The use of multiple means of determination to “triangulate” on the existence and character of a common phenomenon, object, or result has had a long tradition in science but has seldom been a matter of primary focus. As with many traditions, it is traceable to Aristotle, who valued having multiple explanations of a phenomenon, and it may also be involved in his distinction between special objects of sense and common sensibles. It is implicit though not emphasized in the distinction between (...) primary and secondary qualities from Galileo onward. It is arguably one of several conceptions involved in Whewell’s method of the “consilience of inductions” (Laudan 1971) and is to be found in several places in Peirce. (From M. Brewer and B. Collins, eds., (1981); Scientific Inquiry in the Social Sciences (a festschrift for Donald T. Campbell), San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, pp. 123–162.). (shrink)

We develop and apply a multi-dimensional account of explanatory depth towards a comparative analysis of inflationary and bouncing paradigms in primordial cosmology. Our analysis builds on earlier work due to Azhar and Loeb (2021) that establishes initial conditions fine-tuning as a dimension of explanatory depth relevant to debates in contemporary cosmology. We propose dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy as two further dimensions of depth in the context of problems with instability and trans-Planckian modes that afflict bouncing and inflationary approaches respectively. In (...) the context of the latter issue, we argue that the recently formulated trans-Planckian censorship conjecture leads to a trade-off for inflationary models between dynamical fine-tuning and autonomy. We conclude with the suggestion that explanatory preference with regard to the different dimensions of depth is best understood in terms of differing attitudes towards heuristics for future model building. (shrink)

In a town near mine, a small business owner used their changeable-letter sign to wage a public protest against a variety of restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike a great man...

According to a rights forfeiture theory of punishment, liability to punishment hinges upon the notion that criminals forfeit their rights against hard treatment. In this paper, I assume the success of rights forfeiture theory in establishing the permissibility of punishment but aim to develop the view by considering how forfeited rights might be reclaimed. Built into the very notion of proportionate punishment is the idea that forfeited rights can be recovered. The interesting question is whether punishment is the sole means (...) for reclaiming forfeited rights. I argue for a pluralistic theory of rights reclamation, according to which, there are multiple ways by which a wrongdoer can recapture her forfeited rights. In particular, I argue that offering remorseful compensation is a valid means by which a wrongdoer might partially, or fully, reclaim her right against punishment. (shrink)

This new edition of a well-regarded book provides a concise and exceptionally clear introduction to Habermas's work, from his early writings on the public sphere, through his work on law and the state, to his more recent discussion of science, religion and contemporary Europe. Outhwaite examines all of Habermas's major works and steers a steady course through the many debates to which they have given rise. A major feature of the book is that it provides a detailed critical analysis of (...) Habermas's most important work, The Theory of Communicative Action. As well as looking at Habermas's appraisal of figures such as Foucault and Derrida, the book also examines his resolute defence of the Enlightenment project, his work on law and democracy and its implications for the important topic of European integration. This book quickly became established as an authoritative guide to Habermas's work, and this updated new edition will be an invaluable critical introduction for students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities, especially sociology, politics, philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

In their Why Machines Will Never Rule the World, Landgrebe and Smith (2023) argue that it is impossible for artificial general intelligence (AGI) to succeed, on the grounds that it is impossible to perfectly model or emulate the “complex” “human neurocognitive system”. However, they do not show that it is logically impossible; they only show that it is practically impossible using current mathematical techniques. Nor do they prove that there could not be any other kinds of theories than those in (...) current use. Even if perfect theories were impossible or unlikely, perfection may not be needed and may even be unhelpful. (shrink)

A climactic piece in the controversy between rationalists & the advocates of sentiment.

The United States carceral system, as currently designed and implemented, is widely considered to be an immoral and inhumane system of criminal punishment. There are a number of pressing issues related to this topic, but in this essay, I will focus upon the problem of prison violence. Inadequate supervision has resulted in unsafe prison conditions where inmates are regularly threatened with rape, assault, and other forms of physical violence. Such callous disregard and exposure to unreasonable risk constitutes a severe violation (...) of the rights of prisoners by the state. While there have been numerous legal, political, and activist efforts to draw attention to this issue—with the goal of reforming and making prisons safer—my goal is different. I argue that inmates who are victims of prison violence should have their sentences automatically reduced. Two distinct arguments are advanced in support of this claim. First, I argue that acts of prison violence are a sort of state-mediated harm which can thus be appropriately described as punishment-constituting. Second, and more straightforwardly, I argue that the compensation owed to prisoners who are victims of prison violence may naturally take the form of a reduced sentence. (shrink)

