If belief has an aim by being a intentional activity, then it ought to be the case that the aim of belief can be weighed against other aims one might have. However, this is not so with the putative truth aim of belief: from the first-person perspective, one can only be motivated by truth considerations in deliberation over what to believe. From this perspective then, the aim cannot be weighed. This problem is captured by David Owens's Exclusivity Objection to belief (...) having an aim. Conor McHugh has responded to this problem by denying the phenomenon of exclusivity and replacing it with something weaker: demandingness. If deliberation over what to believe is characterised by demandingness and not exclusivity, this allows for the requisite weighing of the truth aim. I argue against such a move by suggesting that where non-evidential considerations play a role in affecting what we believe, these considerations merely change the standards required for believing in a particular context, they do not provide non-evidential reasons for forming or withholding belief, which are considered as such from the deliberative perspective. Exclusivity thus remains, and so too does Owens's objection. (shrink)

Under what conditions does machine learning (ML) model opacity inhibit the possibility of explaining and understanding phenomena? In this article, I argue that nonepistemic values give shape to the ML opacity problem even if we keep researcher interests fixed. Treating ML models as an instance of doing model-based science to explain and understand phenomena reveals that there is (i) an external opacity problem, where the presence of inductive risk imposes higher standards on externally validating models, and (ii) an internal opacity (...) problem, where greater inductive risk demands a higher level of transparency regarding the inferences the model makes. (shrink)

Much new global genetic research employs whole genome sequencing, which provides researchers with large amounts of data. The quantity of data has led to the generation and discovery of more incidental or secondary findings and to vigorous theoretical discussions about the ethical obligations that follow from these incidental findings. After a decade of debate in the genetic research community, there is a growing consensus that researchers should, at the very least, offer to return incidental findings that provide high‐impact, medically relevant (...) information, when it is not unduly burdensome to the research enterprise to do so. Much as genetic research has been limited to U.S. and European settings, the incidental findings debate has primarily focused on research conducted in high‐income countries. In a 2015 paper, Alberto Ortiz‐Osorno, Linda Ehler, and Judith Brooks note salient differences between the circumstances of research participants in low‐ and high‐resource settings that alter the analysis of when and why incidental findings should be offered to research participants. In this article, we expand on their analysis and present a framework for thinking about how investigators’ obligations to return genomic data might change in low‐resource settings, particularly in settings where participants do not have access to the medical care needed to treat, assess, or monitor incidental findings that are actionable in settings with plentiful resources. (shrink)

This article examines how people of color can biologically inherit the deleterious effects of white racism. Drawing primarily on the field of epigenetics, I demonstrate how transgenerational racial disparities are in fact racist disparities that can be manifest physiologically, helping constitute the chemicals, hormones, cells, and fibers of the human body. Epigenetics can be used to demonstrate how white racism can have durable effects on the biological constitution of human beings that are not limited to the specific person who is (...) the target of white racism, but instead extend to that person's offspring. In this way, the field of epigenetics can help philosophers and others understand the transgenerational biological impact of social forces such as white racism. It reveals that the damage done by white racism is more extensive than critical philosophers of race might have realized, and also that interventions against white racism must address not just the economic, geographical, social, and psychological, but also the biological aspects of human existence. In particular, the article examines racist disparities in preterm birth rates and argues that the scope and significance of prenatal care for African American women must be expanded intergenerationally and include wide-scale forms of racial justice. (shrink)

Do neurobiologists aim to discover natural kinds? I address this question in this chapter via a critical analysis of classification practices operative across the 43-year history of research on long-term potentiation. I suggest that this 43-year history supports the idea that the structure of scientific practice surrounding LTP research has remained an obstacle to the discovery of natural kinds as philosophers of science have traditionally conceived them.

Ethical analyses of the effects of neural interventions commonly focus on changes to personality and behavior, interpreting these changes in terms of authenticity and identity. These phenomena have led to debate among ethicists about the meaning of these terms for ethical analysis of such interventions. While these theoretical approaches have different criteria for ethical significance, they agree that patients’ reports are concerning because a sense of self is valuable. In this paper, I question this assumption. I propose that the Buddhist (...) theory of no‐self offers a novel approach to making ethical sense of patients’ claims following deep brain stimulation. This alternative approach is based on the value of insight into patterns of cause and effect among mental states and actions. (shrink)

Do neurobiologists aim to discover natural kinds? I address this question in this chapter via a critical analysis of classification practices operative across the 43-year history of research on long-term potentiation (LTP). I argue that this 43-year history supports the idea that the structure of scientific practice surrounding LTP research has remained an obstacle to the discovery of natural kinds.

