ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires (...) determining what I will call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

This article defends the view that knowledge is type-identical to cognitive achievement. I argue, pace Duncan Pritchard, that not only knowledge, but also cognitive achievement is incompatible with environmental luck. I show that the performance of cognitive abilities in environmental luck cases does not distinguish them from non-abilities per se. For this reason, although the cognitive abilities of the subject are exercised in environmental luck cases, they are not manifested in any relevant sense. I (...) conclude by showing that this explanation is not ad hoc as it can be generalized to apply to causal features besides cognitive abilities. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology has it that knowledge is a kind of success through ability, and explains the value of knowledge in terms of the general value of success through ability. However, Duncan Pritchard, in a series of recent writings, argues that knowledge is not merely a success through ability, and the virtue-theoretic explanation of the value of knowledge fails. He derives general claims about what he calls ‘environmental luck’ from certain examples, and uses them against virtue epistemology. First, I (...) propose counterexamples to Pritchard’s general claims about environmental luck. Second, I offer a diagnosis of both Pritchard’s and my examples, according to which they differ as to how many abilities are responsible for the performance in question. Different structures of performance make for different conditions for success to be fully creditable to a subject. Once this is taken account of, virtue epistemology can deal with all the examples, while maintaining its main tenet that the value of knowledge is explained in terms of the value of success through ability. Third, I show that my response to Pritchard’s argument against virtue epistemology is more plausible then the ones offered by John Greco and Ernest Sosa. (shrink)

Theories of knowledge as credit for true belief, or as cognitive achievement, have to face the following objection: in the famous Barn façades case, it seems that the truth of Barney's belief that he is in front of a barn is to be explained by the correct functioning of his cognitive capacities, although we are reluctant to say that he knows he is in front of a barn. Duncan Pritchard concludes from this that a safety clause, irreducible to the conditions (...) a true belief must satisfy in order to be credited to the believer, constitutes a necessary condition of knowledge. Because those who define knowledge as a cognitive achievement have not convincingly answered this objection, I intend, in the first section of this paper, to refute it by showing how practical and doxastic achievements differ. Then I defend the idea that we should also distinguish two kinds of environmental epistemic luck, and, correlatively, two kinds of safety, that are not equally incompatible with knowledge. Finally, I argue that this distinction is inevitably vague and I indicate some consequences of this vagueness for our knowledge‐intuitions. (shrink)

When extended cognition is extended into mainstream epistemology, an awkward tension arises when considering cases of environmental epistemic luck. Surprisingly, it is not at all clear how the mainstream verdict that agents lack knowledge in cases of environmental luck can be reconciled with principles central to extended cognition.

Based on the discussion of a novel version of the Barn County scenario, the paper argues for a new explication of knowledge undermining luck. In passing, an as yet undetected form of benign luck is identified.

This essay takes up two questions. First, what does it mean to say that someone creates her own luck? At least colloquially speaking, luck is conceived as something out of an agent's control. So how could an agent increase or decrease the likelihood that she'll be lucky? Building on some recent work on the metaphysics of luck, the essay argues that there is a sense in which agents can create their own luck because people with more (...) skill tend to have more opportunities to benefit from luck. Second, what implications does this conception of luck have for related topics such as how we evaluate performances (like shooting an arrow), including coming to know something? The ubiquitous presence of luck in our actions is often underappreciated. The essay argues that when we combine an expected outcomes view of luck with a counterfactual view of causation, the distinction between environmental and intervening veritic luck seems to disappear. We need a more nuanced view of how luck sometimes undermines credit for success in agents' actions. The upshot of this view is that while luck may undermine the creditworthiness of an agent's success, it only partially undermines creditworthiness. (shrink)

The core thesis of anti-luck epistemology is the incompatibility thesis, that is, knowledge is incompatible with veritic epistemic luck. Traditionally, anti-luck epistemologists hold that there are two distinct types of veritic epistemic luck, viz, intervening luck and environmental luck. The former occurs when something luckily intervenes between the subject’s belief and the target fact, which renders the subject’s belief luckily true. The latter can be found in cases where the subject’s belief is luckily (...) true when she is in an unfriendly epistemic environment. This paper purports to show that there is another long-neglected type of veritic epistemic luck—I name it ‘interpretative luck’. It refers to the type of luck occurring when the subject accidentally chooses the correct interpretation of evidence and thus her belief is luckily true. I will demonstrate that no proper reasons can support the incompatibility between interpretative luck and knowledge. Instead, the price for insisting this incompatibility would be unacceptably high. Therefore, the existence of interpretative luck falsifies the incompatibility thesis of anti-luck epistemology. (shrink)

