Abstract:This paper, presented as the 2019 Cambridge Quarterly Neuroethics NetworkCharcot Lecture, traces the nosology of disorders of consciousness in light of 2018 practice guidelines promulgated by the American Academy of Neurology, the American College of Rehabilitation Medicine and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research. By exploring the ancient origins of Jennett and Plum’s persistent vegetative state and subsequent refinements in the classification of disorders of consciousness—epitomized by the minimally conscious state, cognitive motor dissociation, and the (...) recently described chronic vegetative state—the author argues that there is a counter-narrative to the one linking these conditions to the right to die. Instead, there is a more nuanced schema distinguishing futility from utility, informed by technical advances now able to identify covert consciousness contemplated by Jennett and Plum. Their prescience foreshadows recent developments in the disorders of consciousness literature yielding a layered legacy with implications for society’s normative and legal obligations to these patients. (shrink)

While neuroethics is generally thought to be a modern addition to the broader field of bioethics, this subdiscipline has existed in clinical practice throughout the course of the 20th century. In this essay, Fins describes an older tradition of clinical neuroethics that featured such physician-humanists as Sir William Osler, Wilder Penfield, and Fred Plum, whose work and legacy exploring disorders of consciousness is highlighted. Their normative work was clinically grounded and focused on the needs of patients, in contrast (...) to modern neuroethics, which is more speculative and distant from the lived reality of the clinic. Using recent developments in the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of consciousness, and the history of the vegetative and minimally conscious states, Fins asks why modern neuroethics has taken this turn and what can be done to restore clinical neuroethics to a more proportionate place in the field. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Minding Brain Injury, Consciousness, and Ethics: Discourse and DeliberationsJoseph J. Fins (bio) and James Giordano (bio)The annual John Collins Harvey Lecture at the Georgetown University’s Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics is a forum for addressing contemporary topics at the intersection of medicine and bioethics. This year, in marking the decadal anniversary of the launch of the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnology (BRAIN) Initiative, the Harvey Lecture provided an (...) interactive discussion with renowned clinician, researcher, scholar, and author, Joseph J. Fins, MD—who is the E. William Davis, Jr., MD Professor of Medical Ethics, Chief of the Division of Medical Ethics, and a Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College—conducted by James Giordano, PhD, MPhil—who is a Professor of Neurology and Biochemistry, and Chief of the Pellegrino Center’s Neuroethics Studies Program at the Georgetown University Medical Center. The discourse focused upon the topic of covert consciousness, and the ways in which current and developing brain science technologies, together with revised practices of medicine, in general, may afford new opportunities in patient care, but may also give rise to issues, questions, challenges, and opportunities for neuroethics.Prof. James GIORDANO:Prof. Fins, your most recent book, Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics, and the Struggle for Consciousness (Fins 2015), addresses your ongoing work to employ current and emerging neurological approaches to reveal conscious functions in patients with profound brain injury and disease. To be sure, the destination—if you will—is to talk about covert consciousness. But in commencing this discussion, I’d like to propose a route, which traces your professional journey to this point in your career, and how it led you on your search to reveal consciousness in those patients who lack expressive capability. You went into palliative care first, and that brought you to where you are today. [End Page 227]Prof. Joseph J. FINS:First, let me thank you and the Pellegrino Center for the honor of giving the John Harvey Collins Lecture in such an interactive manner. The forefront of neurological care—and the neuroethical issues and methods focal to such practice—wasn’t what I initially intended to do professionally, but I think that therein is a good lesson for young people’s career aspirations. Simply put, one doesn’t always know where they’ll end up at the beginning of the journey, and as Kierkegaard said, life is lived forward, but is understood backwards (Kierkegaard 1843).In the nineties and the early 2000s, I was trying to help improve the quality of care of people at the end of life, and I wrote a book, entitled The Palliative Ethic of Care: Clinical Wisdom at Life’s End (Fins 2006), in which I addressed notions of phronesis—practical wisdom—in integrating theory and practice toward improving how people die. I became interested in the Quinlan case (Quinlan 1976), and the right to die, and around the same time, I ran into a colleague of mine at Cornell: Dr. Nicholas D. Schiff. Dr. Schiff is a neurologist, who was a protégé of Fred Plum, who was the originator of the concept of the vegetative state with Bryan Jennett, back in 1972. Fred was both of our teachers here at Cornell. Niko (Dr. Schiff) was interested in patients with disorders of consciousness, and was beginning to envision doing work—that ultimately, we did—using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to try to treat patients in the minimally conscious state, a category that was subsequently codified in 2002.I realized that a whole population of people—with these disorders of consciousness—had been somewhat marginalized, and their neglect essentially devolves back to the considerations of the right to die. The right to die was established in the Quinlan case because Judge Hughes—the presiding chief judge of the New Jersey Supreme Court—talked about Ms. Quinlan’s loss of a cognitive, sapient state as being the moral warrant for her right to die, given the fact that it was viewed as a futile situation. I recognized, over the ensuing years—from my background in palliative and end-of-life care—[1] that we had over-generalized notions of futility... (shrink)

