A large body of information and opinion related to COVID-19 is being shared via social media platforms. Recent reports have raised concerns about the reliability and verifiability of said information being disseminated and the way systems, processes and design of the platforms facilitates such spread. This, alongside other areas of concern, has resulted in several social media platforms taking steps towards tackling the spread of mis- and dis-information. Here we discuss approaches to online public health messaging from a range of (...) sources during COVID-19, with a focus on official and non-official sources in the United Kingdom. We highlight issues for ongoing public health decisions, and the potential impact for the future course of the pandemic. (shrink)

So much for the Aesthetic. We can now proceed to the Analytic, the philosophical importance of which is much greater. Kant's main contentions in this part of his work can be summed up in; two propositions: human understanding contains certain a priori concepts, and on these are based certain non-empirical principles; these concepts are only general concepts of a phenomenal object, and therefore the principles in question are only prescriptive to sense-experience. As has already been said, interest in the first (...) proposition has distracted attention from the fact that the important thing Kant has to say is contained in the second. (shrink)

The Quietist affair at the end of the seventeenth century has much to teach us about theories of the will in the period. Although Bossuet and Fénelon are the names most famously associated with the debate over the Quietist conception of pure love, Malebranche and his erstwhile disciple Lamy were the ones who debated the deep philosophical issues involved. This paper sets the historical context of the debate, discusses the positions as well as the arguments for and against them, and (...) opens up investigation of important material that is all but ignored in the English literature and only incompletely addressed in the French. (shrink)

To function well in an unpredictable environment using unreliable components, a system must have a high degree of robustness. Robustness is fundamental to biological systems and is an objective in the design of engineered systems such as airplane engines and buildings. Cognitive systems, like biological and engineered systems, exist within variable environments. This raises the question, how do cognitive systems achieve similarly high degrees of robustness? The aim of this study was to identify a set of mechanisms that enhance robustness (...) in cognitive systems. We identify three mechanisms that enhance robustness in biological and engineered systems: system control, redundancy, and adaptability. After surveying the psychological literature for evidence of these mechanisms, we provide simulations illustrating how each contributes to robust cognition in a different psychological domain: psychomotor vigilance, semantic memory, and strategy selection. These simulations highlight features of a mathematical approach for quantifying robustness, and they provide concrete examples of mechanisms for robust cognition. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an argument for the thesis that ‘maximality is extrinsic’, on which a whole physical object is not a whole of its kind in virtue of its intrinsic properties. Theodore Sider has a number of arguments that depend on his own simple argument that maximality is extrinsic. However, Peter van Inwagen has an argument in defence of his Duplication Principle that, I will argue, can be extended to show that Sider's simple argument fails. However, van Inwagen's (...) argument fails against a more complex, sophisticated argument that maximality is extrinsic. I use van Inwagen's own commitments to various forms of causation and metaphysical possibility to argue that maximality is indeed extrinsic, although not for the mundane reasons that Sider suggests. I then argue that moral properties are extrinsic properties. Two physically identical things can have different moral properties in a physical world. This argument is a counterexample to a classical ethical supervenience idea (often attributed to G.E. Moore) that if there is identity of physical properties in a physical world, then there is identity in moral properties as well. I argue moral value is ‘border sensitive’ and extrinsic for Kantians, utilitarians, and Aristotelians. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 214 Seiten: 5-8.

This essay amounts to a commentary on some of the leading doctrines of the Analogies of Experience, whose main contention I take to be that we should not be in possession of a unitary time-system unless certain things were true, and indeed necessarily true, of the world of experienced fact. A unitary time-system is one in which all temporal ascriptions—all dates and durations—are directly relateable; it makes sense inside such a system to ask of every supposed happening whether it preceded, (...) followed or was simultaneous with anything else which is taken to happen. Kant assumes, obviously correctly as it seems to me, that the temporal system we have at least purports to be unitary in this way. He also assumes, again as I see it uncontrovertibly, that statements assigning dates to events or durations to processes are intended to say something about the objective world, instead of to record what particular persons happen to feel. We do contrast real with apparent duration, but it is the former which necessarily occupies our primary attention, for only if we first fix the real position of some things in the temporal process can we speak effectively of the apparent position of other things. The real, here as elsewhere, is the normal, the apparent the deviant, and you cannot understand the deviant until you grasp that from which it deviates. Our chief aim in operating a system of temporal concepts must accordingly be to say what objectively is the case. (shrink)

