Mammals have an XX:XY system of chromosomal sex determination in which a small heterochromatic Y controls male development. The Y contains the testis determining factor SRY, as well as several genes important in spermatogenesis. Comparative studies show that the Y was once homologous with the X, but has been progressively degraded, and now consists largely of repeated sequences as well as degraded copies of X linked genes. The small original X and Y have been enlarged by cycles of autosomal addition (...) to one partner, recombination onto the other and continuing attrition of the compound Y. This addition–attrition hypothesis predicts that the pseudoautosomal region of the human X is merely the last relic of the latest addition. Genes (including SRY) on the conserved or added region of the Y evolved functions in male sex determination and differentiation distinct from the general functions of their X‐linked partners. Although the gonadogenesis pathway is highly conserved in vertebrates, its control has probably changed radically and rapidly in vertebrate – even mammalian – evolution. (shrink)

Wynn's claims are, in principle, entirely reasonable; although, as always, the devil is in the details. With respect to Wynn's discussion of the cultural evolution of artifactual symmetry, we provide a few more arguments for the utility of mirror symmetry and extend the enquiry into the tacit and explicit processing of natural and artifactual symmetry.

Neuroimaging has provided insight into numerous neurological disorders in children, such as epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Many clinicians and investigators believe that neuroimaging holds great promise, especially in the areas of behavioral and cognitive disorders. However, concerns about the risks of various neuroimaging modalities and the potential for misinterpretation of imaging results are mounting. Imaging evaluations also raise questions about stigmatization, allocation of resources, and confidentiality. Children are particularly vulnerable in this milieu and require special attention with regards to safety (...) guidelines and modality adaptations. This article examines pediatric neuroimaging practice through an ethics lens. Most authors in the field of neuroethics focus on the future concerns of neuroimaging. In contrast, our paper examines ethical matters surrounding current clinical applications in the pediatric population. We first provide a brief overview of the neuroimaging technologies most commonly used in a pediatric clinical context and then discuss a variety of ethical issues arising from the use of these technologies. (shrink)

In order to illuminate the potential harms of MRI research, we present data obtained by examining MRI research proposal files that had been submitted for review to several Canadian Research Ethics Boards. The data reveal that REB review of the studies contained omissions, considerable variability, and sometimes confusion regarding MRI research risks and risk classification. If our findings reflect the general state of REB review of MRI research in Canada and elsewhere, there is a pressing need for REBs to be (...) educated about MRI risks in order to responsibly facilitate the disclosure of these research risks in consent forms and during the consent process. Developing a standard template consent form that discloses MRI research risks might be a way to ensure attention to and disclosure of risks. (shrink)

We outline some ways in which motor neglect (the underutilization of a limb despite adequate strength) and hysterical paralysis (failure to move a limb despite no relevant structural damage or disease) may throw light on the pathophysiology of catatonia. We also comment on the manifold inadequacies of distinguishing too firmly between symptoms of “neurologic origin” and of “psychiatric origin.”.

Current medical genetics research is dominated by a single theory that supports the Human Genome Project rationale. This thesis investigates this and several alternative hypotheses and the ethical context related to their development. Firstly, the hypotheses are discussed in detail followed by a subsection in which research evidence based on each hypothesis is cited. Secondly, these medical genetics hypotheses are situated within the contemporary medical paradigm. To conclude, the thesis examines in depth the ethical and practical implications of medical genetics (...) research. A framework of analysis of scientific responsibility is used to explore these implications. Scientific responsibility, as presented in this thesis, is a process consisting of three steps: scientific discourse; the development of the nature of scientific responsibility; and, effective criticism. Once scientific responsibility is defined, the term is applied specifically to the field of medical genetics research. (shrink)

The molecular mechanism of temperature‐dependent sex determination (TSD) is a long‐standing mystery. How is the thermal signal sensed, captured and transduced to regulate key sex genes? Although there is compelling evidence for pathways via which cells capture the temperature signal, there is no known mechanism by which cells transduce those thermal signals to affect gene expression. Here we propose a novel hypothesis we call 3D‐TSD (the three dimensions of thermolabile sex determination). We postulate that the genome has capacity to remodel (...) in response to temperature by changing 3D chromatin conformation, perhaps via temperature‐sensitive transcriptional condensates. This could rewire enhancer–promoter interactions to alter the expression of key sex‐determining genes. This hypothesis can accommodate monogenic or multigenic thermolabile sex‐determining systems, and could be combined with upstream thermal sensing and transduction to the epigenome to commit gonadal fate. (shrink)

