Varied evidence confirms more strongly than less varied evidence, ceteris paribus. This epistemological Variety of Evidence Thesis enjoys widespread intuitive support. We put forward a novel explication of one notion of varied evidence and the Variety of Evidence Thesis within Bayesian models of scientific inference by appealing to measures of entropy. Our explication of the Variety of Evidence Thesis holds in many of our models which also pronounce on disconfirmatory and discordant (...) evidence. We argue that our models pronounce rightly. Against a backdrop of failures of the Variety of Evidence Thesis, the intuitive case for the Variety of Evidence Thesis emerges strengthened. Our models do however not support the general case for the thesis since our explication of it fails to hold in certain cases. The parameter space of this failure is explored and an explanation for the failure is offered. (shrink)

The intuitive Variety of Evidence Thesis states that, ceteris paribus, more varied evidence for a hypothesis confirms it more strongly than less varied evidence. Recent Bayesian analyses have raised serious doubts in its validity. Claveau suggests the existence of a novel type of counter-example to this thesis: a gradual increase in source independence can lead to a decrease in hypothesis confirmation. I show that Claveau’s measure of gradual source independence suffers from two unsuspected types of inconsistencies. (...) I hence put forward a more natural measure of gradual source independence which is not plagued by inconsistencies. Claveau’s counter-examples to the variety of evidence thesis disappear with the measure I suggest. I hence argue that my measure is preferable and that this thesis does at least not seem to be troubled by Claveau’s arguments. (shrink)

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than (...) recent results would lead us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

Diversity of evidence is widely claimed to be crucial for evidence amalgamation to have distinctive epistemic merits. Bayesian epistemologists capture this idea in the variety-of-evidence thesis: ceteris paribus, the strength of confirmation of a hypothesis by an evidential set increases with the diversity of the evidential elements in that set. Yet, formal exploration of this thesis has shown that it fails to be generally true. This article demonstrates that the thesis fails in even more circumstances than (...) recent results would lead us to expect. Most importantly, it can fail whatever the chance that the evidential sources are unreliable. Our results hold for two types of degrees of variety: reliability independence and testable aspect independence. We conclude that the variety-of-evidence thesis can, at best, be interpreted as an exception-prone rule of thumb. (shrink)

The epistemology of studies addressing questions about historical and prehistorical phenomena is a subject of increasing discussion among philosophers of science. A related field of inquiry that has yet to be connected to this topic is the epistemology of climate science. Branching these areas of research, I show how variety-of-evidence reasoning accounts for scientific inferences about the past by detailing a case study in paleoclimate reconstruction. This analysis aims to clarify the logic of historical inquiry in general and, (...) by focusing on a case study about climate change, it offers an epistemic account of a particular discipline that is of environmental and social importance. (shrink)

Varied evidence for a hypothesis confirms it more strongly than less varied evidence, ceteris paribus. This epistemological Variety of Evidence Thesis enjoys long-standing widespread intuitive support. Recent literature has raised serious doubts that the correlational approach of explicating the thesis can vindicate it. By contrast, the eliminative approach due to Horwich vindicates the Variety of Evidence Thesis but only within a relatively narrow domain. I investigate the prospects of extending the eliminative approach to a (...) larger domain by considering a larger class of sensible explications of evidential variety. For a large subclass class of such explications I show how to construct cases in which the less diverse body of evidence for a hypothesis confirms more strongly. I hence argue that these prospects are dire since the eliminative approach widely fails to vindicate the thesis. (shrink)

The variety of evidence thesis in confirmation theory states that more varied supporting evidence confirms a hypothesis to a greater degree than less varied evidence. Under a very plausible interpretation of this thesis, positive test results from multiple independent instruments confirm a hypothesis to a greater degree than positive test results from a single instrument. We invoke Bayesian Networks to model confirmation on grounds of evidence that is obtained from less than fully reliable instruments and (...) show that the variety of evidence thesis is not sacrosanct when testing is conducted with less than fully reliable instruments: under certain conditions, a hypothesis receives more confirmation from evidence that is obtained from one rather than from more independent instruments. In the appendix, we prove certain convergence results for large numbers of positive test results from single versus multiple less than fully reliable instruments. (shrink)

According to the variety of evidence thesis items of evidence from independent lines of investigation are more confirmatory, ceteris paribus, than, for example, replications of analogous studies. This thesis is known to fail (Bovens and Hartmann; Claveau). However, the results obtained by Bovens and Hartmann only concern instruments whose evidence is either fully random or perfectly reliable; instead, for Claveau, unreliability is modelled as deterministic bias. In both cases, the unreliable instrument delivers totally irrelevant information. We (...) present a model that formalizes both reliability and unreliability differently. Our instruments either are reliable, but affected by random error, or are biased but not deterministically so.Bovens and Hartmann’s results are counter-intuitive in that in their model a long series of consistent reports from the same instrument does not raise suspicion of ‘too-good-to-be-true’ evidence. This happens precisely because they contemplate neither the role of systematic bias, nor unavoidable random error of reliable instruments. In our model, the variety of evidence thesis fails as well, but the area of failure is considerably smaller than for Bovens and Hartmann and Claveau, and holds for (the majority of) realistic cases (that is, where biased instruments are very biased). The essential mechanism that triggers variety of evidence thesis failure is the rate of false to true positives for the two kinds of instruments. Our emphasis is on modelling beliefs about sources of knowledge and their role in hypothesis confirmation in interaction with dimensions of evidence, such as variety and consistency. (shrink)

