The OpenNotes (ON) mandate in the 21st Century Cures Act requires that patients or their legally authorized representatives be able to access their medical information in their electronic medical record (EMR) in real time. Ethics notes fall under the domain of this policy. We argue that ethics notes are unique from other clinical documentation in a number of ways: they lack best-practice guidelines, are written in the context of common misconceptions surrounding the purpose of ethics consultation, and often answer questions (...) of a different nature than other documentation. Thus, we believe the clinical ethics community would benefit from clarification on when the withholding of ethics notes is justified. We provide recommendations for excluding information from ethics documentation based on the likelihood and magnitude of harm that may occur with particular disclosures and suggest approaches to decrease the potential harms that may occur. We define and explain six types of reasons to exclude information from ethics notes based on significant harms that are not addressed in the ON policy: (1) harmful revelations from a protected chart note; (2) negative emotional effects on patients or families; (3) the purpose of the consultation is undermined by harmful consequences; (4) avoidable negative impact on interpersonal dynamics; (5) inappropriate labeling or disclosure of medical, social, or financial information; and (6) inclusion of biasing or otherwise unfair information. We also suggest approaches to mitigate harm when excluding, including, reframing, or delaying release of information that is perceived to be relevant to an ethics case. Overall, we hope our analysis and recommendations will initiate a much-needed discussion about the impact of the ON mandate on clinical ethics documentation. (shrink)

The “modest realism” described by Joe Frank Jones, III offers a sound methodological model for developing both self-understanding and philosophical theories. Claire Chafee’s play Why We Have a Body illustrates the pitfalls of living both a thoroughgoing realism and a thoroughgoing idealism and argues for the conception of a life story as a project in which discovery and invention play side by side.Stanley Cavell argues that the shape of a philosophy mirrors the shape of a philosopher’s life. Thereby he suggests (...) that Ludwig Wittgenstein saw his own revolutionary philosophical work as a species of modest realism, i. e., continuing to turn in fruitful directions,rather than as a species of anti-idealism, i. e., rejecting an entire tradition of philosophical theorizing. (shrink)

The central aim of this paper is to shed light on the nature of explanation in computational neuroscience. I argue that computational models in this domain possess explanatory force to the extent that they describe the mechanisms responsible for producing a given phenomenon—paralleling how other mechanistic models explain. Conceiving computational explanation as a species of mechanistic explanation affords an important distinction between computational models that play genuine explanatory roles and those that merely provide accurate descriptions or predictions of phenomena. It (...) also serves to clarify the pattern of model refinement and elaboration undertaken by computational neuroscientists. (shrink)

One of the twentieth-century's most exciting and challenging intellectuals, Gilles Deleuze's writings covered literature, art, psychoanalysis, philosophy, genetics, film and social theory. This book not only introduces Deleuze's ideas, it also demonstrates the ways in which his work can provide new readings of literary texts. This guide goes on to cover his work in various fields, his theory of literature and his overarching project of a new concept of becoming.

In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing (...) to fight-and die for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or by showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses. (shrink)

Louis Althusser remained until his death in 1990 the most controversial of the “master thinkers” who emerged from the turbulent Parisian intellectual scene of the 1960s. The publication of his bestselling posthumous “autobiography”, L'avenir dure longtemps, has now refueled some of these controversies. Hugely influential, whether lauded or vilified, Althusser occupies a unique place in contemporary philosophy. What is certain is that Althusserian themes and motifs continue to constitute a vital region in materialist thought. The Althusserian Legacy is the first (...) collective attempt to draw up a balance sheet, not on Althusser alone but on the questions that his work helped to bring to the forefront of Marxist theory. The volume brings together work in history, philosophy, economics, sociology, and literary criticism, all of it derived from or significantly inflected by Althusser. Taken together, the essays assess soberly, critically, but always generously, the full extent of his legacy. The volume contains a lengthy interview with Jacques Derrida, a long-time friend and colleague of Althusser at the Ecole Normale in Paris, and concludes with obituaries by Derrida and Gregory Elliott. Perhaps only now, more than a decade after his active intellectual life has come to a close, is it possible to render sound, just judgments on the meaning and significance of this much-debated body of work. The Althusserian Legacy is a rich beginning to that important task. (shrink)

Is the relationship between psychology and neuroscience one of autonomy or mutual constraint and integration? This volume includes new papers from leading philosophers seeking to address this issue by deepening our understanding of the similarities and differences between the explanatory patterns employed across these domains.

