In this paper, our goal is to survey some of the legal contexts within which violence risk assessment already plays a prominent role, explore whether developments in neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict violence, and discuss whether neuropredictive models of violence create any unique legal or moral problems above and beyond the well worn problems already associated with prediction more generally. In Violence Risk Assessment and the Law, we briefly examine the role currently played by (...) predictions of violence in three high stakes legal contexts: capital sentencing, civil commitment hearings, and sexual predator statutes. In Clinical vs. Actuarial Violence Risk Assessment, we briefly examine the distinction between traditional clinical methods of predicting violence and more recently developed actuarial methods, exemplified by the Classification of Violence Risk software created by John Monahan and colleagues as part of the MacArthur Study of Mental Disorder and Violence [1]. In The Neural Correlates of Psychopathy, we explore what neuroscience currently tells us about the neural correlates of violence, using the recent neuroscientific research on psychopathy as our focus. We also discuss some recent advances in both data collection and data analysis that we believe will play an important role when it comes to future neuroscientific research on violence. In The Potential Promise of Neuroprediction, we discuss whether neuroscience could potentially be used to improve our ability to predict future violence. Finally, in The Potential Perils of Neuroprediction, we explore some potential evidentiary, constitutional, and moral issues that may arise in the context of the neuroprediction of violence. (shrink)

Whether psychopathy is a mental disease or illness can affect whether psychiatrists should treat it and whether it could serve as the basis for an insanity defense in criminal trials. Our understanding of psychopathy has been greatly improved in recent years by new research in psychology and neuroscience. This illuminating research enables us to argue that psychopathy counts as a mental disease on any plausible account of mental disease. In particular, Szasz's and Pickard's eliminativist views and Sedgwick's social constructivist account (...) of mental illness that might exclude psychopathy are not plausible, and there is no reason to exclude psychopathy under Boorse's and Scadding's biomedical accounts, Wakefield's harmful dysfunction account, and the DSM-IV-TR objective harm account of mental disease. The basic reason is that psychopathy involve neural dysfunction that increases risk of serious harm and loss to people with psychopathy. (shrink)

Neuroscience has been proposed for use in the legal system for purposes of mind reading, assessment of responsibility, and prediction of misconduct. Each of these uses has both promises and perils, and each raises issues regarding the admissibility of neuroscientific evidence.

Neuroscience has been proposed for use in the legal system for purposes of mind reading, assessment of responsibility, and prediction of misconduct. Each of these uses has both promises and perils, and each raises issues regarding the admissibility of neuroscientific evidence.

Much of the literature from political psychology has focused on the negative traits that are positively associated with affective polarization—e.g., animus, arrogance, distrust, hostility, and outrage. Not as much attention has been focused on the positive traits that might be negatively associated with polarization. For instance, given that people who are intellectually humble display greater openness and less hostility towards conflicting viewpoints (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Hopkin et al., 2014; Porter & Schumann, 2018), one might reasonably expect them to be (...) less polarized. -/- We ran two studies designed to explore the relationship between various forms of humility and polarization. Our chief finding is that people who value humility are prone to what we are calling epistemic polarization—that is, judging the epistemic traits of contrapartisans negatively—which in turn plays a role in polarization more generally. Not only are contrapartisans deemed to have the wrong moral and political beliefs, they are also viewed as less humble and more arrogant, close-minded, and irrational. This makes matters even worse when it comes to the growing partisan divide. In light of our findings, we believe that the novel concept of epistemic polarization that we introduce is a promising target for further investigation. (shrink)

For over three decades, clinical ethicists in the United States have recorded their consulting activities to supplement documentation in the medical record, often using locally developed instrument...

We show that a quantum system admits hidden variables if and only if there is a rich set of states which satisfy a Bayesian rule. The result is proved using a relationship between Bayesian type states and dispersion-free states. Various examples are presented. In particular, it is shown that for classical systems every state is Bayesian and for traditional Hilbert space quantum systems no state is Bayesian.

1 Evidence-based policy requires researchers to provide the answers to ecological questions that are of interest to policy makers. To find out what those questions are in the UK, representatives from 28 organizations involved in policy, together with scientists from 10 academic institutions, were asked to generate a list of questions from their organizations. 2 During a 2-day workshop the initial list of 1003 questions generated from consulting at least 654 policy makers and academics was used as a basis for (...) generating a short list of 100 questions of significant policy relevance. Short-listing was decided on the basis of the preferences of the representatives from the policy-led organizations. 3 The areas covered included most major issues of environmental concern in the UK, including agriculture, marine fisheries, climate change, ecosystem function and land management. 4 The most striking outcome was the preference for general questions rather than narrow ones. The reason is that policy is driven by broad issues rather than specific ones. In contrast, scientists are frequently best equipped to answer specific questions. This means that it may be necessary to extract the underpinning specific question before researchers can proceed. 5 Synthesis and applications. Greater communication between policy makers and scientists is required in order to ensure that applied ecologists are dealing with issues in a way that can feed into policy. It is particularly important that applied ecologists emphasize the generic value of their work wherever possible. (shrink)

