This article explores and challenges notions and methodologies of conservation, including the use of blockchain technologies as a means of establishing provenance of a physical BioArtwork, of the artist’s documentation encapsulating their intentions and of the conservator’s records required for the artwork’s ongoing care. The exploration is done through a case study of an art project called ‘Unruly Objects and Biological Conservation’ created by Anna Dumitriu with support from Alex May. The artwork consists of three items containing RFID tags (...) sealed in resin – which point to the location of the artist’s documentation. Therefore, the works physically include instructions for maintaining their inherent concepts and materiality for the benefit of the conservators. Such instructions can often be difficult to track down, or become disassociated from the artwork while the digital preservation of this storage method also poses its own set of questions. The works also include biological material including mud from a bacterial ecosystem known as a Winogradsky Column, living plant material and SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) RNA from a plasmid construct. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider how certain longstanding philosophical questions about mental representation may be answered on the assumption that cognitive and perceptual systems implement hierarchical generative models, such as those discussed within the prediction error minimization framework. We build on existing treatments of representation via structural resemblance, such as those in Gładziejewski :559–582, 2016) and Gładziejewski and Miłkowski, to argue for a representationalist interpretation of the PEM framework. We further motivate the proposed approach to content by arguing that it (...) is consistent with approaches implicit in theories of unsupervised learning in neural networks. In the course of this discussion, we argue that the structural representation proposal, properly understood, has more in common with functional-role than with causal/informational or teleosemantic theories. In the remainder of the paper, we describe the PEM framework for approximate Bayesian inference in some detail, and discuss how structural representations might arise within the proposed Bayesian hierarchies. After explicating the notion of variational inference, we define a subjectively accessible measure of misrepresentation for hierarchical Bayesian networks by appeal to the Kullbach–Leibler divergence between posterior generative and approximate recognition densities, and discuss a related measure of objective misrepresentation in terms of correspondence with the facts. (shrink)

In this paper I highlight two noteworthy features of assertions about our desires, and then highlight two ways in which they can mislead us into drawing unwarranted conclusions about desire. Some of our assertions may indicate that we are sometimes motivated independently of desire, and other assertions may suggest that there are vast divergences between our normative judgements and our desires. But I suggest that some such assertions are, in this respect, potentially misleading, and have in fact misled authors such (...) as Russ Shafer-Landau, Jack Woods, and Tim Scanlon. (shrink)

I critically examine a common liberal egalitarian view about the justification for, and proper content of, mandatory health insurance. This view holds that a mandate is justified because it is the best way to ensure that those in poor health gain health insurance on equitable terms. It also holds that a government should mandate what a representative prudent individual would purchase for themselves if they were placed in fair conditions of choice. I argue that this common justification for a mandate (...) is incomplete. A further reason for mandated insurance is that it helps secure social egalitarian public goods that would be underprovided if insurance were optional. I also argue that rather than mandating what a representative individual would choose for themselves, we should design the mandatory package by appealing to a pluralistic egalitarian view, which cares about improving people’s well-being, reducing unfair inequality, and maintaining egalitarian social relations. (shrink)

In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where acting on a belief rashly risks some disastrous outcome if the belief turns (...) out to be false. Call those who think that pragmatic considerations make a difference to what one ought to believe in the second kind of case, but not in the first, ‘moderate pragmatists’. Many philosophers – in particular, most advocates of pragmatic and moral encroachment – are moderate pragmatists. But moderate pragmatists owe us an explanation of exactly why the second kind of pragmatic consideration makes a difference, but the first kind doesn’t. I argue that the most promising of these explanations all fail: they are either theoretically undermotivated, or get key cases wrong, or both. Moderate pragmatism may be an unstable stopping point between a more extreme pragmatism, on one hand, and an uncompromising anti-pragmatism on the other. (shrink)

We agree with Vaesen that there is evidence for cognitive differences between humans and other primates. However, it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the uniqueness of the cognitive mechanisms underlying human tool use. Tests of causal understanding are in their infancy, as is the study of animals more distantly related to humans.

This paper develops an account of the meaning of `ought', and the distinction between weak necessity modals (`ought', `should') and strong necessity modals (`must', `have to'). I argue that there is nothing specially ``strong'' about strong necessity modals per se: uses of `Must p' predicate the (deontic/epistemic/etc.) necessity of the prejacent p of the actual world (evaluation world). The apparent ``weakness'' of weak necessity modals derives from their bracketing whether the necessity of the prejacent is verified in the actual world. (...) `Ought p' can be accepted without needing to settle that the relevant considerations (norms, expectations, etc.) that actually apply verify the necessity of p. I call the basic account a modal-past approach to the weak/strong necessity modal distinction (for reasons that become evident). Several ways of implementing the approach in the formal semantics/pragmatics are critically examined. The account systematizes a wide range of linguistic phenomena: it generalizes across flavors of modality; it elucidates a special role that weak necessity modals play in discourse and planning; it captures contrasting logical, expressive, and illocutionary properties of weak and strong necessity modals; and it sheds light on how a notion of `ought' is often expressed in other languages. These phenomena have resisted systematic explanation. In closing I briefly consider how linguistic inquiry into differences among necessity modals may improve theorizing on broader philosophical issues. (shrink)

: The debate over when medical research may be performed in developing countries has steered clear of the broad issues of social justice in favor of what seem more tractable, practical issues. A better approach will reframe the question of justice in international research in a way that makes explicit the links between medical research, the social determinants of health, and global justice.