While an accurate assessment of risk is always important, it is especially so in pediatric research. Recognizing the pivotal nature of the minimal-risk standard, we set out to determine under what circumstances pediatric magnetic resonance imaging research does or does not meet this standard. We found that while the physical and psychological risks that attend the MRI procedure do not exceed minimal risk, the sedation and contrast enhancement that are sometimes associated with MRI research do, as both exceed the level (...) of risk encountered by typical, healthy children in their everyday experiences. (shrink)

Many opinions and ideas about aging exist. Biological theories have taken hold of the popular and scientific imagination as potential answers to a “cure” for aging. However, it is not clear what exactly is being cured or whether aging could be classified as a disease. Some scientists are convinced that aging will be biologically alterable and that the human lifespan will be vastly extendable. Other investigators believe that aging is an elusive target that may only be “statistically” manipulatable through a (...) better understanding of the operational principles of systems situated within complex environments. Not only is there confusion over definitions but also as to the safety of any potential intervention. Curing cell death, for example, may lead to cell cancer. The search for a cure for aging is not a clearly beneficial endeavour. This paper will first, describe contemporary ideas about aging processes and second, describe several current life extension technologies. Third, it analyses these theories and technologies, focusing on two representative and differing scientific points of view. The paper also considers the public health dilemma that arises from life extension research and examines two issues, risk/benefit ratio and informed consent, that are key to developing ethical guidelines for life extension technologies. (shrink)

Community engagement has been recognised as an important aspect of the ethical conduct of biomedical research, especially when research is focused on ethnically or culturally distinct populations. While this is a generally accepted tenet of biomedical research, it is unclear what components are necessary for effective community engagement, particularly in the context of genomic research in Africa.

This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

In this paper, we first briefly describe neuroimaging technology, our reasons for studying magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, and then provide a discussion of what we have identified as priority issues for paediatric MRI research. We examine the issues of respectful involvement of children in the consent process as well as privacy and confidentiality for this group of MRI research participants. In addition, we explore the implications of unexpected findings for paediatric MRI research participants. Finally, we explore the ethical issues (...) concerning advances in functional MRI. This paper aims to provide a clear description of priority paediatric MRI research ethics issues to make some preliminary recommendations regarding next steps. (shrink)

Ideas of racial genetic determinism, though unsupported by scientific evidence and atavistic, are common and readily apparent in American medical education. These theories of biologic essentialism have documented negative effects in learners, including increased measures of racial prejudice.

This book was inspired originally by the debates at the turn of the century about placebo controlled trials of antiretrovirals in HIV positive pregnant women in developing countries. Moving forward from this one limited example, the book includes several additional controversial cases of clinical research conducted in developing countries, and asks probing philosophical questions about the ethics of such trials. All clinical research by its very nature uses people to acquire generalizable knowledge to help future people. But what sorts of (...) "use" are morally permissible? What is it to exploit people? Suppose that a trial conducted in a developing country would not be ethically permissible in the developed world. Can we automatically conclude from this that the trial is unethical, that some sort of morally problematic double standard is in operation? Or might the differences in the two settings justify differences in trial design? This collection of philosophical essays examines these important questions about what exploitation is and when clinical research counts as exploitative. -/- "This is an outstanding contribution to the growing literature on the ethics of research with human subjects and a fine example of what bioethics can offer at its best. Anyone with a serious interest in these issues will need to read this book from start to finish." -Daniel Wikler, Harvard School of Public Health "This book contributes significantly to the literature on exploitation in clinical research conducted in the developing world."--Patricia Marshall, Case Western Reserve University . (shrink)

In this brief piece, Jennifer McErlean comments on Kevin Elliott’s thesis that we should decrease or even cease philosophical efforts to build more inclusive biocentric ethical accounts and instead increase efforts to build indirect anthropocentric arguments. While McErlean agrees that it is sensible to marshal a multiplicity of standpoints to strengthen policies that protect the natural world, she disagrees that philosophers no longer need to consider whether nature has intrinsic value. Two specific criticisms are offered. One is that indirect (...) arguments are utilitarian and ethicists ought not to limit themselves a morality of consequences. The second is that underlying principles will make a difference, so that even if anthropocentric arguments currently converge with biocentric ones, we should not anticipate this will continue in future instances. (shrink)