Hegel introduced the Phenomenology of Mind as a work on the problem of knowledge. In the first chapter, entitled “Sense Certainty, or the This and Meaning,” he concluded that knowledge cannot consist of an immediate awareness of particulars ). The tradition discusses sense certainty in terms of this failure of immediate knowledge without, however, specifically addressing the problem of reference. Yet reference is distinct from knowledge in the sense that while there can be no knowledge of objects without reference, there (...) may be reference without knowledge. If that is the case, then the failure of immediate knowledge does not entitle us to conclude anything about the success or failure of reference. It is not surprising, then, that a few scholars have begun to examine sense certainty primarily as a thesis about reference. (shrink)

This paper has two components. The first, longer component (sec. 1-6) is a critical exposition of Armstrong’s views about the metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in Truth and Truthmakers and Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. In particular, I discuss Armstrong’s views about the nature of the cardinal numbers, and his account of how modal truths are made true. In the second component of the paper (sec. 7), which is shorter and more tentative, I sketch an alternative (...) account of the metaphysics of mathematics. I suggest we insist that mathematical truths have physical truthmakers, without insisting that mathematical objects themselves are part of the physical world. (shrink)

In a series of recent papers, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong has used findings in social psychology to put pressure on the claim that our moral beliefs can be non-inferentially justified. More specifically, he has suggested that insofar as our moral intuitions are subject to what psychologists call framing effects, this poses a real problem for moral intuitionism. In this paper, we are going to try to add more fuel to the empirical fire that Sinnott-Armstrong has placed under the feet of (...) the intuitionist. Along the way, we first provide an overview of what Sinnott-Armstrong calls the Master Argument against intuitionism. Then we examine some of the literature on framing effects—especially as it pertains to moral philosophy. Finally, we present the results of a new study which create yet another hurdle intuitionists must clear if they want to motivate their view. It appears that in addition to being influenced by framing effects, our moral intuitions are also influenced by an actor–observer bias as well—a bias whereby we hold other people to different moral standards than we would hold ourselves even if we were in the same situation. If we’re right, the burden is on the moral intuitionist to explain why we should have faith in our moral intuitions despite the gathering evidence concerning their seeming unreliability. And by our lights, this is something that simply cannot be done from the armchair. (shrink)

This paper has two components. The first, longer component (sec. 1-6) is a critical exposition of Armstrong's views about the metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in Truth and Truthmakers and Sketch for a Systematic Metaphysics. In particular, I discuss Armstrong's views about the nature of the cardinal numbers, and his account of how modal truths are made true. In the second component of the paper (sec. 7), which is shorter and more tentative, I sketch an alternative (...) account of the metaphysics of mathematics. I suggest we insist that mathematical truths have physical truthmakers, without insisting that mathematical objects themselves are part of the physical world. (shrink)

One of the most interesting recent attempts to interpret the peculiarities of Plotinus's philosophy is that of Bréhier in his ‘La Philosophie de Plotin’. His thesis, contained in the last four chapters of the work, is that Plotinus, instead of being simply the continuator of the Greek rationalist tradition, is the founder of modern European Idealism, or, perhaps more accurately, Pantheism. ‘Avec Plotin nous saisissons done le premier chatnon d'une tradition religieuse qui n'est pas moins puissante au fond en Occident (...) que la tradition chretienne …’. He is the spiritual ancestor of Spinoza and Hegel. It is interesting in passing to compare this view with that of Dean Inge, for whom Plotinus is the spiritual begetter of S. Thomas Aquinas. The divergences of modern interpreters of the Plotinian metaphysic are often both amusing and suggestive. (shrink)

In this issue, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Franklin G. Miller argue that what makes killing wrong, when it is wrong, is not that it ends life, but that it causes complete and irreversible disability—what they call total disability. They hold that the wrongness of killing should be explained by reference to the harm that killing causes to the person who dies. And the only harm of this sort that killing causes, they argue, is the harm of being totally disabled: once (...) one is totally disabled, there is no further harm to one in losing one's life. It is no worse to be dead, and thus totally disabled, than it is to be totally disabled but alive.In fact, Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller concede that the story may be more complicated than this. For example, it may be that what makes killing wrong, when it is wrong, is not that it causes harm, but that it is intended to do so, or that it violates a right which protects against harm. But either way, harm plays a crucial role in explaining the wrongness of killing, and the relevant harm, they claim, is the harm of being disabled, not that of losing one's life.The Authors’ argument has important implications for medical ethics. Their view implies that killing a person need not be wrong when that person is already completely and irreversibly disabled. This suggests, for example, that the dead donor rule in organ donation is mistaken. Contrary to the rule, it could be morally permissible to harvest organs from a living donor provided that the donor is totally disabled. Harvesting organs will kill the donor, but it will not disable her, since the donor has no abilities left to lose.Four …. (shrink)