In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. To know what it is like (...) one must know an appropriate propositional answer to the question ‘what is it like?’. Despite this mismatch between object-knowledge and knowing an answer, we believe that acquaintance is crucial to Mary’s epistemic progress. When Mary leaves her black and white room, her new knowledge tempts one to think that she must come to know a candidate answer (a coarse-grained fact) that she didn’t know in her room. Since Mary already knows all the physical facts in her room, any additional facts she might learn appear to threaten physicalism. In reply, many physicalists have been attracted to the phenomenal concept strategy according to which Mary can come to have new knowledge and hence know a new answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ by entertaining a coarse-grained fact under a concept she didn’t possess in her room – Mary learns a new fine-grained fact. We believe both of these accounts of Mary’s epistemic progress are mistaken. As we argue, Mary could know every fact (coarse-grained and fine-grained) that might serve as an answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ and still not know what it is like. The physical world leaves no leftover coarse-grained facts for Mary to learn and because concepts are sharable, easy to possess, and easy to introduce, there are possible situations in which Mary, while in her black and white room, has every concept that might make a fine-grained difference. In short, even when Mary is granted a great deal of factual knowledge and vast conceptual resources, she may still not know an appropriate answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’. But in any such situation, Mary lacks acquaintance with red and on this basis we argue that in order to know what it is like, in order for Mary to know an appropriate answer, Mary’s propositional knowledge must be appropriately related to her acquaintance with red. (shrink)

Suppose that you must make choices that may influence the well-being and the identities of the people who will exist, though not the number of people who will exist. How ought you to choose? This paper answers this question. It argues that the currency of distributive ethics in such cases is a combination of an individual’s final well-being and her expected well-being conditional on her existence. It also argues that this currency should be distributed in an egalitarian, rather than a (...) prioritarian, manner. (shrink)

The history of the idea of predicate is the history of its emancipation. The lesson of this paper is that there are two more steps to take. The first is to recognize that predicates need not have a fixed degree, the second that they can combine with plural terms. We begin by articulating the notion of a multigrade predicate: one that takes variably many arguments. We counter objections to the very idea posed by Peirce, Dummett's Frege, and Strawson. We show (...) that the arguments of a multigrade predicate must be grouped into places, with perhaps several arguments occupying positions at a place. Variability may relate to places or positions. Russell's multiple judgement predicate turns out to be just one example of a family-'is necessarily true of', 'is said of', 'is instantiated by' and so on-of predicates with variably many places. Our main concern, however, is lists. Any adequate account of lists must include plural as well as singular terms. On one account, lists are mere strings of separate arguments, which occupy variably many positions within a place of a multigrade predicate. A quite different account takes the list itself to be a compound plural term. We compare these rival conceptions, and reach some surprising conclusions. As a coda, we deploy the conceptual apparatus developed in the paper to assess Morton's pioneer system of multigrade logic. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on what’s novel in the perspective that the prediction error minimization (PEM) framework affords on the cognitive-scientific project of explaining intelligence by appeal to internal representations. It shows how truth-conditional and resemblance-based approaches to representation in generative models may be integrated. The PEM framework in cognitive science is an approach to cognition and perception centered on a simple idea: organisms represent the world by constantly predicting their own internal states. PEM theories often stress the hierarchical structure of (...) the generative models they posit. The novel explanatory power of the PEM account derives largely from the way in which pairs of generative and recognition models interact. “Predictive coding” refers to an encoding strategy in which predicted portions of an input signal are subtracted from the actual signal received, so that only the difference between the two is passed as output to the next stage of information processing. (shrink)

The debate over when medical research may be performed in developing countries has steered clear of the broad issues of social justice in favor of what seem more tractable, practical issues. A better approach will reframe the question of justice in international research in a way that makes explicit the links between medical research, the social determinants of health, and global justice.

In 'Rethinking the Good', Larry Temkin makes two core claims. First, the goodness of a distribution is sometimes ‘essentially comparative’ – it sometimes depends on which alternative distribution(s) it is compared to. Second, such cases threaten the transitivity of ‘all things considered better than’. I argue that the goodness of a distribution may indeed depend on what other distributions are feasible. But contrary to Temkin, I also argue that transitivity holds even when the goodness of a distribution depends on the (...) feasible set of which it is a member. (shrink)

This chapter develops a contextualist account of normative language, focusing on broadly normative readings of modal verbs. The account draws on a more general framework for implementing a contextualist semantics and pragmatics, Discourse Contextualism. The aim of Discourse Contextualism is to derive the discourse properties of normative language from a contextualist interpretation of an independently motivated formal semantics, along with principles of interpretation and conversation. In using normative language, interlocutors can exploit their grammatical and world knowledge, and general pragmatic reasoning (...) skills, to manage an evolving system of norms. Discourse Contextualism provides a perspicuous framework for further philosophical theorizing about the nature of normativity, normative language, and normative judgment. Delineating these issues can help refine our understanding of the space of overall theories and motivate more fruitful ways the dialectics may proceed. Discourse Contextualism provides a linguistic basis for a more comprehensive theory of normativity and normative discourse and practice. (shrink)