We are surrounded by threats of environmental harm whose actual dangers to public health are scientifically unverified. It is widely presumed that under conditions of uncertainty, when it is not possible to foresee the outcomes of our actions, or to calculate the probability they will actually cause harm, we cannot be held culpable for the risks and harms our actions impose on others. It is commonly presumed, that is, that exposing others to what this paper terms ‘uncertain threats’ is (...) permissible, because conventional theories of moral responsibility understand uncertainty as implying that the effects of our actions are out of our control and, therefore, beyond our fault. In contrast, in rejecting arguments from moral luck, this paper denies that authors of uncertain threats of environmental harm are excusably ignorant, and denies that prevailing uncertainty diminishes their moral obligations or attenuates their culpability. For under conditions of uncertainty, culpability turns on the lack of due regard for others as moral equals – a consideration that neither luck nor ignorance excuses. To expose others to unconsented-to uncertain threats of harm without exercising due care to prevent possible injury is to wrongfully gamble with their welfare and their capacity for self-authorship. (shrink)

Recently, it has been debated as to whether understanding is a species of explanatory knowledge. Those who deny this claim frequently argue that understanding, unlike knowledge, can be lucky. In this paper I argue that current arguments do not support this alleged compatibility between understanding and epistemic luck. First, I argue that understanding requires reliable explanatory evaluation, yet the putative examples of lucky understanding underspecify the extent to which subjects possess this ability. In the course of defending this claim, (...) I also provide a new account of the kind of ‘grasping’ taken to be central to understanding. Second, I show that putative examples of lucky understanding unwittingly deploy a kind of luck that is compatible with knowledge. Finally, appealing to a number of works on explanation and its attendant epistemology, I argue that alleged instances of lucky understanding that overcome these two obstacles will invariably violate certain norms of explanatory inquiry – our paradigmatic understanding-oriented practice. By contrast, knowledge of the same information is immune to these criticisms. Consequently, if understanding is environmentally lucky, it is always inferior to the understanding that a corresponding case of knowledge would provide. (shrink)

This essay takes up two questions. First, what does it mean to say that someone creates her own luck? At least colloquially speaking, luck is conceived as something out of an agent's control. So how could an agent increase or decrease the likelihood that she'll be lucky? Building on some recent work on the metaphysics of luck, the essay argues that there is a sense in which agents can create their own luck because people with more (...) skill tend to have more opportunities to benefit from luck. Second, what implications does this conception of luck have for related topics such as how we evaluate performances (like shooting an arrow), including coming to know something? The ubiquitous presence of luck in our actions is often underappreciated. The essay argues that when we combine an expected outcomes view of luck with a counterfactual view of causation, the distinction between environmental and intervening veritic luck seems to disappear. We need a more nuanced view of how luck sometimes undermines credit for success in agents' actions. The upshot of this view is that while luck may undermine the creditworthiness of an agent's success, it only partially undermines creditworthiness. (shrink)

Duncan Pritchard has, in the years following his (2005) defence of a safety-based account of knowledge in Epistemic Luck, abjured his (2005) view that knowledge can be analysed exclusively in terms of a modal safety condition. He has since (Pritchard in Synthese 158:277–297, 2007; J Philosophic Res 34:33–45, 2009a, 2010) opted for an account according to which two distinct conditions function with equal importance and weight within an analysis of knowledge: an anti-luck condition (safety) and an ability condition-the (...) latter being a condition aimed at preserving what Pritchard now takes to be a fundamental insight about knowledge: that it arises from cognitive ability (Greco 2010; Sosa 2007, 2009). Pritchard calls his new view anti-luck virtue epistemology (ALVE). A key premise in Pritchard’s argument for ALVE is what I call the independence thesis; the thesis that satisfying neither the anti-luck condition nor the ability condition entails that the other is satisfied. Pritchard’s argument for the independence thesis relies crucially upon the case he makes for thinking that cognitive achievements are compatible with knowledge-undermining environmental luck—that is, the sort of luck widely thought to undermine knowledge in standard barn facade cases. In the first part of this paper, I outline the key steps in Pritchard’s argument for anti-luck virtue epistemology and highlight how it is that the compatibility of cognitive achievement and knowledge- undermining environmental luck is indispensible to the argument’s success. The second part of this paper aims to show that this compatibility premise crucial to Pritchard’s argument is incorrect. (shrink)

