Research ethics committees, while in many ways an excellent innovation, do have some drawbacks. This paper examines three of these. The first problem of such committees is that their approval of specific projects in their own institutions acquires intrinsic value. The second problem relates to the possible devolution of responsibility from the investigator to the committee. The committee approves, the investigator feels relieved of some responsibility and things can be done to patients which neither the committee nor the investigator might (...) countenance if they had sole responsibility. The third problem arises directly from the bureaucratic nature of the committee itself. And one consequence of the resulting rigid guidelines is the insistence, by most committees, on the written consent of patients. Demanding this can, in some circumstances, mean giving the patient very disturbing information. The paper suggests that in patients with a fatal disease where trials compare two accepted therapies committees dispense with written consent. There is a commentary on this paper by Dr D J Weatherall of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford. (shrink)

Over the past decades, science funding shows a shift from recurrent block funding towards project funding mechanisms. However, our knowledge of how project funding arrangements influence the organizational and epistemic properties of research is limited. To study this relation, a bridge between science policy studies and science studies is necessary. Recent studies have analyzed the relation between the affordances and constraints of project grants and the epistemic properties of research. However, the potentially very different affordances and constraints of funding arrangements (...) such as awards, prizes and fellowships, have not yet been taken into account. Drawing on eight case studies of funding arrangements in high performing Dutch research groups, this study compares the institutional affordances and constraints of prizes with those of project grants and their effects on organizational and epistemic properties of research. We argue that the prize case studies diverge from project-funded research in three ways: 1) a more flexible use, and adaptation of use, of funds during the research process compared to project grants; 2) investments in the larger organization which have effects beyond the research project itself; and 3), closely related, greater deviation from epistemic and organizational standards. The increasing dominance of project funding arrangements in Western science systems is therefore argued to be problematic in light of epistemic and organizational innovation. Funding arrangements that offer funding without scholars having to submit a project-proposal remain crucial to support researchers and research groups to deviate from epistemic and organizational standards. (shrink)

Competing theories on the semantics of group pejorative terms (also known as‘slurs’)comprise both advocates and opponents to the Identity Thesis (IT), according to whichthese terms and their neutral counterparts do not differ in semantic value. In the oppo-nents’camp, Christopher Hom has offered an argument based on substitution of slurs andneutral counterparts that both supports his semanticist approach and cast doubts on all IT-based approaches to slurs. We aim to point to a dilemma triggered by this argument based on evidence showing (...) that substitution of some words (including but not restricted to slurs)for non-problematically co-referential pairs may fail to preserve truth-values in some linguistics contexts. (shrink)

Rationale Despite their inherently pervasive limitations, data from observational studies are increasingly relied upon by health car.

In everyday medical settings in Japan, physicians occasionally tell an elderly patient that their symptoms are “due to old age,” and there is some concern that patient care might be negatively impacted as a result. That said, as this phrase can have multiple connotations and meanings, there are certain instances in which the use of this phrase may not necessarily be indicative of ageism, or prejudice against the elderly. One of the goals in medical care is to address pain and (...) suffering that develops with age in elderly individuals, and whether or not aging is a disease is inconsequential. However, assuming that an individualized and thorough examination has been performed, there are some conditions that can be attributed only to age. Accordingly, physicians must acknowledge the merits and drawbacks of using the phrase “due to old age,” and exercise caution when using it. Both physicians and their elderly patients must share a common awareness of the incomplete and limited nature of modern medicine and its scope, and physicians must help their elderly patients accept and live with the aging phenomenon. (shrink)

With the development of information technology and the Internet of Things, the distance between people has decreased. This has brought great convenience to people’s lives, but it has also greatly changed human life. Video games and short videos have become dominant forms of entertainment, significantly influencing children's attention and time allocation. Children should be learning and developing, but entertainment that primarily focuses on superficial engagement and instant gratification have invaded children’s lives, making it difficult for them to think deeply. This (...) has resulted in many social problems. As an emerging discipline, philosophy for children (P4C) invites us to investigate how to improve children’s mental lives, allowing them to engage in independent thinking and judgment in the era of the decline of critical thinking skills and reflective capacities. This paper introduces the origin of P4C, explores its educational principles and methodologies, and presents two case studies illustrating its application in fostering collaborative learning with children in a hyper-connected society, thus illustrating the potential of P4C in addressing societal challenges arising from technological development, including issues like existential meaninglessness, depression, social isolation, and excessive gaming. (shrink)

Determinations of the ethical acceptability of genetic therapy have relied on several distinctions in attempts to separate ethically acceptable genetic therapy from those possible therapies that could lead to genetic modifications of future human beings. One distinction that has been proposed is that genetic modifications of human somatic cells is ethically acceptable but that Germ-Line genetics modifications would be ethically objectionable. This paper examines several serious difficulties which call into question the ethical relevance of a somatic/Germ-Line distinction. Keywords: double effect, (...) future generations, Germ-Line modification CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Graphical AbstractUsing the indices δ+ and δ* for assessing phylogenetic diversity may lead to spurious results and interpretations; it can bias recommendations for conservation and lead to inappropriate management decisions. Therefore these indices should be avoided and other indices based on quadratic entropy (Qδ+ and Q) should be used instead.

