Verbin, N., Divinely abused: a philosophical perspective on Job and his kin Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11153-010-9262-5 Authors A. K. Anderson, Department of Religion, Wofford College, 429 N. Church St., Spartanburg, SC 29303, USA Journal International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Online ISSN 1572-8684 Print ISSN 0020-7047.
This article discusses the properties of a controllable, flexible, hybrid parallel computing architecture that potentially merges pattern recognition and arithmetic. Humans perform integer arithmetic in a fundamentally different way than logic-based computers. Even though the human approach to arithmetic is both slow and inaccurate it can have substantial advantages when useful approximations ( intuition ) are more valuable than high precision. Such a computational strategy may be particularly useful when computers based on nanocomponents become feasible because it offers a way (...) to make use of the potential power of these massively parallel systems. Because the system architecture is inspired by neuroscience and is applied to cognitive problems, occasional mention is made of experimental data from both fields when appropriate. (shrink)
Newell (1980; 1990) proposed that cognitive theories be developed in an effort to satisfy multiple criteria and to avoid theoretical myopia. He provided two overlapping lists of 13 criteria that the human cognitive architecture would have to satisfy in order to be functional. We have distilled these into 12 criteria: flexible behavior, real-time performance, adaptive behavior, vast knowledge base, dynamic behavior, knowledge integration, natural language, learning, development, evolution, and brain realization. There would be greater theoretical progress if we evaluated theories (...) by a broad set of criteria such as these and attended to the weaknesses such evaluations revealed. To illustrate how theories can be evaluated we apply these criteria to both classical connectionism (McClelland & Rumelhart 1986; Rumelhart & McClelland 1986b) and the ACT-R theory (Anderson & Lebiere 1998). The strengths of classical connectionism on this test derive from its intense effort in addressing empirical phenomena in such domains as language and cognitive development. Its weaknesses derive from its failure to acknowledge a symbolic level to thought. In contrast, ACT-R includes both symbolic and subsymbolic components. The strengths of the ACT-R theory derive from its tight integration of the symbolic component with the subsymbolic component. Its weaknesses largely derive from its failure, as yet, to adequately engage in intensive analyses of issues related to certain criteria on Newell's list. Key Words: cognitive architecture; connectionism; hybrid systems; language; learning; symbolic systems. (shrink)
How do the ways we argue represent a practical philosophy or a way of life? Are concepts of character and ethos pertinent to our understanding of academic debate? In this book, Amanda Anderson analyzes arguments in literary, cultural, and political theory, with special attention to the ways in which theorists understand ideals of critical distance, forms of subjective experience, and the determinants of belief and practice. Drawing on the resources of the liberal and rationalist tradition, Anderson interrogates the (...) limits of identity politics and poststructuralism while holding to the importance of theory as a form of life. Considering high-profile trends as well as less noted patterns of argument, The Way We Argue Now addresses work in feminism, new historicism, queer theory, postcolonialism, cosmopolitanism, pragmatism, and proceduralism. The essays brought together here--lucid, precise, rigorously argued--combine pointed critique with an appreciative assessment of the productive internal contests and creative developments across these influential bodies of thought. Ultimately, The Way We Argue Now promotes a revitalized culture of argument through a richer understanding of the ways critical reason is practiced at the individual, collective, and institutional levels. Bringing to the fore the complexities of academic debate while shifting the terms by which we assess the continued influence of theory, it will appeal to readers interested in political theory, literary studies, cultural studies, gender studies, and the place of academic culture in society and politics. (shrink)
As scientists target communities for research into the etiology, especially the genetic determinants of common diseases, there have been calls for the protection of communities. This paper identifies the distinct characteristics of aboriginal communities and their implications for research in these communities. It also contends that the framework in the Belmont Report is inadequate in this context and suggests a fourth principle of respect for communities. To explore how such a principle might be specified and operationalized, it reviews existing guidelines (...) for protecting aboriginal communities and points out problems with these guidelines and areas for further work. (shrink)
After stating "I am gay" Navy Lieutenant Paul G. Thomasson was honorably discharged from the military. In Thomasson v. Perry (1996), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth District affirmed Thomasson's discharge. Thomasson is now considered the leading case evaluating the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. In this paper, I show that the court's analysis of the Department of Defense policy rests of two unarticulated and undefended assumptions about sexuality. The first is that an act (...) of sex is essentially defined in terms of the sexual orientation of the persons engaging in that act. The second is that whether or not a person is an open homosexual determines the essential nature of the homosexual acts of others. I conclude that both assumptions are untenable, therefore the "don't ask, don't tell" policy is indefensible. (shrink)
Nicholas Wolterstorff and Christopher J. Eberle have defended the view that the ethics of liberal citizenship allows citizens to publicly support the passage of coercive laws based solely on their religious convictions. They also develop positive conceptions of virtuous citizenship that place moral limits on how citizens may appeal to their religion. The question I address in this essay is whether the limits they impose on citizens’ appeals to their religion are adequate. Since Eberle’s “ideal of conscientious engagement” provides us (...) with the most extensive statement of these limits, it is the primary focus of my attention here. My conclusion is that in its current form, Eberle’s ideal is not constraining enough. In the first section, I argue that Eberle’s ideal does not require citizens to be self-critical enough about their religious and political commitments. In the second section, I highlight a conflict between Eberle’s ideal and the need for citizens to respect the religious freedom of their fellow citizens. I argue that the way to resolve this conflict is to adopt a more fine-grained conception of religious reasons and to hold that citizens should not rely on religious reasons of certain kinds. In the final section, I argue that laws punishing or discouraging homosexual conduct (which Eberle’s ideal would apparently allow) violate what Wolterstorff calls “the Idea of liberal democracy” and so are not the kind of proposal that virtuous citizens can defend. (shrink)
To read any book by Paul Weiss is to enter into an ongoing philosophical discussion. Emphatics is no exception. Here Weiss takes up some issues from previous work but from a new angle of vision. Much of what he says also moves beyond the content of earlier writings, which is as it should be. "A creative, systematic philosopher," Weiss says, "is somewhat like a poet rewriting a long poem, preserving some parts of earlier versions in later ones. What has (...) been done is not invalidated, but moved beyond" (37). Another characteristic Weissian feature marks Emphatics: it is difficult to read. The ideas themselves are difficult, and Weiss doesn't go out of his way to coddle his reader. Serving as... (shrink)
The question of how an individual firm's social and environmental performance impacts its firm risk has not been examined in any empirical UK research. Does a company that strives to attain good environmental performance decrease its market risk or is environmental performance just a disadvantageous cost that increases such risk levels for these firms? Answers to this question have important implications for the management of companies and the investment decisions of individuals and institutions. The purpose of this paper is to (...) examine the relationship between corporate environmental performance and firm risk in the British context. Using the largest dataset assembled so far, with community and environmental responsibility (CER) rankings for all rated UK companies between 1994 and 2006, we show that a company's environmental performance is inversely related to its systematic financial risk. However, an increase of 1.0 in the CER score is associated with only a 0.028 reduction in its β. (shrink)
Approaching Plato is a comprehensive research guide to all (fifteen) of Plato’s early and middle dialogues. Each of the dialogues is covered with a short outline, a detailed outline (including some Greek text), and an interpretive essay. Also included (among other things) is an essay distinguishing Plato’s idea of eudaimonia from our contemporary notion of happiness and brief descriptions of the dialogues’ main characters.
