This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy: hasty generalization (HG). HG is committed when some aspect of the definition of the proper generalization is violated. In other words, the “hasty” aspect of this fallacy is triggered either when there is a lack of knowledge of the selected sample or when the selected sample is not representative of the whole group, or when both and are true. We see HG committed just about every day in politics (...) and the media. In politics, HGs are used to emphasize the extremes of a particular viewpoint. Concurrently, HG is used quite often by advertisers to promote a particular product. To avoid committing this fallacy, the arguer should take into consideration the amount of justifiable knowledge one might have on a particular subject and whether the selected sample being used in the case is justifiably representative of the group in question. (shrink)

Steinman indicates that his ability to understand beauty is limited by his imagination. Beauty, as it has been traditionally defined, is an ultimate value, an ideal on same level as truth and goodness. Many of the ancient Greeks believed that symmetry represented order, and order was beautiful because it revealed a type of cosmic justice and truth that no person could deny. So, when Steinman's application of beauty comes into play, he is definitely emphasizing the order and justice that beauty (...) provides. The player of BioShock is introduced to a world quite familiar to ours, not necessarily in sense of Rapture, underwater cities, or vintage décor, but rather in the form of worldview. The vending machines are not coincidentally called Circus of Values. As players, one have value in surviving (intrinsic) so one will do whatever one can to survive, including buying or hacking vending machines with supplies (extrinsic value). (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the slippery slope. According to Patrick Hurley in A Concise Introduction to Logic, “the fallacy of slippery slope is a variety of the false cause fallacy. It occurs when the conclusion of an argument rests on an alleged chain reaction and there is not sufficient reason to think that the chain reaction will actually take place”. The key term in the chapter is “chain reaction”. If all of (...) the events in the chain reaction can be justified, then the slippery slope is not committed. But the nuances and intricate improbable connections between each event still make it difficult to support the ultimate conclusion, which is to get rid of cable. The chapter discusses two simple techniques in order to avoid committing the slippery slope fallacy. (shrink)

Preface In these days, an anthology on the topic of possible worlds hardly needs justification. No issue has given rise to as much literature in the past ...

Much has been published about the ethical issues encountered by clinicians in genetics/genomics, but those experienced by clinical laboratory scientists are less well described. Clinical laboratory scientists now frequently face navigating ethical problems in their work, but how they should be best supported to do this is underexplored. This lack of attention is also reflected in the ethics tools available to clinical laboratory scientists such as guidance and deliberative ethics forums, developed primarily to manage issues arising within the clinic.We explore (...) what ethical issues are being experienced by clinical scientists, how they think such issues could be best analysed and managed, and whether their practice might be enhanced by more situated approaches to ethics deliberation and practice such as ethical preparedness. From thematic analysis of cases presented by clinical scientists at a specially convened meeting of the UK Genethics Forum, we derived three main ethical themes: (1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising.We argue that although standardisation is important for promoting shared understandings of good (including ethical) practice, supplementary approaches to enhance and sustain ethical preparedness will be important to help clinical scientists and others in the recently expanded genetic/genomic medicine environment foster quality ethical thinking. (shrink)

Bringing together researchers from across the cognitive sciences, the book is valuable for philosophers of mind, developmental and comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists.

The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics offers the most authoritative and compelling guide to this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. Twenty-four of the world's most distinguished specialists provide brand-new essays about 'what there is': what kinds of things there are, and what relations hold among entities falling under various categories. They give the latest word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness. The Handbook's unrivaled breadth and depth make it the definitive reference work (...) for students and academics across the philosophical spectrum. (shrink)

This is an editorial introduction to a special issue of Acta Analytica on epistemic luck.

