The double membrane of the nuclear envelope is a formidable barrier separating the nucleus and cytoplasm of eukaryotic cells. However, movement of specific macromolecules across the nuclear envelope is critical for embryonic development, cell growth and differentiation. Transfer of molecules between the nucleus and cytoplasm occurs through the aqueous channel formed by the nuclear pore complex (NPC)Abbreviations: NPC, nuclear pore complex; GlcNac, N‐acetylglucosamine; WGA, wheat germ agglutinin. Although small molecules may simply diffuse across the NPC, transport of large proteins and (...) RNA requires specific transport signals and is energy dependent. A family of pore glycoproteins modified by O‐linked N‐acetylglucosamine moieties are essential for transport through the NPC. Recent evidence suggests that the regulation of nuclear transport may also involve the inteaction of RNA and nuclear proteins with specific binding proteins that recognize these transport signals. Are these nuclear pore glycoproteins and signal binding proteins the ‘gatekeepers’ that control access to the genetic material? Recent evidence obtained from a combination of biochemical and genetic approaches suggests – perhaps. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

We estimate that 208,000 deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices have been implanted to address neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. DBS Think Tank presenters pooled data and determined that DBS expanded in its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 providing a space where clinicians, engineers, researchers from industry and academia discuss current and emerging DBS technologies and logistical and ethical issues facing the field. (...) The emphasis is on cutting edge research and collaboration aimed to advance the DBS field. The Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank was held virtually on September 1 and 2, 2020 (Zoom Video Communications) due to restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The meeting focused on advances in: (1) optogenetics as a tool for comprehending neurobiology of diseases and on optogenetically-inspired DBS, (2) cutting edge of emerging DBS technologies, (3) ethical issues affecting DBS research and access to care, (4) neuromodulatory approaches for depression, (5) advancing novel hardware, software and imaging methodologies, (6) use of neurophysiological signals in adaptive neurostimulation, and (7) use of more advanced technologies to improve DBS clinical outcomes. There were 178 attendees who participated in a DBS Think Tank survey, which revealed the expansion of DBS into several indications such as obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction and Alzheimer’s disease. This proceedings summarizes the advances discussed at the Eighth Annual DBS Think Tank. (shrink)

DBS Think Tank IX was held on August 25–27, 2021 in Orlando FL with US based participants largely in person and overseas participants joining by video conferencing technology. The DBS Think Tank was founded in 2012 and provides an open platform where clinicians, engineers and researchers can freely discuss current and emerging deep brain stimulation technologies as well as the logistical and ethical issues facing the field. The consensus among the DBS Think Tank IX speakers was that DBS expanded in (...) its scope and has been applied to multiple brain disorders in an effort to modulate neural circuitry. After collectively sharing our experiences, it was estimated that globally more than 230,000 DBS devices have been implanted for neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. As such, this year’s meeting was focused on advances in the following areas: neuromodulation in Europe, Asia and Australia; cutting-edge technologies, neuroethics, interventional psychiatry, adaptive DBS, neuromodulation for pain, network neuromodulation for epilepsy and neuromodulation for traumatic brain injury. (shrink)

Philosophers and historians of science have tended to denigrate the status and usefulness of the practice of natural history. The development of biology in this century is seen as the replacement of an older, descriptive and speculative method with a quantitative, experimental and well-founded science. This account embodies a philosophical view about the nature of science, which deems certain kinds of evidence and certain ways of producing knowledge appropriate. Natural history is seen as inadequate, providing insufficient support for establishing theory. (...) ;I develop a case study which shows this account to be incorrect. The case study concerns the debate over the role of geographical isolation in speciation between 1905 and 1907. After some preliminary historical background to the debate, I present a detailed discussion of the arguments made by naturalist David Starr Jordan . The debate that ensued centered on the kinds of evidence one should use in doing science--fieldwork versus experiments. Thus, this case study offers excellent subject matter for understanding natural history. ;After examining the debate and its participants in some detail, we can see that at the heart of this debate is an epistemological issue over what virtues are central to science. In particular, while natural historians like Jordan were advocating an approach which emphasized the consilience of inductions--and hence a variety of kinds of evidence--a more experimentally oriented group of biologists were advocating the centrality of replication and hence argued that all non-experimental forms of evidence should be abandoned. Contrary to expectations, the naturalists had the better theory. (shrink)

