Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

_Memory, Myth, and Seduction_ reveals the development and evolution of Jean-Georges Schimek's thinking on unconscious fantasy and the interpretive process derived from a close reading of Freud as well as contemporary psychoanalysis. Contributing richly to North American psychoanalytic thought, Schimek challenges local views from the perspective of continental discourse. A practicing psychoanalyst, teacher, and consummate Freud scholar, Schimek sought to clarify Freud's concepts and theories and to disentangle complexities borne of inconsistencies in Freud's assumptions and expositions. This book is divided (...) thematically into three sections. The first concerns fantasy and interpretation as they play out in the analytic situation, and the manner in which analyst and patient coconstruct meaning and reconstruct and recover memory. The second consists of two seminal papers which provide the sequence of steps in the five revisions in Freud's seduction theory. Schimek's careful scholarship lays out the data of Freud's writing, which allows one to draw one's own conclusions about the implications of the changes in the theory that he made. In the third, more theoretical section, he provides a foundation for understanding many of today's discussions about unconscious fantasy, dreaming, remembering, consciousness, affect, self-reflection, mentalization, and implicit relational knowing. He clarifies and illustrates Freud's original formulations through a careful reading of sections of _The Interpretation of Dreams_, and a study of Freud's famous Signorelli parapraxis. Skillfully arranged and carefully edited by Deborah Browning and including a foreword by Alan Bass, this collection of Schimek's published and unpublished papers will be of interest to practicing psychoanalysts, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists, and students of the history of ideas and philosophy who have a particular interest in fantasy, interpretation, and Freud. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bearing the Other and Bearing Sexuality: Women and Gender in Levinas’s “And God Created Woman”Deborah Achtenberg (bio)Much ink has been spilled on the question of the role of women for Levinas’s ethics in accounts containing a gamut of claims, from Stella Sandford’s that woman is aligned with sexual difference in such a way that Levinas’s attempts to install her within the human fail,1 to Diane Perpich’s that one (...) reason Otherwise than Being is preferable to Totality and Infinity is that the ethics in the former does not rest on a failed narrative of family life and woman’s role in it as ethics does in the latter,2 to Claire Katz’s that there is a rich, positive ethical component to women’s role for Levinas since he uses maternity as an example of being-for-the-other.3This essay complements those accounts by giving a detailed analysis of the discussion of women in Levinas’s talmudic commentary, “And God Created Woman.”4 Specifically, I ask whether Levinas is right, in his commentary, that, according to Talmud Berakhot 61a, women are not ultimately inferior to men because both men and women are human and their humanity precedes the division of humanity into male [End Page 137] and female. I pursue the question by reading the talmudic passage the way Levinas, in his commentary, tells us that we should read Talmud, namely, by situating texts quoted in it in their broader textual context in Torah rather than treating them as proof texts.When I put quotations cited in Berakhot 61a in their textual context, I find that the male figures treated in the texts from Torah are dismayingly dismissive of women in distress, suggesting that women are treated as inferior, but then learn their mistake and treat the women as equal or even superior, suggesting that Talmud does see them as having a humanity that precedes sexual difference. Nonetheless, I go on to argue, though the talmudic passage does not see women as ultimately inferior to men, it nonetheless treats them as inferior on the day-to-day level and such treatment belies the attempt to treat them as human.I go on to ask about Levinas’s stance toward this problem in the talmudic text, Does he accept the treatment of women as inferior? I argue, to the contrary, that Levinas sees the problem and attempts to overcome it by criticizing two ways the talmudic passage treats women as inferior on the day-to-day level: he rejects the passages’ prohibitions on certain types of male contact with women—such as looking at them!—and he reinterprets its association of women with makeup and deception. His stance is more complicated, though, because he goes on to find a kernel of truth to preserve in each of the problematic talmudic positions: in the first, the fundamental ethical ambiguity of sexuality, since sexuality points toward the other as other but also toward one’s own satisfaction; in the second, what we might anachronistically call women’s ways of knowing that, for Levinas, have a certain ethical superiority over the ways men know. The two resolutions have their own problems, I maintain, since if Levinas is to avoid gender norming and gender hierarchy, he needs to make it clear that both the problematic ethical ambiguity of sexuality and also the ways of knowing he thinks are ethically superior are not essentially associated more with women than with men. [End Page 138]1Reading Levinas’s way, I search out the context of quotations, taking them not as proof texts, but as invitations to interpret. In “And God Created Woman,” he says, “each time a biblical verse is brought in as proof it is not likely that the sages of the Talmud are looking in these texts, squeezed every which way in spite of grammar, for a direct proof of the thesis they are upholding. It is always an invitation to search out the context of the quotation” (NT 166/DSS 130–31). As a feminist, when I search out the context of the quotations Levinas refers to in his reading of Berakhot 61a, I... (shrink)

