This Student's Companion edition lays out, in nontechnical terms, the main ideas contained in Maimonides' famous work Guide of the Perplexed so it can be read by an ambitious beginner or an advanced high school student. It provides a general introduction to Maimonides' life, the plan and outline of the Guide, the required philosophical background, and a concise chapter-by-chapter overview and commentary.

There have been numerous studies onthelifeand work of Maimonides, but most of them are in German, a tribute to the culture of the Jewish community in preNazi Germany. The most recent fulllength biography of Maimonides in English is that ...

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The Drosophila tracheal system is a branched tubular structure that supplies air to target tissues. The elaborate tracheal morphology is shaped by two linked inductive processes, one involving the choice of cell fates, and the other a guided cell migration. We will describe the molecular basis for these processes, and the allocation of cell fate decisions to four temporal hierarchies. First, tracheal placodes are specified within the embryonic ectoderm. Subsequently, branch fates are allocated within the tracheal placodes, prior to migration. (...) Localized presentation of the FGF ligand, Branchless, to tracheal cells that express the FGF receptor, Breathless, guides migration. Once cell migration is initiated, distinct cell fates are determined within each migrating branch. Finally, inhibitory feedback mechanisms ensure the correct assignment of these fates. Tracheal cell fate choices are determined by signaling cascades triggered by signals emanating from the tracheal cells, as well as by ligands produced by adjacent tissues. BioEssays 22:219–226, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Scaling of pattern with size has been described and studied for over a century, yet its molecular basis is understood in only a few cases. In a recent, elegant study, Inomata and colleagues proposed a new model explaining how bone morphogenic protein (BMP) activity gradient scales with embryo size in the early Xenopus laevis embryo. We discuss their results in conjunction with an alternative model we proposed previously. The expansion‐repression mechanism (ExR) provides a conceptual framework unifying both mechanisms. Results of (...) Inomata and colleagues implicate the chordin‐stabilizing protein sizzled as the expander molecule enabling scaling, while we attributed this role to the BMP ligand Admp. The two expanders may work in concert, as suggested by the mathematical model of Inomata et al. We discuss approaches for differentiating the contribution of sizzled and Admp to pattern scaling. (shrink)

