Requiring family authorization for apnea testing subtracts health professionals control over death determination, a procedure that has traditionally been considered a matter of clinical expertise alone. In this commentary, we first provide evidence showing that health professionals’ (HPs) disposition to act on death determination without family’s prior consent could be much lower than that referred to by Berkowitz and Garrett (2020). We hypothesize that HPs may have reservations about their own expertise as regards death, and may thus hesitate to impose (...) their views on patients’ families. We then address the theoretical question of clinical expertise in death determination by distinguishing judgments about facts (e.g., the presence or absence of spontaneous breathing) from interpretations given of these facts (i.e., their meaning for the vital status of an individual). We argue that, while clinicians may claim some expert authority on the former, they hold no particular authority on the latter. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Explaining the behaviour of ecosystems is one of the key challenges for the biological sciences. Since 2000, new-mechanicism has been the main model to account for the nature of scientific explanation in biology. The universality of the new-mechanist view in biology has been however put into question due to the existence of explanations that account for some biological phenomena in terms of their mathematical properties (mathematical explanations). Supporters of mathematical explanation have argued that the explanation of the behaviour of ecosystems (...) is usually provided in terms of their mathematical properties, and not in mechanistic terms. They have intensively studied the explanation of the properties of ecosystems that behave following the rules of a non-random network. However, no attention has been devoted to the study of the nature of the explanation in those that form a random network. In this paper, we cover that gap by analysing the explanation of the stability behaviour of the microbiome recently elaborated by Coyte and colleagues, to determine whether it fits with the model of explanation suggested by the new-mechanist or by the defenders of mathematical explanation. Our analysis of this case study supports three theses: (1) that the explanation is not given solely in terms of mechanisms, as the new-mechanists understand the concept; (2) that the mathematical properties that describe the system play an essential explanatory role, but they do not exhaust the explanation; (3) that a non-previously identified appeal to the type of interactions that the entities in the network can exhibit, as well as their abundance, is also necessary for Coyte and colleagues’ account to be fully explanatory. From the combination of these three theses we argue for the necessity of an integrative pluralist view of the nature of behaviour explanation when this is given by appealing to the existence of a random network. (shrink)

People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket, rather than the first, caused the team to win the basketball game. This recency effect, however, reverses in cases of overdetermination: people judge that earlier events, rather than more recent ones, caused the outcome when the event is individually sufficient but not individually necessary for the outcome. In five experiments (N (...) = 5507), we find evidence for the recency effect and the primacy effect for causal judgment. Traditionally, these effects have been a problem for counterfactual views of causal judgment. However, we argue that an extension of a recent counterfactual model of causal judgment explains both the recency and the primacy effect. In line with the predictions of our extended counterfactual model, we also find that, regardless of causal structure, people tend to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event rather than to the earlier one. Moreover, manipulating this tendency affects causal judgments in the ways predicted by this extended model: asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the earlier event weakens the interaction between recency and causal structure, and asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event strengthens the interaction between recency and causal structure. We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking, causal modeling, and late-preemption. (shrink)

A lo largo de la tradición psicopatológica, incluso de la pre-fenomenológica, se encuentra la categorización del delirio como creencia. Jaspers asumió ese uso y lo fundó fenomenológico-existencialmente, definiendo su carácter de convicción. El concepto de creencia ha tenido un largo recorrido dentro de la historia del pensamiento, aunque recientemente se ha intensificado el debate acerca de la visión doxástica del delirio. En virtud de lo ya mencionado, en el presente artículo presentamos un análisis conceptual de la creencia, con el objetivo (...) de identificar de manera precisa los aspectos esenciales que permiten al delirio definirse según ella. De esta manera, se discutirán algunas de las principales incursiones realizadas en el concepto desde la antigüedad periplatónica hasta José Ortega y Gasset, remarcando en cada pensador las directrices esenciales de su aproximación a la creencia. A su vez, introducir al filósofo español al debate psicopatológico permitirá incluir en la discusión dos aspectos importantes que creemos pueden ser fructíferos para la discusión filosófica sobre el delirio: la diferencia entre ideas y creencias, y la vitalidad de estas últimas. Finalmente, hacemos referencia al actual debate pro- y antidoxástico, haciendo hincapié en la necesidad de considerar la amplitud del concepto de creencia en su genealogía histórica. Con base en ello estaríamos en condición de acercarnos a la visión doxástica moderada que han defendido autoras como Lisa Bortolotti. (shrink)

