In this paper I am concerned with the question of whether degrees of belief can figure in reasoning processes that are executed by humans. It is generally accepted that outright beliefs and intentions can be part of reasoning processes, but the role of degrees of belief remains unclear. The literature on subjective Bayesianism, which seems to be the natural place to look for discussions of the role of degrees of belief in reasoning, does not address the question of whether degrees (...) of belief play a role in real agents’ reasoning processes. On the other hand, the philosophical literature on reasoning, which relies much less heavily on idealizing assumptions about reasoners than Bayesianism, is almost exclusively concerned with outright belief. One possible explanation for why no philosopher has yet developed an account of reasoning with degrees of belief is that reasoning with degrees of belief is not possible for humans. In this paper, I will consider three arguments for this claim. I will show why these arguments are flawed, and conclude that, at least as far as these arguments are concerned, it seems like there is no good reason why the topic of reasoning with degrees of belief has received so little attention. (shrink)

The predominant view is that a study using health data is observational research and should require individual consent unless it can be shown that gaining consent is impractical. But recent arguments have been made that citizens have an ethical obligation to share their health information for research purposes. In our view, this obligation is sufficient ground to expand the circumstances where secondary use research with identifiable health information is permitted without explicit subject consent. As such, for some studies the Institutional (...) Review Board/Research Ethics Committee review process should not assess the practicality of gaining consent for data use. Instead the review process should focus on assessing the public good of the research, public engagement and transparency. (shrink)

Recently, macroscopic accounts of chemical kind individuation have been proposed as alternatives to the microstructural essentialist account advocated by Kripke, Putnam, and others. These accounts argue that individuation of chemical kinds is based on macroscopic criteria such as reactivity or thermodynamics, and they challenge the essentialism that grounds the Kripke-Putnam view. Using a variety of chemical examples, I argue that microstructure grounds these macroscopic accounts, but that this grounding need not imply essentialism. Instead, kinds are individuated on the basis of (...) similarity of reactivity between substances, and microstructure explains similarity of reactivity. (shrink)

Our ability to understand others is one of the most central parts of human life, but explaining how this ability develops remains a controversial issue, exercising psychologists and philosophers alike. Within this literature the Paradox of False Belief Understanding remains one of the main open challenges. Based on an up to date overview of the empirical and theoretical literature, this book highlights the significance of this paradox for our understanding of the development of social cognition and provides a new explanation (...) of it in the form of the Situational Mental File Account. Central features of the account are, firstly, identitfying three distinct stages in the development of belief understanding and, secondly, elaborating the role of both cognitive and situational factors as well as their interaction in the development of belief understanding. This account is also applied to the related phenomenon of pretend play, demonstrating the potential for a wider application of the account. This account generates both new empirical predications and a framework for further theoretical work, thereby providing a fruitful ground for further interdisciplinary research in this area. (shrink)

This volume launches a new series of contemporary conversations about scientific classification. Most philosophical conversations about kinds have focused centrally or solely on natural kinds, that is, kinds whose existence is not dependent on the scientific process of synthesis. This volume refocuses conversations about classification on unnatural, or synthetic, kinds via extensive study of three paradigm cases of unnatural kinds: nanomaterials, stem cells, and synthetic biology.

The future of health research will be characterised by three continuing trends: rising demand for health data; increasing impracticability of obtaining specific consent for secondary research; and decreasing capacity to effectively anonymise data. In this context, governments, clinicians and the research community must demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of health data. IRBs and RECs sit at heart of this process because in many jurisdictions they have the capacity to grant consent waivers when research is judged to be of (...) particular value. However, several different terms are used to refer to this value, indicating a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the appropriate test for access to health data for research without consent. In this paper we do three things. First we describe the current confusion and instability in terminology relating to public interest in the context of consent waivers. Second we argue for harmonisation of terminology on the grounds of clarity, transparency and consistency. Third we argue that the term ‘public interest’ best reflects the normative work required to justify consent waivers because it is the broadest of the competing terms. ‘Public interest’ contains within its scope positive and negative implications of a study, as well as welfare, justice and rights considerations. In making this argument, we explain the normative basis for consent waivers, and provide a starting place for further discussion about the precise conditions in which a given study can be said to advance the public interest. Ipsos MORI study found that: … the public would be broadly happy with administrative data linking for research projects provided Those projects have social value, broadly defined. Data are de-identified. Data are kept secure. Businesses are not able to access the data for profit. (shrink)

