Antoni Domènech was one of Spain’s most important political philosophers of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Known primarily as a scholar of republicanism, his work on the concepts of individual liberty and rights complicates standard liberal definitions, which he believed erred in defining these terms independent of institutional context, as pre-political attributes of the individual. He argued that republicanism corrected liberalism’s abstraction by making one’s actually being able to exercise liberty and rights depend on one’s enjoying a sufficiently (...) robust set of material conditions, or on having enough property so that one could always avoid unequal social relationships. (shrink)

From Karl Marx to current critics of 'effective altruism’, the elements of the political left demanding systemic change toward durable equity have long doubted the efficacy of private acts of charity in achieving progressive goals, including material equality or social justice. This article challenges this position, through an investigation of Spanish thinker Helena Béjar’s philosophical analyses of volunteer philanthropy and compassion as potentially conducive to progressive aims. It finally claims that Béjar illuminates new avenues of inquiry into existing questions, though (...) her voice has been absent from relevant debates outside her native Spain, where one of her major works, The Bad Samaritan [El mal samaritano], was a finalist for the prestigious Anagrama Essay Prize. Desde Karl Marx hasta los actuales críticos del ‘altruismo efectivo’, los elementos de la izquierda política que reivindican cambios sistémicos orientados hacia una equidad duradera han dudado desde hace mucho de la eficacia de los actos privados de caridad para lograr objetivos progresistas, como la igualdad material o la justicia social. Este artículo cuestiona esta postura, mediante una investigación de los análisis filosóficos que la pensadora española Helena Béjar ha hecho de la filantropía voluntaria y la compasión, que ella considera potencialmente útiles para alcanzar fines progresistas. Finalmente, se afirma que Béjar ilumina nuevas vías de investigación sobre preguntas abiertas, aunque su voz no suene en los relevantes debates filosóficos fuera de España, donde una de sus grandes obras, El mal samaritano, fue finalista al prestigioso Premio nacional de ensayo Anagrama. From Karl Marx to current critics of 'effective altruism’, the elements of the political left demanding systemic change toward durable equity have long doubted the efficacy of private acts of charity in achieving progressive goals, including material equality or social justice. This article challenges this position, through an investigation of Spanish thinker Helena Béjar’s philosophical analyses of volunteer philanthropy and compassion as potentially conducive to progressive aims. It finally claims that Béjar illuminates new avenues of inquiry into existing questions, though her voice has been absent from relevant debates outside her native Spain, where one of her major works, The Bad Samaritan [El mal samaritano], was a finalist for the prestigious Anagrama Essay Prize. Desde Karl Marx hasta los actuales críticos del ‘altruismo efectivo’, los elementos de la izquierda política que reivindican cambios sistémicos orientados hacia una equidad duradera han dudado desde hace mucho de la eficacia de los actos privados de caridad para lograr objetivos progresistas, como la igualdad material o la justicia social. Este artículo cuestiona esta postura, mediante una investigación de los análisis filosóficos que la pensadora española Helena Béjar ha hecho de la filantropía voluntaria y la compasión, que ella considera potencialmente útiles para alcanzar fines progresistas. Finalmente, se afirma que Béjar ilumina nuevas vías de investigación sobre preguntas abiertas, aunque su voz no suene en los relevantes debates filosóficos fuera de España, donde una de sus grandes obras, El mal samaritano, fue finalista al prestigioso Premio nacional de ensayo Anagrama. (shrink)

This paper provides a computational characterization of coherence that applies to a wide range of philosophical problems and psychological phenomena. Maximizing coherence is a matter of maximizing satisfaction of a set of positive and negative constraints. After comparing five algorithms for maximizing coherence, we show how our characterization of coherence overcomes traditional philosophical objections about circularity and truth.

