In recruitment, promotion, admission, and other forms of wealth and power apportion, an evaluator typically ranks a set of candidates in terms of their perceived competence. If the evaluator is prejudiced, the resulting ranking will misrepresent the candidates’ actual ranking. This constitutes not only a moral and a practical problem, but also an epistemological one, which begs the question of what we should do – epistemologically – to mitigate it. The article is an attempt to begin to answer this question. (...) I first explore the presuppositions that must obtain for individual interventions to likely yield positive epistemological effects in ranking situations. I then compare these with the corresponding presuppositions of a novel, ‘post hoc’ approach to deprejudicing due to Jönsson and Sjödahl (Episteme 14(4):499–517, 2017), which does not attempt to change evaluators but attempts to increase the veracity of the rankings they produce after the fact (but before the rankings give rise to discriminatory effects) using statistical methods. With these two sets of presuppositions in place, I describe the limitations imposed by each presupposition on its intervention, compare presuppositions across the two kinds of interventions, and conclude that the two kinds of interventions importantly complement each other by having fairly disjoint, but non–conflicting, presuppositions. The post hoc intervention can thus complement an individual intervention (and vice versa) in situations where both are applicable (by adding further increases in veracity), but also by applying to situations where that intervention is not applicable (and thereby increase veracity in situations beyond the reach of that intervention). (shrink)

The situation of historical knowledge: the historicized world -- The technology of historical knowledge: management-systems -- The logic of historical knowledge: causality, rationality, identity -- The organization of historical knowledge: categorical coordinators; rhetorical strategy -- The purpose of historical knowledge: comprehension.

There has been much interest in group judgment and the so-called 'wisdom of crowds'. In many real world contexts, members of groups not only share a dependence on external sources of information, but they also communicate with one another, thus introducing correlations among their responses that can diminish collective accuracy. This has long been known, but it has-to date-not been examined to what extent different kinds of communication networks may give rise to systematically different effects on accuracy. We argue that (...) equations that relate group accuracy, individual accuracy, and group diversity are useful theoretical tools for understanding group performance in the context of research on group structure. In particular, these equations may serve to identify the kind of group structures that improve individual accuracy without thereby excessively diminishing diversity so that the net positive effect is an improvement even on the level of collective accuracy. Two experiments are reported where two structures are investigated from this perspective. It is demonstrated that the more constrained network outperforms the network with a free flow of information. (shrink)

Checklists have been used to improve quality in many industries, including healthcare. The use of checklists, however, has not been extensively evaluated in clinical ethics consultation. This article seeks to fill this gap by exploring the efficacy of using a checklist in ethics consultation, as tested by an empirical investigation of the use of the checklist at a large academic medical system (Cleveland Clinic). The specific aims of this project are as follows: (1) to improve the quality of ethics consultations (...) by providing reminders to ethics consultants about process steps that are important for most patient-centered ethics consultations, (2) to create consistency in the ethics consultation process across the medical system, and (3) to establish an effective educational tool for trainers and trainees in clinical ethics consultation. The checklist was developed after a thorough literature review and an iterative process of revising and testing by a group of experienced ethics consultants. To pilot test the checklist, it was distributed to 46 ethics consultants. After a six-month pilot period in which ethics professionals used the checklist during their clinical activities, a survey was distributed to all of those who used the checklist. The 10-item survey examined consultants’ perceptions regarding the three aims listed above. Of the 25 survey respondents, 11 self-reported as experts in ethics consultation, nine perceived themselves to have mid-level expertise, and five self-reported as novices. The majority (68 percent) of all respondents, regardless of expertise, believed that the checklist could be a “helpful” or “very helpful” tool in the consultation process generally. Novices were more likely than experts to believe that the checklist would be useful in conducting consultations. The limitations of this study include: reduced generalizability given that this project was conducted at one medical system, utilized a small sample size, and used self-reported quality outcome measures. Despite these limitations, to the authors’ knowledge this is the first investigatation of the use of a checklist systematically to improve quality in ethics consultation. Importantly, our findings shed light on ways this checklist can be used to improve ethics consultation, including its use as an educational tool. The authors hope to test the checklist with consultants in other healthcare systems to explore its usefulness in different healthcare environments. (shrink)

While consensus exists among many practitioners of ethics consultation about the need for and identification of core competencies and standards, there has been virtually no attempt to determine how these competencies and standards are best taught and assessed. We believe that clinical ethics consultation has reached a state of sufficient maturity that expert practitioners can evaluate those who are new to the field. We will outline several steps that can facilitate the creation of a certification process for clinical ethics consultants, (...) assuring the competency and quality of consultation for the patients, families, and healthcare professionals who utilize ECSs. (shrink)

