The frame problem refers to the fact that organisms must be able to zero in on relevant aspects of the world and intelligently ignore the vast majority of the world that is irrelevant to their goals. In this paper we aim to point out the connection between two leading frameworks for thinking about how organisms achieve this. Predictive processing is a rapidly growing framework within cognitive science which suggests that organisms assign a high ‘weight’ to relevant aspects of the world, (...) effectively treating relevant aspects of the world as if they are more precise. This assignment of weight is called precision-weighting and is the predictive processing account of how organisms allocate their attention. Relevance Realization is a framework that conceptualizes an organism’s ability to realize relevance as resulting from a dynamical system in which a cognitive agent makes use of opponent processing relationships to zero in on relevant aspects of the world. In this paper we use recent work on the diametric model of autism and psychosis to demonstrate that the tradeoffs inherent to precision-weighting are also inherent to relevance realization. This connection will demonstrate that although these frameworks have a different intellectual background and use a different set of concepts and vocabulary, they are both pointing to the same underlying process. The fact that these different frameworks have converged on such a similar solution to the problem of how organisms realize relevance serves to demonstrate the plausibility of that solution. (shrink)

Advance directives (ADs) have for some time been championed by ethicists and patient associations alike as a tool that people newly diagnosed with dementia, or prior to onset, may use to ensure that their future care and treatment are organized in accordance with their interests. The idea is that autonomous people, not yet neurologically affected by dementia, can design directives for their future care that caregivers are morally obligated to respect because they have been designed by autonomous individuals. In this (...) paper, we first criticize the idea that ADs can retain moral authority in severe dementia by arguing that it is paradoxical. Second, we consider two arguments that initially seem to refute this critique of ADs, but we eventually dismiss them. The first argument states that ADs retain moral authority in severe dementia because autonomously formed interests, for example, ADs, can only be appropriately discarded by autonomous persons. This we term the historical autonomy argument. We dismiss it by demonstrating how we, in analog cases, are not obligated to continue to respect autonomously formed interests even though they have been discarded under nonappropriate conditions. The second argument is that ADs can be justified by what we term external interests. While we agree that people with severe dementia plausible can be said to have external interests, we show that ADs cannot express such interests and hence cannot be justified by them. We conclude that none of the discussed arguments support the use of ADs and because of this, the idea of ADs should be reassigned. (shrink)

Background: Although fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, qualitative research exploring clinicians’ considerations in clinical prioritisation within this field is scarce. Objectives: To explore how clinicians understand their professional role in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for old patients. Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was employed to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis. Participants: 20 physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes (...) in different parts of Norway. Results and interpretations: The clinicians struggle with not being able to attend to the comprehensive needs of older patients, and being unfaithful to professional ideals and expectations. There is a tendency towards lowering the standards and narrowing the role of the clinician. This is done in order to secure the vital needs of the patient, but is at the expense of good practice and holistic role modelling. Increased specialisation, advances and increase in medical interventions, economical incentives, organisational structures, and biomedical paradigms, may all contribute to a narrowing of the clinicians’ role. Conclusion: Distributing healthcare services in a fair way is generally not described as integral to the clinicians’ role in clinical prioritisations. If considerations of justice are not included in clinicians’ role, it is likely that others will shape major parts of their roles and responsibilities in clinical prioritisations. Fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is possible only if clinicians accept responsibility in these questions. (shrink)

The book deals with the notion of Downward Causation from a wide array of perspectives, including physics, biology, psychology, social science, communication studies, text theory, and philosophy. The book includes proponents as well as opponents discussing the validity of the notion.