The messianic messages delivered to Londoners by the self-styled prophet, Richard Brothers, were regarded by many sceptical observers and pamphleteers as eccentric or, worse still, the embarrassing utterances of someone wishing to reprise the political turmoil of a by-gone era marred by religious ‘fanaticism’. This article shows the extent to which Brothers's messages, as set down in his Revealed Knowledge of the Prophecies and Times (1794–1795), were absolutely central to the religious politics and culture of the 1790s—or what one contemporary (...) critic mockingly referred to as the ‘age of prophecy’. Brothers's prophecies came to the attention of the British government, which culminated in his arrest for treasonable practices in March 1795 when he became a cause célèbre, before being confined to an asylum for eleven years. He was deemed a criminal lunatic but, as this article seeks to demonstrate, his ‘prophetic imagination’ arose out of the same rich theological, political and cultural context that spurred ‘radicals’ like Tom Paine, whilst inspiring poets and artists such as William Blake. If the content of his prophecies were regarded by contemporary sceptics for having no validity, it remains true to say that Richard Brothers, as an educated gentleman and naval officer, dramatically altered 18th-century expectations and perceptions of what prophets were and the nature of prophecy itself. (shrink)

This encyclopedia, edited by the past editors and founder of the Journal of Business Ethics, is the only reference work dedicated entirely to business and professional ethics. Containing over 2000 entries, this multi-volume, major research reference work provides a broad-based disciplinary and interdisciplinary approach to all of the key topics in the field. The encyclopedia draws on three interdisciplinary and over-lapping fields: business ethics, professional ethics and applied ethics although the main focus is on business ethics. The breadth of scope (...) of this work draws upon the expertise of human and social scientists, as well as that of professionals and scientists in varying fields. This work has come to fruition by making use of the expert academic input from the extraordinarily rich population of current and past editorial board members and section editors of and contributors to the Journal of Business Ethics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musical Design in Sophoclean TheaterDeborah H. RobertsWilliam C. Scott. Musical Design in Sophoclean Theater. Hanover, N.H., and London: University Press of New England, for Dartmouth College, 1996. xxii 1 330 pp. Cloth, $45.Music and the chorus that performed most of this music were fundamental elements in Greek tragedy, but we know very little about the music of tragedy, and it is notoriously difficult to find a successful way (...) of staging the chorus in modern productions. Among the great theorists of tragedy, Aristotle, who knew the music, placed it considerably below plot in importance; Nietzsche, who didn’t, saw it as tragedy’s source and essence. Recent criticism, turning increasingly from text to context, and concerning itself with both social context and performance context, again leads us from a variety of perspectives to consider the role of music and of the chorus in Greek tragedy.In Musical Design in Sophoclean Theater, a sequel of sorts to his earlier book on Aeschylus, William Scott looks at music less as an aspect of context than as an aspect of text; that is, he works with all that remains to us of tragedy’s music, the metrical forms of lyric. He does not understate the difficulties that confront his project and notes our lack of knowledge about melody and even about rhythm. But he seeks by a detailed analysis of metrical patterning and strophic form to show how music may have contributed to choral persona, the progress of choral response, the interchange between characters, the statement of dramatic theme, and the workings of dramatic irony. Scott’s aim is in part to enable producers of Greek plays to translate Greek musical idiom into something analogous to assist the meaning of the play; to that end, here as in the earlier book, he provides an introduction specifically for readers working in translation.Scott gives a useful account of the basic meters of Greek tragedy, avoiding the more arcane reaches of metrical studies and eschewing debate (except in the notes) over the exact metrical interpretation of particular passages. Readers will need to supplement Scott’s text with some form of aural experience of meter (reading out loud themselves, listening to others) if they are to get any sense of musicality; but he does about as much as can be done on the printed page. His comments both general and particular on the Sophoclean chorus and its varied roles and voices clarify its sometimes enigmatic presence for the newcomer to tragedy and also have something to offer to the scholar and teacher. His interpretations of the plays are not themselves novel in either approach or conclusions (nor are they intended to be), but they are again helpful; and in showing how attention to musical elements may strengthen a particular reading Scott vividly brings out important aspects of the plays. Notes and bibliography are thorough, and Scott extensively cites earlier work on the Sophoclean chorus.After a brief introductory chapter, the book consists largely of readings of each of Sophocles’ extant plays informed by metrical analysis and interpretation [End Page 123] of all lyric and anapestic passages in the order in which they occur. The second chapter deals with Antigone and Ajax, and the third with Trachiniae, Oedipus Tyrannus, Electra, and Philoctetes. In the last chapter, after recapitulating the chief features of musical design in the earlier plays, Scott turns to a concluding analysis of Oedipus at Colonus, which he sees as peculiarly varied and innovative. For each play he seeks to show how “scansion patterns can offer a clue to the rich effects available in a full musical performance” and how “it is possible to see from the scansion patterns that there are ironies and enriched meanings in the words that are supported in the musical design” (9). He takes account of the well-known associations of a few meters (dochmiacs with heightened emotion, sequences of dactyls with allusion to epic and so forth) but is primarily concerned with the meanings meters and groups of meters take on in particular metrical and dramatic contexts. Central to Scott’s interpretations is the assumption that the Greek audience responded to the odes in... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 125.1 (2004) 135-140 [Access article in PDF] Barry B. Powell. Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xvi + 210 pp. 57 black-and-white figs. Cloth, $55. Harvey Yunis, ed. Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. x + 262 pp. Cloth, $55. These two works, published within a year of each (...) other, exist in an uneasy but complementary relationship. Each illustrates the merits and drawbacks of the other's approach, and neither enters into dialogue with the central premises of its opposite number. But, together, they do illustrate the point (or impasse) at which a central question in classical scholarship now stands. Almost a half decade since the ground-breaking studies by Goody and Watt, Havelock, and others, scholars still puzzle over the precise impact that the spread of the alphabet had on Greek society and mentality, and they document Greece's gradual transformation from an oral or song culture to a text-based one. While Barry Powell focuses on the early history of this transformation, and the essays in Harvey Yunis' study cast a broader temporal and thematic net, many of the same preoccupations mark both inquiries. What are the chief areas of difference between oral and literate modes of reception and transmission? How and why do texts come into being? How are they deployed?Powell's work is very much a continuation and refinement of his controversial publication of the early 1990s, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet(Cambridge, 1991). There, he argued that the Greek alphabet, unique for its capacity to record the sounds of speech, was invented by a single individual, at a single time and place, and for the express purpose of preserving the Iliadand Odyssey. There, too, he emphasized that writing, whatever the notational form it assumed, imperfectly mirrors speech and that the two systems of communication are fundamentally different. His position remains largely unchanged, although now the focus shifts. In this new work, he sets theories concerning the origins of the Homeric songs within the context of the particular nature of alphabetic writing, mounting a critique against those who neglect the "special role that alphabetic writing... played in the preservation, creation, and dissemination of archaic and classical Greek poetry" (188). It is an enterprise that takes him on a circuitous path. In a seemingly rather random concatenation of chapters ("Text," "Orality and Genre," "Myth," to name a few) Powell spends a substantial portion of the work showing how the existing terms used to debate the Homeric question [End Page 135] are riddled with vagaries and contradictions. But while he excellently illustrates how loose is the deployment of these expressions and concepts in existing scholarship, he fails to supply new and more exact terms. The reader is left with a rather dispirited sense that we cannot even talk about such things as "Tradition" or "Literacy" (persuasively shown to be no monolithic concept) without falling into a morass of confusion. A similar spirit of destruction, rather than reconstruction, marks his treatment of M. L. West's The East Face of Helicon(Oxford, 1997). If, for all the evidence that West (and Powell himself) amasses for the deep penetration of Eastern myth and literary forms on the Greek tradition, West's study neglects the special nature of alphabetic writing, then how exactly did the novel system change the material borrowed by the Greeks?More satisfying are later chapters where Powell grounds some of the observations made in these early, often brief and schematic discussions, in actual case studies, demonstrating his admirable knowledge of, and facility in, the decipherment of the writing systems of the Near and Far East. Particularly rich is the contrast that emerges between the multilingual Near East, with the possibility of cultural transmission through texts that multilingualism allows, and the monolingual culture of Greece. Fascinating, too, are the close readings of Egyptian and Chinese texts as part of an illustration of the... (shrink)