Families play an essential role in deceased organ procurement. As the person cannot directly communicate his or her wishes regarding donation, the family is often the only source of information regarding consent or refusal. We provide a systematic description and analysis of the different roles the family can play, and actions the family can take, in the organ procurement process across different jurisdictions and consent systems. First, families can inform or update healthcare professionals about a person’s donation wishes. Second, families (...) can authorize organ procurement in the absence of deceased’s preferences and the default is not to remove organs, and oppose donation where there is no evidence of preference but the default is to presume consent; in both cases, the decision could be based on their own wishes or what they think the deceased would have wanted. Finally, families can overrule the known wishes of the deceased, which can mean preventing donation, or permitting donation when the deceased refused it. We propose a schema of 4 levels on which to map these possible family roles: no role, witness, surrogate, and full decisional authority. We conclude by mapping different jurisdictions onto this schema to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the consent system for organ donation and some important nuances about the role of families. This classificatory model aims to account for the majority of the world’s consent systems. It provides conceptual and methodological guidance that can be useful to researchers, professionals, and policymakers involved in organ procurement. (shrink)

This article has two main goals: to examine and classify the ways data can be used to advance normative theorizing in political theory, and to demonstrate such usages in the contested disciplinary field of religion–state relations and specifically regarding the hotly debated model of the separation of religion and state. Regarding the former, it is suggested here that the general observation that evaluation of political institutions must rely on proper understanding of such institutions and hence be data-sensitive, can be further (...) detailed or classified, via the following categories: conversion, institutional clarity, theoretical clarity and finally, theory improvement. With regard to the latter we examine how data regarding religion–state relations enables a better understanding (via the noted novel classifications or categories) of two important debates: ‘delineation’ (i.e. the argument that pure separation of religion and state does not exist) and ‘separation-establishment’ (i.e. arguing that models other than separation are permissible in religion–state relations). (shrink)

This article has two main goals: to examine and classify the ways data can be used to advance normative theorizing in political theory, and to demonstrate such usages in the contested disciplinary field of religion–state relations and specifically regarding the hotly debated model of the separation of religion and state. Regarding the former, it is suggested here that the general observation that evaluation of political institutions must rely on proper understanding of such institutions and hence be data-sensitive, can be further (...) detailed or classified, via the following categories: conversion, institutional clarity, theoretical clarity and finally, theory improvement. With regard to the latter we examine how data regarding religion–state relations enables a better understanding (via the noted novel classifications or categories) of two important debates: ‘delineation’ (i.e. the argument that pure separation of religion and state does not exist) and ‘separation-establishment’ (i.e. arguing that models other than separation are permissible in religion–state relations). (shrink)

In this paper a model in particle dynamics of a well-known supertask is constructed. As a consequence, a new and simple result about the failure of determinism of classical particle dynamics can be proved which is related to the non-existence of boundary conditions at spatial infinity. This result is much more accessible to the non-technical reader than similar ones in the scientific literature.

Lower extremity non-contact soft tissue injuries are prevalent in elite futsal. The purpose of this study was to develop robust screening models based on pre-season measures obtained from questionnaires and field-based tests to prospectively predict LE-ST injuries after having applied a range of supervised Machine Learning techniques. One hundred and thirty-nine elite futsal players underwent a pre-season screening evaluation that included individual characteristics; measures related to sleep quality, athlete burnout, psychological characteristics related to sport performance and self-reported perception of chronic (...) ankle instability. A number of neuromuscular performance measures obtained through three field-based tests [isometric hip strength, dynamic postural control and lower extremity joints range of motion ] were also recorded. Injury incidence was monitored over one competitive season. There were 25 LE-ST injuries. Only those groups of measures from two of the field-based tests, as independent data sets, were able to build robust models [area under the receiver operating characteristic curve score ≥0.7] to identify elite futsal players at risk of sustaining a LE-ST injury. Unlike the measures obtained from the five questionnaires selected, the neuromuscular performance measures did build robust prediction models. The inclusion in the same data set of the measures recorded from all the questionnaires and field-based tests did not result in models with significantly higher performance scores. The model generated by the UnderBagging technique with a cost-sensitive SMO as the base classifier and using only four ROM measures reported the best prediction performance scores. The models developed might help coaches, physical trainers and medical practitioners in the decision-making process for injury prevention in futsal. (shrink)