Holistic theories of meaning have, at least since Dummett’s Frege: The Philosophy of language, been assumed to be problematic from the perspective of the incremental nature of natural language learning. In this essay I argue that the general relationship between holism and language learning is in fact the opposite of that claimed by Dummett. It is only given a particular form of language learning, and a particular form of holism, that there is a problem at all; in general, for all (...) forms of holism, and irrespective of how language learning is understood, semantic holism is conducive to language learning. The paper has three main parts. In the first, I demonstrate with the use of a simple formal system, that the form of holism that generates the problem that Dummett draws attention to is really decomposable into three distinct components, each of which is necessary for the problem to arise. In the second part, I demonstrate that even Dummett’s strong form of holism is compatible with one natural way in which to understand the incremental nature of language learning. In the third part, I outline the reasons why all forms of holism are conducive to language learning and offer two ways in which this general fact can be spelled out precisely. I end the paper by addressing some possible objections, and in doing so I draw attention to some affinities between semantic holism and the principle of compositionality, a semantic principle which has long been assumed to be conducive to language learning. (shrink)

Explores the moral dimensions of the current global role of the U.S. military.

Explores the moral dimensions of the current global role of the U.S. military.

In recruitment, promotion, admission, and other forms of wealth and power apportion, an evaluator typically ranks a set of candidates in terms of their competence. If the evaluator is prejudiced, the resulting ranking will misrepresent the candidates’ actual rankings. This constitutes not only a moral and a practical problem, but also an epistemological one, which begs the question of what we should do—epistemologically—to mitigate it. In a recent paper, Jönsson and Sjödahl in [Episteme 14:499–517, 2017], argue that the epistemic (...) problem can be fruitfully addressed by way of a novel statistical method that changes the products of biased behaviour, i.e. the rankings themselves, rather than the biased persons. Jönsson and Sjödahl’s pioneering proposal is a both a welcome addition to the literature on implicit bias, due the problems with existing implicit bias interventions [see e.g. Lai et al. in J Exp Psychol Gen 143:1765–1785; J Exp Psychol Gen 145:1001–1016, 2014; 2016; Forscher et al. in J Person Soc Psychol 117:522–559, 2019] but also to the literature on prejudice more generally, where many proposed prejudice-reduction strategies enjoy less than adequate empirical support [Paluck and Green in Ann Rev Psychol 60:339–367, 2009]. Their proposal, however, needs supplementation in two ways: the circumstances that must hold in order for it to work needs to be refined, and their claim that it works as intended in these circumstances needs to be validated. We argue that four of Jönsson and Sjödahl’s method’s presumed presuppositions can be weakened, but needs to be supplemented by two additional assumptions, overlooked by Jönsson and Sjödahl. Moreover, we demonstrate that the method does work as intended by way of a statistical simulation. (shrink)

Conflicts of interest. None to report. Despite widespread acceptance in the United States of neurological criteria to determine death, clinicians encounter families who object, often on religious grounds, to the categorization of their loved ones as “brain dead.” The concept of “reasonable accommodation” of objections to brain death, promulgated in both state statutes and the bioethics literature, suggests the possibility of compromise between the family’s deeply held beliefs and the legal, professional and moral values otherwise directing clinicians to withdraw medical (...) interventions. Relying on narrative to convey the experience of a family and clinical caregivers embroiled in this complex dilemma, the case analyzed here explores the practical challenges and moral ambiguities presented by the concept of reasonable accommodation. Clarifying the term’s meaning and boundaries, and identifying guidelines for its clinical implementation, could help to reduce uncertainty for both health care professionals and families and, thereby, the incremental moral distress such uncertainty creates. (shrink)

In their invocations of the Muses the early epic poets use indifferently verbs meaning ‘tell’, ‘speak of’ and the verb which we normally translate as ‘sing’ When they refer directly to their own performance they may use the non-committalμνήσομαι, or ἐρέω, ἐνισπεῖνbut more often it isάείδω, ἄρχομ ἀείδεινor something of the sort; and they will pray for goodἀοιδήor hope for reward from it. We cannot make a distinction between two styles of performance, one characterized asἀείδειν the other as ἐνέπεινthe Iliad (...) beginsμῆνιν ἄειδε θεάbut later hasἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι;Hesiod moves straight fromχαίρετε τέκνα Διός, δότε δ᾿ ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδήνtoεἴπατε δ᾿ ὡς... ταῦτά μοι ἔσπετε Μοῦσαι... καὶ εἴπατε; the author of the Hymn to Pan beginsἔννεπε Μοῦσαand endsἴλαμαι δέ σ᾿ ἀοιδῇ... καὶ σεῖο καὶ ἄλλης μνήσομ᾿ ἀοιδῆς. (shrink)

We congratulate Fox and her colleagues (2007) for contributing to the published empirical literature on ethics consultation in United States hospitals. Their study demonstrates the continued wide v...

Inferential Role Semantics is often criticized for being incompatible with the platitude that words of different speakers can mean the same thing. While many assume that this platitude can be accommodated by understanding sameness of meaning in terms of similarity of meaning, no worked out proposal has ever been produced for Inferential Role Semantics. I rectify this important omission by giving a detailed structural account of meaning similarity in terms of graph theory. I go on to argue that this account (...) has a number of attractive features, prominent among them that it makes sameness of meaning probabilistically determine co-reference. (shrink)

Although military personnel are required to follow all legal orders, morally the traditional contract between soldier and state rests on shared assumptions about the purposes for which national militaries will and will not be used.

