Taking their motivation from the perceived failure of the reductive physicalist project concerning consciousness, panpsychists ascribe subjectivity to fundamental material entities in order to account for macro-consciousness. But there exists an unresolved tension within the mainstream panpsychist position, the seriousness of which has yet to be appreciated. I capture this tension as a dilemma, and offer advice to panpsychists on how to resolve it. The dilemma is as follows: Panpsychists take the micro-material realm to feature phenomenal properties, plus micro-subjects to (...) whom these properties belong. However, it is impossible to explain the generation of a macro-subject (like one of us) in terms of the assembly of micro-subjects, for, as I show, subjects cannot combine. Therefore the panpsychist explanatory project is derailed by the insistence that the world’s ultimate material constituents are subjects of experience. The panpsychist faces a choice of giving up her explanatory ambitions, or of giving up the claim that the ultimates are subjects. I argue that the latter option is preferable, leading to neutral monism, on which phenomenal qualities are irreducible but subjects are reducible. So panpsychists should be neutral monists. (shrink)

This paper tries to meet the three basic constraints in the metaphysics of perception—that, following Schellenberg, I call here the particularity constraint, the indistinguishable constraint, and the phenomenological constraint—by putting forward a new combination of the two well-known contradictory views in this field: the relational view and the content view. Following other compatibilists, I do think that it is possible to reconcile the two views, recognizing that experience has both a relational and a representational dimension. However, in opposition to the (...) current ways of combining these two views, I reject the idea of gappy contents. Instead, my proposal is builds on Lewis’s famous semantic, according to which the content of sentences is best modeled as complex functions from context-index pairs to truth-values. In conformity with the content view, I want to suggest that perceptual experiences do represent complex properties or complex functions that are either veridical or falsidical of particulars in contexts and indexes. In this relativist framework, I can also accommodate the relational claim that our experience of particulars must be understood as a fundamental cognitive relation rather than as a representation. In this way, particulars also play a key role in individuating perceptual experiences. Two token experiences, e and e′, are different when one of the following conditions is met: first, if two different particulars, a and a′, are causally responsible for the token experiences e and e′, respectively, regardless of the time and location in which the perceptual experiences take place; second, if the same particular a, which is causally responsible for both e and e′, is either located in a different place or is in the same location but at a different time. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature it needs an “interpretation”. As I understand it, an interpretation of a physical theory amounts to offering (1) a precise formulation of its ontological claims and (2) a clear account of how such claims are related to the world of our experience. Notably, metaphysics enters importantly in both tasks: in (1), because interpreting our best physical theories requires going beyond a merely (...) instrumentalist view of science and therefore using our best metaphysical theories; in (2), because a philosophical elaboration of the theories of the world that are implicit in our experience is one of the tasks of analytic metaphysics, and bridging possible explanatory gaps or even conflicts between the physical image and the manifest image of the world is a typical philosophical task that involves science and metaphysics. (shrink)

Recent technological and methodological changes in farming have led to an emerging set of claims about the role of digital technology in food production. Known as precision agriculture, the integration of digital management and surveillance technologies in farming is normatively presented as a revolutionary transformation. Proponents contend that machine learning, Big Data, and automation will create more accurate, efficient, transparent, and environmentally friendly food production, staving off both food insecurity and ecological ruin. This article contributes a critique of these (...) rhetorical and discursive claims to a growing body of critical literature on precision agriculture. It argues precision agriculture is less a revolution than an evolution, an effort to shore up and intensify the conventional farming system responsible for generating many of the social and environmental problems precision agriculture is presented as solving. While precision agriculture advocates portray it as a radical, even democratic epistemological break with the past, this paper locates truth claims surrounding datafication and algorithmic control in farming within deeper historical contexts of the capitalist rationalization of production and efforts to quantify and automate physical and mental labor. Abjuring the growing cultural tendency to treat algorithmic systems as revolutionary in favor of social and historical dimensions of precision agriculture, can help re-frame the discussion about its design and use around real, socially and ecologically oriented change in farming, and so ensure that the possibilities and benefits of precision agriculture are as evenly and effectively shared as possible. (shrink)

There is abundant evidence of contextual variation in the use of “S knows p.” Contextualist theories explain this variation in terms of semantic hypotheses that refer to standards of justification determined by “practical” features of either the subject’s context (Hawthorne & Stanley) or the ascriber’s context (Lewis, Cohen, & DeRose). There is extensive linguistic counterevidence to both forms. I maintain that the contextual variation of knowledge claims is better explained by common pragmatic factors. I show here that one is (...) variable strictness. “S knows p” is commonly used loosely to implicate “S is close enough to knowing p for contextually indicated purposes.” A pragmatic account may use a range of semantics, even contextualist. I use an invariant semantics on which knowledge requires complete justification. This combination meets the Moorean constraint as well as any linguistic theory should, and meets the intuition constraint much better than contextualism. There is no need for ad hoc error theories. The variation in conditions of assertability and practical rationality is better explained by variably strict constraints. It will follow that “S knows p” is used loosely to implicate that the condition for asserting “p” and using it in practical reasoning are satisfied. (shrink)