The right to withdraw from participation in research is recognized in virtually all national and international guidelines for research on human subjects. It is therefore surprising that there has been little justification for that right in the literature. We argue that the right to withdraw should protect research participants from information imbalance, inability to hedge, inherent uncertainty, and untoward bodily invasion, and it serves to bolster public trust in the research enterprise. Although this argument is not radical, it provides a (...) useful way to determine how the right should be applied in various cases. (shrink)

I describe a suite of reinforcement learning environments in which artificial agents learn to value and respond to moral content and contexts. I illustrate the core principles of the framework by characterizing one such environment, or “gridworld,” in which an agent learns to trade-off between monetary profit and fair dealing, as applied in a standard behavioral economic paradigm. I then highlight the core technical and philosophical advantages of the learning approach for modeling moral cognition, and for addressing the so-called value (...) alignment problem in AI. (shrink)

This paper argues that we should distinguish two different kinds of imaginative vividness: vividness of mental images and vividness of imaginative experiences. Philosophy has focussed on mental images, but distinguishing more complex vivid imaginative experiences from vivid mental images can help us understand our intuitions concerning the notion as well as the explanatory power of vividness. In particular, it can help us understand the epistemic role imagination can play on the one hand and our emotional engagement with literary fiction on (...) the other hand. (shrink)

In this article I address the idea that in Husserl’s eidetic ontology all possibilities are fixed ‘in advance’ so that actual objects and events—despite their contingency—can only ever unfold possibilities that are ‘permitted’ to them by their essences. I show how this view distorts Husserl’s ontology and argue that this distortion stems from a misconstrual of the relations between essences and facts, and between ideal and real possibilities. These ‘local’ misconstruals reflect, I contend, a ‘global’ misunderstanding that mistakes descriptive distinctions (...) for ‘real’ separations, and that remains indebted to a non-Husserlian understanding of the a priori–a posteriori-distinction. In support of this argument, I first lay out the relevant objection to Husserl’s eidetics as I understand it. Then, I clarify the relation between ideal and real possibilities in the context of Husserl’s eidetics as I see it. Finally, I make a general point about the status of Husserl’s ontological differentiations ‘in the midst of life,’ namely in how what they differentiate is effective and (tacitly) manifest ever only as one moment (amongst many) of the complex whole that is a concrete life of consciousness. I end with some remarks on what this might mean for future phenomenological research on the imagination. (shrink)

This paper explores the theory of freedom that Emilie du Châtelet advances in her essay “On Freedom.” Using contemporary terminology, we can characterize this theory as a version of agent-causal compatibilism. More specifically, the theory has the following elements: (a) freedom consists in the power to act in accordance with one’s choices, (b) freedom requires the ability to suspend desires and master passions, (c) freedom requires a power of self-motion in the agent, and (d) freedom is compatible with moral necessity (...) but not with physical necessity. While these elements may at first appear disparate, the paper shows that they fit together quite well. The resulting theory is a surprising combination of doctrines that appear to be based on Samuel Clarke’s libertarian account of free will and doctrines that are reminiscent of the compatibilist accounts of John Locke, Anthony Collins, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes. (shrink)

Popular uprisings, indignant youth, toppled dictators, oligarchic presidents dismissed, hopes dashed, liberties crushed in prisons, fixed trials, and bloodbaths. How are we to read these images? Could revolt, or what is called “riot” on the Web, be waking humanity from its dream of hyperconnectedness? Or could it just be a trick played on us so that the culture of spectacle can last longer? But what “revolt” are we talking about? Is it even possible?

The “best-medical-interests” standard for reporting findings does not go far enough. Research subjects have a right to know about any comprehensible piece of information about them that is generated by research in which they are participating. An even broader standard may sometimes be appropriate: if subjects agree to accept information that they may not understand, then all information may be disclosed.

