The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (shrink)

This paper argues that the various approaches to ethics that bioethicists rely on are not adequate to provide effective moral guidance in how to avoid a series of looming human catastrophes (associated with such threats as environmental degradation, war, extreme poverty, and pandemics). It proposes development of a new approach to ethics, dubbed public ethics, that simultaneously investigates moral responsibilities at multiple levels of human organization from the individual to international bodies. It argues that feminist relational theory can provide guidance (...) to development of this new type of ethics, and it warns against obstacles bioethicists face in its pursuit. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Susan Bordo untangles the myths, ideologies, and pathologies of the modern female body. Bordo explores our tortured fascination with food, hunger, desire, and control, and its effects on women's lives.

Wollstonecraft's early works express a coherent view of moral psychology, moral education and moral philosophy which guides the construction of her early fiction and educational works. It includes a valuable account of the relation between reason and feeling in moral development. Failure to recognize the complexity and coherence of the view and unhistorical readings have led to mistaken criticisms of Wollstonecraft's position. Part I answers these criticisms; Part II describes and textually supports her view.

Should the insane and the mentally ill be held morally responsible for their actions? To answer ‘No’ to this question is to classify the mentally abnormal as not fully human: and indeed legal tradition has generally oscillated between assimilating the insane to brutes and assimilating them to children below the age of discretion, neither of these two categories being accountable in law for what they do. In what respect relevant to moral responsibility were the insane held to resemble brutes and (...) children? In the case of brutes, the answer seems to have been that the doings of the insane appeared to lack whatever it is that marks out human actions as distinctively human. What the insane did could not be thought of as issuing from deliberation, or as capable of having issued from deliberation, but seemed rather to be the result of the unbridled operation of nature — if a diseased nature. The natural comparison with insane killings seemed to be, for example, the killing of birds by cats. This distinction between animal doings and human actions does not depend on Cartesian views about the workings of animals; the operation of nature need not be thought of as mechanical. The thought is simply that where there is no room for deliberation there is no room for moral appraisal. Children, on the other hand, though capable of distinctively human action — i.e. of deliberating about what they do — were held not to be capable of the relevant kind of deliberation: for they were held ‘not to know the difference between right and wrong’. (shrink)

The essays in Part III of the book, on liberal constraints and traditionalist education, argue for a more regulatory conception of liberal education and emphasize the need for some controls over cultural and religious educational authority. Susan Okin, in her essay on group rights, gender, and realistic rights of exit, is mostly concerned, not with the oppression of traditional groups by the liberal state, but with the oppression of individuals, and especially of girls and women, by the traditional community. (...) She is critical of those liberal theorists who argue that a right of exit is sufficient to qualify a cultural or religious group for special recognition in liberal societies, and to counter these views, she notes that the unequal treatment of girls and women can mean that even though they may have a formal right to exit a group, their actual opportunities for doing so are far less adequate than those of their male counterparts. She holds, then, that the right of exit is not sufficient and that the liberal state should have a higher requirement, namely, that girls and women should be treated fairly within the group and thus should be able to take advantage of any formal right of exit. The chapter is arranged in three sections: Section 12.1, Gender and Other Forms of Inequality in Group Rights Theories, shows, by looking at three examples of liberal defenders of group rights, that they tend not to take gender inequality seriously when considering group rights and limitations; Section 12.2, Cultural Factors Affecting Women’s Realistic Rights of Exit, specifies and discusses a number of reasons that contribute to women being significantly less able than men, in many cultural contexts, to chart their own courses of life outside their community of origin; and Section 12.3. Rights of Exit and Realistic Rights of Exit for Women, concludes that the theories examined contain several problematic elements concerning rights of exit for women. (shrink)