Although there has been little written to date that speaks directly to problems of religious luck, described in other terms these problems have a long history. Contemporary contributors to the literature have referred to “soteriological luck” (Anderson 2011) “salvific luck” (Davidson 1999) and “religious luck” (Zagzebski 1994). Using “religious” as the unifying term, Part I of this monograph begins with the need a more comprehensive taxonomy. Serious philosophic interest in moral and epistemic luck took hold (...) only after comprehensive taxonomies for those kinds of luck were introduced, but this has not yet been done for religious luck. Even if incomplete, the more comprehensive taxonomy, as introduced in Chapter One enables better diagnostic questions to be raised for researchers. Emerging questions about potentially ‘luck leaning’ attributions of good/bad religious luck, and of the possibility and desirability of “luck free theologies,” are questions which I hope to motivate as of central interest to researchers in philosophy of religion, both secular and religious. The taxonomy highlights why we should take two concerns — with the concept of religious luck and with asymmetric or sharply differential ascriptions of religious value — to be inextricably connected. The connection between attributing good/bad luck and violating inductive norms is easy to see upon reflection. One related distinction common in recent work on epistemic luck is that between benign evidential luck (‘benign’ because consistent with justified belief and knowledge), and malign (positive epistemic status undercutting) veritic luck. How, philosophically, this distinction should be understood is an especially acute problem when it comes to testimonial trust, and to intellectually virtuous or vicious ways of assessing testimonial claims, and sources of claims. So the chapter concludes with development of the case of Tess, as an example of testimonial environmental veritic luck. The Tess case is constructed to be formally analogous to the environmental veritic luck operating in fake barn cases (where visual perception rather than reception of testimony is the source of the agent’s belief). There does seem to be an intrinsic connection between epistemic assessment of the agent’s beliefs and the inductive context in which their own and their religious community’s inquiry takes place. This will allow for some potentially powerful thought experiments in successive chapters, about luck, risk, and questions of epistemic in/justice as they pertain to religious faith ventures. (shrink)

In Risk and Luck in Medical Ethics Donna Dickenson explains in brilliant fashion the tension between ethics and luck, be it luck in outcomes of action on the one hand or luck in antecedent circumstances, in the problems that have to be faced, or character on the other. According to Dickenson, most of the philosophical debate so far has focused on how luck in outcomes affects agents’ ability to act as morally responsible people. But Dickenson (...) thinks it is equally important to discuss how to modify one’s own luck through character development and environmental changes.Throughout her lively inquiry, packed with interesting real life case studies, Dickenson requires her readers to consider philosophers’ desire “to minimize the effects of chance on moral character and the rightness of ethical choices” , a desire so intense that it led Kant to proclaim that even if the good will was “…wholly lacking in power to accomplish its purposes … it would [still] sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as something that had full worth in itself” . Philosophers want to believe that human beings control their own destiny. Yet they fear that nothing is really in their own control, and that the foundation of morality—autonomy, choice, freedom—is illusory.Dickenson claims that we can both acknowledge the role luck and risk play in our lives and maintain a robust Kantian sense of self if we properly limit that for which we are responsible . Moral agents are not responsible for all the outcomes of their actions, but only for some. Similarly, moral agents are not responsible for the way they initially find themselves in the world; but they are responsible …. (shrink)

Situationism is, roughly, the thesis that normatively irrelevant environmental factors have a great impact on our behaviour without our being aware of this influence. Surprisingly, there has been little work done on the connection between situationism and moral luck. Given that it is often a matter of luck what situations we find ourselves in, and that we are greatly influenced by the circumstances we face, it seems also to be a matter of luck whether we are (...) blameworthy or praiseworthy for our actions in those circumstances. We argue that such situationist moral luck, as a variety of circumstantial moral luck, exemplifies a distinct and interesting type of moral luck. Further, there is a case to be made that situationist moral luck is perhaps more worrying than some other well-discussed cases of moral luck. (shrink)

In 2015, Tomasetti and Vogelstein published a paper in Science containing the following provocative statement: “… only a third of the variation in cancer risk among tissues is attributable to environmental factors or inherited predispositions. The majority is due to “bad luck,” that is, random mutations arising during DNA replication in normal, noncancerous stem cells.” The paper—and perhaps especially this rather coy reference to “bad luck”—became a flash point for a series of letters and reviews, followed by (...) replies and yet further counterpoints. In this paper, I critically assess Tomasetti and Vogelstein's argument, discuss the meaning of “luck” (or, better: “chance”) in the context of the debate, and use this case study to address larger questions about methodological criteria for causal explanations of population level patterns in biomedicine. (shrink)