The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus.
From the outset, critical social theory has sought to diagnose people’s participation in their own oppression, by revealing the roots of irrational and self-undermining choices in the complex interplay between human nature, social structures, and cultural beliefs. As part of this project, Ideologiekritik has aimed to expose faulty conceptions of this interplay, so that the objectively pathological character of what people are “freely” choosing could come more clearly into view. The challenge, however, has always been to find a way of (...) doing this without arrogantly assuming special access to what is good for people. And this danger of paternalism is one to which social theorists have all too often fallen prey. In this brief essay, I focus on contemporary instances of clearly self-defeating behavior in contexts of complex choices. I begin by discussing a recent attempt to diagnose and solve these failures of choices, namely the public policy recommendations of behavioral economist Richard Thaler and reform-minded legal theorist Cass Sunstein. Their influential “libertarian paternalist” approach is particularly interesting, both in what it includes (attention to the socially constructed nature of choice situations and the roots of the problems in human nature) and in what it leaves out (an understanding of the social construction of human nature and an adequate appreciation of the value of autonomy). After discussing it, I consider a broadly perfectionist alternative, to the effect that the problem lies in a failure to adequately appreciate the importance of developing autonomy. I then turn to sketching the outlines of a new approach, based on the concept of “autonomy gaps,” which approaches overly demanding policies in relational and action-theoretical terms. In the final section, I show how this provides the basis for an analysis both in terms of a critique of ideology and of social pathology. (shrink)
The concept of preference dominates economic theory today. It performs a triple duty for economists, grounding their theories of individual behavior, welfare, and rationality. Microeconomic theory assumes that individuals act so as to maximize their utility – that is, to maximize the degree to which their preferences are satisfied. Welfare economics defines individual welfare in terms of preference satisfaction or utility, and social welfare as a function of individual preferences. Finally, economists assume that the rational act is the act that (...) maximally satisfies an individual's preferences. The habit of framing problems in terms of the concept of preference is now so entrenched that economists rarely entertain alternatives. (shrink)
: The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard.
In a recent article, Dale Tuggy argues that the two most favoured approaches to explicating the doctrine of the Trinity, Social Trinitarianism and Latin Trinitarianism, are unsatisfactory on either logical or biblical grounds. Moreover, he contends that appealing to ‘mystery’ in the face of apparent contradiction is rationally and theologically unacceptable. I raise some critical questions about Tuggy's assessment of the most relevant biblical data, before defending against his objections the rationality of an appeal to mystery in the face of (...) theological paradox. (shrink)
In Epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker makes a tremendous contribution to theorizing the intersection of social epistemology with theories of justice. Theories of justice often take as their object of assessment either interpersonal transactions (specific exchanges between persons) or particular institutions. They may also take a more comprehensive perspective in assessing systems of institutions. This systemic perspective may enable control of the cumulative effects of millions of individual transactions that cannot be controlled at the individual or institutional levels. This is true (...) not only with respect to the overall distribution of such goods as income and wealth, but also with respect to the goods of testimonial and hermeneutical justice. Cognitive biases that may be difficult for even epistemically virtuous individuals to correct on their own may be more susceptible to correction if we focus on the principles that should govern our systems of testimonial gathering and assessment. Hence, while Fricker?s focus on individual epistemic virtue is important, we also need to consider what epistemic justice as a virtue of social systems would require. My paper will indicate some directions forward on this front, focusing on the need for integration of diverse institutions and persons engaged in inquiry. (shrink)
Pressuring someone into having sex would seem to differ in significant ways from pressuring someone into investing in one’s business or buying an expensive bauble. In affirming this claim, I take issue with a recent essay by Sarah Conly (‘Seduction, Rape, and Coercion’, Ethics, October 2004), who thinks that pressuring into sex can be helpfully evaluated by analogy to these other instances of using pressure. Drawing upon work by Alan Wertheimer, the leading theorist of coercion, she argues that so long (...) as pressuring does not amount to coercing someone into having sex, her consent to sex answers the important ethical questions about it. In this essay, I argue that to understand the real significance of pressuring into sex, we need to appeal to background considerations, especially the male-dominant gender hierarchy, which renders sexual pressuring different from its non-sexual analogues. Treating pressure to have sex like any other sort of interpersonal pressure obscures the role such sexual pressure might play in supporting gender hierarchy, and fails to explain why pressure by men against women is more problematic than pressure by women against men. I suggest that men pressuring women to have sex differs from the reverse case because of at least two factors: (1) gendered social institutions which add to the pressures against women, and (2) the greater likelihood that men, not women, will use violence if denied, and the lesser ability of women compared to men to resist such violence without harm. (shrink)
This essay provides a positive account of coercion that avoids significant difficulties that have confronted most other recent accounts. It enters this territory by noting a dispute over whether coercion has to manipulate the will of the coercee, or whether direct force inhibiting action (such as manhandling or imprisoning) is itself coercive. Though this dispute may at first seem a mere matter of taxonomic categorization, I argue that this dispute reflects an important divergence in thought about the nature of coercion. (...) Though it has rarely been noted, there are two significantly different ways of theorizing coercion found in recent writing on coercion. One focuses on the ability of the coercer to inhibit actions by the coercee through techniques such as force, violence, and like powers, or threats based in such powers. The other approach restricts coercion to cases where coercion manipulates the will of the coercee, though widens it to include any sort of threat that puts pressure on the coercee's will and alters the coercee's intentional choice of action. The former, enforcement approach used to be widely assumed by many political theorists who discussed the place of coercion in law and politics, though it has been largely supplanted by the latter, pressure approach. I show that these approaches are indeed quite distinct, and argue that the enforcement approach is in several ways superior to and more fundamental than the pressure approach for recognizing and understanding coercion in ethics and political and legal philosophy. I also consider and respond to a number of objections to the enforcement approach, showing that it can deal with some puzzle cases such as bluffs, blackmail, inefficacious threats, oblique threats, and economic coercion. (shrink)
Feminist philosophy of religion as a subject of study has developed in recent years because of the identification and exposure of explicit sexism in much of the traditional philosophical thinking about religion. This struggle with a discipline shaped almost exclusively by men has led feminist philosophers to redress the problematic biases of gender, race, class and sexual orientation of the subject. Anderson and Clack bring together new and key writings on the core topics and approaches to this growing field. (...) Each essay exhibits a distinctive theoretical approach and appropriate insights from the fields of literature, theology, philosophy, gender and cultural studies. Beginning with a general introduction, part one explores important approaches to the feminist philosophy of religion, including psychoanalytic, poststructualist, postmetaphysical, and epistemological frameworks. In part two the authors survey significant topics including questions of divinity, embodiment, autonomy and spirituality, and religious practice. Supported by explanatory prefaces and an extensive bibliography which is organized thematically, Feminist Philosophy of Religion is an important resource for this new area of study. (shrink)
This paper is a summary and evaluation of work presented at the AAAI 2005 Fall Symposium on Machine Ethics that brought together participants from the fields of Computer Science and Philosophy to the end of clarifying the nature of this newly emerging field and discussing different approaches one could take towards realizing the ultimate goal of creating an ethical machine.
