In their recent article, Brummett and Muaygil reject Bishop et al.’s framing of the debate over standardization in clinical ethics consultation (CEC) “as one between pro-credentialing procedural and anti-credentialing phenomenological,” claiming that this framing “amounts to a false dichotomy between two extreme approaches to CEC.” Instead of accepting proceduralism and phenomenology as a binary, Brummett and Muaygil propose that these two views should be seen as the extreme ends of a spectrum upon which CEC should be done. However, as evidenced (...) by several inconsistencies within their article, they have failed to fully appreciate the concern animating Bishop et al.’s proposal. Additionally, because of this failure, they do not seem to realize that credentialing ethicists for CEC will only create different problems in Saudi Arabia even as it possibly solves some of the current problems they identify. In this commentary, we highlight and clarify Brummet and Muaygil’s five misunderstandings of Bishop et al. This leads us to conclude that while they claim to be advocating a middle way between proceduralism and phenomenology, in fact they would like for us to standardize another proceduralism, albeit one that incorporates some of the “qualitative” values of American bioethics. (shrink)

Recent studies have provided evidence of associations between neurochemistry and reading (dis)ability (Pugh et al., 2014). Based on a long history of studies indicating that fluent reading entails the automatic convergence of the written and spoken forms of language and our recently proposed Neural Noise Hypothesis (Hancock et al., 2017), we hypothesized that individual differences in cross-modal integration would mediate, at least partially, the relationship between neurochemical concentrations and reading. Cross-modal integration was measured in 231 children using a two-alternative forced (...) choice cross-modal matching task with three language conditions (letters, words, and pseudowords) and two levels of difficulty within each language condition. Neurometabolite concentrations of Choline (Cho), Glutamate (Glu), gamma-Aminobutyric (GABA), and N- acetyl-aspartate (NAA) were then measured in a subset of this sample (n = 70) with Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS). A structural equation mediation model revealed that the effect of cross-modal word matching mediated the relationship between increased Glu (which has been proposed to be an index of neural noise) and poorer reading ability. In addition, the effect of cross-modal word matching fully mediated a relationship between increased Cho and poorer reading ability. Multilevel mixed effects models confirmed that lower Cho predicted faster cross-modal matching reaction time, specifically in the hard word condition. These Cho... (shrink)

This dissertation urges philosophers to reevaluate how they frame the question of the rationality of moral action. Its motivation is the thought that approaches to the question have suffered from mistakes in the relata. On the part of theories of practical reason, philosophers adopt an inadequate theory of action. On the part of moral theory, philosophers hold narrow conceptions of moral worth. As a result, not only have we failed to vindicate the thought that the moral agent acts well, our (...) conception of moral action invites the charge of remoteness from human life. ;In response, I propose we abandon some dogmas of moral psychology. My rethinking proceeds, negatively, by rejecting desire-based instrumentalist accounts of practical rationality and, positively, from renewed attention to virtuous action, a focus some suggest might counteract the remoteness of which morality's critics complain. I attend to the virtue of true friendship to defend non-instrumental conceptions of moral psychology and practical rationality that bring both into closer contact with commonsense norms of admirable action as they bear on what agents have reason to do. ;Chapter 1 introduces desire-based instrumentalism as the theory proponents claim is best suited to avoid the problem of the alienation of practical reason. I argue their claim does not survive scrutiny. ;In Chapter 2 I distinguish between explicit desiderative content and desiderative framing versions of desire-based instrumentalism. I argue the former is false to the content of deliberation and that arguments from the nature of intentional action fail to support the latter. ;Chapter 3 examines the evaluatively non-detachable quality of the descriptions under which actions performed out of friendship are intentional. I develop an account of virtuous action as nonteleologically ally motivated action understood in terms not of what it brings about but of its expressive quality. I argue action's expressive quality is key to assessing moral worth and rationality. ;Chapter 4 develops my account of virtuous agents' reasons for acting and asks what earns expressive action its claim to rationality. I argue certain actions inherit their rationality by expressing dispositions to regulate practical attitudes , dispositions themselves rationally assessable. (shrink)