The lack of access to gender-affirming surgery represents a significant unmet health care need within the transgender community, frequently resulting in depression and self-destructive behavior. While some transgender people may have access to gender reassignment surgery, an overwhelming majority cannot afford facial feminization surgery. The former may be covered as a “medical necessity,” but FFS is considered “cosmetic” and excluded from insurance coverage. This demarcation between “necessity” and “cosmetic” in transgender health care based on specific body parts is in direct (...) opposition to the scientific community’s understanding of gender dysphoria and professional guidelines for transgender health. GRS affects one’s ability to function in an intimate relationship, while FFS has the same impact on social interactions an, therefore may have a far greater implication for one’s quality of life. FFS is a cost-effective intervention that needs to be covered by insurance policies. The benefits of such coverage far exceed the insignificant costs. (shrink)

Disagreement is a hot topic in epistemology. A fast-growing literature centers around a dispute between the ‘steadfast’ view, on which one may maintain one’s beliefs even in the light of disagreement with epistemic peers who have all the same evidence, and the ‘conciliationist’ view, on which such disagreement requires a revision of attitudes. In this paper, however, I argue that there is less separating the main rivals in the debate about peer disagreement than is commonly thought. The extreme versions of (...) both views are clearly indefensible, while more moderate versions of the views converge on the idea that how much revision of belief is called for by an instance of peer disagreement varies from case to case. Those tempted by this diagnosis are sometimes pessimistic about the prospects for giving a unified account which clearly predicts when more or less extensive revisions will be called for. By contrast, in this paper I give an account that aspires to such unity and predictive power, centering on the notion of the net resilience of your estimate of your own reliability against your estimate of your interlocutor’s reliability. The view I present thus amounts to a new, moderate theory of how one should respond to disagreement. I argue that ultimately, when we weaken conciliationism and the steadfast view to account for exception cases and to make them adequately plausible, they end up converging on the moderate view I present. Much of the seeming disagreement about disagreement is, then, illusory. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of a 'standard of care' as it has been used in recent arguments over the ethics of international human-subjects research. It argues that this concept is ambiguous along two different axes, with the result that there are at least four possible standard of care arguments that have not always been clearly distinguished. As a result, it has been difficult to assess the implications of opposing standard of care arguments, to recognize important differences in their supporting (...) rationales, and even to locate the crux of the disagreement in some instances. The goal of the present discussion, therefore, is to disambiguate the concept of a 'standard of care' and to highlight the areas of genuine disagreement among different standards. In the end it is argued that one standard of care argument in particular is more complex than either its proponents or its critics may have recognized and that understanding this possibility opens up a potentially promising avenue of inquiry that remains to be carefully explored. (shrink)

May Day was the most popular holiday of the two major wings of the German labor movement, Social Democratic and Communist, during the Weimar Republic (1918-1933). While the political importance and ideological significance of May Day celebrations for the German labor movement have been extensively researched, its geographicity, the inherently spatialized and spatializing moment of lived experience, as well as the content of that geographicity have been relatively neglected. Examining working-class May Day celebrations in a specific built environment like the (...) Lustgarten permits detailed consideration of the ways that the festive has involved spatializing and spatialized moments of lived experience which were part of the spatial reproduction of class relations and class experiences at the local level in Berlin in the Weimar Republic. (shrink)

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States and the second cause of death among those ages 15–24 years. The current standard of care for suicidality management often involves an involuntary hospitalization deemed necessary by the attending psychiatrist. The purpose of this article is to reexamine the ethical tradeoffs inherent in the current practice of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization for suicidal patients, calling attention to the often-neglected harms inherent in this practice and proposing a path for future (...) research. With accumulating evidence of the harms inherent in civil commitment, we propose that the relative value of this intervention needs to be reevaluated and more efficacious alternatives researched. Three arguments are presented: (1) that inadequate attention has been given to the harms resulting from the use of coercion and the loss of autonomy, (2) that inadequate evidence exists that involuntary hospitalization is an effective method to reduce deaths by suicide, and (3) that some suicidal patients may benefit more from therapeutic interventions that maximize and support autonomy and personal responsibility. Considering this evidence, we argue for a policy that limits the coercive hospitalization of suicidal individuals to those who lack decision-making capacity. (shrink)

I provide an opinionated overview of the literature on the relationship of contextualism to knowledge norms for action, assertion, and belief. I point out that contextualists about ‘knows’ are precluded from accepting the simplest versions of knowledge norms; they must, if they are to accept knowledge norms at all, accept “relativized” versions of them. I survey arguments from knowledge norms both for and against contextualism, tentatively concluding that commitment to knowledge norms does not conclusively win the day either for contextualism (...) or for its rivals. But I also suggest that an antecedent commitment to contextualism about normative terms may provide grounds for suspicion about knowledge norms, and a debunking explanation of some of the data offered in favor of such norms. (shrink)

This text was first published on Critical Legal Thinking 14 May 2013. Accel­er­a­tion­ism pushes towards a future that is more mod­ern, an altern­at­ive mod­ern­ity that neo­lib­er­al­ism is inher­ently unable to gen­er­ate. 01. INTRODUCTION : On the Conjuncture 1. At the beginning of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, global civilization faces a new breed of cataclysm. These coming apocalypses ridicule the norms and organisational structures of the politics which were forged in the birth - Débats.

