratorium by the NIH. There is an urgent need for practical paths for the evaluation of these capabilities. We propose a model regulatory framework for CGET research, clinical development, and distribution. Our model takes advantage of existing legal and regulatory institutions but adds elevated scrutiny at each (...) stage of CGET development to accommodate the unique technical and ethical challenges posed by germline editing. (shrink)

In “The Immorality of Horror Films,” philosopher and film scholar Gianluca Di Muzio proposes an analytic argument that aims to prove horror narratives, particularly slashers, unethical. His Argument from Reactive Attitudes contests slashers encourage pleasurable responses towards depictions of torture and death, which is possible only by suspending compassionate reactions. Doing so degrades sympathy and empathy, causing desensitization. This article will argue Di Muzio’s ARA, while valuable to discussion of art horror and morbidity, fails to meet its intended aim. The (...) ARA contains structural flaws in its logic, compounded by reliance on insufficient evidence. Additionally, Di Muzio does not adequately consider or rebut prominent aesthetic concerns, including ontological and moral distance of representations. Lastly, the argument utilizes a flawed classificatory schema that undermines its primary goal. Even narrowly confined to slashers, the ARA cannot explain alternative reasons for engaging with horror, nor does it account for those nuanced slasher works designed to foster compassion. The project concludes by offering a modified ARA with greater potential to accurately analyze the interrelation between art horror and morality. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

While every health care system stakeholder would seem to be concerned with obtaining the greatest value from a given technology, there is often a disconnect in the perception of value between a technology’s promoters and those responsible for the ultimate decision as to whether or not to pay for it. Adopting an empirical ethics approach, this paper examines how five Canadian medical device manufacturers, via their websites, frame the corporate “value proposition” of their innovation and seek to respond to what (...) they consider the key expectations of their customers. Our analysis shows that the manufacturers’ framing strategies combine claims that relate to valuable socio-technical goals and features such as prevention, efficiency, sense of security, real-time feedback, ease of use and flexibility, all elements that likely resonate with a large spectrum of health care system stakeholders. The websites do not describe, however, how the innovations may impact health care delivery and tend to obfuscate the decisional trade-offs these innovations represent from a health care system perspective. Such framing strategies, we argue, tend to bolster physicians’ and patients’ expectations and provide a large set of stakeholders with powerful rhetorical tools that may influence the health policy arena. Because these strategies are difficult to counter given the paucity of evidence and its limited use in policymaking, establishing sound collective health care priorities will require solid critiques of how certain kinds of medical devices may provide a better (i.e., more valuable) response to health care needs when compared to others. (shrink)

Among recent theories of the nature of self-knowledge, the rationalistic view, according to which self-knowledge is not a cognitive achievement—perceptual or inferential—has been prominent. Upon this kind of view, however, self-knowledge becomes a bit of a mystery. Although the rationalistic conception is defended in this article, it is argued that it has to be supplemented by an account of the transparency of belief: the question whether to believe that P is settled when one asks oneself whether P.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:482 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY disorder was reLigious men's tendency to find in the Scriptures and their consciences justifications for rebelling against their sovereign. The last half of Leviathan is designed to refute these claims in detail, and this refutation is not merely tacked onto the first parts but is a logical extension of them. The argument for escaping the state of nature is that only through obedience to a (...) common power can man escape the likelihood of an early death. Once that common power is established, and so long as it can carry out its protective function, obedience to it is obligatory. When a man enters civil society, the only right he retains is to defend himself against physical death, and consequently, the only time he is entitled to disobey the sovereign is when the sovereign directly threatens him. Thus excuses for rebellion are reduced to an absolute minimum. In McNeiily's formalization however, the concept of a man's death must be replaced by the formal concept of the frustration of all one's desires. And so "whatevvr [a man] regards as the complete frustration of all his desires... he will be entitled to resist, even if such resistance puts him at war with others, including lawful authority" (p. 193). Now the incredible range of things men have believed essential to avoiding the frustration of all their desires is amply testified to in the history of religious warfare. And clearly, under this formalized interpretation, men would be entitled to rebel over the form of baptism, church government, ministerial costume, prayer, or anything else if they are convinced it is essential to their salvation. It takes little knowledge of history to see that Hobbes's espousing of a theory with such consequences has a low degree of probability indeed. Hobbes complains in Leviathan of Scriptural exegetes who "by casting atoms of Scripture, as dust before men's eyes, make everything more obscure than it is." Rather, he claims, it is "not bare words, but the scope of the writer, that giveth the true light by which any writing is to be interpreted; and they that insist upon single texts, without considering the main design, can derive nothing from them clearly'" (E. W., III, 602). This last would be too harsh to apply to McNeiity's work generally, for his "atoms" are for the most part of considerable worth in themselves. But with regard to our understanding of Hobbes's Leviathan he raises a lot of dust. PAUL J. JOHNSON CalifornM State College, San Bernardino The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. By Peter Gay. VoL I, The Rise ol Modern Paganism. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. Pp. xviii+SSS+xv); VoL II, The Science ot Freedom. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969. Pp. xx+70S+xviii) Le grand int~rSt port~ aux ~tudcs du xvm* si~cle au cours des deux derni~res d6cades et la remise en question des principes critiques encore en vigueur it y a une dizaine d'ann~,s ont fray~ la voie h de nouveaux efforts de synth~se dent la derni~re en date, et non la moins int~ressante, est celle de Peter Gay. Ses deux substantiels volumes sent destines ~ servir de guides ~ une nouvelle g~n~ration d'~tudiants et de chercheurs, ne ffit-ce que pour la bibliographie tr~s d6taill~e et accompagn~ d'obserrations personneUes qui forme un supplement tr~s pr6cieux ~ la Bibliographie de D. C. Cabeen de 1951 et de 1968. Lo travail de Peter Gay inspire confianc~ par BOOK REVIEWS 483 Fampleur des lectures auxquelles il s'est astreint et. (shrink)