Direct awareness, or the immediate, on-the-spot, noninferential access that we have to some of our mental-occurrence instances, is a kind of "secondary consciousness." It often happens, in addition, that direct awareness itself is conscious, meaning that one is also directly aware of being so aware. This is "tertiary consciousness." Indeed, absent tertiary consciousness, one could not base actions on what is mentally occurring to one now. Although Armstrong held that "subliminal introspection" suffices for purposive mental activity, tertiary consciousness would (...) seem to be necessary for carrying out such activity because purposive mental activity essentially involves choosing what mentally to do next on the basis of "introspective" feedback. One must be aware of whatever it may be that one is basing one’s actions on. Adopting, in place of "subliminal introspection," either one of two Jamesian hypotheses could save Armstrong from having to posit nonconscious purposive mental activities. (shrink)

Cassirer’s Die Platonische Renaissance in England und die Schule von Cambridge, of which the present work is a translation, was first published in 1932; it therefore necessarily takes no account of the mass of work on the English Catholic humanists of the Renaissance, beginning with Chambers’s Thomas More, and on 17th-century English religious thought, which has appeared in the last 20 years. This may partly account for the rather old-fashioned impression which the book produces. Cassirer still understood More, Colet, (...) and Erasmus after the manner of Seebohm’s Oxford Reformers, a book which he frequently quotes. But the misunderstanding which, so it seems to the present reviewer, makes the picture given by the book as a whole a distorted one, goes rather deeper. The eminent neo-Kantian author appears to think that authentic Christian orthodoxy is Augustinianism, and Augustinianism interpreted in the manner of Jansenius or Calvin. Hence the philosophy of St. Thomas, to which he gives some fine and understanding pages, appears to him as a heroic but unsuccessful attempt to establish a Christian humanism on an Aristotelian basis which had little lasting effect ; he is led to represent such great and profoundly Catholic figures of the Renaissance as Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa and St. Thomas More as fundamentally unorthodox; in dealing with his main subject, the Cambridge Platonists, he presents ideas which any Catholic brought up in an enlightened Thomist tradition will naturally recognize as a normal part of his own religious and philosophical inheritance as if they were in the deepest disaccord with the teachings of orthodox Christianity; and he greatly exaggerates the opposition between the Cambridge Platonists and their Puritan contemporaries. (shrink)

In this important study D. M. Armstrong offers a comprehensive system of analytical metaphysics that synthesises but also develops his thinking over the last twenty years. Armstrong's analysis, which acknowledges the 'logical atomism' of Russell and Wittgenstein, makes facts the fundamental constituents of the world, examining properties, relations, numbers, classes, possibility and necessity, dispositions, causes and laws. All these, it is argued, find their place and can be understood inside a scheme of states of affairs. This is a (...) comprehensive and rigorously this-worldly account of the most general features of reality, argued from a distinctive philosophical perspective, and it will appeal to a wide readership in analytical philosophy. (shrink)

In his last book, David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world. He begins with the assumption that all that exists is the physical world of space-time. On this foundation he constructs a coherent metaphysical scheme that gives plausible answers to many of the great problems of metaphysics. He gives accounts of properties, relations, and particulars; laws of nature; modality; abstract objects such as numbers; (...) and time and mind. (shrink)

ADVANGEBOOKS - UNDERSTANDING ARGUMENTS: AN INTRODUCTION TO INFORMAL LOGIC, 9E shows readers how to construct arguments in everyday life, using everyday language. In addition, this easy-to-read textbook also devotes three chapters to the formal aspects of logic including forms of argument, as well as propositional, categorical, and quantificational logic. Plus, this edition helps readers apply informal logic to legal, moral, scientific, religious, and philosophical scenarios, too. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not (...) be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The Idea of a Moral Economy is the first modern edition and English translation of three questions disputed at the University of Paris in 1330 by the theologian Gerard of Siena. The questions represent the most influential late medieval formulation of the natural law argument against usury and the illicit acquisition of property. Together they offer a particularly clear example of scholastic ideas about the nature and purpose of economic activity and the medieval concept of a moral economy. In his (...) introduction, editor Lawrin Armstrong discusses Gerard's arguments and considers their significance both within the context of scholastic philosophy and law and as a critique of contemporary mainstream economics. His analysis demonstrates how Gerard's work is not only a valuable source for understanding economic thought in pre-modern Europe, but also a fertile resource for scholars of law, economics, and philosophy in medieval Europe and beyond. (shrink)

The Itinerarium provides a concise introduction to Bonaventure's theological understanding. This new translation presents Latin and English on facing pages, followed by an extensive and detailed commentary on the historical, scriptural, and linguistic contexts of the text and its translation.