Explores the embodied aspects of ownership and private property as these emerge in a range of American literary texts across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Explores the embodied aspects of ownership and private property as these emerge in a range of American literary texts across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

We prove that forp-optimal fields a cell decomposition theorem follows from methods going back to Denef’s paper [7]. We derive from it the existence of definable Skolem functions and strongp-minimality. Then we turn to stronglyp-minimal fields satisfying the Extreme Value Property—a property which in particular holds in fields which are elementarily equivalent to ap-adic one. For such fieldsK, we prove that every definable subset ofK×Kdwhose fibers overKare inverse images by the valuation of subsets of the value group is semialgebraic. Combining (...) the two we get a preparation theorem for definable functions onp-optimal fields satisfying the Extreme Value Property, from which it follows that infinite sets definable over such fields are in definable bijection iff they have the same dimension. (shrink)

We study finitely generated free Heyting algebras from a topological and from a model theoretic point of view. We review Bellissima’s representation of the finitely generated free Heyting algebra; we prove that it yields an embedding in the profinite completion, which is also the completion with respect to a naturally defined metric. We give an algebraic interpretation of the Kripke model used by Bellissima as the principal ideal spectrum and show it to be first order interpretable in the Heyting algebra, (...) from which several model theoretic and algebraic properties are derived. In particular, we prove that a free finitely generated Heyting algebra has only one set of free generators, which is definable in it. As a consequence its automorphism group is the permutation group over its generators. (shrink)

In this paper a new resolution to the gamer’s dilemma is presented. The first part of the paper is devoted to strictly formulating the dilemma, and the second to establishing its resolution. The proposed resolution, the grave resolution, aims to resolve not only the gamer’s dilemma, but also a wider set of analogous paradoxes – which together make up the paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly.

Die Geschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik ist bislang als Teil der Geschichte der Humangenetik und deren Neuorientierung als klinisch-laborwissenschaftliche Disziplin in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts betrachtet worden. Anhand neuen Quellenmaterials soll in diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, dass das Interesse an der Pränataldiagnostik in Westdeutschland auch im Kontext von Forschungen entstand, die sich mit Gefahren für den Menschen in der Umwelt befassten. Anhand der Debatten um die Einrichtung des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms „Pränatale Diagnostik genetischer Defekte“ 1970 untersuchen wir, wie die Technik der (...) Amniozentese in Westdeutschland von einer interdisziplinären Forschungsgruppe eingeführt wurde, die sich mit Schädigungen des Organismus durch Strahlen, Arzneimittel und andere Gebrauchsstoffe und Konsumgüter befasste. In einer als ökologische Wende bezeichneten Zeit wachsenden Umweltbewusstseins, so unsere These, sollte durch die Förderung der Pränataldiagnostik eine wahrgenommene Lücke in der Prävention umweltbedingt auftretender genetischer Anomalien geschlossen werden. Für die Pränataldiagnostik als „Schutzmaßnahme“ sprach unter anderem ihre erwartete Finanzierung als Krankenkassenleistung im Zuge der Reform des Abtreibungsrechts. Erst in einem zweiten Schritt führten Veränderungen von Strukturen der Forschung, vor allem aber Erfahrungen in der gynäkologischen Praxis zu einer Neuausrichtung auf die Diagnostik und Prävention mehrheitlich erblicher oder spontan auftretender Anomalien. Die Pränataldiagnostik, so wie sie schließlich in Westdeutschland ab den frühen 1980er Jahren routinemäßig Einsatz fand, hatte mit Fragen der „Umwelt“ kaum noch zu tun. Diese Fallstudie zur Frühgeschichte der genetischen Pränataldiagnostik handelt von dem noch wenig untersuchten Verhältnis von humangenetischer Forschung, klinischer Praxis und Umweltforschung und hat zum weiteren Ziel, den bisher in anderen Kontexten beschriebenen Wandel von Perspektiven in der Vorsorge um 1970 zu beleuchten. (shrink)