Transformer-based Pre-Trained Language Models currently dominate the field of Natural Language Inference (NLI). We first survey existing NLI datasets, and we systematize them according to the different kinds of logical inferences that are being distinguished. This shows two gaps in the current dataset landscape, which we propose to address with one dataset that has been developed in argumentative writing research as well as a new one building on syllogistic logic. Throughout, we also explore the promises of ChatGPT. Our results show (...) that our new datasets do pose a challenge to existing methods and models, including ChatGPT, and that tackling this challenge via fine-tuning yields only partly satisfactory results. (shrink)

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes the full-text of more than 9,500 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the remarkable library of Victor Amadeus, whose Castle Corvey collection was one of the most spectacular discoveries of the late 1970s. The Corvey Collection comprises one of the most important collections of Romantic era writing in existence anywhere -- including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry, and more -- with a focus on especially (...) difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers. The Corvey library was built during the last half of the 19th century by Victor and his wife Elise, both bibliophiles with varied interests. The collection thus contains everything from novels and short stories to belles lettres and more populist works, and includes many exceedingly rare works not available in any other collection from the period. These invaluable, sometimes previously unknown works are of particular interest to scholars and researchers. European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection includes: * Novels and Gothic Novels * Short Stories * Belles-Lettres * Short Prose Forms * Dramatic Works * Poetry * Anthologies * And more Selected with the guidance of an international team of expert advisors, these primary sources are invaluable for a wide range of academic disciplines and areas of study, providing never before possible research opportunities for one of the most studied historical periods. Additional Metadata Primary Id: B0545300 PSM Id: NCCOF0063-C00000-B0545300 DVI Collection Id: NCCOC0062 Bibliographic Id: NCCO006452 Reel: 4262 MCODE: 4UVC Original Publisher: Chez Lefevre, libraire Original Publication Year: 1819 Original Publication Place: Paris Original Imprint Manufacturer: ľimprimerie de Crapelet Subjects French fiction -- Early works to 1800. (shrink)

Imagine you and your friend Pierre agreed on meeting each other at a café, but he does not show up. What is the difference between a friend’s not showing up meeting? and any other person not coming? In some sense, all people who did not come show the same kind of behaviour, but most people would be willing to say that the absence of a friend who you expected to see is different in kind. In this paper, I will spell (...) out this difference by investigating laypeople’s conceptualisation of absences of actions in four experiments. In languages such as German, French, Italian, or Polish, people consider a friend’s not coming an omission. Any other person’s not coming, in contrast, is not considered an omission at all, but just a mere nothing. This use of the term omission differs from the usage in English, where ‘omission’ refers to all kinds of absences. In addition, ‘omission’ is not even an everyday term, but invented by philosophers for the sake of philosophical investigation. In other languages, ‘omission’ is part of an everyday vocabulary. Finally, I will discuss how this folk concept of omission could be made fruitful for philosophical questions. (shrink)

Pascal was a scientist and man of the world who came to be a passionately devout Christian. The fragments of his great defense of Christianity, left unfinished at his death in 1662, survive in the form of the Pensees. This series of brief, dramatic notes on his religious convictions are here translated into English. These thoughts expose Pascal's vision of the world and display powerful reasoning and a profound faith.

