Sengupta and Sengupta consider a payoff configuration of a TU game as a viable proposal if it challenges each legitimate contender. Lauwers prove that the set of viable proposals is nonempty for every game. In the present paper, we prove that the set of viable proposals coincides with the coalition structure core if there exists an undominated proposal; otherwise, it coincides with the set of accessible proposals. This characterization result implies that a proposal is a viable proposal if and only (...) if it is undominated or accessible. Moreover, we prove that the set of viable proposals includes the minimal dominant set, which is another nonempty extension of the coalition structure core introduced by Kóczy and Lauwers. In particular, we prove that the set of viable proposals of a cohesive game coincides with the minimal dominant set. (shrink)

Before the semester begins, a teacher tells his students: “There will be exactly one exam this semester. It will not take place on a day that is an immediate-successor of a day that you are currently in a position to know is not the exam-day”. Both the students and the teacher know – it is common knowledge – that no exam can be given on the first day of the semester. Since the teacher is truthful and reliable, it seems that (...) the students can know that what he says is true. However, in that case, assuming the students can know that they know whatever it is they know (KK) and assuming their knowledge is closed under entailment (closure), the students can reason from what they know to the conclusion that no exam will take place during the semester. This conclusion contradicts what they supposedly know: that there will be an exam. This puzzle, we argue, gives rise to a new consideration for the rejection of KK. We discuss unique features of the argument, especially in comparison to Timothy Williamson's rejection of KK in light of other versions of the surprise exam paradox. (shrink)

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary (...) view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one’s rational character, whether or not those activities are under one’s voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle. (shrink)

Norman Daniels’s theory of ‘accountability for reasonableness’ is an influential conception of fairness in healthcare resource allocation. Although it is widely thought that this theory provides a consistent extension of John Rawls’s general conception of justice, this paper shows that accountability for reasonableness has important points of contact with both utilitarianism and intuitionism, the main targets of Rawls’s argument. My aim is to demonstrate that its overlap with utilitarianism and intuitionism leaves accountability for reasonableness open to damaging critiques. The important (...) role that utilitarian-like cost-effectiveness calculations are allowed to play in resource allocation processes disregards the separateness of persons and is seriously unfair towards individuals whose interests are sacrificed for the sake of groups. Furthermore, the function played by intuitions in settling frequent value conflicts opens the door for sheer custom and vested interests to steer decision-making. (shrink)

Most people's intuitive reaction after considering Nozick's experience machine thought-experiment seems to be just like his: we feel very little inclination to plug in to a virtual reality machine capable of providing us with pleasurable experiences. Many philosophers take this empirical fact as sufficient reason to believe that, more than pleasurable experiences, people care about “living in contact with reality.” Such claim, however, assumes that people's reaction to the experience machine thought-experiment is due to the fact that they value reality (...) over virtual experiences—an assumption that has seldom (if ever) been questioned. This paper challenges that very assumption. I report some experimental evidence suggesting that the intuition elicited by the thought-experiment may be explainable by the fact that people are averse to abandon the life they have been experiencing so far, regardless of whether such life is virtual or real. I use then an explanatory model, derived from what behavioral economists and psychologists call the status quo bias, to make sense of these results. Finally, I argue that since this explanation also accounts for people's reaction toward Nozick's thought-experiment, it would be wrong to take such intuition as evidence that people value being in touch with reality. (shrink)

Normative discourse frequently involves explanation. For example, we tell children that hitting is wrong because it hurts people. In a recent paper, Selim Berker argues that to account for this kind of explanation, expressivists need an account of normative grounding. Against this, I argue that expressivists should eschew grounding and stick to a more pragmatic picture of explanation, one that focuses on how we use explanatory speech acts to communicate information. I propose that the standard form of a normative explanation (...) is a generalizing explanation, one which shows a particular moral injunction to follow from a more general injunction. I use Marc Lange’s account of unifying explanations in mathematics as a model for the canonical form of a normative explanation, but also to establish that logical entailment can be explanatory, so long as premises entailing the conclusion answer appropriately to our interests. An additional upshot of the resulting view is that it paves the way for a purely metaphysical solution to the problem of creeping minimalism. Quasireal properties are those that, unlike real properties, stand outside of the metaphysical hierarchy of grounding relations. (shrink)

Who Needs Stories if You Can Get the Data? ISPs in the Era of Big Number Crunching Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 371-390 DOI 10.1007/s13347-011-0041-8 Authors Mireille Hildebrandt, Institute of Computer and Information Sciences (ICIS), Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433 Journal Volume Volume 24 Journal Issue Volume 24, Number 4.