Physician-assisted suicide laws in Oregon and Washington require the person's current competency and a prognosis of terminal illness. In The Netherlands voluntariness and unbearable suffering are required for euthanasia. Many people are more concerned about the loss of autonomy and independence in years of severe dementia than about pain and suffering in their last months. To address this concern, people could write advance directives for physician-assisted death in dementia. Should such directives be implemented even though, at the time, the person (...) is no longer competent and would not be either terminally ill or suffering unbearably? We argue that in many cases they should be, and that a sliding scale which considers both autonomy and the capacity for enjoyment provides the best justification for determining when: when written by a previously well-informed and competent person, such a directive gains in authority as the later person's capacities to generate new critical interests and to enjoy life decrease. Such an extension of legalized death assistance is grounded in the same central value of voluntariness that undergirds the current more limited legalization. (shrink)

Endurantists have recently faced a mereological puzzle in various forms. Here I argue that, instead of presenting a genuine worry, the puzzle actually reveals a common misunderstanding about the endurantist ontology. Furthermore, through this discussion of the alleged problem and the misunderstanding which motivates it, I reveal metaphysical commitments the endurantist has that may not be widely recognized. For instance, she is committed to interesting and perhaps controversial views about shape and location. I highlight these commitments and what they mean (...) for the endurantist. (shrink)

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this book Paul Stern provides a full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. He argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character. More specifically, he argues that Socrates' (...) revolutionary decision to subject political life to philosophic reflection, the decision that leads directly to his trial and execution, is based on his awareness of the elusiveness of comprehensive knowledge and the implications of that elusiveness for the validity of philosophic inquiry. This view of Socrates' rationale has important consequences for our understanding of political philosophy and of the validity of the life of reason itself. (shrink)

That many values can be consequentialized – incorporated into a ranking of states of affairs – is often taken to support the view that apparent alternatives to consequentialism are in fact forms of consequentialism. Such consequentializing arguments take two very different forms. The first is concerned with the relationship between morally right action and states of affairs evaluated evaluator-neutrally, the second with the relationship between what agents ought to do and outcomes evaluated evaluator-relatively. I challenge the consequentializing arguments for both (...) forms of consequentialism. The plausibility of the evaluator-neutral consequentializing of certain values, I argue, in fact establishes the implausibility of an evaluator-neutral consequentialist account of such values. The problems that beset this evaluator-neutral consequentializing argument do not beset its evaluator-relative counterpart. But I demonstrate that evaluator-relatively consequentialized theories can also readily be ‘deontologized’, located within an alternative evaluative framework that is congenial to the articulation of nonconsequentialist moral theories. Such an alternative framework can accommodate what is compelling in consequentialists’ ‘Compelling Idea,’ and what is attractive in their Explanatory Thought. This alternative, moreover, can function as a shared evaluative framework within which the merits of consequentialist and nonconsequentialist alternatives can be considered without begging the question either way. (shrink)

The risk that direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals (DTCA) may increase inappropriate medicine use is well recognized. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration addresses this concern by subjecting DTCA content to strict scrutiny. Its strictures are, however, heavily focused on the explicit claims made in commercials, what we term their “propositional content.” Yet research in social psychology suggests advertising employs techniques to influence viewers via nonpropositional content, for example, images and music. We argue that one such technique, evaluative conditioning, is (...) operative in DTCA. We further argue that evaluative conditioning fosters unjustified beliefs about drug safety and efficacy, antagonising the autonomy of viewers’ choices about advertised medicines. We conclude that current guidelines are deficient in failing to account for evaluative conditioning, and that more research and debate are needed to determine the permissibility of this and other forms of nonpropositional persuasion. (shrink)

Mental representations have continuous as well as discrete, combinatorial properties. For example, while predominantly discrete, phonological representations also vary continuously; this is reflected by gradient effects in instrumental studies of speech production. Can an integrated theoretical framework address both aspects of structure? The framework we introduce here, Gradient Symbol Processing, characterizes the emergence of grammatical macrostructure from the Parallel Distributed Processing microstructure (McClelland, Rumelhart, & The PDP Research Group, 1986) of language processing. The mental representations that emerge, Distributed Symbol Systems, (...) have both combinatorial and gradient structure. They are processed through Subsymbolic Optimization–Quantization, in which an optimization process favoring representations that satisfy well-formedness constraints operates in parallel with a distributed quantization process favoring discrete symbolic structures. We apply a particular instantiation of this framework, λ-Diffusion Theory, to phonological production. Simulations of the resulting model suggest that Gradient Symbol Processing offers a way to unify accounts of grammatical competence with both discrete and continuous patterns in language performance. (shrink)

