In discussions of perception and its relation to knowledge, it is common to distinguish what one comes to believe on the basis of perception from the distinctively perceptual basis of one's belief. The distinction can be drawn in terms of propositional contents: there are the contents that a perceiver comes to believe on the basis of her perception, on the one hand; and there are the contents properly attributed to perception itself, on the other. Consider the content.
Patient advocacy organizations (PAOs) advocate for increased research funding and policy changes and provide services to patients and their families. Given their credibility and political clout, PAOs are often successful in changing policies, increasing research funding, and increasing public awareness of medical conditions and the problems of their constituents. In order to advance their missions, PAOs accept funding, frequently from pharmaceutical firms. Industry funding can help PAOs advance their goals but can also create conflicts of interest (COI). Research indicates that (...) bias may occur, even among well-meaning professionals, when people and organizations have financial COI. Industry funding may therefore influence PAOs to act in ways that favor the interests of their donors, which may increase the risk of harm to patients. This article extends the analysis developed in the Institute of Medicine report, Conflicts of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice, and applies the analysis to understand PAOs and their relationships with industry. It argues that the preferred goal of institutional COI policies should not be to promote trust, but to promote trustworthiness and appropriately placed trust. (shrink)
Patient advocacy organizations provide patient- and caregiver-oriented education, advocacy, and support services. PAOs are formally organized nonprofit groups that concern themselves with medical conditions or potential medical conditions and have a mission and take actions that seek to help people affected by those medical conditions or to help their families. Examples of PAOs include the American Cancer Society, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the American Heart Association. These organizations advocate for, and provide services to, millions of people with (...) physical and mental conditions — such as cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease — via their outreach, meetings, counseling, websites, and published materials. A PAO usually seeks to raise public awareness of a disease’s symptoms, risk factors, and treatment options and promotes research to cure or to prevent that disease. (shrink)
“To arrange in or analyse into classes according to shared qualities or characteristics; to make a formal or systematic classification” (OED). For many, classification provokes images of dull cataloging and arcane knowledge. However, in the eighteenth century it was neither dull nor arcane and had momentous import for natural philosophers and everyday individuals alike. Susannah Gibson has captured this expertly in her new book, and the subtitle accents the stakes: How Eighteenth-Century Science Disrupted the Natural Order. Although originating out (...) of a doctoral dissertation, this is not a dense monograph. Instead, Gibson targets a wider academic audience using compelling vignettes in digestible chapters with compact endnotes and helpful suggestions for further reading. On the whole, the book is a success, though more illuminating in some places than others. (shrink)
Wittgenstein famously introduced the notion of ‘hinge propositions’: propositions that are assumptions or presuppositions of our languages, conceptual schemes, and language games, presuppositions that cannot themselves be rationally established, defended, or challenged. This idea has given rise to an epistemological approach, ‘hinge epistemology’, which itself has important implications for argumentation. In particular, it develops and provides support for Robert Fogelin’s case for deep disagreements: disagreements that cannot be rationally resolved by processes of rational argumentation. In this paper, I first examine (...) hinge epistemology in its own right, and then explore its implications for arguments and the theory of argumentation. I argue that the Wittgensteinian approach to hinge propositions is problematic, and that, suitably understood, they can be rationally challenged, defended, and evaluated; there are no well-formed, coherent propositions, ‘hinge’ or otherwise, that are beyond epistemic evaluation, critical scrutiny, and argumentative support/critique; and good arguments concerning hinge propositions are not only possible but common. My arguments will rely on a thoroughgoing fallibilism, a rejection of ‘privileged’ frameworks, and an insistence on the challengeability of all frameworks, both from within and from without. (shrink)
Philosophers have claimed that education aims at fostering disparate epistemic goals. In this paper we focus on an important segment of this debate involving conversation between Alvin Goldman and Harvey Siegel. Goldman claims that education is essentially aimed at producing true beliefs. Siegel contends that education is essentially aimed at fostering both true beliefs and, independently, critical thinking and rational belief. Although we find Siegel’s position intuitively more plausible than Goldman’s, we also find Siegel’s defence of (...) it wanting. We suggest novel argumentative strategies that draw on Siegel’s own arguments but look to us more promising. (shrink)