Creating agents that proficiently interact with people is critical for many applications. Towards creating these agents, models are needed that effectively predict people's decisions in a variety of problems. To date, two approaches have been suggested to generally describe people's decision behavior. One approach creates a-priori predictions about people's behavior, either based on theoretical rational behavior or based on psychological models, including bounded rationality. A second type of approach focuses on creating models based exclusively on observations of people's behavior. At (...) the forefront of these types of methods are various machine learning algorithms. This paper explores how these two approaches can be compared and combined in different types of domains. In relatively simple domains, both psychological models and machine learning yield clear prediction models with nearly identical results. In more complex domains, the exact action predicted by psychological models is not even clear, and machine learning models are even less accurate. Nonetheless, we present a novel approach of creating hybrid methods that incorporate features from psychological models in conjunction with machine learning in order to create significantly improved models for predicting people's decisions. To demonstrate these claims, we present an overview of previous and new results, taken from representative domains ranging from a relatively simple optimization problem and complex domains such as negotiation and coordination without communication. (shrink)

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primarily meant to contribute to the prediction of structural behavior in Multiphysics approaches.

This study examines the relationship between gender, class, and race through a case study of the Ontario, Canada dental profession in the first two decades of the twentieth century. During this time period dentists endeavored to solidify their claims to professional status by defining their relations with patients, the public, and with dental assistants. Dentists drew on gender, class, and racial-ethnic relations and ideology in defining these relations and fostering their professional identity. Dentists' use of these relations enabled them (...) to define and defend their claims to professional authority in the area of dental health. (shrink)

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy has been widely influential and favorably viewed by many as a successful attempt to combine procedural and substantive aspects of democracy, while remaining quintessentially liberal. Although I admit that their conception is one of the strongest renditions of liberal democracy, I argue that it is inadequate in radically multicultural societies that house non-liberal cultural minorities. By focusing on Gutmann’s position on minority claims of culture in the liberal West, which follows (...) from Gutmann and Thompson’s theory of deliberative democracy, I attempt to show that the theory of deliberative democracy does not do justice to legitimate claims of culture made by nonliberal minority cultural groups in the liberal West. As a result, I further argue that their deliberative democracy itself is inadequate for radically diverse societies in the West, some of whose members also belong to nonliberal minority cultural groups. (shrink)

This article sets out to describe how churches have responded and continue to respond to fast-changing urban environments in Pretoria Central and Mamelodi East, animating Henri Lefebvre’s sociological perspective of citadins or urban inhabitants. We make tentative interpretations and offer critical appreciation. Churches, which were historically separated from the city centre, now directly participate in claiming a right to the city. With necessary fluidity, churches express lived African urbanisms through informality, place-making, spatial innovation and everyday rituals. Though not exhaustive, the (...) article focuses on rituals shared among historic urban Christians and contemporary African urban Christians, namely prayer, listening to the Bible and worship. These rituals, when combined with the churches’ spatial innovation, to a certain degree contribute to place-making. (shrink)

The BP neural network model is a hot issue in recent academic research, and it has been successfully applied to many other fields, but few researchers apply the BP neural network model to the field of automobile insurance. The main method that has been used in the prediction of the total claim amount in automobile insurance is the generalized linear model, where the BP neural network model could provide a different approach to estimate the total claim loss. This paper uses (...) a genetic algorithm to optimize the structure of the BP neural network at first, and the calculation speed is significantly improved. At the same time, by considering the overfitting problem, an early stop method is introduced to avoid the overfitting problem. In the model, a three-layer BP neural network model, which includes the input layer, hidden layer, and output layer, is trained. With consideration of various factors, a total claim amount prediction model is established, and the trained BP neural network model is used to predict the total claim amount of automobile insurance based on the data of the training set. The results show that the accuracy of the prediction by using the BP neural network model to both the data of Shandong Province and to the data of six cities is over 95%. Then, the predicted total claim amount is used to calculate premiums for five cities in Shandong Province according to credibility theory. The results show that the average premium of the five cities is slightly higher than the actual claim amount of the city. The combination of BP neural network and credibility theory can perform accurate claim amount estimation and pricing for automobile insurance, which can effectively improve the current situation of the automobile insurance business and promote the development of insurance industry. (shrink)

Particular persons have claims against being made worse off than they could have been. The literature, however, has focused primarily on only two-option cases; yet, these cases fail to capture all of the morally relevant factors, especially when a person’s existence is in question. This paper explores how to assess claims in multiple-option choice sets. We scrutinize the only extant proposal, offered by Michael Otsuka, which we call the Weakening View. In light of its problems, we develop an (...) alternative: the Combining View. The Weakening View holds that a person’s claim against a loss of well-being relative to one distribution is weakened by the availability of further alternatives relative to which the person gains well-being. By contrast, our view holds that a person has an overall claim for or against a certain distribution relative to the whole option set, where overall claims are second-order functions of the different pairwise claims. Finally, we defend the Combining View by exploring its implications for the impact of a person’s possible non-existence on their overall claims, and we develop a proposal for how the number of distributions relative to which a person gains or loses welfare influences the strength of their overall claims. (shrink)