Automated Influence is the use of Artificial Intelligence to collect, integrate, and analyse people’s data in order to deliver targeted interventions that shape their behaviour. We consider three central objections against Automated Influence, focusing on privacy, exploitation, and manipulation, showing in each case how a structural version of that objection has more purchase than its interactional counterpart. By rejecting the interactional focus of “AI Ethics” in favour of a more structural, political philosophy of AI, we show that the real problem (...) with Automated Influence is the crisis of legitimacy that it precipitates. (shrink)

Since the late 1970s, theologians have been attempting to integrate mimetic theory into different fields of theology, yet a distrust of mimetic theory persists in some theological camps. In" Rene Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology," Grant Kaplan brings mimetic theory into conversation with theology both to elucidate the relevance of mimetic theory for the discipline of fundamental theology and to understand the work of Rene Girard within a theological framework. Rather than focus on Christology or atonement (...) theory as the locus of interaction between Girard and theology, Kaplan centers his discussion on the apologetic quality of mimetic theory and the impact of mimetic theory on fundamental theology, the subdiscipline that grew to replace apologetics. His book explores the relation between Girard and fundamental theology in several keys. In one, it understands mimetic theory as a heuristic device that allows theological narratives and positions to become more intelligible and, by so doing, makes theology more persuasive. In another key, Kaplan shows how mimetic theory, when placed in dialogue with particular theologians, can advance theological discussion in areas where mimetic theory has seldom been invoked. On this level the book performs a dialogue with theology that both revisits earlier theological efforts and also demonstrates how mimetic theory brings valuable dimensions to questions of fundamental theology. "Grant Kaplan's" Rene Girard, Unlikely Apologist: Mimetic Theory and Fundamental Theology" is an accessible and original work advancing the discussion of Girard and theology. Kaplan claims mimetic theory for Catholic theology and shows how it can strengthen Catholic theology by providing a powerful apologetic. Immensely helpful, too, is his situating of Girard's work alongside formative theologians and other thinkers." Scott Cowdell, author of "Rene Girard and Secular Modernity: Christ, Culture, and Crisis" ". (shrink)

A familiar part of debates about supererogatory actions concerns the role that cost should play. Two camps have emerged: one claiming that extreme cost is a necessary condition for when an action is supererogatory, while the other denies that it should be part of our definition of supererogation. In this paper, I propose an alternative position. I argue that it is comparative cost that is central to the supererogatory and that it is needed to explain a feature that all accounts (...) agree is central to the very notion of supererogation: optionality. Perhaps because of this agreement on its importance, few attempts have been made to clarify and explain the notion of optionality. I argue that giving an account of the optionality of supererogatory requires drawing a line between doing the bare minimum permissible and going beyond the bare minimum and that this line ought to be drawn based on comparative cost of alternative permissible acts. Having outlined my account and motivated it, I discuss and reject two concerns that might be raised: firstly, that it is extreme cost, not comparative cost, that matters and, secondly, that in fact no cost is needed for an act to be supererogatory. (shrink)

In ”Decision Theory and Epistemology,” Mark Kaplan finds it characteristic of orthodox Bayesians to hold that for each person and each hypothesis she comprehends, there is a precise degree of confidence that person has in the truth of that proposition, and no person can be counted as rational unless the degree of confidence assignment she thus harbors satisfies the axioms of the probability calculus. Kaplan's purpose is twofold. First, he aims to show that, as powerful as many criticisms (...) are against orthodox Bayesianism, there is a credible kind of Bayesianism. Without appeal to idealization or false precision, it offers a substantive account of how the probability calculus constrains the opinions of actual persons and of how this account impinges on traditional epistemological concerns. Second, he aims to show how this Bayesianism finds a foundation in considerations concerning rational preference. (shrink)

Standing in San Marco Cathedral in Venice, you immediately notice the exquisitely decorated spandrels: the triangular spaces bounded on either side by adjoining arches and by the dome above. You would be forgiven for seeing them as the starting point from which to understand the surrounding architecture. To do so would, however, be a mistake. It is a similar mistaken inference that evolutionary biologists have been accused of making in assuming a special adaptive purpose for such biological features as fingerprints (...) and chins. I argue that a mistake of just this sort is being made by ethicists who appeal to the intrinsic value of supererogatory acts in their efforts to make space for supererogation in ethical theory. Many cases of supererogatory action are simply spandrels: by-products of uncontroversial commitments elsewhere in our moral thought. This is not to downplay their value but rather to show that their value need not be the justification for making room for the supererogatory. I demonstrate this by examining two areas: rights and the distribution of burdens among a group. My argument has significance for those who take themselves to be defends of the possibility of supererogatory actions, as well as those who are committed to the contrary and those who believe themselves to be indifferent on the matter. (shrink)