According to new mechanists, mechanisms explain how specific biological phenomena are produced. New mechanists have had little to say about how mechanisms relate to the organism in which they reside. A key feature of organisms, emphasized by the autonomy tradition, is that organisms maintain themselves. To do this, they rely on mechanisms. But mechanisms must be controlled so that they produce the phenomena for which they are responsible when and in the manner needed by the organism. To account for how (...) they are controlled, we characterize mechanisms as sets of constraints on the flow of free energy. Some constraints are flexible and can be acted on by other mechanisms, control mechanisms, that utilize information procured from the organism and its environment to alter the flexible constraints in other mechanisms so that they produce phenomena appropriate to the circumstances. We further show that control mechanisms in living organisms are organized heterarchically—control is carried out primarily by local controllers that integrate information they acquire as well as that which they procure from other control mechanisms. The result is not a hierarchy of control but an integrated network of control mechanisms that has been crafted over the course of evolution. (shrink)

Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a form of life support for cardiac and/or pulmonary failure with unique ethical challenges compared to other forms of life support. Ethical challenges with ECMO exist when conventional standards of care apply, and are exacerbated during periods of absolute ECMO scarcity when “crisis standards of care” are instituted. When conventional standards of care apply, we propose that it is ethically permissible to withhold placing patients on ECMO for reasons of technical futility or when patients have (...) terminal, short-term prognoses that are untreatable by ECMO. Under crisis standards of care, it is ethically permissible to broaden exclusionary criteria to also withhold ECMO from patients who have a low likelihood of recovery, to maximize the overall number of lives saved. Unilateral withdrawal of ECMO against a patient’s preferences is unethical under conventional standards of care, but is ethical under crisis standards of care to increase access to ECMO to others in society. ECMO should only be rationed when true scarcity exists, and allocation protocols should be transparent to the public. When rationing must occur under crisis standards of care, it is imperative that oversight bodies assess for inequities in the allocation of ECMO and make frequent changes to improve any inequities. (shrink)

"Insofar as the essence of this philosophical spirituality is continuous with the essence of Christian spirituality, I am able to specify how... we can be utterly confident that it is wholly reasonable and good to affirm, give thanks for, live, and testify to faith in God."--from the preface While it's clear that a lot of people believe in God, whether they should is a matter of loud debate. Since the Enlightenment, and especially in the last 150 years, a consensus has (...) been building in Western philosophy that belief in a transcendent order--and especially in a supreme being--is unreasonable and should be abandoned. The result of this trend has been to delegitimize religious belief, to claim that those who believe do so against scientific evidence and rational thought. In this confident and sensitive book, William Greenway carefully guides the reader through the developments in Western intellectual life that have led us to assume that belief is irrational. He starts by demonstrating that, along with belief in God, modern definitions of human rationality have also rejected free will and moral agency. He then questions the Cartesian assumption that it is our ability to think that makes us most human and most real. Instead, Greenway explains, it is our capacity to be grasped by the lives and needs of others that forms the heart of who we are. From that vantage point we can see that faith is not a choice we make in spite of evidence to the contrary; it is, rather, wholly rational and in keeping with that which makes us most human. Every person who either has faith or is contemplating faith can be assured that belief in God is both reasonable and good. Greenway embraces both contemporary philosophy and science, inviting readers into a more confident experience of their faith. (shrink)

Based on a qualitative study, this paper explores how United States public health professionals view and think about the existing U.S. healthcare system, while also allowing these study participants to imagine new ways of structuring and practicing public health. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews, I show how public health professionals engage with the concept of “the social” and their personal experiences with public health to question the status quo. By giving public health professionals space in which to imagine changes and different (...) ways of practicing public health, I demonstrate the effectiveness of imagination as a capacity that public health professionals possess to take the lead in creating the changes they hope for. (shrink)