One of the high-points of Italian Renaissance humanism, Machiavelli's The Prince immediately transcended the time and culture from which it had sprung, circulating throughout Europe and paving the road to an astonishing variety of discussions on power and liberty for centuries to come. Indeed, one could hardly think of a literary work whose reception has been more controversial and arguably more crucial to the fashioning of modernity. This volume gathers together the proceedings of a conference held in Oxford, in November (...) 2013, to mark the 500th anniversary of the composition of The Prince. It explores pivotal aspects of the text's complex identity, focusing on three interrelated areas: 1. The Prince's own ways of appropriating ancient and modern traditions of political thought and ethics; 2. the textual history and interpretive details of the work; 3. translations of the treatise into foreign languages (including English and other translations), with their cultural adaptations and reconceptualizations of the original. All chapters offer highly original insights by leading experts on The Prince, shedding light on hitherto neglected topics and locating Machiavelli's masterpiece in an intriguing network of intersecting perspectives. (shrink)

Our hospital’s policy and procedures for “Patients Without Surrogates” provides for gradated safeguards for managing patients’ treatment and care when they lack decision–making capacity, have no advance directives, and no surrogate decision makers are available. The safeguards increase as clinical decisions become more significant and have greater consequences for the patient. The policy also directs social workers to engage in “rigorous efforts” to search for surrogates who can potentially provide substituted judgments for such patients. We describe and illustrate the policy, (...) procedures, and kinds of expected rigorous efforts through our narration of an actual but disguised case for which we provided clinical ethics guidance and social work expertise. Our experience with and reflection on this case resulted in four recommendations we make for health care facilities and organizations that aim to provide quality care for their own patients without surrogates. (shrink)

We propose a coherence account of the conjunction fallacy applicable to both of its two paradigms. We compare our account with a recent proposal by Tentori et al. : 235–255, 2013) that attempts to generalize earlier confirmation accounts. Their model works better than its predecessors in some respects, but it exhibits only a shallow form of generality and is unsatisfactory in other ways as well: it is strained, complex, and untestable as it stands. Our coherence account inherits the strength of (...) the confirmation account, but in addition to being applicable to both paradigms, it is natural, simple, and readily testable. It thus constitutes the next natural step for Bayesian theorizing about the conjunction fallacy. (shrink)

The author surveys the evidence for the three antiquarian epics commonly ascribed to Eumelos: the Titanomachy, Korinthiaka and Europia. He elucidates and restores details, and endeavours to grasp their poets¿ objectives. He argues that they were products of the Corinthian-Sikyonian sphere, and to a degree mutually complementary; that they were composed between the late seventh and the late sixth century, considerably after the supposed lifetime of Eumelos; and that they were perhaps attributed to him for lack of other claimants, he (...) being famous as the Corinthian poet of the Messenians¿ treasured Prosodion. (shrink)

The scene inIliad11 where Nestor's slave Hekamede prepares a restorative κυκεών for his guests in his great cup, which only he can lift when it is full, has often been cited in connection with the skyphos from Ischia, dated toc.735–720 BC, with its verse inscription that alludes to Nestor's εὔποτον ποτήριον. Now that scholarly opinion is increasingly swinging towards a seventh-century dating for theIliad, it seems more prudent than ever to see the Ischia inscription as a reflex not of ourIliadbut (...) of a similar Nestorian drinking episode in earlier epic tradition. His cup, as described, has features of a Bronze Age vessel; and the motif of the mighty goblet is paralleled in the Ugaritic Baal epic, current not later than the fourteenth century.Here I want to consider another element in the scene, namely the grated cheese which Hekamede adds to her posset. I hope to show, by a combination of metrics and archaeology, that this too, even though it cannot be traced back to the Bronze Age, belongs to a traditional account that is many generations older than ourIliad. (shrink)

We describe and analyze 13 cases handled by our ethics consultation service (ECS) in which families requested continuation of physiological support for loved ones after death by neurological criteria (DNC) had been declared. These ethics consultations took place between 2005 and 2013. Patients’ ages ranged from 14 to 85. Continued mechanical ventilation was the focal intervention sought by all families. The ECS’s advice and recommendations generally promoted “reasonable accommodation” of the requests, balancing compassion for grieving families with other ethical and (...) moral concerns such as stewardship of resources, professional integrity, and moral distress. In cases we characterized as finitegoal accommodation, a “reasonable accommodation” strategy proved effective in balancing stakeholders’ interests and goals, enabling steady progress toward resolution. When a family objected outright to a declaration of DNC and asked for an indefinite accommodation, the “reasonable accommodation” approach offered clinicians little practical direction, and resolution required definitive action by either the family or the clinical team. Based on our analysis and reflections on these 13 cases, we propose ethically justified and practical guidelines to assist healthcare professionals, administrators, and ECSs faced with similar cases. (shrink)