The drawbacks of using the concepts of models in discussing the problems of disabled people are discussed. It is suggested that the terms “impairment”, “disability”, and “handicap” can unify the different models and enhance the position of people with disabilities in society.

I argue for a conception of health as a person's ability to achieve or exercise a cluster of basic human activities. These basic activities are in turn specified through free-standing ethical reasoning about what constitutes a minimal conception of a human life with equal human dignity in the modern world. I arrive at this conception of health by closely following and modifying Lennart Nordenfelt's theory of health which presents health as the ability to achieve vital goals. Despite its strengths I (...) transform Nordenfelt's argument in order to overcome three significant drawbacks. Nordenfelt makes vital goals relative to each community or context and significantly reflective of personal preferences. By doing so, Nordenfelt's conception of health faces problems with both socially relative concepts of health and subjectively defined wellbeing. Moreover, Nordenfelt does not ever explicitly specify a set of vital goals. The theory of health advanced here replaces Nordenfelt's (seemingly) empty set of preferences and society-relative vital goals with a human species-wide conception of basic vital goals, or ‘central human capabilities and functionings’. These central human capabilities come out of the capabilities approach (CA) now familiar in political philosophy and economics, and particularly reflect the work of Martha Nussbaum. As a result, the health of an individual should be understood as the ability to achieve a basic cluster of beings and doings—or having the overarching capability, a meta-capability, to achieve a set of central or vital inter-related capabilities and functionings. (shrink)

The subject of the present inquiry is the approach-to-the-truth research, which started with the publication of Sir Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations. In the decade before this publication, Popper fiercely attacked the ideas of Rudolf Carnap about confirmation and induction; and ten years later, in the famous tenth chapter of Conjectures he introduced his own ideas about scientific progress and verisimilitude. Abhorring inductivism for its apprecia tion of logical weakness rather than strength, Popper tried to show that fallibilism could serve (...) the purpose of approach to the truth. To substantiate this idea he formalized the common sense intuition about preferences, that is: B is to be preferred to A if B has more advantages andfewer drawbacks than A. In 1974, however, David Millerand Pavel Tichy proved that Popper's formal explication could not be used to compare false theories. Subsequently, many researchers proposed alternatives or tried to improve Popper's original definition. (shrink)

Shame is a Jekyll-and-Hyde emotion--it can be morally valuable, but it also has a dark side. Thomason presents a philosophically rigorous and nuanced account of shame that accommodates its harmful and helpful aspects. Thomason argues that despite its obvious drawbacks and moral ambiguity, shame's place in our lives is essential.

The internet has become an ubiquitous epistemic source. However, it comes with several drawbacks. For instance, the world wide web seems to foster filter bubbles and echo chambers and includes search results that promote bias and spread misinformation. Richard Heersmink suggests online intellectual virtues to combat these epistemically detrimental effects . These are general epistemic virtues applied to the online environment based on our background knowledge of this online environment. I argue that these online intellectual virtues also demand a particular (...) view of cognitive integration. Online intellectual virtues are incompatible with a popular conception of extended minds proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers . I suggest that if we want to hold on to both a conception of online intellectual virtues and some conception of the extended mind, we have to accept a more gradual theory of cognitive integration along the lines of second-wave theories of the extended mind. (shrink)

In this article I introduce a certain kind of anti-realist account of what makes a property essential to an object and defend it against likely objections. This account, which I call a ‘conferralist’ account, shares some of the attractive features of other anti-realist accounts, such as conventionalism and expressivism, but I believe, not their respective drawbacks.

The interocular suppression technique termed continuous flash suppression (CFS) has become an immensely popular tool for investigating visual processing outside of awareness. The emerging picture from studies using CFS is that extensive processing of a visual stimulus, including its semantic and affective content, occurs despite suppression from awareness of that stimulus by CFS. However, the current implementation of CFS in many studies examining processing outside of awareness has several drawbacks that may be improved upon for future studies using CFS. In (...) this paper, we address some of those shortcomings, particularly ones that affect the assessment of unawareness during CFS, and ones to do with the use of ‘visible’ conditions that are often included as a comparison to a CFS condition. We also discuss potential biases in stimulus processing as a result of spatial attention and feature-selective suppression. We suggest practical guidelines that minimize the effects of those limitations in using CFS to study visual processing outside of awareness. (shrink)

