In what is clearly an important development related to research integrity and the protection of human research subjects, the U.S. government has instituted two new training requirements as a condition of receiving federal financial support. First, the National Institutes of Health is requiring, as a condition of funding, that key research personnel involved in human subject research complete education “in the protection of human subjects.” Evidence that key personnel have completed this training must be provided in NIH grant applications or (...) contract proposals.The NIH education policy will eventually be superseded by a more broadly applicable instructional policy for the “responsible conduct of research,” which will be promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Service's Office of Research Integrity and the Public Health Service. The instructional policy will apply to all persons engaged in any research or research training with PHS support. Presently, the only version of the policy is in draft form. (shrink)

This paper provides a retrospective and prospective overview of TU Delft’s approach to engineering ethics education. For over twenty years, the Ethics and Philosophy of Technology Section at TU Delft has been at the forefront of engineering ethics education, offering education to a wide range of engineering and design students. The approach developed at TU Delft is deeply informed by the research of the Section, which is centered around Responsible Research and Innovation, Design for Values, and Risk Ethics. These theoretical (...) approaches are premised on the notion that technologies are inherently value-laden, and as such contain the possibility of fostering or hindering moral values. Each of these approaches encourages students to take a proactive attitude with respect to their projects and profession, thinking creatively about – and taking responsibility for – how to both prevent harm and do good via the technologies they help develop. To explain how this is put into practice, this paper sketches a brief history of ethics teaching at TU Delft, outlines current activities, and presents future plans for Bachelor and Master’s level engineering ethics education at TU Delft. (shrink)

While positive information in the context of clinical care can lead to placebo effects, negatively framed information can have negative or nocebo effects. Extant literature documents how doctor–patient encounters are fertile ground for suboptimal interactions leading to negative experiences for ethnoracial minority patients. In their _JME_ paper, Blease presents a critical perspective on the potential for patients’ access to their doctors’ clinical notes, ‘open notes’, to engender nocebo effects. 1 In this commentary, we affirm the central claim that nocebo effects (...) could emerge ‘via negative wording or framing of health information expressed by clinicians in documentation’. The advent of electronic health records (EHR) allowed patients the unprecedented opportunity to access personal clinical documentation, giving them a window into decision making around their health. This shift is undoubtedly complex, and thus warrants a more fulsome rendering of the unique challenges faced by ethnoracial minority patients. Herein, we highlight three... (shrink)

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

This paper argues that there are no people. If identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Further, fissioning cases do not support the claim that connectedness is what matters. I consider Peter Unger's view that what matters is a continuous physical realization of a core psychology. I conclude that if identity isn't what matters in survival, nothing matters. This conclusion is deployed to argue that there are no people. Objections to Eliminativism are considered, especially that (...) morality cannot survive the loss of persons. (shrink)

Skepticism about the external world may very well be correct, so the question is in order: what theory of knowledge flows from skepticism itself? The skeptic can give a relatively simple and intuitive account of knowledge by identifying it with indubitable certainty. Our everyday ‘I know that p’ claims, which typically are part of practical projects, deploy the ideal of knowledge to make assertions closely related to, but weaker than, knowledge claims. The truth of such claims is consistent with skepticism; (...) various other vexing problems don’t arise. In addition, even if no claim about the world outside my mind can be more probable than its negation, the project of pure scientific research remains well motivated. (shrink)

This paper will argue that there are no people. Let me summarize the argument. In part II of what follows, I argue that if identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Psychological connectedness, according to Derek Parfit, is the 'holding of particular direct psychological connections,' for example, when a belief, a desire, or some other psychological feature continues to be had ; psychological connectedness consists in two other relations—resemblance plus a cause that produces it. For (...) our purposes, to say of a relation that it is 'what matters in survival' is to say that it carries the burden of responsibility, remorse, and regret for past misdeeds; and that it is what makes rational the anticipation of, and the special hopes and fears we have about, our own future experiences. A consequence of II is that if identity isn't what matters in survival, either something other than psychological connectedness is what matters or nothing matters. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are no people. If identity isn't what matters in survival, psychological connectedness isn't what matters either. Further, fissioning cases do not support the claim that connectedness is what matters. I consider Peter Unger's view that what matters is a continuous physical realization of a core psychology. I conclude that if identity isn't what matters in survival, nothing matters. This conclusion is deployed to argue that there are no people. Objections to Eliminativism are considered, especially that (...) morality cannot survive the loss of persons. (shrink)

