This work is the first to demonstrate the differences and similarities between Plato's myths and the traditional kind of which he was critical. It also actively demonstrates the extent to which his own myths support or undermine the philosophical ideas of the dialogues in which they are set. It offers new arguments and criticism on point of detail concerning modern interpretations.

The theory of mental models and its computer implementations have led to crucial experiments showing that no standard logic—the sentential calculus and all logics that include it—can underlie human reasoning. The theory replaces the logical concept of validity (the conclusion is true in all cases in which the premises are true) with necessity (conclusions describe no more than possibilities to which the premises refer). Many inferences are both necessary and valid. But experiments show that individuals make necessary inferences that are (...) invalid, e.g., Few people ate steak or sole; therefore, few people ate steak. Other crucial experiments show that individuals reject inferences that are not necessary but valid, e.g., He had the anesthetic or felt pain, but not both; therefore, he had the anesthetic or felt pain, or both. Nothing in logic can justify the rejection of a valid inference: a denial of its conclusion is inconsistent with its premises, and inconsistencies yield valid inferences of any conclusions whatsoever including the one denied. So inconsistencies are catastrophic in logic. In contrast, the model theory treats all inferences as defeasible (nonmonotonic), and inconsistencies have the null model, which yields only the null model in conjunction with any other premises. So inconsistences are local. Which allows truth values in natural languages to be much richer than those that occur in the semantics of standard logics; and individuals verify assertions on the basis of both facts and possibilities that did not occur. (shrink)

Even though integrity is widely considered to be an essential aspect of research, there is an ongoing debate on what actually constitutes research integrity. The understanding of integrity ranges from the minimal, only considering falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, to the maximum, blending into science ethics. Underneath these obvious contrasts, there are more subtle differences that are not as immediately evident. The debate about integrity is usually presented as a single, universal discussion, with shared concerns for researchers, policymakers and ‘the public’. (...) In this article, we show that it is not. There are substantial differences between the language of research integrity in the scientific arena and in the public domain. Notably, scientists and policymakers adopt different approaches to research integrity. Scientists tend to present integrity as a virtue that must be kindled, while policy documents and newspapers stress norm enforcement. Rather than performing a conceptual analysis through philosophical reasoning and discussion, we aimed to clarify the discourse of ‘scientific integrity’ by studying its usage in written documents. To this end, large numbers of scientific publications, policy documents and newspaper articles were analysed by means of scientometric and content analysis techniques. The texts were analysed on their usage of the term ‘integrity’ and of frequently co-occurring terms and concepts. A comparison was made between the usage in the various media, as well as between different periods in which they were published through co-word analysis, mapping co-occurrence networks of significant terms and themes. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Herein I engage with the very difficult question of whether the duty to aid (sometimes called a duty of assistance or a duty of beneficence) extends so far as to justify harming persons, perhaps even lethally, in order to protect wild animals. I argue that this question is not nearly as settled as our intuitions may suggest and that Shelly Kagan’s arguments on Defending Animals, contained in his book How to Count Animals, More or Less, provide a rich substrate in (...) which to cultivate ideas on this subject (2019, pp. 248–279). My intuition is that killing a person, even one ‘guilty’ of trying to kill an animal for sport or leisure, is far beyond what a duty to aid can command, though admittedly I find my own intuition somewhat morally dumbfounding. I argue further that Tom Regan’s ‘worse-off principle’ may ease the ever-uncomfortable sense of moral dumbfounding by providing a surer foundation for the intuitive sense that we cannot ethically go so far as to threaten a person with lethal force in defense of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

Incompletely understood medical texts, like other kinds of technical writing, pose problems that require a multi-disciplinary approach. In addition, the etymological writings of ancient commentators hint at their own cultures priorities and limitations. Progress today, therefore, also depends partly upon how well we can harmonize our own thinking with the beliefs and practices of an alien culture, whose medicine may overlap with culinary and other social uses. A puzzling word may have been reshaped to reflect the supposed properties of the (...) entity denoted or the use made of it. Plant names, which figure strongly in such texts, are particularly liable to be passed from language to language as ‘culture borrowings’ and are thus especially vulnerable to this false rationalization process, commonly known as ‘folk etymology’. In a personal exploration I analyse some modern vocabulary and identify several varieties of the process and then illustrate its effects by means of toponyms and medicinal plant names from mediaeval Italy and ancient Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Greece and Italy. Since no known language seems immune from etymologizing, the generic points that emerge are offered as a contribution to the decipherers craft. (shrink)