We live in a morally flawed world. Our lives are complicated by what other people do, and by the harms that flow from our social, economic and political institutions. Our relations as individuals to these collective harms constitute the domain of complicity. This book examines the relationship between collective responsibility and individual guilt. It presents a rigorous philosophical account of the nature of our relations to the social groups in which we participate, and uses that account in a discussion of (...) contemporary moral theory. Christopher Kutz shows that the two prevailing theories of moral philosophy, Kantianism and consequentialism, both have difficulties resolving problems of complicity. He then argues for a richer theory of accountability in which any real understanding of collective action not only allows but demands individual responsibility. (shrink)

Can we understand what makes someone the same person without understanding what it is to be a person? Prereflectively we might not think so, but philosophers often accord these questions separate treatments, with personal-identity theorists claiming the first question and free-will theorists the second. Yet much of what is of interest to a person—the possibility of survival over time, compensation for past hardships, concern for future projects, or moral responsibility—is not obviously intelligible from the perspective of either question alone. Marya (...) Schechtman encourages us to adopt a more unified perspective. (shrink)

Michel Serres is a major twentieth-century thinker who has made decisive contributions to major debates across disciplines ranging from the history of science to literary studies and philosophy. This is the first monograph to offer a comprehensive assessment of Serres’ thought from his early work on Leibniz to his final publications in 2019. The first three chapters carefully explore Serres’ ‘global intuition’, how he understands and engages with the world, and his characteristic ‘figures of thought’, the repeated intellectual moves that (...) characterize his unique approach. Chapters Four to Six explore in detail Serres’ revolutionary contributions to three key areas: language, objects, and ecology. (shrink)

For many Americans, the election of Barack Obama as the country's first black president signaled that we had become a post-racial nation - some even suggested that race was no longer worth discussing. Of course, the evidence tells a very different story. And while social scientists are fully engaged in examining the facts of race, normative political thought has failed to grapple with race as an interesting moral case or as a focus in the expansive theory of social justice. Political (...) thought's under participation in the debate over the status of blacks in American society raises serious concerns since the main academic task of political theory is to adjudicate discrepancies between the demands of ideal justice and social realities. Christopher J. Lebron contends that it is the duty of political thought to address the moral problems that attend racial inequality and to make those problems salient to a democratic polity. Thus, in The Color of Our Shame, he asks two major questions. First, given the success of the Civil Rights Act and the sharp decline in overt racist norms, how can we explain the persistence of systemic racial inequality? Second, once we have settled on an explanation, what might political philosophy have to offer in terms of a solution? In order to answer these questions Lebron suggests that we reconceive of racial inequality as a condition that marks the normative status of black citizens in the eyes of the nation. He argues that our collective response to racial inequality ought to be shame. While we reject race as a reason for marginalizing blacks on the basis of liberal democratic ideals, we fail to live up to those ideals - a situation that Lebron sees as a failure of national character. Drawing on a wide array of resources including liberal theory, virtue ethics, history, and popular culture, Lebron proposes a move toward a "perfectionist politics" that would compel a higher level of racially relevant moral excellence from individuals and institutions and enable America to meet the democratic ideals that it has set for itself. (shrink)

Fundamental Causation addresses issues in the metaphysics of deterministic singular causation, the metaphysics of events, property instances, facts, preventions, and omissions, as well as the debate between causal reductionists and causal anti-reductionists. The book also pays special attention to causation and causal structure in physics. Weaver argues that causation is a multigrade obtaining relation that is transitive, irreflexive, and asymmetric. When causation is singular, deterministic and such that it relates purely contingent events, the relation is also universal, intrinsic, and well-founded. (...) He shows that proper causal relata are events understood as states of substances at ontological indices. He then proves that causation cannot be reduced to some non-causal base, and that the best account of that relation should be unashamedly primitivist about the dependence relation that underwrites its very nature. The book demonstrates a distinctive realist and anti-reductionist account of causation by detailing precisely how the account outperforms reductionist and competing anti-reductionist accounts in that it handles all of the difficult cases while overcoming all of the general objections to anti-reductionism upon which other anti-reductionist accounts falter. This book offers an original and interesting view of causation and will appeal to scholars and advanced students in the areas of metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of physics. (shrink)