According to the Variety of Evidence Thesis items of evidence from independent lines of investigation are more confirmatory, ceteris paribus, than e.g. replications of analogous studies. This thesis is known to fail Bovens and Hartmann, Claveau. How- ever, the results obtained by the former only concern instruments whose evidence is either fully random or perfectly reliable; instead in Claveau, unreliability is modelled as deterministic bias. In both cases, the unreliable instrument delivers totally irrelevant information. We present (...) a model which formalises both reliability, and unreliability, differently. Our instruments are either reliable, but affected by random error, or they are biased but not deterministically so. Bovens and Hartmann’s results are counter-intuitive in that in their model a long series of consistent reports from the same instrument does not raise suspicion of “too-good-to- be-true” evidence. This happens precisely because they neither contemplate the role of systematic bias, nor unavoidable random error of reliable instruments. In our model the Variety of Evidence Thesis fails as well, but the area of failure is considerably smaller than for Bovens and Hartmann, Claveau and holds for realistic cases. The essential mechanism which triggers VET failure is the rate of false to true positives for the two kinds of instruments. Our emphasis is on modelling beliefs about sources of knowledge and their role in hypothesis confirmation in interaction with dimensions of evidence, such as variety and consistency. (shrink)

The variety-of-evidence thesis has been criticized by Bovens and Hartmann. This article points to two limitations of their Bayesian model: the conceptualization of unreliable evidential sources as randomizing and the restriction to comparing full independence to full dependence. It is shown that the variety-of-evidence thesis is rehabilitated when unreliable sources are reconceptualized as systematically biased. However, it turns out that allowing for degrees of independence leads to a qualification of the variety-of-evidence thesis: as Bovens (...) and Hartmann claimed, more independence does not always imply stronger confirmation. (shrink)

This paper proposes an extended version of the interventionist account for causal inference in the practical context of biological mechanism research. This paper studies the details of biological mechanism researchers’ practices of assessing the evidential legitimacy of experimental data, arguing why quantity and variety are two important criteria for this assessment. Because of the nature of biological mechanism research, the epistemic values of these two criteria result from the independence both between the causation of data generation and the causation (...) in question and between different interventions, not techniques. The former independence ensures that the interventions in the causation in question are not affected by the causation that is responsible for data generation. The latter independence ensures the reliability of the final mechanisms not only in the empirical but also the formal aspects. This paper first explores how the researchers use quantity to check the effectiveness of interventions, where they at the same time determine the validity of the difference-making revealed by the results of interventions. Then, this paper draws a distinction between experimental interventions and experimental techniques, so that the reliability of mechanisms, as supported by the variety of evidence, can be safely ensured in the probabilistic sense. The latter process is where the researchers establish evidence of the mechanisms connecting the events of interest. By using case studies, this paper proposes to use ‘intervention’ as the fruitful connecting point of literature between evidence and mechanisms. (shrink)

Meanings are the most elusive objects of linguistic research. The article summarizes the type of evidence we have for them: various types of metalinguistic activities like paraphrasing and translating, the ability to name entities and judge sentences true or false, as well as various behavioral and physiological measures such as reaction time studies, eye tracking.

What happens during a near-death experience? In an accessible style, this text reviews recent research about unbelievable events, creating an account of activity at the boundaries of science. It also examines research concerns, current theories, methodological issues and clinical implications.

A key question for evidence-based medicine is how best to model the way in which EBM should‘[integrate] individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence’. We argue that the formulations and models available in the literature today are modest variations on a common theme and face very similar problems when it comes to risk analysis, which is here understood as a decision procedure comprising a factual assessment of risk, the risk assessment, and the decision what to do based (...) on this assessment, the risk management. Both the early and updated models of evidence-based clinical decisions presented in the writings of Haynes, Devereaux and Guyatt assume that EBM consists of, among other things, evidence from clinical research together with information about patients’ values and clinical expertise. On this A-view, EBM describes all that goes on in a specific justifiable medical decision. There is, however, an alternative interpretation of EBM, the B-view, in which EBM describes just one component of the decision situation and in which, together with other types of evidence, EBM leads to a justifiable clincial decision but does not describe the decision itself. This B-view is inspired by a 100-years older version of EBM, a Swedish standard requiring medical decision-making, professional risk-taking and practice to be in accordance with‘science and proven experience’. In the paper, we outline how the Swedish concept leads to an improved understanding of the way in which scientific evidence and clinical experience can and cannot be integrated in light of EBM. How scientific evidence and clinical experience is integrated influences both the way we do risk assessment and risk management. In addition, the paper sketches the as yet unexplored historical background to VBE and EBM. (shrink)

Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence. Etzel Cardeña. Steven Jay Lynn. and Stanley Krippner (Eds.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2000. 476 pp., $39.95 (cloth).