The premise of this symposium is that the principle and ideal developed in Brown v. Board of Education2 and its successor cases lie at the heart of the rationale for affirmative action in higher education. The principle of the school desegregation cases is that racial segregation is an injustice that demands remediation. The ideal of the school desegregation cases is that racial integration is a positive good, without which “the dream of one Nation, indivisible”3 cannot be realized. Both the principle (...) and the ideal make racial integration a compelling interest. The Supreme Court recognized these claims in Grutter v. Bollinger. However, it failed to take full advantage of them. It thereby failed to answer crucial questions that must be answered by policies subject to strict scrutiny. In this essay, I shall display the links tying Grutter to Brown, discuss the vulnerabilities of Grut- ter in the absence of an explicit grounding in Brown, and demonstrate how the affirmative action policy upheld in Grutter, when explicitly grounded in Brown, survives strict scrutiny. To understand this argument, it is helpful first to explain the integrationist perspective that underlies it. (shrink)
Despite widespread agreement that it would be ethical to use somatic cell gene therapy to correct serious diseases, there is still uneasiness on the part of the public about this procedure. The basis for this concern lies less with the procedure's clinical risks than with fear that genetic engineering could lead to changes in human nature. Legitimate concerns about the potential for misuse of gene transfer technology justify drawing a moral line that includes corrective germline therapy but excludes enhancement interventions (...) in both somatic and germline contexts. Keywords: somatic cell, germ line, genetic diseases, genetic engineering, humanness, enhancement, eugenics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
Recent trends in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science can be fruitfully characterized as part of the ongoing attempt to come to grips with the very idea of homo sapiens--an intelligent, evolved, biological agent--and its signature contribution is the emergence of a philosophical anthropology which, contra Descartes and his thinking thing, instead puts doing at the center of human being. Applying this agency-oriented line of thinking to the problem of representation, this paper introduces the Guidance Theory, according to which (...) the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. We offer a brief account of the motivation for the theory, and a formal characterization. (shrink)
Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) is a popular analytical technique in neuroscience that involves identifying patterns in fMRI BOLD signal data that are predictive of task conditions. But the technique is also frequently used to make inferences about the regions of the brain that are most important to the tasks in question, and our analysis shows that this is a mistake. MVPA does not provide a reliable guide to what information is being used by the brain during cognitive tasks, nor where (...) that information is. This is due in part to inherent run to run variability in the decision space generated by the classifier, but there are also several other issues, discussed below, that make inference from the characteristics of the learned models to relevant brain activity deeply problematic. These issues have significant implications both for many papers already published, and for how the field uses this technique in the future. (shrink)
The principle of clinical equipoise requires that, aside from certain exceptional cases, second generation treatments ought to be tested against standard therapy. In violation of this principle, placebo-controlled trials (PCTs) continue to be used extensively in the development and licensure of second-generation treatments. This practice is typically justified by appeal to methodological arguments that purport to demonstrate that active-controlled trials (ACTs) are methodologically flawed. Foremost among these arguments is the so called assay sensitivity argument. In this paper, I take a (...) closer look at this argument. Following Duhem, I argue that all trials, placebo-controlled or not, rely on external information for their meaningful interpretation. Pending non-circular empirical evidence that we can trust the findings of PCTs to a greater degree than the findings of ACTs, I conclude that the assay sensitivity argument fails to demonstrate that placebo-controlled trials are preferable, methodologically or otherwise, to active-controlled trials. Contrary to the intentions of its authors, the fundamental lesson taught by the assay sensitivity argument is Duhemian: the validity of all clinical trials depends on external information. (shrink)
Since its introduction in 1987, Benjamin Freedman’s principle of clinical equipoise has enjoyed widespread uptake in bioethics discourse. Recent years, however, have witnessed a growing consensus that the principle is fundamentally flawed. One of the most vocal critics has undoubtedly been Franklin Miller. In a 2008 paper, Steven Joffe and Miller build on this critical work, offering a new conception of clinical research ethics based on science, taking what they call a “scientific orientation” toward the ethics of clinical research. Though (...) there is much to recommend Joffe and Miller’s scientifically oriented conception of clinical research ethics, I believe that both the critical and constructive projects suffer from the same basic mistake: inattention to context. The internal norms of science cannot be fully specified, let alone satisfied, independently of contextual (external) factors that only come into view when we are attentive to the particular context of that form of inquiry. (shrink)
An emerging class of theories concerning the functional structure of the brain takes the reuse of neural circuitry for various cognitive purposes to be a central organizational principle. According to these theories, it is quite common for neural circuits established for one purpose to be exapted (exploited, recycled, redeployed) during evolution or normal development, and be put to different uses, often without losing their original functions. Neural reuse theories thus differ from the usual understanding of the role of neural plasticity (...) (which is, after all, a kind of reuse) in brain organization along the following lines: According to neural reuse, circuits can continue to acquire new uses after an initial or original function is established; the acquisition of new uses need not involve unusual circumstances such as injury or loss of established function; and the acquisition of a new use need not involve (much) local change to circuit structure (e.g., it might involve only the establishment of functional connections to new neural partners). Thus, neural reuse theories offer a distinct perspective on several topics of general interest, such as: the evolution and development of the brain, including (for instance) the evolutionary-developmental pathway supporting primate tool use and human language; the degree of modularity in brain organization; the degree of localization of cognitive function; and the cortical parcellation problem and the prospects (and proper methods to employ) for function to structure mapping. The idea also has some practical implications in the areas of rehabilitative medicine and machine interface design. (shrink)
In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen, among other things, discusses certain qualities any adequate theory of justice ought to incorporate. Two important qualities a theory of justice should account for are impartiality/objectivity and sensitivity to consequences. In order to motivate his discussion of sensitivity to consequences, Sen discusses the debate between Krishna and Arjuna from the religio-philosophical Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita. According to Sen, Arjuna represents a sensitivity to consequences while Krishna is an archetypal deontologist. In this paper (...) it will be argued that Sen's interpretation of the Gita is inaccurate. Further, a more adequate interpretation will be presented. What will be of significance is that the more adequate interpretation actually demonstrates the importance of an impartial spectator in moral reasoning. Finally, there will be a discussion of some lessons that can be taken from the Gita regarding justice generally. (shrink)
The authors argue that the time is ripe for national and corporate leaders to move consciously towards the development of global ethics. This papers presents a model of global ethics, a rationale for the development of global ethics, and the implications of the model for research and practice.