This book is about fundamental questions in normative ethics. It begins with the idea that we often respond to ethical theories according to how principled or pragmatic they are. It clarifies this contrast and then uses it to shed light on old debates in ethics, such as debates about the rival merits of consequentialist and deontological views. Using the idea that principled views seem most appealing in dilemmas of acquiescence, it goes on to develop a novel theory of pattern-based reasons. (...) These are reasons to play one’s part in some larger pattern of action because of the goodness or rightness of that pattern. Existing accounts of pattern-based reasons usually assume that such reasons can exist only in cooperative contexts. This book rejects that assumption, and claims instead that we can have pattern-based reasons even when the other agents involved in the pattern are wholly unwilling to cooperate. The result is a pluralist teleological structure for ethics, with similarities to some forms of Rule Consequentialism. Woodard claims that this structure achieves an attractive balance between the two virtues of being pragmatic and being principled. (shrink)

BackgroundAs hospitals have grown more complex, the ethical concerns they confront have grown correspondingly complicated. Many hospitals have consequently developed health care ethics programs (HCEPs) that include far more than ethics consultation services alone. Yet systematic research on these programs is lacking.MethodsBased on a national, cross-sectional survey of a stratified sample of 600 US hospitals, we report on the prevalence, scope, activities, staffing, workload, financial compensation, and greatest challenges facing HCEPs.ResultsAmong 372 hospitals whose informants responded to an online survey, 97% (...) of hospitals have HCEPs. Their scope includes clinical ethics functions in virtually all hospitals, but includes other functions in far fewer hospitals: ethical leadership (35.7%), regulatory compliance (29.0%), business ethics (26.2%), and research ethics (12.6%). HCEPs are responsible for providing ongoing ethics education to various target audiences including all staff (77.0%), nurses (59.9%), staff physicians (49.0%), hospital leadership (44.2%), medical residents (20.3%) and the community/general public (18.4%). HCEPs staff are most commonly involved in policy work through review of existing policies but are less often involved in development of new policies. HCEPs have an ethics representative in executive leadership in 80.5% of hospitals, have representation on other hospital committees in 40.7%, are actively engaged in community outreach in 22.6%, and lead large-scale ethics quality improvement initiatives in 17.7%. In general, major teaching hospitals and urban hospitals have the most highly integrated ethics programs with the broadest scope and greatest number of activities. Larger hospitals, academically affiliated hospitals, and urban hospitals have significantly more individuals performing HCEP work and significantly more individuals receiving financial compensation specifically for that work. Overall, the most common greatest challenge facing HCEPs is resource shortages, whereas underutilization is the most common greatest challenge for hospitals with fewer than 100 beds. Respondents’ strategies for managing challenges include staff training and additional funds.ConclusionsWhile this study must be cautiously interpreted due to its limitations, the findings may be useful for understanding the characteristics of HCEPs in US hospitals and the factors associated with these characteristics. This information may contribute to exploring ways to strengthen HCEPs. (shrink)

Food, Animals, and the Environment: An Ethical Approach examines some of the main impacts that agriculture has on humans, nonhumans, and the environment, as well as some of the main questions that these impacts raise for the ethics of food production, consumption, and activism. Agriculture is having a lasting effect on this planet. Some forms of agriculture are especially harmful. For example, industrial animal agriculture kills 100+ billion animals per year; consumes vast amounts of land, water, and energy; and produces (...) vast amounts of waste, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions. Other forms, such as local, organic, and plant-based food, have many benefits, but they also have many costs, especially at scale. These impacts raise difficult ethical questions. What do we owe animals, plants, species, and ecosystems? What do we owe people in other nations and future generations? What are the ethics of risk, uncertainty, and collective harm? What is the meaning and value of natural food in a world reshaped by human activity? What are the ethics of supporting harmful industries when less harmful alternatives are available? What are the ethics of resisting harmful industries through activism, advocacy, and philanthropy? The discussion ranges over cutting-edge topics such as effective altruism, abolition and regulation, revolution and reform, individual and structural change, single-issue and multi-issue activism, and legal and illegal activism. This unique and accessible text is ideal for teachers, students, and anyone else interested in serious examination of one of the most complex and important moral problems of our time. (shrink)

I explore and reflect on recent attempts to address the general neglect in contemporary aesthetics of the aesthetic character of everyday experiences. Contrasting approaches from Sherri Irvin and Yuriko Saito, I introduce a familiar Kantian distinction in order to express a prominent concern, and motivate what I take to be the most defensible approach to this relatively new area of discussion. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?

Neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism has struggled to arrive at anything approaching a consensus regarding the notion of form. Contending that no ‘right-minded modern’ could embrace anything akin to Arist...

Applied ethics is home to numerous productive subfields such as procreative ethics, intergenerational ethics and environmental ethics. By contrast, there is far less ethical work on ageing, and there is no boundary work that attempts to set the scope for ‘ageing ethics’ or the ‘ethics of ageing’. Yet ageing is a fundamental aspect of life; arguably even more fundamental and ubiquitous than procreation. To remedy this situation, I examine conceptions of what the ethics of ageing might mean and argue that (...) these conceptions fail to capture the requirements of the desired subfield. The key reasons for this are, first, that they view ageing as something that happens only when one is old, thereby ignoring the fact that ageing is a process to which we are all subject, and second that the ageing person is treated as an object in ethical discourse rather than as its subject. In response to these shortcomings I put forward a better conception, one which places the ageing person at the centre of ethical analysis, has relevance not just for the elderly and provides a rich yet workable scope. While clarifying and justifying the conceptual boundaries of the subfield, the proposed scope pleasingly broadens the ethics of ageing beyond common negative associations with ageing. (shrink)

I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law’s (Relig Stud 46(3):353–373, 2010) evil god challenge.

Faced with the ambiguities of this world, in which ugliness and suffering co-exist with beauty, the article rejects the attribution of disvalues to a Fall-event. Instead it faces God's involvement even in violence and ugliness. It explores the concept of divine glory, understood principally as a sign of the divine reality. This includes both the great theophanies of the Hebrew Bible and Jesus’ glorification in his Passion and Crucifixion. It then considers the contemplation of the natural world, using the terminology (...) of “inscape” and “instress.” Divine glory can be discerned even in events as tragic as the Indian Ocean tsunami or the activity of the malarial mosquito. A full Christian contemplation of these events will include scientific understanding and poetic apprehension, and consideration of soteriology and eschatology as well as the theology of creation. Glory is understood to include God's power and sovereignty, and also the divine humility and sacrifice. (shrink)

BackgroundTo help inform the development of more accessible, acceptable, and effective ethics consultation (EC) training programs, we conducted an EC training needs assessment, exploring ethics practitioners’ opinions on: the relative importance of various EC practitioner competencies; the potential market for EC training (that is, how many individuals would benefit and how much individuals and hospitals would be willing to pay); and the preferred content, format, and characteristics of EC training.MethodsAs part of a multipart study, we surveyed “best informants” who self-identified (...) as the person most actively involved in EC or healthcare ethics in a random sample of 600 U.S. general hospitals, stratified for bed size.ResultsThe competency that was ranked most important for a lead or solo ethics consultant was knowledge of ethics, while common sense was ranked least important. The median estimated number of individuals at each hospital who would benefit from EC training was six at the basic level, three at the advanced level, and two for EC management training. In 19.1 percent of hospitals, respondents thought their hospital would not be willing to pay anything for EC training within the next two years. Respondents thought potential trainees would be likely to participate in EC training on multiple different topics. Opinions varied widely on preferred formats. Most respondents thought it very important to be able to interact with instructors and with other trainees, practice EC skills, receive a certificate for completing EC training, and complete EC training during work hours.ConclusionsThese findings provide U.S. population data that may be useful to healthcare educators and bioethics leaders in their efforts to develop EC training programs and products that match trainees’ preferences and needs. (shrink)

This article traces the radical devaluation of the phantasm throughout Western civilization. With the help of Nietzsche’s critical perspective, I develop a notion of hystery as the series of collective traumas repeated in each individual’s growth, whereby the phantasm changes value from psychosomatic interface, to evil incarnate, to disease of learning. Beginning with the Classical episteme represented by Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, then moving up through the Christian era, I focus primarily on Enlightenment thinkers such as Hobbes and Bacon, (...) who represent the last nail in the imagination’s coffin. The next section examines Nietzsche’s rediscovery of the phantasm and the theoretical contributions of post-structuralism that follow in Nietzsche’s wake. Juxtaposing Bataille and Deleuze, I look at Deleuze’s early enthusiasm and ultimate betrayal of the phantasm, and I posit Bataille’s emphasis on the affective force of the mythological phantasm as an insurrection to reclaim our experience and life along with it. The article ends with speculation, offering Bruno’s art of memory as an ontic and epistemic alternative to dominant Western hystery, other pasts opening to other possible futures, an ungrounding that paradoxically leads to a restoration of the human house in a re-enchanted cosmos. (shrink)

