For any system that uses previous experience to solve problems in new situations, it is necessary to identify the features in the situation that should match features in the previous cases through some process ofsituation analysis. In this paper, we examine this problem in the legal domain, where lawyers know it asissue spotting. In particular, we present an implementation of issue spotting in CHASER, a legal reasoning system that works in the domain of tort law.This approach is (...) a compromise between generality and efficiency, and is applicable to a range of problems and domains besides legal reasoning. In particular, it presents a principled way to use multiple cases for a single problem by exploiting the inherent structure present in many domains. (shrink)

Dual-process theories of higher cognition, distinguishing between intuitive (Type 1) and reflective (Type 2) thinking, have become increasingly popular, although also subject to recent criticism. A key question, to which a number of contributions in this special issue relate, is how to define the difference between the two kinds of processing. One issue discussed is whether they differ at Marr’s computational level of analysis. I believe they do but that ultimately the debate will decided at the implementational level (...) where distinct cognitive and neural systems need to be demonstrated. Other distinctions raised in the issue are the unique ability for metarepresentation, cognitive decoupling and hypothetical thinking at the Type 2 level, and the association of emotion and metacognitive feelings with the Type 1 level. The relation of the latter to cognitive control is also discussed. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 9, Page 16-18, September 2011.

This paper is about the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. The most common approaches to this aspect are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where the evaluative approaches are usually comparative (one reasoner is assessed compared to another). These approaches often present problems with blindspots. For example, ought a reasoner to believe a currently true blindspot? Is she permitted to? Consequently, these approaches often fail in describing a situation of alethic maximality, (...) where a reasoner fulfills all the alethic norms and could be used as a standard of rationality (as they are, in fact, used in some of these approaches). I propose a function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as inputand returns a numeric alethic value. Then I use this function to define a notion of alethic maximality that is satisfiable by finite reasoners (reasoners with cognitive limitations) and does not present problems with blindspots. Function α may also be used in alethic norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that may be applied to finite reasoners and do not present problems with blindspots. A result of this investigation isthat the project of providing purely alethic norms is defective. The use of function α also sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the lottery and the preface paradoxes, and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection. (shrink)

In her book Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, bioethicist Jessica Pierce attempts to explore a narrower field of Animal Ethics, the ethics of keeping pets, as the title indicates. Τhere has not been much research in this field, although contemporary literature has dealt with certain issues within its context, such as the issue of euthanasia. The author states that her main aim is to lead the reader, by the time he reaches the last page of the (...) book, to no longer be sure if the very practice of keeping pets is moral. Although the author proposes the use of a kinder language for discussing about pet keeping, she uses the accepted language throughout her book. (shrink)

ArgumentBy examining sources created by people who were detained or employed at the quarantine stations of Australia and the Western Pacific, this article illuminates aspects of the history of disease control that cannot be observed in other source material. Most research examining the history of maritime quarantine has tended to rely on the records of official and government agencies. As a result, discussion has largely been confined to government policy and larger issues of the political, economic, and social consequences of (...) maritime disease control. This article contributes to the historiography by examining personal sources that show how quarantine policy and practice were experienced from the perspective of its participants. They reveal the experiences of otherwise obscured healthy detainees and illuminate agency among quarantined individuals that cannot be observed without these sources. (shrink)

When I proposed having the future at the center of this issue, which marks the 10th anniversary of Humanist Studies & The Digital Age, I was aware of the complexity of this controversial topic. The possibility of magnifiche sorti e progressive — a “splendid and progressive destiny” — made possible by human technology inspires hope in some and critique in others. The expression comes from one of Leopardi’s last poems, Ginestra o il fiore del deserto (Broom, or the flower (...) of the desert), where he uses it ironically to suggest the powerlessnesss of humanity in the face of natural disasters. The poet argues with all those who praise the human condition and progress acritically. He condemns their hubris and bitterly invites them to visit the arid slopes of Vesuvius, reduced to a desert by the volcano’s eruption. (shrink)

This chapter examines the possibility of using AI technologies to improve human moral reasoning and decision-making, especially in the context of purchasing and consumer decisions. We characterize such AI technologies as artificial ethics assistants (AEAs). We focus on just one part of the AI-aided moral improvement question: the case of the individual who wants to improve their morality, where what constitutes an improvement is evaluated by the individual’s own values. We distinguish three broad areas in which an individual might think (...) their own moral reasoning and decision-making could be improved: one’s actions, character, or other evaluable attributes fall short of one’s values and moral beliefs; one sometimes misjudges or is uncertain about what the right thing to do is in particular situations, given one’s values; one is uncertain about some fundamental moral questions or recognizes a possibility that some of one’s core moral beliefs and values are mistaken. We sketch why one might think that AI tools could be used to support moral improvement in those areas, and describe two types of assistance: preparatory assistance, including advice and training supplied in advance of moral deliberation; and on-the-spot assistance, including on-the-spot advice and facilitation of moral functioning over the course of moral deliberation. Then, we turn to some of the ethical issues that AEAs might raise, looking in particular at three under-appreciated problems posed by the use of AI for moral self-improvement: namely, reliance on sensitive moral data; the inescapability of outside influences on AEAs; and AEA usage prompting the user to adopt beliefs and make decisions without adequate reasons. (shrink)