The use of neuroscientific evidence in criminal trials has been steadily increasing. Despite progress made in recent decades in understanding the mechanisms of psychological and behavioral functioning, neuroscience is still in an early stage of development and its potential for influencing legal decision-making is highly contentious. Scholars disagree about whether or how neuroscientific evidence might impact prescriptions of criminal culpability, particularly in instances in which evidence of an accused’s history of mental illness or brain abnormality is offered to support a (...) plea of not criminally responsible. In the context of these debates, philosophers and legal scholars have identified numerous problems with admitting neuroscientific evidence in legal contexts. To date, however, less has been said about the challenges of evaluating the evidence upon which integrative mechanistic explanations that bring together evidence from different areas of neuroscience are based. As we explain, current criteria for evaluating such evidence to determine its admissibility in legal contexts are inadequate. Appealing to literature in the philosophy of scientific experimentation and theoretical work in the social, cognitive and behavioral sciences, we lay the groundwork for reforming these criteria and identify some of the implications of modifying them. (shrink)

The three books presented in this volume, _Integral Humanism_, _Freedom in the Modern World_, and _A Letter on Independence_, were all written in the early 1930s, a time of dire trouble for France. France was then surrounded by enemies preparing for war and was itself so violently split between parties of Left and Right that it seemed on the verge of Civil War. In this collection, Jacques Maritain accepts the responsibility of a Christian philosopher to actively address the agonizing practical (...) problems of the time. Maritain discusses major political issues such as the relation of freedom and religion, the opposition of democracy to any form of totalitarianism, the relation of the spiritual and the temporal, the need for an integral and Christian humanism, and the prospects for a new Christian civilization, all in opposition to the materialism of both communism and capitalism. Against the fierce antagonism of the parties of the political Left and Right, Maritain declares a plague on both their houses and strongly affirms the need for independence from both of them. He does so by distinguishing between two senses of the terms Left and Right, one denoting a temperamental or physiological disposition, the other a definite political position. In the latter sense, Maritain asserts that he is an independent, while acknowledging that he is, by temperament, a man of the Left. (shrink)

By around the age of 5½, many children in the United States judge that numbers never end, and that it is always possible to add 1 to a set. These same children also generally perform well when asked to label the quantity of a set after one object is added (e.g., judging that a set labeled “five” should now be “six”). These findings suggest that children have implicit knowledge of the “successor function”: Every natural number, n, has a successor, n (...) + 1. Here, we explored how children discover this recursive function, and whether it might be related to discovering productive morphological rules that govern language‐specific counting routines (e.g., the rules in English that represent base‐10 structure). We tested 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children’s knowledge of counting with three tasks, which we then related to (a) children’s belief that 1 can always be added to any number (the successor function) and (b) their belief that numbers never end (infinity). Children who exhibited knowledge of a productive counting rule were significantly more likely to believe that numbers are infinite (i.e., there is no largest number), though such counting knowledge was not directly linked to knowledge of the successor function, per se. Also, our findings suggest that children as young as 4 years of age are able to implement rules defined over their verbal count list to generate number words beyond their spontaneous counting range, an insight which may support reasoning over their acquired verbal count sequence to infer that numbers never end. (shrink)

This book offers both the theoretical background behind the minority effect, teachers' personal experiences as they experienced being a minority, and their analyses and insights for teaching diverse learners. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials.