BackgroundRandomized controlled trials (RCTs) are often complex and expensive to perform. Less than one third achieve planned recruitment targets, follow-up can be labor-intensive, and many have limited real-world generalizability. Designs for RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data, including registries, electronic health records, and administrative databases, have been proposed to address these challenges and are being rapidly adopted. These designs, however, are relatively recent innovations, and published RCT reports often do not describe important aspects of their methodology in (...) a standardized way. Our objective is to extend the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement with a consensus-driven reporting guideline for RCTs using cohorts and routinely collected health data.MethodsThe development of this CONSORT extension will consist of five phases. Phase 1 (completed) consisted of the project launch, including fundraising, the establishment of a research team, and development of a conceptual framework. In phase 2, a systematic review will be performed to identify publications (1) that describe methods or reporting considerations for RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data or (2) that are protocols or report results from such RCTs. An initial “long list” of possible modifications to CONSORT checklist items and possible new items for the reporting guideline will be generated based on the Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) and The REporting of studies Conducted using Observational Routinely-collected health Data (RECORD) statements. Additional possible modifications and new items will be identified based on the results of the systematic review. Phase 3 will consist of a three-round Delphi exercise with methods and content experts to evaluate the “long list” and generate a “short list” of key items. In phase 4, these items will serve as the basis for an in-person consensus meeting to finalize a core set of items to be included in the reporting guideline and checklist. Phase 5 will involve drafting the checklist and elaboration-explanation documents, and dissemination and implementation of the guideline.DiscussionDevelopment of this CONSORT extension will contribute to more transparent reporting of RCTs conducted using cohorts and routinely collected health data. (shrink)

In three studies, factors influencing the incidence of fraudulent financial reporting were assessed. We examined (1) the effects of personal values and (2) codes of corporate conduct, on whether managers misrepresented financial reports. In these studies, executives and controllers were asked to respond to hypothetical situations involving fraudulent financial reporting procedures. The occurrence of fraudulent reporting was found to be high; however, neither personal values, codes of conduct, nor the interaction of the two factors played a significant role in fraudulent (...) financial reporting. (shrink)

Background: A fair distribution of healthcare services for older patients is an important challenge, but qualitative research exploring clinicians’ consideration in daily clinical prioritisation in healthcare services for the aged is scarce.Objectives: To explore what kind of criteria, values, and other relevant considerations are important in clinical prioritisations in healthcare services for older patients.Design: A semi-structured interview-guide was used to interview 45 clinicians working with older patients. The interviews were analysed qualitatively using hermeneutical content analysis and template organising style.Participants: 20 (...) physicians and 25 nurses working in public hospitals and nursing homes in different parts of Norway.Results and interpretations: Important dilemmas relate to under-provision of community care and comprehensive approaches, and over-utilisation of certain specialised services. Overt ageism is generally not reported, but the healthcare services for the aged seem to be inadequate due to more subtle processes, for example, dominating considerations and ideals and operating conditions that do not pay sufficient attention to older patients’ needs and considerations of justice. Clinical prioritisations are described as being dominated by adapting traditional biomedical approaches to the operating conditions. Many of the clinicians indicate that there is a potential for improving end of life decisions and for reducing exaggerated use of life-prolonging treatment and hospitalisations.Conclusion: The interviews in this study indicate that considerations of justice and patients’ perspectives should be given more attention to strike a balance between specialised medical approaches and more general and comprehensive approaches in healthcare services for older patients. (shrink)

The DRM paradigm produces robust false memories of non-presented critical words. After studying a thematic word list participants falsely remember the critical item “sleep.” We report two false memory experiments. Study One introduces a novel use of the lexical decision task to prime critical words. Participants see two letter-strings and make timed responses indicating whether they are both words. The word pairs Night-Bed and Dream-Thweeb both prime “sleep” but only one pair contains two words. Our primary purpose is to introduce (...) this new methodology via two pilot experiments. The results, considered preliminary, are promising as they indicate that participants were as likely to recognize critical words and presented words just as when studying thematic lists. Study Two actually employs the standard DRM lists so that semantic priming is in play there as well. The second study, however, uses functional near-infrared spectroscopy to measure activity in the prefrontal cortex during a DRM task which includes a deception phase where participants intentionally lie about critical lures. False and true memories occurred at high levels and activated many of the same brain regions but, compared to true memories, cortical activity was higher for false memories and lies. Accuracy findings are accompanied by confidence and reaction time results. Both investigations suggest that it is difficult to distinguish accurate from inaccurate memories. We explain results in terms of activation-monitoring theory and Fuzzy Trace Theory. We provide real world implications and suggest extending the present research to varying age groups and special populations. A nagging question has not been satisfactorily answered: Could neural pathways exist that signal the presence of false memories and lies? Answering this question will require imaging experiments that focus on regions of distinction such as the anterior prefrontal cortex. (shrink)

Graphical AbstractIdentifying the properties and molecules of the intestinal microbiome may help our understanding of various diseases and therefore facilitate their treatment; from excluding pathogens to manipulation of the immune system and regulation of non-intestinal sites.

