The purpose of this essay is to critically review the design of methods for ethically robust forms of technology appraisal in the regulation of research and innovation in synthetic biology. It will focus, in particular, on the extent to which cost‐benefit analysis offers a basis for informing decisions about which technological pathways to pursue and which to discourage. A further goal is to consider what (if anything) the precautionary principle might offer in enabling better decisions. And this, in turn, raises (...) questions about why mention of precaution can excite accusations of unscientific bias or irrational, “anti‐innovation” extremism. What does the polarized debate tell us about the politics around synthetic biology? In seeking more rigorous, timely, and practical ways to govern these remarkable new technologies, what might we be missing?The sophistication, diversity, and scope of synthetic biology may seem to make it a rather idiosyncratic area for exploring these general issues. It may seem to be a special case, with the bewildering pace of change amplifying the difficulties. But at root, some of the trickiest issues are just specific instances of familiar and long‐standing conundrums in the governance of science and technology. The basic challenge is how to weigh up, for a wide range of potential options, the various pros and cons, as viewed from divergent perspectives, and find a way to justify the best course of action on behalf of society as a whole. This is the central problem addressed by a number of techniques in CBA. On the face of it, synthetic biology seems to present just one more application of these well‐established and self‐confident prescriptive methods.But there do emerge several obstinate, even prohibitive, difficulties for CBA. Although they are well acknowledged by the scholarly literature on and around this topic, they are often sidelined in practice. Yet all are central to the case for applying the concept of precaution to a field like synthetic biology. This essay will briefly explore multicriteria mapping, an appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on emerging technologies, as one practical way to address them. The essay focuses on MCM, not because it presents any sort of panacea for appraisal, but because it is illustrative of the concrete implications of precaution. Setting out even just one among potentially many practical alternative methods at least refutes the last‐ditch argument that CBA is the only operational choice. (shrink)

Abstract:The term stakeholder is a powerful one. This is due, to a significant degree, to its conceptual breadth. The term means different things to different people and hence evokes praise or scorn from a wide variety of scholars and practitioners. Such breadth of interpretation, though one of stakeholder theory’s greatest strengths, is also one of its most prominent theoretical liabilities. The goal of the current paper is like that of a controlled burn that clears away some of the underbrush of (...) misinterpretation in the hope of denying easy fuel to the critical conflagration that would raze the theory. We aim to narrow its technical meaning for greater facility of use in management and organizational studies. By elaborating a number of common misinterpretations – critical and friendly – of the theory, we hope to render a stronger and more convincing theory as a starting place for future research. (shrink)

We extend the monotonic and regular modal logics to the multi-modal cue, and give semantical characterization w.r.t. a semantics of minimal frames. For this we introduce a calculus over neighbourhoods and we obtain simpler conditions than those from the literature.

Scientific cognition is a hard-won achievement, both from a historical point of view and a developmental point of view. Here, I review seven facets of lay cognition that run counter to, and often impede, scientific cognition: incompatible folk theories, missing ontologies, tolerance for shallow explanations, tolerance for contradictory explanations, privileging explanation over empirical data, privileging testimony over empirical data, and misconceiving the nature of science itself. Most of these facets have been investigated independent of the others, and I propose directions (...) for future research that might integrate them so as to explore potential commonalities among seemingly disparate obstacles to science learning, as well as potential strategies for bridging lay cognition and scientific cognition in the context of science education. (shrink)

Some have proposed that it is reasonable for an atheist to pursue a form of life shaped by engagement with theistic religious language and practice, once language and belief in God are interpreted in the appropriate non-realist manner. My aim is to defend this proposal in the face of several objections that have been raised against it. First, I engage in some conceptual spadework to distinguish more clearly some varieties of religious non-realism. Then, in response to two central objections, I (...) seek to articulate the most promising version of the view. I conclude by discussing some practical and moral objections to a non-realist form of religious life. (shrink)

Before the end of the first year of life, infants begin to lose the ability to perceive distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in their native language. It is typically assumed that this developmental change reflects the construction of language-specific phoneme categories, but how these categories are learned largely remains a mystery. Peperkamp, Le Calvez, Nadal, and Dupoux (2006) present an algorithm that can discover phonemes using the distributions of allophones as well as the phonetic properties of the allophones (...) and their contexts. We show that a third type of information source, the occurrence of pairs of minimally differing word forms in speech heard by the infant, is also useful for learning phonemic categories and is in fact more reliable than purely distributional information in data containing a large number of allophones. In our model, learners build an approximation of the lexicon consisting of the high-frequency n-grams present in their speech input, allowing them to take advantage of top-down lexical information without needing to learn words. This may explain how infants have already begun to exhibit sensitivity to phonemic categories before they have a large receptive lexicon. (shrink)