This work defends a modest version of metaphysical realism. The commitments of the view are spelled out and the strongest argument for it is presented. It is suggested that failure to find this argument persuasive frequently arises from either a failure to distinguish between trivial and nontrivial dependence of minds on minds or a tendency to equivocate between metaphysical and theoretical timelines. The notion of mind-dependence is then explored in more detail. It is argued that, while the metaphysical realist has (...) recourse to a sufficiently rich notion of mind-dependence, the notion of mind-dependence required by a rejection of metaphysical realism is far from clear. This further strengthens the case for metaphysical realism. (shrink)

A Professor of Medical Ethics and a theatre director, also mother and daughter, talk about health, illness, suffering, performance and practice. Using the lenses of ethical and performance theory, they explore what it means to be a patient, a spectator and a practitioner and cover many plays, texts and productions: Samuel Beckett’s Not I and All That Fall, Sarah Kane’s Crave, Tim Crouch’s An Oak Tree, Enda Walsh’s Ballyturk, Annie Ryan’s adaptation of Eimear McBride’s novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed (...) Thing, Duncan MacMillan’s People, Place and Things and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. These were selected because first we have seen, studied or worked with each and they have continued to inspire us. Second, they offer rich and revealing insights into the ways in which meaning is/are both negotiated and contested in relation to health and illness. It is the iterative negotiation of meaning that, it is argued, is the essence of narrative practice, be it in medicine or in the theatre. The difference and divergence of perception, response and interpretation to dramatic performance can test relationships, be they professional, creative or familial. Yet, the capacity to understand, and embrace, disagreement and uncertainty is vital; fundamental to a flourishing life. For it is by recognising our part in creating narratives, broken and otherwise, that we can begin to recognise the necessary interactionism and humanity of both medicine and theatre. (shrink)

