This co-edited volume compares Chinese and Western experiences of engineering, technology, and development. In doing so, it builds a bridge between the East and West and advances a dialogue in the philosophy of engineering. Divided into three parts, the book starts with studies on epistemological and ontological issues, with a special focus on engineering design, creativity, management, feasibility, and sustainability. Part II considers relationships between the history and philosophy of engineering, and includes a general argument for the necessity of dialogue (...) between history and philosophy. It continues with a general introduction to traditional Chinese attitudes toward engineering and technology, and philosophical case studies of the Chinese steel industry, railroads, and cybernetics in the Soviet Union. Part III focuses on engineering, ethics, and society, with chapters on engineering education and practice in China and the West. The book’s analyses of the interactions of science, engineering, ethics, politics, and policy in different societal contexts are of special interest. The volume as a whole marks a new stage in the emergence of the philosophy of engineering as a new regionalization of philosophy. This carefully edited interdisciplinary volume grew out of an international conference on the philosophy of engineering hosted by the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. It includes 30 contributions by leading philosophers, social scientists, and engineers from Australia, China, Europe, and the United States. (shrink)

This paper concerns a distinction between circumstantial truths that hold because of the circumstances and acircumstantial truths that hold regardless of, or transcend, the circumstances. Previous discussions of the distinction tended to focus on its applications, such as to modality, logical truth, and essence. This paper focuses on developing the distinction largely, but not entirely, in abstraction from its potential applications. As such, the paper’s main contribution is to further clarify the distinction itself. An indirect contribution is to help guide (...) its future applications. (shrink)

This paper contains a critical examination of the prospects for analyses of knowledge that weaken the factivity condition such that knowledge implies approximate truth.

This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the ...

This paper introduces a new argument against Richard Foley’s threshold view of belief. His view is based on the Lockean Thesis (LT) and the Rational Threshold Thesis (RTT). The argument introduced here shows that the views derived from the LT and the RTT violate the safety condition on knowledge in way that threatens the LT and/or the RTT.

Problems of and explanations for evil -- Neo-cartesianism -- Animal suffering and the fall -- Nobility, flourishing, and immortality : animal pain and animal well-being -- Natural evil, nomic regularity, and animal suffering -- Chaos, order, and evolution -- Combining CDs.

Researchers typically define animal signaling as morphology or behavior specialized for transmitting encoded information from a signaler to a perceiver. Although intuitively appealing, this conception is inherently metaphorical and leaves concepts of both information and encoding undefined. To justify relying on the information construct, theorists often appeal to Shannon and Weaver’s quantitative definition. The two approaches are, however, fundamentally at odds. The predominant definition of animal signaling is thus untenable, which has a number of undesirable consequences for both theory and (...) practice in the field. Theoretical problems include conceptual circularity and running afoul of fundamental evolutionary principles. Problems in empirical work include that research is often grounded in abstractions such as signal honesty and semanticity, and thereby distracted from more basic and concrete factors shaping communication. A revised definition is therefore proposed, making influence rather than transmission of encoded information the central function of animal signaling. This definition is conceptually sound, empirically testable, and inclusive, yet bounded. Implications are considered in both theoretical and empirical domains. (shrink)

This paper raises a problem for the pair of views that universals are immanent in their instantiations and that these instantiations, or states of affairs, are somehow constructed from the instantiated universals. It is argued that the pair is inconsistent. The first view implies that universals are prior to states of affairs, whereas the second view implies that states of affairs are prior to universals. This paper does not attempt to solve this problem, but rather to formulate it precisely. That (...) promises to illuminate how to solve the problem if it can be solved, or why it cannot be solved if it is unsolvable. (shrink)

Is logic out of this world? This elusive question reveals a tension in our thinking about the basis of logic: both worldly and unworldly answers get something right and yet they conflict. My aim is to clarify the question and explore a conciliatory answer. I focus on a characterization of unworldliness in terms of ground. This allows for a distinction between proximal and distal unworldliness. That in turn reconfigures our approach to the question. It may now be taken as asking (...) for the proximal or the distal basis of logic. This helps alleviate the tension because the answer for the one needn’t conflict with a different answer for the other. I explore a case study culminating in an illustration of how a logical truth may indeed be proximally worldly but distally unworldly. I conclude by considering some potential extensions. (shrink)

