Mathematicians routinely pass judgements on mathematical proofs. A proof might be elegant, cumbersome, beautiful, or awkward. Perhaps the highest praise is that a proof is right, that is, that the proof fits the theorem in an optimal way. It is also common to judge that one proof fits better than another, or that a proof does not fit a theorem at all. This paper attempts to clarify the notion of mathematical fit. We suggest six criteria that distinguish proofs as being (...) more or less fitting, and provide examples from several different mathematical fields. (shrink)

As evaluation of practitioners’ competence is largely based on self-report, accuracy in practitioners’ self-assessment is essential for ensuring high quality treatment-delivery. The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between independent observers’ ratings and practitioners’ self-reported treatment integrity ratings of Motivational interviewing. Practitioners were randomized to two types of supervision [i.e., regular institutional group supervision, or individual telephone supervision based on the MI Treatment Integrity code]. The mean age was 43.2 years, and 62.7 percent were females. All sessions (...) were recorded and evaluated with the MITI, and the MI skills were self-assessed with a questionnaire over a period of 12 months. The associations between self-reported and objectively assessed MI skills were overall weak, but increased slightly from baseline to the 12-months assessment. However, the self-ratings from the group that received monthly objective feedback were not more accurate than those participating in regular group supervision. These results expand findings from previous studies and have important implications for assessment of practitioners’ treatment fidelity: Practitioners may learn to improve the accuracy of self-assessment of competence, but to ensure that patients receive intended care, adherence and competence should be assessed objectively. (shrink)

The “right to repair” movement highlights opportunities to reduce health care costs and promote public health resilience through increased competition in the way in which medical devices are serviced and updated over their lifespan. We review legislative and legal facets of third-party repair of medical devices, and conclude with specific recommendations to help this market function more efficiently to the benefit of patients and health care systems.

Marking the 20th anniversary of Belgium’s Kunstenfestivaldesarts—a major international arts festival—this ambitious book examines a wide range of critical perspectives on two decades of performing arts. The authors look closely at performing arts pieces from around the world to see what critiques and insights they reveal about society. Among the topics that these works address are the dialogue between history and memory, the development of a sense of community, the interplay between fiction and reality, and the fine line between a (...) spectator and a witness. In addition to featuring images of the performances, the book includes texts by the artists themselves, sketches, photos, and writings by prominent figures in the fields of philosophy and sociology. _The Time We Share_ attempts to build a global overview of the relationship between performing arts and society and determine how different performances helped shape international thought surrounding specific issues and ideas. (shrink)

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all (...) sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand. (shrink)

In a recent extended essay, philosopher Daniel Hausman goes a long way towards dismissing severity as a morally relevant attribute in the context of priority setting in healthcare. In this response, we argue that although Hausman certainly points to real problems with how severity is often interpreted and operationalised within the priority setting context, the conclusion that severity does not contain plausible ethical content is too hasty. Rather than abandonment, our proposal is to take severity seriously by carefully mapping (...) the possibly multiple underlying accounts to well-established ethical theories, in a way that is both morally defensible and aligned with the term’s colloquial uses. (shrink)

This article argues that large language models (LLMs) should be interpreted as a form of gods. In a theological sense, a god is an immortal being that exists beyond time and space. This is clearly nothing like LLMs. In an anthropological sense, however, a god is rather defined as the personified authority of a group through time—a conceptual tool that molds a collective of ancestors into a unified agent or voice. This is exactly what LLMs are. They are products of (...) vast volumes of data, literally traces of past human (speech) acts, synthesized into a single agency that is (falsely) experienced by users as extra-human. This reconceptualization, I argue, opens up new avenues of critique of LLMs by allowing the mobilization of theoretical resources from centuries of religious critique. For illustration, I draw on the Marxian religious philosophy of Martin Hägglund. From this perspective, the danger of LLMs emerge not only as bias or unpredictability, but as a temptation to abdicate our spiritual and ultimately democratic freedom in favor of what I call a tyranny of the past. (shrink)