In this paper, we introduce the Societal Readiness Thinking Tool to aid researchers and innovators in developing research projects with greater responsiveness to societal values, needs, and expectations. The need for societally-focused approaches to research and innovation—complementary to Technology Readiness frameworks—is presented. Insights from responsible research and innovation concepts and practice, organized across critical stages of project-life cycles are discussed with reference to the development of the SR Thinking Tool. The tool is designed to complement not only shortfalls in TR (...) approaches, but also improve upon other efforts to integrate RRI, sustainability, and design thinking in research and innovation cycles. Operationalization and early-stage user tests of the Tool are reported, along with discussion of potential future iterations and applications. (shrink)

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Higher-Order Logic (HOL) is a proof development system intended for applications to both hardware and software. It is principally used in two ways: for directly proving theorems, and as theorem-proving support for application-specific verification systems. HOL is currently being applied to a wide variety of problems, including the specification and verification of critical systems. Introduction to HOL provides a coherent and self-contained description of HOL containing both a tutorial introduction and most of the material that is needed for day-to-day work (...) with the system. After a quick overview that gives a "hands-on feel" for the way HOL is used, there follows a detailed description of the ML language. The logic that HOL supports and how this logic is embedded in ML, are then described in detail. This is followed by an explanation of the theorem-proving infrastructure provided by HOL. Finally two appendices contain a subset of the reference manual, and an overview of the HOL library, including an example of an actual library documentation. (shrink)

Over the last decade a handful of cognitive models of religious belief have begun to coalesce in the literature. Attempts to offer “scientific explanations of religious belief ” are nothing new, stretching back at least as far as David Hume, and perhaps as far back as Cicero. What is also not new is a belief that scientific explanations of religious belief serve in some way to undermine the justification for those beliefs.

What is the value of having medical students engage in creative production as part of their learning? Creating something new requires medical students to take risks and even to fail--something they tend to be neither accustomed to nor comfortable with doing. “Making stuff” can help students prepare for such failures in a controlled environment that doesn’t threaten their professional identities. Furthermore, doing so can facilitate students becoming resilient and creative problem-solvers who strive to find new ways to address vexing questions. (...) Though creating something new can be fun, this is not the main outcome of interest. Rather, the principle reason we recommend devoting precious curricular time to creative endeavors is because it helps medical students become better doctors. (shrink)

Rickert, value philosophy, and the primacy of practical reason -- Husserl, phenomenology, and lived-experience -- Heideggerian reflections on Paul Natorp -- Dilthey on life, lived-experience, and worldview philosophy -- Toward a fundamental ontology -- Philosophy as praxix.

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

We highlight connections between accessible categories and abstract elementary classes , and provide a dictionary for translating properties and results between the two contexts. We also illustrate a few applications of purely category-theoretic methods to the study of AECs, with model-theoretically novel results. In particular, the category-theoretic approach yields two surprising consequences: a structure theorem for categorical AECs, and a partial stability spectrum for weakly tame AECs.

This article responds to several liberal bioethicists’ criticisms of Jürgen Habermas’s The Future of Human Nature by placing it in the context of his intellectual influences and career-spanning theorization of communicative rationality. In particular, I argue that Habermas’s critics have not grasped his interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality. Far from merely ventriloquizing his friend and teacher, Habermas distinguishes his construal of that concept from Arendt’s, which he presents as a naturalistic foil to his concerns about the potential ethical (...) impact of preimplantation genetic interventions. Whereas, according to Habermas, Arendt reasons directly from the biological fact of birth to the capacity for political action, he himself construes natality as implying a “divide between nature and culture” at the level of the “lifeworld.” Identifying Habermas’s interpretation of Arendt in this way explains why Habermas claims not to be a biological determinist and why the bioethicists’ criticism, according to which he is, fails. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the pragma-dialectical conception of a fallacy, according to which a fallacy is an argumentative speech act which violates one or more of the rules of 'rational discussion'. That conception is found to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for committing a fallacy. It is also found wanting in several other respects.

Droysen sought to exploit, for practical political effect, a vision of history as an integral, progressive, and fathomable continuum, and hence in his writings subordinated historical individuality to history's discernible teleology. Droysen's methodological opponent, Rankean historicism, was to the right of his centrist politics. Droysen insisted against Ranke that history is not something "out there" that can be dispassionately and scientifically analyzed but is man's ontological ground. He was basically a moderate Young Hegelian: historians can be scholars and yet ally (...) with and further the rational dynamism of history's normative Ideas because those Ideas are their own as progressive human beings. This battle between Ranke and Droysen illustrates that the evolution of German historical hermeneutics at mid-nineteenth century was generated both by a deep conflict within the German historical tradition and by the confrontation of that tradition with positivism. (shrink)

