I show that the recursive structure of Leibniz's Law requires agents to perform infinitely many operations to psychologically identify the referents of phenomenal and physical concepts, even though the referents of ordinary concepts (e.g. Hesperus and Phosphorus) can be identified in a finite number of steps. The resulting problem resembles the hard problem of consciousness in the fact that it appears (and indeed is) unsolvable by anyone for whom it arises, and in the fact that it invites dualist and eliminativist (...) responses. Moreover, if this is the hard problem then we can predict that regardless of the strength of the argument for physicalism, and regardless of physicalism's truth, an ineliminable dissatisfaction is bound to accompany any physicalist theory of consciousness. Accordingly, I suggest that this is the hard problem of consciousness, and therefore that the hard problem arises from a recursively degenerate application of Leibniz's Law. (shrink)

According to orthodox views of philosophical methodology, when philosophers appeal to intuitions, they treat them as evidence for their contents. Call this “descriptive evidentialism.” Descriptive evidentialism is assumed both by those who defend the epistemic status of intuitions and by those, including many experimental philosophers, who criticize it. This article shows, however, that the idea that philosophers treat intuitions as evidence struggles to account for the way philosophers treat intuitions in a variety of philosophical contexts. In particular, it cannot account (...) for philosophers' treatment of a priori intuitions, for nonpropositional uses of intuition, and for philosophers' failure to use intuition to exclude the counterintuitive. The article concludes that alternatives to descriptive evidentialism (some of which are sketched) must be developed, and that much of the recent debate between traditionalists and skeptics from, for example, experimental philosophy is probably based on a false presupposition. (shrink)

Advocates of the use of intuitions in philosophy argue that they are treated as evidence because they are evidential. Their opponents agree that they are treated as evidence, but argue that they should not be so used, since they are the wrong kinds of things. In contrast to both, we argue that, despite appearances, intuitions are not treated as evidence in philosophy whether or not they should be. Our positive account is that intuitions are a subclass of inclinations to believe. (...) Our thesis explains why intuitions play a role in persuasion and inquiry, without conceding that they are evidential. The account also makes predictions about the structure of intuitions that are confirmed by independent arguments. (shrink)

Williamson (2000) [Knowledge and its Limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press] argues that attempts to substitute narrow mental states or narrow/environmental composites for broad and factive mental states will result in poorer explanations of behavior. I resist Williamson.

The transparency argument concludes that we're directly aware of external properties and not directly aware of the properties of experience. Focusing on the presentation used by Michael Tye (2002) I contend that the argument requires experience to have content that it cannot plausibly have. I attribute the failure to a faulty account of the transparency phenomenon and conclude by suggesting an alternative understanding that is independently plausible, is not an error-theory and yet renders the transparency of experience compatible with mental-paint (...) style views. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that intuitions are evidential. Yet it is hard to see how introspecting one's mental states could provide evidence for such synthetic truths as those concerning, for example, the abstract and the counterfactual. Such considerations have sometimes been taken to lead to mentalism---the view that philosophy must concern itself only with matters of concept application or other mind-dependent topics suited to a contemplative approach---but this provides us with a poor account of what it is that philosophers take themselves (...) to be doing, for many of them are concerned with the extra-mental facts about the universe. Evidentialism therefore gestates a disaster for philosophy, for it ultimately demands an epistemology for the investigation into such matter as the abstract and the modal that simply will not be forthcoming. We make a different suggestion: That intuitions are inclinations to believe. Hence, according to us, a philosophical argument does well, as a socio-rhetorical matter of fact, when it is founded on premises philosophers are generally inclined to believe, whether or not those inclinations to believe connect appropriately to the extra-mental facts. Accordingly, the role of intuitions (inclinations to believe) in philosophical methodology is non-evidential, and the question of how they could be used as evidence falls away. (shrink)