I find a lost wallet containing the owner's address and a lot of cash. Shall I keep it or return it? Suppose I have the ‘liberty of indifference’: whatever I do, I could have done otherwise. Indeed, part of what is meant in saying I act freely is that either way what I do is up to me. And let's allow this liberty requires that my choice is not a logical consequence of the past and natural laws. If I return (...) the wallet, I could have kept it without violating a law of nature or changing the past. Let's call this ‘situation S’ . Suppose I return the wallet.Others are also in S: free people find lost wallets every day. Each of us can freely return the wallet we find. It doesn’t follow immediately that we can all return it, however. That each ticket holder can win the lottery doesn’t entail they can all win it. We need the additional premiss that no number of people freely returning the wallet prevents the remainder from freely returning it. In short: each of us in S can freely return the wallet. Further, no number of us doing so prevents the remainder from doing so. Therefore it's possible that we all freely do what I do.According to Modal Realism , other possible worlds are concrete realities and the people in them as real as you and me. Some of these people are in S. Each of them can freely return the wallet; none of them is prevented from exercising that ability by others doing so, including others in worlds causally isolated from theirs. For instance, our doings in the actual world no more limit their abilities than …. (shrink)

This article argues that justified true beliefs in Gettier cases often are not true due to luck. I offer two ‘unlucky’ Gettier cases, and it's easy enough to generate more. Hence even attaching a broad ‘anti‐luck’ codicil to the tripartite account of knowledge leaves the Gettier problem intact. Also, two related questions are addressed. First, if epistemic luck isn't distinctive of Gettier cases, what is? Second, what do Gettier cases reveal about knowledge?

Skepticism about the external world may very well be correct, so the question is in order: what theory of knowledge flows from skepticism itself? The skeptic can give a relatively simple and intuitive account of knowledge by identifying it with indubitable certainty. Our everyday ‘I know that p’ claims, which typically are part of practical projects, deploy the ideal of knowledge to make assertions closely related to, but weaker than, knowledge claims. The truth of such claims is consistent with skepticism; (...) various other vexing problems don’t arise. In addition, even if no claim about the world outside my mind can be more probable than its negation, the project of pure scientific research remains well motivated. (shrink)

We investigate the class of those algebras in which is a de Morgan algebra, is a quasi-Stone algebra, and the operations \ and \ are linked by the identity x**º = x*º*. We show that such an algebra is subdirectly irreducible if and only if its congruence lattice is either a 2-element chain or a 3-element chain. In particular, there are precisely eight non-isomorphic subdirectly irreducible Stone de Morgan algebras.

Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to (...) extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism. (shrink)

Using an interdisciplinary approach to reading Plato's Apology of Socrates, I argue that the counter penalty offered by Socrates, what is commonly translated as maintenance in the Prytaneion, was a literary addition from Plato, resembling comic topoi from Aristophanes. I begin with the accounts we have from Plato and Xenophon, then analyze the culture and context of the Prytaneion. Given the evidence, I provide arguments for why the historical Socrates wouldn't respond with sitēsis in the Prytaneion. I suggest that Plato (...) borrows the grammatical phrase from Aristophanes' Knights. (shrink)