This book presents the first full translation of the correspondence of Leo Strauss and Gerhard Krüger, showing for each the development of key and influential ideas, along with seven interpretative essays by leading Strauss scholars. During the early to mid-1930’s, Leo Strauss carried on an intense, and sometimes deeply personal, correspondence with one of the leading intellectual lights among Heidegger’s circle of recent students and younger associates. A fellow traveler in the effort to “return to Plato” and reject neo-Kantian conventions (...) of the day, Krüger was also a serious student of Rudolf Bultmann and the neo-orthodox movement in which Strauss also took an early interest. During the most intense years of their correspondence, each underwent significant intellectual development: in Krüger’s case, through a penetrating series of studies of Kant and Descartes, respectively, ultimately leading to Krüger’s conversion to Catholicism; and, in Strauss’s case, through the complex stages of what he subsequently called his “reorientation,” involving what he for the first time calls “political philosophy.” Readers interested in tracing the development of Strauss’s thoughts regarding a theological alternative that he found helpfully challenging—if not ultimately compelling—will find this correspondence to be an accessible point of entry. (shrink)

A compelling look at the problem of evil in modern thought, from the Inquisition to global terrorism Evil threatens human reason, for it challenges our hope that the world makes sense. For eighteenth-century Europeans, the Lisbon earthquake was manifest evil. Today we view evil as a matter of human cruelty, and Auschwitz as its extreme incarnation. Examining our understanding of evil from the Inquisition to contemporary terrorism, Susan Neiman explores who we have become in the three centuries that separate (...) us from the early Enlightenment. In the process, she rewrites the history of modern thought and points philosophy back to the questions that originally animated it. Whether expressed in theological or secular terms, evil poses a problem about the world's intelligibility. It confronts philosophy with fundamental questions: Can there be meaning in a world where innocents suffer? Can belief in divine power or human progress survive a cataloging of evil? Is evil profound or banal? Neiman argues that these questions impelled modern philosophy. Traditional philosophers from Leibniz to Hegel sought to defend the Creator of a world containing evil. Inevitably, their efforts—combined with those of more literary figures like Pope, Voltaire, and the Marquis de Sade—eroded belief in God's benevolence, power, and relevance, until Nietzsche claimed He had been murdered. They also yielded the distinction between natural and moral evil that we now take for granted. Neiman turns to consider philosophy's response to the Holocaust as a final moral evil, concluding that two basic stances run through modern thought. One, from Rousseau to Arendt, insists that morality demands we make evil intelligible. The other, from Voltaire to Adorno, insists that morality demands that we don't. Beautifully written and thoroughly engaging, this book tells the history of modern philosophy as an attempt to come to terms with evil. It reintroduces philosophy to anyone interested in questions of life and death, good and evil, suffering and sense. Featuring a substantial new afterword by Neiman that raises provocative questions about Hannah Arendt's take on Adolf Eichmann and the rationale behind the Hiroshima bombing, this Princeton Classics edition introduces a new generation of readers to this eloquent and thought-provoking meditation on good and evil, life and death, and suffering and sense. (shrink)

Violence and the Remaking of a Self Susan J. Brison. Political activism (including lobbying for new legislation, speaking out, educating others, helping survivors) can also help to undo the double bind of self-blame versus helplessness.

Patriarchal theologies which obstruct women’s leadership in the Anglican Church and impede ‘collaborative’ ministry prompt this exploration of the reluctance to relinquish male metaphors for God, even when intimate relationship rather than gender is stressed as the crucial concept of Trinitarian theology. Despite the ambiguities of using female terms for the divine and of establishing the oft-neglected Holy Spirit as female imaginary in the Godhead, Father-idolatry and sub-ordinationism in the Trinity need to be challenged. ‘Midwife’ is suggested as a feminine (...) term for the 3rd Person, signifying non-gendered action but retaining personhood. This would creatively renew Trinitarian doctrine, the Church and its leadership as reflections of the perichoretic Godhead. (shrink)

This Element examines the entirety of Kant's Critique of Taste with particular emphasis on its political and moral aims. Kant's critical treatment of aesthetic judgment is both an extended theoretical response to influential predecessors and contemporaries, including Rousseau and Herder, and a practical intervention in its own right meant to nudge history forward at a time of civilizational crisis. Attention to these themes helps resolve a number of puzzles, both textual and philosophic, including the normative force and meaning of judgments (...) of taste, and the relation between natural and artful beauty. (shrink)