When things go badly, we notice that something is amiss, figure out what went wrong and why, and attempt to repair the problem. Artificial systems depend on their human designers to program in responses to every eventuality and therefore typically don’t even notice when things go wrong, following their programming over the proverbial, and in some cases literal, cliff. This article describes our work on the Meta-Cognitive Loop, a domain-general approach to giving artificial systems the ability to notice, assess, and (...) repair problems. The goal is to make artificial systems more robust. (shrink)
This paper consists of an introduction to the life and work of Iring Fetscher by the interviewer, followed by a conversation with Fetscher, and notes. In the interview, Fetscher discusses his relationship to Marxism, Hegelianism, Lukács, and the Frankfurt School, as well as his critique of Althusser. The contribution of Fetscher, an extremely well-known German specialist on Soviet and Marxist thought, is here discussed in greater detail than anywhere else to date in the English-language scholarly literature.
A plausible explanation of the wrongfulness of threatening, advanced most explicitly by Mitchell Berman, is that the wrongfulness of threatening derives from the wrongfulness of the act threatened. This essay argues that this explanation is inadequate. We can learn something important about the wrongfulness of threatening (with implications for thinking about coercion) by comparing credible threats to some other claims of impending harm. A credible bluff threat to do harm is likely to be more and differently wrongful than making intentionally (...) false warnings about other sources of harm. This essay surveys some examples to secure this point, shows that Berman's moralized account of their wrongfulness is wanting, and offers the outline of an approach better suited to explain the wrongfulness of threatening.1. (shrink)
Basics of awareness : knowing yourself -- Basics of awareness : privilege and social responsibility -- The process of acculturation : developing your professional ethical identity -- The ethical culture of psychotherapy -- "I can't believe it's not therapy" : boundaries of the psychotherapy relationship -- Confidentiality : a critical element of trust in the relationship -- Informed consent : the three-legged stool -- Making the most of supervision -- Ending psychotherapy : the good, the bad, and the ethical -- (...) Putting it all together : toward ethical excellence. (shrink)
Many who speak glowingly about the possibilities for human relations in cyberspace, or virtual communities, laud them precisely because such communities are to a great extent free of the real spatial-temporal restrictions rooted in the limitations of our bodies. In this paper I investigate the importance of the body in establishing and maintaining human relations by considering the thought of the twentieth century French philosopher Gabriel Marcel. Because Marcel emphasized the central importance of the body in one's personal self-identity as (...) well as in initiating and maintaining intersubjective bonds in human communities, he is able to offer some interesting reflections on the character of virtual communities. I suggest that a number of the features of cyberspace and its communities that make it attractive to many are precisely the characteristics that Marcel would consider detrimental to establishing intimate lasting human communities. I conclude by indicating why I think that Marcel would be concerned that certain trends in our high tech culture may well lead many to prefer ``living'' in virtual, rather than real communities. (shrink)
Competition among scientists for funding, positions and prestige, among other things, is often seen as a salutary driving force in U.S. science. Its effects on scientists, their work and their relationships are seldom considered. Focus-group discussions with 51 mid- and early-career scientists, on which this study is based, reveal a dark side of competition in science. According to these scientists, competition contributes to strategic game-playing in science, a decline in free and open sharing of information and methods, sabotage of others’ (...) ability to use one’s work, interference with peer-review processes, deformation of relationships, and careless or questionable research conduct. When competition is pervasive, such effects may jeopardize the progress, efficiency and integrity of science. (shrink)
Unjustifiable assumptions about sex and gender roles, the untamable potency of maleness, and gynophobic notions about women's bodies inform and influence a broad range of policy-making institutions in this society. In December 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit continued this ignoble cultural pastime when they decided Everson v. Michigan Department of Corrections. In this decision, the Everson Court accepted the Michigan Department of Correction's claim that “the very manhood” of male prison guards both threatens the safety (...) of female inmates and violates the women's “special sense of privacy in their genitals” and declared that sex-specific employment policies for prison guards is not impermissibly discriminatory. I believe that the Court's decision relies on unacceptable (and offensive) stereotypes about sex, gender and sexuality and it significantly undermines Title VII's power to end discriminatory employment practices. (shrink)
For the least the last 10 years, there has been growing interest in, and grow- ing evidence for, the intimate relations between more abstract or higher order cognition—such as reasoning, planning, and language use—and the more con- crete, immediate, or lower order operations of the perceptual and motor sys- tems that support seeing, feeling, moving, and manipulating. A sub-field of the larger research program in embodied cognition (Clark, 1997, 1998; Wilson, 2001; Anderson, 2003, 2007d, 2008; Gibbs, 2006), this work (...) has generally pro- ceeded under the banner of grounded cognition, and works to support the claim that thinking is inherently tied to—grounded in—perceiving and acting. Thus, Glenberg and Kaschak (2002) discuss “grounding language in action”; Gallese and Lakoff (2005) argue that concepts are “grounded in the sensory–motor sys- tem;” and Barsalou (1999) at various times talks of “grounding cognition in perception,” “grounding conceptual knowledge in modality-specific systems” (Barsalou et al., 2003), and most recently simply of “grounded cognition” (Barsalou, 2008). (shrink)
I want to present a new interpretation of Hobbes, in particular of what he was up to when he wrote Leviathan. In order to do this I will examine how he viewed the problem of social disorder and how he intended for that problem to be solved. I will argue that although he held that maintaining a credible threat of punishment for wrongdoing is necessary for social order, to Hobbes it is not sufficient; unless the subjects are properly educated the (...) commonwealth is doomed. I maintain that this need to ensure proper education illuminates Leviathan’s intent and its structure. Further, I’ll argue that when education is given its proper place in Hobbes’ scheme, the result is an account of disorder and a solution to it which are truer to Hobbes’ text and more plausible than those of certain competing views. In what follows, I will give an overview of the line I propose to take, then discuss how it contrasts with other views of Hobbes in the literature. The problem of disorder. A great deal of Hobbes scholarship focuses on the account he gives in the first half of Leviathan of how people in a state of nature could create a commonwealth. Fruitful and important as it is, however, this focus tends to leave the second half of the book a mystery: if what’s important about Leviathan is its presentation of a social contract theory, it’s not obvious why Hobbes devotes half of his treatise to theological matters. I will argue that once we have a clearer understanding of the problem Hobbes was addressing, Leviathan’s second half can be seen as an important component of Hobbes’ intended solution. While modern theoreticians are often most interested in Hobbes’ account of how people prior to society could make one from scratch, Hobbes himself was most concerned with how to prevent disorder from destroying an existing government. Hobbes wrote a good deal about the causes of disorder—whole chapters and many 1 scattered remarks in The Elements of Law, De Cive, and Leviathan, plus much of Behemoth—and I propose examining these writings closely in order to clarify how Hobbes conceived the problem he was addressing.. (shrink)
We present an account of processing capacity in the ACT-R theory. At the symbolic level, the number of chunks in the current goal provides a measure of relational complexity. At the subsymbolic level, limits on spreading activation, measured by the attentional parameter W, provide a theory of processing capacity, which has been applied to performance, learning, and individual differences data.