This article presents an overview ofregulations, guidelines and societal debates ineight member states of the EC about a)embryonic and fetal tissue transplantation(EFTT), and b) the use of human embryonic stemcells (hES cells) for research into celltherapy, including `therapeutic' cloning. Thereappears to be a broad acceptance of EFTT inthese countries. In most countries guidance hasbeen developed. There is a `strong' consensusabout some of the central conditions for `goodclinical practice' regarding EFTT.International differences concern, amongstothers, some of the informed consent issuesinvolved, and the (...) questions whether anintermediary organisation is necessary, whetherthe methods of abortion may be influenced bythe possible use of EFT, and whether EFTTshould only be used for the experimentaltreatment of rare disorders. The potential useof hES cells for research into cell therapy hasgiven a new impetus to the debate about (human)embryo research. The therapeutic prospects withregard to the retrieval and research use of hEScells appear to function as a catalyst for theintroduction of less restrictive regulationsconcerning research with spare embryos, atleast in some European countries. It remains tobe seen whether the prospect of treatingpatients suffering from serious disorders withtransplants produced by therapeutic cloningwill decrease the societal and moral resistanceto allowing the generation of embryos for`instrumental' use. (shrink)

This article examines allusions to Greek poetry in two Greek verse inscriptions carved on public monuments for Lycian dynasts of the late fifth and early fourth centuriesb.c.(CEG177, 888). Scholarship on these epigrams celebrating the rule, achievements and outstanding qualities of the dynasts Gergis (LycianKheriga) and Arbinas (Erbinna) has largely focussed on the evidence they provide for Lycian history, dynastic ideology and Lycia's relationship to Greece. Less attention has been paid to the possible significance of their long-noted echoes of Greek poetry. (...) Literary analysis of these epigrams has been sidelined, it seems, owing to a prevailing assumption that they were composed and inscribed primarily for Greeks visiting or resident in Xanthus, the Lycian ‘capital’ where they were inscribed, and so their literariness, unheard by Lycian ears, cannot add to our understanding of Lycia and Lycians. Yet, a recent observation of Peter Thonemann suggests that the appropriation and manipulation of Greek poetry is in fact central to the dynastic intent of the epigrams: to assert Lycia's non-Greek, ‘Asiatic’ identity. (shrink)