Two decades of literature and discussion on the topic of therapist-client sexual relationships have revealed much about the nature and consequences of these relationships and have produced an explicit prohibition against such relationships in American Psychological Association (APA) Ethical Principle 6a. This article reviews the literature as it relates to the ethically gray area of sex with former clients. The relative lack of an empirical basis for extending the prohibition of Principle 6a to posttermination relationships is noted. This article describes (...) concepts from three theoretical perspectives about psychotherapy that support an extension of the prohibition to sexual relationships with ex-clients. (shrink)

and apply it to various examples of neural plasticity in which input is rerouted intermodally or intramodally to nonstandard cortical targets. In some cases but not others, cortical activity ‘defers’ to the nonstandard sources of input. We ask why, consider some possible explanations, and propose a dynamic sensorimotor hypothesis. We believe that this distinction is important and worthy of further study, both philosophical and empirical, whether or not our hypothesis turns out to be correct. In particular, the question of how (...) the distinction should be explained is linked to explanatory gap issues for consciousness. Comparative and absolute explanatory gaps should be distinguished: why does neural activity in a particular area of cortex have this qualitative expression rather than that, and why does it have any qualitative expression at all? We use the dominance/deference distinction to address the comparative gaps, both intermodal and intramodal. We do so not by inward scrutiny but rather by expanding our gaze to include relations between brain, body and environment. (shrink)

Externalism comes in varieties. While the landscape isn.

The role of mathematics in scientific practice is too readily relegated to that of formulating equations that model or describe what is being investigated, and then finding solutions to those equations. I survey the role of mathematics in: 1. Exact solutions of differential equations, especially conformal mapping; and 2. Simulations of solutions to differential equations via numerical methods and via agent-based models; and 3. The use of experimental models to solve equations (a) via physical analogies based on similarity of the (...) form of the equations, such as Prandtl’s soap-film method, and (b) the method of physically similar systems. Two major themes emerge: First, the role of mathematics in science is not well described by deduction from axioms, although it generally involves deductive reasoning. Creative leaps, the integration of experimental or observational evidence, synthesis of ideas from different areas of mathematics, and insight regarding analogous forms are required to find solutions to equations. Second, methods that involve mappings or transformations are in use in disparate contexts, from the purely mathematical context of conformal mapping where it is mathematical objects that are mapped, to the use of concrete physical experimental models, where one concrete thing is shown to correspond to another. (shrink)

Imitation, deliberation, and mindreading are characteristically human sociocognitive skills. Research on imitation and its role in social cognition is flourishing across various disciplines; it is here surveyed under headings of behavior, subpersonal mechanisms, and functions of imitation. A model is then advanced within which many of the developments surveyed can be located and explained. The shared circuits model explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by subpersonal mechanisms of control, mirroring and simulation. It is cast at a middle, (...) functional level of description, between the level of neural implementation and the level of conscious perceptions and intentional actions. The shared circuits model connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. It avoids the common conception of perception and action as separate and peripheral to central cognition. Rather, it contributes to the situated cognition movement by showing how mechanisms for perceiving action can be built on those for active perception. (shrink)

The primary aim of this essay is to present a case for a heavily revised notion of heterophenomenology. l will refer to the revised notion as ‘enkinaesthesia’ because of its dependence on the experiential entanglement of our own and the other’s felt action as the sensory background within which all other experience is possible. Enkinaesthesia2 emphasizes two things: (i) the neuromuscular dynamics of the agent, including the givenness and ownership of its experience, and (ii) the entwined, blended and situated co-affective (...) feeling of the presence of the other(s), agential (for example, human, horse, cat, beetle) and non-agential (for example, cup, bed, apple, paper) and, where appropriate, the anticipated arc of the other’s action or movement, including, again where appropriate, the other’s intentionality. When the ‘other’ is also a sensing and experiencing agent it is their - in this case, the pair’s - affective intentional reciprocity, their folding, enfolding, and unfolding, which co-constitutes the conscious relation and the experientially recursive temporal dynamics that lead to the formation and maintenance of the deep integral enkinaesthetic structures and melodies which bind us together, even when they pull us apart. Such deeply felt enkinaesthetic melodies emphasise the dialogical nature of the backgrounded feeling of being. (shrink)