This article constructively retrieves St. Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of retributive justice and provides a defense of what can be called the retributive model of hell. In the first part of this article, we develop the place of retributive punishment in Anselm’s thinking and discuss how and when retributive punishment is a good thing. In the second part, we apply Anselm’s thinking on retributive justice to the problem of hell and provide a defense of how hell, defined as a state (...) of receiving retributive, damnatory, and irreversible punishment, is good. We then address a series of objections. Despite some criticism that both Anselm and the retributive model of hell receive in the contemporary literature, Anselm’s account of retributive justice can make unique and constructive contributions to the contemporary discussion of hell; by retrieving and applying Anselm’s thought to the problem of hell, we intend to kill two birds with one stone. (shrink)

Recurrent complex visual hallucinations (RCVH) represent a form of psychosis. It may be useful to compare RCVH to another form of psychosis, catatonia. Both include a long list of medical illnesses and have been examined using several different hypotheses. Catatonia has a variety of hypotheses, including neurocircuitry, neurochemistry, and an integrated neuropsychiatric hypothesis. This hypothesis for catatonia supports Collerton et al.'s Perception and Attention Deficit model (PAD) for RCVH.

David Chalmers maintains there is a logically possible world (Z) where we all have physically and functionally identical twins without conscious experiences. Z entails that qualia are extra-physical, hence physicalism is false. I argue that his Zombie Argument (ZA) fails on functionalist grounds. Qualia sometimes affect behavior or they never do. If they do affect behavior, they sometimes individuate functional states; hence my zombie twin cannot be functionally identical to me. To save ZA, we must support the second disjunct. This (...) requires arguing that qualia are extra-physical; otherwise why wouldn’t they affect behavior? Suppose we find such an argument. But now ZA is idle. The supposedly successful argument that qualia are extra-physical does all the work. Hence Z is impossible or ZA is idle. (shrink)

Maintaining two full-time careers has required sacrifice, of course. On a recent Saturday Night Live, as an obvious plug, one of the actors carried a copy of The Chomsky Reader throughout a skit. Albert telephoned Chomsky to say, "Hey, you're on television!" and found himself having to explain what Saturday Night Live is. So Chomsky doesn't know anything about popular culture. He doesn't watch TV. He doesn't listen to rock & roll. He goes to maybe one movie a year. He (...) has little time for a private life. (shrink)

From starting his intellectual career as a surrealist, communist and co-founder of the Collège de Sociologie in 1937, Jules Monnerot (1911?95) ended it as a candidate for the Front National in 1989.In this article I offer an explanation for the unexpected trajectory of this thinker whose work is little known in the English-speaking world. Without overlooking the idea that the infamous College encouraged such tendencies, I argue that the notion of ?secular religion?, as Monnerot developed it in his Sociology of (...) Communism (1949), goes some way to explain his gradual radicalization from Cold Warrior to fascist, a path that otherwise seems unlikely for a French intellectual after World War II. In order to emphasize the unusualness of Monnerot's case, I contrast it with that of his erstwhile collaborator, Georges Bataille. I show that accusations of fascism often levelled against Bataille should be more accurately directed at Monnerot, indeed that the fascism inherent within the College of Sociology was brought out not by Bataille but by Monnerot. Monnerot's case is unsettling first because his definition of ?secular religion? contributed to his pro-fascist stance; and second, because it forces us tore think what is meant by ?philosophy after Auschwitz.? This term usually brings to mind scholars such as T.W. Adorno, Emil Fackenheimor Emmanuel Levinas. Monnerot provides a rare example of a thinker whose fascism only developed after the Holocaust, a shocking response that demands the attention of all those interested in the relationship between religion and politics. (shrink)

Brain damage may doubly dissociate cognitive modules, but the practice of revealing dissociations is predicated on modularity being true (T. Shallice, 1988). This article questions the utility of assuming modularity, as it examines a paradigmatic double dissociation of reading modules. Reading modules illustrate two general problems. First, modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of exclusionary criteria that define pure cases. As a consequence, competing modular theories force perennial quests for purer cases, which simply perpetuates growth in the list (...) of exclusionary criteria. The first problem leads, in part, to the second problem. Modularity fails to converge on a fixed set of pure cases. The second failure perpetuates unending fractionation into more modules. (shrink)

