This chapter contrasts the recent emphasis on operationalism as the route to reliability in psychiatry with arguments for an ineliminable role for tacit knowledge. Although Michael Polanyi popularized the idea of tacit dimension, the chapter argues that two clues he offers as to its nature-that we know more than we can tell and that knowledge is an active comprehension of things known-are better interpreted through regress arguments set out by Ryle and Wittgenstein. Those arguments, however, suggest that tacit knowledge is (...) not inexpressible but merely inexpressible in context-free terms. The chapter suggests instead that tacit knowledge is best understood to be context-dependent practical knowledge. So understood, the regress arguments suggest that the operational approach to psychiatric diagnosis can never free itself from a tacit dimension. Given that claim, then Parnas' opposing view of diagnosis can be seen as a way to embrace, rather than deny, the importance of tacit knowledge and skilled clinical judgment for psychiatry. (shrink)

Climate change has obvious practical implications. It will kill millions of people, wipe out thousands of species, and so on. My question in this paper is much narrower. How might climate change impact on moral theory – and especially on the debate between utilitarians and their non-utilitarian rivals? I argue that climate change creates serious theoretical difficulties for non-utilitarian moral theories – especially those that based morality or justice on any contract or bargain for reciprocal advantage. Climate change thus tips (...) the dialectical balance in favour of utilitarianism. However, I also argue that, because it upsets assumptions that lie behind the most plausible forms of modern utilitarianism, climate change may also push utilitarianism in a more austere and demanding direction. (shrink)

Tim Lewens aims to understand what it means to take an evolutionary approach to cultural change, and why it is that these approaches are sometimes treated with suspicion. While making a case for the value of evolutionary thinking for students of culture, he shows why the concerns of sceptics should not dismissed as mere prejudice, confusion, or ignorance. Indeed, confusions about what evolutionary approaches entail are propagated by their proponents, as well as by their detractors. By taking seriously the problems (...) faced by these approaches to culture, he shows how such approaches can be better formulated, where their most significant limitations lie, and how the tools of cultural evolutionary thinking might become more widely accepted. (shrink)

In this ingenious and powerfully argued book Tim Maudlin sets out a novel account of logic and semantics which allows him to deal with certain notorious paradoxes which have bedevilled philosophical theories of truth. All philosophers interested in logic and language will find this a stimulating read.

We aimed to identify the critical insights from empirical peer-reviewed studies on online romance fraud published between 2000 and 2021 through a systematic literature review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol. The corpus of studies that met our inclusion criteria comprised twenty-six studies employing qualitative (n = 13), quantitative (n = 11), and mixed (n = 2) methods. Most studies focused on victims, with eight focusing on offenders and fewer investigating public perspectives. All the (...) victim-focused studies relied on data from the Global North, except for Malaysia. Five offender-focused studies used online data available in the public domain, and three derived their data from West Africa. Our review highlights offenders' techniques to deceive and manipulate victims, as revealed in these studies, and highlights some limitations of offender- and victim-focused studies. The dominant framework used across the studies was found to be the “Scammers Persuasive Techniques Model.” While this framework provides a helpful way of considering the stages of victim involvement, it also faces some limitations, which we highlight. Our study reviews the current state of empirical knowledge on romance fraud and identifies certain gaps and biases in the literature. We argue there is a need for further research into online romance fraud to enhance our understanding of it both from the perspective of the offender as well as the experience of the victim. We also highlight the need for a more inclusive and greater range of regional and global diverse range of data sources and perspectives. Given the scale and impact of online romance fraud, we conclude that its study would benefit from a richer empirical engagement that recognizes it as both a regional and global phenomenon. (shrink)

Science is our best way of finding out about the natural world, and philosophers who write about that world ought to be sensitive to the claims of our best science. There are obstacles, however, to outsiders using science well. We think philosophers are prone to misuse science: to give undue weight to results that are untested; to highlight favorable and ignore unfavorable data; to give illegitimate weight to the authority of science; to leap from scientific premises to philosophical conclusions without (...) spelling out their relevance; to treat mere resonance between a scientific theory and a philosophical view as empirical evidence for the philosophical view. This article identifies and illustrates some of the ways in which philosophers misuse science, explains why these pitfalls are easy to fall into, and concludes with suggestions for avoiding them. (shrink)

Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry is a concise introduction to the growing field of philosophy of psychiatry. Divided into three main aspects of psychiatric clinical judgement, values, meanings and facts, it examines the key debates about mental health care, and the philosophical ideas and tools needed to assess those debates, in six chapters. In addition to outlining the state of play, Essential Philosophy of Psychiatry presents a coherent and unified approach across the different debates, characterized by a rejection of reductionism and (...) an emphasis on the ineliminability of uncodified skilled judgement. The first part, Values, outlines the debate about whether diagnosis of mental illness is essentially value-laden and argues that the prospects for reducing illness or disease to plainly factual matters are poor. It also explains the important role of skilled contextual judgement, rather than a principles-based deduction, in ethical judgement. The second part, Meanings, examines the central role of understanding and a shared first person perspective, both against attempts to reduce meaning to basic information-processing mechanisms and to explain away the difficulties of understanding psychopathology in recent models of delusion. The third part, Facts, shows the importance of uncodified clinical judgements, both in assessing the validity of psychiatric taxonomy and in the application of Evidence Based Medicine. Despite advances in the codifaction of practice and operationalism of diagnosis, an element of judgement remains in the assessment both of what, at one level, is good evidence for diagnosis and treatment and what, at a higher level, is good evidence for the validity of classification overall. (shrink)

Abstract The only biologically respectable notion of human nature is an extremely permissive one that names the reliable dispositions of the human species as a whole. This conception offers no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement, and indeed it has the result that alterations to human nature have been commonplace in the history of our species. Aristotelian conceptions of species natures, which are currently fashionable in meta-ethics and applied ethics, have no basis in biological fact. Moreover, because our folk psychology (...) finds this misleading Aristotelian conception highly tempting, we are in fact better off if we refrain from mentioning human nature altogether in debates over enhancement. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0063-x Authors Tim Lewens, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

Organizational ethics—defined as the alignment of an institution’s practices with its mission, vision, and values—is a growing field in health care not well characterized in empirical literature. To capture the scope and context of organizational ethics work in United States healthcare institutions, we conducted a nationwide convenience survey of ethicists regarding the scope of organizational ethics work, common challenges faced, and the organizational context in which this work is done. In this article, we report substantial variability in the structure of (...) organizational ethics programs and the settings in which it is conducted. Notable findings included disagreement about the activities that comprise organizational ethics and a lack of common metrics used to assess organizational ethics activities. A frequently cited barrier to full engagement in these activities was poor institution-wide understanding about the role and function of organizational ethics resources. These data suggest a tension in the trajectory of organizational ethics’ professionalization: while some variability is appropriate to the field’s relative youth, inadequate attention to definitions of organizational ethics practice and metrics for success can impede discussions about appropriate institutional support, leadership context, and training for practitioners. (shrink)

How can we determine an acceptable level of risk? Should these decisions be made by experts, or by the people they affect? How should safety and security be balanced against other goods, such as liberty? This is the first collection to examine the philosophical dimensions of these pressing practical problems. Leading scholars exploring the full range of philosophical implications of risk, including: risk and ethics risk and rationality risk and scientific expertise risk and lay knowledge the objectivity of risk assessment (...) risk and the precautionary principle risk and terror. With contributions from Carl F. Cranor, Sven Ove Hansson, Martin Kusch, Tim Lewens, D.H. Mellor, Adam Morton, Stephen Perry, Martin Peterson, Alan Ryan, Per Sandin, Cass R. Sunstein and Jonathan Wolff; this collection is essential reading, not only for philosophers and researchers in legal, economic and environmental studies, but for those seeking to gain a better understanding of the decisions we must make as concerned citizens. (shrink)

In part because “imagination” is a slippery notion, its exact role in the production of scientific knowledge remains unclear. There is, however, one often explicit and deliberate use of imagination by scientists that can be (and has been) studied intensively by epistemologists and historians of science: thought experiments. The main goal of this article is to document the varieties of thought experimentation, not so much in terms of the different sciences in which they occur but rather in terms of the (...) different functions they fulfil. I argue that thought experimentation (and hence imagination) plays a role not only in theory choice but in singular causal analysis and scientific discovery as well. I pinpoint, moreover, some of the rules governing the use of thought experiments in theory choice and in singular causal analysis, that is, some of the criteria they should meet in order to fulfil those functions successfully. (shrink)