L'impérieux amour de Pascal. - Discours sur les passions de l'amour. - Lettres de Pascal à Charlotte de Roannez. - Pensées de Pascal sur l'amitié. - Pensées de Pascal sur le coeur. - Pensées de Pascal sur l'amour. - Pensées de Pascal sur la concupisence.

This volume offers a lively and accessible guide to some of the major issues current in French philosophy today and to some of the figures who are or have been influential in shaping its development. The collection is unusual and interesting in bringing together a range of contributors from both Britain and France, and is intended not only for professional philosophers but also for those with a more general interest in the French intellectual scene.

Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that the evidence can rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. Pascal’s wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal’s wager has powerful responses to two prominent objections. First, I (...) argue that if permissivism is true, then permissivism is true about theistic belief. Second, I show how epistemic permissivism about theistic belief dispels two objections to Pascal’s wager: the objection that wagering is impossible, and the objection that wagering is epistemically impermissible. (shrink)

BackgroundBiobanking biospecimens and consent are common practice in paediatric research. We need to explore children and young people’s (CYP) knowledge and perspectives around the use of and consent to biobanking. This will ensure meaningful informed consent can be obtained and improve current consent procedures.MethodsWe designed a survey, in co-production with CYP, collecting demographic data, views on biobanking, and consent using three scenarios: 1) prospective consent, 2) deferred consent, and 3) reconsent and assent at age of capacity. The survey was disseminated (...) via the Young Person’s Advisory Group North England (YPAGne) and participating CYP’s secondary schools. Data were analysed using a qualitative thematic approach by three independent reviewers (including CYP) to identify common themes. Data triangulation occurred independently by a fourth reviewer.ResultsOne hundred two CYP completed the survey. Most were between 16–18 years (63.7%, N = 65) and female (66.7%, N = 68). 72.3% had no prior knowledge of biobanking (N = 73).Acceptability of prospective consent for biobanking was high (91.2%, N = 93) with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘potential benefits outweigh individual risk’, 'frugality', and ‘(in)convenience’.Deferred consent was also deemed acceptable in the large majority (84.3%, N = 86), with common themes: ‘altruism’, ‘body integrity’ and ‘sample frugality’. 76.5% preferred to reconsent when cognitively mature enough to give assent (N = 78), even if parental consent was previously in place. 79.2% wanted to be informed if their biobanked biospecimen is reused (N = 80).ConclusionProspective and deferred consent acceptability for biobanking is high among CYP in the UK. Altruism, frugality, body integrity, and privacy are the most important themes. Clear communication and justification are paramount to obtain consent. Any CYP with capacity should be part of the consenting procedure, if possible. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

What are the main features that influence our attribution of moral responsibility? It is widely accepted that there are various factors which strongly influence our moral judgments, such as the agent’s intentions, the consequences of the action, the causal involvement of the agent, and the agent’s freedom and ability to do otherwise. In this paper, we argue that this picture is incomplete: We argue that social roles are an additional key factor that is radically underestimated in the extant literature. We (...) will present an experiment to support this claim. (shrink)

À partir d’une enquête réalisée dans un grand magasin parisien, cet article s’intéresse aux conflits liés à l’extension des horaires d’ouverture des magasins. Il poursuit deux objectifs. Le premier est d’analyser la manière dont la question du travail sur des horaires atypiques (dimanches, jours fériés, soirées) est posée et imposée dans le commerce de détail. Le second objectif de l’article est d’analyser, d’une part, le rapport que les employés de commerce entretiennent vis-à-vis de cette « nécessité » et, d’autre part, (...) les difficultés rencontrées par l’action syndicale face à ce sujet. (shrink)