This paper argues that the AI ethics has generally neglected the issues related to the science communication of AI. In particular, the article focuses on visual communication about AI and, more specifically, on the use of certain stock images in science communication about AI — in particular, those characterized by an excessive use of blue color and recurrent subjects, such as androgyne faces, half-flesh and half-circuit brains, and variations on Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. In the first section, the author (...) refers to a “referentialist” ethics of science communication for an ethical assessment of these images. From this perspective, these images are unethical. While the ethics of science communication generally promotes virtues like modesty and humility, similar images are arrogant and overconfident. In the second section, the author uses French philosopher Jacques Rancière’s concepts of “distribution of the sensible,” “disagreement,” and “pensive image.” Rancière’s thought paves the way to a deeper critique of these images of AI. The problem with similar images is not their lack of reference to the “things themselves.” It rather lies in the way they stifle any possible forms of disagreement about AI. However, the author argues that stock images and other popular images of AI are not a problem per se, and they can also be a resource. This depends on the real possibility for these images to support forms of pensiveness. In the conclusion, the question is asked whether the kind of ethics or politics of AI images proposed in this article can be applied to AI ethics tout court. (shrink)

Political candidates often believe they must focus their campaign efforts on a small number of swing voters open for ideological change. Based on the wisdom of opinion polls, this might seem like a good idea. But do most voters really hold their political attitudes so firmly that they are unreceptive to persuasion? We tested this premise during the most recent general election in Sweden, in which a left- and a right-wing coalition were locked in a close race. We asked our (...) participants to state their voter intention, and presented them with a political survey of wedge issues between the two coalitions. Using a sleight-of-hand we then altered their replies to place them in the opposite political camp, and invited them to reason about their attitudes on the manipulated issues. Finally, we summarized their survey score, and asked for their voter intention again. The results showed that no more than 22% of the manipulated replies were detected, and that a full 92% of the participants accepted and endorsed our altered political survey score. Furthermore, the final voter intention question indicated that as many as 48% (69.2%) were willing to consider a left-right coalition shift. This can be contrasted with the established polls tracking the Swedish election, which registered maximally 10% voters open for a swing. Our results indicate that political attitudes and partisan divisions can be far more flexible than what is assumed by the polls, and that people can reason about the factual issues of the campaign with considerable openness to change. (shrink)

This paper uses a study of the life story narratives of former classmates of Dutch and Moluccan descent to argue that the constructionist approach to intersectionality, with its account of identity as a narrative construction rather than a practice of naming, offers better tools for answering questions concerning intersectional identity formation than a more systemic intersectional approach. The case study also highlights the importance of the quest for origins in narratives. It demonstrates that theories of intersectionality are unjustified in subsuming (...) the issue of belonging under the identity marker of ethnicity, when all identities are performatively produced in and through narrative enactments that include belonging. Belongingness is a precarious achievement. The case study illustrates that if narrative accounts of a life fail to achieve narrative closure regarding roots, attempts to trace routes are seriously hampered. (shrink)

In everyday conversations we often convey information that goes above and beyond what we strictly speaking say: exaggeration and irony are obvious examples. H.P. Grice introduced the technical notion of a conversational implicature in systematizing the phenomenon of meaning one thing by saying something else. In introducing the notion, Grice drew a line between what is said, which he understood as being closely related to the conventional meaning of the words uttered, and what is conversationally implicated, which can be inferred (...) from the fact that an utterance has been made in context. Since Grice’s seminal work, conversational implicatures have become one of the major research areas in pragmatics. This article introduces the notion of a conversational implicature, discusses some of the key issues that lie at the heart of the recent debate, and explicates tests that allow us to reliably distinguish between semantic entailments and conventional implicatures on the one hand and conversational implicatures on the other. (shrink)

This paper sets out to undermine the view that a commitment to the early modern conception of the mind as immortalized in Ryle’s metaphor of the (Cartesian) ghost in the machine and in Quine’s metaphor of the (Lockean) myth of the museum is required to articulate a defence of the sui generis character of humanistic explanations. These powerful metaphors have not only contributed to undermining the claim for methodological pluralism by caricaturizing the arguments for disunity in the sciences; they have (...) also, and more worryingly, planted red herrings that have diverted attention away from the genuine issues at stake. This paper is an exercise in removing these false clues to reveal what the claim for the autonomy of humanistic explanations really amounts to. (shrink)