In this study, the drawbacks of using some religious concepts produced in the tradition of Western thought directly in their studies on Islamic belief will be discussed. The claim in question will be put forward within the framework of the concepts of deism, atheism and especially theism. Especially by reviewing the philosophy of religion studies made in Turkey, the fact that the three concepts mentioned are directly transferred to the philosophy of religion studies carried out in the Islamic world will (...) be revealed as a problem and this situation will be defined as the reduction of Islamic belief to some other concepts. The aim to be achieved by emphasizing such a problem is to ensure that the principles of Islamic belief are understood in their own meaning without reducing them to other meanings. Because every concept produced within the tradition of Western thought is directly related to its own intellectual and practical past. For this reason, when a solution or criticism that is formed in a different sense or dependent on a certain practical past is brought to Islamic thought, the philosophical and practical past of those concepts will also be carried. However, every belief should be evaluated by considering its own meaning and history. Evaluating this problem through concepts that Islam directly rejects, such as deism and atheism, is more understandable than the concept of theism. However, when it comes to the concept of theism, the subject becomes quite complex. Because in almost all sources, Islam is defined as a theistic religion and this is considered as a necessary pre-acceptance for the Islamic belief. However, theism is the understanding of God in modern Western thought, in which Descartes rationalism and Newtonian mechanics are accepted as the dominant element. Such an understanding of God, built within the epistemic boundaries of the thinking subject, is incompatible with the Islamic conception of God. (shrink)

When classical mechanics is seen as the short-wavelength limit of quantum mechanics (i.e., as the limit of geometrical optics), it becomes clear just how serious and all-pervasive the measurement problem is. This formulation also leads us into the Bohm theory. But this theory has drawbacks: its nonuniqueness, in particular, and its nonlocality. I argue that these both reflect an underlying problem concerning information, which is actually a deeper version of the measurement problem itself.

The ontic conception of explanation is predicated on the proposition that “explanation is a relation between real objects in the world” and hence, according to this approach, scientific explanation cannot take place absent such a premise. Despite the fact that critics have emphasized several drawbacks of the ontic conception, as for example its inability to address the so-called “abstract explanations”, the debate is not settled and the ontic view can claim to capture cases of explanation that are non-abstract, such as (...) causal relations between events. However, by eliminating the distinction between abstract and non-abstract explanations, it follows that ontic and epistemic proposals can no longer contend to capture different cases of explanation and either all are captured by the ontic view or all are captured by the epistemic view. On closer inspection, it turns out that the ontic view deals with events that fall outside the scientists’ scope of observation and that it does not accommodate common instances of explanation such as explanations from false propositions and hence it cannot establish itself as the dominant philosophical stance with respect to explanation. On the contrary, the epistemic conception does account for almost all episodes of explanation and can be described as a relation between representations, whereby the explanans transmit information to the explanandum and that this information can come, dependent on context, in the form of any of the available theories of explanation (law-like, unificatory, causal and non-causal). The range of application of the ontic view thus is severely restricted to trivial cases of explanation that come through direct observation of the events involved in an explanation and explanation is to be mostly conceived epistemically. (shrink)

Decision-making under normative uncertainty requires an agent to aggregate the assessments of options given by rival normative theories into a single assessment that tells her what to do in light of her uncertainty. But what if the assessments of rival theories differ not just in their content but in their structure -- e.g., some are merely ordinal while others are cardinal? This paper describes and evaluates three general approaches to this "problem of structural diversity": structural enrichment, structural depletion, and multi-stage (...) aggregation. All three approaches have notable drawbacks, but I tentatively defend multi-stage aggregation as least bad of the three. (shrink)

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is the heart of Conquest of Abundance, the (...) book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, Conquest of Abundance offers up rich exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he looks at the ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. "Paul Feyerabend . . . was the Norman Mailer of philosophy. . . . brilliant, brave, adventurous, original and quirky."—Richard Rorty, New Republic "As much a smudged icon as a philosophical position holder, [Feyerabend] was alluring and erotic, a torch singer for philosophical anarchy."—Nancy Maull, New York Times Book Review "[A] kind of final testament of Feyerabend's thought . . . Conquest of Abundance is as much the product of a brilliant, scintillating style as of an immense erudition and culture. . . . This book is as abundant and rich as the world it envisions."—Arkady Plotnitsky, Chicago Tribune. (shrink)

This paper proposes a novel answer to the question of what attitude agents should adopt when they receive misleading higher-order evidence that avoids the drawbacks of existing views. The answer builds on the independently motivated observation that there is a difference between attitudes that agents form as conclusions of their reasoning, called terminal attitudes, and attitudes that are formed in a transitional manner in the process of reasoning, called transitional attitudes. Terminal and transitional attitudes differ both in their descriptive and (...) in their normative properties. When an agent receives higher-order evidence that they might have reasoned incorrectly to a belief or credence towards p, then their attitude towards p is no longer justified as a terminal attitude towards p, but it can still be justified as a transitional attitude. This view, which I call the unmooring view, allows us to capture the rational impact of misleading higher-order evidence in a way that integrates smoothly with a natural picture of epistemic justification and the dynamics of deliberation. (shrink)