Optimistic predictions that genetic and genomic testing will provide health benefits have been tempered by the concern that individuals who receive their results may experience negative psychosocial outcomes. This potential ethical and clinical concern has prompted extensive conversations between policy‐makers, health researchers, ethicists, and the general public. Fortunately, the psychosocial consequences of such testing are subject to empirical investigation, and over the past quarter century, research that clarifies some of the types, likelihood, and severity of potential harms from learning the (...) results of the testing has accumulated. I aim to provide an overview of the findings of this research by looking at selected systematic reviews. This will convey the gist of the literature’s quality and coverage, reveal gaps in existing knowledge, and highlight promising areas for future scholarship. (shrink)

African ethical theories tend to hold that moral agents ought to be partial, in the sense that they should favour members of their family or close community. This is considered an advantage over the impartiality of many Western moral theories, which are regarded as having counterintuitive implications, such as the idea that it is unethical to save a family member before a stranger. The partiality of African ethics is thought to be particularly valuable in the context of bioethics. Thaddeus Metz, (...) in particular, argues that his African-derived theory best accounts for a number of plausible intuitions, such as the intuition that health care practitioners ought to be biased towards the patients for whom they are directly responsible. In this article, I claim that the plausible intuitions drawn on in favour of partiality can be satisfactorily explained on the basis of impartial moral theories. Moreover, I argue that blanket acceptance of partiality has problematic consequences for distributive justice in resource allocation in biomedical contexts. By contrast, impartial theories can justify plausible instances of partiality whilst avoiding the pitfalls of fully partial moral theories. Although this provides grounds for abandoning partiality in principle, I claim that this finding should not be seen as damaging to African medical ethics. Instead, it prompts investigation of underexplored possibilities of impartial African moral theories. To demonstrate the value of this direction, I sketch some novel and attractive conceptions that combine impartiality with elements of African ethics. (shrink)

The concept of identity has been seen to lead to paradox: we cannot truly and usefully say that a thing is the same either as itself or as something else. This book is a full examination of this paradox in philosophical logic, and of its implications for the philosophy of mathematics, the philosphy of mind, and relativism about identity. The author's account involves detailed discussion of the views of Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, and Hintikka.

In this article, we examine the advantages of simple metacognitive capabilities in a repeated social dilemma. Two types of metacognitive agent were developed and compared with a non-metacognitive agent and two fixed-strategy agents. The first type of metacognitive agent takes the perspective of the opponent to anticipate the opponent's future actions and respond accordingly. The other metacognitive agent predicts the opponent's next move based on the previous moves of the agent and the opponent. The modeler agent achieves better individual outcomes (...) than a non-metacognitive agent and is more successful at encouraging cooperation. The opponent-perspective agent, by contrast, fails to achieve these outcomes because it lacks important information about the opponent. These simple agents provide insights regarding modeling of metacognition in more complex tasks. (shrink)

This article explains and defends the idea that economic aims of education are as legitimate as any other, particularly liberal, aims. A particular conception of education is developed, which involves a significant vocational aspect, with two aims: individual fulfilment through employment and social well-being through economic prosperity. This account is to be contrasted both with training, which may be an essential component of education but which is not to be identified with it, and also with instrumental forms of vocational education (...) that do not take into account the need for satisfaction in the workplace. This conception is defended against various possible objections. (shrink)

Fortunately, there is heat; and Freudenthal is keen to promote it as an overlooked central factor in Aristotle’s theory of material substance. He begins in agreement with the many scholars who argue that Aristotle’s theory of the four elements underdetermines the plain fact that there are organic substances which exhibit both synchronic and diachronic unity. He goes further than most, however, by arguing that left unaugmented Aristotle’s account of the four basic elements would positively preclude the existence of these forms (...) of unity. For Aristotle embraces the Presocratic picture of the four elements as engaged in “endemic strife”, so constituted that their natural propensities lead them to separate and dissolve rather than to unite and synthesize. Thus, for example, each of the four elements has a natural direction, which ought to result in fire and air ever moving upward and away from earth and water, which will move downward if unimpeded. Hence, as Aristotle himself recognizes, some agent force is required to hold the four elements together when they are mixed. (shrink)