Galen is criticized for combining Plato’s tripartition-cum-trilocation of the soul, in which each part constitutes its own source of motivation, with the demand that the faculty of voluntary motion is limited to the rational part, being the only one located in the brain and having access to the relevant nerves. While scholars have concentrated on small nerves as connective organs, this paper focuses on thepneuma, blood and innate heat. When the latter is increased, the irrational parts can affect the brain’s (...) function to such an extent that the rational part’s volitions are reduced to their own desires. (shrink)

Trust and corporation (extracts) / by F.W. Maitland -- Respublica Christiana -- by J.N. Figgis -- Society and state / by R.M. MacIver -- The discredited state / by E. Barker -- Conflicting social obligations / by G.D.H. Cole -- Community is a process / by M.P. Follett -- The eruption of the group / by E. Barker -- The masses in a representative democracy / by M. Oakeshott -- The atavism of social justice / by F.A. von Hayek -- (...) Collective entities and moral rights / by V. van Dyke -- Capitalism, citizenship and community / by S. Macedo -- Liberalism and the politicization of ethnicity / by W. Kymlicka -- Are there any cultural rights? / by C. Kukathas -- The civil society argument / by M. Walzer. (shrink)

This volume, which follows hard on the heels of publication of the final volume of the 26-volume set of Kierkegaard's writings , allows its readers 'to find their way quickly to relevant sources of help,' elucidates Kierkegaard's 'central concepts,' and demonstrates the contemporary relevance of his ideas.

Mitochondrial replacement therapy requires oocytes of women whose mitochondrial DNA will be transmitted to resultant children. These techniques are scientifically, ethically and socially controversial; it is likely that some women who donate their oocytes for general in vitro fertilisation usage would nevertheless oppose their genetic material being used in MRT. The possibility of oocytes being used in MRT is therefore relevant to oocyte donation and should be included in the consent process when applicable. In present circumstances, specific consent should be (...) obtained. However, once MRT becomes more routine, such consent could be incorporated into the general consent process for oocyte donation. The reported lack of proper consent for MRT from the oocyte donor in the first baby born via the technique is an ethical failing and should be corrected in any future practice of MRT. (shrink)

In this commentary we describe the interplay between 1) contemporary popular and professional understandings of “risk” and “normality” in health and healthcare, and 2) the promotion by state and market forces of individual self-regulation of health. We draw upon the work of critical theorists who have described the relationship between risk, fear, and the notion of “normal” in health discourse to argue that these factors act, primarily via the popular media, to shape the discourse on, and overuse of, diagnostic tests (...) in Canada. (shrink)

The present study evaluated the relationship between job satisfaction and unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB), directly as well as indirectly, through organizational commitment. Multidimensional constructs were utilized for job satisfaction and organizational commitment to provide a granular understanding of how these constructs can motivate employees to engage in UPB, which can threaten organizations' success and diminish the public's confidence in organizations. In order to test these relationships, a diverse sample of 617 participants was recruited through the online survey distribution platform Amazon (...) Mechanical Turk (MTurk®) to test the theoretical model using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicated that identification, affiliation, and exchange commitment served as intervening variables between growth satisfaction and UPB, while no significant indirect effect of internal work motivation on UPB was found. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This paper argues that one problem that besets black-box AI is that it lacks algorithmic justifiability. We argue that the norm of shared decision making in medical care presupposes that treatment decisions ought to be justifiable to the patient. Medical decisions are justifiable to the patient only if they are compatible with the patient’s values and preferences and the patient is able to see that this is so. Patient-directed justifiability is threatened by black-box AIs because the lack of rationale provided (...) for the decision makes it difficult for patients to ascertain whether there is adequate fit between the decision and the patient’s values. This paper argues that achieving algorithmic transparency does not help patients bridge the gap between their medical decisions and values. We introduce a hypothetical model we call Justifiable AI to illustrate this argument. Justifiable AI aims at modelling normative and evaluative considerations in an explicit way so as to provide a stepping stone for patient and physician to jointly decide on a course of treatment. If our argument succeeds, we should prefer these justifiable models over alternatives if the former are available and aim to develop said models if not. (shrink)

Bayesian epistemology provides a popular and powerful framework for modeling rational norms on credences, including how rational agents should respond to evidence. The framework is built on the assumption that ideally rational agents have credences, or degrees of belief, that are representable by numbers that obey the axioms of probability. From there, further constraints are proposed regarding which credence assignments are rationally permissible, and how rational agents’ credences should change upon learning new evidence. While the details are hotly disputed, all (...) flavors of Bayesianism purport to give us norms of ideal rationality. This raises the question of how exactly these norms apply to you and me, since perfect compliance with those ideal norms is out of reach for human thinkers. A common response is that Bayesian norms are ideals that human reasoners are supposed to approximate – the closer they come to being ideally rational, the better. To make this claim plausible, we need to make it more precise. In what sense is it better to be closer to ideally rational, and what is an appropriate measure of such closeness? This article sketches some possible answers to these questions. (shrink)