The expressivist account of knowledge attributions, while claiming that these attributions are nonfactual, also typically holds that they retain a factual component. This factual component involves the attribution of a belief. The aim of this work is to show that considerations analogous to those motivating an expressivist account of knowledge attributions can be applied to belief attributions. As a consequence, we claim that expressivists should not treat the so-called factual component as such. The phenomenon we focus on to claim that (...) belief attributions are non-factual is that of normative doxastic disagreement. We show through several examples that this kind of disagreement is analogous to that of the epistemic kind. The result will be a doxastic expressivism. Finally, we answer some objections that our doxastic expressivism could seem to face. (shrink)

A recent flurry of philosophical research on microaggression suggests that there are various practical and moral reasons why microaggression may be objectionable, including that it can be offensive, cause epistemic harms, express demeaning messages about certain members of our society, and help to reproduce an oppressive social order. Yet little attention has been given to the question of whether microaggression is also epistemically objectionable. This paper aims to further our understanding of microaggression by appealing to recent work on moral encroachment—the (...) idea that knowledge is sensitive to the moral stakes of believing—to argue that microaggression can be irrational in a distinctively epistemic sense, as it can involve relying on an epistemically unwarranted belief. This view suggests that the notion of epistemic justification may come apart from the notion of epistemic blame. (shrink)

This article develops a typology of usages for empirical data in normative theorizing in ‎contemporary political theory. A typology of usages is indicated, providing definitions, ‘names’ and an analysis for each ‎usage, and points to the typical stage within political theory research for each usage. The typology is built in a casuistic methodology. It includes the following categories: Spotlighting, Definition, ‎‎ Conversion, Institutional clarity, Theoretical clarity, and Theory improvement. The typology creates a novel toolbox that can be adopted by political (...) theorists; and it clarifies the methods and achievements of data-sensitive political theory. (shrink)

El propósito fundamental del presente artículo es el de ofrecer una reconstrucción y exégesis de las reflexiones del filósofo español exiliado Juan David García Bacca en torno al problema filosófico del tiempo. En este sentido, a través de la lectura de varias de sus obras extraeremos aquellos elementos de su pensamiento que nos ofrecerán herramientas conceptuales para prefigurar las tensiones vinculadas al tratamiento de estas cuestiones por buena parte de la tradición filosófica occidental. De esta forma, partiendo del diagnóstico de (...) las aporías de la temporalidad desarrollado por Paul Ricoeur explicitaremos de qué manera la metafísica de García Bacca obliga a volver a pensar los fundamentos ontológicos del tiempo. Así, su metafísica _transustanciadora _dotará de una relevancia insoslayable a los instrumentos de medición del tiempo – en sus palabras, de _temporalización _ - en la configuración de la realidad. Ello nos permitirá rastrear desde su pensamiento una novedosa articulación de las relaciones y dependencias entre técnica y temporalidad que prefigura de forma heterodoxa la aproximación filosófica a este concepto. (shrink)

Este artículo reseña: Jorge E. NÚÑEZ, Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty and International Law and Politics: A Theory, Routledge, London, New York, 2023, 216 pp.