Across disciplines there is a large and increasing number of research projects that rely on data collection activities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, these are accompanied by an extensive range of ethical challenges. While the safeguarding of study participants is the primary aim of existing ethics guidelines, this paper argues that this “do no harm” principle should be extended to include research staff. This study is a comprehensive review of more than 80 existing ethics guidelines and protocols that (...) reveals a lack of safeguarding research staff regarding the ethical challenges faced during data collection activities in LMICs. This is particularly the case when it comes to issues such as power imbalances, political risk, staff’s emotional wellbeing or dealing with feelings of guilt. Lead organizations are called upon to develop guiding principles that encompass the safeguarding of research staff, which are then to be adapted and translated into specific protocols and tools by institutions. (shrink)

This is an introduction to a special issue of Perspectives on Science, the outcome of a workshop entitled "Thought Experiments in Science: Four Blind Spots," held at the University of Toronto, March 23rd, 2012. The recent revival in philosophical study of thought experiments has been limited to fields like epistemology, science studies, and metaphilosophy. With this issue we hope to facilitate a discussion about how some other disciplinary perspectives might bear on the subject; specifically, the history of philosophy, (...) literary studies, phenomenology and cognitive science. (shrink)

The task of media ethicists is not only to shine a light on the dilemmas facing our field, but also to point out what the moral issues of the day are. Why is it that some cases and issues appear on our radar, in our textbooks, web sites and journals? Using the example of how the problematic nature of the Apu character in The Simpsons escaped the attention of this author and other media ethicists, this essay explores how media ethicists (...) can be better aware of their own blind spots. Given our limited cognitive abilities and unconscious biases, I will argue that media ethicists could potentially benefit from the help of a theoretical media ethics moral machine (MeMorMach), especially in instances where they are unaware of the potential violation of an established norm. But when normative change occurs, such a device would be less useful in tracking this change and alerting them, especially to those adhering to a constructivist meta-ethical framework. The essay concludes with a call for media ethicists to pay attention to and assist so-called moral enquirers, advocates who, through personal engagement, enact normative change. (shrink)

The paper deals with the introduction of nanotechnology in biochips. Based on interviews and theoretical reflections, it explores blind spots left by technology assessment and ethical investigations. These have focused on possible consequences of increased diffusability of a diagnostic device, neglecting both the context of research as well as increased accuracy, despite it being a more essential feature of nanobiochip projects. Also, rather than one of many parallel aspects in innovation processes, ethics is considered here as a ubiquitous system of (...) choices between sometimes antagonistic values. Thus, the paper investigates what is at stake when accuracy is balanced with other practical values in different contexts. Dramatic nanotechnological increase of accuracy in biochips can raise ethical issues, since it is at odds with other values such as diffusability and reliability. But those issues will not be as revolutionary as is often claimed: neither in diagnostics, because accuracy of measurements is not accuracy of diagnostics; nor in research, because a boost in measurement accuracy is not sufficient to overcome significance-chasing malpractices. The conclusion extends to methodological recommendations. (shrink)

The total ideology of the revolutionary-political themes of Ukrainian consciousness of the twentieth century, the poetization of the absurdly inverted hierarchy of values, was opposed by the new generation of artists with their philosophical and ethical orientation of their creativity. As I.Franko notes, they "... sought a completely modern European way to portray the peculiarity of the life of the Ukrainian people," revealing the unique collisionality of human existence, the diversity of psychological types, ideological orientations, and the human experience of (...) its existence on the background of this difficult time. However, Ukrainian writersphilosophers who talently laid the foundations of national culture, but are now returning to the generations of the Shattered Renaissance, filling black and bloody spots of troubled history of Ukraine. Among them are V. Pidmogylny, B. Antonovenko-Davidovich, G. Kosinka, D. Falkivsky, M.Ivchenko, T.Osmachka, E.Pluzhnik. This is a non-exhaustive list of the leading figures of the post-revolutionary period who were removed from the creative field, whose works are the golden fund of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

Alstin, Zac At a March lecture in Canberra, Australian ethicist and pro-abortion activist Dr Leslie Cannold, spoke about the 'unfinished business' of abortion law reform in Australia. A frustrated friend sent me the transcript of this lecture and asked me to write something in response. But given the context of Cannold's lecture: a pro-abortion speech to a pro-abortion audience about pro-abortion law reform, a direct response seems impertinent. Plus, as a rule of thumb, when you play 'Pin the Tail' on (...) a live donkey you're liable to get a kick in the teeth. It makes more sense to take Cannold's speech at face value as evidence of an abortion activist's self-imposed mission in our society. To attack her for saying what she believes is perhaps in Cannold's own words "like blaming a leopard for having spots.". (shrink)