This article examines the artistic potential of forms of image-making that involve registering the features of real objects using mind-independent processes. According to skeptics, these processes limit an agent’s intentional control over the features of the resultant “automatic images,” which in turn limits the artistic potential of the work, and the form as a whole. I argue that this is true only if intentional control is understood to mean that an agent produces the features of the work by their own (...) bodily movements alone. Not only is this an unrealistic standard to uphold, but I show that a definition of intentional control based on the skeptic’s position does not prohibit an agent from realizing the features of an image by means beyond their own actions. An agent can exercise intentional control over the features of an image if they successfully anticipate the effect that the remote consequences of their actions will have on these. This, I argue, entails that to exert intentional control over the features of an image is to exercise “creative agency,” which is a species of executive agency. Consequently, I defend the idea that the origin of automatic images in creative agency grounds their artistic significance. (shrink)

As healthcare institutions expand and vertically integrate, healthcare delivery is less constrained by geography, nationality, or even by institutional boundaries. As part of this trend, some aspects of the healthcare process are shifted from medical centers back into the home and communities. Telehealth applications intended for health promotion, social services, and other activitiesprovide services outside clinical settings in homes, schools, libraries, and other governmental and community sites. Such developments include health information web sites, on-line support groups, automated telephone counseling, interactive (...) health promotion programs, and electronic mail exchanges. Concomitant with these developments is the growth of consumer health informatics, in which individuals seeking medical care or information are able to find various health information resources that take advantage of new information technologies. (shrink)

Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant (...) or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. (shrink)

Expressivism in logic is the view that logical vocabulary plays a primarily expressive role: that is, that logical vocabulary makes perspicuous in the object language structural features of inference and incompatibility (Brandom, 1994, 2008). I present a precise, technical criterion of expressivity for a logic (§2). I next present a logic that meets that criterion (§3). I further explore some interesting features of that logic: first, a representation theorem for capturing other logics (§3.1), and next some novel logical vocabulary for (...) expressing structural features of inference (§4). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Background Incentives and guidance from the criminal law Other regulatory incentives and guidance Civil incentives Conclusion.

The critical realist and Bourdieusian conceptions of action fundamentally disagree on a number of fronts: the synthetic versus dualistic relationship between structure and agency; the social nature of the self/body; the link between morphogenesis and reflexivity. Despite these differences, this article argues that re-reading Bourdieu’s theories with attention to some of the core tenets of critical realism (emergence, the stratification of reality, and conjunctural causality) can provide insights into how the habitus is capable of reflexivity and social change. In particular, (...) this article reworks Bourdieu’s theory of habitus by suggesting that social selves are always situated at the intersection of multiple and competing social locations (or field positions) and that the habitus itself is always layered. Reflexivity arises from horizontal disjunctures (between field positions) and vertical disjunctures (across temporal sedimentation). (shrink)

The return of STS to its historical roots / Baird Callicott -- Phil-tech meets eco-phil / Don Idhe -- Is technology use insidious? / Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, Brett Clark -- Resistance to risky technologies / Paul Thompson -- Remediation technologies and respect for others / Ben Hale -- Early geoengineering governance / Clare Heyward -- Design for sustainability / Ibo van de Poel -- Industrial ecology and environmental design / Braden Allenby -- Ecodesign in the era of symbolic consumption (...) / Zhang Wei -- Do we consume too much? / Mark Sagoff -- Sustainable technologies for sustainable lifestyles / Philip Brey -- Sustainable animal agriculture and environmental virtue ethics / Raymond Anthony -- Technology, responsibility, and meat / Wyatt Galusky. (shrink)

It is well-documented that the alteration of portrait photographs can have a negative impact on a viewer’s self-esteem. One might think that providing written disclaimers warning of alteration might help to mitigate this effect, yet empirical studies have shown that viewers continue to feel like what they are seeing is real, and thus attainable, despite knowing it is not. I propose that this cognitive dissonance occurs because disclaimers fail to show viewers how to look at the contents of a photographic (...) image differently. Consequently, viewers have the same perceptual experience, where the picture appears to faithfully resemble a direct visual experience of the subject, which conflicts with their changing sense of warrant. However, I argue that the degree of perceived similarity, and so contact, may be subject to change depending on what a viewer is attentive to during their viewing of an image, including subtle but unrealistic signs of alteration. (shrink)

