The differences between critics and proponents of enhancement technologies are easily overblown. Both sides of this debate share the moral ideal of being “authentic” to oneself. They differ in how they prefer to understand authenticity, but even this difference is not as stark as it sometimes seems.

In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their “veritistic value”, i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because we often don't know what beliefs are actually true, and even if we did, (...) the task of determining the veritistic value would be computationally extremely difficult. Neither problem is specific to Goldman's theory and both can be expected to arise for just about any account of veritistic value. It is argued here that the first problem does not pose a serious threat to large classes of interesting practices. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the computational problem, which, it is submitted, can be addressed in promising terms by means of computer simulation. In an attempt to add vividness to this proposal, an up-and-running simulation environment is presented and put to some preliminary tests. (shrink)

I challenge a cornerstone of the Gettier debate: that a proposed analysis of the concept of knowledge is inadequate unless it entails that people don’t know in Gettier cases. I do so from the perspective of Carnap’s methodology of explication. It turns out that the Gettier problem per se is not a fatal problem for any account of knowledge, thus understood. It all depends on how the account fares regarding other putative counter examples and the further Carnapian desiderata of exactness, (...) fruitfulness and simplicity. Carnap proposed his methodology more than a decade before Gettier’s seminal paper appeared, making the present solution to the problem a candidate for being the least ad hoc proposal on the market, one whose independent standing cannot be questioned, among solutions that depart from the usual method of revising a theory of knowledge in the light of counterexamples. As an illustration of the method at work, I reconstruct reliabilism as an attempt to provide an explication of the concept of knowledge. (shrink)

When scientist investigate why things happen, they aim at giving an explanation. But what does a scientific explanation look like? In the first chapter (Theories of Scientific Explanation) of this book, the milestones in the debate on how to characterize scientific explanations are exposed. The second chapter (How to Study Scientific Explanation?) scrutinizes the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation, Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher and Wesley Salmon and shows what went wrong. Next, it is the responsibility of current philosophers (...) of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the pragmatic approach to scientific explanation and clarify briefly what this approach consists in. The third chapter (A Toolbox for Describing and Evaluating Explanatory Practices) elaborates the pragmatic approach by presenting a toolbox for analysing scientific explanation. In the last chapter (Examples of Descriptions and Evaluations of Explanatory Practices) the approach is illustrated with real-life examples of scientists aiming at explaining. (shrink)

Bioethicists frequently call for empirical researchers to engage participants and community members in their research, but don't themselves typically engage community members in their normative research. In this article, we describe an effort to include members of the public in normative discussions about the risks, potential benefits, and ethical responsibilities of social and behavioral genomics (SBG) research. We reflect on what might—and might not— be gained from engaging the public in normative scholarship and on lessons learned about public perspectives on (...) the risks and potential benefits of SBG research and the responsible conduct and communication of such research. We also provide procedural lessons for others in bioethics who are interested in engaging members of the public in their research. (shrink)

Beginning with the assumptions that genetic technology will make possible the enhancement of some significant human capacities and that our society will have self-evident reasons to pursue such enhancements, this essay suggests less evident reasons to proceed with extreme caution. The essay asks: Will we, in our attempts to enhance humans by reducing their subjection to chance and change, inadvertently impoverish them? It explores how technologies aimed at enhancement might affect the good that is our experience of some forms of (...) the beautiful and the excellent, the good that is relationships of care, and the good that is diversity across the life span. In the end, it speculates about the fundamental philosophical difference that underlies the disagreement between those who would tend to embrace a project to enhance human capacities and those who would tend to criticize such a project. (shrink)

Science policy mandates across the industrialized world insinuate more active roles for publics, their earlier participation in policy decisions, and expanded notions of science and technology governance. In response to these policies, engaged scholars in science studies have sought to design and conduct exercises aimed at better attuning science to its public contexts. As demand increases for innovative and potentially democratic forms of public engagement with science and technology, so also do the prospects for insights from science studies to contribute (...) to policy agendas and institutional capabilities. This collection brings together an international set of scholars in science, technology and society who inquire into the meaning, efficacy and responsibility of engaged science studies scholarship as a public matter. (shrink)