Mathematicians appear to have quite high standards for when they will rely on testimony. Many mathematicians require that a number of experts testify that they have checked the proof of a result p before they will rely on p in their own proofs without checking the proof of p. We examine why this is. We argue that for each expert who testifies that she has checked the proof of p and found no errors, the likelihood that the proof contains no (...) substantial errors increases because different experts will validate the proof in different ways depending on their background knowledge and individual preferences. If this is correct, there is much to be gained for a mathematician from requiring that a number of experts have checked the proof of p before she will rely on p in her own proofs without checking the proof of p. In this way a mathematician can protect her own work and the work of others from errors. Our argument thus provides an explanation for mathematicians’ attitude towards relying on testimony. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wittgenstein’s PrefaceBrett BourbonIn his preface to Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein admits his failure to make his book anything more than an interrelated collection of remarks: "After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into... a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks." The fragmented character of Investigations is matched by its other formal oddities and difficulties: (...) its metaphors, its cryptic evocative obscurity about some things and its linguistic precision about others, its dramatization of philosophical positions in stories, in hypothetical worlds, and in the role of the interlocutor(s). Our initial and continual problem in reading Investigations is to understand the reason for its form, and to justify this form relative to its philosophical concerns and methods. I will argue that the justification of the form of Investigations comes down to a single question: how do we take up Wittgenstein's example—in thinking and in confusion—without mimicking him?IThe justification pursued in the preface bears affinities with theological justification, defined as our becoming righteous relative to God, as Calvin characterizes it, "an acceptation, whereby God receiving us into [End Page 428] favour, taketh us for righteous" (Institutes III. xi. §2).1 Righteousness as a mark of acceptation, the very tone of "righteousness" and God's power of acceptation, have no direct counterparts in Wittgenstein's philosophy. Philosophical justification does not have a doctrinal foundation that would establish any particular content nor any special relation between the pursuit of that justification (through philosophy) and its fulfillment, even hypothetically, in some possible acknowledgment of righteousness. The seriousness betrayed by Investigations need for justification, however, is expressed in the moral fervor of Wittgenstein's philosophizing. It is also his philosophical goal to encourage a kind of acceptation that the ground of our involvement in the world, in what constrains and confuses us, is no more than how we live and what we are: "Instead of the unanalyzsable, specific, indefinable; the fact that we act in such-and-such ways, e.g. punish certain actions, establish the state of affairs thus and so, give orders, render accounts, describe colours, take an interest in other's feelings. What has to be accepted, the given—it might be said—are facts of living" (Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, §630; c.f. PI, p. 226d).2 The translators comment in a footnote that a variant for "facts of living" in Wittgenstein's manuscript is "forms of life." What has to be accepted are forms of life.The form of Investigations is justified as part of a discovery, with or without a supporting theology, of how to move ourselves toward some greater form of perfection (although not to reach it). The Protestant cast of this justification, in Wittgenstein's case, is just (and I wouldn't want to extend it further) that while this justification is achieved by virtue of our effort, it is not effort towards the world, but towards our intransigent will, and that the grace that might enable our work is less a gift, than a condition within which we can struggle.3 Thus, "what has to be overcome," in philosophy, "is not the difficulty of the understanding but of the will" (CV, p.17).4 Philosophy for Wittgenstein is a form of self-education. One works on the will in order to see differently: but the will is neither a thing nor a faculty. Working on the will is not a psychological project of self-reform, but a reconstitution of our attitude toward what we take as necessary. We can describe such attitudes with the vocabulary of the passions by which express or curb our will: devotion, derision, hope, fear, confidence, indignation, pride, repentance, emulation, gratitude, consternation, daring, timidity, and so on. And thus "philosophy is a work on the will" is kind of maxim to help us remember a kind of attitude, purpose, and justification.I will derive an agnostic notion of justification from its Protestant [End Page 429] theological form, retaining its moral force and claim on our person, but without psychologizing it, with minimal doctrinal content, and without God. This is... (shrink)

Under conditions of physiological stress, officers are sometimes required to make split-second life-or-death decisions, where deficits in performance can have tragic outcomes, including serious injury or death and strained police–community relations. The current study assessed the performance of 122 active-duty police officers during a realistic lethal force scenario to examine whether performance was affected by the officer’s level of operational skills training, years of police service, and stress reactivity. Results demonstrated that the scenario produced elevated heart rates, as well as (...) perceptual and cognitive distortions, such as tunnel vision, commensurate with those observed in naturalistic use of force encounters. The average performance rating from the scenario was 59%, with 27% of participants making at least one lethal force error. Elevated stress reactivity was a predictor of poorer performance and increased lethal force errors. Level of training and years of police service had differential and complex effects on both performance and lethal force errors. Our results illustrate the need to critically reflect on police training practices and continue to make evidence-based improvements to training. The findings also highlight that while training may significantly improve outcomes, flawless performance is likely not probable, given the limits of human performance under stress. Implications for the objective reasonableness standard, which is used to assess the appropriateness of force in courts of law, are discussed. (shrink)

This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way to moral disagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p (and likewise for B with respect to not-p). If such higher-order evidence is not defeated, then one (...) rationally ought to reduce one’s confidence with respect to the proposition in question. We term this the higher-order evidence account (the HOE account), and present it as a superior to what we might call standard conciliationism, which holds that when agents A and B disagree about p, and are (known) epistemic peers, they should both suspend judgement about p or adjust their confidence towards the mean of A and B’s prior credences in p. Many have suspected that standard conciliationism is implausible and may have skeptical implications. After presenting the HOE account, we put it to work by applying it to a range of cases of moral disagreement, including those that have feature in recent debates assuming standard conciliationism. We show that the HOE account support reasonable, non-skeptical verdicts in a range of cases. Note that this is a paper on moral disagreement, not on the HOE account, thus the account is merely stated here, while defended more fully elsewhere. (shrink)