This article focuses on the location of the duty of loyalty—a unique legal norm in Common Law jurisdictions—both actual and desirable, on the continuum between rules and standards. A rule is a relatively ‘closed’ technical norm, at a high level of specificity; it requires little judicial discretion. A standard is an ‘open’ norm, with a greater degree of flexibility, that requires the exercise of discretion. The insights from this jurisprudential perspective are used to reveal the preferred way for further developing (...) the duty of loyalty. The article explains that ‘loyalty,’ intuitively classified as a ‘pure’ standard, has been reconstructed over time as more specific rules. Moreover, it suggests that, ideally, this movement should continue; namely, when applying loyalty to a specific case, courts should include informative content that would promote predictability. It then illustrates that, unfortunately, this road is not always taken by the courts. A decision to retain loyalty as an ad hoc standard, or an inverse attempt to delineate the boundaries of this norm, has implications on the certainty, consistency, and ethical content of the law. Considering that this duty spreads across different legal fields, personal and commercial, the significance of this discussion becomes all the more evident. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative SymposiumPersonal Narratives Experiences of Psychiatric HospitalizationV. Barnard, J. Carson, Eugene Doe, Robin Driben, Anonymous One, Anonymous Two, Charles Kelley, Michael Kerins, D. Millman, Anonymous Three, Viesia Novosielski, Ben Zion, and Anonymous Four• Dreaming: A Recovery Story• The Intervention of the Demon• Bent but Not Broken• Tortured Souls Do Not Rest• Homesick• A Professional Patient No More• My Spiritual Journey• Personal Account of Psychiatric Hospitalization• Psychiatric Hospitalization Story• (...) As Ice Is to Water• The Power Of Human-To-Human Contact• Dignity• HospitalizationCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative SymposiumPersonal Narratives Experiences of Psychiatric HospitalizationV. Barnard, J. Carson, Eugene Doe, Robin Driben, Anonymous One, Anonymous Two, Charles Kelley, Michael Kerins, D. Millman, Anonymous Three, Viesia Novosielski, Ben Zion, and Anonymous Four• Dreaming: A Recovery Story• The Intervention of the Demon• Bent but Not Broken• Tortured Souls Do Not Rest• Homesick• A Professional Patient No More• My Spiritual Journey• Personal Account of Psychiatric Hospitalization• Psychiatric Hospitalization Story• (...) As Ice Is to Water• The Power Of Human-To-Human Contact• Dignity• HospitalizationCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narrative SymposiumPersonal Narratives Experiences of Psychiatric HospitalizationV. Barnard, J. Carson, Eugene Doe, Robin Driben, Anonymous One, Anonymous Two, Charles Kelley, Michael Kerins, D. Millman, Anonymous Three, Viesia Novosielski, Ben Zion, and Anonymous Four• Dreaming: A Recovery Story• The Intervention of the Demon• Bent but Not Broken• Tortured Souls Do Not Rest• Homesick• A Professional Patient No More• My Spiritual Journey• Personal Account of Psychiatric Hospitalization• Psychiatric Hospitalization Story• (...) As Ice Is to Water• The Power Of Human-To-Human Contact• Dignity• HospitalizationCopyright © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Stel dat een inbreker bij jou thuis alleen de lijsten van de kunstwerken zou wegnemen, en niet de werken zelf. Wat zou er veranderen in je omgang met de kunst? Met dat gedachte-experiment opent de Franse filosoof Jacques Derrida het essay Parergon. Parergon betekent bijzaak in het Grieks. Zoals bijvoorbeeld de lijst van het schilderij, of het kader van een opgehangen foto. Ze behoren niet tot het kunstwerk. En toch zijn ze van groot belang voor hoe het werk bekeken wordt. (...) De belangwekkende tekst van Derrida uit 1974 geeft een centrale rol aan de bijzaak van het kader. Met filosofische acrobatie maneuvreert de denker tussen de grote klassiekers van de kunstfilosofie: Plato, Kant, Hegel en Heidegger. Hij gaat op een speelse manier met hun erfenis om. Woorden worden omgedraaid. Passages die op het eerste gezicht bijzaak lijken, maakt hij tot hoofdrolspelers van zijn betoog. Dit boek presenteert Derridas belangrijkste tekst over beeldende kunst voor de eerste keer in Nederlandse vertaling. Het boek is vormgegeven door de spraakmakende ontwerpster Ines Cox. Vertaler Ben Overlaet schreef een nawoord dat de tekst van de nodige filosofische en historische context voorziet. (shrink)

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on the logical structure of intentional action, on the (...) question of whether basic actions are tryings, and on the notion of “options” in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

This book presents an original comprehensive approach to some of the most difficult problems concerning sense-perception and other mental states. After rejecting prevailing approaches, the author presents his own viewpoint which may be characterized as direct, critical realism. Basing his conclusions on conceptual analysis, psychological evidence and historical considerations, the author is able to offer new insights into traditionally unsolved problems concerning the nature of perceptual states, the ontological status of perceptual environment, the cognitive mechanism in perception and the explanation (...) of perceptual mistakes. The book also discusses the implications of this approach for other mental states such as memory and consciousness. (shrink)

This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.