Abstract Kaldor, one of the leading figures of the post?war ?Cambridge School?, has produced a large volume of methodological writings since the mid?1960s, which we will argue represents one of the major critiques of orthodox equilibrium economic theory produced this century. While Kaldor's position represents a fundamental and radical rejection of the methodological basis of equilibrium economics, he did not provide a systematically formulated alternative methodology for economics. Recent attempts at providing such a reconstruction has argued that scientific realism provides (...) the most convincing philosophical interpretation of Kaldor's methodological contributions. In this paper we will argue that van Fraassen's constructive empiricism represent a more compelling alternative methodological framework to realism for systematizing Kaldor's important contributions. In particular it will be argued that this constructive empiricist reading of Kaldor has the capacity to critically undermine the methodological basis of orthodox equilibrium economics. In addition we explore the potential of this alternative framework to provide a novel and challenging reconstruction of economic methodology. (shrink)

Excerpt from Selections From Pascal Blaise pascal was born at Clermont - Ferrand, in the center of F rance, on June 19, 1623. Three years later his mother died, and his father, taking the family duties most seriously, decided to be his son's own educator. At this time the father occupied a judicial position of considerable importance, but in 1630 he retired from it, moved the household to Paris, and gave himself up entirely to his work of preceptor. (...) He taught Blaise Latin and Greek, Mathematics and Physics, Logic and Philoso phy. For scientific studies the; boy showed unusual aptitude. At the age of twelve he was so far advanced as to write an essay on acoustics, which was followed at fifteen by treatise on conic sections. At eighteen he invented machine for count ing numbers. So great was his zeal for learning that he over taxed his strength by too steady application. Disorders ap peared, headaches and neuralgia, and his sister, Mme Perier, is authority for the statement that, from this time on, he rarely passed day without pain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Is it tautological to call an action "wrongful discrimination?" Some philosophers and political theorists answer this question in the affirmative and claim that the term "discrimination" is intrinsically evaluative. Others agree that "discrimination" usually conveys the action’s moral wrongness but claim that the term can be used in a purely descriptive way. In this paper, we present two corpus studies and two experiments designed to test whether the folk concept of discrimination is evaluative. We demonstrate that the term has undergone (...) a historical development and is nowadays no longer used purely descriptively. Further, we show that this evaluation cannot be cancelled without yielding a contradiction. We conclude that the descriptive use of "discriminatory" is a thing of the past. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur made a lot to introduce analytic philosophy in France during the 70s and 80s, and he engaged in a dialogue with a number of authors from this tradition, such as Austin, Strawson, Davidson or Parfit. This dialogue, though, was one-sided, since there was no discussion of his views by analytic philosophers. Moreover, Ricœur often misunderstood or misprepresented the analytic views that he was discussing. So in many ways the Ricœur’s encounter with analytic philosophy was unsuccessful, which does not (...) mean that Ricœur’s discussions where unfruitful for his own work. Résumé Paul Ricœur a fait beaucoup pour introduire la philosophie analytique en France pendant les années 1970 et 1980, et il a entrepris un dialogue avec les auteurs de cette tradition, comme Austin, Strawson, Davidson ou Parfit. Mais ce dialogue est cependant resté unilatéral, car il n’y a pas eu de discussion des thèses de Ricœur au sein de la tradition analytique. De plus Ricœur a souvent mécompris les vues analytiques qu’il discutait. En ce sens il n’y a pas eu de rencontre entre Ricœur et les philosophes analytiques, ce qui ne veut pas dire que les discussions par Ricœur des philosophes anaytiques n’aient pas été fructueuses pour son œuvre propre. (shrink)

PREFACE When in the year 1940 I ventured a small volume under the title The Secret of Pascal, I honestly did not expect to write further on the topic. But circumstances ordered otherwise. The needs of Cambridge students and the difficulty, ...