In another paper, one of us argued that emergence and reduction are compatible, and presented four examples illustrating both. The main purpose of this paper is to develop this position for the example of phase transitions. We take it that emergence involves behaviour that is novel compared with what is expected: often, what is expected from a theory of the system's microscopic constituents. We take reduction as deduction, aided by appropriate definitions. Then the main idea of our reconciliation of emergence (...) and reduction is that one makes the deduction after taking a limit of an appropriate parameter $N$. Thus our first main claim will be that in some situations, one can deduce a novel behaviour, by taking a limit $N\to\infty$. Our main illustration of this will be Lee-Yang theory. But on the other hand, this does not show that the $N=\infty$ limit is physically real. For our second main claim will be that in such situations, there is a logically weaker, yet still vivid, novel behaviour that occurs before the limit, i.e. for finite $N$. And it is this weaker behaviour which is physically real. Our main illustration of this will be the renormalization group description of cross-over phenomena. (shrink)

The author offers a conceptual investigation of the tension between openness and protection in well-developed welfare states. Because of a combination of demographic tendencies and labor market shortages, a growing number of European welfare states is currently exploring market-led immigration policies. However, the level of protection these welfare states offer seems hard to reconcile with the low threshold markets that are needed to incorporate newcomers. The author argues that the “solution”lies not so much in a clear political choice for either (...) but rather in the coordinated institutionalization of differentiated citizenship rights. The author illustrates this case with examples taken from the Dutch context, claiming further that the particular combination of corporatist welfare arrangements and the tradition of lenient enforcement in the Netherlands provides a “natural”habitat for the kind of regime pluralism that differentiated citizenship requires. (shrink)

In 'How Should We Aggregate Competing Claims', Alex Voorhoeve suggests accommodating intuitions about duties in rescue cases by combining aggregative and non-aggregative elements into one theory. In this paper, I discuss two problems Voorhoeve’s theory faces as a result of requiring a cyclic pattern of choice, and argue that his attempt to solve them does not succeed.

The perception of semantic similarity derives from distinct processes of comparison and integration. A dual process model of conceptual combination claims that attributive combination (e.g., umbrella tree) entails comparison, while relational combination (e.g., pancake spatula) requires integration. The present research uses similarity as a test of this dual process model. Participants (N = 168) were presented attributive and relational conceptual combinations. Half of the participants interpreted the combinations before rating the similarity of their constituent concepts, while the other half (...) provided similarity ratings without interpreting the concepts together. The experiment revealed that attributive combination decreased the perceived similarity of the constituent concepts, whereas relational combination increased the similarity of the constituents. This result indicates that attributive and relational combination occur via distinct processes. Results of a post‐test (N = 60) suggested that these effects were specific to the particular concepts compared or integrated, and do not generalize to other concepts not compared or integrated. The present research thus supported a dual process model of conceptual combination by demonstrating differential effects of comparison and integration on the perception of semantic similarity. (shrink)

Panpsychism is now a bona fide potential solution to the metaphysical quandary of consciousness. Much of the debate concerning the viability of panpsychism is centered on the combination problem. Intriguingly, the literature analyzing this problem displays two competing interpretations which differ in their modal force. According to the first, which we call the ‘no-necessitation view', CP consists in the absence of a priori necessitation of macro-level phenomenal facts from micro-level phenomenal facts. In contrast, the second interpretation, which we label the (...) ‘incoherence charge’, goes further by insisting that it can be positively demonstrated that micro-experiences cannot combine to yield integral macro-experiences. While conceivability arguments are vulnerable to debates over conflicting intuitions, as well as to the claim that a more complete picture will grant the desired necessitation, IC has the advantage that, if true, it removes these concerns and approaches a more final verdict. Nevertheless, while conceivability arguments are widely discussed IC has not been equally well understood or recognized. In this paper we conduct a systematic investigation and reevaluation of IC, as it applies to constitutive micropsychism. We argue that the problem is real and therefore that constitutive micropsychism is a blind alley. (shrink)

SummaryJohn Dalton's atomic theory, with its postulate of compound formation through atom-to-atom combination, brought a new perspective to weight relationships in chemical reactions. A presumed one-to-one combination of atoms A and B to form a simple compound AB allowed Dalton to construct his first table of relative atomic weights from literature analyses of appropriate binary compounds. For such simple binary compounds, the atomic theory had little advantages over affinity theory as an explanation of fixed proportions by weight. For ternary compounds (...) of the form AB2, however, atomic theory made quantitative predictions that were not deducible from affinity theory. Atomic theory required that the weight of B in the compound AB2 be exactly twice that in the compound AB. Dalton, Thomas Thomson and William Hyde Wollaston all published within a few years of each other experimental data that claimed to give the predicted results with the required accuracy. There are nonetheless several experimental barriers to obtaining the desired integral multiple proportions. In this paper I will discuss replication experiments which demonstrate that only Wollaston's results are experimentally reliable. It is likely that such replicability explains why Wollaston's experiments were so influential. (shrink)