Organizations are increasingly embedded with consultants and other non-employees who have the opportunity to engage in wrongdoing. However, research exploring the reporting intentions of employees regarding the discovery of wrongdoing by consultants is scant. It is important to examine reporting intentions in this setting given the enhanced presence of consultants in organizations and the fact that wrongdoing by consultants changes a key characteristic of the wrongdoing. Using an experimental approach, the current paper reports the results of a study examining employees' (...) reporting intentions subsequent to their discovery of wrongdoing by a consultant. The results of the study indicate that perceptions about the seriousness of a wrongdoing, personal costs and personal responsibility related to reporting a wrongdoing, and moral-equity judgments are significantly associated with reporting intentions for a normal reporting channel. Only perceptions of seriousness and personal costs are significantly associated for an anonymous reporting channel. Lastly, while personal costs for the anonymous reporting channel were lower than the normal reporting channel, reporting intentions were similar across the two channels. (shrink)

It is often taken for granted by writers who propose--and, for that matter, by writers who oppose--'justifications' of inductions, that deduction either does not need, or can readily be provided with, justification. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, contrary to this common opinion, problems analogous to those which, notoriously, arise in the attempt to justify induction, also arise in the attempt to justify deduction.

Commentators on the work of Immanuel Kant have long held that his later "critical" writings are a radical rejection of his earlier, less celebrated efforts. In this pathbreaking book, Susan Shell demonstrates not only the developmental unity of Kant's individual writings, but also the unity of his work and life experience. Shell argues that the central animating issues of Kant's lifework concerned the perplexing relation of spirit to body. Through an exacting analysis of individual writings, Shell maps the philosophical (...) contours of Kant's early intellectual struggles and their relation to his more mature thought. The paradox of mind in matter and the tensions it generates—between freedom and determinacy, independence and community, ideal and real—are shown to inform the whole of his work. Shell's fresh, penetrating analysis of the precritical works will surely catapult them to new prominence in Kant studies. Shell's critique goes further to consider the context of contemporary intellectual life. She explores the fascinating realm of Kant's sexual and medical idiosyncracies, linking them to the primary concerns of his critical philosophy. She develops a sure-to-be controversial treatment of the connection between Kant's philosophy and his chronic hypochondria, and illuminates previously unforeseen connections in a remarkable convergence of life and thought, with important theoretical and practical implications for modern times. (shrink)

Background Dynamic consent has been proposed as a process through which participants and patients can gain more control over how their data and samples, donated for biomedical research, are used, resulting in greater trust in researchers. It is also a way to respond to evolving data protection frameworks and new legislation. Others argue that the broad consent currently used in biobank research is ethically robust. Little empirical research with cohort study participants has been published. This research investigated the participants’ opinions (...) of adding a dynamic consent interface to their existing study. Methods Adult participants in the Extended Cohort for E-health, Environment and DNA longitudinal cohort study who are members of the EXCEED Public and Participant Engagement Group were recruited. Four focus groups were conducted and analysed for thematic content. Discussion topics were derived from a review of the current literature on dynamic consent. Results Participants were in favour of many aspects of a dynamic consent interface, such as being able to update their information, add additional data to their records and choose withdrawal options. They were supportive provided it was simple to use and not intrusive. Participants expressed a markedly high level of trust in the study and its investigators and were unanimously happy with their current participation. No strong support was found for adding a dynamic consent interface to EXCEED. Conclusions Trust in the study researchers was the strongest theme found. Openness and good data security were needed to retain their trust. While happy to discuss dynamic consent, participants were satisfied with the current study arrangements. There were indications that changing the study might unnecessarily disturb their trust. This raised the question of whether there are contexts where dynamic consent is more appropriate than others. This study was limited by the small number of participants who were committed to the study and biased towards it. More research is needed to fully understand the potential impact of adding a dynamic consent interface to an existing cohort study. (shrink)

Leading scholars continue the debate over whether consciousness causes behavior or plays no functional role in it, discussing the question in terms of neuroscience, philosophy, law, and public policy.