BackgroundThe merits and drawbacks of moral relevance models of addiction have predominantly been discussed theoretically, without empirical evidence of these potential effects. This study develops and evaluates a novel survey measure for assessing moral evaluations of patient substance misuse (ME-PSM).MethodsThis measure was tested on 524 health professionals (i.e., physicians, nurses, and other health professionals) in California (n = 173), urban France (n = 102), and urban China (n = 249). Demographic factors associated with ME-PSM were investigated using analyses of variance (...) (ANOVAs) and t-tests, with results suggesting that ME-PSM is higher among younger health professionals, nurses (when compared with physicians and other health professionals), and Chinese health professionals (when compared with French and American health professionals).ResultsResults provide preliminary support for the psychometric quality of the survey measure introduced in this study, including the existence of a single latent structure and partial invariance of collected data across countries.ConclusionThe survey measure for ME-PSM which was developed and tested in the current study appears to hold potential utility for use as a measure of moral views of patient substance misuse. With development, this measure may be used to examine moral evaluations, both as factors of stigma and of other clinical factors associated with the treatment of patients with substance use disorders. (shrink)

The article aims to evaluate the quality of a newly constructed diagnostic instrument for personal and organizational value congruence. To attain this, an expert evaluation was invoked. The selected experts evaluated the questionnaire scales and their constituent subscales as well as the eligibility of the contained statements for diagnosing of personal and organizational value congruence. It should be emphasized that the experts were provided a possibility of commenting on each of the statements, making observations and providing suggestions in regard to (...) the statements, scales and subscales of the questionnaire. This article presents the analysis of the evaluation commentaries by the experts, basing on which the main drawbacks of the new instrument were identified and highlighted. Furthermore, a new diagnostic instrument, constructed in accordance with the results of the expert evaluation as applicable for personal and organizational value congruence is introduced as the main result of the research. (shrink)

Knowledge of causal laws is expensive and hard to come by. But we work hard to get it because we believe that it will reduce contingency in planning policies and in building new technologies: knowledge of causal laws allows us to predict reliably what the outcomes will be when we manipulate the factors cited as causes in those laws. Or do they? This paper will argue that causal laws have no special role here. As economists from JS Mill to Robert (...) Lucas and David Hendry stress, along recently with philosophers like James Woodward and Sandra Mitchell, they can do the job only if they are invariant under the manipulations proposed. But then, I shall argue, anything that is invariant under the proposed manipulations will do this job equally well. There seems to be nothing special about causal-law knowledge in and of itself that makes it particularly valuable for policy and technology prediction. What seems to matter is invariance alone, not causality. But what guarantees invariance and how do we know when it will obtain? Here certain kinds of causal laws do have a special place – those underwritten either by what I have called ‘nomological machines’ or by what I have called ‘capacities’. Capacities and nomological machines have a double virtue that makes them invaluable for policy planning. First, the causal laws they give rise to will be invariant so long as they obtain; and second, they typically have visible markers we can come to recognize that tell us when they obtain. The markers for nomological machines are shakier than those for capacities, though, since capacities are often tied to markers by well-established empirical laws. Capacities have their own drawback however, which is the final topic of this paper: the causal laws that are guaranteed by a capacity connect the obtaining (or triggering) of a capacity with its exercise. But Hume argued (mistakenly I suggest) that no distinction can be made between the obtaining of a power and its exercise. (shrink)

An attempt is made to identify what some have felt to be absent from recent official views as to how curricula and the transfer of knowledge are most performatively to be managed. To this end, particular conceptions of teaching and learning are proposed, and use is made of recent work by George Steiner in elaborating a third variant of the relationship between teacher, learner and what is to be learned, namely that of discipleship. While noting that Steiner is concerned with (...) a small number of exceptional teachers, the possibility is considered that the concept may have some more general educational application, attention nevertheless being drawn to the possible dangers and drawbacks this may present. (shrink)

The paper explains how Gettier’s conclusion can be reached on general theoretical grounds within the framework of epistemic logic, without reliance on thought experiments. It extends the argument to permissive conceptions of justification that invalidate principles of multi-premise closure and require neighbourhood semantics rather than semantics of a more standard type. The paper concludes by recommending a robust methodology that aims at convergence in results between thought experimentation and more formal methods. It also warns against conjunctive definitions as sharing several (...) of the drawbacks of disjunctive definitions. (shrink)