The potential to collect brain data more directly, with higher resolution, and in greater amounts has heightened worries about mental and brain privacy. In order to manage the risks to individuals posed by these privacy challenges, some have suggested codifying new privacy rights, including a right to “mental privacy.” In this paper, we consider these arguments and conclude that while neurotechnologies do raise significant privacy concerns, such concerns are—at least for now—no different from those raised by other well-understood data collection (...) technologies, such as gene sequencing tools and online surveillance. To better understand the privacy stakes of brain data, we suggest the use of a conceptual framework from information ethics, Helen Nissenbaum’s “contextual integrity” theory. To illustrate the importance of context, we examine neurotechnologies and the information flows they produce in three familiar contexts—healthcare and medical research, criminal justice, and consumer marketing. We argue that by emphasizing what is distinct about brain privacy issues, rather than what they share with other data privacy concerns, risks weakening broader efforts to enact more robust privacy law and policy. (shrink)

I ask you to X. You now have a reason to X. My request gave you a reason. How? One unpopular theory is the epistemic account, according to which requests do not create any new reasons but instead simply reveal information. For instance, my request that you X reveals that I desire that you X, and my desire gives you a reason to X. Peter Schaber has recently attacked both the epistemic account and other theories of the reason-giving force of (...) requests. Schaber defends a new theory of the reason-giving force of requests according to which request give reasons because it is valuable for requesters and requestees that requests have this power. In this paper I argue that Schaber's attack on the epistemic account fails, and that his own theory ought to be rejected because it faces compelling objections. (shrink)

“X-Firsters” hold that there is some normative feature that is fundamental to all others (and, often, that there’s some normative feature that is the “mark of the normative”: all other normative properties have it, and are normative in virtue of having it). This view is taken as a starting point in the debate about which X is “on first.” Little has been said about whether or why we should be X-Firsters, or what we should think about normativity if we aren’t (...) X-Firsters. Hence the chapter’s two main goals. First, to provide a simple argument that one shouldn’t be an X-Firster about the normative domain, which starts with the observation that analogous views have dubious merits in analogous domains. Second, to offer an alternative view—taking normativity to be a determinable explained in terms of its determinates—that offers an interesting way to think about the structure and unity of normativity. (shrink)

Plato's dialogues frequently criticize traditional Greek myth, yet Plato also integrates myth with his writing. Daniel S. Werner confronts this paradox through an in-depth analysis of the Phaedrus, Plato's most mythical dialogue. Werner argues that the myths of the Phaedrus serve several complex functions: they bring nonphilosophers into the philosophical life; they offer a starting point for philosophical inquiry; they unify the dialogue as a literary and dramatic whole; they draw attention to the limits of language and the limits (...) of knowledge; and they allow Plato to co-opt cultural authority as a way of defining and legitimating the practice of philosophy. Platonic myth, as a species of traditional tale, is thus both distinct from philosophical dialectic and similar to it. Ultimately, the most powerful effect of Platonic myth is the way in which it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in a process of self-examination. (shrink)

Supporters of open borders sometimes argue that the state has no pro tanto right to restrict immigration, because such a right would also entail a right to exclude existing citizens for whatever reasons justify excluding immigrants. These arguments can be defeated by suggesting that people have a right to stay put. I present a new form of the exclusion argument against closed borders which escapes this “right to stay put” reply. I do this by describing a kind of exclusion that (...) has not been discussed in depth, which I call “territorial exclusion.” Territorial exclusion is the process according to which the group that wishes to exclude current citizens secedes from the territory in which those citizens reside. I argue that the wrongness of territorial exclusion explains why there is no pro tanto right for a state to exclude immigrants, because otherwise there would be a pro tanto right for the state to kick people out by seceding from the territory they inhabit. Because kicking people out like this is typically wrong, borders cannot be closed. (shrink)