With few exceptions, a solution to any problem will bring new difficulties. These may or may not be worse than the original problem, and one must decide, not between problem and answer, but between degrees of difficulty. Is the new situation really going to be better than the last? This is undoubtedly the situation with the transsexual. It is undeniable that in the majority of cases the treated transsexual is an infinitely happier person than the one who has not undergone (...) therapy, but as a result of this treatment there arises a host of new difficulties. Using personal experience, it is my intention to illustrate the problems which beset the transsexual before, during and after treatment. It will then be possible to ascertain whether or not, in spite of these difficulties, there is in fact a dilemma. Is there indeed any choice? (shrink)

Two contrasting types of individuals were each predicted to agree, for different reasons, that conventional ethical standards of society need not be upheld if organizational interests appear to demand otherwise. The hypotheses were investigated using questionnaire responses from two samples (employed and student, total N=308). Clear support was obtained for the prediction that individuals inclined toward self-interest and behavior counter to conventional standards would agree with the preceding position. Partial support was obtained for the hypothesis that individuals who simply feel (...) obligated to support an employing organization would also agree. While the latter's perspective may be somewhat narrow or perhaps even cynical, they do not seem to reflect the self-interest profile of the first group. This study also extends the groundbreaking work of Froelich and Kottke by exploring individual difference correlates of their promising ethics scale assessing the extent of agreement that organizational interests legitimately supersede more conventional ethical standards. (shrink)

J.N. Findlay was a South African philosopher who published from the late 1940s into the 1980s. He had a prestigious international academic career, holding many academic posts around the world. This article uses a textual comparative approach and focuses on Findlay’s Gifford Lecture at St Andrews University between 1965 and 1970. The objective of the article is to highlight the extent to which Findlay’s philosophical writings were influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism. Although predominantly a Platonist, Findlay drew influence from Asian philosophy (...) and religion, particularly Mahāyāna Buddhism. In these lectures, he applies the metaphor of the Platonic Cave to investigate Hegelian and Husserlian approaches to knowledge. Though he was a leading Hegel and Husserl scholar, his reading of these two philosophers is strongly influenced by Mahāyāna Buddhism, resulting in a unique mystical interpretation of these two philosophers. Revisiting Findlay’s writings is significant for two reasons; firstly, he investigated Buddhism prior to the Asian religions being included in Religious Studies departments’ purview in South African universities, and secondly, his interpretation of two prominent Western philosophers along Buddhist lines provides an early attempt at decolonising the predominance of Western philosophical views of knowledge.Contribution: This contribution forms part of a larger collection of essays investigating philosophical works that have had a significant impact on the study of religion. This contribution investigates the Buddhist influence on J.N. Findlay’s philosophical readings of Husserl and Hegel. (shrink)

British courts have adjudicated dozens of medical futility disputes over the past 10 years. Many of these cases have involved pediatric patients. All these judgements are publicly available in searchable legal reporters. And most were covered by the print or broadcast media.1 Yet, as noted by Dressler, none of these earlier cases received even a fraction of the public or scholarly attention that Charlie Gard has received. One might assess the Gard case from two different perspectives. At one level, the (...) Gard case is not unique. It is merely the n+1 medical futility dispute decided by the British courts. Admittedly, the Gard case has a much higher profile than earlier cases. But it announced no new rules or principles. It merely focused a spotlight on an already well-established process for resolving medical futility disputes. However, from another perspective, the Gard case is distinctive in at least five ways from other medical futility cases decided by the British courts. Because these unique features illustrate the limits or weaknesses of current rules and principles, they allude to potential improvements in the dispute resolution process. The papers in this special issue offer many valuable suggestions. After identifying the five unique features of the Gard case, I focus on the most prevalent two questions. Are courts the best forum for resolving these disputes? Is the best interest standard the right test for determining the limits of surrogate decision-making authority? Because the British courts have so many publicly available judgements in medical futility cases, it is possible to identify five distinctive features in the Gard case. First, Charlie’s parents were not asking GOSH clinicians to continue treating Charlie against either their professional judgement or against their personal beliefs. Instead, Charlie’s parents wanted to transfer him to another hospital that was willing …. (shrink)