"Science and religion are often viewed as dichotomies. But although our contemporary society is often perceived as a rationalization process, we still need broad, metaphysical beliefs outside of what can be proven empirically. Rituals and symbols remain at the core of modern life. Do our concepts of science and religion require revitalization? Can science itself be considered a religion, a belief, or an ideology? Science's authority and prestige allows for little in the way of alternate approaches not founded in empirical (...) science. It is not unusual to believe that technology and science will solve the world's fundamental problems. Has truth been colonized by science? Have scientific disciplines become so specialized and "operationally closed" that they have constructed barriers to other disciplines as well as the general public? The writers of this book set out to investigate whether the symbols of academia may in some cases take on a quality of sacrality, whether the rule of experts can be said to have the character of a "priesthood of knowledge", whether religion has a place in scientific contexts, and a selection of other questions concerning science and its relations to religious belief."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

This collects some of the remarks made at the 2016 Pacific APA Memorial session for Patrick Suppes and Jaakko Hintikka. The full list of speakers on behalf of these two philosophers: Dagfinn Follesdal; Dana Scott; Nancy Cartwright; Paul Humphreys; Juliet Floyd; Gabriel Sandu; John Symons.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Male Reproductive Strategies in Sherwood Anderson's "The Untold Lie"Judith P. SaundersSingled out repeatedly as one of the finest stories in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, "The Untold Lie" (1919) has attracted surprisingly little sustained critical comment.1 Like all the stories in the Winesburg cycle, this one delineates a revelatory moment of inner turmoil. There is little outward action; conflict and suspense are generated chiefly in the interior of the protagonist's (...) psyche, focusing on his ambivalence as husband and father. Readers become privy to "the buried life" of unacknowledged impulses and the "hidden truth" of repressed resentments,2 as Anderson's central characters struggle with the antithetical "choices available to the individual as biology works its will."3 A portrait of the male mind deliberating the relative advantages of alternative reproductive strategies, the story notably repays biosocial investigation. The theoretical framework, as well as the intellectual rationale, for undertaking biosocial investigation of literary texts has been explained ably by critics and aestheticians such as Joseph Carroll, Brett Cooke, Ellen Dissanayake, Robert Story, and others. Readers unfamiliar with the historical and theoretical foundations of Darwinian literary criticism will find useful commentary in works by these and other thinkers in this rapidly growing field.4Anderson concentrates on the interactions between two men at different stages in life, one middle-aged, perhaps fifty, and one youthful, "only twenty-two."5 The older man, Ray Pearson, has made his most important reproductive decisions well before the story begins: he has been married for many years and fathered half a dozen children (p. 203). He works as a farm hand, eking out a meagre living for his family by means of hard physical labor. A few details are sufficient to suggest [End Page 311] his poverty: his house is "tumble-down," his children "thin-legged," his coat torn and shiny with age (pp. 203, 206). Ray's wife, "sharp" in both features and voice, appears to be a perpetually anxious scold, concerned with fundamental problems of family subsistence. Ray's direct fitness (as measured by reproductive success) promises to be respectable, but the task of rearing his numerous offspring to adulthood has required and will continue to require his utmost effort and full-time commitment. He is just barely able to support his family (food is being purchased on a day-by-day basis), and there is little margin of safety in his situation.As foil to Ray, Anderson presents Hal Winters, a man not only younger but different in physique, in temperament, and in social class. Hal is big, tall, and broad shouldered; by way of contrast, Ray's shoulders are described as "rounded by too much and too hard labor," and he is "almost a foot shorter" than the robust Hal (p. 203ff). Inclined to prototypical masculine display, Hal is observed "roistering" about the town at night, dressing in "cheap flashy clothes." He challenges his own father in a fist fight, and as a result he is arrested and jailed. His brash and often reckless behavior is very unlike that of the "quiet, nervous," and "altogether serious" Ray. In the community Hal has the reputation of "a bad one." A fighter, a drinker, and a womanizer, he is "always up to some devilment." Unsurprisingly, Hal's family background is said not to be particularly respectable. The fathers of both Hal and Ray are small-business owners: the Winters operate a sawmill, the Pearsons a bakery. (The narrator never explains why Ray did not join or succeed his father in the bakery business, which presumably would have offered him a better income and a physically less onerous profession.) The stated difference in social standing appears to derive from the two families' differing records of conduct.Hal's aggressive propensities seem to be at least in part hereditary. He is "the worst" of three notoriously bad brothers, all sired by "a confirmed old reprobate" (pp. 202–3). The father, old Windpeter Winters, is remembered best for the gratuitous violence of his death. Drunk, he drove his team of horses along the railroad tracks straight into the path of an oncoming train, having slashed with his whip at a neighbor who... (shrink)