The influential public health ethics framework proposed by Childress et al. includes five “justificatory conditions,” two of which are “necessity” and “least infringement.” While the framework points to important moral values, we argue it is redundant for it to list both necessity and least infringement because they are logically equivalent. However, it is ambiguous whether Childress et al. would endorse this view, or hold the two conditions distinct. This ambiguity has resulted in confusion in public health ethics discussions citing the (...) Childress et al. framework, as demonstrated by debate between Resnik and Wilson and Dawson. We analyse this debate to resolve these ambiguities. Finally, we argue that the necessity/least infringement principle of the Childress et al. framework applies only in cases in which only one intervention is to be implemented to achieve one specific goal. In other cases, it is not essential to require that only the least infringing intervention be implemented. (shrink)

Helping scientists and engineers challenge received assumptions about how science, engineering, and society relate is a critical cornerstone for macroethics education. Scientific and engineering research are frequently framed as first steps of a value-free linear model that inexorably leads to societal benefit. Social studies of science and assessments of scientific and engineering research speak to the need for a more critical approach to the noble intentions underlying these assumptions. “Science Outside the Lab” is a program designed to help early-career scientists (...) and engineers understand the complexities of science and engineering policy. Assessment of the program entailed a pre-, post-, and 1 year follow up survey to gauge student perspectives on relationships between science and society, as well as a pre–post concept map exercise to elicit student conceptualizations of science policy. Students leave Science Outside the Lab with greater humility about the role of scientific expertise in science and engineering policy; greater skepticism toward linear notions of scientific advances benefiting society; a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the actors involved in shaping science policy; and a continued appreciation of the contributions of science and engineering to society. The study presents an efficacious program that helps scientists and engineers make inroads into macroethical debates, reframe the ways in which they think about values of science and engineering in society, and more thoughtfully engage with critical mediators of science and society relationships: policy makers and policy processes. (shrink)

In recent years a number of sophisticated versions of soteriological universalism have appeared in the literature. In this essay I offer some critical retlections them. In particular, I argue that universalism offers no explanation for the fact that God puts human creatures through the earthly life, and that if there is no such reason then the earthly life and the evil it contains are both gratuitous. Finally, I argue that universalists are obliged to deny that human beings have a centrally (...) important feature of human freedom. (shrink)

This paper is an insighful critique of the shareholder and stakeholder models of organizational purpose. The authors emphasize that both these models fail to serve as an adequate basis for explaining the purpose of an organization and are unable to capture a fuller meaning of living in an organizational community. The paper thus endeavours to introduce into the mainstream of discussion a third model, based on the idea of the common good which draws inspiration from the communitarian Catholic tradition. The (...) first part of this paper traces the idea of common good as it relates to organizations. The second part engages the common good tradition with the shareholder and stake holder models. The paper goes on to describe common good within the organization through three propositions: fundamentality, excellence and integration. The authors reiterate, however, that the idea of the common good does not provide a micro-blueprint for managers, but rather an orientation or moral compass that directs organizational activity towards human development. (shrink)

We introduce a family of rank functions and related notions of total transcendence for Galois types in abstract elementary classes. We focus, in particular, on abstract elementary classes satisfying the condition known as tameness, where the connections between stability and total transcendence are most evident. As a byproduct, we obtain a partial upward stability transfer result for tame abstract elementary classes stable in a cardinal $\lambda$ satisfying $\lambda^{\aleph_{0}}\gt \lambda$, a substantial generalization of a result of Baldwin, Kueker, and VanDieren.

This paper argues that patients' duties are derivable from the idea which typically grounds the idea of patients' rights: patient autonomy. The autonomous patient, joined in partnership with the health care professional, has self-regarding obligations and obligations to others, including health care professionals. Patients' duties include, but are not limited to: a duty to be honest about why the patient seeks care; a duty to collect information on available treatments and likely side-effects; a duty for a patient who has an (...) infectious condition to act on that information which can best prevent further transmission. Keywords: autonomy, duty, paternalism, patient, rights, self-care CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

This book is about an important issue which has arisen within two of the branches of physical science - namely thermodynamics and statistical mechanics - where the notion of entropy plays an essential role. A number of scientists and information theorists have maintained that entropy is a subjective concept and is a measure of human ignorance. Such a view, if it is valid, would create some profound philosophical problems and would tend to undermine the objectivity of the scientific enterprise. Whilst (...) the present volume is not a treatise on thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, all relevant steps in the building up of these disciplines are carefully scrutinised and it is concluded that the charge of subjectivity cannot be upheld. The widely adopted view that entropy is a measure of disorder, or of lack of information, is shown to be ambiguous, although it may be of use in certain contexts. (shrink)