Can the Âtman in its infinity and transcendence be made the basis for civil rights? Can we deduce the idea of civil rights and their number from the conception of the Âtman? Can historicity be preserved in the bosom of the Âtman? It has been said that only ideas like that of the dictatorship are possible on the basis of the Âtman as conceived by Indian thinkers. Individual freedom and initiative necessary for new scientific discoveries and inventions are taught by (...) Christ and other Israel-born religions, and the discovery of the atom bomb is due to such ideas. Long ago the late Prof. C.A. Moore of Hawaii urged me several times to handle such criticisms of Indian philosophy and religion. I tried to answer them in some early papers. The most important considerations are: As Kant said, from the highest metaphysical reality it is not logically possible to deduce anything particular or even lower; for instance, we cannot even deduce from “All men are mortal” whether Socrates is or is not mortal, unless we add “Socrates is a man,” which is an empirical statement. And If the Âtman is one and all-comprehensive, no democracy is said to be possible because individual men cannot be real then; but it is overlooked that then nothing is possible, not even trees and stones. Again, if there is only one personal God and if his will is supreme, will he not be a tyrant or a Louis XIV of the heavens, thundering his unquestionable commands? Where do democracy and freedom of the individual go then? On the other hand, if every one is the Supreme Âtman in essence, then everyone is free with all the initiative one can have by birth. Civil rights will then have a metaphysical foundation because every finite individual is inherently one with the Supreme Person and has the same rights and freedom as any king or emperor. But these arguments and counter-arguments cannot impress every one because to deduce anything from the highest Being leads only to antinomies and will be counter-productive in our search for truth. In metaphysics or ontology we can go only from the lower to the higher in logic or discursive thinking, but not vice versa. (shrink)

Can God create an unliftable stone? Beall & Cotnoir propose that ‘God can create an unliftable stone’ is a truth-value gap (neither true nor false). However, this yields a revenge paradox on whether God can eschew gaps. Can God avoid gappy ascriptions of power? Either way, God’s power seems to have limits. In response, it may be said that ascribing God the power to avoid gaps is itself gappy—it concerns a power that God neither has nor lacks. Yet this ends (...) up being inconsistent, for it implies that God definitely lacks that power. Following Aquinas, perhaps Beall & Cotnoir could accept this lack and still uphold omnipotence, suggesting that the power to avoid gaps is impossible for God. Yet the Aquinian stratagem is enough to block the original paradox, which saps the motivation to proffer truth-value gaps in addition. I conclude that the gappy solution is either inadequate or insufficiently motivated. (shrink)

Matter interacting classically with gravity in 3+1 dimensions usually gives rise to a continuum of degrees of freedom, so that, in any attempt to quantize the theory, ultraviolet divergences are nearly inevitable. Here, we investigate matter of a form that only displays a finite number of degrees of freedom in compact sections of space-time. In finite domains, one has only exact, analytic solutions. This is achieved by limiting ourselves to straight pieces of string, surrounded by locally flat sections of space-time. (...) Globally, however, the model is not finite, because solutions tend to generate infinite fractals. The model is not (yet) quantized, but could serve as an interesting setting for analytical approaches to classical general relativity, as well as a possible stepping stone for quantum models. Details of its properties are explained, but some problems remain unsolved, such as a complete description of the most violent interactions, which can become quite complex. (shrink)