Much has been published about the ethical issues encountered by clinicians in genetics/genomics, but those experienced by clinical laboratory scientists are less well described. Clinical laboratory scientists now frequently face navigating ethical problems in their work, but how they should be best supported to do this is underexplored. This lack of attention is also reflected in the ethics tools available to clinical laboratory scientists such as guidance and deliberative ethics forums, developed primarily to manage issues arising within the clinic.We explore (...) what ethical issues are being experienced by clinical scientists, how they think such issues could be best analysed and managed, and whether their practice might be enhanced by more situated approaches to ethics deliberation and practice such as ethical preparedness. From thematic analysis of cases presented by clinical scientists at a specially convened meeting of the UK Genethics Forum, we derived three main ethical themes: (1) the redistribution of labour and responsibilities resulting from the practice of genomic medicine; (2) the interpretation and certainty of results and (3) the proposal that better standardisation and consistency of ethical approaches (for example, more guidelines and policy) could resolve some of the challenges arising.We argue that although standardisation is important for promoting shared understandings of good (including ethical) practice, supplementary approaches to enhance and sustain ethical preparedness will be important to help clinical scientists and others in the recently expanded genetic/genomic medicine environment foster quality ethical thinking. (shrink)

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Over the last decade a handful of cognitive models of religious belief have begun to coalesce in the literature. Attempts to offer “scientific explanations of religious belief ” are nothing new, stretching back at least as far as David Hume, and perhaps as far back as Cicero. What is also not new is a belief that scientific explanations of religious belief serve in some way to undermine the justification for those beliefs.

The paper examines the problematic understanding of “risk” in entrepreneurial literature that locates courage in either the loss orgain of having or in the difficulty and hardship of the doing. We argue in this paper that what is lost in this vernacular view of courage is a deeper notion of the subjective dimension of work and the social need of society. Grounded within the Catholic social and moral tradition, we find a richer notion of courage, which in part corrects and (...) rounds out the insufficient description of the vernacular understanding of courage in entrepreneurship. What we also find in this account of the virtues and subjective dimension of work is greater explanatory power of what happens to the entrepreneur in the work that he or she does. The end result of this analysis is a more spiritual, ethical and social understanding of entrepreneurship. (shrink)

Talents that selectively facilitate the acquisition of high levels of skill are said to be present in some children but not others. The evidence for this includes biological correlates of specific abilities, certain rare abilities in autistic savants, and the seemingly spontaneous emergence of exceptional abilities in young children, but there is also contrary evidence indicating an absence of early precursors of high skill levels. An analysis of positive and negative evidence and arguments suggests that differences in early experiences, preferences, (...) opportunities, habits, training, and practice are the real determinants of excellence. Key Words: exceptional ability; expertise; gift; innate capacity; music; potential; prodigy; specific ability; talent. (shrink)

For the first time an award-winning Harvard professor shares the lessons from his wildly popular course on classical Chinese philosophy, showing you how these ancient ideas can guide you on the path to a good life today. The lessons taught by ancient Chinese philosophers surprisingly still apply, and they challenge our fundamental assumptions about how to lead a fulfilled, happy, and successful life. Self-discovery, it turns out, comes through looking outward, not inward. Power comes from holding back. Good relationships come (...) from small gestures. Spontaneity comes from practice. And excellence comes from what you choose to do, not your “natural” abilities. Counterintuitive. Countercultural. Even revolutionary. These powerful ideas have made Professor Michael Puett's course the third most popular at Harvard University in recent years, with enrollment surging every year since it was first offered in 2006. It's clear students are drawn by a bold promise Professor Puett makes on the first day of class: “These ideas will change your life.” Now he offers his course to the world. (shrink)