Embodied Cognition is growing up, and How the Body Shapes the Mind is both a sign of, and substantive contributor to this ongoing development. Born in or about 1991, EC is only now emerging from a tumultuous but exciting childhood marked in particular by the size and breadth of the extended family hoping to have some impact on its early education and upbringing. As family members include computer science, phenomenology, developmental and cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy of mind, linguistics, neuroscience, and (...) eastern mysticism, just to name a few, EC has both benefited and suffered from a wealth of different and often incompatible ideas about who and what it is, what it should do with its life, even what language it should speak. Gallagher brings some cohesion and consistency to this situation, not by surveying and synthesizing these competing approaches, but by focusing on some fundamental issues, and carefully marshalling the evidence and developing the vocabulary to thoroughly consider them. (shrink)
The task at hand is to review work on the history of early American pragmatism from the last ten years. However, writing on the history of pragmatism presents us with a different problem than, say, dealing with historical accounts of Mill’s Logic. The meaning of ‘pragmatism’ is routinely contested and, likewise, who is to count as a pragmatist is contested. The issue, of course, arose soon after William James named “pragmatism” in his 1898 talk at Berkeley titled “Philosophical Conceptions and (...) Practical Results.” The discussions of pragmatism that ensued in journals soon thereafter marked James, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, and F. C. S. Schiller as pragmatists. There were, as well, a number of “friends” of pragmatism such as Addison Moore. There were also clear-cut opponents of pragmatism including the likes of Paul Carus and James E. Creighton. But issues quickly muddied the waters. American idealist Josiah Royce, objecting to what he took to be the intellectually loose Jamesian-Schillerian strand of pragmatism, named them ‘pure pragmatists’, and then... (shrink)
Retributivism is regarded by many as an attractive theory of punishment. Its primary assumption is that persons are morally responsible agents, and it demands that the social practices of punishment acknowledge that agency. But others have criticized retributivism as being barbaric, claiming that the theory is nothing more than a rationalization for revenge that fails to offer a compelling non-consequentialist justification for the infliction of harm. Much of the contemporary philosophical literature on retributivism has attempted to meet this criticism. One (...) common move has been to recast retributivism within the social contractarian tradition. The argument is that the justification for retributive punishment flows naturally from social contractarian political theories. Thus, not only is it reasonable to claim that wrongdoers merit punishment independent of any consequentialist concerns, but that fairness requires retributive punishment. While allying retributivism with social contractarianism provides retributivism with a nonconsequentialist justification for punishment (one fuller and less problematic than the conception of "desert" that worries the critics of retributivism), I will argue that far from strengthening the justification of retributivism, social contractarianism weakens it. For this version of the theory invites the Marxist charge that our society is ordered by profoundly unfair political and social institutions, and that to justify punishing the criminals disadvantaged by such institutions with the claim that fairness requires their punishment approaches a cruel joke. Some have defended the contractarian-based theory of retributivism against the Marxist criticism by claiming that it does not require the punishment of such individuals precisely because social relations are unfair. I will conclude in this paper that although such a move is appealing, it is untenable. And if such a move is not open to the retributivist, she is now in the uncomfortable position of either turning a blind eye to the injustices by which many criminals are victimized or abandoning her retributivist intuitions (the very intuitions that drove her to social contractarianism to bolster her theory of retributivism in the first place). I will conclude that attempts to bolster retributivism by appeal to social contractarianism should be abandoned and retributivists ought instead to seek to develop their theory of punishment within an alternative type of political theory. (shrink)
In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible. Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music? Anderson’s second aim is (...) to find places where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writingsof Jack Kerouac.The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy. (shrink)
Heyes's literature review of deception, imitation, and self-recognition is inadequate, misleading, and erroneous. The anaesthetic artifact hypothesis of self-recognition is unsupported by the data she herself examines. Her proposed experiment is tantalizing, indicating that theory of mind is simply a Turing test.
"The question for me is how can the human mind occur in the physical universe? We now know that the world is governed by physics. We now understand the way biology nestles comfortably within that. The issue is how will the mind do that as well?" Alan Newell, 4 December 1991, Carnegie Mellon University -/- The argument John Anderson gives in this book was inspired by the passage above, from the last lecture by one of the pioneers of cognitive (...) science. Alan Newell describes what, for him, is the pivotal question of scientific inquiry, and Anderson gives an answer that is emerging from the study of brain and behaviour. -/- Humans share the same basic cognitive architecture with all primates, but they have evolved abilities to exercise abstract control over cognition and process more complex relational patterns. The human cognitive architecture consists of a set of largely independent modules associated with different brain regions. This book discusses in detail how these various modules can combine to produce behaviors as varied as driving a car and solving an algebraic equation, but focuses principally on two of the modules: the declarative and procedural. The declarative module involves a memory system that, moment by moment, attempts to give each person the most appropriate possible window into his or her past. The procedural module involves a central system that strives to develop a set of productions that will enable the most adaptive response from any state of the modules. Newell argued that the answer to his question must take the form of a cognitive architecture, and Anderson organizes his answer around the ACT-R architecture, but broadens it by bringing in research from all areas of cognitive science, including how recent work in brain imaging maps onto the cognitive architecture. (shrink)
Part of understanding the functional organization of the brain is understanding how it evolved. This talk presents evidence suggesting that while the brain may have originally emerged as an organ with functionally dedicated regions, the creative re-use of these regions has played a significant role in its evolutionary development. This would parallel the evolution of other capabilities wherein existing structures, evolved for other purposes, are re-used and built upon in the course of continuing evolutionary development (“exaptation”: Gould & Vrba 1982). (...) There is psychological support for exaptation in cognition (e.g. Cosmides 1989), theoretical reason to expect it (Anderson 2003; in press-a; in press-b) and neuroanatomic evidence that the brain evolved by preserving, extending, and combining existing network components, rather than by generating complex structures de novo (Sporns & Kötter 2004). However, there has been little evidence that integrates these perspectives, bringing such an account of the evolution of cognitive function into the realm of cognitive neuroscience (although see, e.g., Barsalou 1999). (shrink)
Marcuse's Reason and Revolution was the first Hegelian Marxist text to appear in English, the first systematic study of Hegel by a Marxist, and the first work in English to discuss the young Marx seriously. It introduced Hegelian and Marxist concepts such as alienation, subjectivity, negativity, and the Frankfurt School's critique of positivism to a wide audience in the United States. When the book first appeared, it was attacked sharply from the standpoint of empiricism and positivism by Sidney Hook, among (...) others. Since 1960, new critiques of Marcuse's book have been developed from varying perspectives, especially by the "scientific" Marxist Lucio Colletti, the critical theorist Douglas Kellner, and the Marxist humanist Raya Dunayevskaya. From the postmodernist camp, Jacques Derrida has discussed some of the same themes as did Marcuse, especially around the issues of negativity and difference. It is argued, however, that Derrida's reading of Hegel is more problematic than Marcuse's, especially with regard to the project of constructing a critical social theory. (shrink)
The effort to revise the Declaration of Helsinki and the CIOMS Guidelines has sparked a sometimes vitriolic debate centering on the use of placebo controls.