The relation between moral philosophy and moral practice is itself philosophically controversial. nor is there any one determinate formula through which to express the relations between the basic principles of morality and of rationality itself. the concepts of the moral and the political are both 'essentially contestable' and so too is the nature of their relations; that is, their analysis is itself of moral and political import. nevertheless, in periods of overall stability, this contestability may hardly be apparent. all this, (...) and its connection with philosophy's fundamental commitment to questioning and self-awareness has a deep significance for moral (and political) education. (shrink)

The Pleadings Game is a normative formalization and computational model of civil pleading, founded in Roberty Alexy''s discourse theory of legal argumentation. The consequences of arguments and counterarguments are modelled using Geffner and Pearl''s nonmonotonic logic,conditional entailment. Discourse in focussed using the concepts of issue and relevance. Conflicts between arguments can be resolved by arguing about the validity and priority of rules, at any level. The computational model is fully implemented and has been tested using examples from Article Nine (...) of the Uniform Commercial Code. (shrink)

Purpose. The research is aimed at finding out the grounds, forms and essence of the correlation between the projects of information philosophy and transhumanism from the point of view of the problematics of philosophical anthropology. Attention is focused on the status of the knowing subject and the transformations of the forms of its activity within the specified correlation. Theoretical basis. Insufficient thinking on the issue of the functioning of traditional cognitive models, in particular Kant’s transcendental questioning, which formed the (...) basis of modern rationality and classical science, in the new sociocultural reality led the authors to problematize the forms and essence of interaction and operating with knowledge and communication in the information sphere of human existence and communication. A comparative consideration of the worldviews in the information philosophy and transhumanism projects, made on the basis of a study of current scientific literature, provided an opportunity to assume the probability of implicit elimination of the problems of philosophical anthropology from the horizon of meanings of modern science through the blurring of essentially anthropological analytics. Originality. The article proves the ambivalent nature of the correlation between the projects of philosophy and transhumanism information that are externally close on the subject and problematics, and for the first time in the domestic literature, they have been compared. The content of the powerful potential of information philosophy for the development of philosophical anthropology approaches to the phenomena of the human world determined by the technological nature of civilization and the powerful sociocultural issues of modernity have been clarified. The threats of the dehumanization of the problem field in the modern science and spheres of applied digital technologies associated with transhumanism, interpreted as an ideology, are underlined. Conclusions. The analysis of theoretical positions relevant for the philosophy of information and transhumanism resulted in a number of conclusions, central among which is the statement of the "blurring" situation, the hidden elimination in the content of problematics of philosophical anthropology and its humanistic pathos within the limits of modern forms of correlation and existence in the scientific discourse of the philosophemes and ideologemes in the information philosophy and transhumanism. Epistemological phenomena of "cognitive closure" and a man as a "blind spot" in the thinking on the science and technology development, primarily communication, indicate the relevance of a full comprehensive consideration of the problems of philosophical anthropology in projects of the information philosophy and transhumanism. (shrink)

Thomas Mann (1875-1955), was a leading figure in the 20th century and is writer who has been widely mentioned in world litetarure. He is known not only as the writer of milestone novels but also as the master of oppositions. The Buddenbrook’s Family (1901), The Death in Venice (1912), and The Magıc Mountain (1924) in particular are inspiring the same emotions in the readers of today as the day they were written. While these masterpieces have been the subject of literature (...) research and psychoanalysis, they have also been of interest in the realm of philosophy. In particular, from the perspective of philosophy, The Magic Mountain, was the main concern of this study. This study will indicate both the modern aspects of the story as well as try to show how this work was a mirror for its time. The story takes place in a sanatorium where people who suffering from tuberculosis are sent to recover. This is an illness without remedy in its time and which was widespread through the 19th century. Switzerland, with its lofty mountains, was chosen as a location for tuberculosis senatoriums which offered fresh air, good nutrition, and light exercise. While the hospitals of Davos village tried to treat the patients’ lung spots, they also forced them to follow a life of dicipline. The fact that the “spotted” people went to the senatorium, with no intention of going back to their previous life is the main concern of this study. The most interesting fact here is the chain of events that connected earth to the mystical mountains of this town. The main issue will be the question of why people perceived this earthly place in such a different way. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

The issue of the definition and position of archaeology as a discipline is examined in relation to the dispute which took place from 1980 to 2009 between the archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin and the sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron. This case study enables us to explore the actual conceptual relationships between archaeology and the other sciences (as opposed to those wished for or prescribed). The contrasts between the positions declared by the two researchers and the rooting of their arguments in their disciplines (...) are examined: where the sociologist makes use of his philosophical training, the archaeologist relies mainly on his work on semiology and informatics. Archaeology ultimately plays a minor role in the arguments proposed. This dispute therefore cannot be considered as evidence for the movement of concepts between archaeology and the social sciences. A blind spot in the debate, relating to the ontological specificities of archaeological objects, nevertheless presents itself as a possible way of implementing this movement. (shrink)