Recent technological innovation has made video doctoring increasingly accessible. This has given rise to Deepfake Pornography, an emerging phenomenon in which Deep Learning algorithms are used to superimpose a person’s face onto a pornographic video. Although to most people, Deepfake Pornography is intuitively unethical, it seems difficult to justify this intuition without simultaneously condemning other actions that we do not ordinarily find morally objectionable, such as sexual fantasies. In the present article, I refer to this contradiction as the pervert’s dilemma. (...) I propose that the method of Levels of Abstraction, a philosophical mode of enquiry inspired by Formal Methods in computer science, can be employed to formulate at least one possible solution to the dilemma. From this perspective, the permissibility of some actions appears to depend on the degree to which they are abstracted from their natural context. I conclude that the dilemma can only be solved when considered at low levels of abstractions, when Deepfakes are situated in the macro-context of gender inequality. (shrink)

Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. This is a view (...) of motion—as change in relations of parthood—that Alison Peterman attributes to Digby’s contemporary and acquaintance, Margaret Cavendish. Having shown that Digby’s presentation of the view predates Cavendish’s by more than a decade, I make a case that Digby’s work influenced Cavendish’s on this topic. In developing and defending my reading, I consider to what extent the Digbean account of motion and the arguments for it accord with the ideals of the mechanical philosophy emerging in the early modern period. (shrink)

Online technologies enable vast amounts of data to outlive their producers online, thereby giving rise to a new, digital form of afterlife presence. Although researchers have begun investigating the nature of such presence, academic literature has until now failed to acknowledge the role of commercial interests in shaping it. The goal of this paper is to analyse what those interests are and what ethical consequences they may have. This goal is pursued in three steps. First, we introduce the concept of (...) the Digital Afterlife Industry, and define it as an object of study. Second, we identify the politico-economic interests of the DAI. For this purpose, we develop an analytical approach based on an informational interpretation of Marxian economics. Third, we explain the practical manifestations of the interests using four real life cases. The findings expose the incentives of the DAI to alter what is referred to as the “informational bodies” of the dead, which in turn is to be seen as a violation of the principle of human dignity. To prevent such consequences, we argue that the ethical conventions that guide trade with remains of organic bodies may serve as a good model for future regulation of DAI. (shrink)

Abstract This paper offers an appraisal of Phillip Pettit's approach to the problem how a merely finite set of examples can serve to represent a determinate rule, given that indefinitely many rules can be extrapolated from any such set. I argue that Pettit's so-called ethnocentric theory of rule-following fails to deliver the solution to this problem he sets out to provide. More constructively, I consider what further provisions are needed in order to advance Pettit's general approach to the problem. I (...) conclude that what is needed is an account that, whilst it affirms the view that agents' responses are constitutively involved in the exemplification of rules, does not allow such responses the pride of place they have in Pettit's theory. (shrink)

This book is a study of the role of intellect in human action as described by Thomas Aquinas. One of its primary aims is to compare the interpretation of Aristotle by Aquinas with the lines of interpretation offered in contemporary Aristotelian scholarship. The book seeks to clarify the problems involved in the appropriation of Aristotle's theory by a Christian theologian, including such topics as the practical syllogism and the problems of akrasia. Westberg argues that Aquinas was much closer to Aristotle (...) than is often recognized, and he puts forward important new interpretations of the relation of intellect and will in the stages of intention, deliberation, decision, and execution. In the concluding section of the book, he shows how this new interpretation yields fruitful insights on a range of theological topics, including sin, law, love, and the moral virtues. (shrink)

The web is increasingly inhabited by the remains of its departed users, a phenomenon that has given rise to a burgeoning digital afterlife industry. This industry requires a framework for dealing with its ethical implications. We argue that the regulatory conventions guiding archaeological exhibitions could provide the basis for such a framework.

The problem known as Buridan’s Ass says that a hungry donkey equipoised between two identical bales of hay will starve to death. Indecision kills the ass. Some philosophers worry about human analogs. Computer scientists since the 1960s have known about the computer versions of such cases. From what Leslie Lamport calls ‘Buridan’s Principle’—a discrete decision based on a continuous range of input-values cannot be made in a bounded time—it follows that the possibilities for human analogs of Buridan’s Ass are far (...) more wide-ranging and securely provable than has been acknowledged in philosophy. We are never necessarily decisive. This is mathematically provable. I explore four consequences: first, increased interest of the literature’s solutions to Buridan’s Ass; second, a new asymmetry between responsibility for omissions and responsibility for actions; third, clarification of the standard account of akrasia; and, fourth, clarification of the role of credences in normative decision-theory. (shrink)