Ford, Norman In 1972 Brian Jennett and Fred Plum recommended the term 'persistent vegetative state' to describe a state of continuing 'wakefulness without awareness', which can follow a variety of severe insults to the brain. Their description of the syndrome has stood the test of time, but PVS continues to be a source of medical, legal, and ethical debate.

Despite growing interest in ethical consumer behaviour research, ambiguity remains regarding what motivates consumers to purchase ethical products. While researchers largely attribute the growth of ethical consumerism to an increase in ethical consumer concerns and motivations, widened distribution of ethical products, such as fairtrade, questions these assumptions. A model that integrates both individual and societal values into the theory of planned behaviour is presented and empirically tested to challenge the assumption that ethical consumption is driven by ethical considerations alone. Using (...) data sourced from fairtrade shoppers across the UK, structural equation modelling suggests that fairtrade purchase intention is driven by both societal and self-interest values. This dual value pathway helps address conceptual limitations inherent in the underlying assumptions of existing ethical purchasing behaviour models and helps advance understanding of consumers’ motivation to purchase ethical products. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the flaws of Clark’s extended mind hypothesis. Clark’s hypothesis assumes that the nature of the processes internal to an object has nothing to do with whether that object carries out cognitive processing. The only condition required is that the object is coupled with a cognitive agent and interacts with it in a certain way. In making this tenuous connection, Clark commits the most common mistake extended mind theorists make; alleging that an object becomes cognitive once it is (...) connected to a cognitive agent is a “coupling-constitution fallacy.” From this fallacy, many hastily proceed to the conclusion that the object or process constitutes part of the agent’s cognitive apparatus or cognitive processing. (shrink)

This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the two. The first (...) section of the book argues the point that knowledge consists of beliefs with the right objective connection to facts; two essays discuss this conception of knowledge's implications for naturalism. The next section articulates a view of perception, attempting to distinguish conceptual states from phenomenal states. A naturalized philosophy of mind, and thus a naturalized epistemology, is articulated in the third section. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology. (shrink)

In 2002, Luciano Floridi published a paper called What is the Philosophy of Information?, where he argues for a new paradigm in philosophical research. To what extent should his proposal be accepted? Is the Philosophy of Information actually a new paradigm, in the Kuhninan sense, in Philosophy? Or is it only a new branch of Epistemology? In our discussion we will argue in defense of Floridi’s proposal. We believe that Philosophy of Information has the types of features had by other (...) areas already acknowledge as authentic in Philosophy. By way of an analogical argument we will argue that since Philosophy of Information has its own topics, method and problems it would be counter-intuitive not to accept it as a new philosophical area. To strengthen our position we present and discuss main topics of Philosophy of Information. (shrink)

In this article, we will describe higher order thought theories of consciousness. Then we will describe some examples from synesthesia. Finally, we will explain why the latter may be relevant to the former.

Jerry Fodor’s arguments for a language of thought (LOT) are largely theoretical. Is there any empirical evidence that supports the existence of LOT? There is. Research on Global Aphasia supports the existence of LOT. In this paper, I discuss this evidence and why it supports Fodor’s theory that there is a language of thought.