In visual science the term filling-inis used in different ways, which often leads to confusion. This target article presents a taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena to organize and clarify theoretical and empirical discussion. Examples of boundary completion (illusory contours) and featural completion (color, brightness, motion, texture, and depth) are examined, and single-cell studies relevant to filling-in are reviewed and assessed. Filling-in issues must be understood in relation to theoretical issues about neuralignoring an absencejumping to a conclusionanalytic isomorphismCartesian materialism, a particular (...) neural stage that forms the immediate substrate of perceptual experience enactiveanimatesubpersonal” considerations about internal processing, but rather by considerations about the task of vision at the level of the animal or person interacting with the world. (shrink)

The republican tradition seems to have a blind spot about global justice. It has had little to say about pressing international issues such as world poverty or global inequalities. According to the old, if apocryphal, adage: extra rempublicam nulla justitia. Some may doubt that distributive justice is the primary virtue of republican institutions; and at any rate most would agree that republican values have traditionally been realized in the polis not in the cosmopolis. The article sketches a republican account of (...) global non-domination which suggests that duties of distributive justice are not bounded to the institutions of a single society. In particular, it argues that republicans have good reasons to seek to curb those global inequalities which underpin what I call capability-denying domination. (shrink)

In a survey of issues in philosophy of mind some years ago, I observed that "it is widely granted these days that dualism is not a serious view to contend with, but rather a cliff over which to push one's opponents." (Dennett, 1978, p.252) That was true enough, and I for one certainly didn't deplore the fact, but this rich array of essays tackling my book amply demonstrates that a cliff examined with care is better than a cliff ignored. And, (...) as I have noted in my discussion of the blind spot and other gaps, you really can't perceive an edge unless you represent both sides of it. So one of the virtues of this gathering of essays is that it permits both friend and foe alike to take a good hard look at dualism, as represented by those who are tempted by it, those who can imagine no alternative to it, and those who, like me, still find it to be--in a word--hopeless. (shrink)

Of all humanities disciplines, none is more resistant to the program of positive psychology or more hostile to the prevailing discourse of human flourishing than literary studies. The approach taken in this volume of essays is neither to gloss over that antagonism nor to launch a series of blasts against positive psychology and the happiness industry. Rather, the essays are attempts to reflect on how the kinds of literary research the contributors themselves are doing, the kinds of work to which (...) they are personally committed, might become part of an interdisciplinary conversation about human flourishing. The authors' specific fields of work are wide ranging, covering literary aesthetics, book history, digital humanities, and reader reception, as well as the important "inter-disciplines" of gender and sexuality studies, disability studies, and black studies-fields in which issues of stigma and exclusion are paramount, and which have critiqued the discourse of human flourishing for its failure to grapple with structural inequality and human difference. Taken together, the essays contribute more points of ambiguity and hesitation to the study of human flourishing than decisive advancements. Literary scholars are drawn more readily to the problematic than to the decidable. But by dwelling on the trouble spots in a field of inquiry still largely confined to the sciences, this volume provides the groundwork for new and more productive forms of interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 48, Issue 2, pp 175 - 196 This article provides an analysis of the development of the notions of “self” and “nature” through three stages of Heidegger’s thought. The main contention is that Heidegger’s conceptions of the self and nature are indissolubly connected to each other, and that such connection appears through three concerns that represent important elements of continuity: 1) the “irreducibility of the self,” conceived in a non-subjectivist way; 2) the recovery of a non-objectivist (...) “originary” account of nature; 3) the overall commitment to the overcoming of the polarization between subject and object. I argue that there is a parallelism in the way self and nature are addressed in each of the three phases; and that the transformations of the notions are functional to the project of addressing the concerns mentioned earlier. I conclude by addressing the “violence of nature,” which remains a “blind spot” in the philosophy of the later Heidegger. (shrink)

In today's global business environment it is no longer acceptable that a corporation does well simply by doing good. It is expected. With increasing pressures from stakeholders to improve the bottom line as well as to be good corporate citizens, business leaders face tough decisions. What social issues should we support? What initiatives should we develop that will do the most good for the company as well as the cause? Do we include social messages in our advertising, encourage our employees (...) to volunteer, do we modify our business practices? How do we integrate a new initiative into current strategies? These and other challenges will continue to face future leaders. This book provides thoughtful answers to these important questions, and to many more. The book offers suggestions on how to choose among major worthy causes and also how to measure the amount of good achieved both for the recipients and the companies themselves. Of course, all is not only about challenges, there are loads of opportunities that go along with them but it's only responsible and sustainable leaders who would be able to spot these opportunities. That is the future which awaits 21st century leaders. (shrink)