Are we made entirely of matter, like sticks and stones? Or do we have a soul—a nonphysical entity—where our mental lives take place? -/- The authors Eric T. Olson and Aaron Segal begin this accessible and wide-ranging debate by looking at the often-overlooked question of whether we appear in ordinary experience to be material things. Olson then argues that the dependence of our mental lives on the condition of our brains—the fact that general anesthesia causes complete unconsciousness, for instance—is best (...) explained by saying that our mental lives are physical activities in our brains rather than nonphysical activities in the soul. Segal objects that this view is incompatible with two obvious and important facts about ourselves: that there is only one of you rather than trillions of almost identical beings now thinking your thoughts, and that we exist and remain conscious for more than an instant. These facts, he claims, are presupposed in our practical and moral judgments—but they require us to be immaterial things. Olson is forced to concede that there is no easy and uncontroversial answer to these objections but doubts whether taking us to be immaterial would be any help. The debate takes in large philosophical questions extending well beyond dualism and materialism. -/- The book features clear statements of each argument, responses to counter-arguments, in-text definitions, a glossary of key terms, and section summaries. Scholars and students alike will find it easy to follow the debate and learn the key concepts from metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and other areas necessary to understand each position. (shrink)

This article examines a series of Greek myths which establish a structural equivalence between two motifs, stoning and blinding; the two penalties either substitute for one another in alternative versions of a single story, or appear in sequence as repayments in kind. After reviewing other theories concerning the motives behind blinding and lapidation, I argue that both punishments-together with petrifaction and live imprisonment, which frequently figure alongside the other motifs-are directed against individuals whose crimes generate pollution. This miasma affects not (...) only the perpetrator of the deed, but risks spreading to the community at large, and prompts measures aimed at containing the source of the disease. Both blinding and lapidation are designed to cordon off the contaminant by removing him from all visual and tactile contact with other men. But it is not only the nature of the crimes that explains the kinship between the two penalties. I further argue that the attributes Greek thinking assigned to stones, repeatedly characterized as unseeing, mute, immobile, and dry, and symbolic of the condition of the dead, elucidate the connections and clarify the antagonism that myth suggests between lapidation and sight. Stoning, blinding, imprisonment, and petrifaction all consign the criminal to an existence exactly parallel to that of the stone, stripping him of the properties that distinguish the living from the dead, and making him both unseeing and unseen. Three examples drawn from archaic and classical literature provide examples of these interactions between stones, blindness, invisibility, and death: the snake portent sent by Zeus in Book 2 of the Iliad, the Perseus myth, and Hermes' activity in both the Homeric Hymn to Hermes and Aeschylus' Choephoroe. (shrink)

'The Biological Approach,' Eric T. Olson writes, 'is the view that you and I are human animals, and that no sort of psychological continuity is either necessary or sufficient for a human animal to persist through time.' Human 'persons' are self-aware human animals which, as they aren't essentially self aware, aren't essentially persons. Ranged against this position is the 'Psychological Approach,' a spectrum of views according to which 'some psychological relation is both necessary and sufficient for one to survive.' The (...) Psychological Approach is sufficiently broad to include the view that you survive because of a relation between your basic mental capacities in a physically continuous realizer, e.g., your cerebrum. The Biological Approach merits more attention than it has received from philosophers, and Olson's lucid and engaging defense of it is welcome. His book is full of interesting arguments of which I will consider only the most central. (shrink)

Political theorists have traditionally grappled with laughter by posing a simple, normative question: ‘What role, if any, should laughter play in the polis?’ However, the outsized presence of laughter in contemporary politics has rendered this question increasingly obsolete. What good does determining laughter’s role in the polis do when the polis itself is to a large extent shaped by laughter? The present essay argues that Kant’s aesthetic investigations of laughter in the Critique of Judgment and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point (...) of View offer a much needed alternative to the normative discourse. Kant theorizes laughter as an intensely dialectical experience — at once an aesthetic judgment and an affect. Laughter in Kant enacts dissensus: it disrupts and transforms sensus communis, or the ways subjects see and hear the world in common that organize and structure a political community. The essay illustrates the advantages of a Kantian conception of the politics of laughter over the normative discourse by examining Dave Chappelle’s controversial 2019 stand-up comedy special Sticks & Stones. It concludes that the dissensus enacted by laughter, while not necessarily democratic, provides a privileged opening for democratic politics. (shrink)