I show how a robot with what looks like a hard problem of consciousness might emerge from the earnest attempt to make a robot that is smart and self-reflective. This problem arises independently of any assumption to the effect that the robot is conscious, but deserves to be thought of as related to the human problem in virtue of the fact that (1) the problem is one the robot encounters when it tries to naturalistically reduce its own subjective states (2) (...) it seems incredibly difficult from the robot’s own naturalist perspective and, most importantly, (3) it invites the robot to engage in the exact same metaphysical responses as humans offer to the problem of consciousness. Despite the fact that it invites the robot to consider extravagant metaphysical solutions, the problem I explore is purely algorithmic. The robot cannot complete its naturalist physicalist reduction as a matter of algorithmic fact, whether or not the naturalist physicalist reduction would be correct as a matter of metaphysical fact. It is hoped that by reproducing the familiar seeming problem in an artificial context, a greater understanding of the human problem of consciousness can be achieved. (shrink)

We develop an approach to the problem of de se belief usually expressed with the question, what does the shopper with the leaky sugar bag have to learn to know that s/he is the one making the mess. Where one might have thought that some special kind of “de se” belief explains the triggering of action, we maintain that this gets the order of explanation wrong. We sketch a very simple cognitive architecture that yields de se-like behavior on which the (...) action-triggering functionality of the belief-state is what counts it as de se rather than some prior property of being “de se” explaining the triggering of action. This functionality shows that action-triggering change in belief-state also undergirds a correlative change in the objective involved in the triggered action. This model is far too simple to have any claim to showing how the de se works for humans, but it shows, by illustration, that nothing mysteriously “subjective”” need be involved in this aspect of self-conception. While our exposition is very different from those of Perry and Recanati, all three of us are developing the same kind of view. (shrink)

From the assumption that the presence of consciousness is detectable, in the first instance, only from behavioral indicators, I offer a proof to the effect that, with respect to any theory T that states that some particular state or process is the neural correlate of consciousness, there are always rival neural correlates that, from T’s perspective, can never be empirically ruled out. That's because, with respect to these states, the means of detecting consciousness is disrupted along with the empirical test. (...) Possible responses are discussed. (shrink)

Bernard Molyneux presents some new arguments against descriptive evidentialism about intuitions. Descriptive evidentialism is the thesis that philosophers use intuitions as evidence. Molyneux's arguments are that: the propositions that intuition putatively supports are treated as having a degree and kind of certainty and justification that they could not have got from being intuited; intuitions influence us in ways we cannot explain by supposing we treat them as evidence; and certain strong intuitions that persuade us of their contents (...) are treated as inadmissible in the context of justification. This article presents a partial defence of descriptive evidentialism against these new arguments. (shrink)

The dominant account of welfare in medicine is an objective one; welfare consists of certain favoured health states, or in having needs satisfied, or in certain capabilities and functionings. By contrast, I present a subjective account of welfare, suggested initially by LW Sumner and called “authentic happiness”. The adoption of such an account of welfare within medicine offers several advantages over other subjective and objective accounts, and systematises several intuitions about patient-centredness and autonomy. Subjective accounts of welfare are unpopular because (...) of their implications for justice and the autonomy of the healthcare professional. This account of welfare, however, seems to have the resources to resist these criticisms. (shrink)

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a (...) central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics. (shrink)

How I became a philosopher -- To love, to love me, to love us.

"Six Metaphysical Meditations" by René Descartes (translated by William Molyneux). Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to (...) everyone in a high-quality digital format. (shrink)

Eighty one years on, the Russian Revolution remains an event of unique significance for socialists, Marxists and historical materialists. It is the only occasion to date of which it can plausibly be claimed that the working class itself overthrew the capitalist state, established its own power and maintained it on a national scale for a significant period of time. Discount the Russian Revolution and we are left only with heroic but local and short-lived attempts and near-misses such as the Paris (...) Commune, the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, the Munich Soviet and Barcelona 1936, or the long list of seizures of power, usually by armed forces of one sort or another, in the name of the working class or Marxism. (shrink)

Conscious experience is one of the most difficult and thorny problems in psychological science. Its study has been neglected for many years, either because it was thought to be too difficult, or because the relevant evidence was thought to be poor. Bernard Baars suggests a way to specify empirical constraints on a theory of consciousness by contrasting well-established conscious phenomena - such as stimulus representations known to be attended, perceptual, and informative - with closely comparable unconscious ones - such (...) as stimulus representations known to be preperceptual, unattended, or habituated. Adducing data to show that consciousness is associated with a kind of global workplace in the nervous system, and that several brain structures are known to behave in accordance with his theory, Baars helps to clarify many difficult problems. (shrink)