Räsänen draws a distinction between chronological age and biological age and argues that biological ageing is (sometimes) desirable. To demonstrate this, he asks us to consider the case of April, who like Karel Čapek’s Elina Makropulos, has stopped biologically ageing. Unlike Makropulos, though, April’s biological ageing was halted before puberty, so she will never mature into adulthood. Räsänen contends this case shows ageing can be desirable, but this equivocates between maturing and ageing. Here I argue biological ageing, or the wear (...) and tear normally associated with chronological ageing, isprima facieundesirable, but that maturing can beprima faciedesirable. (shrink)

We generalize two of our previous results on abelian definable groups in p-adically closed fields [12, 13] to the non-abelian case. First, we show that if G is a definable group that is not definably compact, then G has a one-dimensional definable subgroup which is not definably compact. This is a p-adic analogue of the Peterzil–Steinhorn theorem for o-minimal theories [16]. Second, we show that if G is a group definable over the standard model $\mathbb {Q}_p$, then $G^0 = G^{00}$. (...) As an application, definably amenable groups over $\mathbb {Q}_p$ are open subgroups of algebraic groups, up to finite factors. We also prove that $G^0 = G^{00}$ when G is a definable subgroup of a linear algebraic group, over any model. (shrink)

This text focuses on basic topics and problems of logic, as well as decision theory and topics related to the philosophy of science and statistics. Topics covered include inductive inference; causal inferrence; probability calculus; expected value; confirmation theory; the justification of induction; the riddle of induction and theories of probability. It also includes coverage, in both historical and contemporary terms, of the traditional problem of induction raised by Hume.

Hume says we never have grounds to believe in miracles. He’s right, but many commentators misunderstand his theory of probability and therefore his argument. This book shows that Humean probability descends from Roman law, and once properly contextualized historically and philosophically, Hume’s argument survives the criticisms leveled against it.

This book offers a detailed utilitarian analysis of the ethical issues involved in war. Utilitarianism and the Ethics of War addresses the two basic ethical questions posed by war: when, if ever, are we morally justified in waging war, and if recourse to arms is warranted, how are we permitted to fight the wars we wage? In addition, it deals with the challenge that realism and relativism raise for the ethical discussion of war, and with the duties of military personnel (...) and the moral challenges they can face. In tackling these matters, the book covers a wide range of topics—from pacifism to armed humanitarian intervention, from the right of national defense to pre-emptive or preventive war, from civilian immunity to the tenets of just war theory and the moral underpinnings of the rules of war. But, what is distinctive about this book is that it provides a consistent and thorough-going utilitarian or consequentialist treatment of the fundamental normative issues that war occasions. Although it goes against the tide of recent work in the field, a utilitarian approach to the ethics of war illuminates old questions in new ways by showing how a concern for well-being and the consequences of our actions and policies shape the moral constraints to which states and other actors must adhere. This book will be of much interest to students of the ethics of war, just war theory, moral philosophy, war and conflict studies and IR. (shrink)

First published in 1840, this two-volume treatise by Cambridge polymath William Whewell remains significant in the philosophy of science. The work was intended as the 'moral' to his three-volume History of the Inductive Sciences, which is also reissued in this series. Building on philosophical foundations laid by Immanuel Kant and Francis Bacon, Whewell opens with the aphorism 'Man is the Interpreter of Nature, Science the right interpretation'. Volume 1 contains the majority of Whewell's section on 'ideas', in which he (...) investigates the philosophy underlying a range of different disciplines, including pure, classificatory and mechanical sciences. Whewell's work upholds throughout his belief that the mind was active and not merely a passive receiver of knowledge from the world. A key text in Victorian epistemological debates, notably challenged by John Stuart Mill and his System of Logic, Whewell's treatise merits continued study and discussion in the present day. (shrink)

This article examines one of the sources of David Benatar’s anti-natalism. This is the view that ‘all procreation is [morally] wrong.’ (Benatar and Wasserman, 2015:12) One of its sources is the claim that each of our lives is objectively bad, hence bad whether we think so or not. The question I will pose is whether the constraints of metaphysical naturalism allow for an objective devaluation of human life sufficiently negative to justify anti-natalism. My thesis is that metaphysical naturalism does not (...) have the resources to support such a negative evaluation. Metaphysical naturalism is the view that causal reality is exhausted by nature, the space-time system and its contents. The gist of my argument is that the ideal standards relative to which our lives are supposed to be axiologically substandard cannot be merely subjective expressions of our desires and aversions; they must be (i) objectively binding standards that are (ii) objectively possible in the sense of concretely realizable. The realizability condition, however, cannot be satisfied on metaphysical naturalism; ergo, failure to meet these ideal standards cannot show that our lives are objectively bad. (shrink)