Paul Davidson's critique of O'Driscoll and Rizzo is based on an “official” philosophical position that turns on an opposition between knowledge and ignorance and a corresponding opposition between ergodic and nonergodic processes. But Davidson's substantive analysis reveals a very different “unofficial” position, based on “sensible expectations” and a realist ontology of enduring social structures. While O'Driscoll and Rizzo have the edge on Davidson in terms of their characterization of agents’ beliefs, their ontology of event regularities is ultimately the same, and (...) suffers from the same drawbacks, as Davidson's official ontology. The solution to some of these problems may lie in adopting an ontology similar to the one Davidson invokes in his unofficial capacity. (shrink)

This article contributes to the revision of the procedure of robustness analysis of mathematical models in epistemic democracy using the systematic review method. It identifies the drawbacks of robustness analysis in epistemic democracy in terms of sample universality and inference from samples with the same results. To exemplify the effectiveness of systematic review, this article conducted a pilot review of diversity trumps ability theorem models, which are mathematical models of deliberation often cited by epistemic democrats. A review of nine models (...) extracted from 352 papers exemplifies the effectiveness of robustness analysis supplemented by systematic review in epistemic democracy. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that morality applies universally to all human beings as moral targets, and our general moral obligations to people will not, as a rule, be affected by their views. I propose and explore a radical, alternative normative moral theory, ‘Designer Ethics’, according to which our views are pro tanto crucial determinants of how, morally, we ought to be treated. For example, since utilitarians are more sympathetic to the idea that human beings may be sacrificed for the greater (...) good, perhaps it is permissible to give them ‘priority’ as potential victims. This odd idea has manifold drawbacks but I claim that it also has substantial advantages, that it has some affinities to more commonly accepted moral positions, and that it should be given a significant role in our ethical thinking. (shrink)

From flea bites to galaxies, from love affairs to shadows, Paul Feyerabend reveled in the sensory and intellectual abundance that surrounds us. He found it equally striking that human senses and human intelligence are able to take in only a fraction of these riches. "This a blessing, not a drawback," he writes. "A superconscious organism would not be superwise, it would be paralyzed." This human reduction of experience to a manageable level is the heart of _Conquest of Abundance_, the (...) book on which Feyerabend was at work when he died in 1994. Prepared from drafts of the manuscript left at his death, working notes, and lectures and articles Feyerabend wrote while the larger work was in progress, _Conquest of Abundance_ offers up rich exploration and startling insights with the charm, lucidity, and sense of mischief that are his hallmarks. Feyerabend is fascinated by how we attempt to explain and predict the mysteries of the natural world, and he looks at the ways in which we abstract experience, explain anomalies, and reduce wonder to formulas and equations. Through his exploration of the positive and negative consequences of these efforts, Feyerabend reveals the "conquest of abundance" as an integral part of the history and character of Western civilization. "Paul Feyerabend... was the Norman Mailer of philosophy.... brilliant, brave, adventurous, original and quirky."—Richard Rorty, _New Republic_ "As much a smudged icon as a philosophical position holder, [Feyerabend] was alluring and erotic, a torch singer for philosophical anarchy."—Nancy Maull, _New York Times Book Review_ "[A] kind of final testament of Feyerabend's thought... Conquest of Abundance is as much the product of a brilliant, scintillating style as of an immense erudition and culture.... This book is as abundant and rich as the world it envisions."—Arkady Plotnitsky, _Chicago Tribune_. (shrink)

At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, two policy aims are imperative: avoiding the need for a general lockdown of the population, with all its economic, social and health costs, and preventing the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by the unchecked spread of infection. Achieving these two aims requires the consideration of unpalatable measures. Julian Savulescu and James Cameron argue that mandatory isolation of the elderly is justified under these circumstances, as they are at increased risk of becoming severely ill (...) from COVID-19, and are thus likely to put disproportionate strain on limited healthcare resources. However, their arguments for this strategy are contingent on the lack of viable alternatives. We suggest that there is a possible alternative: a mandatory, centralised contact-tracing app. We argue that this strategy is ethically preferable to the selective isolation of the elderly, because it does not target members of a certain group, relying instead on the movements of each individual, and because it avoids the extended isolation of certain members of the society. Although this type of contact-tracing app has its drawbacks, we contend that this measure warrants serious consideration. (shrink)