This book offers the fullest and most sophisticated account of Gert's influential moral theory, a model first articulated in the classic work The Moral Rules: A New Rational Foundation for Morality, published in 1970. In this final revision, Gert makes clear that the moral rules are only one part of an informal system that does not provide unique answers to every moral question but does always provide a range of morally acceptable options. A new chapter on reasons includes an account (...) of what makes one reason better than another and a second new chapter is devoted to the question of justifying violations of the rules. Moral impartiality, the moral ideals, and virtue and vice, are all treated in greater detail. Throughout, Gert attempts to answer all of the challenges that his work has provoked. (shrink)

An updated and expanded successor to Culver and Gert's Philosophy in Medicine, this book integrates moral philosophy with clinical medicine to present a comprehensive summary of the theory, concepts, and lines of reasoning underlying the ...

This paper explores a remarkable convergence of ideas and evidence, previously presented in separate places by its authors. That convergence has now become so persuasive that we believe we are working within substantially the same broad framework. Taylor's mathematical papers on neuronal systems involved in consciousness dovetail well with work by Newman and Baars on the thalamocortical system, suggesting a brain mechanism much like the global workspace architecture developed by Baars (see references below). This architecture is relational, in the sense (...) that it continuously mediates the interaction of input with memory. While our approaches overlap in a number of ways, each of us tends to focus on different areas of detail. What is most striking, and we believe significant, is the extent of consensus, which we believe to be consistent with other contemporary approaches by Weiskrantz, Gray, Crick and Koch, Edelman, Gazzaniga, Newell and colleagues, Posner, Baddeley, and a number of others. We suggest that cognitive neuroscience is moving toward a shared understanding of consciousness in the brain. (shrink)

Malaria is a disease of developing countries whose local health services do not have the time, resources or personnel to mount studies of drugs or vaccines without the collaboration and technology of western investigators. This investigative collaboration requires a unique bridging of cultural differences with respect to human investigation. The following debate, sponsored by The Institute of Medicine and The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, raises questions concerning the conduct of trans-cultural clinical malaria research. Specific questions are raised (...) about the difficulties of informed consent in different cultural settings and whether there is any role for community involvement. Discussants debate whether drug and vaccine trials not approved in an industrialised country are ever defensible if performed in a third-world setting. Potential conflicting priorities between investigators are discussed and ideas regarding conflict resolution are offered. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been an increase in the establishment of biobanks for genetic and genomic studies around the globe. One example of this is the Human Heredity and Health in Africa Initiative (H3Africa), which has established biobanks in the sub‐region to facilitate future indigenous genomic studies. The concept of ‘broad consent’ has been proposed as a mechanism to enable potential research participants in biobanks to give permission for their samples to be used in future research studies. However, questions (...) remain about the acceptability of this model of consent. Drawing on findings from empirical research about the role of trust in decision‐making, we argue that an account of entrustment may be an appropriate way of addressing current challenges of seeking consent for biobank research in Africa. We propose a set of key points to consider that can support the proposed entrustment framework. (shrink)

We tend to suppose that the ancient Greeks had primitive ideas of the self, of responsibility, freedom, and shame, and that now humanity has advanced from these to a more refined moral consciousness. Bernard Williams's original and radical book questions this picture of Western history. While we are in many ways different from the Greeks, Williams claims that the differences are not to be traced to a shift in these basic conceptions of ethical life. We are more like the (...) ancients than we are prepared to acknowledge, and only when this is understood can we properly grasp our most important differences from them, such as our rejection of slavery. The author is a philosopher, but much of his book is directed to writers such as Homer and the tragedians, whom he discusses as poets and not just as materials for philosophy. At the center of his study is the question of how we can understand Greek tragedy at all, when its world is so far from ours. Williams explains how it is that when the ancients speak, they do not merely tell us about themselves, but about ourselves. _Shame and Necessity_ gives a new account of our relations to the Greeks, and helps us to see what ethical ideas we need in order to live in the modern world. (shrink)

I. Réviser pour développer. 1. Du modèle bergsonien à la révision bergsonienne -- 2. De la révision bergsonienne au développement rationnel -- II. La dialectique généralisée. 1. Réflexions sur les synthèses dialectiques fichtéennes -- 2. Réflexions sur Schelling au temps de l'idéalisme transcendantal -- 3. Réflexions sur les dialectiques hégéliennes -- III. Les dialectiques juridiques. 1. L'approbation du contrat social par Kant et Fichte -- 2. Le refus de contrat social par Hegel.

