In the clinical setting, questions of medical ethics raise a host of perplexing problems, often complicated by conflicting perspectives and the need to make immediate decisions. In this volume, bioethicists and physicians provide a nuanced, in-depth approach to the difficult issues involved in bioethics consultation. Addressing the needs of researchers, clinicians, and other health professionals on the front lines of bioethics practice, the contributors focus primarily on practical concerns -- whether ethics consultation is best done by individuals, teams, or committees (...) how an ethics consult service should be structured the need for institutional support and techniques and programs for educating and training staff -- without neglecting more theoretical considerations, such as the importance of character or the viability of organizational ethics. (shrink)

The essays in this volume reflect this desire to "make a difference"—not just in the world of academic philosophy, but in the broader world.

The Quine-Putnam Indispensability argument is the argument for treating mathematical entities on a par with other theoretical entities of our best scientific theories. This argument is usually taken to be an argument for mathematical realism. In this chapter I will argue that the proper way to understand this argument is as putting pressure on the viability of the marriage of scientific realism and mathematical nominalism. Although such a marriage is a popular option amongst philosophers of science and mathematics, in light (...) of the indispensability argument, the marriage is seen to be very unstable. Unless one is careful about how the Quine-Putnam argument is disarmed, one can be forced to either mathematical realism or, alternatively, scientific instrumentalism. I will explore the various options: (i) finding a way to reconcile the two partners in the marriage by disarming the indispensability argument (Jody Azzouni [2], Hartry Field [13, 14], Alan Musgrave [18, 19], David Papineau [21]); (ii) embracing mathematical realism (W.V.O. Quine [23], Michael Resnik [25], J.J.C. Smart [27]); and (iii) embracing some form of scientific instrumentalism (Ot´ avio Bueno [7, 8], Bas van Fraassen [30]). Elsewhere [11], I have argued for option (ii) and I won’t repeat those arguments here. Instead, I will consider the difficulties for each of the three options just mentioned, with special attention to option (i). In relation to the latter, I will discuss an argument due to Alan Musgrave [19] for why option (i) is a plausible and promising approach. From the discussion of Musgrave’s argument, it will emerge that the issue of holist versus separatist theories of confirmation plays a curious role in the realism–antirealism debate in the philosophy of mathematics. I will argue that if you take confirmation to be an holistic matter—it’s whole theories (or significant parts thereof) that are confirmed in any experiment—then there’s an inclination to opt for (ii) in order to resolve the marital tension outlined above.. (shrink)

Preface: help! my brainchild's been kidnapped! -- Intellectual misconduct: backwards, forward, and sideways -- The world of scholarship: rituals and rewards, norms and departures -- Structural and organizational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Cultural causes of scholarly misconduct -- Individual and situational causes of scholarly misconduct -- Scholarly misconduct as crime -- Criminological theory and scholarly crime -- Implications for theory and research -- Preventing and controlling scholarly crime -- Afterword: against all odds, a code is born.

In this article, I use a mental models computational account of representation to illustrate some details of my previously presented inferential model of scientific understanding. The hope is to shed some light on possible mechanisms behind the notion of scientific understanding. I argue that if mental models are a plausible approach to modelling cognition, then understanding can best be seen as the coupling of specific rules. I present our beliefs as ?ordinary? conditional rules, and the coupling process as one where (...) the consequent of one ordinary rule (OR) matches and activates the antecedent of the rule to which it is coupled in virtue of the activation of an intermediate ?inference? rule. I argue that on this approach knowledge of an explanation is the activation of ORs in a cognitive hierarchy, while understanding is achieved when those activated ORs are also coupled via correct inference rules. I do not directly address issues regarding the plausibility of mental models themselves. This article should therefore be seen as an exercise in refining the inferential model within an already presupposed computational setting, not one of arguing for the psychological adequacy of computational approaches. (shrink)

In “Consensus, Clinical Decision Making, and Unsettled Cases,” David M. Adams and William J. Winslade make multiple references to both editions of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation in their discussion of two assumptions that are supposed to be at the heart of the facilitated consensus model’s inability to handle unsettled cases; that is, that:1. Consultants “should maintain a kind of moral impartiality or neutrality throughout the process,” “explicitly condemn[ing] anything resembling a (...) substantive ‘ethics’ recommendation,” and2. “What counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible.”Herein, I argue that neither of these assumptions is required by ASBH’s ethics facilitation approach. I then conclude by suggesting that, despite their fundamentally mistaken interpretation of the ASBH approach—perhaps even because of it—Adams and Winslade have made two important contributions to the ethics consultation literature. (shrink)