Godfrey-Smith’s environmental complexity thesis is most often applied to multicellular animals and the complexity of their macroscopic environments to explain how cognition evolved. We think that the ECT may be less suited to explain the origins of the animal bodily organization, including this organization’s potentiality for dealing with complex macroscopic environments. We argue that acquiring the fundamental sensorimotor features of the animal body may be better explained as a consequence of dealing with internal bodily—rather than environmental complexity. To press and (...) elucidate this option, we develop the notion of an animal sensorimotor organization that derives from an internal coordination account for the evolution of early nervous systems. The ASMO notion is a reply to the question how a collection of single cells can become integrated such that the resulting multicellular organization becomes sensitive to and can manipulate macroscopic features of both the animal body and its environment. In this account, epithelial contractile tissues play the central role in the organization behind complex animal bodies. In this paper, we relate the ASMO concept to recent work on epithelia, which provides empirical evidence that supports central assumptions behind the ASMO notion. Second, we discuss to what extent the notion applies to basic animal architectures, exemplified by sponges and jellyfish. We conclude that the features exhibited by the ASMO are plausibly explained by internal constraints acting on and within this multicellular organization, providing a challenge for the role the ECT plays in this context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:L'autorité d'un canon philosophique. Le cas Descartes by Delphine Antoine-MahutFred AblondiDelphine Antoine-Mahut. L'autorité d'un canon philosophique. Le cas Descartes. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2021. Pp. 356. Paperback, €13.00.Henri Gouhier once asked, "Après le mort de Descartes, qu'est-ce que le cartésianisme?" to which he replied, "C'est la philosophie de Descartes vue par ses disciples" (La vocation de Malebranche [Paris: J. Vrin, 1926], 80). In L'autorité d'un canon philosophique, (...) Delphine Antoine-Mahut asks a similar question about who controls in just what a philosophical '-ism' consists, and she offers a nuanced and thoughtful answer. While "l'auctorialité du nom en question" is one part, she adds that we must also consider "l'auctorialité de celui ou de celle qui raconte cette histoire, dans un contexte et avec des enjeux très différent de ceux de l'individu d'origine auquel cette histoire est attachée" (10–11). The end result is that "un canon philosophique n'a rien de philosophiquement pur" (12). With this larger question in mind, she documents, as something of a case study, the genesis and development of the "impure" canon cartésien.The battle for authority over the content of canonical Cartesianism starts with the story of Descartes and his one-time devoted pupil and later disavowed outcast, Henricus Regius. Their relationship began in 1638, when Regius, a professor of theoretical medicine and botany at the University of Utrecht, wrote a letter of appreciation to Descartes. Over the next few years, Descartes offered both corrections to Regius's written work and advice on how best to handle the controversies that arose as a result of those writings. In 1645, however, Regius published his Fundamenta physices, in which he claimed that reason alone is not sufficient to prove either the existence of God or the real distinction between the human mind and body. In fact, he went on to speculate that the human mind is merely a mode of the body. [End Page 322] He also denied that we possess innate ideas, and the existence in us of a pure intellect. At the bottom of Regius's break with Descartes was his belief that Cartesian metaphysics is not needed to ground Cartesian physics. For Regius, consistency with empirical findings and simplicity are all that is required.At this point, as Antoine-Mahut puts it, "le sillon est creusé" (41). Descartes responded angrily, both in private letters and in his preface to the 1647 French edition of his Principles of Philosophy. He accused Regius of plagiarizing from his unpublished work and of confusing his views. Following the appearance of a broadsheet summarizing Regius's disagreements with Descartes (written by Regius's student, Peter Wassenaer), Descartes wrote Notae in programma quoddam, in which he reiterated his arguments for both God's existence and the real distinction. Regius and Wassenaer replied with their Brevis explicatio mentis humanae (1648). All of this is laid out clearly and in detail by Antoine-Mahut in part 1 of her book.Part 2 picks up with Descartes's literary executor Claude Clerselier and his campaign to disassociate Regius from what he believed to be "true" Cartesianism. In the preface to the publication of the first volume of Descartes's letters (1657), Clerselier revived the charge of plagiarism against Regius, who responded by publishing a second edition of the Brevis explicatio. This included a preface that attacked Clerselier for publishing Regius's private correspondence without his permission—in fact, because Regius had not made Descartes's letters to him available, Clerselier had had to reconstruct them from Descartes's notes— and claimed it was Descartes who plagiarized Regius. In Antoine-Mahut's narrative of these events, this "disassociation" was followed by a "combining" (her terms) of Cartesian thought with empiricist natural philosophy in the work of Louis de la Forge, for whom "le cartésianisme se spécifie comme une psychologie empiriste dans laquelle l'activité de l'âme joue un rôle essentiel" (175). There was then a subsequent "incorporating" (again borrowing Antoine-Mahut's terminology) by Nicolas Malebranche, who, she says, "occupe une place... (shrink)