A strong distinction is often made between personal autonomy and moral autonomy. Personal autonomy involves governing yourself in the pursuit of your own conception of the good. Moral autonomy involves legislating the moral law for yourself. Viewed in this way personal autonomy seems at best marginal and at worst a positive hindrance to moral autonomy, since personal autonomy can conflict with moral autonomy. Given that Kantian approaches to morality are closely aligned with moral autonomy, does that mean that the Kantian (...) must view personal autonomy as a moral hindrance? Can there be a legitimate role for personal autonomy within Kant’s ethical framework? This paper will seek to argue: that personal and moral autonomy need not be seen as in tension or at odds with one another; that Kant defends an attractive weak substantive theory of personal autonomy; that socialisation plays an important role (both positive and negative) in the development of autonomy competences in Kant’s theory; and that personal autonomy (properly understood) has an essential role to play in Kant’s ethical framework. (shrink)

_An investigation into the foundations of democratic societies and the ongoing struggle over the power of concentrated wealth_ Much of our politics today, Paul Starr writes, is a struggle over entrenchment—efforts to bring about change in ways that opponents will find difficult to undo. That is why the stakes of contemporary politics are so high. In this wide‑ranging book, Starr examines how changes at the foundations of society become hard to reverse—yet sometimes are overturned. Overcoming aristocratic power was the (...) formative problem for eighteenth‑century revolutions. Overcoming slavery was the central problem for early American democracy. Controlling the power of concentrated wealth has been an ongoing struggle in the world’s capitalist democracies. The battles continue today in the troubled democracies of our time, with the rise of both oligarchy and populist nationalism and the danger that illiberal forces will entrench themselves in power. _Entrenchment_ raises fundamental questions about the origins of our institutions and urgent questions about the future. (shrink)

In ‘Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?’ (Miller, 2017), Alistair Miller presents a searing indictment of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and a dismissal of claims for its importance for education. He provides a summary account of Levinas's philosophy and, in relation to this, refers briefly to a number of authors who have related Levinas's work to education. This account is at fault, however, in fundamental ways, and this leads to errors in the conclusions that he draws. The present short paper does (...) not attempt to address these problems in the round but rather focuses on a particular aspect of his phrasing in constructing the account, taking this as a significant pointer to the nature of the misinterpretation as a whole. (shrink)

There remains a division between the work of philosophers who draw on the sciences of the mind to understand emotion and those who see the philosophy of emotion as more self-sufficient. This article examines this methodological division before reviewing some of the debates that have figured in the philosophical literature of the last decade: whether emotion is a single kind of thing, whether there are discrete categories of emotion, and whether emotion is a form of perception. These questions have been (...) addressed by both sides of the methodological divide and the integration of these two approaches would have clear benefits. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann argues directly from our ignorance about actual and merely possible goods and evils and the broadly logical relations that hold betweenthem to the conclusion that “noseeum” arguments from evil against theism like William L. Rowe’s are unsuccessful. I critically discuss Bergmann’s argument in the first part of this paper. Bergmann also suggests that our ignorance about value and modality undermines the Humean argument from evil against theism that I defended in a 1989 paper. I explain in the second (...) part of this paper why this suggestion is false. (shrink)

By registering different health benefits on a common scale, CEA allows us to assess the relative social importance of different health care interventions and opens the way for the allocation decisions of health care policy. If it is really to be effective, however, CEA must be recalibrated so that it better reflects some of our widely held beliefs about the merits of different kinds of treatment.

In two studies of a GO–NOGO task assessing sustained attention, we examined the effects of altering speed–accuracy trade-offs through instructions and auditory alerts distributed throughout the task. Instructions emphasizing accuracy reduced errors and changed the distribution of GO trial RTs. Additionally, correlations between errors and increasing RTs produced a U-function; excessively fast and slow RTs accounted for much of the variance of errors. Contrary to previous reports, alerts increased errors and RT variability. The results suggest that standard instructions for sustained (...) attention tasks, emphasizing speed and accuracy equally, produce errors arising from attempts to conform to the misleading requirement for speed, which become conflated with attention-lapse produced errors and auditory alerts have complex, and sometimes deleterious, effects on attention. We argue that instructions emphasizing accuracy provide a more precise assessment of attention lapses in sustained attention tasks. (shrink)

The macaque washes a potato in a stream. It does this because it has seen the dirt come off as another macaque washed its potato, and it knows that clean potato.

This article explores aspects of eros in education in relation to ideas of indirectness associated with the French concept of pudeur, sometimes translated as ‘modesty’. It explores lines of thought extending through Emerson and Nietzsche but reaching back to Plato's Symposium. This is a means of exposing the ‘impudence’ of some aspects of contemporary education and of pointing towards a conception of eros that is otherwise obscured.