In recent years a number of sophisticated versions of soteriological universalism have appeared in the literature. In this essay I offer some critical retlections them. In particular, I argue that universalism offers no explanation for the fact that God puts human creatures through the earthly life, and that if there is no such reason then the earthly life and the evil it contains are both gratuitous. Finally, I argue that universalists are obliged to deny that human beings have a centrally (...) important feature of human freedom. (shrink)

This paper is an insighful critique of the shareholder and stakeholder models of organizational purpose. The authors emphasize that both these models fail to serve as an adequate basis for explaining the purpose of an organization and are unable to capture a fuller meaning of living in an organizational community. The paper thus endeavours to introduce into the mainstream of discussion a third model, based on the idea of the common good which draws inspiration from the communitarian Catholic tradition. The (...) first part of this paper traces the idea of common good as it relates to organizations. The second part engages the common good tradition with the shareholder and stake holder models. The paper goes on to describe common good within the organization through three propositions: fundamentality, excellence and integration. The authors reiterate, however, that the idea of the common good does not provide a micro-blueprint for managers, but rather an orientation or moral compass that directs organizational activity towards human development. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the pragma-dialectical conception of a fallacy, according to which a fallacy is an argumentative speech act which violates one or more of the rules of 'rational discussion'. That conception is found to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for committing a fallacy. It is also found wanting in several other respects.

As the federal government distributed remdesivir to some of the states COVID-19 hit hardest, policymakers scrambled to develop criteria to allocate the drug to their hospitals. Our state, Michigan, was among those states to receive an initial quantity of the drug from the U.S. government. The disparities in burden of disease in Michigan are striking. Detroit has a death rate more than three times the state average. Our recommendation to the state was that it should prioritize the communities that bear (...) a disproportionate burden of suffering in the allocation of the new potential treatment. This recommendation is justified not only for new drugs with uncertain effects, but also for drugs of certain benefit or vaccines. For states with significant health disparities, such as Michigan, this allocation priority may help to repair them. In fact, any other allocation strategy may make them worse. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The calls for us to find solace in our “together-apart-ness” obfuscate the calamity of Black lives being lost in numbers exponentially higher than white bodies. In the midst of a virus that “does not discriminate,” but is aided in its deadly spread by those systems that do, the concept of “wake work” demands our time and attention.

I provide a critique of Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition by calling into question the extent to which recognitive relations are immune to the effects of social and economic power and their ability to shape consciousness and moral cognition. I maintain that as a theory of socialization, Honneth’s theory is inadequate to deal with the strong structural-functional forces that hold administrative-capitalist societies together. This has the effect of constituting subjectivity in particular ways, and this problem of the constitution of the (...) personality and consciousness of individuals vitiates the descriptive and normative claims of the theory of recognition. I end by considering an alternative way to view recognition and its role in promoting a form of critical subjectivity. (shrink)

I argue that a dilemma arises for naturalistic philosophers of mind in the naturalised semantics tradition. Giving a naturalistic account of the mind is a pressing problem. Brentano’s Thesis — that a state is mental if, and only if, that state has underived representational content — provides an attractive route to naturalising the mental. If true, Brentano’s Thesis means that naturalising representation is sufficient for naturalising the mental. But a naturalist who accepts Brentano’s Thesis thus commits to an eliminativism about (...) the category of the mental. This is because naturalistic theories of representation are reductive, and so over-generalise by applying to patently non-mental states. According to these theories, it has been argued, phenomena like tree rings and saliva come out as representational. Only proposing further Naturalistic conditions on representation could avoid the eliminativist conclusion. But this shows that Naturalists have made only limited progress towards naturalising the mental. And if a Naturalist rejects Brentano’s Thesis, then she gives up on a clear link between representation and mentality. Hence, it is incumbent on the Naturalist to propose another, naturalistically acceptable, mark of the mental. This, again, shows that Naturalists have made only limited progress on the issue of naturalising the mental.Keywords: Intentionality, representation, physicalism, eliminativism, Brentano, materialism, naturalism. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that motivation is an important determinant for a successful sports career. Specific patterns of motivational constructs have recently demonstrated promising associations with future success in team sports like football and ice hockey. The present study scrutinizes whether those patterns also exist in individual sports and whether they are able to predict future performance levels. A sample of 155 young individual athletes completed questionnaires assessing achievement goal orientations, achievement motives, and self-determination at t1. The person-oriented method linking (...) of clusters after removal of a residue was used to form clusters based on these motivational constructs in order to analyze the relations between these clusters and the performance level 2.5 years later. Similar to the studies in team sports, four motivational patterns were observed at t1. The highly intrinsically achievement-oriented athletes were much more likely to compete internationally [odds ratio = 2.12], compared to the failure-fearing athletes. Although team and individual sports differ in many respects, they nevertheless are characterized by similar and thus generalizable career-promoting motivational profiles: Regardless of the type of sport, the highly intrinsically achievement-oriented athletes consistently have the best potential for success. (shrink)