In this paper, we present two variants of Peirce’s Triadic Logic within a language containing only conjunction, disjunction, and negation. The peculiarity of our systems is that conjunction and disjunction are interpreted by means of Peirce’s mysterious binary operations Ψ and Φ from his ‘Logical Notebook’. We show that semantic conditions that can be extracted from the definitions of Ψ and Φ agree (in some sense) with the traditional view on the semantic conditions of conjunction and disjunction. Thus, we support (...) the conjecture that Peirce’s special interest in these operations is due to the fact that he interpreted them as conjunction and disjunction, respectively. We also show that one of our systems may serve as a suitable base for an interesting implicative expansion, namely the connexive three-valued logic by Cooper. Sound and complete natural deduction calculi are presented for all systems examined in this paper. (shrink)

There is a need to consider the impact of the new resident-hours regulations on the variety of aspects of medical education and patient care. Most existing literature about this subject has focused on the role of fatigue in resident performance, education, and health care delivery. However, there are other possible consequences of these new regulations, including a negative impact on decision ownership. Our main assumption of is that increased shift work in medicine can decrease ownership of treatment decisions and impact (...) negatively on quality of care. We review some potential components of decision ownership in treatment context and suggest possible ways in which the absence of decision ownership may decrease the quality of medical decision making. The article opens with the definition of decision ownership and the overview of some contextual factors that may contribute to the development of ownership in medical residency. The following section discusses decision ownership in medical care from the perspe... (shrink)

Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counter-example to the acyclicity of the relationship 'all things considered better than'. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person's painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on the way people (...) evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels' and Temkin's example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity. (shrink)

Within the history of African American struggle against racist oppression that often verges on dystopia, a hidden tradition has depicted a transfigured world. Daring to speculate on a future beyond white supremacy, black utopian artists and thinkers offer powerful visions of ways of being that are built on radical concepts of justice and freedom. They imagine a new black citizen who would inhabit a world that soars above all existing notions of the possible. In Black Utopia, Alex Zamalin offers (...) a groundbreaking examination of African American visions of social transformation and their counterutopian counterparts. Considering figures associated with racial separatism, postracialism, anticolonialism, Pan-Africanism, and Afrofuturism, he argues that the black utopian tradition continues to challenge American political thought and culture. Black Utopia spans black nationalist visions of an ideal Africa, the fiction of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sun Ra’s cosmic mythology of alien abduction. Zamalin casts Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler as political theorists and reflects on the antiutopian challenges of George S. Schuyler and Richard Wright. Their thought proves that utopianism, rather than being politically immature or dangerous, can invigorate political imagination. Both an inspiring intellectual history and a critique of present power relations, this book suggests that, with democracy under siege across the globe, the black utopian tradition may be our best hope for combating injustice. (shrink)

I note the multitude of ways in which, beginning with the classic paper by Machamer et al., the mechanists have qualify their methodological dicta, and limit the vulnerability of their claims by strategic vagueness regarding their application. I go on to generalize a version of the mechanist requirement on explanations due to Craver and Kaplan :601–627, 2011) in cognitive and systems neuroscience so that it applies broadly across the life sciences in accordance with the view elaborated by Craver and Darden (...) in In Search of Mechanisms. I then go on to explore what ramifications their mechanist requirement on explanations may have for explanatory “dependencies” reported in biology and the special sciences. What this exploration suggests is that mechanism threatens to eliminate instead of underwrite a large number of such “dependencies” reported in higher-levels of biology and the special sciences. I diagnose the source of this threat in mechanism’s demand that explanations identify nested causal differences makers in mechanisms, their components, the components further components, and so forth. Finally, I identify the “love–hate” relationship mechanism must have with functional explanation, and show how it makes mechanism an extremely interesting thesis indeed. (shrink)

If you are kind to me, I am likely to reciprocate and doing so feels fair. Many theories of social exchange assume that such reciprocity and fairness are well aligned with one another. We argue that this correspondence between reciprocity and fairness is restricted to interpersonal dyads and does not govern more complex multilateral interactions. When multiple people are involved, reciprocity leads to partiality, which may be seen as unfair by outsiders. We report seven studies, conducted with people from the (...) United States, in which participants were asked to evaluate situations involving resource distribution in contexts such as economic games, government, and the workplace. Specifically, we find that equal resource distribution in multilateral interactions is seen as more fair than engaging in reciprocity. We also find that negative reciprocity is seen as more fair than positive reciprocity in these multilateral situations because positive reciprocity is perceived as based in favoritism. We rule out alternative explanations and demonstrate that there are contexts where favoritism is not viewed as unfair. These findings are important for theories of fairness and reciprocity as they demonstrate the central role of perceived partiality in the evaluation of multi‐party resource allocation. (shrink)