This collection of papers explores one of the central debates in the field of bioethics in the new century. It evaluates the controversy between the claim that there is a common morality accepted by all and the opposing view that there are different moral visions and moral rationalities, within which complex bioethical issues demand a solution. Contributions within this volume offer different approaches and perspectives on the pursuit of global ethics in the new century. They are organized under five major (...) themes. The first theme explores the different plausible understandings of the foundations of bioethics and contemporary reflections on the nature and role of moral theory. The second theme analyses the impact of moral loss and moral diversity on the character of bioethics and the search for alternative perspectives in post-traditional and post-modern societies. The third theme examines a number of theoretical issues raised by concrete examples of bioethnological applications, which bear importantly on contemporary debates between the possibility and impossibility of global bioethics. The fourth theme discusses examples of moral conflicts and dilemmas in everyday health care practice regarding the permissible treatment of humans by humans under different ethical perspectives and cultural traditions. The fifth theme explores alternative suggestions for opening up new modes of self-understanding and new strategies for bioethical exploration in the new century. The volume is an important work of reference for philosophers, moral theologians, ethicists, counsellors, doctors, nurses, sociologists, journalists, health care professionals, public policy makers and everyone who is interested in the profound ethical issues arising from modern technological advancements which are not only transforming our lives but are also demanding urgent ethical decision-making and `pragmatic' solutions from a cross-cultural perspective. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Tierpsychologe Frederik J. J. Buytendijk (1887–1974) entwickelte in seinen Forschungen der 1920er und 1930er Jahre in Abgrenzung zum Behaviorismus eine antireduktionistische Zugangsweise auf Verhaltensexperimente. So bezog er in seinen Experimentalpraktiken explizit die subjektive Erfahrung des Versuchsleiters mit ein. Damit entwarf Buytendijk eine Wissenschaftstheorie, die methodologisch auf die Phänomenologie, Hermeneutik wie auf gestalttheoretische Ganzheitskonzepte zurückgriff, quantitative Datenerhebungen aber dennoch nicht aufgab. Vielmehr untersuchte Buytendijk auf der Grundlage des Biotheoretikers Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) in seinem physiologischen Institut in Groningen konkret (...) die These einer „Tier-Umwelt-Einheit“. Der vorliegende Beitrag ermittelt anhand der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen und zweier Experimente (1924 und 1931), inwiefern Buytendijk seine Aussage, dass das Tier „mit und in seiner Umwelt geboren [ist]“, die zugleich sein wissenschaftsphilosophisches Konzept stützte, zu verifizieren wusste. Dass die Umwelt dem Tier ein Organ ist, ist bei Buytendijk dementsprechend nicht nur metaphorisch, sondern ganz real zu verstehen. (shrink)

Somewhere outside of Baton Rouge, my cousin is FaceTiming her children goodbye before intubation "just in case." They press a watercolor sun to the screen to give her good dreams while she sleeps. I think how recklessly hopeful, how gloriously human a thing it is to close one's eyes and trust the sun to...

In [3], two different effective versions of Borel embedding are defined. The first, called computable embedding, is based on uniform enumeration reducibility, while the second, called Turing computable embedding, is based on uniform Turing reducibility. While [3] focused mainly on computable embeddings, the present paper considers Turing computable embeddings. Although the two notions are not equivalent, we can show that they behave alike on the mathematically interesting classes chosen for investigation in [3]. We give a “Pull-back Theorem”, saying that if (...) Φ is a Turing computable embedding of K into K’, then for any computable infinitary sentence φ in the language of K’, we can find a computable infinitary sentence φ* in the language of K such that for all. (shrink)

Spoken language consists of a linear sequence of units, from which the existence of particular underlying hierarchical processing mechanisms is inferred. Uddén et al. use graph theory to provide a framework for describing the possible structural relationships that may underlie a linear output sequence. Being more explicit in defining different structures can help identifying and testing for such structures in AGL experiments, as well as help showing how behavioral and neuroimaging data reveals signatures of hierarchical processing in humans.