A key question for evidence-based medicine is how best to model the way in which EBM should “[integrate] individual clinical expertise and the best external evidence”. We argue that the formulations and models available in the literature today are modest variations on a common theme and face very similar problems. For example, both the early and updated models of evidence-based clinical decisions presented in Haynes, Devereaux and Guyatt assume that EBM consists of, among other things, evidence (...) from clinical research and clinical expertise. On this A-view, EBM describes all that goes on in a specific justifiable medical decision. There is, however, an alternative interpretation of EBM, the B-view, in which EBM describes just one component of the decision situation and in which, together with other types of evidence, EBM leads to a justifiable clincial decision but does not describe the decision itself. This B-view is inspired by a 100-years older version of EBM, a Swedish standard requiring medical decision-making and practice to be in accordance with ‘science and proven experience’. In the paper we outline how the Swedish concept leads to an improved understanding of the way in which scientific evidence and clinical experience can and cannot be integrated in light of EBM. In addition the paper sketches the as yet unexplored historical background to EBM. (shrink)

Many authors argue that conscious experience involves a sense of self or self-consciousness. According to the strongest version of this claim, there can be no selfless states of consciousness, namely states of consciousness that lack self-consciousness altogether. Disagreements about this claim are likely to remain merely verbal as long as the target notion of self-consciousness is not adequately specified. After distinguishing six notions of self-consciousness commonly discussed in the literature, I argue that none of the corresponding features is necessary for (...) consciousness, because there are states of consciousness in which each of them is plausibly missing. Such states can be said to be at least partially selfless, since they lack at least one of the ways in which one could be self-conscious. Furthermore, I argue that there is also preliminary empirical evidence that some states of consciousness lack all of these six putative forms of self-consciousness. Such states might be totally selfless, insofar as they lack all the ways in which one could be self-conscious. I conclude by addressing four objections to the possibility and reportability of totally selfless states of consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper I present a novel taxonomy of envy, according to which there are four kinds of envy: emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. An inquiry into the varieties of envy is valuable not only to understand it as a psychological phenomenon, but also to shed light on the nature of its alleged viciousness. The first section introduces the intuition that there is more than one kind of envy, together with the anecdotal and linguistic evidence that supports it. (...) The second section proposes and explains in detail a definition of envy tout court. The third section presents a recurring distinction between behavioral tendencies of envy, which has been explained in two distinct ways, one mostly proposed by psychologists, the other discernible in the philosophical tradition. The fourth section argues that these models of explanation track two variables, whose interplay is responsible for the existence of the four envies. The fifth section illustrates four paradigmatic cases, and provides a detailed analysis of the phenomenology, motivational structure, and typical behavioral outputs of each. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the implications of the taxonomy for moral education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guibert of Tournai's Letter to Lady Isabelle:An Introduction and English TranslationLarry F. Field, Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Guibert of TournaiIntroductionGuibert, from the noble family of As-Piès, was born near Tournai around 1200. From his hometown he traveled to Paris for his art degree, and completed the curriculum in theology there before entering the Franciscan Order around 1240. He may have participated in Louis IX's crusade of 1248, (...) but, if so, was surely back in Paris by 1254 at the latest, since he preached a cycle of sermons de dominicis et de sanctis to the university community before summer 1255.1 His regency as Franciscan master of theology at Paris was probably around 1259–1261,2 about the time he [End Page 31] completed his Eruditio regum et principum for Louis IX,3 and began his most substantial work, the Erudimentum doctrinae.4 Other significant treatises include his De pace et animi tranquillitate (ca. 1275)5 written for Marie de Dampierre, and the Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae, prepared for the Second Council of Lyon.6 Guibert died in Tournai on 7 October 1284.7Sometime around 1254, Guibert wrote a long letter of spiritual advice to Isabelle (1225–70), the sister of King Louis IX.8 Isabelle was herself a remarkable figure. She had rejected several proposals of marriage, including that with Conrad, the heir to Emperor Frederick II, in 1243, in spite of pressure from her family and Pope Innocent IV. But following a bout of serious illness at about that time,9 her family accepted her [End Page 32] decision to remain unwed. There is no evidence, however, that Isabelle ever pronounced a formal vow of virginity. Through the 1250s she simply remained at the Capetian court as a virgin princess with an increasing reputation for piety and indeed holiness, praised in lavish terms by Innocent IV in 1253 and Alexander IV in 1256.10 This piety took a distinctly Franciscan turn by 1254, when Pope Innocent IV granted her request for Franciscan confessors,11 which would ultimately result in her foundation of Longchamp, a house of Sorores minores just west of Paris, by 1260.12 Guibert's letter shows no awareness of such a project, indicating that it must have been written before spring 1255, by which time the land for Longchamp was being purchased on Isabelle's behalf.13 Guibert thus wrote at the moment when Isabelle was forming her first ties to the Franciscans, but well before her move to Longchamp, where she lived out the 1260s as resident lay patron (but never a nun).Guibert's Letter is really a short treatise of spiritual and moral advice, tailored to a celibate princess. It is organized around Psalm 44:14–15, All the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden fringes, clothed around with varieties. In a five-part structure, the king's daughter stands for a heavenly inheritance; glory within represents internal purity; gold indicates virginity; the fringes are a sign of humility; and clothed around with varieties points to honest comportment. The resulting "royal garment," however, is rather unequally woven together, with section one on the "heavenly inheritance" and the intertwined sections three and four on virginity and humility receiving by far the most space. In fact, section one forms a sort of treatise-within-a-treatise, organized as a ten-step ascent to the heavenly inheritance awaiting the daughter of the king. [End Page 33]The Letter to Lady Isabelle was first edited by Alphonse de Poorter in 1931, from a manuscript which contained only part of the text.14 The full text was brought into print by Sean Field in 2003,15 and translated into French by Jacques Dalarun in 2014.16 Yet in spite of these advances, the Letter has remained little noticed by scholars. Anne-Hélène Allirot offered several perceptive pages in 2010, stressing the way Guibert's treatment of hereditas implies that female members of the royal family might be particularly able to embody Capetian claims to holiness.17 That same year, in the only recent article dedicated specifically to this Letter, Rina Lahav... (shrink)