Cinema, thought and time -- Deleuze's cinema books -- Technology -- Essences -- Space and time -- Bergson, time, and life -- The movement-image -- The history of time and space and the history of cinema -- The movement-image and semiotics -- Styles of sign -- The whole of movement -- Image and life -- Becoming-inhuman, becoming imperceptible -- The deduction of the movement-image -- Art and time -- Destruction of the sensory motor apparatus and the spiritual automaton -- Time (...) and money -- Art and history -- Monument -- Framing, territorialization, and the plane of composition -- Politics and the origin of meaning -- Transcending life and the genesis of sense -- Beyond symbolic and imaginary -- Shit and money -- Exchange, gift, and theft -- The fiction of mind -- Collective investment and group fantasy -- The time of man -- The intense germinal influx. (shrink)

There has been some debate as to whether or not it is possible to keep a promise, and thus fulfil a duty, to supererogate. In this paper, I argue, in agreement with Jason Kawall, that such promises cannot be kept. However, I disagree with Kawall’s diagnosis of the problem and provide an alternative account. In the first section, I examine the debate between Kawall and David Heyd, who rejects Kawall’s claim that promises to supererogate cannot be kept. I disagree with (...) Heyd’s argument, as it fails to get to the heart of the problem Kawall articulates. Kawall’s argument however fails to make clear the problem with promising to supererogate because his discussion relies on the plausibility of the following claim: that supererogatory actions cannot also fulfil obligations. I argue that this view is mistaken because there are clear examples of supererogatory actions that also fulfil obligations. In the final section, I give my alternative account of the problem, identifying exactly what is wrong with fulfilling a duty, and thus keeping a promise, to supererogate. My diagnosis emphasises the importance of identifying non-supererogatory actions when it comes to understanding the way in which supererogatory actions go above and beyond the call of duty. (shrink)

Abstract: Groundwork is lain for answering questions as to how to situate Husserl’s theory of functions in relation to Frege’s. I examine Husserl’s ideas about analyticity and mathematics, logic and mathematics, formalization, calculating with concepts and propositions, the foundations of arithmetic, extensions to show that, although he knew, studied and lauded Frege’s ideas about functions and concepts, each man approached the issues from different angles. Seduced by the siren of transcendental phenomenology Husserl did not pursue the issues, implications, and consequences (...) of his ideas about functions. I ask whether so doing could provide new insight into, or even solutions to, the problems involving functions that beset Frege, Russell and have beset their successors. (shrink)

This chapter uses Marx’s credit theory in Comments on James Mill and Freire’s theory of the banking model of education from Pedagogy of the Oppressed to argue that the confluence of massive student debt and structures of “banking” pedagogy in contemporary American higher education places many university students in a unique position of dehumanization. The material limitations brought about by the loan are compounded by the social limitations of a resulting push toward productivity in education. Students with loan debt are (...) driven in the direction of business and pre-professional majors and away from the humanities and other fields which would facilitate students’ abilities to critically question the dehumanizing aspects of their situation. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s interest in tragedy continues throughout his work. And yet scholarship on Nietzsche’s account of tragedy has focused almost exclusively on his first book, The Birth of Tragedy – a work which is in many ways discontinuous with his more mature philosophical views. In this paper, I aim to illuminate Nietzsche’s post-Birth of Tragedy views on tragedy by setting them in the context of a particular historical conversation. Ever since Plato banished the tragic poets from the kallipolis, various philosophers have (...) attempted to respond to his challenge to offer a ‘defense of poetry’. What Nietzsche offers, I argue, is a distinctive form of response to Plato’s challenge. I show how Nietzsche takes seriously Plato’s worries, and even ends up in partial agreement with him: tragedy is not (unqualifiedly) valuable; it can be spiritually dangerous. Key to Nietzsche’s account is a distinction he draws between two types of tragic audience. For the ‘lower types’, tragedy is – as Plato feared – dangerous. For the ‘higher types’, however, tragedy can act as a regenerative force. Finally, I discuss a distinctive form of value that tragedy makes available to a modern audience: tragedy can act as a stimulus towards the process of the revaluation of values. (shrink)

The notion of supererogation—going above and beyond the call of duty—is typically discussed in a moral context. However, in this paper we argue for the existence of rationally supererogatory actions: that is, actions that go above and beyond the call of rational duty. In order to establish the existence of such actions, we first need to overcome the so-called paradox of supererogation: we need to provide some explanation for why, if some act is rationally optimal, it is not the case (...) that we are rationally required to carry out that act. We argue that a response to this ‘paradox’ can be found by reflecting on normative conflicts: cases where what is best according to some normative domain is different from what is best according to some other normative domain. (shrink)

L'unique tâche philosophique de Lequier a consisté dans la recherche d'une première vérité. Le récit existentiel est la voie qu'il a choisie. Cette voie, loin de mettre en question la métaphysique, expose, sous une forme phénoménologique, comment la vérité peut s'accomplir comme liberté dans l'histoire grâce à laquelle un être humain affirme son identité.