This chapter considers the present account to be a sufficient response to the generality problem as an objection that specifically targets reliabilism. It identifies the main challenge for reliabilism in relation to the typing of belief‐forming processes. The chapter focuses on insights in cognitive science in a way that should make this response attractive to practitioners of naturalized epistemology, including Goldman himself. The most stimulating part of Conee and Feldman's attack can charitably be viewed as targeting the notion that the (...) reliabilist concepts of knowledge and justification are sufficiently similar to their folk counterparts. The chapter focuses for simplicity on the reliabilist theory of justification (RJ) and on Conee and Feldman's criticism as targeting the faithfulness of RJ with regard to everyday concept of justification. For the purposes of neutralizing Conee and Feldman's central challenge it was sufficient to give a purely descriptive account of how people type belief‐forming processes. (shrink)

One generally considered plausible way to allocate resources in health care is according to people’s needs. In this paper I focus on a somewhat overlooked issue, that is the conceptual structure of health care needs. It is argued that what conceptual understanding of needs one has is decisive in the assessment of what qualifies as a health care need and what does not. The aim for this paper is a clarification of the concept of health care need with a starting (...) point in the general philosophical discussion about needs. I outline three approaches to the concept of need and argue that they all share the same conceptual underpinnings. The concept of need is then analyzed in terms of a subject x needing some object y in order to achieve some goal z. I then discuss the relevant features of the object y and the goal z which make a given need qualify as a health care need and not just a need for anything. (shrink)

Proponents of permitting living kidney sales often argue as follows. Many jobs involve significant risks; people are and should be free to take these risks in exchange for money; the risks involved in giving up a kidney are no greater than the risks involved in acceptable hazardous jobs; so people should be free to give up a kidney for money, too. This paper examines this frequently invoked but rarely analysed analogy. Two objections are raised. First, it is far from clear (...) that kidney sales and dangerous jobs involve comparable risks on an appropriately broad comparison. Second, and more importantly, even if they do involve comparable risks it does not follow that kidney sales must be permitted because dangerous jobs are. The analogy assumes that kidney sales are banned for paternalistic reasons. But there may be other, non-paternalistic reasons for the ban. And paternalists, too, can consistently defend the ban even if kidney sales are no riskier than occupations that they find acceptable. Soft paternalists may want to protect would-be vendors from harms that they have not voluntarily chosen. Egalitarian hard paternalists may want to protect already badly off vendors from further worsening their situation. For neither species of paternalist is the size of the risk prevented decisive. I conclude that the analogy with dangerous jobs, while rhetorically powerful, pulls little real argumentative weight. Future debates on living kidney sales should therefore proceed without it. (shrink)

A much-discussed objection to skeptical theism is that skeptical theism implies that divine testimony cannot provide us with knowledge. Here I argue that it is not skeptical theism that raises doubts about the trustworthiness of divine testimony; rather, the vast amount of inscrutable evil in our world together with God’s track record of deception is the source of the trouble. I draw on that insight to develop further my divine deception argument (Wielenberg 2014). The argument I will defend goes roughly (...) like this: There is a lot of inscrutable evil in the world and the Christian God has a track record of being deceptive about future events. Therefore, divine testimony regarding future events is not a source of knowledge that such events will occur. (shrink)

We develop a constructive version of nonstandard analysis, extending Bishop's constructive analysis with infinitesimal methods. A full transfer principle and a strong idealisation principle are obtained by using a sheaf-theoretic construction due to I. Moerdijk. The construction is, in a precise sense, a reduced power with variable filter structure. We avoid the nonconstructive standard part map by the use of nonstandard hulls. This leads to an infinitesimal analysis which includes nonconstructive theorems such as the Heine-Borel theorem, the Cauchy-Peano existence theorem (...) for ordinary differential equations and the exact intermediate-value theorem, while it at the same time provides constructive results for concrete statements. A nonstandard measure theory which is considerably simpler than that of Bishop and Cheng is developed within this context. (shrink)

William Bateson has long occupied a controversial role in the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bateson has been situated as the British translator of Mendel or as the outspoken antagonist of W. F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson's biometrics program. Less has been made of Bateson's transition from embryologist to advocate for discontinuous variation, and the precise role of British and American influences in that transition, in the years leading up to (...) the publication of his massive Materials for the Study of Variation. In this paper, I first attempt to trace Bateson's development in his early career before turning to search for the development of the moniker "anti-Darwinist" that has been attached to Bateson in well-known histories of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis. (shrink)