In “Revive and Refuse: Capacity, Autonomy, and Refusal of Care After Opioid Overdose”, Marshall, Derse, Weiner, and Joseph contend that patients who may appear to satisfy the standard criteria for...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 7.1 (2002) 147-153 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals Steven M. Wise. Foreward by Jane Goodall. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Books, 2000. pp. 384. US $17.50. ISBN 0-7382-0437-4 (Paperback) "Ancient philosophers claimed that all nonhuman animals had been designed and placed on this earth just for human beings. Ancient jurists (...) declared that law had been created just for human beings. Although philosophy and science have long since recanted, the law has not." Steven M. Wise, Rattling the Cage, p. 4. Readers of this journal are well-versed in the myriad ways in which nonhuman animals are harmfully exploited at the hands of human beings—from battery hens and veal calves to mass-produced pigs; from Pennsylvania pigeon shoots to canned hunts on Texas ranches; from rodeos to roadside zoos; from LD-50 toxicity tests on rats and Draize eye tests on rabbits to head trauma and infectious disease experimentation on primates. Despite other sticking points, it is by now uncontroversial among [End Page 147] nonanthropocentric theorists that, in utilitarian terms, the benefits to humans of the above practices fall far short of justifying the harms they cause to their nonhuman victims or, in deontological terms, that they violate the rights of creatures with inherent value. Indeed, these arguments are so well-rehearsed and so widely regarded as compelling that it no longer seems particularly bold to predict that if reason ever prevails over tradition and prejudice, the future will look back on this generation's treatment of our fellow creatures with the same kind of shame and condemnation with which European Americans regard our slaveholding past.More sobering but equally familiar is the observation that decisive arguments for the gross immorality of existing practices will bring about neither their elimination nor significant reform as long as the presumed legitimacy of human exploitation of nonhuman beings remains entrenched in both popular consciousness and economic, political, and legal institutions. In the interests of chipping away at popular apathy, academics should no doubt go on repeating the well-worn arguments against speciesism in classrooms, popular venues, and professional research. But in a world structured far more directly by the interests of a powerful few than by the values of the many, this consciousness-raising strategy properly plays at most a supporting role to the even more vital project of challenging and ultimately restructuring the institutions that sanction and carry out these injustices. In short, what nonhuman animals need from ethically sensitive intellectuals is not just rational argument, but effective legal and political action.One of the main institutional obstacles to progress in this area is undoubtedly the legal relegation of animals to property status—which is why Steve M. Wise's Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals is such an important book. Wise teaches animal rights law at Harvard, Vermont, and John Marshall Law Schools and has spent more than twenty years fighting for animals in the legal system; his book displays the bittersweet fruit of that experience. The tenor throughout is a mixture of conviction in the justice of his cause—which cannot but sustain a vision of its eventual success—together with the frustration and determined patience borne from decades of butting up against an utterly implacable wall. An eloquent foreword by Jane Goodall, together with Wise's own harrowing first chapter, describe the nightmarish existences imposed on our nearest nonhuman relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, for the sake of science, entertainment, and profit—nightmares enabled by a legal system that [End Page 148] treats all nonhumans as mere things. An engaging storyteller with a synthetic conception of the history of ideas, Wise unearths the origins of this conception of animals in the Great Chain of Being, demonstrates its defeat by Darwinian science, and builds piece by piece a case—drawing heavily on research into animal consciousness—for extending legal rights at least to chimpanzees and bonobos.The substantive theses of this case are, first, that the denial of... (shrink)

Metamorphoses of the Zoo marshals a unique compendium of critical interventions that envision novel modes of authentic encounter that cultivate humanity's biophilic tendencies without abusing or degrading other animals. These take the form of radical restructurings of what were formerly zoos or map out entirely new, post-zoo sites or experiences. The result is a volume that contributes to moral progress on the inter-species front and eco-psychological health for a humankind whose habitats are now mostly citified or urbanizing.