Many people, including many egalitarian political philosophers, professa belief in equality while enjoying high incomes of which they devotevery little to egalitarian purposes. The article critically examinesways of resolving the putative inconsistency in the stance of thesepeople, in particular, that favouring an egalitarian society has noimplications for behaviour in an unequal one; that what''s bad aboutinequality is a social division that philanthropy cannot reduce; thatprivate action cannot ensure that others have good lives; that privateaction can only achieve a ``drop in (...) the ocean''''; that private effortis not called for, since justice is a matter for the state to enforce;that private effort cannot remove the fundamental injustice, whichis inequality of power; and that private effort involves an unreasonablylarge psychological burden. (shrink)

In this paper, we claim that, if you justifiably believe that you ought to perform some act, it follows that you ought to perform that act. In the first half, we argue for this claim by reflection on what makes for correct reasoning from beliefs about what you ought to do. In the second half, we consider a number of objections to this argument and its conclusion. In doing so, we arrive at another argument for the view that justified beliefs (...) about what you ought to do must be true, based in part on the idea that the epistemic and practical domains are uniform, in a sense we spell out. We conclude by sketching possible implications of our discussion for the debates over what is wrong with akrasia and pragmatic encroachment on justified belief and knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referendums. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris (...) paribus more affected than people who don’t, because the former stands to pay more in carbon taxes than the latter. Consequently, people who pollute a lot receive large voting power, while people who pollute a little receive little voting power. This is a puzzling distribution of voting power for several reasons. First, it is instrumentally counterproductive if the goal is to rectify damages to the climate. Second, it introduces prudential incentives for everyone to pollute more to gain voting power. Third, the relative difference in voting power between people who pollute a lot and people who don’t is puzzling from a desert-based point of view, since the former often make a serious effort to avoid polluting, while the latter don’t. (shrink)

G.A. Cohen famously claims that egalitarians shouldn’t be so rich. If you possess excess income and there is little chance that the state will redistribute it to the poor, you are obligated to donate it yourself. We argue that this conclusion is correct, but that the case against the rich egalitarian is significantly stronger than the one Cohen offers. In particular, the standard arguments against donating one’s excess income face two critical, unrecognized problems. First, we show that these arguments imply (...) that citizens have no duty to further egalitarian political institutions—a conclusion that Cohen’s Rawlsian opponents cannot abide. Second, these arguments yield unacceptable implications for other questions of justice. We conclude that even moderately rich egalitarians are obligated to donate their excess income. (shrink)

The article proposes a formal semantics of happiness and sadness modalities in the imperfect information setting. It shows that these modalities are not definable through each other and gives a sound and complete axiomatization of their properties.

This book presents G. A. Cohen's Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1996. Focusing on Marxism and Rawlsian liberalism, Cohen draws a connection between these thought systems and the choices that shape a person's life. In the case of Marxism, the relevant life is his own: a communist upbringing in the 1940s in Montreal, which induced a belief in a strongly socialist egalitarian doctrine. The narrative of Cohen's reckoning with that inheritance develops through a series of sophisticated (...) engagements with the central questions of social and political philosophy. In the case of Rawlsian doctrine, Cohen looks to people's lives in general. He argues that egalitarian justice is not only, as Rawlsian liberalism teaches, a matter of rules that define the structure of society, but also a matter of personal attitude and choice. Personal attitude and choice are, moreover, the stuff of which social structure itself is made. Those truths have not informed political philosophy as much as they should, and Cohen's focus on them brings political philosophy closer to moral philosophy, and to the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition, than it has recently been. (shrink)