Harvey Siegel's (1985) attempts to revive the traditional epistemological formulation of the rationality of science. Contending that "a general commitment to evidence" is constitutive of method and rationality in science, Siegel advances its compatibility with specific, historically attuned formulations of principles of evidential support as a virtue of his aprioristic candidate for science's rationality. In point of fact, this account is compatible with virtually any formulation of evidential support, which runs afoul of Siegel's claim that scientific beliefs (...) must be evaluated with respect to their rationality. The unwelcome consequence of Siegel's view is that most any belief, scientific or pseudoscientific, can be defended as rational. Indeed, if we want to furnish a warrant for rational choice, we must turn to the very historically informed principles of evidential support that are dismissed by Siegel as providing a misleading portrait of science's rationality. (shrink)
What do we see? We are visually conscious of colors and shapes, but are we also visually conscious of complex properties such as being John Malkovich? In this book, Susanna Siegel develops a framework for understanding the contents of visual experience, and argues that these contents involve all sorts of complex properties. Siegel starts by analyzing the notion of the contents of experience, and by arguing that theorists of all stripes should accept that experiences have contents. She then (...) introduces a method for discovering the contents of experience: the method of phenomenal contrast. This method relies only minimally on introspection, and allows rigorous support for claims about experience. She then applies the method to make the case that we are conscious of many kinds of properties, of all sorts of causal properties, and of many other complex properties. She goes on to use the method to help analyze difficult questions about our consciousness of objects and their role in the contents of experience, and to reconceptualize the distinction between perception and sensation. Siegel's results are important for many areas of philosophy, including the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of science. They are also important for the psychology and cognitive neuroscience of vision. (shrink)
In 1905 two different etiologic agents for syphilis were proposed in Berlin, one, the Cytorrhyctes luis, by John Siegel, the other, Spirochaete pallida, by Fritz Schaudinn. Both scientists were pupils of Franz Eilhard Schulze, and were outsiders to the Berlin medical establishment. Both belonged to the same thought collective, used the same thought style, and started from the same supposition that the etiologic agent of syphilis must be a protist. Both used the same morphological approach, the same microscopes and (...) the same stains. Both presented their findings in the same societies, used the same rhetoric, published in the same journals, used the same arguments to criticise each other's shortcomings. Both were backed by powerful institutions and enlisted the support of prestigious patrons. Within half a year, the scientific community at large had in its overwhelming majority accepted Schaudinn's results and rejected those of Siegel. Social forces thus cannot be shown to have played any role in deciding the issue. Ludwik Fleck's suggestion that 'appropriate influence' and a 'proper measure of publicity throughout the thought collective' would have been sufficient for Siegel's ideas to win the day is untenable. (shrink)
As we so often trip about and lose our breath over speaking precisely to "what is rhetoric?," it should come to no surprise that being asked what we want of rhetoric, of language, of an other moves us to fidget, even brings us to blush. But if we pause with these questions, lips parted without yet the words to answer, we may notice a peculiar craving that churns before the naming. We want of rhetoric—but what? We are compelled toward rhetoric—whereto? (...) We seek in rhetoric—for? If this desire, what Hannah Arendt calls an appetite for love for its own sake, refers to the will to "have and to hold," our love in/for/through rhetoric always seems to slip from capture. So much so that after a whirl of... (shrink)
In the more than thirty specially commissioned essays that make up this book, leading scholars survey the histories, the theories, and the faultlines that ...
This is a draft of what became a contribution to a virtual symposium on Susanna Siegel's "The Content of Visual Experience". It takes issue with her claims, and arguments, that perceptual experience has representational content.
There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.
What is the relation of epistemology, understood as the study of the evaluation of knowledge claims, and empirical psychology, understood as the study of the causal generation of a person's beliefs? Quine maintains that the relation is one of “mutual containment”.Epistemology in its new setting, conversely, is contained in natural science, as a chapter of psychology. … We are studying how the human subject of our study posits bodies and projects his physics from his data, and we appreciate that our (...) position in the world is just like his. Our very epistemological enterprise, therefore, and the psychology wherein it is a component chapter, and the whole of natural science wherein psychology is a component book—all this is our own construction or projection from stimulations like those we were meting out to our epistemological subject. There is thus reciprocal containment, though containment in different senses: epistemology in natural science and natural science in epistemology. (shrink)
There is an important division in the human mind between perception and reasoning. We reason from information that we have already, but perception is a means of taking in new information. Susanna Siegel argues that these two aspects of the mind become deeply intertwined when beliefs, fears, desires, or prejudice influence what we perceive.
Why is racism so tenacious? Drawing from recent methodological innovations in the study of racism, this essay explores the appeal of racism and the erotics of race within the imagination. The slippery nature of racism, and its ability to alter its manifestations with ease and hide behind various disavowals, facilitates the racialization of both religious thought and social institutions.