'With this scheme, John Anderson joins a very distinguished line of philosophers who have presented us with a set of categories. We have first Plato (the doctrine of Highest Kinds in his dialogue The Sophist), then Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Samuel Alexander.' - D. M. Armstrong, from the introduction. Space, Time and the Categories presents a unique record of personal influence and inspiration over three generations of philosophers in Australia, England and Scotland. This work is a vitally important text (...) in the history of the development of realist philosophy in Australian universities. With an introduction by Emeritus Professor D M Armstrong whose own student notes are the basis for the text used, this book brings together three of the major figures in the history of Australian philosophy. (shrink)
Monica A. Coleman achieves remarkable rigor in bringing together in one volume her long-standing interests in process philosophy and theology, womanist theology and ethics, African diaspora studies, West African religions, and African American women’s literature. Making a way out of No Way (2008) is a tour de force in contemporary African American constructive theology and especially in womanist discourse on the religious experience(s) of African American women. Coleman insists on understanding black women’s religious experience through the lens of their complex (...) subjectivity, which is irreducible to singularity or totality. As typically found in academic womanist theology, Coleman does not begin her theology with .. (shrink)
The problem of Philo's ambivalence about the physical world -- The context for Philo's ambivalence toward the physical world -- Philo's negative terminology for the physical world : [ousia, hylē, genesis, genētos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [kosmos] -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 1 -- Philo's positive terminology for the physical world : [physis] part 2 -- Higher and lower approaches to God -- The ambiguity of the physical world : (...) a multiperspectival approach -- Conclusions. (shrink)
In barely the space of one generation, Athens was transformed from a conventional city-state into something completely new--a region-state on a scale previously unthinkable. This book sets out to answer a seemingly simple question: How and when did the Athenian state attain the anomalous size that gave it such influence in Greek politics and culture in the classical period? Many scholars argue that Athens's incorporation of Attica was a gradual development, largely completed some two hundred years before the classical era. (...)Anderson, however, suggests that it is not until the late sixth century that we see the first systematic attempts by the Athenian polis to integrate all of Attica. Anderson first takes issue with the prevailing view of Cleisthenes' landmark political reforms of 508-7 b.c., arguing that they were animated by a more comprehensive vision of regional political community in Attica. The Athenians' strengthened the state by establishing institutional mechanisms that would allow inhabitants of the Attic periphery to participate as never before in the life of the center. The creation of a suitable physical setting for the new order was accompanied by religious, military, and symbolic innovations. Regional participation in Athenian affairs was stimulated by encouraging the Attic populace to imagine themselves, for the first time ever, as members of a single, like-minded, self-governing political community. Greg Anderson is Assistant Professor of Classics and History, University of Illinois at Chicago. (shrink)
The trouble with business schools -- The great, but delicate experiment -- A hippocratic oath for business -- Six more arguments for the MBA oath -- The purpose of a manager -- Ethics and integrity -- No man is an island : stakeholders -- Ambition and good faith -- The letter and the spirit : law -- The sunlight of responsibility : transparency -- Personal and professional growth -- Sustainable prosperity : a partnership for living well -- Accountability.
With the publication of the final report of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, it becomes clear that there is considerable convergence between a policy agenda rooted on social epidemiology and one rooted in a concern for human rights. As commentators like Jonathan Mann have argued, concern for human rights and the achievement of social justice can inform and improve public health. In this article, we ask a different question: what does a health perspective adds to the (...) enduring fight for a more just world? We consider three possibilities: (1) that public health, in an inversion of Mann's argument, actually provides useful tools for specifying social injustice; (2) that, contrary to the usual critical stance and assumption of weakness, the institutions of public health bring powerful capacities to the practical promotion of social justice; and (3) that health as a banner mobilizes people who would not be mobilized to act in the name of social justice. (shrink)
In recent years, in the UK and elsewhere, scientists and science policymakers have grappled with the question of how to reap the benefits of nanotechnologies while minimising the risks. Having recognised the importance of public support for future innovations, they have placed increasing emphasis on ‘engaging’ ‘the public’ during the early phase of technology development. Meaningful engagement suggests some common ground between experts and lay publics in relation to the definition of nanotechnologies and of their benefits and risks. However, views (...) on nanotechnologies are likely to vary according to where actors stand in the technology production/consumption/assessment cycle. Drawing on data from a recent UK-based study, this article examines how scientists (‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’) and policymakers portray the benefits and risks of nanotechnologies, particularly as they relate to two major areas of predicted application, namely medicine/public health and environmental sustainability. The findings reveal that, in the main, scientists and science policymakers held a positive conception of nanotechnologies and see imminent applications, although they acknowledged particular risks, including adverse public reaction. While definitions of ‘benefit’ and ‘risk’ varied, most saw the benefits as outweighing the risks and believed that the risks could be adequately regulated once they were assessed. The difficulties of assessing risk, however, were acknowledged. The study raises a number of questions that will need to be addressed if regulations are to be developed that not only protect people’s heath and wellbeing and the environment but also engender public trust in nanotechnologies. (shrink)
Focusing on a discussion by Ruddich and Stassen of the ?Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough?, this paper shows that some of the usual criticisms made by sociologists of Wittgenstein are misplaced. He does not reject causal explanations of beliefs and actions and replace them with some other form of explanation, but dismisses the idea that any explanation is called for here. His argument that the origin of the desire to explain beliefs is to be found in a misconceived parallel between (...) science and magic is explained and discussed. (shrink)
The current paper details a restricted semantics for active logic, a time-sensitive, contradictiontolerant logical reasoning formalism. Central to active logic are special rules controlling the inheritance of beliefs in general, and beliefs about the current time in particular, very tight controls on what can be derived from direct contradictions (P &¬P ), and mechanisms allowing an agent to represent and reason about its own beliefs and past reasoning. Using these ideas, we introduce a new definition of model and of logical (...) consequence, as well as a new definition of soundness such that, when reasoning with consistent premises, all classically sound rules are sound for active logic. However, not everything that is classically sound remains sound in our sense, for by classical definitions, all rules with contradictory premises are vacuously sound, whereas in active logic not everything follows from a contradiction. (shrink)
In this paper we contend that the ability to engage in meta-dialog is necessary for free and exible conversation. Central to the possibility of meta-dialog is the ability to recognize and negotiate the distinction between the use and mention of a word. The paper surveys existing theoretical approaches to the use-mention distinction, and brie y describes some of our ongoing e orts to implement a system which represents the use-mention distinction in the service of simple meta-dialog.