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an (...) interpretation of Hegel’s method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)

Dil felsefesi ilk bakışta XX. yüzyılda ortaya çıkmış oldukça yeni bir felsefe dalıymış gibi görünmekle birlikte, henüz felsefe dalları arasında bugünkü anlamda bir bölünmenin söz konusu olmadığı Platon ile Aristoteles'e dek uzanan "geleneksel felsefe"nin hemen bütün filozofları, dili felsefi araştırmanın es geçilemez, değme bir konusu olarak görmüşlerdir. Nitekim dil üstüne düşünüşün tarihi başta mantık tarihi olmak üzere bir bütün olarak felsefe tarihinden ayrılamaz.

In a previous article, we projected the future accumulation of profiles belonging to deceased users on Facebook. We concluded that a minimum of 1.4 billion users will pass away before 2100 if Facebook ceases to attract new users as of 2018. If the network continues expanding at current rates, on the other hand, this number will exceed 4.9 billion. Although these findings provided an important first step, one network alone remains insufficient to establish a quantitative foundation for further macro-level analysis (...) of the phenomenon of online death. Facebook is but one social media platform among many, and hardly the most representative in terms of their policy on deceased users. In this study, we use the same methodology to develop a complementary analysis of projected mortality on Instagram. Our models indicate that somewhere between 767 million and 4.2 billion Instagram users will die between 2019 and 2100, depending on the network’s future growth rate. Although the number of deceased Instagram profiles will likely be fewer than those on Facebook, we argue that they are nonetheless part of a shared digital cultural heritage, and should hence be curated with careful consideration. (shrink)

Matematiğe, mantığa ve bilimlere gereğinde başvuran çözümleyici felsefenin en temel amacı herhangi bir dilsel anlam bulanıklığından arınmış şekilde felsefe yapmak ve felsefede varolan anlam bulanıklıklarını ortadan kaldırmaktır.

Deneycilerin deneyimden anladığı genellikle duyu organları aracılığıyla gerçekleştirilen deneyimdir. Gizemci deneyim, estetik deneyim vb. deneycinin başvurmayı tercih etmeyeceği bilgi edinme yollarıdır. Deneyci düşüncenin en belirgin özelliği deneyime önsel (a priori) bilgiyi yadsımasıdır.

This paper aims to understand Hegel’s claim in the introduction to his Philosophy of Mind that mind is an actualization of the Idea and argues that this claim provides us with a novel and defensible way of understanding Hegel’s naturalism. I suggest that Hegel’s approach to naturalism should be understood as ‘formal’, and argue that Hegel’s Logic, particularly the section on the ‘Idea’, provides us with a method for this approach. In the first part of the paper, I present an (...) interpretation of Hegel’s method in which life plays a central role. In the second part of the paper, I develop Hegel’s method by providing a reading of Hegel’s Subjective Spirit, focusing on the sections ‘Anthropology’ and ‘Phenomenology’ in particular, arguing that they display the dialectic between life and cognition outlined by Hegel’s Idea. (shrink)

Aggregating individuals’ consistent attitudes might produce inconsistent collective attitudes. Some groups therefore need the capacity to form attitudes that are irreducible to those of their members. Such groups, group-agent realists argue, are agents in control of their own attitude formation. In this paper, however, I show how group-agent realism overlooks the important fact that groups consist of strategically interacting agents. Only by eliminating group agency from our social explanations can we see how individuals vote strategically to gain control of their (...) groups and produce collective attitudes we cannot make sense of if we treat groups as agents. (shrink)