On a view implicitly endorsed by many, a concept is epistemically better than another if and because it does a better job at ‘carving at the joints', or if the property corresponding to it is ‘more natural' than the one corresponding to another. This chapter offers an argument against this seemingly plausible thought, starting from three key observations about the way we use and evaluate concepts from en epistemic perspective: that we look for concepts that play a role in explanations (...) of things that cry out for explanation; that we evaluate not only ‘empirical' concepts, but also mathematical and perhaps moral concepts from an epistemic perspective; and that there is much more complexity to the concept/property relation than the natural thought seems to presuppose. These observations, it is argued, rule out giving a theory of conceptual evaluation that is a corollary of a metaphysical ranking of the relevant properties. -/- conceptual ethics, explanation, naturalness, epistemic value, concept/property, semantic internalism. (shrink)

Many think that expressivists have a special problem with negation. I disagree. For if there is a problem with negation, I argue, it is a problem shared by those who accept some plausible claims about the nature of intentionality. Whether there is any special problem for expressivists turns, I will argue, on whether facts about what truth-conditions beliefs have can explain facts about basic inferential relations among those beliefs. And I will suggest that the answer to this last question is, (...) on most plausible attempts at solving the problem of intentionality, ‘no’. (shrink)

People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket, rather than the first, caused the team to win the basketball game. This recency effect, however, reverses in cases of overdetermination: people judge that earlier events, rather than more recent ones, caused the outcome when the event is individually sufficient but not individually necessary for the outcome. In five experiments (N (...) = 5507), we find evidence for the recency effect and the primacy effect for causal judgment. Traditionally, these effects have been a problem for counterfactual views of causal judgment. However, an extension of a recent counterfactual model of causal judgment explains both the recency and the primacy effect. In line with the predictions of the extended counterfactual model, we also find that, regardless of causal structure, people tend to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event rather than to the earlier one (Experiment 2). Moreover, manipulating this tendency affects causal judgments in the ways predicted by this extended model: asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the earlier event weakens (and sometimes eliminates) the interaction between recency and causal structure, and asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event strengthens the interaction between recency and causal structure (Experiments 3 & 5). We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking and causal modeling. (shrink)

We present evidence indicating new individual differences with people's intuitions about the relation of determinism to freedom and moral responsibility. We analysed participants' written explanations of why a person acted. Participants offered one of either 'decision' or 'causal' based explanations of behaviours in some paradigmatic cases. Those who gave causal explanations tended to have more incompatibilist intuitions than those who gave decision explanations. Importantly, the affective content of a scenario influenced the type of explanation given. Scenarios containing highly affective actions (...) (e.g. murder) tended to generate more decision explanations than scenarios with low affective content (e.g. cheating on taxes). These results give important clues about the proximal processes generating some intuitions about free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Ritual and Myth in the International Corona-Drama. A Conversation with Jeffrey Alexander.

Since the early 1990s, increasing attention has been paid to the impact of workplace bullying on employees’ well-being and job attitudes. However, the relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction remains unclear. This study aims to shed light on the nature of the bullying-job satisfaction relationship in the Italian context. As expected, the results revealed a U-shape curvilinear relationship between workplace bullying and job satisfaction after controlling for demographic variables. In contrast to the curvilinear model, the results support a negative (...) linear relationship between workplace bullying and psychological well-being, in which higher exposure to negative acts at work is associated with diminished well-being. In addition, gender and job position significantly predicted mental health scores where men and managers reported a better psychological well-being than women, blue-collar, and white-collar employees. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed according to these results. (shrink)

In two experiments, we demonstrate that intentional action intuitions vary as a function of whether one brings about or observes an event. In experiment 1a (N?=?38), participants were less likely to judge that they intended (M?=?2.53, 7 point scale) or intentionally (M?=?2.67) brought about a harmful event compared to intention (M?=?4.16) and intentionality (M?=?4.11) judgments made about somebody else. Experiments 1b and 1c confirmed and extended this pattern of actor-observer differences. Experiment 2 suggested that these actor-observer differences are not likely (...) to occur when participants are asked to ?imagine? being an actor. We argue that these results challenge the substantial philosophical and empirical reliance on hypothetical thought examples about intentional action. Our data offer new and necessary methodological avenues for understanding folk intentional action intuitions. (shrink)