The central philosophical texts of this volume, the “metaphysical” or “cosmological” essays of the early 1890s published in The Monist, have long been a source of enjoyable controversy for Peirce scholars. From the reasonably straightforward arguments of “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” to the wild and fascinating speculative suggestions in “Evolutionary Love,” Peirce marks out the transitional ideas of his mid-career. Whether one sees, as I do, a continuity among these essays and their predecessors and followers, or whether one reads (...) them as idiosyncratic efforts of a midlife Peirce, one is compelled to wrestle with their meaning. This alone makes the reading of Volume 8 of the Chronological Edition an .. (shrink)
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the use of metacognition in intelligent systems. This essay is part of a small section meant to give interested researchers an overview and sampling of the kinds of work currently being pursued in this broad area. The current essay offers a review of recent research in two main topic areas: the monitoring and control of reasoning (metareasoning) and the monitoring and control of learning (metalearning).
Ever since, while continuing to develop his liguistic theories, he has been the most prominent US critic both of his country's foreign policy and of the intellectuals and media that give it overwhelming consensual support. "The Responsibility of Intellectuals" was followed by a series of ever more devastating attacks on American policy in Vietnam (collected in American Power and the New Mandarins and At War With Asia ): by 1970, he was far and away the best known intellectual opponent of (...) the US war effort. (shrink)
Educational theory does not oppose educational practice, as manyseem to think; instead it is a form of practice and the action oftheory exists at two levels. At a cultural level theory ischaracterized by linguistic forms of action and at a social level it is characterized by the day to day practices thatorganize and reward the work of producing educational philosophy.While the social practices that govern the production ofphilosophy certainly beg for ethnographic attention,any consideration anthropologists or philosophers giveit will eventually find (...) its way to the page and hence tothe cultural forms of linguistic action that are thesubject of this paper. Focusing on how educationalphilosophers see the things that they do, as opposedto what they see, I will suggest that the wayeducational philosophy is fashioned is an importantpart of what is fashioned. Ironically, as I will show,the ``way'' of educational philosophy can flow with oragainst the ``what'' of it â an author, that is, can saythat they are for or against this or that, but their stylized way of saying it can contradict the literalmeaning of their words. (shrink)
The practice of paying research subjects for participating inclinical trials has yet to receive an adequate moral analysis.Dickert and Grady argue for a wage payment model in whichresearch subjects are paid an hourly wage based on that ofunskilled laborers. If we accept this approach, what follows?Norms for just working conditions emerge from workplacelegislation and political theory. All workers, includingpaid research subjects under Dickert and Grady''s analysis,have a right to at least minimum wage, a standard work week,extra pay for overtime hours, (...) a safe workplace, no faultcompensation for work-related injury, and union organization.If we accept that paid research subjects are wage earners likeany other, then the implications for changes to current practiceare substantial. (shrink)
Despite the bad press that retributivism often receives, the basic assumptions on which this theory of punishment rests are generally regarded as being attractive and compelling. First of these is the assumption that persons are morally responsible agents and that social practices, such as criminal punishment, must acknowledge that fact. Additionally, retributivism is committed to the claim that punishment must be proportionate to the crime, and not determined by such utilitarian concerns as the welfare of society, or the hope of (...) deterring other criminals. Because the most commonly discussed version of retributivism is developed from Kant's moral and legal theory, I will refer to it as Kantian Retributivism. Despite its appeal, Kantian Retributivism cannot provide a satisfactory response to a kind of case that is receiving increasingly serious consideration in philosophical literature. The case is this: Many crimes are committed by individuals profoundly disadvantaged by unjust social institutions, such as racism, classism, and/or sexism. If such individuals commit crimes, the retributivist is placed in a very difficult position: Either she must claim that the individual has willfully committed a crime and for that reason deserves punishment, seeming to ignore entirely the social background of the individual, or she can claim that the individual—in virtue of being disadvantaged by social injustices(s)—does not deserve punishment because such punishment would be unfair. I have argued elsewhere that neither strategy is tenable. (shrink)
This essay examines the role of data and program?code archives in making economic research ?replicable.? Replication of published results is recognized as an essential part of the scientific method. Yet, historically, both the ?demand for? and ?supply of? replicable results in economics has been minimal. ?Respect for the scientific method? is not sufficient to motivate either economists or editors of professional journals to ensure the replicability of published results. We enumerate the costs and benefits of mandatory data and code archives, (...) and argue that the benefits far exceed the costs. Progress has been made since the gloomy assessment of Dewald, Thursby and Anderson some 20 years ago in the American Economic Review, but much remains to be done before empirical economics ceases to be a ?dismal science? when judged by the replicability of its published results. (shrink)
Fourteen philosophers share their experience teaching Peirce to undergraduates in a variety of settings and a variety of courses. The latter include introductory philosophy courses as well as upper-level courses in American philosophy, philosophy of religion, logic, philosophy of science, medieval philosophy, semiotics, metaphysics, etc., and even an upper-level course devoted entirely to Peirce. The project originates in a session devoted to teaching Peirce held at the 2007 annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The session, (...) organized by <span class='Hi'>James</span> Campbell and Richard Hart, was co-sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. (shrink)
In this article we describe our approach to understanding wrongdoing in medical research and practice, which involves the statistical analysis of coded data from a large set of published cases. We focus on understanding the environmental factors that predict the kind and the severity of wrongdoing in medicine. Through review of empirical and theoretical literature, consultation with experts, the application of criminological theory, and ongoing analysis of our first 60 cases, we hypothesize that 10 contextual features of the medical environment (...) (including financial rewards, oversight failures, and patients belonging to vulnerable groups) may contribute to professional wrongdoing. We define each variable, examine data supporting our hypothesis, and present a brief case synopsis from our study that illustrates the potential influence of the variable. Finally, we discuss limitations of the resulting framework and directions for future research. (shrink)
In this chapter, I describe my “post-diagnosis” experiences as the parent of an autistic child, those years in which I tried, but failed, to make sense of the overwhelming and often nonsensical information I received about autism. I argue that immediately after being given an autism diagnosis, parents are pressured into making what amounts to a life-long commitment to a therapy program that (they are told) will not only dramatically change their child, but their family’s financial situation and even their (...) entire mode of existence. Moreover, despite information overload, many treatment programs for autism rely on empty jargon and make completely unrealistic promises, so parents are left feeling overwhelmed and panicked. Even well respected therapy programs encourage parents to spend liberally. Indeed, autistic therapists, who help construct what I refer to as the Culture of Autism, advise parents to commit to a minimum of 35 to 45 hours of intensive therapy every week. The implications are clear: for a parent who works full-time, their autistic child becomes a second full-time job. Autism is big business right now, and therapists are pushing parents to the brink of desperation. So it is not too surprising that there is a desperate cry for a more permanent solution—which is why researchers seek to cure autism. But there are two ways to conceptualize cure. A Therapeutic Cure model (TC) conceives of a cure as a beneficial treatment for the patient that eliminates or ameliorates