The Monographs produced by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) apply rigorous procedures for the scientific review and evaluation of carcinogenic hazards by independent experts. The Preamble to the IARC Monographs, which outlines these procedures, was updated in 2019, following recommendations of a 2018 expert Advisory Group. This article presents the key features of the updated Preamble, a major milestone that will enable IARC to take advantage of recent scientific and procedural advances made during the 12 years since (...) the last Preamble amendments. The updated Preamble formalizes important developments already being pioneered in the Monographs Programme. These developments were taken forward in a clarified and strengthened process for identifying, reviewing, evaluating and integrating evidence to identify causes of human cancer. The advancements adopted include strengthening of systematic review methodologies; greater emphasis on mechanistic evidence, based on key characteristics of carcinogens; greater consideration of quality and informativeness in the critical evaluation of epidemiological studies, including their exposure assessment methods; improved harmonization of evaluation criteria for the different evidence streams; and a single-step process of integrating evidence on cancer in humans, cancer in experimental animals and mechanisms for reaching overall evaluations. In all, the updated Preamble underpins a stronger and more transparent method for the identification of carcinogenic hazards, the essential first step in cancer prevention. (shrink)

© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.We present new observations of the low-mass companion to HD 984 taken with the Gemini Planet Imager as a part of the GPI Exoplanet Survey campaign. Images of HD 984 B were obtained in the J and H bands. Combined with archival epochs from 2012 and 2014, we fit the first orbit to the companion to find an 18 au orbit with a 68% confidence interval between 14 and 28 au, an eccentricity (...) of 0.18 with a 68% confidence interval between 0.05 and 0.47, and an inclination of 119°with a 68% confidence interval between 114°and 125°. To address the considerable spectral covariance in both spectra, we present a method of splitting the spectra into low and high frequencies to analyze the spectral structure at different spatial frequencies with the proper spectral noise correlation. Using the split spectra, we compare them to known spectral types using field brown dwarf and low-mass star spectra and find a best-fit match of a field gravity M6.5 ±1.5 spectral type with a corresponding temperature of K. Photometry of the companion yields a luminosity of log=2.88 ± 0.07 dex with DUSTY models. Mass estimates, again from DUSTY models, find an age-dependent mass of 34 ±1 to 95 ±4 M Jup. These results are consistent with previous measurements of the object. (shrink)

Critical Realism and Marxism addresses controversial debates, revealing a potentially fruitful relationship; deepening our understanding of the social world and contibuting towards eliminating barbarism in contemporary capitalism.

Fallibilists claim that one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Jessica Brown offers a compelling defence of this view against infallibilists, who claim that it is contradictory to claim to know and yet to admit the possibility of error.

Professor Brown describes and criticises the major classical model of rationality and offers a new model of this central concept in the history of philosophy and of science.

One of the challenges of modern healthcare ethics practice is the navigation of boundaries. Practicing healthcare ethicists in the performance of their role must navigate meanings, choices, decisions and actions embedded in complex cultural and social relationships amongst diverse individuals. In light of the evolving state of modern healthcare ethics practice and the recent move toward professionalization via certification, understanding boundary navigation in healthcare ethics practice is critical. Because healthcare ethics is endowed with many boundaries which often delineate concerns about (...) professional expertise and authority, epistemological reflection on the relationship between theory and practice points toward the social context as relevant to the conceptualization of boundaries. The skills of social scientists may prove helpful to provide data and insights into the conceptualization and navigation of clinical ethics qua profession. Empirical ethics research, which combines empirical description (usually social scientific) with normative-ethical analysis and reflection, is a way forward as we engage and reflect upon issues which have implications for practice standards and professionalization of the role. This requires cooperative engagement of the descriptive and normative disciplines to explore our understandings of boundaries in healthcare ethics practice. This will contribute to the ongoing reflection not only as we envision the professional role but to ensure that it is enacted in practice. (shrink)

According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. What one is truly said to want, it turns out, varies remarkably by context—and to an underappreciated degree. To explain this context-sensitivity—and closure properties of wanting—I advance a Desiderative Lockean view that is distinctive in having two context-sensitive parameters.