We address three fundamental questions: What does it mean for an entity to be living? What is the role of inter-organismic collaboration in evolution? What is a biological individual? Our central argument is that life arises when lineage-forming entities collaborate in metabolism. By conceiving of metabolism as a collaborative process performed by functional wholes, which are associations of a variety of lineage-forming entities, we avoid the standard tension between reproduction and metabolism in discussions of life – a tension particularly (...) evident in discussions of whether viruses are alive. Our perspective assumes no sharp distinction between life and non-life, and does not equate life exclusively with cellular or organismal status. We reach this conclusion through an analysis of the capabilities of a spectrum of biological entities, in which we include the pivotal case of viruses as well as prions, plasmids, organelles, intracellular and extracellular symbionts, unicellular and multicellular life-forms. The usual criterion for classifying many of the entities of our continuum as non-living is autonomy. This emphasis on autonomy is problematic, however, because even paradigmatic biological individuals, such as large animals, are dependent on symbiotic associations with many other organisms. These composite individuals constitute the metabolic wholes on which selection acts. Finally, our account treats cooperation and competition not as polar opposites but as points on a continuum of collaboration. We suggest that competitive relations are a transitional state, with multi-lineage metabolic wholes eventually outcompeting selfish competitors, and that this process sometimes leads to the emergence of new types or levels of wholes. Our view of life as a continuum of variably structured collaborative systems leaves open the possibility that a variety of forms of organized matter – from chemical systems to ecosystems – might be usefully understood as living entities. (shrink)

Today's climate models are supported in a couple of ways that receive little attention from philosophers or climate scientists. In addition to standard 'model fit', wherein a model's simulation is compared to observational data, there is an additional type of confirmation available through the variety of instances of model fit. When a model performs well at fitting first one variable and then another, the probability of the model under some standard confirmation function, say, likelihood, goes up more than under (...) each individual case of fit alone. Thus, two instances of fit of distinct variables of a global climate model using distinct data sets considered collectively will provide stronger evidence for a model than either one of the instances considered individually. This has consequences for model robustness. Sets of models that produce robust results will, if their assumptions vary enough and they each are observationally sound, provide reasons to endorse common structures found in those models. Finally, independent empirical support for aspects and assumptions of the model provides an additional confirmational virtue for climate models, contrary to what is implied by some current philosophical writing on this topic. (shrink)

I know, for the most part, what I think, want, and intend, and what my sensations are. In addition, I know a great deal about the world around me. I also sometimes know what goes on in other people's minds. Each of these three kinds of empirical knowledge has its distinctive characteristics. What I know about the contents of my own mind I generally know without investigation or appeal to evidence. There are exceptions, but the primacy of unmediated self-knowledge (...) is attested by the fact that we distrust the exceptions until they can be reconciled with the unmediated. My knowledge of the world outside of myself, on the other hand, depends on the functioning of my sense organs, and this causal dependence on the senses makes my beliefs about the world of nature open to a sort of uncertainty that arises only rarely in the case of beliefs about my own states of mind. Many of my simple perceptions of what is going on in the world are not based on further evidence; my perceptual beliefs are simply caused directly by the events and objects around me. But my knowledge of the propositional contents of other minds is never immediate in this sense; I would have no access to what others think and value if I could not note their behaviour. (shrink)

After completing his monumental work, The Principles of Psychology, William James turned his attention to serious consideration of such important religious and philosophical questions as the nature and existence of God, immortality of the soul, and free will and determinism. His interest in these questions found expression in various works, including The Varieties of Religious Experience, his classic study of spirituality. Based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion he gave at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902, (...) the book--studded with richly concrete examples--documents and discusses various religious states of consciousness and covers such topics as the meaning of the term "divine," the reality of the unseen, the religion of healthy-mindedness, the sick soul, the divided self and the process of its unification, conversion, saintliness, and mysticism. One of the author's most popular works, The Varieties of Religious Experience remains one of the great books on the subject, especially noteworthy for the evidence it gives for religious experience as a unique phenomenon. This Dover edition will be the least expensive one in print. Unabridged republication of the second edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1902. Index. (shrink)