A widely accepted view in recent work in epistemology is that knowledge is a cognitive achievement that is properly creditable to those subjects who possess it. More precisely, according to the Credit View of Knowledge, if S knows that p, then S deserves credit for truly believing that p. In spite of its intuitive appeal and explanatory power, I have elsewhere argued that the Credit View is false. Various responses have been offered to my argument and I here consider each (...) of these objections in turn. I show that none succeeds in undermining my argument and, thus, my original conclusion stands—the Credit View of Knowledge is false. (shrink)

The lottery paradox involves a set of judgments that are individually easy, when we think intuitively, but ultimately hard to reconcile with each other, when we think reflectively. Empirical work on the natural representation of probability shows that a range of interestingly different intuitive and reflective processes are deployed when we think about possible outcomes in different contexts. Understanding the shifts in our natural ways of thinking can reduce the sense that the lottery paradox reveals something problematic about our concept (...) of knowledge. However, examining these shifts also raises interesting questions about how we ought to be thinking about possible outcomes in the first place. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back to a (...) difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body of empirical (...) work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Testimony is a vital and ubiquitous source of knowledge. Were we to refrain from accepting the testimony of others, our lives would be impoverished in startling and debilitating ways. Despite the vital role that testimony occupies in our epistemic lives, traditional epistemological theories have focused primarily on other sources, such as sense perception, memory, and reason, with relatively little attention devoted specifically to testimony. In recent years, however, the epistemic significance of testimony has been more fully appreciated. I shall here (...) focus on two questions that have received the most attention in recent work in the epistemology of testimony. First, is testimonial knowledge acquired only by being transmitted from speaker to hearer? Second, must a hearer have positive reasons to justifiedly accept a speaker's testimony? (shrink)

Schopenhauer repeatedly claims that suicide is both foolish and futile. But while many commentators have expressed sympathy for his charge of foolishness, most regard his charge of futility as indefensible even within his own system. In this paper, I offer a defense of Schopenhauer’s futility charge, based on metaphysical and psychological considerations. On the metaphysical front, Schopenhauer’s view implies that psychological connections extend beyond death. Drawing on Parfit’s discussion of personal identity, I argue that those connections have personal significance, such (...) that suicide does not allow one, as Hamlet hopes, simply “not to be.” On the psychological front, I argue that a distinction between agents’ intentions and underlying desires makes room for Schopenhauer to claim that paradigmatic suicidal agents ultimately desire the opposite of what suicide accomplishes. I conclude by showing how the resulting account of futility can buttress the charge of foolishness as well. My interpretation still leaves Schopenhauer vulnerable to certain objections, but shows that his account is significantly more defensible than previous commentators have realized. (shrink)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke insists that all knowledge consists in perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. However, he also insists that knowledge extends to outer reality, claiming that perception yields ‘sensitive knowledge’ of the existence of outer objects. Some scholars have argued that Locke did not really mean to restrict knowledge to perceptions of relations within the realm of ideas; others have argued that sensitive knowledge is not strictly speaking a form of knowledge for Locke. (...) This chapter argues that Locke’s conception of sensitive knowledge is in fact compatible with his official definition of knowledge, and discusses his treatment of the problem of skepticism, both in the Essay and in the correspondence with Stillingfleet. (shrink)

Considered the most original thinker in the Italian philosophical tradition, Giambattista Vico has been the object of much scholarly attention but little consensus. In this new interpretation, David L. Marshall examines the entirety of Vico's oeuvre and situates him in the political context of early modern Naples. He demonstrates Vico's significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions. Marshall presents Vico's work as an effort to resolve a contradiction. As a professor of rhetoric (...) at the University of Naples, Vico had a deep investment in the explanatory power of classical rhetorical thought, especially that of Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Yet as a historian of the failure of Naples as a self-determining political community, he had no illusions about the possibility or worth of democratic and republican systems of government in the post-classical world. As Marshall demonstrates, by jettisoning the assumption that rhetoric only illuminates direct, face-to-face interactions between orator and auditor, Vico reinvented rhetoric for a modern world in which the Greek polis and the Roman res publica are no longer paradigmatic for political thought. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