Hunting is typically valued for its instrumentality for food procurement, wildlife management, conservation, heurism, and atavism. More importantly, some hunting is valued intrinsically. A particular form of hunting is a game and game playing, categorically, is often valued intrinsically. This view can be further supported with an application of a concept of caring and an accompanying argument that hunting generally, and fair-chase hunting in particular, is cared about deeply by millions of its practitioners. There are normative grounds for a shift (...) in the way that hunting is valued. While hunting as game playing is valued and cared about deeply by millions of fair-chase practitioners, which is far more important than any of its various instrumentalities, the position that such hunting is morally villainous can be sustained. (shrink)

Contributed research papers presented at the annual sessions of the Indian Philosophical Congress.

The role of animals in the realm of sport is the focus of this special issue which delves into the nuanced intersections of sport, animals, and ethics. For millennia, humans have forged multifacete...

The thesis of this paper is that games and sports that harm nonhuman animals are unethical because they exceed the permissible limits of optional harm and the more harm the game imposes on the nonhuman animal(s) it objectifies the worse the ethical transgression. Factors in the analysis include the nature of games and sports, the ontology of beings (i.e., human and nonhuman animals) in games, the mitigating power of informed consent among human game-players and its absence among nonhuman game players, (...) harm, and intent. (shrink)

We point out that, when the dimension of the Hilbert space is greater than two, Bell’s operators entering the Bell-CHSH inequality do exhibit inequivalent unitary matrix representations. Although the Bell-CHSH inequality turns out to be violated, the size of the violation is different for different representations, the maximum violation being given by Tsirelson’s bound. The feature relies on a pairing mechanism between the modes of the Hilbert space of the system.

My objective in this project is to explore the concept of moral luck as it relates to sports. I am especially interested in constitutive luck. As a foundation I draw from both Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel’s classic handling of moral luck, generally. Within the philosophy of sport are similar explorations of this nexus by Robert Simon and David Carr that also factor into the present work. My intent is to put a new lens in front of a puzzle drawn (...) from Torbjörn Tännsjö’s well-known article ‘Is Our Admiration of Sports Heroes Facistoid?’ Specifically, the idea that we might admire an athlete who excels without having worked hard for it. If we may call this puzzle ‘the talent problem,’ the questions driving the present work are as follows: what is the relationship between moral luck and the talent problem, and can this relationship provide a prescription for morally assessing the talent problem? The thesis that this exploratory work suggests that more complex games (and... (shrink)

Herein I address and extend the sparse literature on deception in sports, specifically, Kathleen Pearson’s Deception, Sportsmanship, and Ethics and Mark J. Hamilton’s There’s No Lying in Baseball. On a Kantian foundation, I argue that attempts to deceive officials, such as framing pitches in baseball, are morally unacceptable because they necessarily regard others as incompetent and as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. More dramatically I argue, contrary to Pearson and Hamilton, that some forms of competitor-to-competitor deception are (...) similarly unacceptable. Specifically, I offer a ‘principle of caustic deceit’ according to which any strategic deception that divorces a game from its constitutive skills is morally untoward and ought to be met with negative social pressure at least, and/or legislated out of existence. The problem with these forms of strategic deception is that they treat one’s opponents, again in the Kantian sense, as a mere means to one’s own self-interested ends. (shrink)

_Purpose._ This research defines the conceptual foundations of anthropotechnics as a science that studies modern processes of interaction between humans and technologies in the socio-humanitarian dimension. _Theoretical basis._ The authors use the method of anthropological analysis, which allows generalizing the approaches of anthropotechnics in the socio-cultural context in the "human-technology" system. _Originality._ Based on the results of the research, the understanding of the essence of anthropotechnics as a science that studies human interaction with technologies and technical systems has been clarified. (...) The idea of implementing anthropotechnical approaches to the management of the educational process gained further development, in particular in the context of practical training of applicants for education, distance learning, and dual education forms. The concept of professional activity and professional self-realization of the individual is taken into account, and promising directions in the development of anthropotechnics in the context of the application of artificial intelligence are determined. _Conclusions._ Considering anthropotechnics in a philosophical and sociocultural dimension is an important approach to understanding the interaction of technologies, people, and society as a whole, where technologies affect human perception of the world and interaction with it. The range of approaches chosen by the authors, the disclosure of their principles and categories allows for considering the object of this research – anthropotechnics as a modern science – in a multifaceted and holistic way, to interpret the results of the research based on the use of the basic categories of approaches: a person, equipment, technology, activity, development, personality, system. (shrink)