The basic principles of scientific research from the great French physiologist whose contributions in the 19th century included the discovery of vasomotor nerves; nature of curare and other poisons in human body; more.

Hannah Arendt is famous for her influential and innovative analysis of totalitarianism. However, her thinking on political systems and ideologies is far from limited to this theorization. Arendt also criti-cizes modern liberalism and its ideological framework. Indeed, Arendt’s thought reveals many of the political consequences of world-lessness, the loss of the world in contemporary times, particularly in terms of a sense of disempowerment and the advent of a technical vision of politics. This article looks at the political effects of world-lessness, (...) exploring the emerging opposition between liberal post-politics and conservative hyper-politics. This critique of Arendt’s thought can help us better understand the issues and questions raised by liberalism. (shrink)

Si la raison moderne, declaree en son principe par Descartes comme libre affirmation personnelle de l'universel, generalise son application avec le projet rousseauiste d'une politique de la liberte, c'est dans l'ecartelement reconnu entre le volontarisme moral de celle-ci et le constat de son destin historique negatif. Depuis les deux revolutions marquees par l'heritage de Rousseau, celle, pratique, de 1789, et celle, theorique, de Kant, le developpement de la raison politique moderne est ordonne a la fondation et a la determination nouvelle (...) d'un droit essentiellement republicain. Les etudes composant le present recueil analysent les divers aspects et moments d'une telle raison politique moderne, de leur socle doctrinal a leur insertion historique. On s'est interroge notamment sur la signification concrete revetue par eux dans le contexte essentiellement francais, mais egalement europeen et mondial. (shrink)

For many decades, access to human biological samples, such as cells, tissues, organs, blood, and sub-cellular materials such as DNA, for use in biomedical research, has been central in understanding the nature and transmission of diseases across the globe. However, the limitations of current ethical and regulatory frameworks in sub-Saharan Africa to govern the collection, export, storage and reuse of these samples have resulted in inconsistencies in practice and a number of ethical concerns for sample donors, researchers and research ethics (...) committees. This paper examines stakeholders’ perspectives of and responses to the ethical issues arising from these research practices. (shrink)

Part I. Phenomenology -- Phenomenology and the return to beginnings -- Delimitations: phenomenology and the end of metaphysics -- Part II. Sallis's Plato interpretation -- Being and logos: reading the Platonic dialogues -- Chorology: on beginning in Plato's Timaeus -- Platonic legacies -- Part III. Art/Sallis -- Stone -- Shades-of painting at the limit -- Topographies -- Part IV. Sallis and other thinkers -- The gathering of reason -- Spacings-of reason and imagination in texts of Kant, Fichte, Hegel -- Echoes: (...) after Heidegger -- Crossings: Nietzsche and the space of tragedy -- Part V. Sallis speaks directly -- Double truth -- Force of imagination: the sense of the elemental -- On translation -- The Sallis/Derrida dialogue -- Derrida's "Tense" and Sallis's The verge of philosophy. (shrink)