The evidence most of us have for our beliefs on global climate change, the extent of human contribution to it, and appropriate anticipatory and mitigating actions turns crucially on epistemic trust. We extend trust or distrust to many varied others: scientists performing original research, intergovernmental agencies and those reviewing research, think tanks offering critique and advocating skepticism, journalists transmitting and interpreting claims, even social systems of modern science such as peer-reviewed publication and grant allocation. Our personal experiences and assessments of (...) evidential indicators themselves may be buttressed significantly by trust, not just in. (shrink)

The daring idea that convention - human decision - lies at the root of so-called necessary truths, on the one hand, and much of empirical science, on the other, reverberates through twentieth-century philosophy, constituting a revolution comparable to Kant's Copernican revolution. Conventionalism is the first comprehensive study of this radical turn. One of the conclusions it reaches is that the term 'truth by convention', widely held to epitomize conventionalism, reflects a misunderstanding that has led to the association of conventionalism with (...) relativism and postmodernism. Conventionalism, this book argues, did not contend that truths can be stipulated, but rather, that stipulations are often confused with truths. Their efforts were thus directed toward disentangling truth and convention, not reducing truth to convention."--Jacket. (shrink)

Liberalism is the dominant ideology of our time, yet its character remains the subject of intense scholarly and political controversy. Inspired by the work of Michael Freeden, this book brings together an internationally-respected cast of scholars to debate liberalism and to redefine the very essence of what it is to be a liberal.

Efforts to promote equitable public policy with algorithms appear to be fundamentally constrained by the “impossibility of fairness” (an incompatibility between mathematical definitions of fairness). This technical limitation raises a central question about algorithmic fairness: How can computer scientists and policymakers support equitable policy reforms with algorithms? In this article, I argue that promoting justice with algorithms requires reforming the methodology of algorithmic fairness. First, I diagnose the problems of the current methodology for algorithmic fairness, which I call “formal algorithmic (...) fairness.” Because formal algorithmic fairness restricts analysis to isolated decision-making procedures, it leads to the impossibility of fairness and to models that exacerbate oppression despite appearing “fair.” Second, I draw on theories of substantive equality from law and philosophy to propose an alternative methodology, which I call “substantive algorithmic fairness.” Because substantive algorithmic fairness takes a more expansive scope of analysis, it enables an escape from the impossibility of fairness and provides a rigorous guide for alleviating injustice with algorithms. In sum, substantive algorithmic fairness presents a new direction for algorithmic fairness: away from formal mathematical models of “fair” decision-making and toward substantive evaluations of whether and how algorithms can promote justice in practice. (shrink)

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

Recent works by feminist and social epistemologists have carefully mapped the contours of epistemic injustice, including gaslighting and prejudicial credibility deficits, prejudicial credibility excesses, willful hermeneutical ignorance, discursive injustices, contributory injustice, and epistemic exploitation. As we look at this burgeoning literature, attention has been concentrated mainly in four areas in descending order of emphasis: phenomena of epistemic injustice themselves, including the nature of wrongdoings involved, attendant consequences and repercussions, individual and structural changes for prevention or mitigation, and restorative, restitutive, or (...) retributive responses. This project urges greater attention to the last of these, and to that end offers a relational approach to epistemic justice drawing upon Margaret Walker’s work on moral repair and reparative justice. In developing and enacting better epistemic practices, how can such practices be made meaningfully restorative: not only recognizing the prospects for epistemic improvement, but responding to the perpetration and experience of epistemic injustice with effective epistemic amelioration? (shrink)

The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities in the historical sciences, and in the process, blur the distinction between the historical sciences and the experimental sciences: all sciences deploy theories about the world in their investigations.