Fully automated vehicles (AVs) hold promise toward providing numerous societal benefits including reducing road fatalities. However, we are uncertain about how individuals’ perceptions will influence their ability to accept and adopt AVs. The 28-item Automated Vehicle User Perception Survey (AVUPS) is a visual analog scale that was previously constructed, with established face and content validity, to assess individuals’ perceptions of AVs. In this study, we examined construct validity, via exploratory factor analysis and subsequent Mokken scale analyses. Next, internal consistency was (...) assessed via Cronbach’s alpha (α) and 2-week test–retest reliability was assessed via Spearman’s rho (ρ) and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). The Mokken scale analyses resulted in a refined 20-item AVUPS and three Mokken subscales assessing specific domains of adults’ perceptions of AVs: (a)Intention to use; (b)perceived barriers; and (c)well-being. The Mokken scale analysis showed that all item-coefficients of homogeneity (H) exceeded 0.3, indicating that the items reflect a single latent variable. The AVUPS indicated a strong Mokken scale (Hscale= 0.51) with excellent internal consistency (α = 0.95) and test–retest reliability (ρ = 0.76, ICC = 0.95). Similarly, the three Mokken subscales ranged from moderate to strong (rangeHscale= 0.47–0.66) and had excellent internal consistency (range α = 0.84–0.94) and test–retest reliability (range ICC = 0.84–0.93). The AVUPS and three Mokken subscales of AV acceptance were validated in a moderate sample size (N= 312) of adults living in the United States. Two-week test–retest reliability was established using a subset of Amazon Mechanical Turk participants (N= 84). The AVUPS, or any combination of the three subscales, can be used to validly and reliably assess adults’ perceptions before and after being exposed to AVs. The AVUPS can be used to quantify adults’ acceptance of fully AVs. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;In this thesis, I argue against the following common philosophical explanations of political disagreement: firstly, the view that those who disagree about political issues do so because they completely fail to understand each other; secondly, the view that political disagreement is value-laden and persists because disputes over values, unlike disputes over facts, are not amenable to rational resolution; thirdly, the general view that moral and political arguments are, in (...) principle, rationally unsettlable. I also consider the view that moral and political reasoning is open-ended and, as a result, that there is always something inconclusive about political argument. I argue that there are, indeed, a number of ways in which moral and political reasoning is open-ended, but maintain that none of these ways is sufficient to explain fully the existence and intractability of moral and political disputes in developed capitalist societies. ;I defend an alternative conception of how political disagreement should be explained. I make a distinction between rational and non-rational explanations of political disagreement and claim that, in general, philosophical explanations of political disagreement are rational ones because they appeal simply to the reasons those who disagree about political issues have for making the judgements they do. Instead, I urge that we should seek non-rational explanations for the holding of political beliefs and then construct explanations of political disagreement out of them. I defend an empirical model which attempts to do this. This model appropriates some aspects of an account of the construction of gender proposed by N. Chodorow, and employs the results of some research performed by C. Gilligan on the different ways in which men and women reason about moral and political issues. I apply the model to the work of two contemporary political theorists: John Rawls and Robert Nozick. (shrink)

When we look around us, some things look “alive,” others do not. What is it to “look alive”—to perceive animacy? Empirical work supports the view that animacy is genuinely perceptual. We should construe perception of animacy as perception of agents and behavior. This proposal explains how static and dynamic animacy cues relate, and explains how animacy perception relates to social cognition more broadly. Animacy perception draws attention to objects that are apt to be well‐understood folk psychologically, enabling us to marshal (...) our folk psychological resources efficiently. (shrink)

What’s the difference between those psychological posits that are ‘me” and those that are not? Distinguishing between these psychological kinds is important in many domains, but an account of what the distinction consists in is challenging. I argue for Psychological Constructionism: those psychological posits that correspond to the kinds within folk psychology are personal, and those that don’t, aren’t. I suggest that only constructionism can answer a fundamental challenge in characterizing the personal level – the plurality problem. The things that (...) plausibly qualify as personal are motley. Other attempts at accounting for the personal level either cannot accommodate this plurality, or cannot explain what unifies the personal. Given arguments others have given for a pluralistic conception of folk psychology, constructionism explains and predicts this plurality in a systematic and unified way, thereby solving the plurality problem. (shrink)

How do we know about other minds on the basis of perception? The two most common answers to this question are that we literally perceive others’ mental states, or that we infer their mental states on the basis of perceiving something else. In this paper, I argue for a different answer. On my view, we don’t perceive mental states, and yet perceptual experiences often immediately justify mental state attributions. In a slogan: other minds are neither seen nor inferred. I argue (...) that this view offers the best explanation of our deeply equivocal intuitions about perception-based mental state attributions, and also holds substantial interest for the epistemology of perception more generally. (shrink)

The Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC)—that many cognitive processes are carried out by a hybrid coalition of neural, bodily and environmental factors—entails that the intentional states that are reasons for action might best be ascribed to wider entities of which individual persons are only parts. I look at different kinds of extended cognition and agency, exploring their consequences for concerns about the moral agency and personal responsibility of such extended entities. Can extended entities be moral agents and bear responsibility for (...) actions, in addition to or in place of the individuals typically held responsible? What does it mean to be autonomous when one’s cognition is influenced and supported by a milieu of environmental factors? To answer these questions, I explore strong parallels between HEC’s critique of individualism in cognition, and feminist critiques of individualist accounts of self, agency, and autonomy. This relational and social conception of autonomous agency, as scaffolded and supported (or undermined and impaired) by a milieu of social, relational, and normative factors, has important lessons for HEC. Drawing together these two visions of distributed and decentralized aspects of personhood highlights how cognition, action, and responsibility are inextricably linked. It also encourages a reconceptualization of all cognition and all concerns about responsibility for actions, not simply as sometimes extended around individuals, but as fundamentally communal, social, and normative, with individual cognition and individual moral responsibility being derivative special cases, not the paradigm examples. Individuals are merely one of many possible loci of cognition, action, and responsibility. (shrink)

Brian Barry's Justice as Impartiality is a highly enjoyable and rewarding book. It throws new light on some familiar theories of justice, and shows how the idea that principles of justice are those principles which no one could reasonably reject can yield prescriptions for constitutional design. But I shall argue that Barry's defence of his theory is less robust than he thinks, and more generally that there is reason to suppose that principles of justice are as contestable as conceptions of (...) the good. (shrink)

Quilty-Dunn et al. argue that deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) optimized for image classification exemplify structural disanalogies to human vision. A different kind of artificial vision – found in reinforcement-learning agents navigating artificial three-dimensional environments – can be expected to be more human-like. Recent work suggests that language-like representations substantially improves these agents’ performance, lending some indirect support to the language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH).

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance...

Many now accept the thesis that norms are somehow constitutively involved in people's contentful intentional states. I distinguish three versions of this normative thesis that disagree about the type of norms constitutively involved. Are they objective norms of correctness, subjective norms of rationality, or intersubjective norms of social practices? I show the advantages of the third version, arguing that it improves upon the other two versions, as well as incorporating their principal insights. I then defend it against two serious challenges: (...) (1) If content is constituted by others' normative judgments, how can content be causally efficacious? (2) This account appears to make having contentful thoughts a matter of people having contentful thoughts about your thoughts. That appears to be viciously circular and so can't be naturalistic. (shrink)

Representation is a pivotal concept in cognitive science, yet there is a serious obstacle to a naturalistic account of representations’ semantic content and intentionality. A representation having a determinate semantic content distinguishes correct from incorrect representation. But such correctness is a normative matter. Explaining how such norms can be part of a naturalistic cognitive science is what I call the normativity problem. Teleosemantics attempts to naturalize such norms by showing that evolution by natural selection establishes neural mechanisms’ functions, and such (...) functions provide the normativity requisite for a determinate semantic content. I argue that such attempts fail, because when specifying functions, and thus semantic contents, that are determinate enough to enable misrepresentation, they must tacitly appeal to human normative practices, especially the practice of giving intentional states as reasons for actions. I present a different tactic: using evolution by natural selection to avoid rather than solve the normativity problem. Representations’ semantic contents and their intentional targets are irreducibly normative. Semantics and intentionality are constituted within human normative practices. However, evolution by natural selection can be used to naturalistically explain the transition from a world without human beings and human normative practices — and thus without any distinction between thoughts that may be called “correct” or “incorrect” — to a world in which such human practices and distinctions are commonplace. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper considers Robert Nozick's account of self‐esteem, as presented in Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I criticise three aspects of it. First, the claim that people gain self‐esteem only when they believe that they possess greater quantities than others of some valued talent or attribute. Secondly, the view that there will always be a conflict of interests between people over the acquisition of self‐esteem. Thirdly, the proposal that the most promising way to improve levels of self‐esteem across a society (...) is to educate people so that they value a number of different activities and attributes. I argue against Nozick that there are non‐comparative standards of doing something well or successfully that provide a person with a means of self‐assessment; there is no necessary conflict of interests over the acquisition of self‐esteem; reforming basic social and economic institutions is a promising way for a society to increase levels of self‐esteem. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss what motivated reasoning research tells us about the prospects for deliberative democracy. In section I, I introduce the results of several political psychology studies examining the problematic affective and cognitive processing of political information by individuals in nondeliberative, experimental environments. This is useful because these studies are often neglected in political philosophy literature. Section II has three stages. First, I sketch how the study results from section I question the practical viability of deliberative democracy. Second, (...) I briefly present the results of three empirical studies of political deliberation that can be interpreted to counter the findings of the studies in section I. Third, I show why this is a misinterpretation and that the study results from section I mean that it is implausible that sites of political deliberation would naturally emerge from the wide public sphere and coalesce into institutionalized forms of the practice such that deliberative democracy can satisfy its raison d’être. Finally, in section III, I conclude that viable conceptions of deliberative democracy should be limited to narrower aims. (shrink)