In a recent edition of the Medical Journal of Australia, Greg Dore and David Cooper called on persons in developed nations like Australia to bridge the divide between resource-rich countries to nations in the developing world, where therapies to ease or halt the ravages of the virus are nonexistent or in short supply.

Around the world, there exist many organisations who claim a Christian motivation and whose work falls within the scope of the development sector. These organisations are distinctly different from local congregations, and whilst development as a field of theological study is becoming increasingly well-defined and established, there has been limited theological research and reflection on these organisations. Much about them remains unstudied and unclear, raising questions about their purpose, legitimacy and theological contribution. This in turn hampers a responsive and responsible (...) engagement with them within the academy. Contributing to this oversight is the absence of an appropriate, commonly shared name and definition around which research and discourse can occur. This article reviews names and definitions currently being used and then proposes the name ‘Christian developmental organisation’. It provides a rich definition, considering the CDO’s organisational, societal, purpose, activity and faith dimensions. In addition, the history dimension brings an understanding of the origins and formation of the CDO whilst the relationship dimension positions the CDO within a web of relational dynamics. It is hoped that the name and definition offered in this article will promote research and engagement with the CDO as well as aid their self-understanding. (shrink)

This rich and interesting book tells the story of the development and ultimate disappearance over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of a central theme in Scottish philosophy: common sense realism. Taking Thomas Reid's version of common sense realism as the paradigmatic form, McDermid shows how Reid's views had their roots in Lord Kames's account of perceptual realism, how Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton defended and modified Reid's view, and how James Ferrier systematically repudiated both Reid's (...) appeal to common sense and his realism. McDermid succeeds in providing a clear overview of the trajectory, while not losing sight of the details of the individual philosophers' views. (shrink)

The study aims to lay the groundwork for systematically investigating children’s peer discourse at different age levels with a view to delimiting the role of peer talk for pragmatic development. An interdisciplinary stance to the study of children’s peer talk is argued for, considering it simultaneously as the arena for the co-construction of childhood cultures as well as an arena for development. We propose a four-dimensional model of discursive events, meant to capture both dimensions simultaneously. The model takes into account (...) the dynamic interplay among the type of activity children are engaged in, the overall thematic frame of the event, its internal framing by the children themselves and the genre used. The model is applied to the analysis of natural peer talk at two age levels, preschoolers and fourth graders, focusing mainly on variation along the dimension of keying. The two age groups studied are shown to share a rich repertoire of keyings and genres, but to differ in their relative salience and modes of realization by age. Our analysis suggests that peer talk offers children ample opportunities to listen in, practice and display conversational as well as academic discursive skills, and hence may very well prove a crucial site for pragmatic development. (shrink)

Various studies have shown that philosophizing with children at school can have a positive effect on cognitive, language and social skills. However, previous studies have not considered how the quality of the dialogue influences these outcomes. Addressing this gap, our article introduces a high-inference rating instrument to assess the quality of philosophical dialogue. This instrument features four quality dimensions: Philosophical Richness, Co-construction, Focus, and Restrained Facilitation. It was applied to evaluate 63 class dialogues from a Swiss study involving secondary-school students. (...) The article presents the instrument using excerpts from the study, along with initial validation information, showing its reliability in measuring philosophical dialogue quality. The significance of this research lies in its focus on the quality of philosophical dialogue, an aspect often overlooked in educational settings. By providing a tool to assess this quality, we open up new pathways for analyzing the effectiveness of philosophical dialogues in schools. This is especially relevant as educational systems increasingly recognize the importance of developing students' critical thinking and discussion skills. The findings highlight the potential of high-quality philosophical dialogues to enrich students' educational experiences and offer insights for educators and researchers into enhancing these interactions. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how philosophical dialogue can be used as a powerful educational tool, not just for engaging students but for fostering meaningful and impactful learning. (shrink)

In arguing for religion as a side effect of everyday cognition, Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) provide useful analyses of the strengths of the “naturalness-of-religion” position over others; however, experimental shortcomings limit the contributions of their empirical work. A relevant addendum involves considering research on children's orientation to teleological explanations of natural phenomena, which suggests that relatively rich cognitive proclivities might underlie religious thought.