Tom Andersen’s reflecting team process, which allowed families to witness and respond to the talk of professionals during therapy sessions, has been described as revolutionary in the field of family therapy. Reflecting teams are prominent in a number of family therapy approaches, more recently in narrative and dialogical therapies. This way of working is considered more a philosophy than a technique, and has been received positively by both therapists and service users. This paper describes how dialogical therapists conceptualise the (...) reflective process, how they work to engage families in reflective dialogues and how this supports change. We conducted semi-structured, reflective interviews with 12 dialogical therapists with between 2 and 20 years of experience. Interpretative Phenomenological analysis of transcribed interviews identified varying conceptualisations of the reflecting process and descriptions of therapist actions that support reflective talk among network members. We adopted a dialogical approach to interpretation of this data. In this sense, we did not aim to condense accounts into consensus but instead to describe variations and new ways of understanding dialogical reflecting team practices. Four themes were identified: Lived experience as expertise; Listening to the self and hearing others; Relational responsiveness and fostering connection; and Opening space for something new. We applied these themes to psychotherapy process literature both within family therapy literature and more broadly to understand more about how reflecting teams promote helpful and healing conversations in practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics by Brett BourbonKatie PelkeyEveryday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics by Brett Bourbon; 200 pp. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022.In Everyday Poetics: Logic, Love, and Ethics, Brett Bourbon probes the nature of poetry and its centrality in our everyday lives, working from the ordinary-language philosophical framework associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, W. V. O. Quine, and Stanley Cavell. Bourbon's (...) ideas contribute new dimensions to the elusive concept of poetry and pivots the reader's attention inward: how can we recognize poetry in our day-to-day and why should we? At sentence level, his claims are clear and compelling to readers across disciplines with varying knowledge of philosophy and poetry. This book is thus addressed to "poets, literary scholars, philosophers, and students of religion, and anyone who cares about the ethics of everyday life, about the surprises that punctuate and give our lives form" (p. ix).Poems themselves are such "events of form," Bourbon emphasizes, which live among us and need not be constituted by words. Wordless poems can be uncovered and embraced through the development of a "poetic vulnerability" to ordinary experiences that are not necessarily wedded to one's aesthetic reaction. Bourbon designates the alphabet as one such example of what he calls a "primal everyday poem"; the alphabet is wordless and consists of a patterned order whose mere form does not encompass its meaning. The ordinary expression "I love you" also falls under this classification; the phrase is a performative poem whose intricate connotation is simplified by common language, yet is not the equivalent of its mere words. Bourbon asserts that, like the phrase "I love you," poems of the everyday cannot be reduced to mere language, conditions, or creative modes.Of the ineffable nature of poetry, Bourbon claims, "Poetry, like death, is that which we can only know by analogy—by examples—but it has a scope beyond all our examples" (p. 108). In terms of examples, he draws from poignant personal experiences to reinforce his arguments and provide insight into his keen sensibility. In chapter 1 ("Poems of the Everyday"), Bourbon recounts his own dismissal as a young boy of poetry's worthiness until one day while watching an old film, he in fact was struck by the phrase "I love you." This ordinary phrase allowed him to reconsider the parameters of what constitutes poetry and acknowledge the dichotomy of the phrase's formal power constituted by trivial symbols.Chapter 4 ("Epithalamion") is also rooted in personal experience. Bourbon opens with the flat assertion, "I have never liked weddings" (p. 43), but he notes a difference between a "marriage of forms" and "marriage of intimacy and stability": his distaste is for the former. He believes that a successful marriage can become a poem of the everyday—an event of power and "linguistic surrogacy"—where the event itself fosters more meaning than the words alone [End Page 475] can carry. Marriage can be a poem of discovery that arises from the action of learning what it means to love. But in the objects of the wedding and all its trite, heart-shaped symbols, Bourbon remarks, no poems are to be found.Bourbon dedicates chapter 5 ("Is a Poem the Same as Its Words?") to his claim that what a poem is cannot be bound by its words entirely or by meaning alone. If one finds each line of a poem intelligible, that does not indicate that the poem's meaning is consequentially understood. Conversely, a reader may not know a poem's meaning with complete certainty; what is said may not illuminate what is meant. In Bourbon's explanation of the sentence as a model for how particular words construct a poem, he says that one must determine how such a sentence-poem would be meaningful through our own reading. He claims that a poem is more than its words and cannot be simplified into sets of sentences or phrases. "A poem, if it is a sentence, is always more than that sentence; otherwise, a poem would not be a poem but a sentence" (p. 67).Bourbon's latest publication challenges traditional, long... (shrink)