This essay raises new objections to the two dominant approaches to understanding the justification of group beliefs—_inflationary_ views, where groups are treated as entities that can float freely from the epistemic status of their members’ beliefs, and _deflationary_ views, where justified group belief is understood as nothing more than the aggregation of the justified beliefs of the group's members. If this essay is right, we need to look in an altogether different place for an adequate account of justified group belief. (...) From these objections emerges the skeleton of the positive view that this essay goes on to develop and defend, called the _group epistemic agent account_: groups are epistemic agents in their own right, with justified beliefs that respond to both evidence and normative requirements that arise only at the group level but that are nonetheless importantly constrained by the epistemic status of the beliefs of their individual members. (shrink)

Virtually everything we know depends in some way or other on the testimony of others—what we eat, how things work, where we go, even who we are. We do not, after all, perceive firsthand the preparation of the ingredients in many of our meals, or the construction of the devices we use to get around the world, or the layout of our planet, or our own births and familial histories. These are all things we are told. Indeed, subtracting from our (...) lives the information that we possess via testimony leaves them barely recognizable. Scientific discoveries, battles won and lost, geographical developments, customs and traditions of distant lands—all of these facts would be completely lost to us. It is, therefore, no surprise that the importance of testimony, both epistemological and practical, is nearly universally accepted. Less consensus, however, is found when questions about the nature and extent of our dependence on the word of others arise. Is our justified reliance on testimony fundamentally basic, for instance, or is it ultimately reducible to perception, memory, and reason? Is trust, or some related interpersonal feature of our social interaction with one another, essential to the acquisition of beliefs that are testimonially justified? Is testimonial knowledge necessarily acquired through transmission from speaker to hearer? Can testimony generate epistemic features in its own right? These are the questions that will be taken up in this paper and, as will become clear, their answers have far-reaching consequences for how we understand our place in the social world. (shrink)

Against recent work by Haslanger and Leslie, I argue that we do not yet have good reason to think that we should single out generics about social groups out as peculiarly destructive, or that we should strive to eradicate them from our usage. Indeed, I suggest they continue to serve a very valuable purpose and we should not rush to condemn them.

You and I have been colleagues for ten years, during which we have tirelessly discussed the reasons both for and against the existence of God. There is no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on this question that one of us is aware of that the other is not—we are, then, evidential equals relative to the topic of God’s existence. There is also no cognitive virtue or capacity, or cognitive vice or incapacity, that one of us possesses that the (...) other does not—we are, then, also cognitive equals relative to the question at issue. Given this evidential and cognitive equality, combined with the fact that we have fully disclosed to one another all of our reasons and arguments relative to this topic, we are epistemic peers with respect to the question whether God exists. Yet despite the symmetry of our epistemic positions, we deeply disagree about the answer to this question. What response does rationality require in such a case, where epistemic peers disagree over a question despite there being no apparent asymmetries between them? (shrink)

Questions regarding the nature of moral judgment loom large in moral philosophy. Perhaps the most basic of these questions asks how, exactly, moral judgments and moral rules are to be defined; what features distinguish them from other sorts of rules and judgments? A related question concerns the extent to which emotion and reason guide moral judgment. Are moral judgments made mainly on the basis of reason, or are they primarily the products of emotion? As an example of the former view, (...) Kant held all moral requirements to be derived from a principle of rationality (the categorical imperative). As an example of the latter, Hume famously claimed that reason is “the slave of the passions” and that moral judgments stem from the moral emotions. When addressing these issues, philosophers have largely relied on the traditional tools of philosophical analysis, along with introspection, anecdotal evidence and armchair speculation. In recent years, however, a rich body experimental psychology has emerged which, in the view of a growing number of philosophers, casts important new light on these venerable questions. Our aim, in this chapter, is to illustrate how empirical methods can help move traditional philosophical debates forward in interesting and important ways. Since space does not permit an exhaustive survey of the relevant experimental work, we will focus on a few of the most compelling examples. (shrink)

This paper hypothesises that museums are fundamentally haunted, and hauntological, institutions, and argues that understanding the spectre is necessary to understanding the true position and potential of the museum as a cultural form. In doing so, the paper will address what precisely spectres are, and what hauntology is, before discussing how museums are haunted and hauntological through their relation to memory, anxiety, and the unheimliche. Ultimately, the key argument and conclusion of this paper is that understanding and accepting the museum’s (...) inherently haunted status can enable us to change how museums behave in the twenty-first century, and how we understand their role in public life. (shrink)