In this book, Jiri Benovsky takes a stand for a variant of panpsychism as being the best solution available to the mind-body problem. More exactly, he defends a view that can be labelled 'dual-aspect-pan-proto-psychism'. Panpsychism claims that mentality is ubiquitous to reality, and in combination with dual-aspect monism it claims that anything, from fundamental particles to rocks, trees, and human animals, has two aspects: a physical aspect and a mental aspect. In short, the view is that the nature (...) of reality is 'phental' (physical-mental). But this does not mean, according to the author, that rocks and photons think or have conscious experiences, in the sense in which human animals have experiences. This is where pan-proto-psychism enters the picture as being a better theoretical option, where the mental aspects of fundamental particles, rocks, and trees are not experiential. Many hard questions arise here. In this book, Benovsky focuses on the combination problem: in short, how do tiny mental aspects of fundamental particles combine to yield macro-phenomenal conscious experiences, such as your complex experience when you enjoy a great gastronomic meal? What makes the question even harder is that the combination problem is not just one problem, but rather a family of various combination issues and worries. Benovsky offers a general strategy to deal with these combination problems and focuses on one in particular – namely, the worry concerning the existence of subjects of experience. Indeed, if standard panpsychism were true, we would need an explanation of how tiny micro-subjects combine into a macro-subject like a human person. And if panprotopsychism is true, it has to explain how a subject of experience can arise from proto-micro-mental aspects of reality. Benovsky shows that understanding the nature of subjectivity in terms of the growingly familiar notion of mineness in combination with a reductionist/eliminativist view of the self, allows us to have a coherent picture, where this type of combination problem is avoided, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. (shrink)

This chapter talks about “Super Best Friends,” where the kids are seduced by illusionist David Blaine and his growing cult, and Jesus and the Super Best Friends must come to the rescue. It reviews important philosophical questions the episode raises, including miracles and the difference between the natural and supernatural. More generally, the chapter also talks about the nature of religious pluralism—the co‐existence of many different claims to religious authority—and how faith relates to reason in a world of diverse (...) beliefs. (shrink)

Slavery harmed the slaves but not their descendants since slavery brought about their existence. The descendants gain the slaves’ claims via inheritance. However, collecting the inheritance-based claim runs into a number of difficulties. First, every descendant usually has no more than a portion of the slave’s claim because the claim is often divided over generations. Second, there are epistemic difficulties involving the ownership of the claim since it is unlikely that a descendant of a slave several generations removed would (...) have retained the claim of inheritance given the loss of wealth and disinheritance that often characterizes families. There are also problems in determining the amount of inheritance. This is in part because of the problems of calculating in the effects of offsets, especially crime-related offsets, which are owed by a significant portion of the descendants. Even if this inheritance claim can be established with sufficient confidence certain entities may not be asked to pay it. The federal government does not owe compensation since as a historical matter it permitted but did not cause enslavement. The beneficiaries of slavery do not owe compensation since merely receiving the benefit of an unjust activity does not by itself generate a debt of compensation. When combined these problems constitute an overwhelming case against reparations. (shrink)

In this paper I will argue that if physics is to become a coherent metaphysics of nature it needs an “interpretation”. As I understand it, an interpretation of a physical theory amounts to offering a precise formulation of its ontological claims and a clear account of how such claims are related to the world of our experience. Notably, metaphysics enters importantly in both tasks: in, because interpreting our best physical theories requires going beyond a merely instrumentalist view of (...) science and therefore using our best metaphysical theories; in, because a philosophical elaboration of the theories of the world that are implicit in our experience is one of the tasks of analytic metaphysics, and bridging possible explanatory gaps or even conflicts between the physical image and the manifest image of the world is a typical philosophical task that involves science and metaphysics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany academic authors, policy makers, NGOs, and corporations have focused on top-down human rights global norm-making, such as the United Nations Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights. What is often missing are contextual and substantive analyses that interrogate rights mobilization and linkages between voluntary transnational rules and domestic governance. Deploying a socio-legal approach and using a combination of longitudinal field and archival data, this article investigates how a local, indigenous community in Northern Chile mobilized their rights over a period (...) of almost two decades. We found that rights mobilization was largely shaped by tensions between the different logics of legality and the business organization. In our case, the UNGP implementation process has been ineffective in giving rightsholders access to genuine remedy. On the contrary, it has led to weakened rights mobilization, dividing the local community. We conclude that greater attention to rights mobilization and domestic governance dynamics should be given in the business and human rights debate. (shrink)