Nancy Leys Stepan’s historical analysis of the analogical reasoning used in nineteenth century research on human variation highlights an interesting feature of scientific discourse: metaphors imported from larger society can negatively impact scientific practice. In this paper, I consider the roles of analogical reasoning in scientific practice and demonstrate how it can mislead the scientists relying on it. One way, the problem of ingrained analogy, results when the correspondences of a metaphor become entrenched in the minds of scientists. Previous solutions, (...) offered by Turbayne (1971) and Recker (2004, 2010), lack the resources to address the problem. Thus, I propose introducing novel critique from relevant outsiders as a method to mitigate the power of scientific metaphors to mislead. (shrink)

In a remarkable experiment lasting over a decade, a group of 88 independent campuses, ranging from comprehensive universities to intimate colleges, have demonstrated the value of an emerging educational agenda focused on infusing the exploration of meaning and purpose into undergraduate life. These programs have shown that college can provide emerging adults with an understanding of themselves and today’s insecure and highly competitive world that enhances their ability to develop the resilience to create meaningful lives. By focusing on the exploration (...) of vocation, including its theological meanings, these efforts produced remarkable outcomes in enhanced student engagement in learning and more effective entry into adult life. Discernment of vocation provided, for many students, a synthetic and compelling focus for intellectual and practical exploration. Sustained by articulate reflection and grounded in communities of learning that included faculty as well as students, undergraduate life took on new significance and urgency. Examining the experiences of students and faculty, this book reveals the concrete importance of this educational agenda for individual lives and particular campuses. By connecting the several dimensions of undergraduate experience through reflection on purpose, these programs expanded the bandwidth of academic learning to strengthen the broad aims of liberal education. Within the larger, troubled environment of contemporary higher education these pioneering efforts hold promise for a significant rethinking of the undergraduate experience to better serve students and society. (shrink)

Chapter 5 presents three very different examples one of the PTEV’s key strengths: the ability to foster communities of learning around vocational themes. The largely first-generation students at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, were drawn into deeper engagement with their own quest for purpose and a meaningful future by entering into service among communities of recent immigrants, making personal connections while learning to understand these experiences within a larger historical and religious perspective. At Marquette University (...) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the PTEV was able to creatively adapt the Jesuit tradition of self-examination and awareness to form learning communities among faculty and staff that deepened their participants’ commitment to their common educational mission. This trajectory of revitalizing tradition to enhance educational mission converged with the parallel PTEV developments at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, that drew on Protestant traditions to develop a learning community among new and continuing faculty and staff that was focused on their common calling as educators. (shrink)

The title of this book indicates its main theme, that "the most central concept" in an analysis of intelligent activity is that of making. The author begins by asking, "what in general we might mean by the 'process' of making if we consider it as a form of intelligible activity," and proceeds both by analyzing the grammar of claims about making things and by inviting us to look more closely at the activity of making.

This is a survey of recent debates concerning the normativity of belief. We explain what the thesis that belief is normative involves, consider arguments for and against that thesis, and explore its bearing on debates in metaethics.

According to the fitting-attitudes account of value, for X to be good is for it to be fitting to value X. But what is it for an attitude to be fitting? A popular recent view is that it is for there to be sufficient reason for the attitude. In this paper we argue that proponents of the fitting-attitudes account should reject this view and instead take fittingness as basic. In this way they avoid the notorious ‘wrong kind of reason’ problem, (...) and can offer attractive accounts of reasons and good reasoning in terms of fittingness. (shrink)

Biobanking, the large-scale, systematic collection of data and tissue for open-ended research purposes, is on the rise, particularly in clinical research. The infrastructures for the systematic procurement, management and eventual use of human tissue and data are positioned between healthcare and research. However, the positioning of biobanking infrastructures and transfer of tissue and data between research and care is not an innocuous go-between. Instead, it involves changes in both domains and raises issues about how distinctions between research and care are (...) drawn and policed. Based on an analysis of the emergence and development of clinical biobanking in the Netherlands, this article explores how processes of bio-objectification associated with biobanking arise, redefining the ways in which distinctions between research and clinical care are governed. (shrink)

This book explores the uses of the term “paradigm” with respect to both logos and myth in Plato, with a focus on Sophist and Statesman. In so doing, Conor Barry argues for a unitary as opposed to a developmental conception of Plato's dialogues.