Background Voluntary assisted dying became lawful in Victoria, the first Australian state to permit this practice, in 2019 via the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2017 (Vic). While conscientious objection by individual health professionals is protected by the Victorian legislation, objections by institutions are governed by policy. No research has been conducted in Victoria, and very little research conducted internationally, on how institutional objection is experienced by patients seeking assisted dying. Methods 28 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 family caregivers and (...) one patient about the experience of 28 patients who sought assisted dying. Participants were interviewed during August-November 2021. Data from the 17 interviews (all with family caregivers) which reported institutional objection were analysed thematically. Results Participants reported institutional objection affecting eligibility assessments, medication access, and taking the medication or having it administered. Institutional objection occurred across health settings and was sometimes communicated obliquely. These objections resulted in delays, transfers, and choices between progressing an assisted dying application and receiving palliative or other care. Participants also reported objections causing adverse emotional experiences and distrust of objecting institutions. Six mediating influences on institutional objections were identified: staff views within objecting institutions; support of external medical practitioners and pharmacists providing assisted dying services; nature of a patient’s illness; progression or state of a patient’s illness; patient’s geographical location; and the capability and assertiveness of a patient and/or caregiver. Conclusions Institutional objection to assisted dying is much-debated yet empirically understudied. This research found that in Victoria, objections were regularly reported by participants and adversely affected access to assisted dying and the wider end-of-life experience for patients and caregivers. This barrier arises in an assisted dying system that is already procedurally challenging, particularly given the limited window patients have to apply. Better regulation may be needed as Victoria’s existing policy approach appears to preference institutional positions over patient’s choice given existing power dynamics. (shrink)

The structuring of our environment to provide cues and reminders for ourselves is common: We leave notes on the fridge, we have a particular place for our keys where we deposit them, making them easy to find. We alter our world to streamline our cognitive tasks. But how did hominins gain this capacity? What pushed our ancestors to structure their physical environment in ways that buffered thinking and began the process of using the world cognitively? I argue that the capacity (...) to engage in these behaviours is a by-product of increased tool investment and tool curation, which in turn was necessary because of increasingly heterogeneous environments. The minute tools are carried and cared for, they begin to undergo selection for added functions, becoming available as cognitive primers and as signals. I explore the trajectory of this co-evolutionary feedback loop of hominins and their tools, and demonstrate the role tools have in shaping our thinking. (shrink)

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, on the relationship between individual emissions and climate change, that “we cannot claim to know that it is morally wrong to drive a gas guzzler just for fun” or engage in other inessential emissions-producing individual activities. His concern is not uncertainty about the phenomenon of climate change, nor about human contribution to it. Rather, on Sinnott-Armstrong’s analysis the claim of individual moral responsibility for emissions must be grounded in a defensible moral principle, yet no principle withstands scrutiny. (...) I argue thatthe moral significance of individual emissions is obscured by this critique. I offer a moral principle, the threshold-contribution principle, capable of withstanding Sinnott-Armstrong’s criticisms while also plausibly explaining what’s wrong with gas-guzzling joyrides and other gratuitous emissions-producing individual acts. (shrink)

Several recent publications in biomedical ethics argue that organ donation is generally morally obligatory and failure to do so is morally indefensible. Arguments for this moral conclusion tend to be of two kinds: arguments from fairness and arguments from easy rescue. While I agree that many of us have a duty to donate, in this article I criticize these arguments for a general duty of organ donation and their application to organ procurement policy. My concern is that these arguments neglect (...) the role that trust plays in contemporary organ transplant policies and in differential rational attitudes toward donation. Recognizing donation as an achievement of trust, and acknowledging the warrant of many people's rational distrust or withheld trust in medicine, I argue, should have significant implications for the ethics of organ procurement. (shrink)

In Parts of Classes and "Mathematics is Megethology" David Lewis shows how the ideology of set membership can be dispensed with in favor of parthood and plural quantification. Lewis's theory has it that singletons are mereologically simple and leaves the relationship between a thing and its singleton unexplained. We show how, by exploiting Kit Fine's mereology, we can resolve Lewis's mysteries about the singleton relation and vindicate the claim that a thing is a part of its singleton.