This paper argues that we ought to rethink the harm-reduction prioritization strategy that has shaped early responses to acute resource scarcity (particularly of intensive care unit beds) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although some authors have claimed that “[t]here are no egalitarians in a pandemic,” it is noted here that many observers and commentators have been deeply concerned about how prioritization policies that proceed on the basis of survival probability may unjustly distribute the burden of mortality and morbidity, even while reducing (...) overall deaths. The paper further argues that there is a general case in favor of an egalitarian approach to medical rationing that has been missed in the ethical commentary so far; egalitarian approaches to resource rationing minimize wrongful harm. This claim is defended against some objections and the paper concludes by explaining why we should consider the possibility that avoiding wrongful harm is more important than avoiding harm simpliciter. (shrink)

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Among other things, it found that states may refuse to expand Medicaid to all individuals earning less than 133% of the federal poverty line. In this article, I evaluate the strongest conservative objection to the Medicaid expansion, which runs as follows: "Defenders of the ACA promised that the Medicaid expansion (and all other parts of the ACA) would be paid for with compensating (...) cuts. However, it’s arguable that that claim is false and that the government is likely to follow its well-worn pattern of charging at least some of the increased spending to the national debt. Debt is already at dangerous levels, and adding to it increases the risk of a serious fiscal crisis. We should therefore oppose the Medicaid expansion." After laying out this argument, I evaluate its central claims and draw three main conclusions. First, some people could reasonably believe the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus reasonably oppose the Medicaid expansion as well. Second, despite the fact that reasonable critics could hold those assumptions, most critics do not, and so they should not reject the Medicaid expansion on these fiscal grounds. Third, supporters of the ACA and the Medicaid expansion can reasonably reject the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus the objection itself. (shrink)

My paper has two aims: to underscore the importance of differently time-indexed ‘ought implies can’ principles; and to apply this to the culpable inability problem. Sometimes we make ourselves unable to do what we ought, but in those cases, we may still fail to do what we ought. This is taken to be a serious problem for synchronic ‘ought implies can’ principles, with a simultaneous ‘ought’ and ‘can’. Some take it to support diachronic ‘ought implies can’, with a potentially temporally (...) distinct ‘ought’ and ‘can’. I will argue that this problem is not avoided by diachronic ‘ought implies can’. (shrink)

Physicalism and antireductionism are the ruling orthodoxy in the philosophy of biology. But these two theses are difficult to reconcile. Merely embracing an epistemic antireductionism will not suffice, as both reductionists and antireductionists accept that given our cognitive interests and limitations, non-molecular explanations may not be improved, corrected or grounded in molecular ones. Moreover, antireductionists themselves view their claim as a metaphysical or ontological one about the existence of facts molecular biology cannot identify, express, or explain. However, this is tantamount (...) to a rejection of physicalism and so causes the antireductionist discomfort. In this paper we argue that vindicating physicalism requires a physicalistic account of the principle of natural selection, and we provide such an account. The most important pay-off to the account is that it provides for the very sort of autonomy from the physical that antireductionists need without threatening their commitment to physicalism. (shrink)

This paper expands the definition of gray-marketing to include some ethically problematic marketing activities and techniques used in personal selling in China. Based on this, a conceptual model of gray-marketing for a particular type of selling in which both the sellers and the buyers exhibit problematic ethics in an exchange and the associated hypotheses are developed and tested. The findings show that, first, the respondents have different ethical evaluations of different marketing practices used in personal selling such as giving and (...) accepting gifts, buying and accepting meals, and offering and accepting kickbacks. Some of these practices may not be considered unethical. Second, in terms of ethical assessment, gray-marketing practiced by buying agents is more unacceptable than when practiced by sales agents. Third, a person's ethical evaluation of gray-marketing behavior, empathy for gray-marketing, and belief that gray-marketing has serious consequences, significantly affects his inclination to use gray-marketing. This paper concludes with a discussion of some possible applications of our research findings. (shrink)

When citizens and legislators attempt to justify coercive acts, such as fines or imprisonment, they often do so on the basis of controversial justificatory principles. There are at least two ways a principle can be controversial: one may claim that the principle in question is false; or one may claim that the principle, correctly applied, does not actually justify the specific act in question. Thus, suppose the state invokes the principle ‘false beliefs should be censored’ to justify silencing a dissident. (...) The dissident might disagree because she thinks the state should not be in the business of censoring false beliefs, or she might agree with the principle but object to the action because she is quite convinced that her beliefs are not false. (shrink)

Raimond Gaita affirms absolute goodness as the only thing with the power to keep fully among us the worst kind of evildoer. At issue in this goodness is a wonder that he ties to joy. Yet Gaita does not, perhaps cannot, imagine this power with respect to the evildoer concretely enough for it to move us in the way his account requires. An aspect of his writings that resists the emphasis on a joyous wonder may assist our thinking about the (...) relation to the evildoer. (shrink)