I argue that misanthropy is systematic condemnation of the moral character of humankind as it has come to be. Such condemnation can be expressed affectively and practically in a range of different ways, and the bulk of the paper sketches the four main misanthropic stances evident across the history of philosophy. Two of these, the Enemy and Fugitive stances, were named by Kant, and I call the others the Activist and Quietist. Without exhausting the range of ways of being a (...) philosophical misanthrope, these four suffice to justify my main claim that misanthropy should not be seen specifically in terms of hatred and violence. We should attend to the varieties of philosophical misanthropy, especially since doing so reveals a deeper phenomenon I call the misanthropic predicament. (shrink)

This chapter addresses an ambiguity in some of the literature on rational peer disagreement about the use of the term 'rational'. In the literature 'rational' is used to describe a variety of normative statuses related to reasons, justification, and reasoning. This chapter focuses most closely on the upshot of peer disagreement for what is rationally required of parties to a peer disagreement. This follows recent work in theoretical reason which treats rationality as a system of requirements among an agent's (...) mental states. It is argued that peer disagreement has either no, or a very limited, affect on what rationality requires of an agent in a given circumstance. This is in part because of difficulties generated by a novel example of evidence of evidence of p being evidence against p. This example calls into question the mechanisms whereby peer disagreement might affect what is rationally required of an agent. The chapter also reevaluates the importance of actual peer disagreement against the backdrop of prior expectations about whether disagreement is believed to be likely, arguing that peer disagreement is most likely to change what is rationally required of an agent when it is believed to be unlikely. (shrink)

I know, for the most part, what I think, want, and intend, and what my sensations are. In addition, I know a great deal about the world around me. I also sometimes know what goes on in other people's minds. Each of these three kinds of empirical knowledge has its distinctive characteristics. What I know about the contents of my own mind I generally know without investigation or appeal to evidence. There are exceptions, but the primacy of unmediated self-knowledge (...) is attested by the fact that we distrust the exceptions until they can be reconciled with the unmediated. My knowledge of the world outside of myself, on the other hand, depends on the functioning of my sense organs, and this causal dependence on the senses makes my beliefs about the world of nature open to a sort of uncertainty that arises only rarely in the case of beliefs about my own states of mind. Many of my simple perceptions of what is going on in the world are not based on further evidence; my perceptual beliefs are simply caused directly by the events and objects around me. But my knowledge of the propositional contents of other minds is never immediate in this sense; I would have no access to what others think and value if I could not note their behaviour. (shrink)

When we deliberate about what to do, we appear to be free to decide on different options. Three accounts use ordinary beliefs to explain this apparent freedom—appealing to different types of ‘epistemic freedom’. When an agent has epistemic freedom, her evidence while deliberating does not determine what decision she makes. This ‘epistemic gap’ between her evidence and decision explains why her decision appears free. The varieties of epistemic freedom appealed to might look similar. But there is an important (...) difference. Two rely on an agent's ability to justifiably form beliefs unconstrained by evidence, and identify decisions as beliefs—either beliefs about acts or about decisions. But, when used to explain apparent freedom, these accounts face serious problems: they imply that agents have epistemic freedom over evidence-based beliefs, and rely on a faulty notion of justification. Underlying these troubles, it turns out that these accounts presuppose an unexplained apparent ability to form different beliefs. A third variety of epistemic freedom uses ignorance conditions instead (Levi and Kapitan). We appear free partly because we’re ignorant of what we’ll decide. Ignorance-based accounts avoid the above problems, and remain a promising alternative. (shrink)

The notion of responsible innovation suggests that innovators carry additional responsibilities beyond those commonly suggested. In this paper, we will discuss the meaning of these novel responsibilities focusing on two philosophical problems of attributing such responsibilities to innovators. The first is the allocation of responsibilities to innovators. Innovation is a process that involves a multiplicity of agents and unpredictable, far-reaching causal chains from innovation to social impacts, which creates great uncertainty. A second problem is constituted by possible trade-offs between different (...) kinds of responsibility. It is evident that attributing backward-looking responsibility for product failures diminishes the willingness to learn about such defects and to take forward-looking responsibility. We will argue that these problems can be overcome by elaborating what it is exactly that innovators are responsible for. In this manner, we will distinguish more clearly between holding responsible and taking responsibility. This opens a space for ‘supererogatory’ responsibilities. Second, we will argue that both innovation processes and outcomes can be objects of innovators’ responsibility. Third, we will analyze different kinds of responsibility and show that the functions of their attribution are not necessarily contradictory. Based on this conceptual refinement, we will argue that accountability, responsibility-as-virtue and the willingness to take responsibility are crucial for responsible innovation. (shrink)

This chapter describes some of the varieties of philosophical humanism and different conceptions of, and attitudes towards, the natural sciences. I focus on three kinds of humanism evident in 20th century European philosophy – humanism as essentialism, humanism as rational subjectivity, and existential humanism. Some are strongly allied to the sciences, others are antipathetic to them, while others offer subtler positions. By emphasising this diversity, I want to oppose claims about the inevitability of an 'alliance' of science to humanism, and (...) that claim that to be a humanist is something we must approve or applaud. At best, those 'alliances' and that praiseworthiness will only be true of certain varieties of humanism. (shrink)