The World Psychiatric Association has emphasised the importance of idiographic understanding as a distinct component of comprehensive assessment but in introductions to the idea it is often assimilated to the notion of narrative judgement. This paper aims to distinguish between supposed idiographic and narrative judgement. Taking the former to mean a kind of individualised judgement, I argue that it has no place in psychiatry in part because it threatens psychiatric validity. Narrative judgement, by contrast, is a genuinely distinct complement to (...) criteriological diagnosis but it is, nevertheless, a special kind of general judgement and thus can possess validity. To argue this I first examine the origin of the distinction between idiographic and nomothetic in Windelband’s 1894 rectorial address. I argue that none of three ways of understanding that distinction is tenable. Windelband’s description of historical methods, as a practical example, does not articulate a genuine form of understanding. A metaphysical distinction between particulars and general kinds is guilty of subscribing to the Myth of the Given. A distinction based on an abstraction of essentially combined aspects of empirical judgement cannot underpin a distinct empirical method. Furthermore, idiographic elements understood as individualised judgements threaten the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. In the final part I briefly describe some aspects of the logic of narrative judgements and argue that in the call for comprehensive diagnosis, narrative rather than idiographic elements have an important role. Importantly, however, whilst directed towards individual subjects, narratives are framed in intrinsically general concepts and thus can aspire to validity. (shrink)

Idiographic understanding has been proposed as a response to concern that criteriological diagnosis cannot capture the nature of human individuality. It can seem that understanding individuals requires, instead, a distinct form of ‘individualised’ judgement and this claim receives endorsement by the inventor of the term ‘idiographic’, Wilhelm Windelband. I argue, however, that none of the options for specifying a model of individualised judgement, to explain what idiographic judgement might be, will work. I suggest, at the end, that narrative, rather than (...) idiographic, understanding is a more promising response to the limitations of criteriological diagnosis. (shrink)

Deze tekst vertrekt vanuit een van de meest invloedrijke denkers in de metafysica, namelijk Aristoteles. We lezen hem via de interpretatie van Giorgio Agamben in het artikel On potentiality. 4 Agamben werpt in die tekst een nieuw licht op het onderscheid tussen potentialiteit en act. De Westerse metafysica heeft vaak de act geprivilegieerd boven de potentialiteit. Enkel actuele entiteiten zouden bestaan, terwijl mogelijkheden behoren tot het domein van de verbeelding. Aristoteles ondermijnt deze stelling volgens Agamben. De mens als redelijk dier (...) is een potentieel wezen. De verwerkelijking van zijn essentie is het cultiveren van de rede als potentialiteit. In de mens zijn act en potentialiteit één. Daarom moeten wij begrijpen in welke zin potentialiteiten bestaan en hoe zij zich verhouden tot de act. Het antwoord vinden wij in de verwerkelijking van impotentialiteit, of het vermogen om dingen niet te doen. De mens kan niet enkel x doen, maar ook actief x niet-doen. Bijvoorbeeld in de vasten kan men van niet-eten een project maken. Agambens studie van impotentialiteit verduidelijkt daarmee wat de termen ‘act’ en ‘potentialiteit’ precies betekenen. Agamben stelt voor om elke actualisering te begrijpen als de opschorting van een impotentialiteit. De vaster die begint te eten, schort zijn project tot niet-eten op. Los van deze of gene actualisering is de wereld eerst de verzamelnaam voor alle mogelijke actualiseringen en die mogelijkheden zijn nooit uitgeput in eender welke actualisering van de wereld. De mens is dan het wezen dat, dankzij zijn impotentialiteit, inziet dat de wereld steeds meer is dan enkel wat het geval is. (shrink)

This paper sets to answering the question of how Lacan’s 1959-60 Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis[1], with its recurring critique of the Platonic idea of a moral Sovereign Good, might contribute to and improve our understanding of the Nietzschean project to diagnose the moral metaphysics instigated by Plato in philosophy, and by Christianity in religion, as a history of untruth and nihilism––opposed to life––in preparation for its overcoming. I explore the possibility that Lacan’s Ethics might make such a contribution (...) by i) its tripartite ontology of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary serving as an additional frame of reference for examining the nature of the Good and our configurations of desire beneath it; and ii) by its more detailed elaboration of the archaic, polymorphous perversity at the instinctual base of the drives, what Lacan in his Ethics will call das Ding, the somewhat diabolical Freudian Thing. I also attempt to indicate how Nietzsche’s own ethics might make a contribution to those of the Lacanian, for the purposes of further combating what I will take to be the contemporary neurosis and nihilism of a ‘life’ against life––as indicated today for instance by such phenomena as the physical destruction of the environment, along with us as amongst its earthly inhabitants. (shrink)