Bystander information is information about others’ attitudes towards a text (i.e. about whether they agree or disagree with it). Social media platforms force bystander information upon us when we read posts thereon. What effect does this have on how we respond to what we read? The dominant view in the literature is that it changes our minds (the so-called “bandwagon effect”). Simplifying a little: if we see that most people agree (disagree) with what a post says, we are more likely (...) to agree (disagree) with what it says. This paper argues that we should take seriously a competitor view and care about the difference between it and the dominant view. The competitor view proposes that bystander information changes what a text seems to us to say: although bystander information may lead us to change what attitude we express toward a post, that’s not because we’ve changed our attitude toward any fixed content (i.e. fixed thing that the post says). This paper argues that, if this competitor view is correct, then social media is likely to be an especially hazardous place for the practice of sharing content. (shrink)

The revival of classical liberal thought has reignited a debate about economic freedom and social justice. Classical liberals claim to defend expansive economic freedom, while their critics wish to restrict this freedom for other values. However, there are two problems with the role ‘economic freedom’ plays in this debate: inconsistency in the use of the concept and indeterminacy with respect to its definition. Inconsistency in the use of the concept ‘freedom’ has mistakenly made a certain kind of ‘left-wing’ critique of (...) poverty, and of markets generally, appear to be a concern with inequality in means to enjoy freedom, not with freedom itself. Indeterminacy about which beings and doings the basic liberties protect misrepresents the left-wing position as about something other than economic freedom. Inconsistency and indeterminacy lead to artificial narrowness in current debates and to a failure to see that disagreement is based not just on moral differences but also on conceptual confusion. This confusion leads both classical liberals and their critics to claim more than they may legitimately do, and to ignore a position that accepts the standard of definition of freedom but arrives at different institutional conclusions about what secures that freedom. (shrink)

Contemporary process metaphysics has achieved a number of important results, most significantly in accounting for emergence, a problem on which substance metaphysics has foundered since Plato. It also faces trenchant problems of its own, among them the related problems of boundaries and individuation. Historically, the quest for ontology may thus have been largely responsible for the persistence of substance metaphysics. But as Plato was well aware, an ontology of substantial things raises serious, perhaps insurmountable problems for any account of our (...) epistemic access to such things. Physical things are subject to change, and as such, they are poor objects of knowledge—if knowledge is to be more reliable than mere opinion. There is a reading of Plato’s Theaetetus on which knowledge may be understood as a relation between an epistemic subject and a logos, where logoi are intrinsically dialectical, and where dialectic is a kind of intersubjective activity. Insofar as this epistemology may be attributed to Plato, the project of this paper is Platonic in spirit. It is also, in a sense, Kantian, in that it divorces ontology from the search for things-in-themselves, redirecting our attention from things to objects: epistemic objects. Such objects can be understood, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty proposed, as shared by multiple subjects by virtue of their participation in an intersubjective world, constituted by what Shaun Gallagher calls participatory sense-making. On an epistemology constructed in this way, the fact that both epistemic objects and their subject are mutable is no obstacle to knowledge. Far-from-equilibrium systems are forever mutable; at thermodynamic equilibrium, there would be neither subject, nor object. Epistemic objects, on this picture, are metastable loci of interactive potential. (shrink)

Research misconduct is an alarming concern worldwide, and especially in Italy, where there is no formal training of young researchers in responsible research practices. The main aim of this study was to map the perceptions and attitudes about RM in a sample of young researchers attending a one-week intensive course on methodology, ethics and integrity in biomedical research, held at the University of Insubria. To this end, we administered the Scientific Misconduct Questionnaire to all attendees at the beginning of the (...) course. Thereafter, SMQ-R was re-administered at the end, to assess the impact of the course on the responsiveness of study participants, which is intended as the frequency of responses other than “don’t know”. Results show that respondents rate as high their own understanding about rules and procedures related to scientific misconduct, as well as the effectiveness of their institution’s measures for reducing it. Most of them perceive as low the chances of getting caught for RM. Some respondents believe that cases of misconduct occur in their workplace and that the integrity of a research is not solely the responsibility of the principal investigator. Among the main factors contributing to research misconduct, the need for publications, unclear definition of what constitutes misconduct and pressure for external funding do stand out. Respondents are concerned about the amount of misconduct and express a pressing need for training on research ethics. Remarkably, the responsiveness of participants tends to increase with course attendance. This finding may be useful to support education programmes devoted to research methodology, ethics and integrity among young researchers. (shrink)

Going about our daily lives in an orderly manner requires us, once we are aware of them, to dismiss many metaphysical possibilities. We take it for granted that we are not brains in vats, or living in the Matrix, or in an extended dream. Call these things that we take for granted “anti-skeptical assumptions”. What should a reflective agent who believes these things think of these beliefs? For various reasons, it can seem that we do not have evidence for such (...) anti-skeptical assumptions. Are anti-skeptical assumptions, then, beliefs that one may rationally hold without evidence for them – indeed, even in the face of a positive judgment that one lacks evidence for them? I survey and criticize some prominent answers to this question, and then offer a positive view that blends externalism about evidence with a mild, qualified kind of pragmatism. The view I offer aims to do justice to the sense that anti-skeptical assumptions are evidentially groundless while also maintaining that one cannot rationally believe something that one judges oneself to lack sufficient evidence for. (shrink)