How evaluative are legal texts? Do legal scholars and jurists speak a more descriptive or perhaps a more evaluative language? In this paper, we present the results of a corpus study in which we examined the use of evaluative language in both the legal domain as well as public discourse. For this purpose, we created two corpora. Our legal professional corpus is based on court opinions from the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We compared this professional corpus to a public corpus, (...) which is based on blog discussions on the internet forum Reddit. While many linguistic phenomena can give insights into evaluativity, we investigated the use of a wide selection of evaluative adjectives (more specifically, thick adjectives) to gain a more comprehensive picture of the degree of evaluativity in the legal domain. Our analysis shows that legal professionals use thick terms less evaluatively than laypeople, which suggests that legal texts are less evaluative than ordinary discussions. This result, more generally, supports the philosophical idea that thick concepts may vary in their evaluative intensity. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that normative considerations play an important role in causal cognition. For instance, when an agent violates a moral rule and thereby produces a negative outcome, she will be judged to be much more of a cause of the outcome, compared to someone who performed the same action but did not violate a norm. While there is a substantial amount of evidence reporting these effects, it is still a matter of debate how this evidence is to (...) be interpreted. In this paper, we engage with the three most influential classes of explanations, namely, (a) the Norm‐Sensitive Cognitive Process View, (b) the Normative Concept View, and (c) the Pragmatics View. We will outline how these theories explain the empirical results and in what ways they differ. We conclude with a reflection on how well these strategies do overall and what questions they still leave unanswered. (shrink)

For much of his life Pascal (1623-62) worked on a magnum opus which was never published in its intended form. Instead, he left a mass of fragments, some of them meant as notes for the Apologie. These were to become known as the Pensées, and they occupy a crucial place in Western philosophy and religious writing. Pascal's general intention was to confound scepticism about metaphysical questions. Some of the Pensées are fully developed literary reflections on the human condition,, (...) some contradict others, and some remain jottings whose meaning will never be clear. The most important are among the most powerful aphorisms about human experience and behaviour ever written in any language. This translation is the only one based on the Pensées as Pascal left them. It includes the principal dossiers classified by Pascal, as well as the essential portion of the important Writings on Grace. A detailed thematic index gives access to Pascal's areas of concern, while the selection of texts and the introduction help to show why Pascal changed the plan of his projected work before abandoning the book he might have written. (shrink)

In the last few decades, great progress has been made in both genetic and genomic research. The development of the Human Genome Project has increased our knowledge of the genetic basis of diseases and has given a tremendous momentum to the development of new technologies that make widespread genetic testing possible and has increased the availability of previously inaccessible genetic information. Two examples of this exponential evolution are the increasing implementation of next-generation sequencing technologies in the clinical context and the (...) expanding commercial offer of genetic tests directly-to-consumers.Firstly, the rapid development of next generation sequencing technologies has substantially reduced both the cost and the time required to sequence an entire human genome. These technologies are increasingly being used in the clinical setting with the goal of diagnosing conditions of presumed genetic origin that cannot be explained by targeted sequencing approaches. (shrink)

Ownership is universal and ubiquitous in human societies, yet the psychology underpinning ownership intuitions is generally not described in a coherent and computationally tractable manner. Ownership intuitions are commonly assumed to derive from culturally transmitted social norms, or from a mentally represented implicit theory. While the social norms account is entirelyad hoc, the mental theory requires prior assumptions about possession and ownership that must be explained. Here I propose such an explanation, arguing that the intuitions result from the interaction of (...) two cognitive systems. One of these handles competitive interactions for the possession of resources observed in many species including humans. The other handles mutually beneficial cooperation between agents, as observed in communal sharing, collective action and trade. Together, these systems attend to specific cues in the environment, and produce definite intuitions such as “this is hers,” “that is not mine.” This computational model provides an explanation for ownership intuitions, not just in straightforward cases of property, but also in disputed ownership (squatters, indigenous rights), historical changes (abolition of slavery), as well as apparently marginal cases, such as the questions, whether people own their seats on the bus, or their places in a queue, and how people understand “cultural appropriation” and slavery. In contrast to some previous theories, the model is empirically testable and free ofad hocstipulations. (shrink)

Pascal conceives the civil order as an order of conscupiscence, that is, an order produced and regulated by concupiscence. However, when exempting virtue from being the source of civil order, he does not advance the separation between politics and morals, but signals a new and problematic role to virtue in the interior of civil order - no more the role of producing it, but of judging it properly.Pascal concebe a ordem civil como uma ordem da concupiscência, isto é, (...) uma ordem produzida e regulada pela concupiscência. Ao dispensar a virtude de ser o fundamento da ordem civil, ele não promove, contudo, a separação entre a política e a moral, mas assinala um novo e problemático papel para a virtude no interior da ordem civil - não mais o de produzi-la, mas o de julgá-la de modo apropriado. (shrink)