In the social sciences and in everyday speech we often talk about groups as if they behaved in the same way as individuals, thinking and acting as a singular being. We say for example that "Google intends to develop an automated car", "the U.S. Government believes that Syria has used chemical weapons on its people", or that "the NRA wants to protect the rights of gun owners". We also often ascribe legal and moral responsibility to groups. But could groups literally (...) intend things? Is there such a thing as a collective mind? If so, should groups be held morally responsible? Such questions are of vital importance to our understanding of the social world. In this lively, engaging introduction Deborah Tollefsen offers a careful survey of contemporary philosophers? answers to these questions, and argues for the unorthodox view that certain groups should, indeed, be treated as agents and deserve to be held morally accountable. Tollefsen explores the nature of belief, action and intention, and shows the reader how a belief in group agency can be reconciled with our understanding of individual agency and accountability. _Groups as Agents_ will be a vital resource for scholars as well as for students of philosophy and the social sciences encountering the topic for the first time. (shrink)

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

This text provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as an alternative framework for the epistemology of experiment. It seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis.

This chapter contains section titled: Introduction Objective Reality in the Cartesian Framework Material Falsity and Its Problems Reading 1: Descartes Abandons Material Falsity Reading 2: Reconciling Material Falsity and Objective Reality Response to the Dilemma of Uncaused Ideas The Identity of Ideas References and Further Reading.

Research has found that children possess a broad bias in favor of teleological - or purpose-based - explanations of natural phenomena. The current two experiments explored whether adults implicitly possess a similar bias. In Study 1, undergraduates judged a series of statements as "good" or "bad" explanations for why different phenomena occur. Judgments occurred in one of three conditions: fast speeded, moderately speeded, or unspeeded. Participants in speeded conditions judged significantly more scientifically unwarranted teleological explanations as correct, but were not (...) more error-prone on control items. Study 2 extended these findings by examining the relationship between different aspects of adults’ "promiscuous teleology" and other variables such as scientific knowledge, religious beliefs, and inhibitory control. Implications of these findings for scientific literacy are discussed. (shrink)

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a major (...) reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Autism is one of the most compelling, controversial, and heartbreaking cognitive disorders. It presents unique philosophical challenges as well, raising intriguing questions in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and philosophy of language that need to be explored if the autistic population is to be responsibly served. Starting from the "theory of mind" thesis that a fundamental deficit in autism is the inability to recognize that other persons have minds, Deborah R. Barnbaum considers its implications for the nature of consciousness, (...) our understanding of the consciousness of others, meaning theories in philosophy of language, and the modality of mind. This discussion lays the groundwork for consideration of the value of an autistic life, as well as the moral theories available to persons with autism. The book also explores questions about genetic decision making, research into the nature of autism, and the controversial quest for a cure. This is a timely and wide-ranging book on a disorder that commends itself to serious ethical examination. (shrink)

Decades before the environmental movement emerged in the 1960s, Adorno condemned our destructive and self-destructive relationship to the natural world, warning of the catastrophe that may result if we continue to treat nature as an object that exists exclusively for our own benefit. "Adorno on Nature" presents the first detailed examination of the pivotal role of the idea of natural history in Adorno's work. A comparison of Adorno's concerns with those of key ecological theorists - social ecologist Murray Bookchin, ecofeminist (...) Carolyn Merchant, and deep ecologist Arne Naess - reveals how Adorno speaks directly to many of today's most pressing environmental issues. Ending with a discussion of the philosophical conundrum of unity in diversity, "Adorno on Nature" also explores how social solidarity can be promoted as a necessary means of confronting environmental problems. (shrink)

While many philosophers of science have accorded special evidential significance to tests whose results are "novel facts", there continues to be disagreement over both the definition of novelty and why it should matter. The view of novelty favored by Giere, Lakatos, Worrall and many others is that of use-novelty: An accordance between evidence e and hypothesis h provides a genuine test of h only if e is not used in h's construction. I argue that what lies behind the intuition that (...) novelty matters is the deeper intuition that severe tests matter. I set out a criterion of severity akin to the notion of a test's power in Neyman-Pearson statistics. I argue that tests which are use-novel may fail to be severe, and tests that are severe may fail to be use-novel. I discuss the 1919 eclipse data as a severe test of Einstein's law of gravity. (shrink)

Over the last decade or so, there has been a renewed interest in a view about properties known as quidditism. However, a review of the literature reveals that ‘quidditism’ is used to cover a range of distinct views. In this paper I explore the logical space of distinct types of quidditism. The first distinction noted is between quidditism as a thesis explicitly about property individuation and quidditism as a principle of unrestricted property recombination. The distinction recently drawn by Dustin Locke (...) between extravagant quidditism and austere quidditism is a distinction between quidditisms of the first type. It is then argued that austere quidditism may itself be further sub-divided into what I call ‘extremely austere quidditism’ and ‘moderately austere quidditism’. Moderately austere quidditism is argued to be preferable to extremely austere quidditism and further to be able to address many of the arguments leveled against quidditism in general. (shrink)