Die "Paradoxien des Unendlichen" sind ein Klassiker der Philosophie der Mathematik und zugleich eine gute Einführung in das Denken des "Urgroßvaters" der analytischen Philosophie. Das Unendliche - seit jeher ein Faszinosum für die philosophische Reflexion - wurde in der Zeit nach der Grundlegung der Analysis durch Leibniz und Newton in der Mathematik zunächst als Problem betrachtet, das sich nicht vollkommen widerspruchsfrei behandeln lässt. Bernard Bolzano, der heute als "Urgroßvater der analytischen Philosophie" (Michael Dummett) gilt, zeigt in diesem klassisch gewordenen (...) Text jedoch, dass es beim Nachdenken über das Unendliche, sofern man begrifflich differenziert argumentiert und klare Definitionen zugrunde legt, keine echten Widersprüche gibt und sich die "Paradoxien des Unendlichen" auflösen lassen. Bolzano setzt sich zunächst mit den Unendlichkeitsbegriffen der Mathematik und der (idealistisch geprägten) Philosophie seiner Zeit auseinander, bevor er sich Schritt für Schritt die analytischen Grundlagen einer konsistenten Theorie des Unendlichen erarbeitet. Bereits einige Jahrzehnte vor Georg Cantors bis heute maßgeblicher mathematischer Unendlichkeitsdefinition gelingt Bolzano mit diesem Werk, dessen logische Klarheit und dessen Grad an philosophischer Durchdachtheit bis heute Beispielcharakter haben, die Rehabilitation des Unendlichen für die Philosophie der Mathematik. Die "Paradoxien des Unendlichen" wurden zuerst 1851 aus dem Nachlass herausgegeben. Diese Neuausgabe beruht auf dem der Erstausgabe zugrundeliegenden Manuskript. (shrink)

This book contributes to current bioethical debates by providing a critical analysis of the philosophy of human death. Bernard N. Schumacher discusses contemporary philosophical perspectives on death, creating a dialogue between phenomenology, existentialism, and analytic philosophy. He also examines the ancient philosophies that have shaped our current ideas about death. His analysis focuses on three fundamental problems: (1) the definition of human death, (2) the knowledge of mortality and of human death as such, and (3) the question of whether (...) death is nothing to us or, on the contrary, whether it can be regarded as an absolute or relative evil. Drawing on scholarship published in four languages and from three distinct currents of thought, this volume represents a comprehensive and systematic study of the philosophy of death, one that provides a provocative basis for discussions of the bioethics of human mortality. (shrink)

BackgroundVerbal autopsy is a pragmatic approach for generating cause-of-death data in contexts without well-functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems. It has primarily been conducted in health and demographic surveillance systems (HDSS) in Africa and Asia. Although significant resources have been invested to develop the technical aspects of verbal autopsy, ethical issues have received little attention. We explored the benefits and burdens of verbal autopsy in HDSS settings and identified potential strategies to respond to the ethical issues identified.MethodsThis research was (...) based on a case study approach centred on two contrasting HDSS in Kenya and followed the Mapping-Framing-Shaping Framework for empirical bioethics research. Data were collected through individual interviews, focus group discussions, document reviews and non-participant observations. 115 participants were involved, including 86 community members (HDSS residents and community representatives), and 29 research staff (HDSS managers, researchers, census field workers and verbal autopsy interviewers).ResultsThe use of verbal autopsy data for research and public health was described as the most common potential benefit of verbal autopsy in HDSS. Community members mentioned the potential uses of verbal autopsy data in addressing immediate public health problems for the local population while research staff emphasized the benefits of verbal autopsy to research and the wider public. The most prominent burden associated with the verbal autopsy was emotional distress for verbal autopsy interviewers and respondents. Moral events linked to the interview, such as being unsure of the right thing to do (moral uncertainty) or knowing the right thing to do and being constrained from acting (moral constraint), emerged as key causes of emotional distress for verbal autopsy interviewers.ConclusionsThe collection of cause-of-death data through verbal autopsy in HDSS settings presents important ethical and emotional challenges for verbal autopsy interviewers and respondents. These challenges include emotional distress for respondents and moral distress for interviewers. This empirical ethics study provides detailed accounts of the distress caused by verbal autopsy and highlights ethical tensions between potential population benefits and risks to individuals. It includes recommendations for policy and practice to address emotional and moral distress in verbal autopsy. (shrink)

A bold new interpretation of Aristotelian thought is central to Bernard Yack's provocative new book. He shows that for Aristotle, community is a conflict-ridden fact of everyday life, as well as an ideal of social harmony and integration. From political justice and the rule of law to class struggle and moral conflict, Yack maintains that Aristotle intended to explain the conditions of everyday political life, not just, as most commentators assume, to represent the hypothetical achievements of an idealistic "best (...) regime." By showing how Aristotelian ideas can provide new insight into our own political life, Yack makes a valuable contribution to contemporary discourse and debate. His work will excite interest among a wide range of social, moral, and political theorists. (shrink)