Substantivalists claim that spacetime enjoys an existence analogous to that of material bodies, while relationalists seek to reduce spacetime to sets of possible spatiotemporal relations. The resulting debate has been central to the philosophy of space and time since the Scientific Revolution. Recently, many philosophers of physics have turned away from the debate, claiming that it is no longer of any relevance to physics. At the same time, there has been renewed interest in the debate among physicists working on quantum (...) gravity, who claim that the conceptual problems which they face are intimately related to interpretative questions concerning general relativity . My goal is to show that the physicists are correct--there is a close relationship between the interpretative issues of classical and quantum gravity. ;In the first part of the dissertation I challenge the received view that substantivalism has a commanding advantage over relationalism on grounds internal to GR. I argue that this view is based on a misconception of the relationships between realism and substantivalism, and between empiricism and relationalism. This has led to a narrow conception of relationalism. Once this is relinquished it can be seen that none of the standard arguments in favor of substantivalism are cogent. ;In the second part of the dissertation, I consider the way in which considerations arising out of quantum gravity bear upon the substantival-relational debate. I develop a framework in which to discuss the interpretative problems of gauge theories and place GR in this context. From this perspective, I provide a taxonomy of interpretative options, and show how the hole argument arises naturally as a consequence of gauge freedom. This means that certain substantivalist interpretations of GR render the theory indeterministic. In the final chapter, I argue that, far from being a drawback, this presents an opportunity for substantivalists. Examples from quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and quantum gravity, are used to demonstrate that the ambiguities inherent in quantization can lead to an interpretative interplay between theories. In the case of quantum gravity, this means that substantivalism and relationalism suggest, and are suggested by, distinct approaches to quantizing GR. (shrink)

Know Thyself: The Value and Limits of Self-Knowledge takes the reader on tour of the nature, value, and limits of self-knowledge. Mitchell S. Green calls on classical sources like Plato and Descartes, 20th-century thinkers like Freud, recent developments in neuroscience and experimental psychology, and even Buddhist philosophy to explore topics at the heart of who we are. The result is an unvarnished look at both the achievements and drawbacks of the many attempts to better know one's own self. Key topics (...) in this volume include: Knowledge - what it means to know, the link between wisdom and knowledge, and the value of living an "examined life" Personal identity - questions of dualism, bodily continuity, and personhood The unconscious - including the kind posited by psychoanalysis as well as the form proposed by recent research on the so-called adaptive unconscious Free will - if we have it, and the recent arguments from neuroscience challenging it Self-misleading - the ways we willfully deceive ourselves, and how this relates to empathy, peer disagreement, implicit bias, and intellectual humility Experimental psychology - considerations on the automaticity of emotion and other cognitive processes, and how they shape us This book is designed to be used in conjunction with the free 'Know Thyself' MOOC created through collaboration of the University of Connecticut's Project on Humility and Conviction in Public Life, and the University of Edinburgh's Eidyn research centre, and hosted on the Coursera platform. The book is also suitable as a text for interdisciplinary courses in the philosophy of mind or self-knowledge, and is highly recommended for anyone looking for a short overview of this fascinating topic. (shrink)

Corporate Social Responsibility reporting by large corporations has witnessed phenomenal growth over the last two decades. The voluntary nature of these disclosures, however, has led to inconsistencies in reporting formats, treatment, and inclusion of various contextual elements, and a lack of robust measures pertaining to the quality and accuracy of the reports’ content. Efforts to address these drawbacks such as Global Reporting Initiative and ISO 26000 have proven unsatisfactory due to their primary emphasis on process for creating CSR reports without (...) similar attention on measurement criteria to ensure robust implementation, or verify accuracy of information. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature. It uses a new framework—called the CSR-Sustainability Monitor®—of analyzing and evaluating the contents of CSR reports in a manner that allows for a single report to be compared with any other single group, and groups of reports based on industry, country-of-origin, and similar other groupings. Using data from the CSR reports of 614 large corporations worldwide, this study analyzes the character and scope of integrity assurance contained in these CSR reports. The analysis is further extended to explore some external factors that would explain variations in the assurance decision and the quality of integrity assurance in these reports. (shrink)

The simplest quantified modal logic combines classical quantification theory with the propositional modal logic K. The models of simple QML relativize predication to possible worlds and treat the quantifier as ranging over a single fixed domain of objects. But this simple QML has features that are objectionable to actualists. By contrast, Kripke-models, with their varying domains and restricted quantifiers, seem to eliminate these features. But in fact, Kripke-models also have features to which actualists object. Though these philosophers have introduced variations (...) on Kripke-models to eliminate their objectionable features, the most well-known variations all have difficulties of their own. The present authors reexamine simple QML and discover that, in addition to having a possibilist interpretation, it has an actualist interpretation as well. By introducing a new sort of existing abstract entity, the contingently nonconcrete, they show that the seeming drawbacks of the simplest QML are not drawbacks at all. Thus, simple QML is independent of certain metaphysical questions. (shrink)