Humans have distinctive powers of reflection: no other animal seems to have anything like our capacity for self-examination. Many philosophers hold that this capacity has a uniquely important guiding role in our cognition; others, notably Hilary Kornblith, draw attention to its weaknesses. Kornblith chiefly aims to dispel the sense that there is anything ‘magical’ about second-order mental states, situating them in the same causal net as ordinary first-order mental states. But elsewhere he goes further, suggesting that there is something deeply (...) misleading about reflection’s first-person view of cognition. This chapter takes a closer look at the conditions under which reflection is misleading. Even if humans are the only reflective animals, we are no longer the only creatures that can be questioned about their claims. Chatbots can also be asked to explain themselves, and by studying the conditions under which they produce clarification as opposed to confabulation, we can develop a non-skeptical account of the epistemic value of reflection. I argue that this capacity naturally supports the distribution of complex problem solving among multiple agents. (shrink)

This paper provides a general introduction to the use of causal models in the metaphysics of causation, specifically structural equation models and directed acyclic graphs. It reviews the formal framework, lays out a method of interpretation capable of representing different underlying metaphysical relations, and describes the use of these models in analyzing causation.

This paper addresses the question of what constitutes an apt interpreted model for the purpose of analyzing causation. I first collect universally adopted aptness principles into a basic account, flagging open questions and choice points along the way. I then explore various additional aptness principles that have been proposed in the literature but have not been widely adopted, the motivations behind their proposals, and the concerns with each that stand in the way of universal adoption. I conclude that the remaining (...) work of articulating aptness for a SEM analysis of causation is tied up with issue to do with modality, ontology, and mereology. Continuing this work is therefore likely to shed light on the relationship between these areas and causation more generally. (shrink)

The key concept in Kant’s aesthetics is “aesthetic reflective judgment,” a critique of which is found in Part 1 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). It is a critique inasmuch as Kant unravels previous assumptions regarding aesthetic perception. For Kant, the comparative edge of a “judgment” implicates communicability, which in turn gives it a public face; yet “reflection” points to autonomy, and the “aesthetic” shifts the emphasis away from objective properties to the subjective response evoked by the (...) object. Contrary to the view he had inherited, Kant did not treat aesthetic judgments as confused perceptions or inferior cognitions, but rather put them in a category of their own. For Kant, aesthetic reflective judgments implicated not only the processes involved in understanding the empirical world but also the processes involved in ascribing ideas or meaning to experience (which go beyond what is given in perception/cognition). This “going beyond cognition” may have been referred to by Kant as non-cognitive, but it is conditioned on a way of cognizing the object. Kant describes the features of such judgments in the Analytic of the Beautiful before addressing their possibility in subtle ways throughout the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments. Kant’s critique gives rise to three apparent dichotomies: immediate intuition and prior learning; autonomy and communicability; and non-cognitive response and aesthetic ideas. An interpretation of Kant’s theory can be deemed correct to the degree that it succeeds in showing that the contradictions are only apparent. I will argue that the resulting positive account of Kant’s aesthetic theory offers an understanding of aesthetic reflective judgment that is quite different from the standard formalism that the critics of formalism usually target and by which they misrepresent Kant’s aesthetic theory. When I refer to Kant’s formalism, then, I mean something quite different by this than what is meant by “standard formalism.” The latter is the representation given Kant’s formalism by its contemporary critics and is the typical account of formalism found in the art theory and philosophy of art literature, as will be demonstrated. (shrink)

Psychiatric ethics as professional and biomedical ethics -- The distinctiveness of the psychiatric setting -- Psychiatric ethics as virtue ethics -- Elements of a gender-sensitive ethics for psychiatry -- Some virtues for psychiatrists -- Character and social role -- Case studies in psychiatric virtues.

Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this (...) thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us. (shrink)

Abstract:With democracy in mind, promoting students’ cognitive, personal, and social development can inform and shape the mathematics curriculum and classroom practice with the goal of their becoming more capable, self-reflective, and socially aware human beings. Toward that realization, their mathematics experience could include: heuristics, as it provides a natural language for problem solving; habits of mind, so students can think and act with a more developed “reflective intelligence”; and multiple-centers investigations, where collaborations based on shared mathematical interest can be pursued. (...) In this way, their education would be “a fostering, a nurturing, a cultivating process” that supports the development of democratic society. (shrink)