Noncommuting quantum observables, if considered asunsharp observables, are simultaneously measurable. This fact is exemplified for complementary observables in two-dimensional state spaces. Two proposals of experimentally feasible joint measurements are presented for pairs of photon or neutron polarization observables and for path and interference observables in a photon split-beam experiment. A recent experiment proposed and performed by Mittelstaedt, Prieur, and Schieder in Cologne is interpreted as a partial version of the latter example.

The Franciscan William of Ockham was an English medieval philosopher, theologian, and political theorist. Along with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, he is regarded as one of the three main figures in medieval philosophy after around 1150. Ockham is important not only in the history of philosophy and theology, but also in the development of early modern science and of modern notions of property rights and church-state relations. This volume offers a full discussion of all significant aspects of Ockham's thought: (...) logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and natural philosophy, epistemology, ethics, action theory, political thought and theology. It is the first study of Ockham in any language to make full use of the new critical editions of his works, and to consider recent discoveries concerning his life, education, and influences. (shrink)

Children learn about the world from the testimony of other people, often coming to accept what they are told about a variety of unobservable and indeed counter-intuitive phenomena. However, research on children’s learning from testimony has paid limited attention to the foundations of that capacity. We ask whether those foundations can be observed in infancy. We review evidence from two areas of research: infants’ sensitivity to the emotional expressions of other people; and their capacity to understand the exchange of information (...) through non-verbal gestures and vocalization. We conclude that a grasp of the bi-directional exchange of information is present early in the second year. We discuss the implications for future research, especially across different cultural settings. (shrink)

Philosophers of history in the past few decades have been predominantly interested in issues of explanation and narrative discourse. Consequently, they have focused consistently and almost exclusively on the historian’s output, thereby ignoring that historical scholarship is a practice of reading, thinking, discussing, and writing, in which successful performance requires active cultivation of certain skills, attitudes, and virtues. This paper, then, suggests a new agenda for philosophy of history. Inspired by a “performative turn” in the history and philosophy of science, (...) it focuses on the historian’s “doings” and proposes to analyze these performances in terms of epistemic virtue. It argues that historical scholarship is embedded in “practices” or “epistemic cultures,” in which knowledge is created and warranted by means of such virtues as honesty, carefulness, accuracy, and balance. These epistemic virtues, however, are not etched in stone: historians may highlight some of them, exchange one for another, or reinterpret their meaning. On the one hand, this suggests a rich area of research for historians of historiography. To what extent can consensus, conflict, continuity, and change in historical scholarship be explained in terms of epistemic virtue? On the other hand, the proposal outlined in this article raises a couple of philosophical questions. For example, on what grounds can historians choose among epistemic virtues? And what concept of the self comes with the notion of virtue? In addressing these questions, philosophy of history may expand its current scope so as to encompass not only “writings” but also “doings,” that is, the virtuous performances historians recognize as professional conduct. (shrink)

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology offers potential for human augmentation in areas ranging from communication to home automation, leisure and gaming. This paper addresses ethical challenges associated with the wider scale deployment of BCI as an assistive technology by documenting issues associated with the development of non-invasive BCI technology. Laboratory testing is normally carried out with volunteers but further testing with subjects, who may be in vulnerable groups is often needed to improve system operation. BCI development is technically complex, sometimes (...) requiring lengthy recording sessions to achieve the necessary personalisation of the paradigms, and this can present ethical challenges that vary depending on the subject group. The paper contributes to the on-going ethical discussion surrounding the deployment BCI outside the specialist laboratory and suggests some tentative guidelines for BCI research teams, appropriate to those deploying the technology, derived from experience on a multisite project. Any tension between deployment and technical progress must be managed by a formal process within a multidisciplinary consortium. (shrink)

Paul Standish; Bibliography, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 36, Issue 3, 16 December 2002, Pages 503–512, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00290.