Detailed studies of people who have experienced the Capgras delusion (the delusion that certain other people, usually close relatives, have been replaced by impostors) have led to advances in constructing an account which can deal with the basic symptomatology, testing alternative possibilities, generating and testing non‐trivial predictions, and broadening the scope of the basic account to encompass other delusions. This paper outlines these developments. It uses them to explore implications for understanding the formation and maintenance of beliefs, and to discuss (...) basic principles of what has come to be known as cognitive neuropsychiatry. (shrink)

Drawing on interviews with people from the advertising and technology industry, legal experts and policy makers, this paper assesses the rise of emotion detection in digital out-of-home advertising, a practice that often involves facial coding of emotional expressions in public spaces. Having briefly outlined how bodies contribute to targeting processes and the optimisation of the ads themselves, it progresses to detail industrial perspectives, intentions and attitudes to data ethics. Although the paper explores possibilities of this sector, it pays careful attention (...) to existing practices that claim not to use personal data. Centrally, it argues that scholars and regulators need to pay attention to the principle of intimacy. This is developed to counter weaknesses in privacy that is typically based on identification. Having defined technologies, use cases, industrial perspectives, legal views and arguments about jurisprudence, the paper discusses this ensemble of perspectives in light of a nationwide survey about how UK citizens feel about the potential for emotion detection in out-of-home advertising. (shrink)

A question that is often asked of analytic theologians is: what, if anything, distinguishes analytic theology from philosophy of religion? In this essay, I consider two approaches to what is called “analytic theology.” I argue that the first approach, which I associate with the common practice of analytic theology in the university, is very difficult to distinguish consistently from philosophy of religion. I also argue, however, that there is another approach that can be more clearly distinguished from philosophy of religion. (...) Following Aquinas, I associate this with a scientific approach to analytic theology: an approach that is distinguished by a specific commitment to understanding the mind-independent reality of God and all things in relation to God. The primary aim of this essay is to present an account of this latter approach and ask whether it might be possible to take such an approach in the contemporary university. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of recent developments in solving the timing problem (discreteness vs. continuity) in cognitive neuroscience. Both theoretical and empirical studies have been considered, with an emphasis on the framework of Operational Architectonics (OA) of brain functioning (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, 2001, 2005). This framework explores the temporal structure of information flow and interarea interactions within the network of functional neuronal populations by examining topographic sharp transition processes in the scalp EEG, on the millisecond scale. We conclude, based (...) on the OA framework, that brain functioning is best conceptualized in terms of continuity-discreteness unity which is also the characteristic property of cognition. At the end we emphasize where one might productively proceed for the future research. (shrink)

This article considers the links between international institutions and global economic justice: how international institutions might be morally important; how they have changed; and at what those changes imply for justice. The institutional structure of international society has evolved in ways that help to undercut the arguments of those who take a restrictionist position towards global economic justice. There is now a denser and more integrated network of shared institutions and practices within which social expectations of global justice and injustice (...) have become more securely established. But, at the same time, our major international social institutions continue to constitute a deformed political order. This combination of density and deformity shapes how we should think about international justice in general and has important implications for the scope, character, and modalities of global economic justice. Having laid out a view of normative development and where it leads, the article then examines why international distributive justice remains so marginal to current practice. (shrink)

This book provides a highly original approach to the writings of the twentieth-century German philosopher Walter Benjamin by one of his most distinguished readers. It develops the idea of "working with" Benjamin, seeking both to read his corpus and to put it to work - to show how a reading ofBenjamin can open up issues that may not themselves be immediately at stake in his texts.The defining elements in Benjamin's writings that Andrew Benjamin isolates - history, experience, translation, technical (...) reproducibility and politics - are put to work; that is, their utility is established in engaging the works of others. The question is how utility is understood. As AndrewBenjamin argues, utility involves demonstrating the different ways in which Benjamin is a central thinker within the project of understanding the nature of modernity. This is best achieved by noting connections and points of differentiation between his work and the writings of Adorno and Heidegger.However, the more demanding project is that "working with" Benjamin necessitates deploying the implicit assumptions within his writings as well as demanding of his formulations more than is provided by their initial presentation. What is at stake is not the application of Benjamin's thought. Ratherwhat counts is its use.Working with Benjamin engages with the themes central to Benjamin's work with deftness, daring and critical insight while at the same time situating those themes within current academic and cultural debates. (shrink)