This book seeks to educate principals, counselors, teachers, coaches, support staff, and students about sexual misconduct, while providing a training model to prepare school staff to avoid sexual misconduct, to encourage school leaders to upgrade their supervision efforts, and to provide needed outreach and intervention before sexual misconduct occurs. To help eliminate sexual misconduct in schools, this book provides step-by-step training procedures that can be used as part of the schools' staff development program to teach educators about the importance of (...) setting boundaries. Real-life case studies documenting inappropriate teacher-student relationships are included. The major focus of this second edition is to alert educators to the effects of unrelenting school reform efforts, which have become a distraction at best and a barrier at worst to dealing with problems such as sexual misconduct. This book provides a roadmap of what needs to be done to restore each educator's mission to being committed to their students' well-being before it is too late. (shrink)

Contents: Stephen White: Opuscula and Opera in the Catalogue of Theophrastus' Works Han Baltussen: Theophrastean Echoes? The De Sensibus in the Platonic and Aristotelian Tradition Pamela M. Huby: Arabic Evidence about Theophrastus' De Sensibus Todd Ganson: A Puzzle Concerning the Aristotelian Notion of a Medium of Sense-Perception Istvan M. Bodnar: Theophrastus' De igne: Orthodoxy, Reform and Readjustment in the Doctrine of Elements Georg Wohrle: Ps-Aristoteles De Coloribus -aA Theophrastean Opusculum? David Sider: On On Signs - R.A.H. King: Nutrition and Fatigue (...) Amneris Roselli: Greek Medical Theories of Fatigue Sabine Vogt: Theophrast, De Vertigine Armelle Debru: La sueur des corps: le De sudore de Theophraste face a la tradition medicale John Dillon: Theophrastus' Critique of the Old Academy in the Metaphysics H. Takahashi: Syriac Fragments of Theophrastean Meteorology and Mineralogy Index Contributors and Editors. (Franz Steiner 2002). (shrink)

Analytic philosophy of existence in the 20th century and beyond has been dominated by two central claims. One is that existence is instantiation. The other is that there are no modes of existence. This article attempts to refute both claims.

Donald Capps and John Capps's James and Dewey on Belief and Experience juxtaposes the key writings of two philosophical superstars. As fathers of Pragmatism, America's unique contribution to world philosophy, their work has been enormously influential, and remains essential to any understanding of American intellectual history. In these essays, you'll find William James deeply embroiled in debates between religion and science. Combining philosophical charity with logical clarity, he defended the validity of religious experience against crass forms of scientism. Dewey (...) identified the myriad ways in which supernatural concerns distract religious adherents from pressing social concerns, and sought to reconcile the tensions inherent in science's dual embrace of common sense and the aesthetic. James and Dewey on Belief and Experience is divided into two sections: the former showcases James, the latter is devoted to Dewey. Two transitional passages in which each reflects on the work of the other bridge these two main segments. Together, the sections offer a unique perspective on the philosophers' complex relationship of influence and interdependence. An editors' introduction provides biographical information about both men, an overview of their respective philosophical orientations, a discussion of the editorial process, and a brief commentary on each of the selections. Comparing what these foremost pragmatists wrote on both themes illumines their common convictions regarding the nature of philosophical inquiry and simultaneously reveals what made each a distinctive thinker. (shrink)

The ethics of human genetic engineering.

Education policy, in general, reflects the past and present embrace of science and technology as progressive forces to be further cultivated. Technology has a profound effect on education policy. It serves to divert rather than enhance critical thinking about the future of our race and planet. In addition, the emphasis on technology has dramatically increased vocational emphases that elevate instrumental pedagogical concerns over philosophic reflection on ends. The technology-driven, vocationally rooted school agendas ignore alternative cultural reflections as powerful forces and (...) directions remain exempt from scholarly examination. “How to” triumphs over “why?” The corporate-financed business-education partnership movement gathering momentum in schools across the nation raises a question: If pervasive environmental and human problems are endemic to the emerging technology-supported and technology-driven global order, how will schools end their denial of needed cultural change? (shrink)

