Political polarisation in the United States offers opportunities to explore how beliefs about candidates – that they could save or destroy American society – impact people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Participants forecast their future emotional responses to the contentious 2020 U.S. presidential election, and reported their actual responses after the election outcome. Stronger beliefs about candidates were associated with forecasts of greater emotion in response to the election, but the strength of this relationship differed based on candidate preference. Trump supporters’ (...) forecast happiness more strongly related to beliefs that their candidate would save society than for Biden supporters. Biden supporters’ forecast anger and fear were more strongly related to beliefs that Trump would destroy society than vice versa. These forecasts mattered: predictions of lower happiness and greater anger if the non-preferred candidate won predicted voting, with Biden supporters voting more than Trump supporters. Generally, participants forecast more emotion than they experienced, but beliefs altered this tendency. Stronger beliefs predicted experiencing more happiness or more anger and fear about the election outcome than had been forecast. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms through which political polarisation and rhetoric can influence voting behaviour. (shrink)

Because idealizations frequently advance scientific understanding, many claim that falsehoods play an epistemic role. In this paper, we argue that these positions greatly overstate idealiza...

Under what conditions does machine learning (ML) model opacity inhibit the possibility of explaining and understanding phenomena? In this article, I argue that nonepistemic values give shape to the ML opacity problem even if we keep researcher interests fixed. Treating ML models as an instance of doing model-based science to explain and understand phenomena reveals that there is (i) an external opacity problem, where the presence of inductive risk imposes higher standards on externally validating models, and (ii) an internal opacity (...) problem, where greater inductive risk demands a higher level of transparency regarding the inferences the model makes. (shrink)

Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous.

Some people oppose abortion on the grounds that fetuses have full moral status and thus a right to not be killed. We argue that special obligations that hold between mother and fetus also hold between parents and their children. We argue that if these special obligations necessitate the sacrifice of bodily autonomy in the case of abortion, then they also necessitate the sacrifice of bodily autonomy in the case of organ donation. If we accept the argument that it is obligatory (...) to override a woman’s bodily autonomy for the sake of an unborn child’s survival, we must continue to override the bodily autonomy of parents to ensure the survival of their living children, until the parent no longer has a special obligation to their child to the same degree as their special obligation to the fetus. And if the life of a child is truly more important than the bodily autonomy of its parents, as must be the case to force women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term, this should remain true until such a time that their children are no longer considered their responsibility. Thus, parity of reasoning suggests that policies compelling the gestation of a fetus should be accompanied by policies compelling organ donation. (shrink)

We argued in a recent issue of this journal that if abortion is restricted,1 then there are parallel obligations for parents to donate body parts to their children. The strength of this obligation to donate is proportional to the strength of the abortion restrictions. If abortion is never permissible, then a parent must always donate any organ if they are a match. If abortion is sometimes permissible and sometimes not, then organ donation is sometimes obligatory and sometimes not. Our argument (...) was based on the following ideas: (a) that a fetus has full moral status, (b) that parents have special obligations to their offspring, fetus or not, and (c) that this special obligation is to protect them. The result is the conclusion that abortion restrictivists cannot also consistently deny that organ donation should be compulsory. (shrink)

This book draws its inspiration from Hilbert, Wittgenstein, Cavaillès and Lakatos and is designed to reconfigure contemporary philosophy of mathematics by making the growth of knowledge rather than its foundations central to the study of mathematical rationality, and by analyzing the notion of growth in historical as well as logical terms. Not a mere compendium of opinions, it is organised in dialogical forms, with each philosophical thesis answered by one or more historical case studies designed to support, complicate or question (...) it. The first part of the book examines the role of scientific theory and empirical fact in the growth of mathematical knowledge. The second examines the role of abstraction, analysis and axiomatization. The third raises the question of whether the growth of mathematical knowledge constitutes progress, and how progress may be understood. Readership: Students and scholars concerned with the history and philosophy of mathematics and the formal sciences. (shrink)