According to many, joint intentional action must be understood in terms of joint intentions. Most accounts of joint intention appeal to a set of sophisticated individual intentional states. The author argues that standard accounts of joint intention exclude the possibility of joint action in young children because they presuppose that the participants have a robust theory of mind, something young children lack. But young children do engage in joint action. The author offers a revision of Michael Bratman’s analysis of joint (...) intention that reflects the socio-cognitive abilities young children do have. This revision makes sense of joint action among young children and equally well explains simple joint actions involving adults. Key Words: collective intentionality • joint action • child’s theory of mind • joint attention. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Pre‐Socratics and Sophists Socrates Socrates and Plato Aristotle Hellenistic Philosophy Conclusion Bibliography.

This article argues that the fact that an action will compound a prior injustice counts as a reason against doing the action. I call this reason The Anti-Compounding Injustice principle or aci. Compounding injustice and the aci principle are likely to be relevant when analyzing the moral issues raised by “big data” and its combination with the computational power of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Past injustice can infect the data used in algorithmic decisions in two distinct ways. Sometimes prior (...) injustice undermines the accuracy of the data itself. In these contexts, improving accuracy will also help to avoid compounding injustice. Other times, past injustice produces real-world differences among people with regard to skills, health, wealth, and other traits that employers, lenders, and others seek to measure. When decisions are based on accurate data that itself results from prior injustice, these decisions can also compound injustice. This second dynamic has received less attention than the first but is especially important because improving the accuracy of data will not mitigate this unfairness. (shrink)

In recent discussions on the meaning of derogatory terms, most theorists base their investigations on the assumption that slurring terms could in principle have some neutral, i.e. purely descriptive, counterpart. Lauren Ashwell has recently shown that this assumption does not generalize to gendered slurs. This paper aims to challenge the point and benefit of approaching the meaning of derogatory terms in contrast to their allegedly purely descriptive counterparts. I argue that different discursive practices among different communities of practice sometimes change (...) the semantics of a term. By the example of the term ‘black,’ I show in what ways these different practices may amount to semantic contestations which complicate the assessment of whether a specific politically significant term is purely descriptive. My discussion of politically significant terms provides insights into further phenomena such as the appropriation of derogatory terms by the target group or meaning change more generally. Moreover, it not only accounts for the political aspects of a linguistic phenomenon, but equally highlights and explains the oft-neglected but crucial role that language plays in social and political struggles. It thus contributes to ongoing discussions both in philosophy of language and in social and political philosophy. (shrink)

In “Group Testimony” (2007) I argued that the testimony of a group cannot be understood (or at least cannot always be understood) in a summative fashion; as the testimony of some or all of the group members. In some cases, it is the group itself that testifies. I also argued that one could extend standard reductionist accounts of the justification of testimonial belief to the case of testimonial belief formed on the basis of group testimony. In this paper, I explore (...) the issue of group testimony in greater detail by focusing on one putative source of testimony, that of Wikipedia. My aim is to the answer the following questions: Is Wikipedia a source of testimony? And if so, what is the nature of that source? Are we to understand Wikipedia entries as a collection of testimonial statements made by individuals, some subset of individuals, or is Wikipedia itself (the organization or the Wikipedia community) the entity that testifies? If Wikipedia itself is a source of testimony, what resources do we have for assessing the trustworthiness of such an unusual epistemic source? In answering these questions I hope to further elucidate the nature of collective epistemic agency (Tollefsen 2006), of which group testimony is a paradigm example. When a mans Discourse begineth…at some saying of another, of whose ability to know the truth, and of whose honesty in not deceiving, he doubteth not; and then the Discourse is not so much concerning the Thing, as the Person; and the Resolution is called Beleefe, and Faith: Faith in the man. (1651/1991, Ch. 7; p. 48). (shrink)

Scholarly interest in Margaret Cavendish's philosophical views has steadily increased over the past decade, but her epistemology has received little attention, and no consensus has emerged; Cavendish has been characterized as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as presenting an alternative epistemology to both rationalism and empiricism, and even as presenting no clear theory of knowledge at all. This paper concludes that Cavendish was only a modest skeptic, for she believed that humans can achieve knowledge through sensitive and rational perception as (...) well as through self-knowledge and can form probable opinions through reasoning. (shrink)