This article considers the practical question of how research institutions should best structure their legal relationship with the human genomic data that they generate. The analysis, based on South African law, is framed by the legal position that although a research institution that generates human genomic data is not automatically the owner thereof, it is well positioned to claim ownership of newly generated data instances. Given that the research institution exerts effort to generate the data, it can be argued that (...) it has a moral right to claim ownership of such data. Combined with the fact that it has an interest in having comprehensive rights in such data, it appears that the prudent policy for research institutions is to claim ownership of the human genomic data instances that they generate. This policy is tested against two opposing policy positions. The first opposing policy position is that research participants should own the data that relate to them. However, in light of data protection legislation that already provides extensive protections to research participants, bestowing data ownership on research participants would offer little benefit to such individuals, while leading to significant practical problems for research institutions. The second opposing policy position is that the concept of ownership should be abandoned in favour of data custodianship. This opposing position is problematic, as avoiding reference to ownership is a denial of legal reality and hence not a useful policy. Also, avoiding reference to ownership will leave research institutions with limited legal remedies in the event of appropriation of data by third parties. Accordingly, it is concluded that the wisest policy for research institutions is indeed to explicitly claim ownership of the human genomic data instances that they generate. (shrink)

Because they failed to include our informed consent, guided imagery scenarios, and debriefing, the relevance of Korn, Huelsman, Reed, and Aiello's (1992) data remains unknown. The design of their Study 1 did not test the greater objectivity of role taking over involved participation. The design of their Study 2 did not demonstrate the effects of demand characteristics. The older "personal acquaintances" were not at higher risk of rape as they claimed. Properly gathered data from the University of Connecticut's laboratory demonstrated (...) that participants regarded the guided imagining of rape to be personally and scientifically beneficial, educating them about the crime and the experience of the rape victim. Prior research had demonstrated that exposure to rape stimuli in combination with debriefing had an educational effect on the decreased endorsement of rape myths. Previously published ethical principles for balancing the rights of scientists, subjects, and society explicate our ethical stance. Informed consent precludes the occurrence of wrongful harms. This poorly designed and poorly reasoned "ethical" critique was unfounded; yet, it might produce a chilling effect on both the use of guided imagery and freedom of inquiry into politically sensitive topics. (shrink)

This paper discusses justice-constrained libertarian claims that were proposed as a way to circumvent the impossibility of the Paretian liberal. Since most of the results are negative in character, we suggest an alternative route: A requirement on the structure of individual orderings should be combined with the idea that under particular circumstances individual decisiveness should be controlled by higher-order principles.

The claim that Galileo Galilei transformed the spyglass into an astronomical instrument has never been disputed and is considered a historical fact. However, the question what was the procedure which Galileo followed is moot, for he did not disclose his research method. On the traditional view, Galileo was guided by experience, more precisely, systematized experience, which was current among northern Italian artisans and men of science. In other words, it was a trial-and-error procedure—no theory was involved. A scientific analysis of (...) the optical properties of Galileo’s first improved spyglass shows that his procedure could not have been an informed extension of the traditional optics of spectacles. We argue that most likely Galileo realized that the objective and the eyepiece form a system and proceeded accordingly. (shrink)

In this article, I propose a novel characterization of sufficientarianism. I argue that sufficientarianism combines three claims: a priority claim that we have non-instrumental reasons to prioritize benefits in certain ranges over benefits in other ranges; a continuum claim that at least two of those ranges are on one continuum; and a deficiency claim that the lower a range on a continuum, the more priority benefits in that range have. This characterization of sufficientarianism sheds new light on two long-standing (...) philosophical debates, namely about the distinctiveness of sufficientarianism as a distributive principle and about the common objections to sufficientarianism. (shrink)

This thesis concerns alternative concatenating operations in extensive measurements and the degree to which concatenating operations are matter of convention. My arguments are directed against Ellis' claim that what prevents us from choosing alternative ways of combining extensive quantities is only convenience and simplicity and that the choice is not based on empirical reasons. ;My first argument is that, given certain relational theories of measurement, there can be no more than one concatenating operation per quantity; because combining operations (...) are the only conclusive distinguishing characteristic among distinct extensive measurements and thus the only thing that can serve as an indicator for the identity of a quantity. Rectangular and collinear concatenation, for example, cannot both be used as a way of combining lengths. However, rectangular concatenation could be used to measure some other extensive quantity since it fulfills the necessary conditions for adequate numerical assignment. ;For those that adopt theories of measurement which can support the claim that dinches measure length, I demonstrate, in the second argument, that rectangular concatenation would be a bad alternative and thus no alternative at all. Implementation of rectangular concatenation requires a new science; a science compatible with dinches violates present invariance principles and a new set must be provided, if possible. It is not clear that there is a set of invariance principles compatible with dinches which also gives basis for a science that explains the phenomena as well as the old one. Moreover, new invariance principles would be unintuitive and would require that certain fundamental concepts change their meaning. For these reasons the choice between them is guided by a number of empirical reasons and is not only a matter of convention. (shrink)