This article contributes to a growing conversation about the role of numbers in promoting gendered agendas in potentially contradictory ways. Drawing from interviews with gender advisors—the professionals tasked with mainstreaming gender in development projects—in an East African country, I begin from the paradox that gender advisors articulate a strong preference for qualitative data to best capture the lives of the women they aim to assist while voicing a need for quantitative metrics. I demonstrate that gender advisors come to imagine metrics (...) as expeditious bureaucratic tools able to inspire cooperation from otherwise reluctant coworkers. I argue that development organizations are gendered in ways—acutely seen in how advisors struggle, are sidelined, and attempt to advance their goals with numbers—that lead to the utility of valuing quantitative metrics over qualitative ones. I establish two theoretical contributions: Gendered organizations theory is essential to understanding the adoption and globalization of performance metrics, and in an age of evidence-based decision making, the utility of quantified data to garner resources is heightened, rewarding those who adopt quantified knowledge production. I coin the term “the paradox of quantified utility” to describe how these material advantages encourage even skeptics to value quantitative metrics. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a devastating impact on care homes in the United Kingdom, particularly for those residents living with dementia. The impetus for this article comes from a recent review conducted by the authors. That review, a qualitative media analysis of news and academic articles published during the first few months of the outbreak, identified ethical care as a key theme warranting further investigation within the context of the crisis. To explore ethical care further, a set of salient (...) ethical values for delivering care to care home residents living with dementia during the pandemic was derived from a synthesis of relevant ethical standards, codes and philosophical approaches. The ethical values identified were caring, non-maleficence, beneficence, procedural justice, dignity in death and dying, well-being, safety, and personhood. Using these ethical values as a framework, alongside examples from contemporaneous media and academic sources, this article discusses the delivery of ethical care to care home residents with dementia within the context of COVID-19. The analysis identifies positive examples of ethical values displayed by care home staff, care sector organisations, healthcare professionals and third sector advocacy organisations. However, concerns relating to the death rates, dignity, safety, well-being and personhood – of residents and staff – are also evident. These shortcomings are attributable to negligent government strategy, which resulted in delayed guidance, lack of resources and Personal Protective Equipment, unclear data, and inconsistent testing. Consequently, this review demonstrates the ways in which care homes are underfunded, under resourced and undervalued. (shrink)

Exploring the intimate tie between body movement and space and time, Lee begins with the position that body movement generates space and time and explores the ethical implications of this responsibility for the situations one’s body movements generate. Whiteness theory has come to recognize the ethical responsibility for situations not of one’s own making and hence accountability for the results of more than one’s immediate personal conscious decisions. Because of our specific history, whites have developed a particular embodiment and body (...) movement that generates places that can only be characterized as more comfortable and more enabling to whites. (shrink)

To ensure that the information resulting from research is relevant to patients, the Patient‐Centered Outcomes Research Institute eschews the “traditional health research” paradigm, in which investigators drive all aspects of research, in favor of one in which patients assume the role of research partner. If we accept the premise that patient engagement can offer fresh perspectives that shape research in valuable ways, then at least two important sets of questions present themselves. First, how are patients being engaged—and how should they (...) be engaged? Second, which patients are being engaged—and which patients should be? This set has received relatively less attention, and the neglect is surprising, given that the “who” question is conceptually prior to the question of “how.”This article focuses attention on the “who” of patient engagement in research. First, we provide background on the rationale for patient engagement, underscoring the importance of ensuring the representativeness of engaged patients. Second, we present what little is known about patients engaged in PCORI‐funded research. Third, we identify and discuss the ethical implications of ways in which current practices of patient identification and recruitment may lead to a lack of representativeness. These practices include reliance on the well‐connected and well‐informed, reliance on patients who are not well trained or well‐informed, and reliance on patient advocacy organizations. Finally, we consider several strategies for addressing these pitfalls in order to maximize the positive goals of patient engagement. Patient engagement is intended to address the inability of researchers, funders, and others to fully represent patient views and priorities, but without sufficient attention, the patients selected for this role may still leave important gaps. (shrink)