Much of the literature on public space focuses on physical inclusion and exclusion rather than social inclusion or exclusion. In this paper, the implications of this are considered in the context of two monuments, The Volunteers/Les Bénévoles, and The Emigrant, located outside the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. These monuments, while perhaps designed to celebrate Canadian multiculturalism, can be read instead as signaling Canada’s enduring commitment to white supremacy, Eurocentricity and colonization, when viewed through (...) the eyes of racialized immigrants. Thus the “public space” becomes exclusionary. In the context in which the monuments are situated, the racial subtext cannot be ignored. This article purports that images, text and placement, regardless of intention, have significant implications on public space and public demeanor. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher of (...) this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

In recent years, campaigns across the globe have called for the removal of objects symbolic of white supremacy. This paper examines the ethics of altering or removing such objects. Do these strategies sanitize history, destroy heritage and suppress freedom of speech? Or are they important steps towards justice? Does removing monuments and renaming schools reflect a lack of parity and unfairly erase local identities? Or can it sometimes be morally required, as an expression of respect for the memories of people (...) who endured past injustices; a recognition of this history's ongoing legacies; and a repudiation of unjust social hierarchies? (shrink)

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle examines the nature of happiness, which he defines as a specially good kind of life. He considers the nature of practical reasoning, friendship, and the role and importance of the moral virtues in the best life. This new edition features a revised translation and valuable new introduction and notes.

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over the jobs we get, the loans we're granted, the information we see online. Algorithms can and often do wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has been largely neglected. I investigate algorithmic neutrality, tackling three questions: What is algorithmic neutrality? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

Presents opposing viewpoints of animal rights, exploring their sense of pain and intelligence, factory farming, genetic engineering, culling, hunting, pets, and animals in the entertainment industry.

What is war? -- The ethical arguments -- The history of war ethics -- Can war be justified? -- Lawful authority -- Humanitarian intervention -- With good intention? -- A last resort? -- A good chance of success -- Waging war -- Pre-emptive strikes -- Proportionality -- Weapons -- War and religion -- Holy wars -- Pacifism -- Non-violence -- Aftermath -- War crimes.

Although parents are the default legal surrogate decision-makers for minor children in the U.S., shared decision making in a pluralistic society is often much more complicated, involving not just parents and pediatricians, but also grandparents, other relatives, and even community or religious elders. Parents may not only choose to involve others in their children’s healthcare decisions but choose to defer to another; such deference does not imply agreement with the decision being made and adds complexity when disagreements arise between surrogate (...) decision-makers for minor children and their physicians. I argue that clinicians and ethicists have a duty to consider voices marginalized by hierarchical structures, including but not limited to gender-based inequalities. This approach involves negotiating potential conflicts: between respecting differences of culture and religion, on one hand, and assuring that the wishes of those who are most invested in children’s lives are considered, on the other. (shrink)

This new book proposes a way out of the crisis by letting go of the idea that psychology needs ‘new’ foundations or a new identity, whether biological, discursive, or cognitive. The psychological is not narrowly confined to any one aspect of human experience; it is quite literally ‘everywhere’. Drawing on a range of influential thinkers including Michel Serres, Michel Foucault, AN Whitehead, and Gilles Deleuze, the book proposes a strong process-oriented approach to the psychological, which studies ‘events’ or ‘occasions.’.

The ‘No Ought From Is’ principle (or ‘NOFI’) states that a valid argument cannot have both an ethical conclusion and non-ethical premises. Arthur Prior proposed several well-known counterexamples, including the following: Tea-drinking is common in England; therefore, either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought to be shot. My aim in this paper is to defend NOFI against Prior’s counterexamples. I propose two novel interpretations of NOFI and prove that both are true.