The fact that much of our knowledge is gained through the testimony of others challenges a certain form of epistemic individualism. We are clearly not autonomous knowers. But the discussion surrounding testimony has maintained a commitment to what I have elsewhere called epistemic agent individualism. Both the reductionist and the anti-reductionist have focused their attention on the testimony of individuals. But groups, too, are sources of testimony - or so I shall argue. If groups can be testifiers, a natural question (...) to ask is whether our beliefs based on the testimony of groups are ever justified and whether such a justification is to be conferred inferentially or non-inferentially. I consider and dismiss the possibility of extending an anti-reductionist account of justification to our group testimonial beliefs. I also argue against a version of reductionism that would have our group testimonial beliefs justified only in so far as we were able to monitor the trustworthiness of members of the group. However, there are forms of reductionism that can be extended to make sense of the justification of our group testimonial beliefs. There are mechanisms for monitoring the trustworthiness and competency of a group (rather than its members) and, further, a variety of background beliefs allow us to assess the testimony of a group for reliability. (shrink)

The key problem in the controversy over group selection is that of defining a criterion of group selection that identifies a distinct causal process that is irreducible to the causal process of individual selection. We aim to clarify this problem and to formulate an adequate model of irreducible group selection. We distinguish two types of group selection models, labeling them type I and type II models. Type I models are invoked to explain differences among groups in their respective rates of (...) production of contained individuals. Type II models are invoked to explain differences among groups in their respective rates of production of distinct new groups. Taking Elliott Sober's model as an exemplar, we argue that although type I models have some biological importance--they force biologists to consider the role of group properties in influencing the fitness of organisms--they fail to identify a distinct group-level causal selection process. Type II models if properly framed, however, do identify a group-level causal selection process that is not reducible to individual selection. We propose such a type II model and apply it to some of the major candidates for group selection. (shrink)

Although both philosophers and scientists are interested in how to obtain reliable knowledge in the face of error, there is a gap between their perspectives that has been an obstacle to progress. By means of a series of exchanges between the editors and leaders from the philosophy of science, statistics and economics, this volume offers a cumulative introduction connecting problems of traditional philosophy of science to problems of inference in statistical and empirical modelling practice. Philosophers of science and scientific practitioners (...) are challenged to reevaluate the assumptions of their own theories - philosophical or methodological. Practitioners may better appreciate the foundational issues around which their questions revolve and thereby become better 'applied philosophers'. Conversely, new avenues emerge for finally solving recalcitrant philosophical problems of induction, explanation and theory testing. (shrink)

The growing availability of computer power and statistical software has greatly increased the ease with which practitioners apply statistical methods, but this has not been accompanied by attention to checking the assumptions on which these methods are based. At the same time, disagreements about inferences based on statistical research frequently revolve around whether the assumptions are actually met in the studies available, e.g., in psychology, ecology, biology, risk assessment. Philosophical scrutiny can help disentangle 'practical' problems of model validation, and conversely, (...) a methodology of statistical model validation can shed light on a number of issues of interest to philosophers of science. (shrink)

Floridi and Sanders, seminal work, “On the morality of artificial agents” has catalyzed attention around the moral status of computer systems that perform tasks for humans, effectively acting as “artificial agents.” Floridi and Sanders argue that the class of entities considered moral agents can be expanded to include computers if we adopt the appropriate level of abstraction. In this paper we argue that the move to distinguish levels of abstraction is far from decisive on this issue. We also argue that (...) adopting certain levels of abstraction out of context can be dangerous when the level of abstraction obscures the humans who constitute computer systems. We arrive at this critique of Floridi and Sanders by examining the debate over the moral status of computer systems using the notion of interpretive flexibility. We frame the debate as a struggle over the meaning and significance of computer systems that behave independently, and not as a debate about the ‘true’ status of autonomous systems. Our analysis leads to the conclusion that while levels of abstraction are useful for particular purposes, when it comes to agency and responsibility, computer systems should be conceptualized and identified in ways that keep them tethered to the humans who create and deploy them. (shrink)

Research on linguistic interaction suggests that two or more individuals can sometimes form adaptive and cohesive systems. We describe an “alignment system” as a loosely interconnected set of cognitive processes that facilitate social interactions. As a dynamic, multi-component system, it is responsive to higher-level cognitive states such as shared beliefs and intentions (those involving collective intentionality) but can also give rise to such shared cognitive states via bottom-up processes. As an example of putative group cognition we turn to transactive memory (...) and suggest how further research on alignment in these cases might reveal how such systems can be genuinely described as cognitive. Finally, we address a prominent critique of collective cognitive systems, arguing that there is much empirical and explanatory benefit to be gained from considering the possibility of group cognitive systems, especially in the context of small-group human interaction. (shrink)

_An engaging, accessible survey of the ethical issues faced by engineers, designed for students_ The first engineering ethics textbook to use debates as the framework for presenting engineering ethics topics, this engaging, accessible survey explores the most difficult and controversial issues that engineers face in daily practice. Written by a leading scholar in the field of engineering and computer ethics, Deborah Johnson approaches engineering ethics with three premises: that engineering is both a technical and a social endeavor; that engineers (...) don’t just build things, they build society; and that engineering is an inherently ethical enterprise. (shrink)