Reference and Existence, Saul Kripke's John Locke Lectures for 1973, can be read as a sequel to his classic Naming and Necessity. It confronts important issues left open in that work -- among them, the semantics of proper names and natural kind terms as they occur in fiction and in myth; negative existential statements; the ontology of fiction and myth. In treating these questions, he makes a number of methodological observations that go beyond the framework of his earlier book -- (...) including the striking claim that fiction cannot provide a test for theories of reference and naming. In addition, these lectures provide a glimpse into the transition to the pragmatics of singular reference that dominated his influential paper, " Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference " -- a paper that helped reorient linguistic and philosophical semantics. Some of the themes have been worked out in later writings by other philosophers -- many influenced by typescripts of the lectures in circulation -- but none have approached the careful, systematic treatment provided here. The virtuosity of Naming and Necessity -- the colloquial ease of the tone, the dazzling, on-the-spot formulations, the logical structure of the overall view gradually emerging over the course of the lectures -- is on display here as well. (shrink)

Although fallacies have been common since Aristotle, until recently little attention has been devoted to identifying and defining them. Furthermore, the concept of fallacy itself has lacked a sufficiently clear meaning to make it a useful tool for evaluating arguments. Douglas Walton takes a new analytical look at the concept of fallacy and presents an up-to-date analysis of its usefulness for argumentation studies. Walton uses case studies illustrating familiar arguments and tricky deceptions in everyday conversation where the charge of fallaciousness (...) is at issue. The numerous case studies show in concrete terms many practical aspects of how to use textual evidence to identify and analyze fallacies and to evaluate arguments as fallacious. Walton looks at how an argument is used in the context of conversation. He defines a fallacy as a conversational move, or sequence of moves, that is supposed to be an argument that contributes to the purpose of the conversation but in reality interferes with it. The view is a pragmatic one, based on the assumption that when people argue, they do so in a context of dialogue, a conventionalized normative framework that is goal-directed. Such a contextual framework is shown to be crucial in determining whether an argument has been used correctly. Walton also shows how examples of fallacies given in the logic textbooks characteristically turn out to be variants of reasonable, even if defeasible or questionable arguments, based on presumptive reasoning. This is the essence of the evaluation problem. A key thesis of the book, which must not be taken for granted as previous textbooks have so often done, is that you can spot a fallacy from how it was used in a context of dialogue. This is an innovative and even, as Walton notes, "a radical and controversial" theory of fallacy. (shrink)

Advances in Pig Welfare analyses current topical issues in the key areas of pig welfare assessment and improvement. With coverage of both recent developments and reviews of historical welfare issues, the volume provides a comprehensive survey of the field. The book is divided into two sections. Part I opens with an overview of main welfare challenges in commercial pig production systems and then reviews pig welfare hot spots from birth to slaughter. Part II highlights emerging topics in pig welfare, such (...) as pain and health assessment, early socialisation and environmental enrichment, pig-human interactions, breeding for welfare, positive pig welfare and pigs as laboratory animals. This book is an essential part of the wider ranging series Advances in Farm Animal Welfare, with coverage of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. With its expert editor and international team of contributors, Advances in Pig Welfare is a key reference tool for welfare research scientists and students, veterinarians involved in welfare assessment, and indeed anyone with a professional interest in the welfare of pigs. (shrink)

"This is an exceedingly long short book, stretching at least fifty thousand years into the past and who knows how many into the future." So begins Visions of the Future, the prophetic new book by eminent economist Robert Heilbroner. Heilbroner's basic premise is stunning in its elegant simplicity. He contends that throughout all of human history, despite the huge gulf in social organization, technological development, and cultural achievement that divides us from the earliest known traces of homo sapiens, there have (...) really only been three distinct ways of looking at the future. During a period Heilbroner refers to simply as the Distant Past, stretching from prehistory to the appearance of modern nation-states in seventeenth century Europe, there was no notion of a future measurably and materially different from the present or the past. From the Stone Age to the Bronze, Mesopotamia and Egypt to Greece and Rome, and throughout the Middle Ages, a continuum of cultures and civilizations shared one defining expectation--the absence of any expectation of material progress for the great masses of people. Heilbroner maintains that it was not until the first stirrings of the period he refers to as Yesterday, spanning from roughly 1700 to 1950, that the future entered into human consciousness as a great beckoning force. Capitalism, continually reinvigorated by the seemingly endless forward march of science and an evolving sense of democracy, appeared to promise all levels of society some expectation of a future at least somewhat better than the past. It was this unwavering faith in the superiority of the future that separated Yesterday from the age we have now entered, that of Today. While we are still driven towards tomorrow by the same forces that determined the recent past, the lessons of Hiroshima and Chernobyl, the chaos in the former Soviet Union, the stagnation of the West, and the anarchic rage unleashed in our inner cities and in hot spots around the globe have brought on a palpable anxiety that is quite apart from both the resignation of the Distant Past or the bright optimism of Yesterday. In a brilliant conclusion drawing together the threat of nuclear blackmail, global warming and the growing commodification of life represented by video games, voice mail, and VCRs, Visions of the Future issues a call to face the challenges of the twenty-first century with a new resolve strengthened by the inspiration of our collective past. (shrink)