The shared circuits model (SCM) is a useful explanatory framework that can be applied to interpersonal synchrony by incorporating temporal dynamics. Temporally precise predictive simulations and mirroring enable interpersonal synchrony. When partners' movements are highly synchronous, the self/other distinction can be blurred.

In a recent article, Peter Gärdenfors (1992) has suggested that the AGM (Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson) theory of belief revision can be given an epistemic basis by interpreting the revision postulates of that theory in terms of a version of the coherence theory of justification. To accomplish this goal Gärdenfors suggests that the AGM revision postulates concerning the conservative nature of belief revision can be interpreted in terms of a concept of epistemic entrenchment and that there are good empirical reasons (...) to adopt this view as opposed to some form of foundationalist account of the justification of our beliefs. In this paper I argue that Gärdenfors’ attempt to underwrite the AGM theory of belief revision by appealing to a form of coherentism is seriously inadequate for several reasons. (shrink)

From Leibniz's time until the mid-1970s, the word ‘theodicy’ was used to describe attempts to explain God's permission of evil. Since the mid-1970s, however, it has taken on a more refined sense among philosophers of religion – a change that can be attributed to Alvin Plantinga's book God, Freedom and Evil. In this work, Plantinga distinguishes between two types of explanations of evil that theists might construct. The first type is offered in response to arguments that the coexistence of God (...) and evil is impossible. Explanations of this sort, which Plantinga calls ‘defences’, need only show the logical compatibility of God and evil. The second type aims to provide plausible and perhaps even likely-to-be-true explanations of evil, explanations which show that the existence of evil is not unlikely given the existence of God. Plantinga labelled explanations of this latter sort ‘theodicies’. His distinction has left a lasting mark on the field, and in the contemporary literature philosophers of religion use the term ‘theodicy’ in this narrower sense, and it is in this sense that it will be addressed in this article. The article discusses the punishment theodicy, the natural consequence theodicy, the free-will theodicy, the natural-law theodicy, soul-making theodicies, and theodicies of animal suffering. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the best explanation of expertise about taste is that such alleged experts are simply more eloquent in describing the taste experiences that they have than are ordinary tasters.

Following the standard practice in sociology, cultural anthropology and history, sociologists, historians of science and some philosophers of science define scientific communities as groups with shared beliefs, values and practices. In this paper it is argued that in real cases the beliefs of the members of such communities often vary significantly in important ways. This has rather dire implications for the convergence defense against the charge of the excessive subjectivity of subjective Bayesianism because that defense requires that communities of Bayesian (...) inquirers share a significant set of modal beliefs. The important implication is then that given the actual variation in modal beliefs across individuals, either Bayesians cannot claim that actual theories have been objectively confirmed or they must accept that such theories have been confirmed relative only to epistemically insignificant communities. (shrink)