A PICTURE MAY BE WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS-- BUT A FEW CHOICE WORDS CAN SPEAK VOLUMES! _ If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't More People Happy? Bottled Water Is for Suckers Clones Are People Too At Least the War on the Environment Is Going Well Don't Believe Everything You Think The Revolution Will Be Tweeted _ Long before blogs, tweets, and sound bites, people were telling the world how they felt in brief, blunt bursts of information plastered on the backs (...) of their cars. Whether they're political or religious, passionate or proud, controversial or corny, these brightly colored, boldly lettered mini manifestos are declarations of who we are, where we stand, and what we'd rather be doing. But as bestselling author and noted philosopher Jack Bowen reveals, there's much more to the pop-culture phenomenon of bumper stickers than rolling one-liners and drive-by propaganda--no less, in fact, than a wise, funny, poignant, contentious, and truthful discourse on the human condition. _ Mixing pop culture with the ideas of historically prominent philosophers and scientists, If You Can Read This exposes the deeper wisdom couched behind these slogans--or, as need be, exposes where they have gone wrong. If you brake for big ideas, now's the time. _. (shrink)

Substantial metaphysical theory has long struggled with the question of negative facts, facts capable of making it true that Valerie isn’t vigorous. This paper argues that there is an elegant solution to these problems available to anyone who thinks that there are positive facts. Bradley’s regress and considerations of ontological parsimony show that an object’s having a property is an affair internal to the object and the property, just as numerical identity and distinctness are internal to the entities that are (...) numerically identical or distinct. For the same reasons, an object’s lacking a property must be an affair internal to the object and the property. Negative facts will thus be part of any ontology of positive facts. (shrink)

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe that (...) p without believing that one believes that p. (shrink)

The papers in this issue are based on presentations by the authors at the 163nd National Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Seattle, Washington, 13–18 February 1997 in the session entitled Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t: What the Scientific Community Can Do about Whistleblowing organized by Stephanie J. Bird and Diane Hoffman-Kim. The papers have been modified following double blind peer review.

Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe that (...) p without believing that one believes that p. (shrink)

Increasingly, feminist linguistic research has adopted a discursive perspective to learn how women and men ‘do’ leadership in gendered ways. ‘Women’ as a social category is made relevant to this study by virtue of the lack of female senior leaders in UK businesses. Much previous research has analysed leadership discourse in mixed gender groups, relying on theories that imply comparisons between men and women. Using an Interactional Sociolinguistic approach, this study aims to learn more about how women perform leadership in (...) the absence of men by analysing the spoken interactions of a women-only team who were engaged in a competitive leadership task. The analysis reveals that the women accomplish leadership in multiple and complex ways that defy binary gendered classifications. Nonetheless, there is a distinctive gendered dynamic to the team’s interactions which, it is argued, might be disadvantageous to women aspiring to senior positions. (shrink)

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl (2000) to formalize a causal (...) notion of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman (1976) and Kratzer (1979) will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions. (shrink)

The intervention attempts to engage critically with the Smittestopp app as a specifically Norwegian technofix. Culturally and politically, much of the Covid-19 response and the success of social distancing rules have been organized around the widespread trust in the government and public health authorities, and a focus on the citizens’ duty to contribute to the dugnaðr. The intervention argues that Smittestopp has been co-created by the mobilization of trust and dugnaðr, resulting in the launch of an incomplete and poorly defined (...) data-hoarding product with significant vulnerabilities. (shrink)

I aim to disentangle two very important debates: one about whether corporations can be moral agents (and thus have moral obligations), one about whether corporations are persons (and thus entitled to certain rights and protections). Critics often conflate these two debates, arguing that moral agency entails personhood and then treating that entailment as a kind of reductio for claims of corporate moral agency. My primary purpose is to rebut the claim of entailment, demonstrating that even the highly sophisticated moral agency (...) of corporations does not entail the kind of personhood at issue here: to be a person requires a kind of vulnerability that corporations do not have. Additionally, exploring how this is the case reveals a flaw in the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Citizens United. (shrink)

To achieve impact, academics need to create personal impact development plans, focused on what and on whom to have an impact and the necessary competencies to do so. Profession and university leaders play a critical role in the successful implementation of such plans.