According to Hanne Andersen, "an analysis of goes beyond research ethics and includes important epistemological aspects" (p.1). Her purpose is to point at a new area for philosophy of science in practice, which she does by highlighting different epistemological issues about malpractices and showing how documenting them in a precise way is beneficial to their solution. She articulates in particular two questions, namely the issue of the identification of bad practices and malpractices, and the ways of preventing the latter (...) from happening. I shall discuss how Andersen contributes to these issues, and make additional suggestions. Before going further, I first want to clarify a few points. (shrink)

Over the last decades, science has grown increasingly collaborative and interdisciplinary and has come to depart in important ways from the classical analyses of the development of science that were developed by historically inclined philosophers of science half a century ago. In this paper, I shall provide a new account of the structure and development of contemporary science based on analyses of, first, cognitive resources and their relations to domains, and second of the distribution of cognitive resources among collaborators and (...) the epistemic dependence that this distribution implies. On this background I shall describe different ideal types of research activities and analyze how they differ. Finally, analyzing values that drive science towards different kinds of research activities, I shall sketch the main mechanisms underlying the perceived tension between disciplines and interdisciplinarity and argue for a redefinition of accountability and quality control for interdisciplinary and collaborative science. (shrink)

A finer-grained delineation of a given explanandum reveals a nexus of closely related causal and non- causal explanations, complementing one another in ways that yield further explanatory traction on the phenomenon in question. By taking a narrower construal of what counts as a causal explanation, a new class of distinctively mathematical explanations pops into focus; Lange’s characterization of distinctively mathematical explanations can be extended to cover these. This new class of distinctively mathematical explanations is illustrated with the Lotka-Volterra equations. There (...) are at least two distinct ways those equations might hold of a system, one of which yields straightforwardly causal explanations, but the other of which yields explanations that are distinctively mathematical in terms of nomological strength. In the first, one first picks out a system or class of systems, finds that the equations hold in a causal -explanatory way; in the second, one starts with the equations and explanations that must apply to any system of which the equations hold, and only then turns to the world to see of what, if any, systems it does in fact hold. Using this new way in which a model might hold of a system, I highlight four specific avenues by which causal and non- causal explanations can complement one another. (shrink)