This paper examines how unethical behavior in the workplace occurs when management places inordinately strong emphasis on goalattainment without a corresponding emphasis on following legitimate procedures. Robert Merton's theory of sodal structure and anomie provides a foundation to discuss this argument. Key factors affecting ethical climates in work organizations are also addressed. Based on this analysis, the paper proposes strategies for developing and changing aspects of organizational culture to reduce anomie, thereby creating work climates which discourage unethical practices and provide (...) employees with mechanisms to resolve ethical conflicts in a constructive way. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper sets out a framework for understanding how the scientific community constructs computer simulation as an epistemically and pragmatically useful methodology. The framework is based on comparisons between simulation and the loosely-defined categories of “theoretical work” and “experimental work.” Within that framework, the epistemological adequacy of simulation arises from its role as a mathematical manipulation of a complex, abstract theoretical model. To establish that adequacy demands a detailed “theoretical” grasp of the internal structure of the computer program. Simultaneously, (...) the pragmatic usefulness of simulation arises from its role as a “virtual laboratory.” That role is made possible by black-boxing the internal structure of the program, such that the scientist can interact with the computer in an intuitive, “experimental” manner. Thus simulation is rendered authoritative, opening up encoded theories to a novel, “experimental” type of manipulation. (shrink)

Background: Ethical issues are increasingly being reported by care-providers; however, little is known about the nature of these issues within the nursing home. Ethical issues are unavoidable in healthcare and can result in opportunities for improving work and care conditions; however, they are also associated with detrimental outcomes including staff burnout and moral distress. Objectives: The purpose of this review was to identify prior research which focuses on ethical issues in the nursing home and to explore staffs’ experiences of ethical (...) issues. Methods: Using a systematic approach based on Aveyard (2014), a literature review was conducted which focused on ethical and moral issues, nurses and nursing assistants, and the nursing home. Findings: The most salient themes identified in the review included clashing ethical principles, issues related to communication, lack of resources and quality of care provision. The review also identified solutions for overcoming the ethical issues that were identified and revealed the definitional challenges that permeate this area of work. Conclusions: The review highlighted a need for improved ethics education for care-providers. (shrink)

The concept of agency as applied to technological artifacts has become an object of heated debate in the context of AI research because some AI researchers ascribe to programs the type of agency traditionally associated with humans. Confusion about agency is at the root of misconceptions about the possibilities for future AI. We introduce the concept of a triadic agency that includes the causal agency of artifacts and the intentional agency of humans to better describe what happens in AI as (...) it functions in real-world contexts. We use the VW emission fraud case to explain triadic agency since in this case a technological artifact, namely software, was an essential part of the wrongdoing and the software might be said to have agency in the wrongdoing. We then extend the case to include futuristic AI, imagining AI that becomes more and more autonomous. (shrink)

One of the chief innovations in medieval adaptations of Aristotelian psychology was the expansion of Aristotle's notion of imagination orphantasiato include a variety of distinct perceptual powers known collectively as the internal senses. Amongst medieval philosophers in the Arabic world, Avicenna offers one of the most complex and sophisticated accounts of the internal senses. Within his list of internal senses, Avicenna includes a faculty known as “estimation”, to which various functions are assigned in a wide variety of contexts. Although many (...) philosophers in the Arabic world as well as in the Latin West accepted Avicenna's positing of an estimative faculty, Avicenna's best-known critics, al-Ghazâlî and Averroes, found Avicenna's arguments in support of a distinct estimative faculty problematic. For different reasons, both Averroes and Ghazâlî raised the basic question of whether one needed to posit a distinct faculty of estimation to supplement the perceptual abilities of the other internal senses, and whether the notion of an estimative power as defined by Avicenna was internally coherent. Such criticisms suggest that the Avicennian conception of estimation is not entirely unambiguous, and that a correct understanding of Avicenna's motivations for delineating an estimative power requires a careful study of the diverse activities assigned to it throughout Avicenna's philosophical writings. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has repeatedly been described as an “essentially contested concept,” which means that its signification is subject to continuous struggle. We argue that the “CSR institution” (CSRI; i.e., the set of standards and rules regulating corporate conduct under the banner of CSR) is legitimized by narratives which “decontest” the underlying concept of CSR in a manner that safeguards the CSRI from calls for alternative institutional arrangements. Examining several such narratives from a structuralist perspective, we find them to (...) be permeated with six recurrent ambiguities that we show to be reflective of three deep-set taboos: the taboo of the noncongruency between corporate profit objectives and societal needs, the taboo of multinational firms’ continued contribution to the emergence of global socioenvironmental issues, and the taboo of the CSRI’s moderate results in solving these problems. We contend that the perpetuation of these taboos contributes to inhibiting substantial change in the way of doing business, and we sketch out possibilities for initiating a “recontestation” of CSR’s meaning. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Logic and language Psychology and metaphysics Political philosophy.