There are numerous ways in which “the particular”—particular individuals, particular ideologies, values, beliefs, and perspectives—are sometimes overlooked, ignored, or even driven out of the healthcare profession. In many such cases, this is bad for patients, practitioners, and the profession. Hence, we should seek to find a place for the particular in health care. Specific topics that I examine in this essay include distribution of health care based on the particular needs of patients, the importance of protecting physicians’ right to conscientious (...) objection, the value in tolerating a plurality of moral and medical perspectives within the field, and more. Ultimately, as the imagery in the essay’s title suggests, I argue that if one cares about the “well-being” of the medical profession, then one should seek to avoid destroying the many diverse and particular entities that constitute it. (shrink)

This paper deals with the truth conditions of conditional sentences. It focuses on a particular class of problematic examples for semantic theories for these sentences. I will argue that the examples show the need to refer to dynamic, in particular causal laws in an approach to their truth conditions. More particularly, I will claim that we need a causal notion of consequence. The proposal subsequently made uses a representation of causal dependencies as proposed in Pearl to formalize a causal notion (...) of consequence. This notion inserted in premise semantics for counterfactuals in the style of Veltman and Kratzer will provide a new interpretation rule for conditionals. I will illustrate how this approach overcomes problems of previous proposals and end with some remarks on remaining questions. (shrink)

I consider two events in late seventeenth-century philosophy: the condemnation of Cartesianism by the church, the throne, and the university and the noncondemnation of Gassendism by the same powers. What is striking about the two events is that both Cartesians and Gassendists accepted the same proposition deemed heretical. Thus, what was sufficient to condemn Cartesianism was not sufficient to condemn Gassendism. As a result, I suggest that to understand what is involved in condemnation one has to pay close attention to (...) the intellectual and/or social context and to rhetorical strategy, not just to the propositions condemned. In this case, what is at stake are some of the central propositions of corpuscularianism and the mechanical philosophy. (shrink)

Health research increasingly relies on organized collections of health data and biological samples. There are many types of sample and data collections that are used for health research, though these are collected for many purposes, not all of which are health-related. These collections exist under different jurisdictional and regulatory arrangements and include: 1) Population biobanks, cohort studies, and genome databases 2) Clinical and public health data 3) Direct-to-consumer genetic testing 4) Social media 5) Fitness trackers, health apps, and biometric data (...) sensors Population biobanks, cohort studies, and genome databases Clinical and public health data Direct-to-consumer genetic testing Social media Fitness trackers, health apps, and biometric data sensors Ethical, legal, and social challenges of such collections are well recognized, but there has been limited attention to the broader societal implications of the existence of these collections. Although health research conducted using these collections is broadly recognized as beneficent, secondary uses of these data and samples may be controversial. We examine both documented and hypothetical scenarios of secondary uses of health data and samples. In particular, we focus on the use of health data for purposes of: Forensic investigations Civil lawsuits Identification of victims of mass casualty events Denial of entry for border security and immigration Making health resource rationing decisions Facilitating human rights abuses in autocratic regimes Forensic investigations Civil lawsuits Identification of victims of mass casualty events Denial of entry for border security and immigration Making health resource rationing decisions Facilitating human rights abuses in autocratic regimes Current safeguards relating to the use of health data and samples include research ethics oversight and privacy laws. These safeguards have a strong focus on informed consent and anonymization, which are aimed at the protection of the individual research subject. They are not intended to address broader societal implications of health data and sample collections. As such, existing arrangements are insufficient to protect against subversion of health databases for non-sanctioned secondary uses, or to provide guidance for reasonable but controversial secondary uses. We are concerned that existing debate in the scholarly literature and beyond has not sufficiently recognized the secondary data uses we outline in this paper. Our main purpose, therefore, is to raise awareness of the potential for unforeseen and unintended consequences, in particular negative consequences, of the increased availability and development of health data collections for research, by providing a comprehensive review of documented and hypothetical non-health research uses of such data. (shrink)

These essays showcase the value of the narrative arts in investigating complex conflicts of value in moral and political life, and explore the philosophical problem of moral dilemmas as expressed in ancient drama, classic and contemporary novels, television, film, and popular fiction. From Aeschylus to Deadwood, from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Harry Potter, the authors show how the narrative arts provide some of our most valuable instruments for complex and sensitive moral inquiry.