The debate over off-line simulation has largely focussed on the capacity to predict behavior, but the basic idea of off-line simulation can be cast in a much broader framework. The central claim of the off-line account of behavior prediction is that the practical reasoning mechanism is taken off-line and used for predicting behavior. However, there's no reason to suppose that the idea of off-line simulation can't be extended to mechanisms other than the practical reasoning system. In principle, any cognitive component (...) can be taken off-line and used to perform some other function. On this view of off-line simulation, such accounts differ radically from traditional information-based accounts of cognitive capacities. And cognitive penetrability provides a wedge for empirically determining whether a capacity requires an information-based account or an off-line simulation account. Stich and Nichols (1992) argued that the simulation theory of behavior prediction was inadequate because behavior prediction seemed to be cognitively penetrable. We present empirical evidence that supports the claim that the behavior prediction is cognitively penetrable. As a result, the simulation account of behavior prediction still seems unpromising. However, off-line simulation might provide accounts of other cognitive capacities. Indeed, off- line simulation accounts have recently been offered for a strikingly diverse set of capacities including counterfactual reasoning, empathy and mental imagery. Goldman, for instance, maintains that counterfactual reasoning and empathy clearly demand off-line simulation accounts. We argue that there are alternative information-based explanations of these phenomena. Nonetheless, the off-line accounts of these phenomena are interesting and clearly worthy of further exploration. (shrink)

Social contract theorists often take the ideal contract to be the agreement or bargain individuals would make in some privileged choice situation. Recently, experimental philosophers have explored this kind of decision-making in the lab. One rather robust finding is that the exact circumstances of choice significantly affect the kinds of social arrangements experimental subjects unanimously endorse. Yet prior work has largely ignored the question of which of the many competing descriptions of the original position subjects find most compelling. This paper (...) aims to address this gap, exploring how attractive experimental subjects find various characterizations of these circumstances of choice. We find evidence suggesting that no one choice situation can fulfill the role that social contract theorists have hoped it would play. We also find that, contrary to what some prominent social contract theorists have expected, there is no robust relationship between an individual’s ranking of distributive principles and their ranking of various descriptions of the original position. In conclusion, we discuss the broader implications of these results for political philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter examines three recent empirical approaches to the study of moral motivation: moral foundations theory, deep pragmatism, and morality-as-cooperation. All three approaches conceptualize moral motivation as a suite of desires, emotions, sentiments, dispositions, values, and relationships that move people to think, judge, and act in accordance with morality. Moral foundations theory posits five or six basic foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and sometimes liberty. People are thought to be emotionally attuned to each foundation, though some are more sensitive (...) to certain foundations than to others. Deep pragmatism posits that people tend to be motivated not only to promote their own narrow self interest but also the interests of their group. This can be seen as a sort of proto-morality, which has the capacity to develop into full-blown morality as one begins to conceive of one’s group in ever-broader terms. Finally, morality-as-cooperation is grounded in game theory and posits that cooperative solutions to non-zero-sum games are morally good, and that being motivated to seek out and implement such solutions is what it means to be morally motivated. Empirical evidence gathered in the last decade supports the morality-as-cooperation hypothesis, though more work is needed to further elaborate it and test its predictions. (shrink)

Evidence-based approaches to policy-making are growing in popularity. A generally embraced view is that with the appropriate evidence at hand, decision and policy making will be optimal, legitimate and publicly accountable. In practice, however, evidence-based policy making is constrained by a variety of problems of evidence. Some of these problems will be explored in this article, in the context of the debates on evidence from which they originate. It is argued that the source of (...) much disagreement might be a failure to addressing crucial philosophical assumptions that inform, often silently, these debates. Three controversial questions will be raised which appear central to some of the challenges faced by evidence-based policy making: firstly, how do certain types of facts candidate themselves as evidence; secondly, how do we decide what evidence we have, and how much of it; and thirdly, can we combine evidence. In addressing these questions it will be shown how a philosophically informed debate might prove instrumental in clarifying and settling practical difficulties. (shrink)