the harms of the disease or condition. But the notion of a therapeutic cure for autism is highly implausible, given the complexities of autism. Indeed, at this point, the vast majority of researchers have come to the conclusion that the idea of a therapeutic cure for autism is simply a non-starter. Therefore the bulk of research seeking a cure for autism focuses instead on a second approach, which I refer to as the Negative Eugenics Cure model (NEC). With this model, the intention is to eliminate the disease or condition without regard for the health or well-being of the organism carrying the disease or condition. So, with regard to autism, researchers are focusing on identifying genetic markers for autism that can be detected in utero, or in embryos, so that autistic fetuses can be eliminated and autism eradicated by preventing the existence of autistic individuals. I review both models and argue that both fail to provide convincing arguments that the “solution” either offers is desirable. Both rest on the assumption that autism renders a life not worth living which, all things considered, is false. Instead of pushing to cure autism, an idea pervasive in this Culture of Autism, I contend that autistics are individuals with lives worth living. Moreover, rather than expend millions on research to search for the means to eliminate autism, we should instead expend our resources to ensure autistic individuals have access to support they may need. If the phenomenology of autism were better understood and appreciated, the panicked demand for a cure for autism might abate and perhaps autism could be seen as having value in and of its own right. (shrink)
Despite the bad press that retributivism often receives, the basic assumptions on which this theory of punishment rests are generally regarded as being attractive and compelling. First of these is the assumption that persons are morally responsible agents and that social practices, such as criminal punishment, must acknowledge that fact. Additionally, retributivism is committed to the claim that punishment must be proportionate to the crime, and not determined by such utilitarian concerns as the welfare of society, or the hope of (...) deterring other criminals. Because the most commonly discussed version of retributivism is developed from Kant's moral and legal theory, I will refer to it as Kantian Retributivism. Despite its appeal, Kantian Retributivism cannot provide a satisfactory response to a kind of case that is receiving increasingly serious consideration in philosophical literature. The case is this: Many crimes are committed by individuals profoundly disadvantaged by unjust social institutions, such as racism, classism, and/or sexism. If such individuals commit crimes, the retributivist is placed in a very difficult position: Either she must claim that the individual has willfully committed a crime and for that reason deserves punishment, seeming to ignore entirely the social background of the individual, or she can claim that the individual—in virtue of being disadvantaged by social injustices(s)—does not deserve punishment because such punishment would be unfair. I have argued elsewhere that neither strategy is tenable. (shrink)
Artificial Intelligence, in press. Abstract: For some time we have been developing, and have had significant practical success with, a time-sensitive, contradiction-tolerant logical reasoning engine called the active logic machine (ALMA). The current paper details a semantics for a general version of the underlying logical formalism, active logic. Central to active logic are special rules controlling the inheritance of beliefs in general (and of beliefs about the current time in particular), very tight controls on what can be derived from direct (...) contradictions (P &￢P), and mechanisms allowing an agent to represent and reason about its own beliefs and past reasoning. Furthermore, inspired by the notion that until an agent notices that a set of beliefs is contradictory, that set seems consistent (and the agent therefore reasons with it as if it were consistent), we introduce an “apperception function” that represents an agent’s limited awareness of its own beliefs, and serves to modify inconsistent belief sets so as to yield consistent sets. Using these ideas, we introduce a new definition of logical consequence in the context of active logic, as well as a new definition of soundness such that, when reasoning with consistent premises, all classically sound rules remain sound in our new sense. However, not everything that is classically sound remains sound in our sense, for by classical definitions, all rules with contradictory premises are vacuously sound, whereas in active logic not everything follows from a contradiction. (shrink)
This paper illustrates the interplay between theory development and data analysis by considering the ability of the rational expectations hypothesis to explain the empirical cointegration structure found in the term structure. It finds that although a standard no-arbitrage theory that incorporates rational expectations can explain some of the properties of Treasury Bill yields, this theoretical explanation is incomplete. A broader-based explanation that accounts for government debt and time-varying risk premia can improve predictions of yield movements, relative to those predictions based (...) solely on a bill yield spread. (shrink)
The Saami assert that "to move on is better than to stay put" (jot'tit lea buorit go orrot). The senior (in more ways than one) author, Myrdene Anderson, found as a Saami ethnographer that her life history resonated well with this Saami philosophy. In addition, Anderson had adopted from her own heritage the adage that "one can't hit a moving target". The Saami would also be comfortable with that formula. Together, one might minimally collapse and paraphrase both adages (...) as: "a rolling agent invests in the moment". Devika Chawla, the junior author, interrogates Anderson in nuancing this philosophy. To what degree is our research overdetermined and underdetermined by such factors as life history, culture, personality, and narrative reflections? The inquiry proceeds to unpack the opacities and transparencies in semiosic constructions. (shrink)
Heikki Ikäheimo and Arto Laitinen (eds), Recognition and Social Ontology Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 134-137 Authors Sybol Cook Anderson, St. Mary's College of Maryland, USA Journal Critical Horizons: A Journal of Philosophy & Social Theory Online ISSN 1568-5160 Print ISSN 1440-9917 Journal Volume Volume 13 Journal Issue Volume 13, Number 1 / 2012.
The notion of a motivated semiotic might capture some of the intent behind "empirical semiotics", itself a rubric striking many as an oxymoron. In "motivated semiotics", practitioners would foreground the provisionality in all phases of a project, from the conditions of interdisciplinarity, the acknowledgment of open, nondeterminate systems, their emergent constraints of enablement and limitation, the role of initial and boundary conditions, on to the transdisciplinary problematics of interpretation and the selection of tropes which act as digestive enzymes for the (...) wider dissemination of ideas. Without such provisionality, nothing safeguards any motivated program (and, let's face it, all agendas are motivated), and consequently, even in semiotics, all research risks slipping unawares down the time-greased chute of vulgar positivism. (shrink)
Metaphysics and language: Quine, W. V. O. On the individuation of attributes. Körner, S. On some relations between logic and metaphysics. Marcus, R. B. Does the principle of substitutivity rest on a mistake? Van Fraassen, B. C. Platonism's pyrrhic victory. Martin, R. M. On some prepositional relations. Kearns, J. T. Sentences and propositions.--Basic and combinatorial logic: Orgass, R. J. Extended basic logic and ordinal numbers. Curry, H. B. Representation of Markov algorithms by combinators.--Implication and consistency: Anderson, A. R. Fitch (...) on consistency. Belnap, N. D., Jr. Grammatical propaedeutic. Thomason, R. H. Decidability in the logic of conditionals. Myhill, J. Levels of implication.--Deontic, epistemic, and erotetic logic: Bacon, J. Belief as relative knowledge. Wu, K. J. Believing and disbelieving. Kordig, C. R. Relativized deontic modalities. Harrah, D. A system for erotetic sentences. (shrink)
Feminist epistemology has often been understood as the study of feminine "ways of knowing." But feminist epistemology is better understood as the branch of naturalized, social epistemology that studies the various influences of norms and conceptions of gender and gendered interests and experiences on the production of knowledge. This understanding avoids dubious claims about feminine cognitive differences and enables feminist research in various disciplines to pose deep internal critiques of mainstream research.
Moral intuitions, while ubiquitous in moral reasoning, have been the cause of considerable controversy in philosophy. My purpose here is to describe the most reasonable role for intuitions in moral theory, in order to look at some problems that arise, particularly for theories of justice, when intuitions are presumed to have this role.