The essay examines the relation between the explicit aesthetic ideology of Proust’s Recherche and the structure of the “involuntary memory” that is supposed to serve as that ideology’s empirical basis. I challenge the apparent solipsism and idealism of the narrator’s aesthetics by focusing on the one experience of involuntary memory that he omits from his final reflections, in Time Regained, on the relation between memory and art: this is the involuntary memory, in the earlier volume Sodom and Gomorrah, of his (...) dead grandmother, a memory that he describes there as an experience of true otherness. Through a close reading of this passage, I argue that Proust’s interest in involuntary memory implies a concept of literary art as above all ethical in nature, in so far as it is the only means by which individuals can emerge from the solitude to which they are otherwise existentially condemned. In both the Sodom and Gomorrah passage and a later passage from Time Regained this emergence is cast in terms of a rhetoric of multiplicity that emphasizes both the disturbing and the productive dimensions connecting literature with life. (shrink)

Physical Relativity explores the nature of the distinction at the heart of Einstein's 1905 formulation of his special theory of relativity: that between kinematics and dynamics. Einstein himself became increasingly uncomfortable with this distinction, and with the limitations of what he called the 'principle theory' approach inspired by the logic of thermodynamics. A handful of physicists and philosophers have over the last century likewise expressed doubts about Einstein's treatment of the relativistic behaviour of rigid bodies and clocks in motion in (...) the kinematical part of his great paper, and suggested that the dynamical understanding of length contraction and time dilation intimated by the immediate precursors of Einstein is more fundamental. Harvey Brown both examines and extends these arguments, after giving a careful analysis of key features of the pre-history of relativity theory. He argues furthermore that the geometrization of the theory by Minkowski in 1908 brought illumination, but not a causal explanation of relativistic effects. Finally, Brown tries to show that the dynamical interpretation of special relativity defended in the book is consistent with the role this theory must play as a limiting case of Einstein's 1915 theory of gravity: the general theory of relativity.Appearing in the centennial year of Einstein's celebrated paper on special relativity, Physical Relativity is an unusual, critical examination of the way Einstein formulated his theory. It also examines in detail certain specific historical and conceptual issues that have long given rise to debate in both special and general relativity theory, such as the conventionality of simultaneity, the principle of general covariance, and the consistency or otherwise of the special theory with quantum mechanics. Harvey Brown' s new interpretation of relativity theory will interest anyone working on these central topics in modern physics. (shrink)

Decision theory and folk psychology both purport to represent the same phenomena: our belief-like and desire- and preference-like states. They also purport to do the same work with these representations: explain and predict our actions. But they do so with different sets of concepts. There's much at stake in whether one of these two sets of concepts can be accounted for with the other. Without such an account, we'd have two competing representations and systems of prediction and explanation, a dubious (...) dualism. Folk psychology structures our daily lives and has proven fruitful in the study of mind and ethics, while decision theory is pervasive in various disciplines, including the quantitative social sciences, especially economics, and philosophy. My interest is in accounting for folk psychology with decision theory -- in particular, for believe and wanting, which decision theory omits. Many have attempted this task for belief. (The Lockean Thesis says that there is such an account.) I take up the parallel task for wanting, which has received far less attention. I propose necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in terms of decision theory, for when you're truly said to want; I give an analogue of the Lockean Thesis for wanting. My account is an alternative to orthodox accounts that link wanting to preference (e.g. Stalnaker (1984), Lewis (1986)), which I argue are false. I argue further that want ascriptions are context-sensitive. My account explains this context-sensitivity, makes sense of conflicting desires, and accommodates phenomena that motivate traditional theses on which 'want' has multiple senses (e.g. all-things-considered vs. pro tanto). (shrink)

The quantum theory of de Broglie and Bohm solves the measurement problem, but the hypothetical corpuscles play no role in the argument. The solution finds a more natural home in the Everett interpretation.