I present and defend a naturalist, internalist, and realist theory of the foundations of ethics. The theory, grounded in a particular concept of humanity, combines features of the Mencian and the Humean moral traditions. ;An acceptable moral theory must contain accounts of human nature and moral phenomenology. The former includes analyses of moral agency and moral psychology, the latter the nature of moral perception and the meaning of moral language. Both Mencius and Hume offer moral theories that attempt to meet (...) these conditions. Neither, however, is entirely successful. Following Mencius and Hume, I defend the position that a moral judgment ascribes---truly or falsely---a definable and natural quality to an action, object, or person. ;I further argue that a true moral judgment must be made on the perceptual basis of the moral judge under normal conditions . These normal conditions are the conditions under which the sentiment of humanity is called for and expected. What is humanity? Hume describes humanity as consistent sympathy. We find ourselves very often extending sympathy to a friend, but not so often to a stranger. Humanity requires us to extend sympathy to all people consistently. Interpreted this way, Hume's concept is similar to Mencius' concept of humanity . Though similar, Hume and Mencius offer different accounts of certain aspects of humanity. On the one hand, Hume explains the cognitive importance of characteristically human feelings and the relation between humanity and reason. On the other, Mencius presents a theory of the actualization of humanity through self-cultivation. Mencius also makes it explicit that humanity, as the unity of virtues, is the single force by which all human activities achieve their integrity. ;The Ontological and epistemological commitments in this dissertation make an internalism not just possible but unavoidable. With regard to the relation between moral judgments and motivation or reasons for action, there are two positions: an irrealist position, namely, internalism, and a realist position, namely, externalism. Internalism is the claim that there is an analytic connection between moral judgments and motivation or reasons for action; but externalism denies the necessary connection. I contend that externalism is highly problematic for its inability to explain the motivational force of morality. I also contend that traditional internalism is not acceptable when it appeals to some forms of emotivism in rejecting moral realism because by doing so it falls into radical relativism and arbitrariness. (shrink)

The analysis here is an attempt to show how the current epistemological theory of response‐dependence (R‐D) may be relevant to understanding putative ontological claims of the empirical social sciences. To this end I argue that the constitutive features of human response, central to R‐D theory, can be made explicit for social science. I conclude that for the empirical social sciences the implication of combining R‐D and certain forms of statistical analyses leads to the possibility of an events‐based ontology.

This article pays close attention to Michel Foucault's theory that political regimes are enlightened through courageous free speech. A Foucaultian enlightenment occurs not when philosophical reason completely replaces superstition and enthusiasm in the public sphere, but instead when the parrhesiast partially organizes competing claims to know and to speak the truth. While much of the recent scholarly literature on Foucault’s later lectures emphasizes the political importance of the parrhesiast, less attention has been paid to the overlap and/or incompatibility between (...) parrhesia and the other modes of truth-telling. Below, I explain Foucault’s analysis of the basic modes of philosophical truth-telling: prophesy, philosophy, teaching, and parrhesia. I provide examples of speakers working within these modes in the ancient and modern world. I explain the overlap and tension between these modes, and I analyze Foucault’s partial organization of them through the image of the parrhesiast. I briefly compare Foucault’s position to the agonistic democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and distinguish Foucault’s view from consensus-based views of public reason. Finally, I provide practical and theoretical examples of parrhesiastic activity in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Sometimes the cognitive part of the human mind is modelled in a simplified way by degrees of belief. E.g., in philosophy of science and in formal epistemology agents are often identified by their credences in a set of claims. This line of dealing with the individual mind is currently expanded to groups by attempts of finding adequate ways of pooling individual degrees of belief into an overall group credence or, more abstractly speaking, into a collective mind. In this paper, (...) we model religious people’s minds as such a collective mind. Religious people are therein identified with a set of degrees of beliefs containing religious and secular credences. E.g., within a religious context a person may be sure that some statement is true, whereas the same person lacks non-religious support for such a credence and hence may doubt the truth of that statement within a secular context. We will also present two results on the adequacy of this model. (shrink)

This is a book that we would enthusiastically recommend to those who unconditionally believe in the epistemologically or politically unproblematic character of organisational research. Carl Rhodes, once an employee of the Boston Consulting Group, now researcher at the University of Technology, Sydney, has written a small yet important book about academic writing on organisation. It has appeared in a small but interesting collection called Advances in Organization Studies that is edited by Stewart Clegg and Alfred Kieser and published by John (...) Benjamins. Rhodes’ book resonates well with developed traditions in narrative and storytelling approaches to management and organisation studies. Such traditions have approached organisational knowledge from a narrative perspective1 and used narrative and literary methods to understand organisations.2 More specifically, Rhodes both draws on and contributes to an understanding of the relationship between narrative and power3 and to using multiple interpretations and representations in research.4 However, although we would argue that it is possible to identify Rhodes’ position in the field, ‘summing up’ in his own terms what he has to say is not easy. His central point seems to be that conclusively singular representations, perhaps including the one that we give here, are problematical from both an ethical and political perspective. One may be tempted to discard this as yet another postmodernist frivolity, but we would suggest that what writers and researchers in organisation studies, and the social sciences more generally, might get from this work is an increased sensitivity to the ethics of their writing practices. We intend in this review essay not so much to provide the reader with a neat survey of Rhodes’ book as to build further on some of its ideas. And in doing so, we will highlight its philosophical underpinnings not only because we think that these are especially interesting for the readers of this journal but also because we think that some of them are problematical. We have tried to provide a fairly neutral reconstruction of Rhodes’ argument in the first three sections below, and from the fourth section onwards — ‘authorless writing’ — we question some of Rhodes’ assumptions and ideas. While we are enthused by the questions raised in this book and indeed by the way the overall argument is presented, we will also claim that in places he seems to succumb to an anti-realist and anti-authoritarian position that we regard as unnecessarily radical. (shrink)