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

This volume brings together for the first time a significant number of Reid's manuscript papers on natural history, physiology and materialist metaphysics. An important contribution not only to Reid studies but also to our understanding of eighteenth-century science and its context.

An urgent account of the state of our oceans today--and what we must do to protect them The ocean sustains life on our planet, from absorbing carbon to regulating temperatures, and, as we exhaust the resources to be found on land, it is becoming central to the global market. But today we are facing two urgent challenges at sea: massive environmental destruction and spiraling inequality in the ocean economy. Chris Armstrong reveals how existing governing institutions are failing to respond (...) to the most pressing problems of our time, arguing that we must do better. Armstrong examines these crises--from the fate of people whose lands will be submerged by sea level rise to the exploitation of people working in fishing to the rights of marine animals--and makes the case for a powerful World Ocean Authority capable of tackling them. A Blue New Deal presents a radical manifesto for putting equality, democracy, and sustainability at the heart of ocean politics. (shrink)

Our personal and political worlds are rife with arguments and disagreements, some of them petty and vitriolic. The inability to compromise and understand the opposition is epidemic today, from countries refusing to negotiate, to politicians pandering to their base. Social media has produced a virulent world where extreme positions dominate. There is much demonization of the other side, very little progress is made, and the end result is further widening of positions. How did this happen, and what might be done (...) to address it? Walter Sinnott-Armstrong says there is such a thing as a "good" argument: Reasonable arguments can create more mutual understanding and respect, and even if neither party is convinced by the other, compromise is still possible. Think Again shows the importance of good arguments and reveals common misunderstandings. Rather than a means to persuade other people or beat them in an intellectual competition, Sinnott-Armstrong sees arguments as an essential tool for constructive interaction with others. After showing how the failure of good arguments has led us to society's current woes, he shows readers what makes a good argument. In clear, lively, and practical prose, and with plentiful examples from politics, popular culture, and everyday life, Sinnott-Armstrong explains what defines an argument, identifies the components of good arguments as well as fallacies to avoid, and demonstrates what good arguments can accomplish. Armed with these tools, readers will be able to spot bad reasoning and bad arguments, and to advance their own views in a forceful yet logical way. These skills could even help repair our tattered civic culture. (shrink)

This volume contains a selection of authoritative essays exploring the central questions raised by the conjectured technological singularity. In informed yet jargon-free contributions written by active research scientists, philosophers and sociologists, it goes beyond philosophical discussion to provide a detailed account of the risks that the singularity poses to human society and, perhaps most usefully, the possible actions that society and technologists can take to manage the journey to any singularity in a way that ensures a positive rather than a (...) negative impact on society. The discussions provide perspectives that cover technological, political and business issues. The aim is to bring clarity and rigor to the debate in a way that will inform and stimulate both experts and interested general readers. (shrink)

This chapter provides a classification scheme for artificial intelligence (AI) predictions, and tools for analyzing their reliability and uncertainties. It presents a series of brief case studies of some of the most famous AI predictions: the initial Dartmouth AI conference; Hubert Dreyfus' criticism of AI; Ray Kurzweil's predictions in The Age of Spiritual Machines; and Stephen Omohundro's AI Drives. The chapter takes every falsifiable statement about future AI to be a prediction. Thus the following four categories are all predictions: Timelines (...) and outcome predictions, Scenarios, Plans, and Issues and metastatements. The following schema was suggested by a review of the AI predictions literature : Causal models, Non‐causal models, The outside view, Philosophical arguments, and Expert judgment. The chapter looks at four prominent AI predictions, and analyses their accuracy, attempting to gain insights that will be useful for assessing future prediction. (shrink)

God Exists! 50 Profound Proofs By: Matthew Armstrong Some of the most important questions in one’s life are: Where will I live for all eternity? Is God real? Will I live in His kingdom? Is it possible to prove the existence of God? God Exists! explores fifty proofs that God absolutely exists. Prophecy demonstrates the existence of God. Events taking place in the world today reveal that God exists and knows what will happen well in advance. The universe displays (...) the handiwork of God. (shrink)