Theology after Heidegger must take into account history and language as constitutive elements in the pursuit of meaning. Quite often, this prompts a hurried flight from metaphysics to an embrace of an absence at the center of Christian narrativity. In this book, Conor Sweeney explores the "postmodern" critique of presence in the context of sacramental theology, engaging the thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Lieven Boeve. Chauvet is an influential postmodern theologian whose critique of the perceived onto-theological constitution of presence (...) in traditional sacramental theology has made big waves, while Boeve is part of a more recent generation of theologians who even more wholeheartedly embrace postmodern consequences for theology. Sweeney considers the extent to which postmodernism a la Heidegger upsets the hermeneutics of sacramentality, asking whether this requires us to renounce the search for a presence that by definition transcends us. Against both the fetishization of presence and absence, Sweeney argues that metaphysics has a properly sacramental basis, and that it is only through this reality that the dialectic of presence and absence can be transcended. The case is made for the full but restless signification of the mother's smile as the paradigm for genuine sacramental presence. (shrink)

According to Paul Boghossian and others, inference is subject to the taking condition: it necessarily involves the thinker taking his premises to support his conclusion, and drawing the conclusion because of that fact. Boghossian argues that this condition vindicates the idea that inference is an expression of agency, and that it has several other important implications too. However, we argue in this paper that the taking condition should be rejected. The condition gives rise to several serious prima facie problems and (...) the reasons which have been offered in favour of it fail to convince. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] There are criteria of ineffability whereby, even if the concept of ineffability can never serve to modify truth, it can sometimes serve to modify other things, specifically understanding. This allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed by Diamond, Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than (...) ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

Norm-attitude accounts of value say that for something to be valuable is for there to be norms that support valuing that thing. For example, according to fitting-attitude accounts, something is of value if it is fitting to value, and according to buck-passing accounts, something is of value if the reasons support valuing it. Norm-attitude accounts face the partiality problem: in cases of partiality, what it is fitting to value, and what the reasons support valuing, may not line up with what’s (...) valuable. Buck-passers have a solution to this problem and may claim that this gives them an advantage over fitting-attitude accounts. In this paper, we show how fitting-attitudes accounts can offer a broadly analogous, and equally attractive, solution to the problem. (shrink)

Animals, Equality and Democracy examines the structure of animal protection legislation and finds that it is deeply inequitable, with a tendency to favor those animals the community is most likely to see and engage with. Siobhan O'Sullivan argues that these inequities violate fundamental principle of justice and transparency.

This book has two main aims. First, it develops and defends a constitutive account of normative reasons as premises of good reasoning. This account says, roughly, that to be a normative reason for a response (such as a belief or intention) is to be premise of good reasoning, from fitting responses, to that response. Second, building on the account of reasons, it develops and defends a fittingness-first account of the structure of the normative domain. This account says that there is (...) a single normative property, fittingness, which is normatively basic, and on which all other normative properties depend. On this view, reasons, oughts, value, and other normative phenomena all ultimately depend on fittingness. The account of normative reasons is a part of this general view of the normative domain. The book begins, in Chapter 1, by motivating the account of reasons as premises of good reasoning. Chapter 2 argues that good reasoning is, roughly, reasoning that preserves fittingness. Chapter 3 addresses the question of what fittingness is. Chapter 4 defends constitutive accounts of evaluative properties, like goodness, in terms of fitting attitudes. Chapters 5 and 6 shows how the view provides an attractive account of how reasons determine the deontic status of a response—whether you ought or may so respond. Chapter 7 addresses some challenges concerning certain reasons for belief, the relationship between reasons for action and reasons for intention, and reasons for emotion. (shrink)

Many philosophers categorise judgment as a type of action. On the face of it, this claim is at odds with the seeming fact that judging a certain proposition is not something you can do voluntarily. I argue that we can resolve this tension by recognising a category of non-voluntary action. An action can be non-voluntary without being involuntary. The notion of non-voluntary action is developed by appeal to the claim that judging has truth as a constitutive goal. This claim, when (...) combined with a conception of judging as a way of settling a question, explains both why judging is genuinely agential, and why it is nevertheless non-voluntary. (shrink)