There has recently been a considerable amount of research into the influence of 18th century British philosophy--particularly into the thinking of David Hume on Continental philosophy and Kant. The aim of this collection is to provide some of the key texts which illustrate the impact of Kant's thought together with two important 20th century monographs on aspects of Kant's early reception and his influence on philosophical thought. Contents: Immanuel Kant in England 1793-1838 [1931] Rene Wellek 328 pp The Early Reception (...) of Kant's Thought in England 1785-1805 [1990] Giuseppe Micheli 114 pp A General and Introductory view of Professor Kant's Principles [1796] F. A. Nitsch 234 pp Text-Book to Kant [1881] (with a biographical sketch) James Hutchison Stirling 576 pp The Development from Kant to Hegel [1882] Andrew Seth 178 pp Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant [1890] Thomas Hill Green 155 pp On the Philosophy of Kant [1879] Robert Adamson 270pp A Sketch of Kant's Life and Writings [1854] H. G. Henderson 80 pp Inquisitio Philosophica [1866], An Examination on the Principles of Kant and Hamilton M. P. W. Bolton 286 pp Philosophy of the Unconditioned [1829] William Hamilton 38 pp On the Philosophy of Kant [1856] Henry L. Mansel 45 pp The aim of this collection is to provide some of the key texts which illustrate the impact of Kant's thought together with two important 20th century monographs on aspects of Kant's early reception and his influence on philosophical thought. (shrink)

Exploring recent controversies over the role of ethics in economics, The Boundaries of Technique encourages scholars and students to discover and debate the ways in which economics is insulated from ethics, and the ways in which it is dependent upon it. Ultimately, by bringing readers to a deeper awareness of the intrinsic involvement of the individual and the responsibility of moral choice, Yuengert makes an invaluable contriubtion to the study and practice of economics.

We provide an overview of a proposal for a new metaphysical framework within which theology and science might both find a home. Our proposal draws on the triadic semiotics and threefold system of metaphysical categories of C. S. Peirce. We summarize the key features of a semiotic model of the Trinity, based on observed parallels between Peirce's categories of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness and Christian thinking about, respectively, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We test and extend the semiotic model (...) by exploring how Peirce's taxonomy of signs offers a new approach to theological reflection on the Incarnation. This leads to a novel way of framing scientific questions about human evolution in semiotic terms and to a new approach to theological anthropology. Finally, we use the semiotic model of the Trinity as the basis of a trinitarian approach to the theology of creation according to which the semiotic processes that are fundamental to life and to human behavior and cognition may be understood as “vestiges of the Trinity in creation.”. (shrink)

In this chapter we look at selfhood in contemporary Confucianism and feminism. We will argue that contemporary Confucians and feminists (and, with some caveats, Confucius and Mencius) have three important points in common when considering the self. In our argument, we will reflect on the debate about Chengyang Li's suggestion that there are important similarities between 仁 (ren ), a term that means roughly "humanity;' "human kindness,'' or "humanity at its best;' and the care ethics advocated by feminists Carol Gilligan, (...) Nel Noddings, and others. Our goal here is not to settle the debates between and among differing Confucians and feminists. Instead, we want to argue that the differences among the views of particular contemporary Confucians and feminists in understanding selfhood and relationality may in fact be smaller than the differences between the two looked at categorically. (shrink)

As the title suggests, Breeur’s project is to discuss three key ideas: lies, stupidity, and imposture. The book is organized into two parts of two chapters each, followed by an appendix. The individual chapters and sub-sections are well-written and philosophically sophisticated. However, the reader will be disappointed if they expect a sustained analysis of the relations among the book’s titular ideas or a unified account of their role in the breakdown of respect for truth more broadly. Breeur’s approach is more (...) episodic, laying out valuable considerations and enticing formulations, but often breaking off before spelling out their full implications or connecting them to previous discussions in the book. His discussion clearly opens up these additional avenues of thought, but the task of going down them is left largely to the reader. This review briefly takes up each of Breeur’s themes: lies, stupidity, and imposture. (shrink)

The problem of the criterion says that we can know a proposition only if we first know a criterion of truth and vice versa, hence, we cannot know any proposition or any criterion of truth. The epistemic levels response says that since knowledge does not require knowledge about knowledge, we can know a proposition without knowing a criterion of truth. This response (advocated by Chisholm and Van Cleve) presupposes that criteria of truth are epistemic principles. In general, however, criteria of (...) truth are not epistemic principles, so the epistemic levels response to the problem of the criterion fails. (shrink)