Identity crafts for migration and citizenship purposes require the assistance of brokerage actors that help secure documents, advise on self-presentations, and vouch for relevant credentials. While recognizing the contradictory roles these intermediaries play in both facilitating and controlling migration and the porous boundary between for-profit and non-profit actors, scholars have yet to explore what challenges these characteristics pose to the organization of a particular brokerage transaction. How do these intermediaries reconcile their roles as migration facilitators and surrogate gatekeepers? Does it (...) matter to present the transaction as driven by financial rewards or other loftier goals? How are the boundaries between different types of intermediaries enacted and contested? I explore these questions through the case of a religious organization that helps migrants establish their religious identities for asylum claims-making on religious grounds. Combining insights from the “relational work” approach with ethnographic research in Korean evangelical congregations in the U.S., I show how the template of gift giving allows the church to focus on making the faithful as God’s intermediary, instead of screening them as the state’s private deputy, and avoid an accusation that its trade with asylum-seekers turns the Christian persona into a quasi-commodity. The boundary between the church and commercial brokers, between gift giving and market exchange, however, is constantly contested and renegotiated through the interaction between the transaction parties. In conclusion, I discuss how the relational work approach can advance our comparative inquiry into the brokerage transactions facilitating the “profane” exchange of “sacred” identities for migration and citizenship purposes. (shrink)

Over fifteen years after first reporting to the State of New York, the Harvard Medical Practice Study continues to have a significant impact in medical malpractice policy debates. In those debates the HMPS has come to stand for four main propositions. First, “medical injury… accounts for more deaths than all other kinds of accidents combined” and “more than a quarter of those were caused by substandard care.” Second, the vast majority of people who are injured as result of substandard care (...) do not file a claim. Third, “a substantial majority of malpractice claims filed are not based on provider carelessness or even iatrogenic injury.” Fourth, “whether negligence or a medical injury had occurred… bore little relation to the outcome of the claims.”Medical malpractice researchers have long known that the HMPS provides far stronger support for the first two of these propositions than for the last two; the HMPS was not designed or powered to reach strong conclusions about the validity of medical malpractice claims. (shrink)

Over fifteen years after first reporting to the State of New York, the Harvard Medical Practice Study continues to have a significant impact in medical malpractice policy debates. In those debates the HMPS has come to stand for four main propositions. First, “medical injury… accounts for more deaths than all other kinds of accidents combined” and “more than a quarter of those were caused by substandard care.” Second, the vast majority of people who are injured as result of substandard care (...) do not file a claim. Third, “a substantial majority of malpractice claims filed are not based on provider carelessness or even iatrogenic injury.” Fourth, “whether negligence or a medical injury had occurred… bore little relation to the outcome of the claims.”Medical malpractice researchers have long known that the HMPS provides far stronger support for the first two of these propositions than for the last two; the HMPS was not designed or powered to reach strong conclusions about the validity of medical malpractice claims. (shrink)

A critical commentary is offered on a skeptical rebuttal made by Arthur Reber and James Alcock in the July/August 2019 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, which came in response to an article by Etzel Cardeña (published in the mainstream journal American Psychologist in 2018) that reviewed the extensive evidence from parapsychological experiments which seems to collectively offer support for the existence of psychic (or psi) phenomena. At the heart of their rebuttal, Reber and Alcock seek to make the counterargument that this (...) evidence cannot be meaningful because psi phenomena are "impossible," appearing to violate four fundamental principles of physics. It is shown here that rather than being based on any kind of substantial evidence, the criticisms that Reber and Alcock put forth in support of this counterargument are instead based on a combination of narrow personal opinion, unfounded assumption, and superficial rhetoric, leaving their claims unsound and ultimately unconvincing. (shrink)