I have proposed the language of narrative as a vehicle for explaining and promoting the values and concerns of humanists. It is a different language than that of idealism, empiricism, and theological supernaturalism. In the language of the humanist narrative the old metaphors contained in a supernatural dualistic view must be relinquished, for they no longer make sense, nor do they work. The view of the world in the humanist narrative is non-dualistic, and it is “naturalistic” in a pragmatic sense (...) that is limited to an understanding of language in which both culture and nature are viewed as linguistic constructs. (shrink)

It is common to think that clarity is an essential ingredient of good teaching, meaning, in part, that good teachers always make it as easy as possible to follow what they say. We disagree. What we argue is that there are cases in which a philosophy teacher needs to forego clarity, making strategic use of obscurity in the undergraduate classroom.

_Appearing in English for the first time, Schelling’s 1842 lectures develop the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions._.

ABSTRACT Nietzsche once remarked of Emerson's Essays, “never have I felt so much at home in a book.” Indeed, throughout his intellectual life, Nietzsche returned to Emerson more than any other author. This text is a presentation, for the first time in English, of Nietzsche's Emerson marginalia of 1881, along with those passages that he copied, with variations and abridgments, from Emerson's Versuche into a separate notebook in January 1882. For context, I have included in my notes brief passages from (...) the German translation alongside Emerson's original that bear the most direct relevance to the texts here presented. Often these are passages Nietzsche himself underlined. With particular attention to the German translation Nietzsche was reading, I demonstrate in my introduction critical ways in which Emerson provoked Nietzsche's thought, and articulate what I take to be the basis of Nietzsche's deep and abiding affinity with the American thinker. (shrink)

Three decades have elapsed since Stanley Cavell, regarding Nietzsche's debt to Emerson, remarked, "no matter how obvious to anyone who cares to verify it, it stays incredible". With this book, Benedetta Zavatta has dispelled completely and forever that aura of the incredible. The book is a great advance on the two previous monographs dedicated to the Emerson–Nietzsche connection...

This paper analyzes the proposed use of combinatorial derivatives markets for event prediction, especially for catastrophic events such as terrorism, war, or political assasination. Following a presentation of the philosophical principles underlying these politico-economic tools, I examine case studies (U.S. DoD proposals) that evaluate their advantages and disadvantages in terms of both efficacy and moral considerations. I conclude that these markets are both fatally flawed due to internal conceptual contradictions and morally problematic.

States that are about things are intentional, that is, they have content. The precise nature of intentional states is a matter of dispute.What makes some states, but not others, intentional? Of those states that are intentional, what makes them about what they are about as opposed to something else, i.e. what gives them their specific content?

This interdisciplinary paper identifies principles of an affluent country (im)migration policy that avoids: (1) the positivist inclusion/exclusion mechanism of liberalism and communitarianism; and (2) the idealism of most cosmopolitan (im)migration theories. First, I: (a) critique the failure of liberalism and communitarianism to consider (im)migration under distributive justice; and (b) present cosmopolitan (im)migration approaches as a promising alternative. This paper’s central claim is that cosmopolitan (im)migration theory can determine normative shortcomings in (im)migration policy by coupling elements of Frankfurt School methodology to (...) case studies of (im)migration regimes. Lastly, I apply this analytical procedure to recent special changes in Spanish and UK immigration law. (shrink)