Unemployment has been at historically high rates for an extended period, and while it has recently improved in certain countries, the unemployment that remains may be becoming structural. Aside from inequality, unemployment is accordingly the problem that is most likely to put critical pressure on our political institutions, disrupt the social fabric of our way of life, and even threaten the continuation of liberalism itself. Despite the obvious importance of the problem of unemployment, however, there has been a curious lack (...) of attention paid to this issue by contemporary non-Marxist political philosophers. Non-Marxists typically view unemployment as a technical matter, and doing something about it a question of means not ends, with the solution to this question depending on the kind of empirical determinations about what causes what that are best left to economists, not political philosophers. But I think this is a mistake. Because work is a major part of our social life, as well as something that for a great many people grounds their sense of who they are and provides the basis of their sense of self-respect, those unable to find work are missing out on a great deal of what makes for a meaningful life, and not just the economic benefits that social cooperation has to offer. Those who are unemployed accordingly have something to complain about, even if we do not let them starve, and the rest of us (or at least the institutions that represent us) may have some sort of moral obligation to take action to increase the number of employment opportunities currently available regardless of any uncertainty surrounding the effects that any actions open to us might have. The nature and extent of this moral obligation is what On Unemployment is dedicated to exploring. (shrink)

Early in my career as a neonatologist, I was called into the hospital for a newborn who would not stop crying. Screaming, really. When I entered the unit, I was greeted by a loud, shrill, distinctive cry. After hearing the history and examining the baby, I just stood there for a while, watching and listening. It took some time, but eventually, I noticed a subtle regularity, a rhythmicity. I took off my watch, placed it on the bed next to the (...) child, and found that the crying briefly grew louder about every six or seven seconds. This baby was having an atypical seizure. This preliminary diagnosis was followed by a conversation with the parents and a neurologist, transfer to the nearby academic center for an extensive evaluation, and the eventual demise of the child from a poorly understood disease. About a year later, I walked into the same unit and heard a cry I had heard only once before. I looked over to see the same mother at a newborn's bedside, with tears in her eyes, looking back at me. She knew what the coming days held for her and for her second child. That was over twenty years ago, but two images, or moments, remain with me. One is the watch on the bed next to the first baby; the other is the mother's expression of sadness the morning the second child was born. The image of the timepiece is perhaps instructive. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the comparator model is not a satisfactory model of sense of agency (SoA). We present a theoretical argument and experimental studies. We show (1) most studies of SoA neglect a distinction between SoA associated with movements (narrow SoA) and SoA associated with environmental events (broad SoA); (2) the comparator model emerges from experimental studies of sensory consequences narrowly associated with movements; (3) narrow SoA can be explained by a comparator model, but a motor signal (...) model is simpler and explain narrow SoA equally well; and (4) standard experimental paradigms study only broad SoA. Finally, we present results from two experiments, where we have failed to induce illusory narrow SoA in healthy participants. We believe our experimental approaches should have led to illusory SoA, if the comparator model of SoA was correct. The results challenge proponents of the comparator model of narrow SoA. (shrink)

It has been argued in the conservation literature that giving conservation absolute priority over competing interests would best protect the environment. Attributing infinite value to the environment or claiming it is ‘priceless’ are two ways of ensuring this priority (e.g. Hargrove 1989; Bulte and van Kooten 2000; Ackerman and Heinzerling 2002; McCauley 2006; Halsing and Moore 2008). But such proposals would paralyse conservation efforts. We describe the serious problems with these proposals and what they mean for practical applications, and we (...) diagnose and resolve some conceptual confusions permeating the literature on this topic. (shrink)

Attempts to arrange all of classical mechanics upon a self-contained basis encounter difficulties due to "the lousy encyclopedia phenomenon": hard cases involving, e.g., billiard balls, often require that the standard treatments be abandoned in favor of conceptually different accounts. Worse yet, these chains of interdependence often travel in circular loops, where the practitioner is returned to formalisms that she had previously abandoned. However, behaviors of this sort are to be expected if classical doctrine is instead viewed as a "reduced variable" (...) covering of quantum mechanics, which is the point of view that this essay recommends. (shrink)

Together again for the first time, Marx and Durkheim join forces in the pages of Disintegration: Bad Love, Collective Suicide, and the Idols of Imperial Twilight for a dialectical exploration of the moral economy of neoliberalism, animated, as it is not only by the capitalist chase for surplus value, but also by an immortal vortex of sacred powers. Classical sociology and psychoanalysis are reconstituted within Hegelian social ontology and dialectical method that differentiates between the ephemeral and free and the eternal (...) and fixed aspects of modern life. (shrink)

The contemporary canon of what constitutes ancient political thought was fixed in the course of the nineteenth century by the then newly reigning discipline of the philosophy of history. It made little difference whether this discipline was positivistically or dialectically inclined. Whatever the methodological commitment there was general agreement that the sources of ancient wisdom on the nature and ends of social and political life were to be found in the political and ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle and, to (...) a lesser extent, Cicero. Here Cicero was read, in part, as a repository of a Stoic political wisdom that had not survived in the original texts. According to this tradition, genuine, if not final, political wisdom is to be found in the reflections of these ancient thinkers -- not a totally unexpected conclusion to come from philosophers. For these nineteenth-century practitioners of Geistesgeschichte the essence of ancient experience is distilled in its inner life, its art, literature, religion, and above all in its philosophical speculation, but not, for instance, in its political experience as recorded in its history. (shrink)