We discuss two kinds of quotation, namely indirect quotation and pure quotation. With respect to each, we have both a negative and a positive plaint. The negative plaint is that the strict Davidsonian treatment of indirect and pure quotation cannot be correct. The positive plaint is an alternative account of how quotation of these two sorts works. /// Discutimos dos tipos de citas, a saber, citas indirectas y citas puras. Hacemos dos planteamientos, uno positivo y otro negativo, con respecto a (...) cada una. El negativo es que el tratamiento estrictamente davidsoniano de las citas indirectas y puras no puede ser correcto. El positivo consiste en dar una explicatión alternativa de cómo funcionan estos dos tipos de citas. (shrink)

This article examines the belated reception and occlusion of the photographic work of Roy DeCarava by evaluating two recent publications: The Sound I Saw: Improvisations on a Jazz Theme (2019) and Light Break (2019). In the article, I attend to the ways in which DeCarava’s closely cropped photographs delve into the sensual, private textures of everyday life but also track as well the collective anguish and social discontent that still burns on today.

One of the earliest issues in cognitive ethology concerned the meaning of animal signals. In the 1970s and 1980s this debate was most active with respect to the question of whether animal alarm calls convey information about the emotional states of animals or whether they “refer” directly to predators in the environment (Seyfarth, Cheney, & Marler 1980; see Radick 2007 for a historical account), but other areas, such as vocalizations about food and social contact, were also widely discussed. In the (...) 1990s, ethologists largely came to a consensus that such calls were “functionally referential” (Evans & Marler 1995) even if they did not satisfy all the semantic requirements imposed by philosophers of language. More recently, though, it has been argued that ethologists should eschew the concept of reference and return to a focus on the affective aspects of animal communication (Rendall & Owren 2002). We propose to take a new look at this debate in the light of recent developments in the philosophy of language under the heading of “Neo-Expressivism” (Bar-On 2004). This view provides two different senses.. (shrink)

The likelihood principle of Bayesian statistics implies that information about the stopping rule used to collect evidence does not enter into the statistical analysis. This consequence confers an apparent advantage on Bayesian statistics over frequentist statistics. In the present paper, I argue that information about the stopping rule is nevertheless of value for an assessment of the reliability of the experiment, which is a pre-experimental measure of how well a contemplated procedure is expected to discriminate between hypotheses. I show that, (...) when reliability assessments enter into inquiries, some stopping rules prescribing optional stopping are unacceptable to both Bayesians and frequentists. (shrink)

The free will defence attempts to show that belief in an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God may be rational, despite the existence of evil. At the heart of the free will defence is the claim that it may be impossible, even for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, to bring about certain goods without the accompanying inevitability, or at least overwhelming probability, of evil. The good in question is the existence of free agents, in particular, agents who are sometimes free (...) with respect to morally significant actions and who are thereby responsible, at least in part, for those actions and the personal character which is a function of and exhibited in those actions. The free will defender contends that if an agent is to be truly responsible for her actions, then she must be free to bring about both good and evil, and God cannot be blamed if such agents choose to bring about the latter rather than the former. A number of years ago, Antony Flew objected that God was not forced to choose between creating free agents who might act wrongly and not creating a world with free agents. Instead, God could have created free agents who were wholly good, i.e. who always acted rightly." Freedom and responsibility, Flew argued, are compatible with one’s actions being causally determined by God, thus it was within God’s power to create agents who were both free and responsible yet causally determined to always act rightly. In response, proponents of the free will defence criticized Flew’s conditional analysis of freedom – if S had chosen to do otherwise, she would have been able to do otherwise – maintaining instead that an agent’s freedom consists in her ability at the time in question to both perform the action and refrain from performing the action. Acting freely, on this libertarian view, is incompatible with one’s actions being determined by God, for an agent.. (shrink)

In 2009, the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee conducted an ‘evidence check’ on homeopathy to evaluate evidence for its effectiveness. In common with the wider literature critical of homeopathy, the STC report seems to endorse many of the strong claims that are made about its implausibility. In contrast with the critical literature, however, the STC report explicitly does not place any weight on implausibility in its evaluation. I use the contrasting positions of the STC and the wider (...) critical literature to examine the ‘implausibility arguments’ against homeopathy and the place of such arguments within evidence-based medicine. I argue that the STC report undervalues its strong claims about the mechanistic plausibility of homeopathy because it relies on a misunderstanding about the role of mechanistic evidence within EBM. This is not a conclusion for a revision of the role mechanistic evidence plays within EBM, however. It is a conclusion about the inconsistency of the STC report’s position towards implausibility arguments, given the evidential claims they endorse and the atypical situation that homeopathy presents. It provides a further example of the general point that mechanistic reasoning should not be seen as providing categorically lower quality evidence. (shrink)

De Poolse componist Górecki schreef Beatus Vir in opdracht van kardinaal Wojtyła – de latere paus Johannes Paulus II – en verergerde daarmee het conflict dat hij als rector van een belangrijke muziekacademie had met de communistische machthebbers. Uit het stuk, dat de weerslag vormt van dat conflict, spreken een zeldzame kracht, schoonheid en emotie.