This essay explores how the distinctively anthropological concept of culture provides uniquely valuable insights into the workings of science in its cultural context. Recent efforts by anthropologists to dislodge the traditional notion of culture as a homogenous, stable whole have opened up a variety of ways of imagining culture that place power differentials, flux, and contradiction at its center. Including attention to a wide variety of social domains outside the laboratory, attending to the ways nonscientists actively engage with scientific knowledge, (...) and focusing on the complex interactions that flow both into and out of research laboratories are ways the activities of both scientists and nonscientists can be situated in the heterogeneous matrtx of culture. Three images—the citadel, the rhizome, and the string figure—allow us to picture the discontinuous ways science both permeates and is permeated by cultural life. (shrink)

Frege argues that number is so unlike the things we accept as properties of external objects that it cannot be such a property. In particular, (1) number is arbitrary in a way that qualities are not, and (2) number is not predicated of its subjects in the way that qualities are. Most Aristotle scholars suppose either that Frege has refuted Aristotle's number theory or that Aristotle avoids Frege's objections by not making numbers properties of external objects. This has led some (...) to conclude that Aristotle's accounts of arithmetical and geometrical objects differ substantially. I close this supposed gap by showing that Aristotle's arithmetical objects, like geometrical objects, are just certain sensible things qua certain properties they in fact possess. Specifically, numbers are pluralities qua quantitative or relational properties like ten units or ten. I show that this view is resistant to the Fregean concerns about arbitrariness and numerical predication. (shrink)

The Cartesian method, construed as a way of organizing domains of knowledge according to the "order of reasons," was a powerful reductive tool. Descartes made significant strides in mathematics, physics, and metaphysics by relating certain complex items and problems back to more simple elements that served as starting points for his inquiries. But his reductive method also impoverished these domains in important ways, for it tended to restrict geometry to the study of straight line segments, physics to the study of (...) ambiguously constituted bits of matter in motion, and metaphysics to the study of the isolated, incorporeal knower. This book examines in detail the negative and positive impact of Descartes's method on his scientific and philosophical enterprises, exemplified by the Geometry, the Principles, the Treatise of Man, and the Meditations. (shrink)

Madison Kilbride recently argued that insurance ) should cover in vitro fertilisation with preimplantation genetic testing services for couples at high risk of having a child affected with a genetic condition. She argues that IVF-PGT meets CMS’s definition of ‘medically necessary care’, where such care includes ‘services or supplies needed to diagnose or treat an illness, injury, condition, disease or its symptoms’. Kilbride argues that IVF-PGT satisfies this definition in two ways: as a diagnostic tool and as a treatment. Contradicting (...) Kilbride, however, I argue that IVF-PGT provides neither diagnosis nor treatment under CMS’s definition. Thus, as long as we accept CMS’s definition of medically necessary care—which Kilbride does, explicitly—it follows that IVF-PGT does not count as medically necessary care. Still, there may be other reasons to conclude that IVF-Preimplantation genetic testing should be covered, and so, it would be a mistake to reject Kilbride’s conclusion altogether. The problem is simply that Kilbride’s argument—that the procedure should be covered because it is medically necessary per CMS’s definition—is not sound. I conclude by discussing a number of other genetic services that are not currently being covered despite the fact that they do seem to satisfy CMS’s definition of ‘medically necessary diagnosis or treatment’. These services, I argue, should be provided under CMS before we consider expanding coverage to include elective procedures such as IVF-PGT. (shrink)

Through a commentary on the enriching experience of receiving feedback through the Brewing Legal Times author-meets-reader session in February 2018, this piece reflects on the intellectual generosity and scholarly labour that makes such sessions an important form of academic social reproduction.