To make a business case for corporate sustainability, firms must be able to sell their sustainable products. The influence that firm engagement with non-governmental organizations may have on consumer adoption of sustainable products has been neglected in previous research. We address this by embedding corporate sustainability in a cosmopolitan framework that connects firms, consumers, and civil society organizations based on the understanding of responsibility for global humanity that underlies both the sustainability and cosmopolitanism concepts. We hypothesize that firms’ sustainability engagement (...) and their NGO engagement influence consumer adoption of sustainable products. Empirically, we investigate the adoption of sustainable Eco-circle products made from recycled fibers marketed by Li Ning, a China-based global sportswear brand. We apply a stepwise regression approach to test our hypotheses with paper-and-pencil survey data from 217 Chinese consumers. We find adoption to be positively associated with consumers’ sustainability attitude but not with firms’ sustainability engagement. For firm–NGO engagement, these relationships are reversed: Adoption is positively associated with firm–NGO engagement, but not with consumers’ related attitude. Our results present a picture of the Chinese context in which there is a business case for corporate sustainability if firms’ words about sustainable product strategies are supported by signals from civil society about firm deeds. The results imply that in a Chinese context, firms need to be particularly aware of the role of NGOs when hoping to be rewarded for sustainability. (shrink)
In Specters of Marx, Derrida suggests that a non-revolutionary — ‘spectral’ — Marxism could alleviate a contemporary crisis in imagining the future in the late twentieth century. This ‘presentist’...
A series of experiments tested the hypothesis that very brief exposure to feared stimuli can have positive effects on avoidance of the corresponding feared object. Participants identified themselves as fearful of spiders through a widely used questionnaire. A preliminary experiment showed that they were unable to identify the stimuli used in the main experiments. Experiment 2 compared the effects of exposure to masked feared stimuli at short and long stimulus onset asynchronies . Participants were individually administered one of three continuous (...) series of backwards masked or non-masked stimuli: unreportable images of spiders , clearly visible images of spiders , or unreportable images of trees . Immediately thereafter, they engaged in a Behavioral Avoidance Test with a live, caged tarantula. Exposure to unreportable images of spiders resulted in greater approach towards the tarantula than unreportable neutral images. A post-hoc comparison with clearly visible exposure to these same images approached significance. These effects were maintained at a 1-week follow-up . In Experiment 3 , participants engaged in the BAT 1 week prior to the exposure manipulation in order to provide a baseline measurement of their avoidant behavior, and again immediately after the exposure manipulation. Exposure to unreportable images of spiders reduced avoidance of the tarantula. Similar exposure to trees did not. Implications for the non-conscious basis of fear are discussed. (shrink)
Harvey Siegel argues that minimum competency testing (MCT) is incompatible with strong sense critical thinking. His arguments are reviewed and contrasted with positions held by John E. McPeck and Michael Scriven. Siegel's arguments seem directed against the prevailing form of MCT. However, alternative formats which allow for the aggregate and context-sensitive nature of critical thinking are not doomed to the arbitrariness Siegel finds. MCT may be a legitimate and useful means for furthering critical thinking as one of (...) our educational ideals. (shrink)
Gilles Deleuze, arguably the best-known theorist of virtuality, describes the virtual as part of an ontology of becoming and multiplicity: he sees the virtual as a characteristic of being which is directly opposed to, but simultaneously constitutive of the actual aspect of reality, as a force that works mostly invisibly, but powerfully within the interstices of the material world, introducing constant flux into reality through its negotiations with the actual.1 This conception of the virtual represents something of a leitmotif for (...) the forty-four essays collected in The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. The collection offers a wide range of approaches to virtuality as a philosophical and aesthetic concept as well as a... (shrink)
Background: Today in vitro fertilisation is a widespread and important technique of reproductive medicine. When the technique was first used, it was considered ethically controversial. This is the first study conducted of adult IVF-offspring in order to learn about their ethical opinions and personal attitudes towards this medical technology.Methods: We recruited the participants from the first cases of in vitro fertilisation in Germany at the Gynaecological Clinic of the University Hospital Erlangen. Our qualitative interview study consisted of in-depth, face-to-face interviews (...) with 16 adults who had been conceived by IVF. Our data was analysed with methods of Grounded Theory.Results: For these adults, the most important factor influencing their personal attitudes towards IVF was the knowledge that they were deeply wanted children. The artificiality of their conception seemed irrelevant for their ethical opinion. All participants mentioned that it was important for them to be informed about the circumstances of their conception by their parents.Conclusions: IVF seems to be a medical technique which, although it affects intimate aspects of human existence, can be integrated into the lives of the affected persons without any great difficulties. The findings suggest that parents should inform their children about their fertilisation at an early age and as part of a process over time, not only on a single occasion. Physicians should advise IVF-parents accordingly. (shrink)