The paper begins by asking, in the context of McDowell's Mind and World, what guides empirical judgement. It then critically examines David Bell's account of the role of aesthetic judgement, or experience, in Kant and Wittgenstein, in shedding light on empirical judgement. Bell's suggestion that a Wittgensteinian account of aesthetic experience can guide the application of empirical concepts is criticised: neither the discussion of aesthetic judgement nor aesthetic experience helps underpin empirical judgement. But attention to the parallel between Wittgenstein's discussion (...) of understanding rules and the question of how empirical concepts can be applied to particulars suggests how to dissolve the felt need for an answer. This in turn helps shed light on McDowell's conceptualist account of experience. (shrink)

This paper examines the account offered by Bolton and Hill (1996) of how reasons can be causes, and thus how symptoms of mental disorders can be both caused and carry meaning. The central problem is to reconcile the causal and rationalizing powers of content-laden mental states. I draw out these two aspects by putting them in the context of recent work in analytical philosophy, including Davidson's token identity theory and his account of mental disorder. The latter, however, can be used (...) to emphasize in a novel way what is becoming a familiar charge: that Davidson does not show how mental content, as opposed to the physical bearers of that content, can itself play a causal role. (edited). (shrink)

Harry Collins’s Tacit and Explicit Knowledge characterises tacit knowledge through a number of antonyms: explicit, explicable, and then explicable via elaboration, transformation, mechanization and explanation and, most fundamentally, what can be communicated via “strings”. But his account blurs the distinction between knowledge and what knowledge can be of and has a number of counter-intuitive consequences. This is the result of his adoption of strings themselves rather than the use of words or signs as the mark of what is explicit and, (...) I suggest, it may stem from his earlier response to Wittgenstein’s rules regress. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive resource of original essays by leading thinkers exploring the newly emerging interdisciplinary field of the philosophy of psychiatry. The contributors aim to define this exciting field and to highlight the philosophical assumptions and issues that underlie psychiatric theory and practice, the category of mental disorder, and rationales for its social, clinical, and legal treatment.

ABSTRACT According to many contemporary observers, including Hillel Steiner [1], Herbert Hart [2], John Gray [3] and Isaiah Berlin [4], the equal liberty principle lies at the heart of liberalism. Yet despite its central place in liberal theory, it has attracted little critical appraisal. This paper seeks to examine the meaning and some of the policy implications of the equal liberty principle, paying particular attention to the elucidations produced by Herbert Spencer, Steiner and Hart — the only systematic analysts of (...) the notion of equal liberty. In part 1, the meaning of the equal liberty principle is discussed, and it is shown to be intrinsically ambivalent. In part 2, where certain policy implications are considered, the conclusion is reached that the equal liberty principle is ambiguous in its policy prescriptions, and requires to be supplemented by some other principle before it can be unequivocally applied. (shrink)

. Editorial. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 85-85.

Many Americans don't hold journalists in very high regard these days, and sports journalists are often viewed in the least favorable light. The general public does not perceive any visible, unified, and concerted effort among sportswriters to practice their craft in a consistently ethical manner. Efforts to upgrade the craft include the Associated Press Sports Editors ethical guidelines, which cover freebies, moonlighting, community involvement by sports journalists, and commercial sponsors of sporting events. This study examines the APSE code and suggests (...) additional, more specific, and enforceable guidelines in ten areas: freebies, moonlighting, newsgathering methods, news sources, direct quotes, privacy, gambling, special interests, self?interests, and involvements. Sports journalists should be as ethically accountable as any other journalists, the author concludes. (shrink)

My strategy is to assume a "market libertarian" ideology for the purposes of this paper and then argue that employment offers directed toward people in desperate circumstances are predatory immoral offers. I develop comparisons between predatory behaviour that is widely held to be immoral (cases where people in power prey on the desperate, i.e., people who are desperately hungry, ignorant, secretive, etc.,) and the predatory behaviour of corporate agents who prey on desperate people for cheap labour. What all of these (...) cases have in common is that the predator takes advantage of the fact that the prey is not in a position to make a meaningful choice. When this argument by analogy is put in the context of the libertarian insistence that voluntary exchanges are at the foundation of everyone's freedom, it represents a devastating critique of neo-liberal consistency. (shrink)