The opening argument in the Metaphysics M.2 series targeting separate mathematical objects has been dismissed as flawed and half-hearted. Yet it makes a strong case for a point that is central to Aristotle’s broader critique of Platonist views: if we posit distinct substances to explain the properties of sensible objects, we become committed to an embarrassingly prodigious ontology. There is also something to be learned from the argument about Aristotle’s own criteria for a theory of mathematical objects. I hope to (...) persuade readers of Metaphysics M.2 that Aristotle is a more thoughtful critic than he is often taken to be. (shrink)

In Physics 2.4–6, Aristotle offers an account of things that happen “by luck” and “spontaneously”. Many of these things are what we might think of as “lucky breaks”: cases where things go well for us, even though we don’t expect them to. In Physics 2.5, Aristotle illustrates this idea with the case of a man who goes to the market for some reason unrelated to collecting a debt he is owed. While he is there, this man just so happens to (...) run into his debtor and get his money back—which is what he “wanted” all along. This case has a number of features that have proved puzzling. Most notably, Aristotle seems to think that while “it happened accidentally to him to come and to do this for the sake of getting the money”, nevertheless the man “did not come for the sake of this”—though he “would have”. What must such a proceeding be like to be described in these ways? Physics 2.4–6 makes several important moves towards answering this question. One of them—among the earliest and seemingly a foundational one—is the claim that “for the sake of something are as many things as could be done by thought and by nature”. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that this claim plays in Aristotle’s account of spontaneous proceedings. It defends two main claims. First, Aristotle’s suggestion that spontaneous proceedings could be done by nature and by thought is the product of a more general strategy. His approach is to sketch an intuitive pattern of explanation for proceedings that happen for the sake of something in the ordinary—non-spontaneous—way, and then to try to extend that model to the case of things that do so spontaneously, preserving as much of it as possible. Applying this strategy reveals that whereas nature and thought in fact function as efficient causes of ordinary proceedings that are for the sake of something, this cannot be the case in spontaneous ones. Instead, nature and thought could function as their causes. Second, I argue that Aristotle’s implementation of this strategy is rooted in his account of causation and especially Physics 2.3’s list of “modes” of causes. When he claims that spontaneous proceedings “could” be done by nature and by thought, he is saying that nature and thought are their efficient causes in capacity. In the practical case, spontaneous proceedings are caused by agents who have certain capacities, connected with their desires and abilities. In the right circumstances, these agents would actively exercise those capacities in acting for the sake of a given end. (shrink)

In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, James Sabin and his colleagues ask what responsibility investigators in a learning health organization have to patients when research—particularly research of which patients might be unaware—illuminates problematic aspects of the patients' care. Sabin and his colleagues were confronted by this question in the midst of designing a randomized controlled trial that sought to determine if an educational intervention targeted at patients with atrial fibrillation and their clinicians reduces underuse of oral anticoagulants. Worried (...) about harm that might befall patients in the control group and fearing that they would be negligent bystanders if they knew these patients were at risk and did nothing, the investigators adopted a “workaround.” But the “workaround,” I suggest, was not a solution to the negligent bystander problem. Nor was it a solution to the problem as I would alternatively frame it—how to address instances of suboptimal patient care identified through research within learning health organizations. (shrink)

This book explicates Leibnizian analysis as a search for conditions of intelligibility, and reconsiders his use of principles and methods as well as his account of truth in this way. Via careful reading of well-known, lesser known, and previously unedited texts, it gives a more accurate picture of his philosophical intentions, as well as the relevance of his project to contemporary debate. Two case studies are included, one concerning logic and the other arithmetic; they illustrate a theory of intelligibility that (...) takes as its central notion "possibility for thought", a notion which allows Leibniz to escape certain traps of psychologism, the pseudo-ontology of empiricism, and the empty forms of logicism, and suggests new approaches for contemporary philosophy. "In this remarkable study, Grosholz and Yakira offer a fresh interpretive and conceptual angle on Leibniz's metaphysics. [...] this study deserves high marks for its subtlety, novelty, and creative insight into Leibniz's modes of inquiry as well as for its philosophical acumen." Annals of Science. (shrink)