In the prospectus for his later work pronounced in 1952, Merleau-Ponty announced that his move beyond the phenomenological to the ontological level of analysis is motivated by issues of sociality, notably communication with others.' I propose to interrogate this priority attributed by the author to this interpersonal bond in his reflections on corporeality in general, marking a departure from The Structure of Behavior and The Phenomenology of Perception, which privileged the starting point of consciousness and the body proper. My interest (...) lies particularly in exposing the psychological sources of Merleau-Ponty's thinking about the primacy of sociality. Referring to his lectures on Child Psychology and Pedagogy, which he delivered as Professor at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1949-52,2 I will develop the contention that the developmental psychology of child sociality significantly informed his understanding of relations between self and other laid out in the later texts, and henceforth informed also his conception of the flesh. Specifically, the psychological hypotheses about the anonymous and fusional form initially taken by human sociality appears to play a determining role in his conception of interpersonal life formulated on the ontological plane. I will then point to the internal tensions involved in the theory of sociality based on the thesis of anonymity and disclose an alternative theoretical account, which has the merit of preserving the advantages of the anonymity thesis while avoiding its drawbacks; it also facilitates continued dialogue between Merleau-Ponty's philosophy and recent developmental psychology. (shrink)

We consider drawbacks to scientific methods that prefer simple hypotheses to complex ones that cover the same data. The discussion proceeds in the context of a precise model of scientific inquiry.

There are two major semantic theories of proper names: Semantic Descriptivism and Direct Reference. According to Semantic Descriptivism, the semantic content of a proper name N for a speaker S is identical to the semantic content of a definite description “the F” that the speaker associates with the name. According to Direct Reference, the semantic content of a proper name is identical to its referent. As is well known, Semantic Descriptivism suffers from a number of drawbacks first pointed out by (...) Donnellan (1970) and Kripke (1972).1 The first difficulty is semantic: in many cases, the definite description that S associates with N (if it denotes) denotes an entity other than the referent of N. The second difficulty is epistemic: in many cases, contrary to what Semantic Descriptivism predicts, an utterance of “N=the F” does not semantically express a proposition that is knowable a priori. And the third difficulty is modal: although Semantic Descriptivism entails that the proposition semantically expressed by an utterance of “N=the F” is metaphysically necessary, in many cases the relevant proposition is actually metaphysically contingent. Direct Reference faces three main difficulties of its own. First, there is the problem of cognitive significance (or, as it has come to be known, Frege’s Puzzle): if the content of a proper name is its referent, then different proper names have the same content, and hence utterances of “N=M” and “N=N” semantically express the same proposition; yet these two utterances differ in cognitive significance, and it would seem 1 that utterances semantically expressing the same proposition should not differ in cognitive significance. Second, there is the problem of substitution: if the content of a proper name is its referent, then co-referential proper names should be intersubstitutable in propositional attitude contexts salva veritate; yet linguistic intuitions suggest that substitution of co-referential proper names in such contexts often fails to preserve truthvalue.. (shrink)

In this article, we will concentrate on the two true norm definitions that have existed throughout the history of the Deontic Logic: that offered by Professor Kalinowski and that proposed by the semantics of possible worlds. The former is based on Tarski’s definition of the true proposition, but it has the drawback of depending on a concrete, philosophical theory concerning the nature of norms. The latter, widely accepted nowadays, presents difficulties which we will analyse, using as a reference, K. (...) Solt’s critique. Despite its limitations, it offers the indisputable advantage of being independant of any concrete, philosophical option, and indicates, in our opinion, the correct way of proceeding. (shrink)

In view of a resurgence of concern about the measurement problem, it is pointed out that the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation remedies issues previously considered as drawbacks or refutations of the original TI. Specifically, once one takes into account relativistic processes that are not representable at the non-relativistic level, absorption is quantitatively defined in unambiguous physical terms. RTI therefore provides a well-defined terminus to what appears to be a necessary infinite regress concerning ‘absorption’ when only the non-relativistic level is considered. In (...) addition, specifics of the relativistic transactional model demonstrate that the Maudlin ‘contingent absorber’ challenge to the original TI cannot even be mounted: basic features of established relativistic field theories dictate that the ‘slow-moving offer wave’ required for the challenge scenario cannot exist. It is concluded that issues previously considered obstacles for TI are no longer legitimately viewed as such, and that reconsideration of the transactional picture is warranted in connection with solving the measurement problem. (shrink)

Until quite recently, almost no philosophers trained in the continental tradition saw anything of value in realism. The situation in analytic philosophy was always different, but in continental philosophy realism was usually treated as a pseudo-problem. That is no longer the case. In this provocative new book, two leading philosophers examine the remarkable rise of realism in the continental tradition. While exploring the similarities and differences in their own positions, they also consider the work of others and assess rival trends (...) in contemporary philosophy. They begin by discussing the relation between realism and materialism, which DeLanda links closely but which Harman tries to separate. Part Two covers the many different meanings of realism, with the two authors working together to develop an expanded definition of the term. Part Three features a spirited exchange on the respective virtues and drawbacks of DeLanda's realism of attractors and singularities and Harman's object-oriented theory. Part Four shifts to the question of the knowability of the real, as the authors discuss whether scientific knowledge does full justice to reality. In Part Five, they shift the focus to space, time, and science more generally, and here Harman offers a defence of actor-network theory despite its obvious anti-realist elements. Lively, accessible and engaging, this book is the best attempt so far to clarify the different paths for realism in continental philosophy. It will be of great value to students and scholars of continental philosophy and to anyone interested in the cutting-edge debates in philosophy and critical theory today. (shrink)