This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappropriations of an iconic 1853 story from Francis Galton's African travels. In response to a (...) fundamental lack of physical evidence concerning prehistoric men, savage numbers offered a readily available body of data that helped scholars envisage great extremes of civilizational lowliness in a way that was at once analysable and comparable, and anecdotes like Galton's made those data vivid and compelling. Moreover, they provided a simple and direct means of conceiving of the progressive scale of civilizational development, uniting societies and races past and present, at the heart of Victorian scientific racism. (shrink)

The misleading and propagandistic tendencies in American news reporting have been a part of public discussion from its earliest days as a republic (Innis, 2007;Sheppard, 2007). “Fake news” is hardly new (McKernon, 1925), and the term has been applied to a variety of distinct phenomenon ranging from satire to news, which one may find disagreeable (Jankowski, 2018;Tandoc et al., 2018). However, this problem has become increasingly acute in recent years with the Macquarie Dictionary declaring “fake news” the word of the (...) year in 2016 (Lavoipierre, 2017). The international recognition of fake news as a problem (Pomerantsev and Weiss, 2014;Applebaum and Lucas, 2016) has led to a number of initiatives to mitigate perceived causes, with varying levels of success (Flanagin and Metzger, 2014;Horne and Adali, 2017;Sample et al., 2018). The inability to create a holistic solution continues to stymie researchers and vested parties. A significant contributor to the problem is the interdisciplinary nature of digital deception. While technology enables the rapid and wide dissemination of digitally deceptive data, the design and consumption of data rely on a mixture of psychology, sociology, political science, economics, linguistics, marketing, and fine arts. The authors for this effort discuss deception’s history, both old and new, from an interdisciplinary viewpoint and then proceed to discuss how various disciplines contribute to aiding in the detection and countering of fake news narratives. A discussion of various fake news types (printed, staged events, altered photographs, and deep fakes) ensues with the various technologies being used to identify these; the shortcomings of those technologies and finally the insights offered by the other disciplines can be incorporated to improve outcomes. A three-point evaluation model that focuses on contextual data evaluation, pattern spread, and archival analysis of both the author and publication archives is introduced. While the model put forth cannot determine fact from fiction, the ability to measure distance from fact across various domains provides a starting point for evaluating the veracity of a new story. (shrink)

This article answers questions about the consistency, coherence, and motivation of Hobbes's account of the right to punish. First, it develops a novel account of authorization that explains how Hobbes could have consistently held both that the subjects do not give the sovereign the right to punish and also that they authorize the sovereign to punish. Second, it shows that, despite appearances, the natural and artificial elements of Hobbes's account form a coherent whole. Finally, it explains why Hobbes thought it (...) was important to establish the sovereign's right to punish apart from the sovereign's power to punish. (shrink)

This paper presents a theorisation of collaborative activity that was developed in the research field known as “collaborative learning”, in order to understand the processes of co-elaboration of meaning and knowledge. Collaboration, as distinguished from cooperation, coordination and collective activity, is defined as a continued and conjoined effort towards elaborating a “joint problem space” of shared representations of the problem to be solved. An approach to analysing the processes of co-construction of a joint problem space is outlined, in terms of (...) inter-discursive operations, together with approaches to defining different forms of cooperative activity. In conclusion, the specificity of this approach to defining collaboration is discussed in relation to other fields of research. (shrink)

This paper presents a theorisation of collaborative activity that was developed in the research field known as “collaborative learning”, in order to understand the processes of co-elaboration of meaning and knowledge. Collaboration, as distinguished from cooperation, coordination and collective activity, is defined as a continued and conjoined effort towards elaborating a “joint problem space” of shared representations of the problem to be solved. An approach to analysing the processes of co-construction of a joint problem space is outlined, in terms of (...) inter-discursive operations, together with approaches to defining different forms of cooperative activity. In conclusion, the specificity of this approach to defining collaboration is discussed in relation to other fields of research. (shrink)