En este artículo reconstruyo y analizo las respuestas de los escépticos académicos a la objeción de apraxia. Esta objeción afirma que el escepticismo es una doctrina imposible de practicar puesto que sus tesis conducen a la apraxia, esta es, un estado de privación o imposibilidad de acción. Las respuestas a la objeción se dividen en dos clases. La primera prueba que el asentimiento no es una condición necesaria para realizar acciones, por lo que la recomendación escéptica de suspender global y (...) permanentemente el asentimiento no conduciría a la apraxia. La segunda prueba que es posible deliberar y orientar racionalmente nuestras acciones sin impresiones aprehensivas, por lo que la tesis escéptica de que no existen impresiones aprehensivas tampoco conduciría a la apraxia. Tras unas breves consideraciones generales, en la primera parte de este artículo presento las respuestas de Arcesilao y en la segunda parte las repuestas de Carnéades. (shrink)

Background Consent policies for post-mortem organ procurement (OP) vary throughout Europe, and yet no studies have empirically evaluated the ethical implications of contrasting consent models. To fill this gap, we introduce a novel indicator of governance quality based on the ideal of informed support, and examine national differences on this measure through a quantitative survey of OP policy informedness and preferences in seven European countries. -/- Methods Between 2017–2019, we conducted a convenience sample survey of students (n = 2006) in (...) Austria (AT), Belgium (BE), Denmark (DK), Germany (DE), Greece (GR), Slovenia (SI) and Spain (ES), asking participants about their donation preferences, as well as their beliefs and views about the policy in place. From these measures, we computed indices of informedness, policy support, and fulfilment of unexpressed preferences, which we compared across countries and consent systems. -/- Results Our study introduces a tool for analyzing policy governance in the context of OP. Wide variation in policy awareness was observed: Most respondents in DK, DE, AT and BE correctly identified the policy in place, while those in SI, GR and ES did not. Respondents in opt-out countries (AT, BE, ES and GR) tended to support the policy in place (with one exception, i.e., SI), whereas those in opt-in countries (DE and DK) overwhelmingly opposed it. These results reveal stark differences in governance quality across countries and consent policies: We found a preponderance of informed opposition in opt-in countries and a general tendency towards support–either informed or uninformed–in opt-out countries. We also found informed divergence in opt-in countries and a tendency for convergence–either informed or uninformed–among opt-out countries. -/- Conclusion Our study offers a novel tool for analyzing governance quality and illustrates, in the context of OP, how the strengths and weaknesses of different policy implementations can be estimated and compared using quantitative survey data. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss a number of challenges with the empirical study of emotion and its relation to moral judgment. We examine a case study involving the moral foreign-language effect, according to which people show an increased utilitarian response tendency in moral dilemmas when using their non-native language. One important proposed explanation for this effect is that using one’s non-native language reduces emotional arousal, and that reduced emotion is responsible for this tendency. We offer reasons to think that there (...) is insufficient evidence for accepting this explanation at present. We argue that there are three themes that constrain our current ability to draw firm empirical conclusions: 1) the frequent use of proxies or partial measures for emotions, 2) the lack of a predictive and generalizable theory of emotion and specific emotion-types, and 3) the obscurity of a baseline level of neutrality with respect to participant emotion. These lessons apply not only to research on the moral foreign-language effect, but to empirical research in moral psychology more generally. (shrink)

In this paper a simple model in particle dynamics of a well-known supertask is constructed (the supertask was introduced by Max Black some years ago). As a consequence, a new and simple result about creation ex nihilo of particles can be proved compatible with classical dynamics. This result cannot be avoided by imposing boundary conditions at spatial infinity, and therefore is really new in the literature. It follows that there is no reason why even a world of rigid spheres should (...) be eternal, as has been erroneously assumed, especially since the time of Newton. (shrink)

La gestión de la información es una actividad sustancial en la formación inicial del profesorado, y para la convivencia en la sociedad digital. De ahí la necesidad de, diagnosticar las competencias informacionales del profesorado en formación, a fin de determinar sus carencias y expectativas de logro. En ese propósito se aplicó el cuestionario IL-HUMASS (Information Literacy Humanities Social Sciences Survey) a 344 estudiantes de nueve especialidades pedagógicas de una facultad de educación. Los resultados permiten evidenciar las diferencias de adquisición, en (...) términos de la importancia y autoeficacia atribuida a las competencias informacionales; y la necesidad de rediseñar la formación docente. (shrink)