In Development as Freedom Amartya Sen explains how in a world of unprecedented increase in overall opulence millions of people living in the Third World are still unfree. Even if they are not technically slaves, they are denied elementary freedoms and remain imprisoned in one way or another byeconomic poverty, social deprivation, political tyranny or cultural authoritarianism. The main purpose of development is to spread freedom and its 'thousand charms' to the unfree citizens. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once (...) the ultimate goal of social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. Social institutions like markets, political parties, legislatures, the judiciary, and the media contribute to development by enhancingindividual freedom and are in turn sustained by social values. Values, institutions, development, and freedom are all closely interrelated, and Sen links them together in an elegant analytical framework. By asking 'What is the relation between our collective economic wealth and our individualability to live as we would like?' and by incorporating individual freedom as a social commitment into his analysis Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom. (shrink)

Distinctions between therapy and enhancement are difficult to draw with precision, especially in marginal cases. Nevertheless, most recent Christian discussions of enhancement technologies accept the general plausibility of distinctions drawn between therapeutic interventions and enhancement technologies by appealing to general understandings of nature and human nature as available benchmarks. On that basis, a range of religious assessments of enhancement technologies can be identified. Those judgments incorporate different interpretations of nature as a source of moral insight, different understandings of human responsibility (...) in light of God's purposes, and different assessments of the effects of sin and finitude on human freedom. (shrink)

‘Psychological structures may be shown to grow and differentiate throughout life. Correspondingly, the brain has a much more lengthy and involved development than any other mechanism of the body. We know little yet of how this uniquely complex process is determined, but it is certain that the principles of embryogenesis apply in all growth, including psychological growth, and not just to the morphogenesis of the body of the embryo.’.

PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and aesthetic world. Verdicts on the latter often have holistic features, and there are dangers that such verdicts involve attempts to compare what cannot be compared. Judgments (...) about the normative and the social often feature a legitimate lack of consistency. (shrink)

The extent to which British Idealism was heavily influenced by Scots has been little noticed, yet not only were they at the forefront of introducing Hegel into Britain in the work of Ferrier, Carlyle, Hutcheson, Stirling and Edward Caird, but they were also distinctive in locating themselves in relation to the Scottish philosophical tradition they sought to extend. The Scottish Idealists, among them Edward Caird, David George Ritchie, Andrew Seth Pringle Pattison, William Mitchell, John Watson, and the Welshman (...) Henry Jones who found his spiritual home in Glasgow, comprised a formidable force and dominated the philosophical professoriate in Britain, Australia and Canada from the late nineteenth century to the years leading up to the First World War. Its main centres were St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, Cardiff in Wales, and Oxford in England. This collection of readings, the first of its kind, has been chosen with a view to displaying the variety, richness and strength of the Scottish Idealist tradition, beginning with an essay from the famous Essays in Philosophical Criticism, a book that set-out the future direction of enquiry for this group of thinkers who shared a 'common purpose or tendency'. Scottish Idealism was immensely spiritual in character and recognized no hard and fast distinctions between philosophy, religion, poetry and science. It was a formidable force in social and educational reform.. (shrink)

Peter Abelard held two views that imply a form of Mereological Essentialism: first, a thing is nothing other than all its parts taken together and second, no thing has more parts at one time than it does at another. This paper situates Abelard’s theses within their historical context. The paper first examines Boethius’s suggestive remarks about the dependence of the whole upon its parts and it highlights several of the choices that were open to twelfth-century students of Boethius’s mereology. Then (...) there is a brief survey of Abelard’s understanding of Mereological Essentialism. Finally, the paper examines some of the more interesting challenges to Mereological Essentialism that were posed by Abelard’s contemporaries. The paper focuses in particular on a set of fragments that have been attributed to the school of Joscelin of Soissons. (shrink)

The close proximity and topical confluence of two early fourteenth-century quodlibetal disputations, those of John Duns Scotus and Jacques de Thérines, has drawn the attention of several scholars. Antonie Vos argues that Thérines’s quodlibet exhibits the influence of Scotus’s, yet no solid evidence has yet been provided for the chronology of their delivery or publication. Most scholars agree that they likely delivered their quodlibets in the same year: 1306. The following article gives a full exposition of corresponding topics in the (...) two texts, closely analyzing them for clues as to which influenced the other. (shrink)