John Stuart Mill underwent a mental crisis in the 1820s. He emerged from it, argues Fred Wilson, with a new understanding of the notion of introspective analysis more dequare as an empirical method than the sort of analysis that had been used by earlier utilitarian thinkiers such as Bentham and James Mill. Wilson's study places Mill's innovations in the context of earlier work in ethics and perception and of subsequent developments in the history of psychology. He shows the significance (...) of these topics with which Mill was concerned. The more adequate notion of introspective analysis enabled the younger Mill to reply to criticisms of various empiricist and utilitarian positions cencering the analysis of relations, the nature of our percievings of physical objects, the status of science of economics, and the nature of the utilitarian principle itself. Mill was thus able to reject the quantitative hedonism of his predecessors and to introduce qualitative hedonism in its place. Wilson suggest that the long tradition that views Mill's qualitative hedonism as inconsistent is mistaken, as area a variety of criticisms of his work in the psychology of perception and the philosophy of economics. A better grasp of the background of Mill's views of psychology and the philosophy of psychology easily shows the critics to be mistaken. (shrink)

Among the French Cartesians of the second half of the seventeenth century, Géraud de Cordemoy stands out as the most radical. He was one of the first to argue that Cartesian metaphysics imply occasionalism, and he was alone in arguing that those same metaphysical commitments lead to atomism. This paper addresses the second of these positions. Following a discussion of what is taken to be the strongest version of his argument for atomism, consideration will turn to an objection against Cordemoy, (...) one that was raised in his own day by Gottfried Leibniz and more recently by Steven Nadler. The paper concludes with a response offered on Cordemoy's behalf. (shrink)

What are the meanings of empty names such as ‘Vulcan,’ ‘Pegasus,’ and ‘Santa Claus’ in such sentences as ‘Vulcan is the tenth planet,’ ‘Pegasus flies,’ and especially ‘Santa Claus does not exist’?Our view, developed in Adams et al., consists of a direct-reference account of the meaning of empty names in combination with a pragmatic-implicature account of why we have certain intuitions that seem to conflict with a direct-reference account.

Descartes’s First Meditation employs a series of arguments designed to generate the worry that the senses might not provide sufficient evidence to justify one’staking as certain one’s beliefs about the way the world is. As the meditator considers what principle describes the conditions under which it is possible to attain certain knowledge, one after another doubt-generating device is ushered in, until at last he finds himself like someone caught in a whirlpool, able neither to stand firm nor to swim out. (...) In this paper, I examine one of those devices, namely, what is often referred to as the Madness Argument. In particular, I want to discuss its relation to the Dream Argument and its function in the Meditations as a whole. My position stands in contrast to the interpretations of Anthony Kenny, Margaret Wilson, Michael Williams, and, more recently, Janet Broughton and Catherine Wilson. (shrink)

Since Kripke's attack on Nozick's Tracking Theory of knowledge, there has been strong suspicion that tracking theories are false. We think that neither Kripke's arguments and examples nor other recent attacks in the literature show that the tracking theories are false. We cannot address all of these concerns here, but we will show why some of the most discussed examples from Kripke do not demonstrate that the tracking theories are false.

"This anthology of writings by prominent black thinkers from antiquity to the present makes the case for a central tradition of black philosophy, rooted in Africa and distinct from the intellectual heritage of the West."--From publisher description.

Since Kripke's attack on Nozick's Tracking Theory of knowledge, there has been strong suspicion that tracking theories are false. We think that neither Kripke's arguments and examples nor other recent attacks in the literature show that the tracking theories are false. We cannot address all of these concerns here, but we will show why some of the most discussed examples from Kripke do not demonstrate that the tracking theories are false.

Erratum to: Topoi DOI 10.1007/s11245-014-9252-9The affiliation of the second author was incorrectly published in the original article. The author’s correct affiliation appears in this erratum.