There is a famous passage in chapter six of James’ Principles of Psychology whose import, many believe, deals a devastating blow to the explanatory aspirations of panpsychism. In the present paper I take a close look at James’ argument, as well as at the claim that it underlies a powerful critique of panpsychism. Apart from the fact that the argument was never aimed at panpsychism as such, I show that it rests on highly problematic assumptions which, if followed to their (...) logical consequences, are just as inedible to contemporary critics of panpsychism as they are to its present-day supporters. Hence, a naïve employment of the argument, as a critique leveled by physicalists against panpsychism, is counterproductive and even self-defeating. After examining the metaphysical shortcomings undermining James’ position , I conclude with some reflections on what needs to be done in order to obtain a better perspective regarding the explanatory prospects of panpsychism as an alternative approach to mainstream physicalism in the study of conscious phenomena. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that a phenomenological concept of normality can be helpful to understand the experiential side of post-truth phenomena. How is one’s longing for, or sense of, normality related to what we deem as real, true, or objective? And to what extent is the sense for “what (really) is” related to our beliefs of what should be? To investigate this, I combine a phenomenological approach to lived normality with a genealogical account of represented normality that sheds light (...) on the social and historical contingency of definitions of normality and their intertwinement with structures of power. It is my contention that such an approach to normality is well-suited to investigate how is and ought are interrelated within subjective experience and practice. This might in turn help overcoming one-sided debates on post-truth, which rely on the strict opposition of objectivity versus subjectivity, universal truth versus subjective experience, facticity versus meaning, or reason versus stupidity. It also sheds light on the ambivalent or contested status of experience within debates of post-truth and feminist theory. I will conclude that post-truth is related to what Hannah Arendt has termed the lack of a common world (i.e., normality), arguing that a plurality of experiences is needed to let the “real world” stand its ground again. (shrink)

The extension of intellectual property rights into the realm of biology has emerged as an increasing focus of controversy in relation to science,2 biodiversity,3 agriculture,4 health,5 development,6 human rights7 and trade.8 This paper presents the results of a review of international trends in activity for patent protection between 1990-2000 and provisional data to 2004 and 2005 from over 70 national patent offices, four regional patent offices and the World Intellectual Property Organisation using the European Patent Office esp@cenet worldwide database.9 The (...) review employed patent publication counts as an indicator of activity for traditional medicines, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and biotechnology. The research provides insights into the internationalisation of patent activity in multiple areas of biology. The review emphasises the need to combine the further development of quantitative methods with qualitative analysis of the implications of international patent activity in relation to biological and genetic material for science, society and policy. (shrink)

The extension of intellectual property rights into the realm of biology has emerged as an increasing focus of controversy in relation to science,2 biodiversity,3 agriculture,4 health,5 development,6 human rights7 and trade.8 This paper presents the results of a review of international trends in activity for patent protection between 1990-2000 and provisional data to 2004 and 2005 from over 70 national patent offices, four regional patent offices and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) using the European Patent Office esp@cenet worldwide database.9 (...) The review employed patent publication counts as an indicator of activity for traditional medicines, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and biotechnology. The research provides insights into the internationalisation of patent activity in multiple areas of biology. The review emphasises the need to combine the further development of quantitative methods with qualitative analysis of the implications of international patent activity in relation to biological and genetic material for science, society and policy. (shrink)

Three reservations about Keller & Miller's (K&M's) argument are explored: Serious validity problems afflict epidemiological criteria discriminating disorders from non-disorders, so high rates may be misleading. Normal variation need not be mild disorder, contrary to a possible interpretation of K&M's article. And, rather than mutation-selection balance, true disorders may result from unselected combinations of normal variants over many loci. (Published Online November 9 2006).

Most of us have certain intuitions about moral rights, at least partially captured by the ideas that: (A) rights carry special weight in moral argument; (B) persons retain their rights even when they are legitimately infringed; although (C) rights undoubtedly do conflict with one another, and are sometimes overridden as well by nonrights considerations. I show that Dworkin's remarks about rights allow us to affirm (A), (B), and (C), yet those remarks are extremely vague. I then argue that Feinberg's more (...) comprehensive and precise theory, designed to do justice to all three theses, cannot assure us of (A), that rights are not merely one consideration to be weighed in the balance with heterogeneous others. I show how Feinberg accepts (C) despite being drawn toward an alternative absolutist theory of rights and commits himself to (B) through his rejection of prima facie rights. But his promising distinction between recognition and enforcement of a right, which helps give some sense to (B) despite its tension with (C), undermines the force of rights in moral argument apparently intended by (A). We thus learn that Feinberg's and Dworkin's accounts of rights are incompatible, though each is correct in important ways. Contrasting their views allows us to clarify the implications and consistency of alternative theses about rights, one step toward meeting the challenge of developing a theory which shows more adequately how respect for rights is to be combined with other intuitions about rights and their relation to other values. (shrink)

This article studies the conceptions of social justice of women active in transnational migrant politics over a period of roughly 20 years in the Netherlands. The novel focus on migrant women reveals that transnational politics is almost completely male-dominated and -directed. Two of the exceptions found in this article include a leftist and a Kurdish women organization supporting the communist cause in the 1980s and the Kurdish struggle in the 1990s in Turkey, respectively. In both organizations gender equality was subordinated (...) to broader ideologies of political parties in their homeland. Leftist activists in the cold war era supported a narrow definition of the "politics of redistribution," while and Kurdish activists, combined classical features of the latter with those of traditional identity politics. (shrink)