Algorithms have become a widespread trope for making sense of social life. Science, finance, journalism, warfare, and policing—there is hardly anything these days that has not been specified as “algorithmic.” Yet, although the trope has brought together a variety of audiences, it is not quite clear what kind of work it does. Often portrayed as powerful yet inscrutable entities, algorithms maintain an air of mystery that makes them both interesting and difficult to understand. This article takes on this problem and (...) examines the role of algorithms not as techno-scientific objects to be known, but as a figure that is used for making sense of observations. Following in the footsteps of Harold Garfinkel’s tutorial cases, I shall illustrate the implications of this view through an experiment with algorithmic navigation. Challenging participants to go on a walk, guided not by maps or GPS but by an algorithm developed on the spot, I highlight a number of dynamics typical of reasoning with running code, including the ongoing respecification of rules and observations, the stickiness of the procedure, and the selective invocation of the algorithm as an intelligible object. The materials thus provide an opportunity to rethink key issues at the intersection of the social sciences and the computational, including popular concerns with transparency, accountability, and ethics. (shrink)

Medicines and medical devices containing animal-derived ingredients are frequently used on patients without their informed consent, despite a significant proportion of patients wanting to know if an animal-derived product is going to be used in their care. Here, I outline three arguments for why this practice is wrong. First, I argue that using animal-derived medical products on patients without their informed consent undermines respect for their autonomy. Second, it risks causing nontrivial psychological harm. Third, it is morally inconsistent to respect (...) patients’ dietary preferences and then use animal-derived medicines or medical devices on them without their informed consent. I then address several anticipated objections and conclude that the continued failure to address this issue is an ethical blind spot that warrants applying the principles of respect for autonomy and informed consent consistently. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

The Implications of Immanence develops a philosophy of life in opposition to the notion of “bio-power,” which reduces the human to the question of power over what Giorgio Agamben terms “bare life,” mere biological existence. Breaking with all biologism or vitalism, Lawlor attends to the dispersion of death at the heart of life, in the “minuscule hiatus” that divides the living present, separating lived experience from the living body and, crucially for phenomenology, inserting a blind spot into a visual field.Lawlor (...) charts here a post-phenomenological French philosophy. What lies beyond phenomenologyis “life-ism,” the positive working out of the effects of the “minuscule hiatus” in a thinking that takes place on a “plane of immanence,” whose implications cannot be predicted. Life-ism means thinking life and death together, thinking death as dispersed throughout life. In carefully argued and extensively documented chapters, Lawlor sets out the surpassing of phenomenology and the advent of life-ism in Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Foucault, with careful attention to the writings by Husserl and Heidegger to which these thinkers refer.A philosophy of life has direct implications for present-day political and medical issues. The book takes its point of departure from the current genocide in Darfur and provides conceptual tools for intervening in such issues as the AIDS epidemic and life-support for the infirm. Indeed, the investigations contained in The Implications of Immanence are designed to help us emerge once and for all out of the epoch of bio-power.“Lawlor’s novel way of treating the concept of life is stimulating, original, and necessary for the social well being of our time.”—Fred Evans, Duquesne University“The Implications of Immanence continues the most promising, rigorous, and fruitful ongoing research project among scholars of twentieth-century philosophy. . . .A wonderful new book.”—John Protevi, Louisiana State University. (shrink)

Everyone is talking about food. Chefs are celebrities. "Locavore" and "freegan" have earned spots in the dictionary. Popular books and films about food production and consumption are exposing the unintended consequences of the standard American diet. Questions about the principles and values that ought to guide decisions about dinner have become urgent for moral, ecological, and health-related reasons. In _Philosophy Comes to Dinner_, twelve philosophers—some leading voices, some inspiring new ones—join the conversation, and consider issues ranging from the sustainability of (...) modern agriculture, to consumer complicity in animal exploitation, to the pros and cons of alternative diets. (shrink)