This book is about an important issue which has arisen within two of the branches of physical science - namely thermodynamics and statistical mechanics - where the notion of entropy plays an essential role. A number of scientists and information theorists have maintained that entropy is a subjective concept and is a measure of human ignorance. Such a view, if it is valid, would create some profound philosophical problems and would tend to undermine the objectivity of the scientific enterprise. Whilst (...) the present volume is not a treatise on thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, all relevant steps in the building up of these disciplines are carefully scrutinised and it is concluded that the charge of subjectivity cannot be upheld. The widely adopted view that entropy is a measure of disorder, or of lack of information, is shown to be ambiguous, although it may be of use in certain contexts. (shrink)

In a recent revision (chapter 4 of Nowakowa and Nowak 2000) of an older article Leszek Nowak (1992) has attempted to rebut Niiniluoto’s 1990 critical suggestion that proponents of the Poznań idealizational approach to the sciences have committed a rather elementary logical error in the formal machinery that they advocate for use in the analysis of scientific methodology. In this paper I criticize Nowak’s responses to Niiniluoto’s suggestion, and, subsequently, work out some of the consequences of that criticism for understanding (...) the role that idealization plays in scientific methodology. (shrink)

This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappropriations of an iconic 1853 story from Francis Galton's African travels. In response to a (...) fundamental lack of physical evidence concerning prehistoric men, savage numbers offered a readily available body of data that helped scholars envisage great extremes of civilizational lowliness in a way that was at once analysable and comparable, and anecdotes like Galton's made those data vivid and compelling. Moreover, they provided a simple and direct means of conceiving of the progressive scale of civilizational development, uniting societies and races past and present, at the heart of Victorian scientific racism. (shrink)

Cognitive aging researchers have been challenged with demonstrating age-related effects above and beyond global slowing ever since Cerella raised this issue in 1990. As the literature has made clear, this has indeed proved to be a difficult task and continues to plague the field. One way that researchers have attempted to test for disproportionate age differences across task conditions is by using Brinley plots, or plotting the mean response latencies of older adults against the mean latencies for younger adults. The (...) simplicity and large proportion of variance accounted for by these models has led to the widespread use of Brinley plots over the years. However, as systematically tested here through eight cases of simulated data, it is clear that the Brinley technique is not well suited to either identify or display the underlying structure of datasets examining age-related differences in attentional control. Some of the problems with conventional Brinley plots can be resolved by using a modified Brinley plot that includes study-specific slopes linking trial types and a no-age-difference reference line. Multilevel models find all of the relevant effects, especially if applied to trial-level data, and have the advantage of incorporating study-level moderators that might account for slope heterogeneity. Ultimately, we encourage fellow cognitive aging researchers to access the code and data for this project on OSF and employ the use of multilevel models over Brinley plots. (shrink)

I propose and outline an ethical theory of waste not as refuse or garbage, but rather as a property of activities and practices. On my account, waste results when resources are utilized in society in such a way that the maximum number of individuals within the community are unable to benefit from the collective resources and efforts of social activities. I point to three ethical “dimensions” of waste: socially unproductive activity, under-utilization of resources, and the mis-utilization or mis-direction of resources. (...) Each of these dimensions accounts for different kinds of practices and activities as well as institutional arrangements within any society. As I see it, waste emerges when those resources are employed and utilized in ways that do not maximize their potential benefits for what I term socially valid ends. In this sense, waste can be seen to adhere to practices, activities, and systems of production and consumption that do not benefit the largest possible share of the society. I end by considering the relevance of this ethical concept of waste for a broader theory of social justice. (shrink)

This paper presents a theorisation of collaborative activity that was developed in the research field known as “collaborative learning”, in order to understand the processes of co-elaboration of meaning and knowledge. Collaboration, as distinguished from cooperation, coordination and collective activity, is defined as a continued and conjoined effort towards elaborating a “joint problem space” of shared representations of the problem to be solved. An approach to analysing the processes of co-construction of a joint problem space is outlined, in terms of (...) inter-discursive operations, together with approaches to defining different forms of cooperative activity. In conclusion, the specificity of this approach to defining collaboration is discussed in relation to other fields of research. (shrink)