This paper provides a unifying axiomatic account of the interpretation of recursive types that incorporates both domain-theoretic and realizability models as concrete instances. Our approach is to view such models as full subcategories of categorical models of intuitionistic set theory. It is shown that the existence of solutions to recursive domain equations depends upon the strength of the set theory. We observe that the internal set theory of an elementary topos is not strong enough to guarantee their existence. In contrast, (...) as our first main result, we establish that solutions to recursive domain equations do exist when the category of sets is a model of full intuitionistic Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory. We then apply this result to obtain a denotational interpretation of FPC, a recursively typed lambda-calculus with call-by-value operational semantics. By exploiting the intuitionistic logic of the ambient model of intuitionistic set theory, we analyse the relationship between operational and denotational semantics. We first prove an “internal” computational adequacy theorem: the model always believes that the operational and denotational notions of termination agree. This allows us to identify, as our second main result, a necessary and sufficient condition for genuine “external” computational adequacy to hold, i.e. for the operational and denotational notions of termination to coincide in the real world. The condition is formulated as a simple property of the internal logic, related to the logical notion of 1-consistency. We provide useful sufficient conditions for establishing that the logical property holds in practice. Finally, we outline how the methods of the paper may be applied to concrete models of FPC. In doing so, we obtain computational adequacy results for an extensive range of realizability and domain-theoretic models. (shrink)

When we open our eyes, the world seems full of colored opaque objects, light sources, and transparent volumes. One historically popular view, _eliminativism_, is that the world is not in this respect as it appears to be: nothing has any color. Color _realism_, the denial of eliminativism, comes in three mutually exclusive varieties, which may be taken to exhaust the space of plausible realist theories. Acccording to _dispositionalism_, colors are _psychological_ dispositions: dispositions to produce certain kinds of visual experiences. According (...) to both _primitivism_ and _physicalism_, colors are not psychological dispositions; they differ in that primitivism says that no reductive analysis of the colors is possible, whereas physicalism says that they are physical properties. This paper is a defense of physicalism about color. (shrink)

This paper presents a novel challenge for the panpsychist solution to the problem of consciousness. It advances three main claims. First, that the problem of consciousness is really an instance of a more general problem: that of grounding the qualitative. Second, that we should want a general solution to this problem. Third, that panpsychism cannot provide it. I also suggest two further things: (1) that alternative kinds of Russellian monism may avoid the problem in ways panpsychists cannot, and (2) that (...) a kind of neo-Aristotelian or ground-theoretical physicalism fares just as well here if not better. (shrink)

Most of us have grown up with faces on television that look back at us, talk to us, even whenwe ignore them. They smile at us, and seem to address us personally. But they cannot seeor hear us, and we may or may not know who they are. Increasingly, in societies wherescreens are prevalent , our encounters with fellow humanbeings are mediated in ways such as this. Has the ubiquitous intervention of screens in ourlives thus made it harder to understand (...) and communicate directly with one another? Or,have screens extended our capacity to empathise and ‘socialise’, bringing us face-to-facewith people and points of view that we otherwise would never have encountered? In thisessay, I examine the idea that cinematic perception enables us to see the social world froma radically different perspective, and that an experience of this perspective may in itself beethical. I focus on the use of ‘direct address’, and discuss two documentaries by Errol Morriswhere the technique of direct address is used in ways that complicate ideas of mediationand empathy: Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. and The Fog of War:Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara . I also draw on the philosophyof Emmanuel Levinas, particularly his work on ethics and the face, to analyse the effects ofMorris’s techniques. The essay highlights the importance of responsibility in human communication, and maintains that by reflecting on the viewing situation we are betterpositioned to empathise with Morris’s controversial subjects. (shrink)

Stuart Rachels and Larry Temkin have offered a purported counterexample to the acyclicity of the relationship “all things considered better than”. This example invokes our intuitive preferences over pairs of alternatives involving a single person’s painful experiences of varying intensity and duration. These preferences, Rachels and Temkin claim, are confidently held, entirely reasonable, and cyclical. They conclude that we should drop acyclicity as a requirement of rationality. I argue that, together with the findings of recent research on the way people (...) evaluate episodes of pain, the use of a heuristic known as similarity-based decision-making explains why our intuitive preferences may violate acyclicity in this example. I argue that this explanation should lead us to regard these preferences with suspicion, because it indicates that they may be the result of one or more biases. I conclude that Rachels’ and Temkin’s example does not provide sufficient grounds for rejecting acyclicity. (shrink)