Most people agree that murder is wrong. Yet, within computer games virtual murder scarcely raises an eyebrow. In one respect this is hardly surprising, as no one is actually murdered within a computer game. A virtual murder, some might argue, is no more unethical than taking a pawn in a game of chess. However, if no actual children are abused in acts of virtual paedophilia (life-like simulations of the actual practice), does that mean we should disregard these acts with the (...) same abandon we do virtual murder? In this paper I shall outline several arguments which attempt to permit virtual murder, whilst prohibiting virtual paedophilia. (shrink)

Journal of Mathematical Logic, Volume 22, Issue 02, August 2022. Motivated by results of Bagaria, Magidor and Väänänen, we study characterizations of large cardinal properties through reflection principles for classes of structures. More specifically, we aim to characterize notions from the lower end of the large cardinal hierarchy through the principle [math] introduced by Bagaria and Väänänen. Our results isolate a narrow interval in the large cardinal hierarchy that is bounded from below by total indescribability and from above by subtleness, (...) and contains all large cardinals that can be characterized through the validity of the principle [math] for all classes of structures defined by formulas in a fixed level of the Lévy hierarchy. Moreover, it turns out that no property that can be characterized through this principle can provably imply strong inaccessibility. The proofs of these results rely heavily on the notion of shrewd cardinals, introduced by Rathjen in a proof-theoretic context, and embedding characterizations of these cardinals that resembles Magidor’s classical characterization of supercompactness. In addition, we show that several important weak large cardinal properties, like weak inaccessibility, weak Mahloness or weak [math]-indescribability, can be canonically characterized through localized versions of the principle [math]. Finally, the techniques developed in the proofs of these characterizations also allow us to show that Hamkin’s weakly compact embedding property is equivalent to Lévy’s notion of weak [math]-indescribability. (shrink)

Let k be an infinite cardinal. A subset of $(^k k)^n $ is a $\Sigma _1^1 $ -subset if it is the projection p[T] of all cofinal branches through a subtree T of $(lt;kk)^{n + 1} $ of height k. We define $\Sigma _k^1 - ,\Pi _k^1 $ - and $\Delta _k^1$ subsets of $(^k k)^n $ as usual. Given an uncountable regular cardinal k with k = k (...) there is a shrink)

In this paper I will evaluate Ali’s dissolution of the gamer’s dilemma. To this end the dilemma will be summarized and Ali’s dissolution formulated. I conclude that Ali has not dissolved the dilemma (at least not fully).

We study the influence of the existence of large cardinals on the existence of wellorderings of power sets of infinite cardinals κ with the property that the collection of all initial segments of the wellordering is definable by a Σ1‐formula with parameter κ. A short argument shows that the existence of a measurable cardinal δ implies that such wellorderings do not exist at δ‐inaccessible cardinals of cofinality not equal to δ and their successors. In contrast, our main result shows that (...) these wellorderings exist at all other uncountable cardinals in the minimal model containing a measurable cardinal. In addition, we show that measurability is the smallest large cardinal property that imposes restrictions on the existence of such wellorderings at uncountable cardinals. Finally, we generalise the above result to the minimal model containing two measurable cardinals. (shrink)

Russell and Walker proposed different ways of constructing instants from events. For an explanation of "time as a continuum," Thomason favored Walker's construction. The present article shows that Russell's construction fares as well. To this end, a mathematical characterization problem is solved which corresponds to the characterization problem that Thomason solved with regard to Walker's construction. It is shown how to characterize those event structures (formally, interval orders) which, through Russell's construction of instants, become linear orders isomorphic to a given (...) (or, deriving, to some—nontrivial ordered) real interval. As tools, separate characterizations for each of resulting (i) Dedekind completeness, (ii) separability, (iii) plurality of elements, (iv) existence of certain endpoints are provided. Denseness is characterized to replace Russell's erroneous attempt. Somewhat minimal nonconstructive principles needed are exhibited, and some alternative approaches are surveyed. (shrink)

Let [Formula: see text] be an expansion of either an ordered field [Formula: see text], or a valued field [Formula: see text]. Given a definable set [Formula: see text] let [Formula: see text] be the ring of continuous definable functions from [Formula: see text] to [Formula: see text]. Under very mild assumptions on the geometry of [Formula: see text] and on the structure [Formula: see text], in particular when [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-minimal or [Formula: see text]-minimal, or (...) an expansion of a local field, we prove that the ring of integers [Formula: see text] is interpretable in [Formula: see text]. If [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-minimal and [Formula: see text] is definably connected of pure dimension [Formula: see text], then [Formula: see text] defines the subring [Formula: see text]. If [Formula: see text] is [Formula: see text]-minimal and [Formula: see text] has no isolated points, then there is a discrete ring [Formula: see text] contained in [Formula: see text] and naturally isomorphic to [Formula: see text], such that the ring of functions [Formula: see text] which take values in [Formula: see text] is definable in [Formula: see text]. (shrink)