Knowledge of causal laws is expensive and hard to come by. But we work hard to get it because we believe that it will reduce contingency in planning policies and in building new technologies: knowledge of causal laws allows us to predict reliably what the outcomes will be when we manipulate the factors cited as causes in those laws. Or do they? This paper will argue that causal laws have no special role here. As economists from JS Mill to Robert (...) Lucas and David Hendry stress, along recently with philosophers like James Woodward and Sandra Mitchell, they can do the job only if they are invariant under the manipulations proposed. But then, I shall argue, anything that is invariant under the proposed manipulations will do this job equally well. There seems to be nothing special about causal-law knowledge in and of itself that makes it particularly valuable for policy and technology prediction. What seems to matter is invariance alone, not causality. But what guarantees invariance and how do we know when it will obtain? Here certain kinds of causal laws do have a special place – those underwritten either by what I have called ‘nomological machines’ or by what I have called ‘capacities’. Capacities and nomological machines have a double virtue that makes them invaluable for policy planning. First, the causal laws they give rise to will be invariant so long as they obtain; and second, they typically have visible markers we can come to recognize that tell us when they obtain. The markers for nomological machines are shakier than those for capacities, though, since capacities are often tied to markers by well-established empirical laws. Capacities have their own drawback however, which is the final topic of this paper: the causal laws that are guaranteed by a capacity connect the obtaining of a capacity with its exercise. But Hume argued that no distinction can be made between the obtaining of a power and its exercise. (shrink)

Many business leaders vigorously and single-mindedly pursue bottom-line outcomes with the hope of producing superior results for themselves and their companies. Our study investigated two drawbacks of such leader bottom-line mentality. First, based on leaders’ power over followers, we hypothesized that leader BLM promotes unethical pro-leader behaviors among followers. Second, based on cognitive dissonance theory, we hypothesized that UPLB, and leader BLM via UPLB, increase turnover intention among employees with a strong moral identity. Data collected from 153 employees of various (...) organizations supported our hypotheses. In particular, leader BLM was positively related to followers’ UPLB. Further, for employees with a stronger moral identity: UPLB was positively related to turnover intention; and leader BLM was related to turnover intention via UPLB. (shrink)

Recent psychological research shows that attention affects appearances. An “attended item looks bigger, faster, earlier, more saturated, stripier.” (Block 2010, p. 41). What is the significance of these findings? Ned Block has argued that they undermine representationism, roughly the view that the phenomenal character of perception is determined by its representational content. My first goal in this paper is to show that Block’s argument has the structure of a Problem of Arbitrary Phenomenal Variation and that it improves on other instances (...) of arguments of the same form along several dimensions (most prominently, these are arguments based on the possibility of spectral inversion). My second goal is to consider responses to Block’s version of the arbitrariness problem. I will show that most of them have serious drawbacks. Overall, the best view is to accept that attention may distort perception, sacrificing veridicality for usability. I end my discussion by showing how to develop that view. (shrink)

In his Populist Democracy: A Defence (1993), Torbjörn Tännsjö suggests, roughly, the following necessary and sufficient conditions for a democratic collective choice: If the majority of a given group of voters prefer A to B, then the collective choice is A rather than B; and if the majority of voters had preferred B to A, then the collective choice would have been B rather than A. Moreover, the preference of a voter is equated with the one she is showing by (...) the act of voting (e.g., by putting a ballot in a box). Tännsjö’s definition has the advantage of being simple, naturalistic, and, to the best of my knowledge, more exact that most other definitions proposed in the literature. As such, I think it is a useful starting point for a discussion of how to define democratic decision making. As we will see below, such a discussion can be quite illuminating and generate interesting and fruitful questions regarding how to understand democracy. Tännsjö claims that his definition is in line with common language use, i.e., that it is a lexical definition. Pace Tännsjö, I shall show that it departs from common language use since it has a number of counterintuitive implications in regards to which decisions and methods that are classified as democratic or undemocratic. I shall suggest a number of amendments to avoid these drawbacks and incorporate these amendments in a definition of a democratic collective choice. The result is a definition of a democratic decision that is superior to Tännsjö’s, or so we will argue. It will be acknowledged, however, that it still has some shortcomings that future efforts need to rectify, or that it might not be possible to give a 1 simple and naturalistic definition of democracy that is sufficiently in line with common language use. To avoid a possible misunderstanding, let me add that I don’t think there is necessarily one correct way of defining a democratic decision (although there might be a common kernel) and I certainly don’t suggest that the definition proposed here is the only way of explicating the ordinary language use of the term “democracy”.. (shrink)