Clifford Geertz was perhaps the most influential anthropologist of our time, but his influence extended far beyond his field to encompass all facets of contemporary life. Nowhere were his gifts for directness, humor, and steady revelation more evident than in the pages of the New York Review of Books, where for nearly four decades he shared his acute vision of the world in all its peculiarity. This book brings together the finest of Geertz's review essays from the New York Review (...) along with a representative selection of later pieces written at the height of his powers, some that first appeared in periodicals such as Dissent, others never before published. This collection exemplifies Geertz's extraordinary range of concerns, beginning with his first essay for the Review in 1967, in which he reviews, with muffled hilarity, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski. This book includes Geertz's unflinching meditations on Western academia's encounters with the non-Western world, and on the shifting and clashing places of societies in the world generally. Geertz writes eloquently and arrestingly about such major figures as Gandhi, Foucault, and Genet, and on topics as varied as Islam, globalization, feminism, and the failings of nationalism. Life among the Anthros and Other Essays demonstrates Geertz's uncommon wisdom and consistently keen and hopeful humor, confirming his status as one of our most important and enduring public intellectuals. (shrink)

We argue that the Standard Model in the Higgs phase does not suffer from a “hierarchy problem” and that similarly the “cosmological constant problem” resolves itself if we understand the SM as a low energy effective theory emerging from a cutoff-medium at the Planck scale. We actually take serious Veltman’s “The Infrared–Ultraviolet Connection” addressing the issue of quadratic divergences and the related huge radiative correction predicted by the SM in the relationship between the bare and the renormalized theory, usually called (...) “the hierarchy problem” and claimed that this has to be cured. We discuss these issues under the condition of a stable Higgs vacuum, which allows extending the SM up to the Planck cutoff. The bare Higgs boson mass then changes sign below the Planck scale, such that the SM in the early universe is in the symmetric phase. The cutoff enhanced Higgs mass term as well as the quartically enhanced cosmological constant term provide a large positive dark energy that triggers the inflation of the early universe. Reheating follows via the decays of the four unstable heavy Higgs particles, predominantly into top–antitop pairs, which at this stage are massless. Preheating is suppressed in SM inflation since in the symmetric phase bosonic decay channels are absent at tree level. The coefficients of the shift between bare and renormalized Higgs mass as well as of the shift between bare and renormalized vacuum energy density exhibit close-by zeros at about \ and \, respectively. The zero of the Higgs mass counter term triggers the electroweak phase transition, from the low energy Higgs phase and to the symmetric phase above the transition point. Since inflation tunes the total energy density to take the critical value of a flat universe and all contributing components are positive, it is obvious that the cosmological constant today is naturally a substantial fraction of the total critical density. Thus taking cutoff enhanced corrections seriously the Higgs system provides besides the masses of particles in the Higgs phase also dark energy, inflation and reheating in the early universe. The main unsolved problem in our context remains the origin of dark matter. Higgs inflation is possible and likely even unavoidable provided new physics does not disturb the known relevant SM properties substantially. The scenario highly favors to understand the SM and its main properties as a natural structure emerging at long distance. This in particular concerns the SM symmetry patterns and their consequences. (shrink)

While there has been a resurgence in Malebranche scholarship in the anglophone world over the last twenty years, most of it has focused on Malebranche’s theory of ideas, and little attention has been paid to his philosophy of mind. Schmaltz’s book thus comes as a welcome addition to the Malebranche literature; that he has given us such a well-researched and carefully argued study is even more welcome. The focus of this work is Malebranche’s split with Descartes on the question of (...) our knowledge of the nature of the mind; the book concentrates specifically on Malebranche’s rejection of the claim that we know the nature of the mind better than we know the nature of body. Schmaltz maintains that Malebranche’s arguments for his position are, for the most part, successful against the Cartesians who opposed him, though he claims—and this is perhaps the central claim of the book—that “Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it”. While acknowledging that Augustine was “the primary inspiration for [Malebranche’s] view of the ideas that are the objects of perception”, Schmaltz’s interpretation of Malebranche’s theory of the soul “presents it as fundamentally Cartesian”. According to Schmaltz, not only is Malebranche closer to Descartes in this regard than is generally thought, he is closer to him than are many other Cartesians. Part 1 of the book examines Malebranche’s position that while we have certain knowledge of the soul’s existence, we have only confused knowledge of its nature. Part 2 focuses on Arnauld’s objection that if in fact we had no clear idea of the soul, we could not, despite Malebranche’s claims to the contrary, know anything of its immortality, spirituality, or freedom. (shrink)