Toleration is one possible response to diversity, and it is a defining feature of contemporary liberal democracies. Still, why we should tolerate and what we should tolerate are persistent political questions. This dissertation explores the reasons why citizens should sometimes refrain from embodying in law moral beliefs that they hold to be true. It claims that a neglected aspect of John Locke's writings on religious toleration, the formal relationship between moral principles and law, can instruct political deliberation. Since this portion (...) of Locke's thought is deeply influenced by Christian natural law, the approach is analogical. Locke confronted some political problems analogous to our own and there are alternative secular justifications available for the intermediate principles he employed. These intermediate principles can provide meaningful guidance in contemporary disputes about law and morality. ;Chapter Two explores Locke's most important insight into the formal relationship between law and morality, concerns about the use of "non-neutral principles" in political argument. A non-neutral principle is one that contains the very term under dispute between two contending parties. Neglected arguments in Locke's Third Letter Concerning Toleration provide formal tests for differentiating between non-neutral principles that do and do not justify coercive law. The Lockean criteria assume a "juridical equality" between persons such that at the persons who disagree are moral equals under a common set of public, general, and reasonable rules that determine when they may and may not use force. ;This Lockean insight has broad implications both for political theory and Locke scholarship. Chapter Three explores the relationship between natural law, consent, and the public good and argues that Lockean criteria can help modern readers choose between competing conceptions of the public good. Chapter Four explores the tensions between the Lockean formal criteria and Locke's specific views about which groups the government should tolerate. Chapter Five shows how a Lockean theory can account for institutional reasons for toleration, instances where a person refrains from putting a stop to an action for lack of jurisdiction. Chapter Six shows how both substantive and institutional forms of toleration should guide interpreters of the United States Constitution. (shrink)

When a novel scientific theory conflicts with otherwise plausible moral assumptions, we do not treat that as evidence against the theory. We may scrutinize the empirical data more keenly and take extra care over its interpretation, but science is in some core sense immune to moral refutation. Can the same be said of philosophical theories (or the non-ethical, ‘metaphysical’ ones at least)? If a position in the philosophy of mind, for example, is discovered to have eye-widening moral import, does that (...) count against it at all? Actual responses by philosophers to the question of whether unanticipated moral consequences of metaphysical theories have evidential force are scattered, implicit, divergent, under-argued, and sometimes even self-undermining. The present discussion is, most immediately, an attempt to sort out the confusion. Beyond that, it exploits the new perspective this question gives us on a familiar topic: the relation of philosophy to science. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 335-354 "An Unaccountable Pleasure": Hume on Tragedy and the Passions ALEX NEILL Hume begins his essay "Of Tragedy" with a description of what he calls "a singular phaenomenon": It seems an unaccountable pleasure, which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions, that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are (...) touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle; and as soon as the uneasy passions cease to operate, the piece is at an end.... They are pleased in proportion as they are afflicted, and never are so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swoln with the tenderest sympathy and compassion. The few critics who have had some tincture of philosophy, have remarked this singular phaenomenon, and have endeavoured to account for it.1 The account of the audience's experience of tragedy that Hume goes on to offer in "Of Tragedy" has been the target of criticism since the essay was published. My purpose in what follows is to show that some of what may appear to be the most damaging of that criticism is based on a misinterpretation of the thesis that Hume develops in the essay. I shall not attempt to argue that Hume's thesis is persuasive; indeed, I believe and have argued Alex Neill is at the Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton, Hants Sl 7 IBJ ENGLAND. 336 Alex Neill elsewhere that it is not.2 My project here is almost entirely interpretive: it is an attempt to get clear about what Hume's thesis concerning our experience of tragedy really is. To that end, it should be noted that the apparently "unaccountable" pleasure Hume describes at the beginning of "Of Tragedy" is something that he has remarked on before. In Book I of the Treatise, he notes that in matters of religion men take a pleasure in being terrify'd, and that no preachers are so popular, as those who excite the most dismal and gloomy passions. In the common affairs of life, where we feel and are penetrated with the solidity of the subject, nothing can be more disagreeable than fear and terror; and 'tis only in dramatic performances and in religious discourses, that they ever give pleasure? The phenomenon that Hume finds so remarkable in these passages from "Of Tragedy" and the Treatise is thus, at a minimum, that in certain circumstances, such as when we are at the theatre, we may find agreeable the experience of "the most dismal and gloomy passions." The explanation he gives of this phenomenon in the Treatise is as follows: In these latter cases the imagination reposes itself indolently on the idea; and the passion, being soften'd by the want of belief in the subject, has no more than the agreeable effect of enlivening the mind, and fixing the attention. (T 115) Hume's explanation of how the experience of "uneasy" passions can be enjoyed when we are in church and at the theatre thus has two components. First, because we do not believe the stories we are told in church4 and at the theatre, the uneasy passions we experience are not so very uneasy; as he puts it later in the Treatise, in such circumstances the passion in question "lies not with that weight upon us: It feels less firm and solid" (T 631). Second, a weakly disagreeable passion of this sort agreeably "enlivens" the mind and "fixes" (or as he says later, "rouzes") our attention. By the time he wrote "Of Tragedy," however, Hume had come to regard this explanation of his "singular phaenomenon" as inadequate. With regard to the idea that the passions, even if "uneasy," have the pleasurable effect of "enlivening" the mind (an idea which in "Of Tragedy" he attributes to Dubos), Hume objects that having one's mind "enlivened," one's attention "fixed" or "rouzed," need not be pleasurable: "the same object of distress, which pleases in a tragedy, were it really set before us, would give the most unfeigned uneasiness; though it... (shrink)