I defend the view that we should not overintellectualize the mind. Nonhuman animals can occupy islands of practical rationality: they can have contextbound reasons for action even though they lack full conceptual abilities. Holism and the possibility of mistake are required for such reasons to be the agent's reasons, but these requirements can be met in the absence of inferential promiscuity. Empirical work with animals is used to illustrate the possibility that reasons for action could be bound to symbolic or (...) social contexts, and connections are made to simulationist accounts of cognitive skills. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

I examine Frege’s explanation of how Hilbert ought to have presented his proofs of the independence of the axioms of geometry: in terms of mappings between (what we would call) fully interpreted statements. This helps make sense of Frege’s objections to the notion of different interpretations, which many have found puzzling. (The paper is the text of a talk presented in October 1994.).

The term conceptual simulation refers to a type of everyday reasoning strategy commonly called “what if” reasoning. It has been suggested in a number of contexts that this type of reasoning plays an important role in scientific discovery; however, little direct evidence exists to support this claim. This article proposes that conceptual simulation is likely to be used in situations of informational uncertainty, and may be used to help scientists resolve that uncertainty. We conducted two studies to investigate the relationship (...) between conceptual simulation and informational uncertainty. Study 1 was an in vivo study of expert scientists; the results suggest that scientists do use conceptual simulation in situations of informational uncertainty, and that they use conceptual simulation to make inferences from their data using the analogical reasoning process of alignment by similarity detection. Study 2 experimentally manipulated experts' level of uncertainty and provides further support for the hypothesis that conceptual simulation is more likely to be used in situations of informational uncertainty. Finally, we discuss the relationship between conceptual simulation and other types of reasoning using qualitative mental models. (shrink)

The original data reported by Benjamin Libet and colleagues are reinterpreted, taking into account the facilitation which is experimentally demonstrated in the first of their series of articles. It is shown that the original data equally well or better support a quite different set of conclusions from those drawn by Libet. The new conclusions are that it takes only 80 ms for stimuli to come to consciousness and that “subjective back-referral of sensations in time” to the time of the stimulus (...) does not occur. (shrink)

The population of most non-dominant ethnic groups in the USA is growing dramatically. Faculty members are challenged to develop curricula that adequately prepare our future nurses. An increased focus on clinical ethics has resulted from the use of sophisticated technology, changes in health care financing, an increasing elderly population and the shift of care from inpatient to outpatient settings. Nurses frequently face situations demanding resolution of ethical dilemmas involving cultural differences. Nursing curricula must include content on both ethics and cultural (...) sensitivity. Active student participation is an important element providing a foundation for ethical practice. A proposed educational format was introduced with graduating baccalaureate students. In a pilot study, curricular content on cultural sensitivity and ethical practice was taught in separate modules. Students were then asked to identify and problem solve an ethical dilemma involving patients and professional caregivers from vastly different cultures. Course faculty members provided discussion questions to guide the students' thinking. (shrink)

Language is the species-specific human version of the animal system of communication. In contrast to non-human animals, language enables humans to invent a plurality of possible worlds; reflect upon signs; be responsible for our actions; gain conscious awareness of our inevitable mutual involvement in the network of life on this planet; and be responsibly involved in the destiny of the planet. The author looks at semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and communication as developing sequentially rather than successively, more synchronically (...) than diachronically. She discusses the contemporary phenomenon that people in today's society have witnessed and participated in, as part of the development of semiotics. Although there is a long history preceding semiotics, in a sense the field is, as a phenomenon, more "of our time" than of any time past. Its leading figures, whom Petrilli examines, belong to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Semiotics is associated with a capacity for listening. This capacity is also the condition for reconnecting to and recovering the ancient vocation of semiotics as that branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs or symptoms. The pragmatic aspect of global semiotics studies the impact of language or signs on those who use them, and looks for consequences in actual practice. In this respect, Petrilli theorizes that the task for semiotics in the era of globalization is nothing less than to take responsibility for life in its totality. (shrink)