In this critical introduction to contemporary philosophical issues in the theory of truth Pascal Engel provides clear and authoritative exposition of recent and current ideas while providing original perspectives that advances discussion of the key issues. This book begins with a presentation of the classical conceptions of truth - the correspondence theory, the coherence theory and verificationist and pragmatist accounts - before examining so-called minimalist and deflationist conceptions that deny truth can be anything more than a thin concept holding (...) no metaphysical weight. The debates between those who favour substantive conceptions of the classical kind and those who advocate minimalist and deflationist conceptions are explored. Engel argues that, although the minimalist conception of truth is basically right, it does not follow that truth can be eliminated from our philosophical thinking as some upholders of radical deflationist views have claimed. Questions about truth and realism are examined and the author shows how the realism/anti-realism debate remains a genuine, meaningful issue for a theory of truth and has not been undermined by deflationist views. Even if a metaphysical substantive theory of truth has little chance to succeed, Engel concludes, truth can keep a central role within our thinking, as a norm or guiding value of our rational inquiries and practices, in the philosophy of knowledge and in ethics. (shrink)

La philosophie de l'esprit et des phénomènes mentaux a connu, depuis une trentaine d'années, un renouveau important, notamment en raison de l'intérêt suscité chez les philosophes par les progrès des neurosciences et des sciences cognitives. Au sein de la tradition analytique anglo-américaine en particulier, un véritable tournant mentaliste et naturaliste tend désormais à supplanter l'approche " linguistique " jusque-là dominante. Ce livre propose une introduction aux thèmes riches et complexes que développent des auteurs comme Davidson, Fodor, Dennett et Dretske : (...) les relations de l'esprit et du corps, le problème de la causalité mentale, celui de l'explication en sciences cognitives, les débats sur le statut de la " psychologie populaire ", la nature des croyances chez les adultes, les enfants et les animaux, des images mentales, de l'identité personnelle et de la conscience. Et il présente de façon synthétique et rigoureuse les principales théories de l'esprit actuelles : l'identité esprit-cerveau, le fonctionnalisme, l'éliminativisme, et les divers programmes de " naturalisation " de l'intentionnalité. L'auteur montre que la philosophie de l'esprit contemporaine est un domaine très ouvert, étroitement lié aux problématiques philosophiques traditionnelles comme à celles des sciences cognitives. Il s'efforce de défendre une forme de matérialisme non réductionniste, sensible à la fois au caractère naturel et causal des phénomènes mentaux et à leur dimension spécifique et autonome. (shrink)

In this paper I want to show that, although it is a common thread of many pragmatist or pragmatist-inspired doctrines, the belief-as-disposition-to-act theme is played on very different tunes by the various philosophical performers. A whole book could be devoted to the topic. I shall limit myself here to the views of Peirce, James, Ramsey, contemporary functionalists, and Isaac Levi. Depending on how they interpret this theme, the pragmatist philosophers can emphasise more or less the role of theory and practice (...) in their respective account of thought, truth and inquiry. When they stress the former pragmatists are what I shall call theoria-pragmatists, when they put the stress on the latter, I'll call them the praxis pragmatists. I suggest that the first variety is much more appealing than the other, and I side with the theoreticist pragmatists. (edited). (shrink)

This paper investigates the structure and composition of the social network formed on the campus of the Faculty of Economics and Business of Diego Portales University, Chile, exposing a series of characteristics that are aligned with similar research in the field of networks. We use a model of social networks formation in order to understand socioeconomic and academic factors that predict the formation of friendship between two students. Specifically, we test empirically our model, using students' administrative information. Of special interest (...) is the impact of the length of stay of the students in the university, with which we refer to the years completed in the degree course, in the probability of establishing friendship ties where being socioeconomically different is a condition. The mechanism behind a result like this is the sense of belongingness that being part of the same institution may induce amongst students. By means of counterfactual simulations we found evidence in favor that passing through the university increases the probability of forming friendship networks, which can mean a kind of social capital, thus reducing socioeconomic segregation from the Chilean school system. Given the importance of this finding, we believe that policies that increase the sense of belongingness such as cultural events, leaderships programs, and community should be implemented on university campuses. (shrink)