Molinism is named after Luis de Molina (1535–1600). Molina and his fellow Jesuits became entangled in a fierce debate over issues involving the doctrine of divine providence, which is a picture of how God runs the world. Molinism reemerged in the 1970s after Alvin Plantinga unwittingly assumed it in his Free Will Defense against the ‘Logical’ Argument from Evil. Molinism has been the subject of vigorous debate in analytic philosophy of religion ever since. The main aim of this essay is (...) to survey the main contours of this debate. We will visit some ‘old’ battlefields and current hot spots in the ongoing Molinism Wars. (shrink)

This article concerns the structure of defeasible arguments like: 'If Bob has red spots, Bob has the measles; Bob has red spots; therefore Bob has the measles.' The issue is whether such arguments have the form of modus ponens or not. Either way there is a problem. If they don't have the form of modus ponens, the common opinion to the contrary taught in leading logic textbooks is wrong. But if they do have the form of modus ponens, doubts (...) are raised about the conventional dogma that all arguments having the form of modus ponens are deductively valid. By carefully examining arguments on both sides of the issue, reasonable doubts are raised about the view that all arguments having a modus ponens form are valid. (shrink)

Our study presents an overview of the issues that were brought forward by participants of a moral case deliberation (MCD) project in two elderly care organizations. The overview was inductively derived from all case descriptions (N = 202) provided by participants of seven mixed MCD groups, consisting of care providers from various professional backgrounds, from nursing assistant to physician. The MCD groups were part of a larger MCD project within two care institutions (residential homes and nursing homes). Care providers are (...) confronted with a wide variety of largely everyday ethical issues. We distinguished three main categories: ‘resident’s behavior’, ‘divergent perspectives on good care’ and ‘organizational context’. The overview can be used for agendasetting when institutions wish to stimulate reflection and deliberation. It is important that an agenda is constructed from the bottom-up and open to a variety of issues. In addition, organizing reflection and deliberation requires effort to identify moral questions in practice whilst at the same time maintaining the connection with the organizational context and existing communication structures. Once care providers are used to dealing with divergent perspectives, inviting different perspectives (e.g. family members) to take part in the deliberation, might help to identify and address ethical ‘blind spots’. (shrink)

An accessible yet rigorous introduction to the field, Environmental Ethics: Theory in Practice helps students develop the analytical skills to effectively identify and evaluate the social and ethical dimensions of environmental issues. Covering a wide variety of theories and critical perspectives, author Ronald Sandler considers their strengths and weaknesses, emphasizes their practical importance, and grounds the discussions in a multitude of both classic and contemporary cases and examples. FEATURES * Discusses a wide range of theories of environmental ethics, representing their (...) strengths and weaknesses as charitably as possible without advocating for any particular theory, thereby encouraging students to think critically about which views are well justified and which are not * Extensive use of cases and examples links theoretical and practical issues and shows how environmental issues have both social and ecological components; issues covered include climate change, species conservation, ecological economics, consumption, environmental justice, intergenerational justice, genetically modified crops, animal agriculture, population, environmental rights, and food security, among many others * Incorporates both classic and cutting-edge cases and examples; iconic cases include the spotted owl, Bhopal chemical link, and Hetch Hetchy controversies, while contemporary cases include lead contamination of Flint, Michigan's water supply and innovations is conservation genetics, including conservation cloning, deextinction, and gene drives * Covers food ethics--addressing such topics as genetic engineering, food systems, food waste, and eating animals--and technology ethics, reflecting on technological power and the role of technology in creating and responding to environmental issues * Emphasizes the social justice dimensions of environmental problems with chapters on environmental justice, food security, ecofeminism, and more * Includes text boxes that provide extended discussions of cases; thought experiments; additional coverage of theoretical issues discussed in the main text; and exercises that ask students to apply theories or reflect on how theoretical issues intersect with practical problems * Provides numerous pedagogical aids including review questions, discussion questions, key terms and additional reading lists at the end of each chapter, extensive internal cross-referencing, a glossary of key terms and concepts, and more than thirty images, illustrations, tables, and graphs. (shrink)

“Everyday ethics” is a term that has been used in the clinical and ethics literature for decades to designate normatively important and pervasive issues in healthcare. In spite of its importance, the term has not been reviewed and analyzed carefully. We undertook a literature review to understand how the term has been employed and defined, finding that it is often contrasted to “dramatic ethics.” We identified the core attributes most commonly associated with everyday ethics. We then propose an integrative model (...) of everyday ethics that builds on the contribution of different ethical theories. This model proposes that the function of everyday ethics is to serve as an integrative concept that (1) helps to detect current blind spots in bioethics (that is, shifts the focus from dramatic ethics) and (2) mobilizes moral agents to address these shortcomings of ethical insight. This novel integrative model has theoretical, methodological, practical, and pedagogical implications, which we explore. Because of the pivotal role that moral experience plays in this integrative model, the model could help to bridge empirical ethics research with more conceptual and normative work. (shrink)