There is a world-wide shortage of kidneys for transplantation. Many people will have to endure lengthy and unpleasant dialysis treatments, or die before an organ becomes available. Given this chronic shortage, some doctors and health economists have proposed offering financial incentives to potential donors to increase the supply of transplantable organs. In this paper, I explore objections to the practice of buying and selling organs from the point of view 1) justice, 2) beneficence and 3) Commodification. Regarding objection to the (...) Commodification of transplant organs, I examine a number of possible justifications of this objection but conclude that each of these would, if true, rule out the donation of transplant organs or the selling of numerous accepted commodities, or is implausible for some other reason. (shrink)

This article critiques Fröding and Peterson’s account of friendship developed in their article “Animal Ethics Based on Friendship.” I deny their central claim that friendship between a farmer qua farmer and her cow is even possible. Further, I argue that even if such a relationship were possible, the lack of such a relation on our part in the case of free-living animals does not, contrary to their claim, give us moral license to eat them. I suggest that even though Fröding (...) and Peterson’s friendship differential does not do the work it is intended to do, virtue ethics has other resources to help us discover a more virtuous relationship with animals. (shrink)

For vocal animals, recognizing species-specific vocalizations is important for survival and social interactions. In humans, a voice region has been identified that is sensitive to human voices and vocalizations. As this region also strongly responds to speech, it is unclear whether it is tightly associated with linguistic processing and is thus unique to humans. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging of macaque monkeys (Old World primates, Macaca mulatta) we discovered a high-level auditory region that prefers species-specific vocalizations over other vocalizations and (...) sounds. This region not only showed sensitivity to the ‘voice’ of the species, but also to the vocal identify of conspecific individuals. The monkey voice region is located on the superior-temporal plane and belongs to an anterior auditory ‘what’ pathway. These results establish functional relationships with the human voice region and support the notion that, for different primate species, the anterior temporal regions of the brain are adapted for.. (shrink)

Models in decision theory and game theory assume that preferences are determinate: for any pair of possible outcomes, a and b, an agent either prefers a to b, prefers b to a, or is indifferent as between a and b. Preferences are also assumed to be stable: provided the agent is fully informed, trivial situational influences will not shift the order of her preferences. Research by behavioral economists suggests, however, that economic and hedonic preferences are to some degree indeterminate and (...) unstable, which in turn suggests that other sorts of preferences may suffer the same problem. Even fully informed agents do not always determinately prefer a to b, prefer b to a, or feel indifferent as between a and b. Seemingly trivial situational influences rearrange the order of their preferences. One could respond that decision theory and game theory are not meant to describe actual behavior, and that they instead adumbrate an ideal of rationality from which human action diverges in various ways. When the divergences are small and systematic, they help us identify the heuristics that conspire to help people approximate rationality. One such heuristic, dubbed the Wilde heuristic, is explored. However, the divergences documented by behavioral economists threaten to be too large to handle through idealization. The Rum Tum Tugger Model, in which indifference is intransitive, is spelled out as one promising way for decision and game theory to retrench. Preferences may be locally unstable and indeterminate, but when the differences between options are sufficiently large, they approximate stability and determinacy. (shrink)

Information and representation are thought to be intimately related. Representation, in fact, is commonly considered to be a special kind of information. It must be a _special_ kind, because otherwise all of the myriad instances of informational relationships in the universe would be representational -- some restrictions must be placed on informational relationships in order to refine the vast set into those that are truly representational. I will argue that information in this general sense is important to genuine agents, but (...) that it is a blind alley with regard to the attempt to understand representation. On the other hand, I will also argue that a different, quite non-standard, form of information is central to genuine representation. First I turn to some of the reasons why information as usually considered is the wrong category for understanding representation; second to an alternative model of representation -- one that is naturally emergent in autonomous agents, and that does involve information, but not in any standard form; and third I return to standard notions of informational relationships and show what they are in fact useful for. (shrink)

To form a coherent percept of the environment, our brain combines information from different senses. Such multisensory integration occurs in higher association cortices; but supposedly, it also occurs in early sensory areas. Confirming the latter hypothesis, we unequivocally demonstrate supra-additive integration of touch and sound stimulation at the second stage of the auditory cortex. Using high-resolution fMRI of the macaque monkey, we quantified the integration of auditory broad-band noise and tactile stimulation of hand and foot in anaesthetized animals. Integration was (...) found posterior to and along the lateral side of the primary auditory cortex in the caudal auditory belt. Integration was stronger for temporally coincident stimuli and obeyed the principle of inverse effectiveness: greater enhancement for less effective stimuli. These findings demonstrates that multisensory integration occurs early and close to primary sensory areas and—because it occurs in anaesthetized animals—suggests that this integration is mediated by preattentive bottom-up mechanisms. (shrink)