What is truth? What value should we see in or attribute to it? The war over the meaning and utility of truth is at the center of contemporary philosophical debate, and its arguments have rocked the foundations of philosophical practice. In this book, the American pragmatist Richard Rorty and the French analytic philosopher Pascal Engel present their radically different perspectives on truth and its correspondence to reality. Rorty doubts that the notion of truth can be of any practical use (...) and points to the preconceptions that lie behind truth in both the intellectual and social spheres. Engel prefers a realist conception, defending the relevance and value of truth as a norm of belief and inquiry in both science and the public domain. Rorty finds more danger in using the notion of truth than in getting rid of it. Engel thinks it is important to hold on to the idea that truth is an accurate representation of reality. In Rorty's view, epistemology is an artificial construct meant to restore a function to philosophy usurped by the success of empirical science. Epistemology and ontology are false problems, and with their demise goes the Cartesian dualism of subject and object and the ancient problematic of appearance and reality. Conventional "philosophical problems," Rorty asserts, are just symptoms of the professionalism that has disfigured the discipline since the time of Kant. Engel, however, is by no means as complacent as Rorty in heralding the "end of truth," and he wages a fierce campaign against the "veriphobes" who deny its value. _What's the Use of Truth?_ is a rare opportunity to experience each side of this impassioned debate clearly and concisely. It is a subject that has profound implications not only for philosophical inquiry but also for the future study of all aspects of our culture. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Publications are primarily a means of communicating scientific information to colleagues, but they are much more than that. Publications in peer reviewed journals are proof of academic competence, are used as a crucial component in evaluation criteria for academic promotion and fundraising and increase the prestige of research centres and universities. The urgent need for publications has also led to abuses in authorship. In the past the single‐author article was the rule, but over the past decades, the average number (...) of authors on scientific manuscripts has drastically increased. In the field of bioethics, however, no research has been undertaken to study whether the percentage of single‐author articles is decreasing, the proportion of multi‐author articles is increasing or the average number of authors per article is increasing. The objective of this research is to analyze these trends in authorship for the period 1990–2003 in peer reviewed journals in the field of bioethics. In the nine peer reviewed journals from the field of bioethics we studied, we observed a significant increase of the multi‐author article and of the average number of authors. This is mainly due to the increase in the number of publications with an empirical design. This growing trend is a challenge for the editors of journals in the field of bioethics to enhance awareness about the value and definition of authorship. (shrink)

Since its origin, bioethics has attracted the collaboration of few social scientists, and social scientific methods of gathering empirical data have remained unfamiliar to ethicists. Recently, however, the clouded relations between the empirical and normative perspectives on bioethics appear to be changing. Three reasons explain why there was no easy and consistent input of empirical evidence into bioethics. Firstly, interdisciplinary dialogue runs the risk of communication problems and divergent objectives. Secondly, the social sciences were absent partners since the beginning of (...) bioethics. Thirdly, the meta‐ethical distinction between ‘is’ and ‘ought’ created a ‘natural’ border between the disciplines. Now, bioethics tends to accommodate more empirical research. Three hypotheses explain this emergence. Firstly, dissatisfaction with a foundationalist interpretation of applied ethics created a stimulus to incorporate empirical research in bioethics. Secondly, clinical ethicists became engaged in empirical research due to their strong integration in the medical setting. Thirdly, the rise of the evidence‐based paradigm had an influence on the practice of bioethics. However, a problematic relationship cannot simply and easily evolve into a perfect interaction. A new and positive climate for empirical approaches has arisen, but the original difficulties have not disappeared. (shrink)

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency—the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing—is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (...) or the font of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric and by the font they were presented in , but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency . We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception. (shrink)

(2005). The unimportance of being modest: a footnote to McDowell’s note. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 89-93. doi: 10.1080/0967255042000324362.

By modifying the Education Code and the definition of «handicap», the French law passed in February 2005 in favour of disabled people has doubled the number of students classified as disabled in mainstream secondary schools. Nine years after the enactment of this act, the field practice continues to be an ordeal that teachers can relate to in terms of experience. How does this law impact on the teaching practices of mainstream secondary school teachers? Using an interactionist approach, this paper explains (...) how the 2005 law calls into question the «mandate» and the «license» (Hughes, 1996) of the teaching profession. It also shows to what extent implementing inclusion encourages mainstream teachers to develop new professional skills and knowledge. (shrink)