This book offers a fresh perspective on Richard Rorty by situating his work in the arena of political theory. Reinterpreting Rorty's much-maligned antirepresentationalism as a Romantic affirmation of the power of imaginative writing, Voparil firmly grounds Rorty in an American tradition that includes not only James and Dewey, but Emerson, Whitman, and James Baldwin, and initiates an overdue reassessment of this important thinker's value to the political discourse of the 21st century.

We show the Boxdot Conjecture holds for a limited but familiar range of Lemmon-Scott axioms. We re-introduce the language of essence and accident, first introduced by J. Marcos, and show how it aids our strategy.

The first comprehensive collection of the work of Richard Rorty, The Rorty Reader brings together the influential American philosopher’s essential essays from over four decades of writings. Offers a comprehensive introduction to Richard Rorty's life and body of work Brings key essays published across many volumes and journals into one collection, including selections from his final volume of philosophical papers, Philosophy as Cultural Politics ) Contains the previously unpublished essay, “Redemption from Egotism” Includes in-depth interviews, and several revealing autobiographical pieces (...) Represents the fullest portrait available today on Rorty’s relationship with American pragmatism and the trajectory of his thought. (shrink)

It has become increasingly common to point out that African morality is under-represented in ethical theorizing. However, it is less common to find arguments that this under-representation is unjustified. This latter claim tends to be simply assumed. In this paper I draw together arguments for this claim. In doing so, I make the case that the relative lack of attention paid to African moral ideas conflicts with epistemic and ethical values. In order to correct these shortcomings, moral theorists, broadly construed (...) as including descriptive and normative disciplines, have a duty to engage with and actively explore African moral ideas. I claim that Moral Foundations Theory is well suited to a descriptive exploratory project, and could provide a significant contribution to normative, African-derived moral theories that could be epistemically and ethically superior to their Western counterparts. (shrink)

We best understand Rule Consequentialism as a theory of pattern-based reasons, since it claims that we have reasons to perform some action because of the goodness of the pattern consisting of widespread performance of the same type of action in the same type of circumstances. Plausible forms of Rule Consequentialism are also pluralist, in the sense that, alongside pattern-based reasons, they recognise ordinary act-based reasons, based on the goodness of individual actions. However, Rule Consequentialist theories are distinguished from other pluralist (...) theories of pattern-based reasons by implausible claims about the relative importance of act-based and pattern-based reasons in different cases. Rule Consequentialists should give up these claims. They should either embrace some other pluralist pattern-based view, or reject pattern-based reasons altogether. Note, though, that these arguments apply only to compliance-based, rather than acceptance-based, versions of Rule Consequentialism. This suggests that these two kinds of theory are more different from each other than we might previously have realised. (shrink)

This article considers how professional knowledge should be assessed. It is maintained that the assessment of professional know-how raises distinctive issues from the assessment of know-how more generally. Intellectualist arguments which suggest that someone's giving an account of how to F should suffice for attributing to them knowledge of how to F are set out. The arguments fail to show that there is no necessary distinction between two kinds of know-how, namely the ability to F and knowing that w is (...) a way to F, such that the latter is more fundamental. The consequences of this failure for our understanding of professional assessment are then considered. The issue of the assessment of tacit knowledge is then addressed. It is concluded that there is no context-dependent codifiable or articulable propositional knowledge of how to F which could be substituted for being able to F and that therefore tacit knowledge can only be assessed in performance. The parallel with Gettier cases is reviewed and it is concluded that the provenance of accounts of and justifications for the attribution of know-how are not matters of indifference to its assessment. Finally, the question of evaluability or what Ryle would have called the applicability of intelligence epithets is discussed in relation to its relevance to our procedures for assessing practical knowledge. Once again, it is concluded that excellent performance is necessary to attribute excellence in know-how. However, the ability to give an account of how and why an agent would do something in hypothetical circumstances is also very important for the assessment of professional knowledge. (shrink)