In 2011 it emerged that to induce the death penalty, United States authorities had begun giving injections of pentobarbital, a substance provided by Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck. Lundbeck's product pentobarbital is licensed for treatment of refractory forms of epilepsy and for usage as an anaesthetic, thus for a very different purpose. The Lundbeck case offers a difficult, but also interesting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) dilemma between choices facing a pharmaceutical company to stop the distribution of a medical substance in order (...) to avoid complicity in human rights violations, or to retain distribution of the substance in order not to impede access to the medicine for those patients who need it. The dilemma arose at a time when the United Nations (UN) Secretary General's Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, was finalizing a set of Guiding Principles to operationalize recommendations on business and human rights that he had presented to the UN Human Rights Council in 2008. The article discusses the dilemma in which Lundbeck was placed in from the perspective of the Guiding Principles on business and human rights and the 2008 Protect, Respect, Remedy UN Framework. The analysis seeks to assess what guidance may be gauged from the Guiding Principles in relation to the dilemma at hand and discusses the adequacy the Guiding Principles for dealing with acute human rights dilemmas of conflicting requirements in which a decision to avoid one type of violation risks causing violation of another human right. The article concludes by drawing up perspectives for further development of guidance on implementation of the UN Framework that could be considered by the newly established Working Group on Business and Human Rights and related UN bodies. (shrink)

In early 2011, news emerged that United States authorities had begun to apply injections of pentobarbital, a substance provided by Danish pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, when executing capital punishments. Lundbeck reported to be appalled by such unintended usage of pentobarbital, which is licensed for treatment of refractory forms of epilepsy and for usage as an anaesthetic.The human rights NGOs Reprieve and Amnesty International urged Lundbeck to ensure that pentobarbital was not made available to U.S. authorities for use in capital punishments. Lundbeck (...) argued that complete halting of provision of pentobarbital would be detrimental to patients suffering from conditions of severe epilepsy for whom the substance was developed and intended for treatment for life-threatening epileptic seizures. Lundbeck’s Danish headquarters also argued that controlling the provision of pentobarbital was out of Danish Lundbeck’s hands because the substance is produced at Lundbeck’s plant in the United States. Eventually, after talks with Amnesty International and Reprieve, Lundbeck in July 2011 announced that it would seek to put a stop to using pentobarbital in capital punishment through the introduction of a “drop-ship” program. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues. Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians (including three women), (...) aged 33–66 years, residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner. Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position. Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Physicians are exposed to matters of existential character at work, but little is known about the personal impact of such issues.Methods: To explore how physicians experience and cope with existential aspects of their clinical work and how such experiences affect their professional identities, a qualitative study using individual semistructured interviews has analysed accounts of their experiences related to coping with such challenges. Analysis was by systematic text condensation. The purposeful sample comprised 10 physicians , aged 33–66 years, (...) residents or specialists in cardiology or cardiothoracic surgery, working in a university hospital with 24-hour emergency service and one general practitioner.Results: Participants described a process by which they were able to develop a capacity for coping with the existential challenges at work. After episodes perceived as shocking or horrible earlier in their career, they at present said that they could deal with death and mostly keep it at a distance. Vulnerability was closely linked to professional responsibility and identity, perceived as a burden to be handled. These demands were balanced by an experience of meaning related to their job, connected to making a difference in their patients’ lives. Belonging to a community of their fellows was a presupposition for coping with the loneliness and powerlessness related to their vulnerable professional position.Conclusions: Physicians’ vulnerability facing life and death has been underestimated. Belonging to caring communities may assist growth and coping on exposure to existential aspects of clinical work and developing a professional identity. (shrink)

The Half-Causation Method is a metaphysical-epistemic model for developing industrialised technological inventions. It consists of five phases of reasoning through which methodological success is achieved. The Method is named after its first phase, which consists of a methodological idealisation of the causal process, by pinpointing half of a possible causal relation while ignoring everything else. Following this, the Method prescribes how the reasoning should proceed, which ultimately constructs a complete and novel causal process. Each phase terminates with an epistemic justification (...) which the inventor (or inventors) can share with other knowers and have them deliberated and scrutinised. As such, the entire process of developing industrialised technological inventions, including the early stages which are traditionally regarded as mysterious can be understood as a sequence of epistemic justifications. In this paper, the Half-Causation Method is presented as a detailed practical prescription for future projects which aim to develop industrialised technological inventions. Throughout the paper two case studies from the recent history of technology are used as exemplars, namely: the invention of the microwave oven and the invention of the centrifugal vacuum cleaner. First, a definition of the ‘technological invention’ is proposed. Following that, the prescription is presented as fifteen methodological instructions: three instructions that repeat at each phase. The prescription is supplemented by a set-theoretic diagram. Although this is a philosophy paper, it is spoken directly to the scientists and engineers who aim to direct part of their research towards the development of inventions. (shrink)