Recent work within psychology demonstrates that unconscious cognition plays a central role in the judgments and actions of individuals. We distinguish between two basic types unconscious social cognition: unconsciousness of the influences on judgments and actions, and unconscious of the mental states that give rise to judgments and actions. Influence unconsciousness is corroborated by strong empirical evidence, but unconscious states are difficult to verify. We discuss procedures aimed at providing conclusive evidence of state unconsciousness, and apply them to (...) recent empirical findings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:130 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY statesmen who, for reasons of international politics, would wish this to be so; but if it were so, it would not in itself mean that American philosophy was any better. Although it is a useful literary device to select one theme by which to discuss major figures in a given period, and while the particular theme that Smith has selected is fairly appropriate (once we (...) have reconciled ourselves to the loss of Santayana), it is, I think, a mistake to overlook the diversity that has characterized American philosophic effort from colonial days to the present. But these criticisms, even if just, cannot detract from an extremely wellorganized, beautifully expressed, and immensely readable discussion of four or five American philosophers. Whether there is one spirit or several, its (or theirs) expression in American philosophers has been handsomely dealt with by Professor Smith. GERALD RUNKLE Southern Illinois University The Varieties of Goodness. By Georg Henrik von Wright. (New York: The Humanities Press, International Library of Philosophy and Scientific Method [12], 1963. Pp. xiv + 222. $5.50.) To review this volume critically and adequately is out of the question here; it is a major contribution to the theory of values and deserves to be studied carefully from this point of view. Here we can merely call attention to its historical significance and relation to other classics. It already has won a place in the history of the analysis of the good and should take its place in the series of classics, especially in the series which von Wright himself suggests--the ethical writing of Aristotle, Kant, and G. E. Moore. The relation to Aristotle is most evident and most rewarding, and the following comments are made in order to stress this historical relation. In 1959 and 1960 the author delivered the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews and entitled them "Norms and Values, an Inquiry into the Conceptual Foundations of Morals and Legislation." This volume contains the second series, the one on values; the first, on norms, is to follow. The fact that the lectures on norms came first and this publication on values comes first is philosophically significant. A system of ethics, according to von Wright, is a body of normative concepts whose aim is practical rather than theoretical. But this volume, he insists, is not a system of ethics but an inquiry into how judgments of value are true or false. This conceptual analysis of the good lays a "conceptual foundation" for a theory of norms. Values and norms are definitely distinguished and given independent analyses. The transition from BOOK REVIEWS 131 an analysis of the varieties of goodness to the theory of norms is indicated in the last three chapters (VIII, 'good' and 'must'; IX, Duty; X, Justice), but the theory itself is to come in the second volume, based on the first series of the Gifford Lectures. Both volumes are intended as "conceptual analyses": instrumental value, technical excellence, beneficence, hedonic good, good man, good action, etc. --these varieties of good are treated here not as "states of affairs" but as concepts (p. 91). Though the general range of subject-matter is similar to that of Aristotle's Ethics, von Wright wishes to be clear in distinguishing between the concepts or judgments of goodness and the actual affairs of morals and legislation, a distinction which is ambiguous in Aristotle. Subjectmatter for Aristotle is "'legomena" and in practical or teleological sciences (such as is the case of this volume) the legomena (things-said) become in effect prolegomena. But for von Wright a philosophical analysis should concern itself not with the arts of morals and politics themselves but solely with their "conceptual foundations." The notion that practical affairs have conceptual foundations (not mere formulations) is characteristic of contemporary analysis and would probably be repudiated by Aristotle, who was careful to keep legomenaand phenomena intimately related; if either were foundational to the other, the arts themselves and not their concepts or "verbalizations " would be the basic factor. It is significant that even in von Wright's meticulous analysis, the distinction between the concepts and the affairs conceptualized is less evident in the later chapters, and the problems of the true... (shrink)

This paper uses evidence from laboratory experiments to identify a variety of tribalisms. This is important because some tribalisms encourage zerosum thinking and others do not; and some are not developed by Buchanan. This, in turn, supplies new insights into Buchanan’s project of identifying the kinds of environment that encourage his sense of moral progress. In particular, current levels of inequality become a significant barrier to moral progress not only because they create an economic form of tribalist zero-sum (...) thinking but they also undermine the scope for positive-sum. (shrink)

Moral intuitionism is the view that we can know or justifiably believe some moral facts directly, without inferring them from other evidence or proof. While intuitionism is frequently dismissed as implausible, the theory has received renewed interest in the literature.See Robert Audi, The Good in the Right: A Theory of Intuition and Intrinsic Value (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jill Graper Hernandez (ed.), The New Intuitionism (London: Continuum, 2011); Michael Huemer, Ethical Intuitionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Sabine Roeser, (...) Moral Emotions and Intuitions (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Russ Shafer-Landau, Moral Realism: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003); Philip Stratton-Lake (ed.), Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002). Several philosophers have defended updated intuitionistic theories and argue that the theory is not as objectionable as previously alleged.Contemporary reformulations of moral intuitionism ar. (shrink)

Helmut Reich’s theory of relational and contextual reasoning is a courageous initiative for the resolution of cognitive conflicts between apparently incompatible or incommensurable views. Built upon Piagetian logico-mathematical reasoning, cognitive complexity theory, and dialectical and analogical reasoning, it includes the development of a both/and logic inclusive of binary either/or logic. Reich provides philosophic, theoretical, and even initial empirical support for the development of this form of reasoning along with a heuristic for its application. A valuable step beyond the limits of (...) binary, static, and formal reasoning, it takes relationship, context, and perspectival variations seriously in an explicitly reflective and iterative system. We can and do address conflicts not resolvable by conventional appeals to logic or evidence, including those at epistemic boundaries or produced by belief-commitment differences. Although this form of reasoning has real promise, including stepping beyond complementarity in the religion-science dialogue, it seems better directed to causally explanatory theories than to other forms of rendering meaning. Finally, its coextension requirement may render it problematic where functionally coherent explananda cannot be identified or are themselves produced or constituted by a belief system. (shrink)

Social magic always manages to produce discontinuity out of continuity.Social dialect, which can be defined negatively as dialect associated with variables other than geographic region, was hardly recognized as a linguistic category until the twentieth century. Although it has been recognized since antiquity that groups at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder speak differently from the elite, non-elite idioms did not merit serious investigation since they were regarded merely as corrupt or decadent approximations to the prestige variety. There is (...) evidence that the Greeks also recognized gender as a variable in linguistic production. Age occasionally figures in discourse about language, but the association is vaguer since it was tangled up with the idea that earlier generations spoke a better or more authentic form of Greek. (shrink)