Few major philosophers show evidence of having studied the works of their predecessors with special care, even in cases where they were subject to particular influences which they were ready to acknowledge. Hume knew that he was working in the tradition of ‘some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing’—‘Mr Locke, my Lord Shaftsbury, Dr Mandeville, Mr Hutchinson, Dr Butler, &c.’ But there is not much sign in the Treatise or (...) elsewhere in Hume's writings of any close acquaintance with the works of these authors; the presumption must be that he had read them at some time and extracted the main ideas, but was not in the habit of returning to their texts. He had something more important to do, namely to work at philosophical problems of his own. Similarly Kant, though he said that the Critique of Pure Reason was not meant to be ‘a critique of books and systems, but of the faculty of reason in general’, had clearly felt the impact of the thought of some important past philosophers, but equally had never spent much time in finding out just what these philosophers had to say. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume all get fairly frequent mention in his pages. But Kant takes his knowledge of Plato and Aristotle from J. J. Brucker's Historia critica philosophiae, a six-volume compilation which first appeared in 1742, or from doubtful sources such as Mendelssohn's doctored translation of the Phaedo, and though he doubtless knew the more recent authors at first hand clearly felt no need to study them in any depth. This was true even of writers to whom he attributed a particular importance, such as Leibniz and Hume. The references to Hume in the Critique and Prolegomena are all disappointingly general, and though the summary of Leibniz's philosophy in the section called ‘The Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection’ has a certain force, it is not documented with references to Leibnizian texts. Kant knows that there is a difference between the views of the historical Leibniz and those which constituted the ‘Leibnizian-Wolffian system’ of his successors. But he is not very curious about the difference, or inclined to explore it. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-TW X-NONE It is commonly believed that impartial utilitarian moral theories have significant demands that we help the global poor, and that the partial virtue ethics of Mencius and Aristotle do not. This ethical partiality found in these virtue ethicists has been criticized, and some have suggested that the partialistic virtue ethics of Mencius and Aristotle are parochial (i.e., overly narrow in their scope of concern). I (...) believe, however, that the ethics of Mencius and Aristotle are both more cosmopolitan than many presume and also are very demanding. In this paper, I argue that the ethical requirements to help the poor and starving are very demanding for the quintessentially virtuous person in Mencius and Aristotle. The ethical demands to help even the global poor are demanding for Mencius’ jun-zi ( 君子 chün-tzu / junzi ) and Aristotle’s megalopsuchos . I argue that both the jun-zi and megalopsuchos have a wide scope of concern for the suffering of poor people. I argue that the relevant virtues of the jun-zi and megalopsuchos are also achievable for many people. The moral views of Mencius and Aristotle come with strong demands for many of us to work harder to alleviate global poverty. . (shrink)

This collection of original essays covers a wide range of issues in current naturalised philosophy of mind.

Book Information Necessary Goods: Our Responsibilities to Meet Others' Needs. Edited by Gillian Brock. Rowman and Littlefield. Lanham, MD. 1998. Pp. ix + 238. Hardback, US$63.00. Paperback, US$23.95.

This question does not mean: what has a philosopher to learn from paintings? Rather it is: what metaphysical implications can be derived from the consideration of the art of painting? Since, however, this consideration is not a contemplation but a theorizing, we must understand Gilson's question to be: what metaphysical implications can be suggested by a theory about the creative activity of painters and about the kind of entity a painting is?