In 1988 Fodor and Pylyshyn issued a challenge to the newly-popular connectionism: explain the systematicity of cognition without merely implementing a so-called classical architecture. Since that time quite a number of connectionist models have been put forward, either by their designers or by others, as in some measure demonstrating that the challenge can be met (e.g., Pollack, 1988, 1990; Smolensky, 1990; Chalmers, 1990; Niklasson and Sharkey, 1992; Brousse, 1993). Unfortu- nately, it has generally been unclear whether these models actually do (...) have this implication (see, for instance, the extensive philosophical debate in Smolensky, 1988; Fodor and McLaughlin, 1990; van Gelder, 1990, 1991; McLaughlin, 1993a, 1993b; Clark, 1993). Indeed, we know of no major supporter of classical orthodoxy who has felt compelled, by connectionist models and argu- ments, to concede in print that connectionists have in fact delivered a non-classical explanation of systematicity. (shrink)

This essay considers the critical response to Hegel's view of Socrates we find in Kierkegaard's dissertation, The Concept of Irony. I argue that this dispute turns on the question whether or not the examination of particular thinkers enters into Socrates’ most basic aims and interests. I go on to show how Kierkegaard's account, which relies on an affirmative answer to this question, enables him to provide a cogent defence of Socrates' philosophical practice against Hegel's criticisms.

Can a liberal state exclude illiberal immigrants in order to preserve its liberal status? Hrishikesh Joshi has argued that liberalism cannot require a commitment to open borders because this would entail that liberalism is committed to its own demise in circumstances in which many illiberal immigrants aim to immigrate into a liberal society. I argue that liberalism is committed to its own demise in certain circumstances, but that this is not as bad as it may appear. Liberalism’s commitment to its (...) own demise is merely a reflection of the fact that it must take into account the rights of outsiders, not just the rights of existing citizens, and of the fact that circumstances of injustice can sometimes leave liberal societies with no correct choice. (shrink)

Abstract: According to a rationalist theory of introspection, rational agents have a capacity to believe they are in conscious states when they are in them, much as they have the capacity, for example, to avoid obvious contradictions in their beliefs. For the agent to know or believe by introspection, on this view, is for them to exercise that capacity. According to an acquaintance theory of introspection, by contrast, whenever an agent is in a conscious state, the agent is aware of (...) or is acquainted with being in the state, where the background notion of acquaintance is understood to be distinct from sense perception, on the one hand, and belief or knowledge, or the other. For the agent to know or believe by introspection, on this view, is for them to take advantage of the epistemic position they occupy in virtue of being acquainted in this way. These theories are not in conflict; it is possible to hold both an acquaintance theory and a rationalist theory. This paper, however, sets out and recommends a different possibility, namely, that of holding a rationalist theory while rejecting any acquaintance theory. (shrink)

Mandatory minimum sentencing provisions have been a feature of the U.S. justice system since 1790. But they have expanded considerably under the war on drugs, and their use has expanded considerably under the Trump Administration; some states are also poised to expand drug-related mandatory minimums further in efforts to fight the current opioid epidemic. In this paper I outline and evaluate three prominent arguments for and against the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs—they appeal, respectively, to proportionality, (...) consistency, and efficiency. I ultimately defend the view that the use of mandatory minimums in the war on drugs is unjust. -/- . (shrink)

The fast development of synthetic media, commonly known as deepfakes, has cast new light on an old problem, namely—to what extent do people have a moral claim to their likeness, including personally distinguishing features such as their voice or face? That people have at least some such claim seems uncontroversial. In fact, several jurisdictions already combat deepfakes by appealing to a “right to identity.” Yet, an individual’s disapproval of appearing in a piece of synthetic media is sensible only insofar as (...) the replication is successful. There has to be some form of identity between the content and the natural person. The question, therefore, is how this identity can be established. How can we know whether the face or voice featured in a piece of synthetic content belongs to a person who makes claim to it? On a trivial level, this may seem an easy task—the person in the video is A insofar as he or she is recognised as being A. Providing more rigorous criteria, however, poses a serious challenge. In this paper, I draw on Turing’s imitation game, and Floridi’s method of levels of abstraction, to propose a heuristic to this end. I call it the identification game. Using this heuristic, I show that identity cannot be established independently of the purpose of the inquiry. More specifically, I argue that whether a person has a moral claim to content that allegedly uses their identity depends on the type of harm under consideration. (shrink)