In modern zoos, enrichment programs have become a standard part of animal care routines. Although 'higher' primates usually receive complex enrichment programs, encompassing many types of enrichment, these are less common for prosimians. These animals often largely receive food-based enrichment, as was previously the case at Auckland Zoo, where the ring-tailed lemur enrichment schedule contained only three different items, all food-related. Lemurs tend to be considered less curious and quick to learn than other primates, as well as being less manually (...) dextrous, and for these reasons can be overlooked for complex enrichment. However, they have strong sensory abilities, in particular an acute sense of smell (Sauther et al 1999). This paper describes an enrichment program designed for the lemurs at Auckland Zoo with the aim of stimulating all senses. (shrink)

It is often argued that cosmopolitanism faces unique motivational constraints, asking more of individuals than they are able to give. This ‘motivational problem’ is held to pose a significant challenge to cosmopolitanism, as it appears unable to transform its moral demands into motivated political action. This article develops a novel response to the motivational problem facing cosmopolitanism, arguing that self-interest, alongside appeals to sentiment, can play a vital and neglected, transitional role in moving towards an expanded cosmopolitical condition. The article (...) explicates the ‘motivational problem’, analyses the relationship between self-interest and sentimental cosmopolitanism in addressing it, and develops a series of claims that self-interest can be one important component in what we label as ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’. In doing so, we argue that self-interested motivations can be compatible with sentiment-based approaches, rendering them more plausible. In addition, two expected critiques of self-interested ‘transitional cosmopolitanism’ are tackled: (A) That it cannot address feasibility constraints, and (B) That self-interested motivations cannot meet what an ‘authentic’ cosmopolitanism entails. We refute and challenge these critiques and outline three conditions in which self-interest can advance a transitional form of cosmopolitanism, while also being compatible with cosmopolitanism writ large. (shrink)

Meet Tega. Blue, fluffy, and AI-enabled, Tega is a relational robot: a robot designed to form relationships with humans. Created to aid in early childhood education, Tega talks with children, plays educational games with them, solves puzzles, and helps in creative activities like making up stories and drawing. Children are drawn to Tega, describing him as a friend, and attributing thoughts and feelings to him ("he's kind," "if you just left him here and nobody came to play with him, he (...) might be sad"). Scholars and members of the public alike have raised the alarm about relational robots, worrying that the relationships that people, and especially children, form with such robots are objectionably inauthentic. We, members of an interdisciplinary team that developed and studies Tega, make this inauthenticity worry precise and offer practical recommendations for addressing it. We distinguish two kinds of (in)authenticity -- inauthenticity as unreality, and inauthenticity as deception -- arguing that neither is just what others have thought it is. With our distinction in hand, we argue that the authenticity concern can be met only through co-design methods -- methods that give stakeholders of all kinds (e.g. parents, educators, and children themselves) a genuine say in how relational robots are built. (shrink)

It is claimed by the future like ours anti-abortion argument that since killing adult humans is wrong because it deprives them of a future of value and the fetus has a future of value, killing fetuses is wrong in the same way that killing adult human beings is wrong. In The morality of abortion and the deprivation of futures (this journal, April 2000) I argued that the persuasive power of this argument rests upon an equivocation on the term “future of (...) value”. If the expression means “a potential future of value” then the moral claim is implausible because people do not in general have rights to what they need to fulfill their potential; if the expression means “self-represented future of value” then the argument fails because the fetus does not represent its future. Under no interpretation is the argument sound. In Deprivations, futures and the wrongness of killing (this journal, December 2001) Donald Marquis, author of the future like ours argument, responds at length to this objection. In the present essay the focus of the debate shifts to the proper interpretation of the right not to be killed. Donald Marquis argues that this liberty right entails the welfare right to the means necessary to sustain life; I argue that the right not to be killed does not entail unlimited welfare rights. On Marquis's view, the right not to be killed confers upon the fetus the right to whatever it takes to sustain life; on the view I defend, the right not to be killed does not confer upon the fetus or anyone else the right to another person's body. On Marquis's view, abortion is almost never permissible; on my view abortion is almost always permissible. (shrink)

This volume is about the notion of 'defeat' in philosophy. The idea is that someone who has some knowledge, or a justified belief, can lose this knowledge or justified belief if they acquire a 'defeater' - evidence that undermines it. The contributors examine the role of defeat not just in epistemology but in practical reasoning and ethics.