This book deals with a topic that has been largely neglected by philosophers of science to date: the ability to refer and analyze in tandem. On the basis of a set of philosophical case studies involving both problems in number theory and issues concerning time and cosmology from the era of Galileo, Newton and Leibniz up through the present day, the author argues that scientific knowledge is a combination of accurate reference and analytical interpretation. In order to think well, we (...) must be able to refer successfully, so that we can show publicly and clearly what we are talking about. And we must be able to analyze well, that is, to discover productive and explanatory conditions of intelligibility for the things we are thinking about. The book’s central claim is that the kinds of representations that make successful reference possible and those that make successful analysis possible are not the same, so that significant scientific and mathematical work typically proceeds by means of a heterogeneous discourse that juxtaposes and often superimposes a variety of kinds of representation, including formal and natural languages as well as more iconic modes. It demonstrates the virtues and necessity of heterogeneity in historically central reasoning, thus filling an important gap in the literature and fostering a new, timely discussion on the epistemology of science and mathematics. (shrink)

Research suggests a gendered dimension to the geography of sexual minorities, as gay couples are more likely to live in cities than are lesbian couples. Using data from 60 interviews with rural gays and lesbians, this article employs an intersectional analysis of the mutually constitutive relationships among place, gender, and sexuality in order to assess how acceptance of gays and lesbians in small towns is gendered. Findings indicate that femininity aligns with gay sexuality but not rurality. In contrast, masculinity underpins (...) both the categories “rural” and “lesbian.” Furthermore, both lesbian women and gay men gain acceptance in rural areas by doing masculinity. This analysis indicates that masculinity is not something to which only male bodies are privy. In contrast to prior work, it shows one form of female masculinity that is normative rather than transgressive. The analysis also reveals that the meanings of gender presentations vary by geographical context. (shrink)

A. A. Fet’s translation of J. W. Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea is an important early example of Fet’s lifelong practice as a translator and attests to his well-known fidelity to his source texts. His strongest preference is to maintain the versification characteristics of his source, but the degree of his lexical-semantic fidelity is also very strong and far outranks fidelity on other levels (phonetic, grammatical). The poet evidently translated holistically within very small textual domains, within which he sometimes isolated pivots (...) of core semantic information (which he located in translation as they were in the original), around which less important material was fitted, insofar as space permitted. In Fet’s text, versification limitations sometimes led to lexical-semantic mismatches of semanticdenotation, and these mismatches are characterized in the paper: they typically involve repetitions, repeated mentions, or known information, and the mismatch may entail full or partial loss or enrichment of the semantics of the original. In addition, conflicts sometimes arise between denotative requirements within the local domain and the cumulative (usually connotative) associations generated across the larger domain of the whole text. When such conflicts arise, Fet resolves them in favour of small-domain accuracy, resulting in semantic changes (‘shifts’) in the domain of the poetic text, which thereby loses some rhetorical or poetic force, relative to the original. Dissonance between large- and smalldomain semantics is often inevitable, because of the language-specific nature of connotation. To the extent that the semantics of Fet’s translation are a consequence of his personal preferences, they may be viewed in the context of, first, his early school training (not far behind him when he translated Hermann und Dorothea) and, second, his status as both professional poet, writing in Russian, and educated native German-Russian bilingual. (shrink)

Today, the most powerful research technique available for assigning chronometric age to human cultural objects is radiocarbon dating. Developed in the United States in the late 1940s by an alumnus of the Manhattan Project, radiocarbon dating measures the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 (C14) in organic material, and calculates the time elapsed since the materials were removed from the life cycle. This paper traces the interdisciplinary collaboration between archaeology and radiochemistry that led to the successful development of radiocarbon dating (...) in the early 1950s, following the movement of people and ideas from Willard Libby's Chicago radiocarbon laboratory to museums, universities and government labs in the United States, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. I show how radiocarbon research built on existing technologies and networks in atomic chemistry and physics but was deeply shaped by its original private philanthropic funders and archaeologist users, and ultimately remained to the side of many contemporaneous Cold War scientific and military projects. (shrink)