I argue that, if belief is subject to a norm of truth, then that norm is evaluative rather than prescriptive in character. No prescriptive norm of truth is both plausible as a norm that we are subject to, and also capable of explaining what the truth norm of belief is supposed to explain. Candidate prescriptive norms also have implausible consequences for the normative status of withholding belief. An evaluative norm fares better in all of these respects. I propose an evaluative (...) account according to which the goodness of true belief is, in Geach's sense, attributive rather than predicative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:William of Tyre, Livy, and the Vocabulary of ClassConor KostickThe most valuable source for the history of the early crusades and the Kingdom of Jerusalem is undoubtedly William of Tyre's A History of Deeds Done Beyond The Sea. A work of great scholarship and careful detail, it is particularly important in that William was Chancellor of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1174 and Archbishop of Tyre from 1175 to (...) his death c. 1185 and so was closely placed to the political decision making of the period. William was also a careful and highly educated scholar; although born in Jerusalem, he spent twenty years among the leading intellectuals of France and Italy and, after pursuing an avid interest in the liberal arts, devoted himself to civil law and the teachings of the masters at Bologna.1 In this respect William is far more than a narrator of crusading history, for which he would be highly regarded; he is also an important figure in the intellectual advances of the twelfth century. A close examination of William's vocabulary of social order shows that in his work he advanced the evolution of twelfth-century social concepts and also shed some light on the social structure of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.The History was commissioned by King Amalric of Jerusalem in 1167 and took its final form after redrafting by William in 1184, and it is clear that in his work William reveals a very rich vocabulary to describe social classes (see appendix). William actually uses the term classis to mean a social category of person. Current scholarship in history, sociology, and political theory would consider it anachronistic to talk about class in the twelfth century. Indeed, the use of classis as a term for social category must have been extremely rare as even such eminent scholars of lexicographers as Charles Dufresne Du Cange and Jan Frederik Niermeyer do not note it.Insofar as medieval writers before William discussed society, they referred to ordines, the orders of society. In the early part of the eleventh century even [End Page 353] the most advanced discussion of the subject of class had not progressed beyond the work of Adalbero, Bishop of Laon, and Gerard, Bishop of Cambrai, writing c. 1025, who had articulated the famous tripartite division of society according to function—those who pray, those who fight, and those who labor.2William uses the term ordo to mean order in the theological sense and ordines to indicate social order, but equally often he uses the term classis for the same purpose. For example, in describing the character of Baldwin III, he writes that "[Baldwin] acquired so great favor to himself from the commoners and the greater people that he was more popular with both classes [classis] than his predecessors."3 After the defeat of King Louis VII at Mount Cadmus, 7 January 1148, during the Second Crusade, William describes how the women fearfully cast about during for the return of fathers, lords, husbands, and sons: "and while they did not find what they sought they spent the night kept awake by the burden of their cares... nevertheless there returned in the night some of each of these classes [classis]."4Classis also appears in the phrase secundae classis homines, a phrase used three times to indicate a category of middle-class person. In describing the distant origins of the Hospitallers he says that it was a time when "there also flocked [to Jerusalem] some of the other nations, both nobles and the second class of men."5 At the fall of Balbis (3 November 1168) King Amalric's troops, "scarcely spared the old people and children, and were not any more merciful to the second class of persons."6 For his campaign beginning December 1170 the king's formidable opponent Saladin "increased his army with commoners and the second class of people."7 It is interesting to note that in these last two examples the term is referring to Muslim society, which William must have considered as socially diverse as his own. The existence and activity of a middle class of person as subjects of his history required William to use... (shrink)

Nihilism is the logic of nothing as something, which claims that Nothing Is. Its unmaking of things, and its forming of formless things, strain the fundamental terms of existence: what it is to be, to know, to be known. But nihilism, the antithesis of God, is also like theology. Where nihilism creates nothingness, condenses it to substance, God also makes nothingness creative. Negotiating the borders of spirit and substance, theology can ask the questions of nihilism that other disciplines do not (...) ask: Where is it? What is it made of? Why is it so destructive? How can it be made holy, or overcome? Genealogy of Nihilism rereads Western history in the light of nihilistic logic, which pervades two millennia of Western thought and is coming to fruition in our present age in a virulently dangerous manner. From Parmenides to Alain Badiou, via Plotinus, Avicenna, Duns Scotus, Ockham, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Sartre, Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, a genealogy of nothingness can be witnessed in development, with devastating consequences for the way we live. Conor Cunningham's elaborate and sophisticated theology, spanning the disciplines of philosophy, science and popular culture, permits us to see not simply how modernity has formulated its philosophies of nothing, but how these philosophies might be transfigures by the crucial difference theology makes, and so be reconcilable with life and the living - with the very gift which being is. (shrink)