Tools and technologies expand our capacities, including our cognitive capacities. Microscopes extend our perceptual capacities. Notebooks extend the natural limits of memory. These facts are important, for all that they are obvious. The extended cognition hypothesis wants more. Some external devices and processes are literal parts of cognitive processes themselves. When there is fast and reliable access to external data or processes, then the cognitive processes that occur uncontroversially inside the brain literally and controversially extend out into the world to (...) incorporate external structures or processes. Retrieval of an address from memory and retrieval of the same information from a notebook can both be fully cognitive processes involving fully cognitive representations. So say the proponents of extended cognition.It is an attractive metaphor. But is there any good reason to take it as literal truth? Adams and Aizawa argue that the debate on extended cognition implicates an …. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The purpose of this article is to review literature that is relevant to the social scientific study of ethics and leadership, as well as outline areas for future study. We first discuss ethical leadership and then draw from emerging research on “dark side” organizational behavior to widen the boundaries of the review to includeunethical leadership. Next, three emerging trends within the organizational behavior literature are proposed for a leadership and ethics research agenda: 1) emotions, 2) fit/congruence, and 3) identity/identification. We (...) believe each shows promise in extending current thinking. The review closes with discussion of important issues that are relevant to the advancement of research on leadership and ethics. (shrink)

This paper puts forward a new account of rigorous mathematical proof and its epistemology. One novel feature is a focus on how the skill of reading and writing valid proofs is learnt, as a way of understanding what validity itself amounts to. The account is used to address two current questions in the literature: that of how mathematicians are so good at resolving disputes about validity, and that of whether rigorous proofs are necessarily formalizable.

Internet recruitment methods for research are rapidly evolving as technology and participant preferences do as well. This brings data security concerns, balanced with respect to persons for research participants. Internet recruitment research strategies are still important given the importance of creating private and accessible pathways for potentially marginalized populations or people experiencing stigmatized mental health conditions to participate in research. This manuscript describes the case of social media recruitment for a mental health and racism study in Fall 2022 that was (...) infiltrated by bots. We contextualize it in the context of data quality literature, with considerations for future directions including strategies for study design and management, and further research questions. (shrink)

I do four things in responding to Patrick Toner’s incisive critique of my Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus (AST). First, I further motivate Aquinas’s position that Socrates exists in the post-mortem and ante-resurrection state by noting that Socrates’ situation is at least analogous to other states of affairs that would certainly count as atypical (although not impossible). Secondly, I offer a revised Thomistic account of artefact identity through time in light of Toner’s objections to Aquinas’srestrictive view. Unlike the restrictive (...) view, this revised account is compatible with common-sense intuitions. Thirdly, I show how my defense of Aquinas’s substance metaphysic in AST is useful for the purpose of constructing defeators for certain kinds of arguments for reductionism. Fourthly, I defend Aquinas’s views on the unity of substance against Toner’s suggestion that they are implausible on the grounds that they are in conflict with certain so-called “scientifically informed”common-sense beliefs. (shrink)

A compositional semantics for anankastic conditionals (‘If you want p, you must φ’) has been elusive. Condoravdi and Lauer (2016) decisively object to all semantics that precede their own. CL's view rests on a response to *the problem of conflicting goals*; CL use an interpretation of 'want' on which an agent's desires don't conflict with her beliefs. But a proper response requires lack of conflict with the facts. CL's view fails. Anankastic conditionals are still a mystery.

In this discussion with Craig Browne, Luc Boltanski comments on how his recent work reconsiders the questions of agency and the nature of social explanation. Boltanski reflects on the connections between his investigations of grammars of justifications and his later work with Eve Chiapello on the historical transition to a new spirit of capitalism. The significance of politics, conflict and critique to Boltanski’s sociology are highlighted. Bolanski explains why he regards May 1968 as a major disruption of the capitalist (...) social order and how the conservative response to this contestation subsequently prevailed in France. The reorganisation of capitalism in recent decades has increased social division, yet Boltanski believes that the recent recession and existing discontent could lead to unexpected outcomes. (shrink)