Resumen Aunque Carlos Arturo Truque sigue siendo poco conocido, no podemos hablar de literatura afrocolombiana, ni colombiana, sin su aporte. Con una producción literaria dispersa en publicaciones periódicas, el chocoano apuesta por el cuento cuando este no era suficientemente valorado en su país. Vivan los compañeros recoge todos sus cuentos, en los que se acerca tanto a los personajes excluidos de la sociedad como a los episodios de la historia colombiana más “vergonzosos”, desde un lenguaje que se aleja de todo (...) academicismo. Su obra, calificada en la época de “literatura sucia”, y ubicada concretamente en el Chocó y el puerto de Buenaventura, no es ajena a cualquier injusticia humana. Además, la necesidad de Truque de plasmar el habla de su comunidad no le impide contemplar las nuevas técnicas narrativas que llegaban entonces de Norteamérica. Así, renueva el cuento colombiano desde el plano formal y de contenido.Although Carlos Arturo Truque is still not well known, we cannot talk about Afro-Colombian, or Colombian literature, without mentioning his contribution. With an unfocused literary production in periodic publications, the “chocoano” bets on the short story when this genre was not highly valued in his country. Vivan los compañeros collects all his short stories, where he approaches the excluded characters of society as well as the more “shameful” episodes of Colombian history, from a language that distances itself from all academic art. His work, described at the time as “dirty literature” and specifically located in Chocó and the port of Buenaventura, is not alien to any human injustice. Besides, the need for Truque to express the speech of his community does not prevent him from contemplating new narrative techniques coming from North America. Thus, he renews the Colombian short story from the formal level and its content. (shrink)

While there has always been discourse seeking to discredit feminism and its proposals using false arguments, as the movement has gained ground, the effort to discredit it has increased. Based on cases reported by the media websites Maldita.es, in its section Maldito Feminism, Newtral.es and Efe Verifica, we point out the important presence of anti-feminist content in the disinformation present in social media. We analyse the underlying ideology and the reasons why this discourse is particularly damaging to the feminist movement (...) today and to society in general, as new technologies make disinformation even more dangerous. We conclude our research by drawing a parallel between this phenomenon and Susan Faludi's analysis of the anti-feminist reaction in the 1980s, looking at the new challenges facing feminism in this fight against post-truth. (shrink)

The first aim of this paper is to introduce a new way of looking at supertasks in the light of special relativity which makes use of the elementary dynamics of relativistic point particles subjected to elastic binary collisions and constrained to move unidimensionally. In addition, this will enable us to draw new physical consequences from the possibility of supertasks whose ordinal type is higher than the usual ω or ω * considered so far in the literature. Thus, the paper shows (...) how an entire collection of infinitely many particles may place itself spontaneously in motion (mechanical self-acceleration) or even reach the speed of light in a way compatible with special relativity. Interesting implications for classical mechanics are also derived, particularly the possibility of a system of particles disappearing spontaneously in spatial infinity even under the condition of the non-existence of non-collision singularities. (shrink)

Hume argued that inductive inferences do not have rational justification. My aim is to reject Hume’s argument. The discussion is partly motivated by an analogy with Carroll’s Paradox, which concerns deductive inferences. A first radically externalist reply to Hume (defended by Dauer and Van Cleve) is that justified inductive inferences do not require the subject to know that nature is uniform, though the uniformity of nature is a necessary condition for having the justification. But then the subject does not have (...) reasons for believing what she believes. I defend a moderate externalist account that seeks to partly accommodate that objection to the radical externalist proposal. It is based on an extension of Peacocke’s theory of concepts: possession conditions for predicative concepts standing for natural properties include (fallible) dispositions to project them to new cases in accordance with inductive inferential patterns. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

Norton’s very simple case of indeterminism in classical mechanics has given rise to a literature critical of his result. I am interested here in posing a new objection different from the ones made to date. The first section of the paper expounds the essence of Norton’s model and my criticism of it. I then propose a specific modification in the absence of gravitational interaction. The final section takes into consideration a surprising consequence for classical mechanics from the new model introduced (...) here. (shrink)