The Half-Causation Method is a metaphysical-epistemic model for developing industrialised technological inventions. It consists of five phases of reasoning through which methodological success is achieved. The Method is named after its first phase, which consists of a methodological idealisation of the causal process, by pinpointing half of a possible causal relation while ignoring everything else. Following this, the Method prescribes how the reasoning should proceed, which ultimately constructs a complete and novel causal process. Each phase terminates with an epistemic justification (...) which the inventor can share with other knowers and have them deliberated and scrutinised. As such, the entire process of developing industrialised technological inventions, including the early stages which are traditionally regarded as mysterious can be understood as a sequence of epistemic justifications. In this paper, the Half-Causation Method is presented as a detailed practical prescription for future projects which aim to develop industrialised technological inventions. Throughout the paper two case studies from the recent history of technology are used as exemplars, namely: the invention of the microwave oven and the invention of the centrifugal vacuum cleaner. First, a definition of the ‘technological invention’ is proposed. Following that, the prescription is presented as fifteen methodological instructions: three instructions that repeat at each phase. The prescription is supplemented by a set-theoretic diagram. Although this is a philosophy paper, it is spoken directly to the scientists and engineers who aim to direct part of their research towards the development of inventions. (shrink)

We argue for a relevance-guided learning mechanism to account for both innovative reproduction and faithful imitation by focusing on the role of communication in knowledge transmission. Unlike bifocal stance theory, this mechanism does not require a strict divide between instrumental and ritual-like actions, and the goals they respectively fulfill (material vs. social/affiliative), to account for flexibility in action interpretation and reproduction.

This article explores how agreements to preferentially save can ground an exception to the duty to minimize harm when saving. A rescuer preferentially saves if she knowingly fails to minimize harm among prospective victims, even though minimizing harm would not have imposed greater costs on the rescuer herself. Allowing rescuers to act on agreements to preferentially save is justified by the reasons we have to respect the agreements that agents form as a means of pursuing their own ends.

Brown, Roy W The International Panel on Climate Change issued its second-last full report in 2007. The experts hoped at that time that, provided sufficient measures were taken soon enough to reduce CO2 emissions, it should be possible to limit global warming to just 2 degrees Celsius over the coming century. But over the past five years and despite the economic downturn, the effects of global warming have been accelerating and the experts' predictions, no doubt mindful of the massive political (...) opposition to their message, were quite simply too optimistic. In this article I summarise the evidence that the consequences of global warming will be devastating within the lifetimes of most people alive today. (shrink)

Perception and action are tightly coupled. However, there is still little recognition of how individual motor constraints impact perception in everyday life. Here we asked whether and how the motor slowing that accompanies aging influences the sense of visual speed. Ninety-four participants aged between 18 and 90 judged the natural speed of video clips reproducing real human or physical motion. They also performed a finger tapping task and a visual search task, which estimated their motor speed and visuospatial attention speed, (...) respectively. Remarkably, aged people judged videos to be too slow, as compared to younger people: the Point of Subjective Equality, which estimated the speed bias in the SoS task, was +4% in young adults, +12% in old adults and +16% in elders. On average, PSE increased with age at a rate of 0.2% per year, with perceptual precision, adjustment rate, and completion time progressively worsening. Crucially, low motor speed, but not low attentional speed, turned out to be the key predictor of video speed underestimation. These findings suggest the existence of a counterintuitive compensatory coupling between action and perception in judging dynamic scenes, an effect that becomes particularly germane during aging. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the two general kinds of uploading scenarios and given our response to Chalmers' objections, let us summarize where things stand. First, there is considerable reason to be pessimistic about instantaneous destructive uploading's ability to preserve identity or to produce continuations of the original person. Second, there is also good reason to be pessimistic about gradual destructive uploading's ability to preserve identity or produce continuations, since exactly the same issues arise in the context of gradual uploading. The chapter (...) introduces issues from the field of metaphysics that are key to determining whether you could survive uploading. The author argues that it is plausible, given these background metaphysical issues, that you will not survive uploading. The chapter considers David Chalmers' objections to our position, as stated in a recent paper of his. (shrink)