Let p be prime number, K be a p‐adically closed field, a semi‐algebraic set defined over K and the lattice of semi‐algebraic subsets of X which are closed in X. We prove that the complete theory of eliminates quantifiers in a certain language, the ‐structure on being an extension by definition of the lattice structure. Moreover it is decidable, contrary to what happens over a real closed field for. We classify these ‐structures up to elementary equivalence, and get in particular (...) that the complete theory of only depends on m, not on K nor even on p. As an application we obtain a classification of semi‐algebraic sets over countable p‐adically closed fields up to so‐called “pre‐algebraic” homeomorphisms. (shrink)

Given an uncountable regular cardinal κ, we study the structural properties of the class of all sets of functions from κ to κ that are definable over the structure 〈H,∈〉 by a Σ1-formula with parameters. It is well known that many important statements about these classes are not decided by the axioms of ZFC together with large cardinal axioms. In this paper, we present other canonical extensions of ZFC that provide a strong structure theory for these classes. These axioms are (...) variations of the Maximality Principle introduced by Stavi and Väänänen and later rediscovered by Hamkins. (shrink)

The ability of RtoP to deliver has been mixed, but it is a bit early in RtoP's young life to judge what it will be when it grows up as a mature policy tool. There is reason to question, as well, whether Somalia and Darfur are the best tests of RtoP's potential.

I argue that there exists a proportional relationship between degrees of moral culpability and degrees of probability, where the more an agent believes her actions will result in certain consequences, the more morally culpable she is for these consequences. I assert that this degree of probability is necessarily diminished by the existence of active supernatural powers. Consequently, agents who believe in such powers are less morally culpable than agents who do not.

In this paper we consider whether Christopher Bartel has resolved the gamer’s dilemma. The gamer’s dilemma highlights a discrepancy in our moral judgements about the permissibility of performing certain actions in computer games. Many gamers have the intuition that virtual murder is permissible in computer games, whereas virtual paedophilia is not. Yet finding a relevant moral distinction to ground such intuitions can be difficult. Bartel suggests a relevant moral distinction may turn on the notion that virtual paedophilia harms women in (...) a way that virtual murder does not. We argue that this distinction is only in a position to provide a partial solution to the dilemma. (shrink)

Montefiore and Formosa (Ethics Inf Technol 24:31, 2022) provide a useful way of narrowing the Gamer’s Dilemma to cases where virtual murder seems morally permissible, but not virtual child molestation. They then resist the dilemma by theorising that the intuitions supporting it are not moral. In this paper, I consider this theory to determine whether the dilemma has been successfully resisted. I offer reason to think that, when considering certain variations of the dilemma, Montefiore and Formosa’s theory may not be (...) the most likely theory available to us. (shrink)

There is currently little empirical information about attitudes towards cognitive enhancement - the use of pharmaceutical drugs to enhance normal brain functioning. It is claimed this behaviour most commonly occurs in students to aid studying. We undertook a qualitative assessment of attitudes towards cognitive enhancement by conducting 19 semi-structured interviews with Australian university students. Most students considered cognitive enhancement to be unacceptable, in part because they believed it to be unethical but there was a lack of consensus on whether it (...) was similar or different to steroid use in sport. There was support for awareness campaigns and monitoring of cognitive enhancement use of pharmaceutical drugs. An understanding of student attitudes towards cognitive enhancement is important in formulating future policy. (shrink)

Topological developmental models with local (position of internodes) and global (branch lengths) characteristics are proposed to investigate the relationships between fundamental branching patterns of plants such as acrotony, mesotony, and basitony, including the coincidence of different patterns on the same plant. Modification of the basic acrotony during the development by means of, (1) the final expected main axis length results in either basitony or an extension of acrotony over a shortened main axis, (2) the final expected lateral branch length yields (...) either lateral unlimited sympodial branching or the absence of proximal branches. Combinations of these schemes can have variable quantitative expressions on main and lateral axes.As applications, progressive morphological changes introduced by monotonic variations of parameter values give an insight into the relationships between determinate and indeterminate growth, using Lycopersicon as an example. - A theoretical framework is proposed as a possible aid for formalizing plant typology. (shrink)