This article seeks to consider the policing of anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, from November 2013 to April 2014. We argue that women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries that establish the dominant cultural and social order, and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects. The article draws upon recent work on pacification, which views police power as having both destructive and productive dimensions, to consider the impact of police (...) violence on women involved in protest. We seek to explore the ways in which this violence impacts not only on those involved in protest but also those on the peripheries. The article suggests that the threat and use of sexual violence by police towards women aims to enforce compliance within the protest movement and to send a message, specifically to those on the fringes of the movement, that protest is illegitimate and inherently dangerous. As such, sexual violence forms part of the social production and construction of gender and is instrumental in the making and remaking of subjectivities. The case study suggests that police brutality towards women at Barton Moss, therefore, operated as a disciplinary function to regulate acceptable forms of protest and acceptable forms of femininity. (shrink)

Rational discussion guides, but does not compel individual decisions, and the best process of inquiry and decision should vary with a person’s goals and situation. Sir Karl Popper noted that after a result of observation or experiment has been obtained by independent researchers, scientists agree to reject as false theories that are contradicted by accepted facts. Popper, though, wrongly assumed this consensus also applies to acceptance for purposes of research. In reality researchers develop competing theories about which evidence is currently (...) in conflict, and sometimes even refuting the theories in their current form. Further, Popper asserted that only negative arguments should be used in rational inquiry. In reality, productive inquiry involves also positive arguments, even in science. Positive considerations such as which basic theories are justified by the researcher’s preferred metaphysics, or what theories in applied science are justified by existing accepted basic theories, are also used productively. (shrink)

Drawing upon the work of various critical race theorists, including Frantz Fanon, Kevin Quashie, Hortense J. Spillers, Calvin L. Warren and Sylvia Wynter, this article suggests that if Blackness has historically been, and continues to be, cast outside of being and into being, or what Wynter terms désêtre, then for Blackness to give expression to itself and/or to prove (or improvise) its “aliveness” is a necessarily “poetic” process, given that poetry/ poiesis is the bringing into being of that which previously (...) did not exist. Looking at a range of films, including Arthur Jafa’s Dreams are colder than Death (USA, 2014) and Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death (USA, 2016), Barry Jenkins’s The Gaze (USA, 2021) and Paige Taul’s I am (USA, 2017), the article considers this cinematic poiesis in the light of Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of poetry, drawing out the structuring antiblackness at work in the latter and in modernity more generally, before suggesting that cinematically to present Blackness in a loving fashion/to love Blackness through film is what Denise Ferreira da Silva might term a radical and “poethical” gesture, using poetry to decolonise our white supremacist world. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Philosophers examining mechanistic explanations in biology have identified heuristic strategies scientists use in discovering mechanisms. This paper examines the heuristic strategy of investigating phylogenetically distant model organisms, using research on sleep in fruit flies as an example. At the time sleep was discovered in flies in 2000 next to nothing was known about mechanisms regulating sleep in flies and what they could reveal about those in us. One relatively straightforward line of research focused on homologous genes in flies and humans, (...) using those in flies to understand what roles their homologs played in controlling sleep in us. But other research focused on a higher level of organization—the neural networks involved in homeostatic and circadian control of sleep. This raises a puzzle—given that fly and vertebrate brains are organized very differently, how could sleep regulation in flies serve as an informative model of vertebrate sleep? I argue that the basic design of mechanisms such as those regulating sleep can be conserved even as the composition of the mechanism changes and that researchers can hope to use the designs deciphered in flies as heuristic models for understanding sleep in humans. (shrink)

At every level, the study of organic life underlies the relational nature of its subject. Whether one looks at an organism as a whole and its relationship to its environment or other members of its species, or at the component parts of the organism at an organ system, cellular or even molecular level, there is an externally referential and thus relational nature to lived beings. There is perhaps no place as fruitful to illustrate this relationality than the field of immunology. (...) This paper argues that close attention to the phenomenon of relationality that is evidenced by natural scientific research provides an important occasion to demonstrate the wide-ranging validity of the sort of relational ontology defended by the tradition of phenomenological personalism. Such intersections as one discerns in interdisciplinary engagement between personalist phenomenology and immunology, moreover, can provide a basis for further clarification of the relation of person to the world of nature and vice versa in ways that call into question the dominance of reductive philosophies of nature. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)