Measures of visual cortical development in children demonstrate high variability and inconsistency throughout the literature. This is partly due to the specificity of the visual system in processing certain features. It may then be advantageous to activate multiple cortical pathways in order to observe maturation of coinciding networks. Visual stimuli eliciting the percept of apparent motion and shape change is designed to simultaneously activate both dorsal and ventral visual streams. However, research has shown that such stimuli also elicit variable visual (...) evoked potential (VEP) morphology in children. The aim of this study was to describe developmental changes in VEPs, including morphological patterns, and underlying visual cortical generators, elicited by apparent motion and shape change in school-aged children. Forty-one typically developing children underwent high-density EEG recordings in response to a continuously morphing, radially modulated, circle-star grating. VEPs were then compared across the age groups of 5-7, 8-10, and 11-15 years according to latency and amplitude. Current density reconstructions were performed on VEP data in order to observe activated cortical regions. It was found that two distinct VEP morphological patterns occurred in each age group. However, there were no major developmental differences between the age groups according to each pattern. Current density reconstructions further demonstrated consistent visual generators across age and pattern. These results describe two novel VEP morphological patterns in typically developing children, but with similar underlying cortical sources. The importance of these morphological patterns is discussed in terms of future studies and the investigation of a relationship to visual cognitive performance. (shrink)

An incomplete degree is cuppable if it can be joined by an incomplete degree to a complete degree. For sets fulfilling some type of simplicity property one can now ask whether these sets are cuppable with respect to a certain type of reducibilities. Several such results are known. In this paper we settle all the remaining cases for the standard notions of simplicity and all the main strong reducibilities.

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar el pensamiento de Gabriel Marcel y Leonardo Polo acerca de un rasgo esencial del ser humano, el tener, y la visión del hombre que se obtiene desde esta característica. Polo considera que existe una jerarquía en el tener, que puede adoptar tres formas: el tener corpóreo, el tener cognoscitivo y el tener habitual. Marcel establece una diferencia entre ser y tener, y vincula el tener a la corporalidad.

En What Emotions Really Are y en otros artículos, Griffiths afirma que las clases naturales de los organismos vivos en Biología son cladistas. La afirmación está inmersa en una nueva teoría acerca de las clases naturales. En este trabajo examinaré los argumentos esgrimidos por Griffiths para sostener el estatus privilegiado de las clasificaciones cladistas frente a otras clasificaciones. No se discutirá la teoría de las clases naturales ofrecida, de cuyos méritos no dudo, sino su capacidad para ofrecer una solución en (...) la cuestión particular de qué sistema de clasificación de organismos debería utilizarse en Biología. In What emotions really are and in other papers Griffiths states that in Biology, natural classes ofliving organisms are clades. This assertion is made within the bounds of a new theory of natural classes. In this paper I wiIl consider the arguments employed by Griffiths to support the privileged status of the cladistic classification over other classifications. It is not Griffith's theory of natural classes what will be discussed, but his ability to offer a solution to the particular issue ofwhich classification system of organisms should be used in Biology. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of ‘waste heat recycling’ and charts the ways in which data centre operators in Stockholm and Paris direct waste heat through metropolitan district heating systems and urban (...) homes, and valorise it. Drawing on new materialisms, infrastructure studies and classical theory of production and destruction of value in capitalism, the article outlines two modes in which this process happens, namely infrastructural convergence and decentralisation of the data centre. These modes arguably help data centre operators convert big data from a source of value online into a raw material that needs to flow in the network irrespective of meaning. In this conversion process, the article argues, a new commodity is in a process of formation, that of computation traffic. Altogether data-driven heat production is suggested to raise the importance of certain data processing nodes in Northern Europe, simultaneously intervening in the global politics of access, while neutralising external criticism towards big data by making urban life literally dependent on power from data streams. (shrink)

This was what Heidegger said to his Japanese enquirer in “A Dialogue on Language,” which, however, concluded on a note bespeaking much more of convergence than of divergence. Yet the difficulties which lie in any comparative study of two thinkers belonging to such distinct and independent traditions as Heidegger and Wang Yang-ming remain great and many. First of all, as Heidegger himself pointed out, we have the language hurdle. Chinese as well as Japanese lacks a clear verb to be; the (...) Chinese language in particular organizes its uninflected words solely according to word order and the placing of particles. Such a language seems to defy logical analysis and forbids an exact translation of the term, “Being.” How is common ground to be found in such a case? (shrink)