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely characterize causal relata, including their degree (...) of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 32 (summer 2012): 83–6 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PATRICIA RUSSELL Kenneth Blackwell Russell Archives/Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. Hamilton, on, Canada l8s 4l6 [email protected] B ertrand Russell took his own advice not to marry a woman novelist, (...) but he did marry women who wrote for publication. His third wife, Patricia Russell (née Marjorie Spence, then Patricia Helen Spence, and, after divorcing Russell, Mrs. P.yH. Spence) was no exception. Having studied history at Oxford, she did a great deal of research for Russell and some actual writing. She did some public speaking during the ccny case in 1940, and in 1946 she organized a major meeting in Cambridge for the Save Europe Now organization. Later in the 1940s she began employment in town planning, and brief mentions of that topic show up in Authority and the Individualz (1949). The Bodleian Library, Oxford, has a box of her papers, placed, at her instructions, under a very lengthy embargo. On one occasion while they were in America there was an employment opportunity for her. It involved her writing skills, and her husband drafted the following testimonial. With its strikeouts, it is unWnished in the form in which it survives, and we cannot be sure it was sent. It is dated December 6, 1941. My wife, Patricia Helen Russell, has, throughout the last ten years acted both as my collaborator and as my secretary. In the latter capacity she has drafted and written, on my behalf, letters on a great variety of subjects, and has shown great skill in doing so, both as regards literary style and grasp of the matter concerned. As regards collaboration: In “Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914”, she did a very large part of the research and a considerable part of the actual writing. In “The Amberley Papers”, which was published under our joint names, she did considerably more than half the work, not only as regards detail, but also as regards the general plan. In addition to this work on books, she has written magazine articles on my behalf, sometimes in part, sometimes wholly. Her purely secretarial work has been very extensive and always admirable. (ra1 142.079883) books By “the last ten years” Russell is dating the start of their collaboration to 1932. This is consistent with the acknowledgements he makes to her in several books on which she collaborated with him in various ways, in addition to her title-page June 25, 2012 (9:21 pm) E:\CPBR\RUSSJOUR\TYPE3201\russell 32,1 060 red.wpd 84 kenneth blackwell 1 See Brett Lintott, “Russell’s Aborted Book on Fascism”, Russellz 28 (2008): 39–64. credit in The Amberley Papers. They even planned a joint work, on the rise of Nazism and Fascism,1 but after some years it was discontinued. She contributed much to the unpublished book manuscript, “The Problems of Democracy”, written in 1941–42. Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914. London: George Allen & Unwin; New York: W.xW. Norton, 1934. Preface, p. viii: “Throughout the writing of this book, the work has been shared by my collaborator, Peter Spence, who has done half the research, a large part of the planning, and small portions of the actual writing, besides making innumerable valuable suggestions.” (The Wrst edition omitted “valuable” and an erratum slip was inserted.) In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays. London : George Allen & Unwin; New York: W.xW. Norton, 1935. Preface, p. 6: “I have also to acknowledge the assistance of Peter Spence in suggesting and discussing many of the subjects.” The Amberley Papers: the Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley. Edited by Bertrand and Patricia Russell. 2 vols. London: Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press; New York: W.yW. Norton & Company, 1937. The preface is signed “B.R.” above “P.R.” From Russell’s letter to The Times Literary Supplement, 20 March 1937: “Your reviewer treats the work as more mine and less my wife’s... (shrink)

This brief text assists students in understanding Kuhn's philosophy and thinking so they can more fully engage in useful, intelligent class dialogue and improve their understanding of course content. Part of the Wadsworth Notes Series, (which will eventually consist of approximately 100 titles, each focusing on a single "thinker" from ancient times to the present), ON KUHN is written by a philosopher deeply versed in the philosophy of this key thinker. Like other books in the series, this concise book offers (...) sufficient insight into the thinking of a notable philosopher, better enabling students to engage in reading and to discuss the material in class and on paper. (shrink)

This paper discusses the uniqueness thesis, a core thesis in the epistemology of disagreement. After presenting uniqueness and clarifying relevant terms, a novel counterexample to the thesis will be introduced. This counterexample involves logical disagreement. Several objections to the counterexample are then considered, and it is argued that the best responses to the counterexample all undermine the initial motivation for uniqueness.

Even in areas of philosophy of science that don’t involve formal treatments of truth, one’s background view of truth still centrally shapes views on other issues. I offer an informal way to think about truth as trueing, like trueing a bicycle wheel. This holist approach to truth provides a way to discuss knowledge products like models in terms of how well-trued they are to their target. Trueing emphasizes: the process by which models are brought into true; how the idealizations in (...) models are not false but rather like spokes in appropriate tension to achieve a better-trued fit to target; and that this process is not accomplished once and done forever, but instead requires upkeep and ongoing fine-tuning. I conclude by emphasizing the social importance of being a pragmatist about truth in order to accurately answer questions about science such as, “but do we really know that…”. (shrink)

We present a case study of how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We have conducted interviews with two research mathematicians, the talented PhD student Adam and his experienced supervisor Thomas, about a research paper they wrote together. Over the course of 2 years, Adam and Thomas revised Adam’s very detailed first draft. At the beginning of this collaboration, Adam was very knowledgeable about the subject of the paper and had good presentational skills but, as a new PhD student, did not yet (...) have experience writing research papers for mathematicians. Thus, one main purpose of revising the paper was to make it take into account the intended audience. For this reason, the changes made to the initial draft and the authors’ purpose in making them provide a window for viewing how mathematicians write for mathematicians. We examined how their paper attracts the interest of the reader and prepares their proofs for validation by the reader. Among other findings, we found that their paper prepares the proofs for two types of validation that the reader can easily switch between. (shrink)