Schopenhauer presents his moral philosophy as diametrically opposed to that of Kant: for him, pure practical reason is an illusion and morality can arise only from the feeling of compassion, while for Kant it cannot be based on such a feeling and can be based only on pure practical reason. But the difference is not as great as Schopenhauer makes it seem, because for him compassion is supposed to arise from metaphysical insight into the unity of all being, thus from (...) pure if theoretical reason, while for Kant pure practical reason works only by effecting a feeling of respect (in the works) or by cultivating, i.e. affecting, natural dispositions to moral feeling (in the works). I argue that Kant's is the more realistic theory on this point. (shrink)

On the strength of a clarification of the nature of philosophy of education, a critical overview is offered of Wittgenstein's impact on the field. The focus then narrows to give attention to Wittgenstein's claim that “Nothing is hidden”, pitched here in a questionable relation to contemporary concerns with transparency. Familiar readings of this passage are challenged in connection with Wittgenstein's late writings on psychology, especially with regard to imagination and pretence. These are argued to be essential to the development of (...) mind and world, from the child's first entry into language, and hence crucial to education. (shrink)

In adversarial problem solving (APS), one must anticipate, understand and counteract the actions of an opponent. Military strategy, business, and game playing all require an agent to construct a model of an opponent that includes the opponent's model of the agent. The cognitive mechanisms required for such modeling include deduction, analogy, inductive generalization, and the formation and evaluation of explanatory hypotheses. Explanatory coherence theory captures part of what is involved in APS, particularly in cases involving deception.

This paper examines relations between eugenics and genetics during the Weimar Republic. Research aims and requests for funding were motivated by a sense that biology could contribute to national reconstruction after the First World War. Geneticists' participation in social policy-making is assessed, as well as the rise of interest in eugenics and racial biology among public health officials. It was important that eugenics be acceptable to the Centre Party, and a sometime Jesuit, Hermann Muckermann, took a leading role as intermediary (...) between the state and human geneticists in the founding of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Earlier plans to establish a national institute, the organization of the Institute as it actually materialized, and the scope of research are considered. Finally, the dislocation in 1933 is assessed in order to further emphasize how the Institute was deeply embedded in the Weimar social structure. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre's landmark book After Virtue, first published in 1981, begins with sobering words, the resonance of which has, in the three decades since then, been felt by many. We live in a wo...

Evidential atheism, as espoused by various philosophical atheists, recommends belief that God does not exist on the basis of not just the evidence of which we are aware, but also our overall available evidence. This article identifies a widely neglected problem from potential surprise evidence that undermines an attempt to give a cogent justification of such evidential atheism. In addition, it contends that evidential agnosticism fares better than evidential atheism relative to this neglected problem, and that traditional monotheism has evidential (...) resources, unavailable to evidential atheism, which promise to save it from the fate of evidential atheism. (shrink)

Philosophers have long been familiar with the contrast between predicates privado privado son las únicas características cualitativas realmente simples. Con base en que, después de todo, sus referentes externos admiten un análisis estructural, relacional, causal o funcional de algún tipo. En este artículo quiero adoptar un enfoque más general y más filosófico que los argumentos antireduccionistas evidenciando los problemas que generan con la filosofía de la ciencia; la neurociencia emergente y con la historia de la ciencia en general. Sus argumentos (...) carecen incluso de solidez con respecto a los estándares de la filosofía puramente analítica únicas características cualitativas realmente simples. Con base en que, después de todo, sus referentes externos admiten un análisis estructural, relacional, causal o funcional de algún tipo. En este artículo quiero adoptar un enfoque más general y más filosófico que los argumentos antireduccionistas evidenciando los problemas que generan con la filosofía de la ciencia; la neurociencia emergente y con la historia de la ciencia en general. Sus argumentos carecen incluso or concepts that denote “qualitative simples,” as opposed to predicates or concepts that denote or express “structural, relational, causal, or functional” features. The tendency has been to think of these two classes of properties as being ontologically quite different from each other. Some would insist that the features displayed in this private cognitive domain are the only genuinely simple qualitative features, on grounds that their external brethren all turn out to admit of a structural, relational, causal, or functional analysis of some kind after all. In this paper I wish to take a more general and more philosophical approach to the anti-reductionist arguments which run into trouble with the philosophy of science, with emerging neuroscience, and with the history of science generally. They lack integrity even by the standards of purely analytic philosophy. / Los filósofos conocen bien el contraste entre predicados o conceptos que denotan características “cualitativas simples”, a diferencia de predicados o conceptos que señalan características “estructurales, relacionales, causales o funcionales”. La tendencia ha sido pensar estas dos clases de propiedades como ontológicamente diferentes entre sí. Algunos insistirían en que las características que se muestran en este dominio cognitivo de solidez con respecto a los estándares de la filosofía puramente analítica. (shrink)