Philosophical writing is challenging for students new to philosophy. Many philosophy classes are populated, for the most part, by students who have never taken philosophy before. While many institutions offer general writing support services, these services tend to be most beneficial for helping to identify problems with style and grammar. They are not equipped to help students with the particular challenges that come with writing philosophy for the first time. We implemented the “Home Base” Mentoring Program in two introductory level (...) philosophy courses to target the specific challenges that novice learners have when learning how to write philosophy. Through the program, students had access to writing mentors who were undergraduate senior philosophy majors. Based on surveys given to the students who have participated in this program, we found that the program boosted student confidence in writing and also worked to develop a welcoming, judgment-free, and encouraging environment in the philosophy department more generally. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to address the recently renewed debate pertaining to esotericism, secret messages encoded within writings from antiquity, especially in the writings of Plato. The question of esotericism has assumed a prominent role within debates concerning the history of political thought. Ever since Leo Strauss offered his suspicion that there were secrets ‘buried in the writings of the rhetoricians of antiquity’, the idea that philosophers deliberately concealed their true beliefs in a way that few could detect (...) has been fiercely debated. More recently, the research of J.B. Kennedy has made international headlines for discovering a musical pattern embedded within Platonic writings, a pattern that Kennedy insists is evidence of Plato’s Pythagorean allegiance. The theses proffered by Strauss and Kennedy are empty doctrines of esotericism, or empty esotericisms. These doctrines insinuate the presence of secret or coded writing within Platonic dialogues but reveal no actual secret. These theses of esotericism falsely represent Plato as hyper-cryptic.Without actually providing substantive content, these notions of esotericism compel the reader to merely negate the exoteric writings of Plato, which actually render his already heterodox writings as commonplace and orthodox. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume are the proceedings of the 1999 Royal Institute of Philosophy conference: the theme of the conference, the same as the title of this collection, Naturalism, Evolution and Mind. The essays collected here cover a wide array of disparate themes in philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology and the philosophy of science. They range in subject matter from the mind/body problem and the nature of philosophical naturalism, to the naturalization of psychological norms to the naturalization of phenomenal (...) and intentional content, from the methodology cognitive ethology to issues in evolutionary psychology. They are united by the simple thought that the great promise of current naturalism in philosophy of mind resides in its potential to reveal mental phenomena as continuous with other phenomena of the natural world, particularly with other biological phenomena. (shrink)

This essay discusses the implications of Irigaray's readings of the Antigone in the construction of a feminist ethics. By focusing on the gaps and intersections between Lacanian psychoanalysis and Hegelian phenomenology as formulative of Irigaray's eventual call for an ethics of sexual difference, 1 emphasize the inevitability of rethinking the functions of historicity, femininity, and maternity in the formation of new models of intersubjectivity.

Since the publication of Jonathan Dancy's 'Moral Reasons' in 1991, many English speaking ethicists have been especially interested in the role of abstract theory in moral life and the extent to which principles analogous to those employed in the hard sciences like physics are central to the development of ethical knowledge. Unlike earlier generations of philosophers who had, on the whole, accepted that principles had an integral role in the life of a morally serious person, contemporary ethicists are largely divided (...) about the merits of such principles and whether ethical knowledge is gained through principles. This debate about the form of ethical knowledge raises questions about the epistemic status of intuitions. Can intuitions about right and wrong provide an alternative source of genuine ethical knowledge? Is reflection upon a belief enough to show that it is true? This edited collection, consisting of 11 essays by distinguished philosophers, pursues and advances that debate. The early chapters of the book are concerned primarily with intuitions and intuitionism. John Cottingham, in an essay that casts doubt on the possibility of secular intuitions, argues that if intuitions are uprooted from their traditional theological foundations then they lose their plausibility. The claim is that theism and moral intuitionism are natural partners and morality is doomed if we reject theistic picture that 'provides a home for these intuitions'. James Lenman provides an indirect response to Cottingham, questioning whether evolutionary explanations of intuitions genuinely debunk them. Explaining the causal origins of intuitions within a naturalistic framework is not damning of them or of morality itself. (shrink)