The evolution of cognition literature is dominated by views that presume the evolution of underlying neural structures. However, recent models of cognition reemphasize the role of physiological structures, development, and external resources as important components of cognition. This article argues that these alternative models of cognition challenge our understanding of human cognitive evolution. As a case study, it focuses on rehabilitating bipedalism as a crucial moment in human evolution. The australopithecines are often seen as “merely” bipedal chimpanzees, with a similar (...) suite of behaviors. But an embodied, developmental approach to understanding australopithecine cognitive abilities shows that the transition between australopithecines and the emergence of the Homo genus is less of a break than is often thought. Bipedalism on this view is not just a physiological and behavioral breakthrough: it represents a major cognitive leap as well. (shrink)

As a moral foundation for vegetarianism and other consumer choices, act consequentialism can be appealing. When we justify our consumer and dietary choices this way, however, we face the problem that our individual actions rarely actually precipitate more just agricultural and economic practices. This threshold or individual impotence problem engaged by consequentialist vegetarians and their critics extends to morally motivated consumer decision-making more generally, anywhere a lag persists between individual moral actions taken and systemic moral progress made. Regan and others (...) press just this point against Singer's utilitarian basis for vegetarianism; recently Chartier criticizes act-consequentialist vegetarianism by identifying many factors weakening the connection between individual meat purchases and changes in animal production. While such factors are relevant to act-consequentialist moral reasoning, I argue, they need not defeat the act-consequentialist case for vegetarianism and consumer ethics. This is shown by offering a probabilistic account of the threshold issue and discussing the positive and negative role-modelling effects of our morally motivated dietary and consumer choices. (shrink)

I review the book “Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate” by Derek Turner. Turner suggests that philosophers should take seriously the historical sciences such as geology when considering philosophy of science issues. To that end, he explores the scientific realism debate with the historical sciences in mind. His conclusion is a view allied to that of Arthur Fine: a view Turner calls the natural historical attitude. While I find Turner’s motivations good, I find his characterisation of the (...) historical sciences unconvincing. I say why in a section at the end of the review. The result is that I am unpersuaded by his thesis. (shrink)

We revisit the foundations of positive model theory, introducing h-inductive sentences. These allow a considerably simplified presentation of positive model theory, as well as a characterisation of Hausdorff cats by an amalgamation property of their h-inductive theory.

Not every metaphor can be literally paraphrased by a corresponding simile – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is not the literal meaning of ‘Juliet is like the sun’. But every metaphor can be literally paraphrased, since if ‘metaphorically’ is prefixed to a metaphor, the result says literally what the metaphor says figuratively – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is the literal meaning of ‘metaphorically, Juliet is the sun’.

We prove that under reasonable assumptions, every cat (compact abstract theory) is metric, and develop some of the theory of metric cats. We generalise Morley's theorem: if a countable Hausdorff cat T has a unique complete model of density character Λ ≥ ω₁, then it has a unique complete model of density character Λ for every Λ ≥ ω₁.

Interactive robots are used increasingly not only in entertainment and service robotics, but also in rehabilitation, therapy and education. The work presented in this paper is part of the Aurora project, rooted in assistive technology and robot-human interaction research. Our primary aim is to study if robots can potentially be used as therapeutically or educationally useful ‘toys’. In this paper we outline the aims of the project that this study belongs to, as well as the specific qualitative contextual perspective that (...) is being used. We then provide an in-depth evaluation, in part using Conversation Analysis, of segments of trials where three children with autism interacted with a robot as well as an adult. We focus our analysis primarily on joint attention which plays a fundamental role in human development and social understanding. Joint attention skills of children with autism have been studied extensively in autism research and therefore this behaviour provides a relevant focus for our study. In the setting used, joint attention emerges from natural and spontaneous interactions between a child and an adult. We present the data in the form of transcripts and photo stills. The examples were selected from extensive video footage for illustrative purposes, i.e. demonstrating how children with autism can respond to the changing behaviour of their co-participant, i.e. the experimenter. Furthermore, our data shows that the robot provides a salient object, or mediator for joint attention. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of this work in the context of further studies with robots and children with autism within the Aurora project, as well as the potential contribution of robots to research into the nature of autism. (shrink)