Can parties such as the Swedish Democrats, the Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary, the UK Independence Party and the Italian Lega Nord all be classified consistently as part of the same family? Part I of this study summarizes the conceptual framework arguing that the traditional post-war Left-Right cleavage in the electorate and party competition has faded, overlaid by divisions over authoritarian-libertarianism and populism-pluralism. Building on this, part II discusses the pros and cons of alternative methods for gathering evidence (...) useful to classify party positions. Part III describes how these are measured in this study, using Chapel Hill Expert Survey data in 2014 and 2017, and how they are mapped on a multidimensional issue space. Part IV compares European political parties on these scales – including Authoritarian-Populist parties – across a wide range of European countries. The conclusion in part V draws together the main findings and considers their implications. (shrink)

Evidence-based medicine has been the subject of much controversy within and outside the field of medicine, with its detractors characterizing it as reductionist and authoritarian, and its proponents rejecting such characterization as a caricature of the actual practice. At the heart of this controversy is a complex linguistic and social process that cannot be illuminated by appealing to the semantics of the modifier evidence-based. The complexity lies in the nature of evidence as a basic concept that circulates (...) in both expert and non-expert spheres of communication, supports different interpretations in different contexts, and is inherently open to contestation. We outline a new methodology that combines a social epistemological perspective with advanced methods of corpus linguistics and elements of conceptual history to investigate this and other basic concepts that underpin the practice and ethos of modern medicine. The potential of this methodology to offer new insights into controversies such as those surrounding EBM is demonstrated through a case study of the various meanings supported by evidence and based, as attested in a large electronic corpus of online material written by non-experts as well as a variety of experts in different fields, including medicine. (shrink)

The paper discusses the sharp semantic shifts of the Greek expressions psychê and sôma between the Archaic and Classical era. Concerning the documentary evidence of the medical, rhetorical and philosophical literature at the end of the 5th century BC, I argue that speculations on human health and disease attested in some of the Hippocratic treatises involved a specificnotionofthebody-souldistinctionandalsothatthisnotionprovides an important contrast to the definitionofphilosophyasatherapyofsoul.

“Naturalized epistemology” is a recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. Traditional epistemologists object to this proposal on the grounds that it eliminates the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this thesis, I argue that traditional philosophers are justified in their reluctance to accept naturalism, but that their ongoing inability to refute it points to deeper problems inherent in traditional epistemology. I establish my thesis first by critiquing three versions of naturalism, showing that (...) each version either fails to implement its objectives consistently or starts from dubious objectives. “Optimistic naturalism” attempts to use naturalistic methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions (such as by affirming that our beliefs can be justified). This fails because the form of traditional questions requires the concept “belief,” a concept that I argue naturalistic methodology cannot countenance (because of the severe constraints of naturalistic semantic theory). “Pessimistic naturalism,” the version advocated by Quine, is more consistent with naturalistic methodology, but fails because hidden behind its conclusions are assumptions (such as the underdetermination thesis) that cannot themselves be naturalized in the full context of scientific evidence. A final attempt to naturalize epistemology, deflationary naturalism, dispenses with traditional questions entirely, urging that the terms “knowledge” and “justification” be taken as mere pragmatic devices whose use can, nevertheless, be studied scientifically. Curiously, this view fails to take account of important facts about the actual use of those terms, as studied by psychologists. In the end, despite problems with each of these versions, traditional philosophers can learn something from their encounter with naturalism. In the course of showing how various naturalistic doctrines cannot themselves be naturalized, I identify the flaws in traditional epistemology (such as its reliance on a priorism, and its resulting inability to articulate a workable empirical foundationalist theory of justification) that make naturalism harder to challenge. These flaws must be corrected if philosophers are to preserve the autonomy of their discipline. (shrink)

How to model non-egoic experiences – mental events with phenomenal aspects that lack a felt self – has become an interesting research question. The main source of evidence for the existence of such non-egoic experiences are self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences. In these, a person says about herself that she underwent an episode where she was conscious but lacked a feeling of self. Some interpret these as accurate reports, but this is questionable. Thomas Metzinger, Rocco Gennaro, and Charles Foster have (...) hinted at the self-defeating nature of such statements if we take them to be genuine reports: Apparently, the reporter explicitly denies her existence during the selfless experience, but implicitly affirms her existence as a witness to that selfless experience in order to give a first-person report about it. So the content of such a report conflicts with the pragmatics of reporting. If all self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences are self-defeating in this way, then they cannot count as evidence for the existence of non-egoic experiences. Here, I map out why such strong conclusions do not directly follow: What look like self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences may occur for a number of reasons. Only some explanations for such utterances rely on a change in consciousness. Of those that do rely on a change in consciousness, only one is incoherent. But its alternatives do not lead to contradictions. I argue that the most likely change in phenomenality that leads to self-ascriptions of non-egoic experiences is not one where a felt self disappears, but where it expands. (shrink)