This paper explores factors shaping perceptions of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) amongst a range of informed stakeholders, with a particular focus on their role in future social and political systems. We find considerable ambivalence regarding the role of climate targets and incumbent interests in relation to GGR. Our results suggest that GGR is symbolic of a fundamental debate - occurring not only between separate people, but sometimes within the minds of individuals themselves - over whether technological solutions represent a pragmatic (...) or an unethical strategy. We present the idea of a 'Monsanto effect', whereby an entirely separate debate taps into deeper narratives and becomes so pervasive that it spills over into a new topic area. Our findings have significant implications for extant and emergent climate policy as they suggest that, in addition to the considerable practical challenges facing large-scale GGR deployment, there is a deeper psychological challenge in that actors are themselves conflicted about the fundamental desirability of GGR. (shrink)

The close association of particular races with particular classes invites a means to exhibit disdain for a race via class. Class and race do not simply occupy a list of social problems, because generally, specific races correlate with particular classes. Racism is presently unacceptable, but not classism. We may feel sympathy for the poor, but we do not refrain from disdain. The disdain of the poor centers on Neoclassical economics’ insistence on choice in regards to class. The language of choice (...) does not circumscribe race. Michel Foucault’s work illustrates that the persistent correlation of race and class is not merely sociological but conceptual. Such close associations of particular races with particular classes serve as a means to generate essentialisms that express racism through classism. (shrink)

Homi Bhabha brings attention to the figure of the postcolonial metropolitan subject—a third world subject who resides in the first world. Bhabha describes the experiences of the “colonial” subject as ambivalently split. As much as his work is insightful, Bhabha's descriptions of the daily life of postcolonial metropolitan subjects as split and doubled is problematic. His analysis lends only to the possibility of these splittings/doublings as schizophrenically wholly arising. His analysis cannot account for the agonistic moments when the colonial subject (...) is caught in not knowing, and in developing understanding about present circumstances. A framework with an account of context and horizons, such as in phenomenology, can better depict the experiences of the postcolonial metropolitan subject. Maurice Merleau-Ponty follows a gestaltian contact with the world, which advances that the “most basic unit of experience is that of figure-on-a-background.” One perceives the figure/theme because of and within the background/horizon. In this horizonal framework, human experiences are ambiguously open. The openness in the horizon of the gestaltian framework better accounts for the conditions Bhabha refers to as splitting. The ambivalence can be understood not simply as conundrums that defy understanding but as ambiguous moments for expanding, developing, and growing. (shrink)

I argue that intelligible matter, for Aristotle, is what makes mathematical objects quantities and divisible in their characteristic way. On this view, the intelligible matter of a magnitude is a sensible object just insofar as it has dimensional continuity, while that of a number is a plurality just insofar as it consists of indivisibles that measure it. This interpretation takes seriously Aristotle's claim that intelligible matter is the matter of mathematicals generally – not just of geometricals. I also show that (...) intelligible matter has the same meaning in all three places where it is explicitly invoked: Z.10, Z.11, and H.6. Since the H.6 passage involves a mathematical definition, this requires determining what the mathematician defines and how she defines it. I show that, as with natural scientific definitions, there must be a matterlike element in mathematical definitions. This element is not identical with, but rather refers to, intelligible matter. (shrink)

This article examines the regulation of Latina youth sexualities in the context of sexual and reproductive health care provision. In-depth interviews with health care providers working in two Latino-serving community health centers are analyzed for how they interpret and respond to the sexual and reproductive practices of their low-income Latina teen patients. The author finds that providers emphasize teenage pregnancy as a social problem among this population to the exclusion of other dimensions of youth sexualities and encourage Latina girls’ adherence (...) to a life course trajectory that conforms to middle-class, heteronormative ideals as a solution to this problem. By relying on such understandings, providers construct meanings of sexual citizenship that require participation in bourgeois heteronormativity. These findings suggest that Latino-serving community health centers, their providers, and their teen patients could benefit from questioning the assumptions that inform providers’ appraisals of Latina youth and developing a more inclusive approach to Latina youth sexualities beyond a discourse of pregnancy prevention. Such efforts could allow community health centers to actively participate in disrupting the structural inequalities that shape their young patients’ lives. (shrink)