Sheaf semantics is developed within a constructive and predicative framework, Martin‐Löf's type theory. We prove strong completeness of many sorted, first order intuitionistic logic with respect to this semantics, by using sites of provably functional relations.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle claims that just about everyone agrees that the highest good is eudaimonia while disagreeing with one another about what eudaimonia is. A similar situation exists among many contemporary philosophers: they agree that naturalism is true while disagreeing with one another about what naturalism is. By their lights, the claim that a given entity exists is worth taking seriously only if the entity in question is compatible with naturalism ; otherwise, the entity is queer or spooky (...) and the claim that it exists should be rejected outright.In God, Value, and Nature, Fiona Ellis considers five increasingly expansive version of naturalism, ranging from a view according to which the only entities that qualify as natural rather than spookily supernatural are those that can be studied by the hard sciences to a view about that classifies the Christian God as natural. Part of Ellis’s project is to consider the extent to wh .. (shrink)

Background: Metaphors are often used within the context of ethics and healthcare but have hardly been explored in relation to moral reasoning. Objective: To describe a central set of metaphors in one case and to explore their contribution to moral reasoning. Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 parents of a child suffering from the neurodegenerative disease CLN3. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and metaphors were analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and discussed about their analyses until they reached consensus. Ethical (...) considerations: Participants gave oral and written consent and their confidentiality and anonymity were respected. Findings: A central set of metaphors referred to the semantic field of the hands and arms and consisted of two central metaphors that existed in a dialectical relationship: grasping versus letting go. Participants used these metaphors to describe their child’s experiences, who had to “let go” of abilities, while “clinging” to structures and the relationship with their parent(s). They also used it to describe their own experiences: participants tried to “grab” the good moments with their child and had to “let go” of their child when (s)he approached death. Participants, in addition, “held” onto caring for their child while being confronted with the necessity to “let go” of this care, leaving it to professional caregivers. Discussion: The ethical analysis of the findings shows that thinking in terms of the dialectical relationship between “grasping” and “letting go” helps professional caregivers to critically think about images of good care for children with CLN3. It also helps them to bear witness to the vulnerable, dependent, and embodied nature of the moral self of children with CLN3 and their parents. Conclusion: Metaphorical reasoning may support the inclusion of marginalized perspectives in moral reasoning. Future studies should further explore the contribution of metaphorical reasoning to moral reasoning in other cases. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 35, Issue 7, Page 688-695, September 2021.

We interpret intuitionistic theories of (iterated) strictly positive inductive definitions (s.p.-ID i′ s) into Martin-Löf's type theory. The main purpose being to obtain lower bounds of the proof-theoretic strength of type theories furnished with means for transfinite induction (W-type, Aczel's set of iterative sets or recursion on (type) universes). Thes.p.-ID i′ s are essentially the wellknownID i -theories, studied in ordinal analysis of fragments of second order arithmetic, but the set variable in the operator form is restricted to occur only (...) strictly positively. The modelling is done by constructivizing continuity notions for set operators at higher number classes and proving that strictly positive set operators are continuous in this sense. The existence of least fixed points, or more accurately, least sets closed under the operator, then easily follows. (shrink)

This paper examines some connections between Hume’s epistemology in his Treatise of Human Nature and his political economy. I make three claims: First, I argue that it is the development of Hume’s account of the faculty of reason in Book I of the Treatise that leads him to emphasize social science—including political economy—and the humanities over more abstract modes of intellectual inquiry. Second, I argue that Hume’s conception of reason has implications for his methodology in political economy. His perception of (...) human reason leads him to deploy a method of qualified generalization that emphasizes the by-and-large nature of theoretical statements. Third, when it comes to policy matters, the method of qualified generalization in theory cashes out in terms of practical maxims. I suggest that two central maxims in Hume’s political economy derive from his views of the usefulness of economic liberty and the coordinating nature of the status quo. (shrink)

The class of points in a set-presented formal topology is a set, if all points are maximal. To prove this constructively a strengthening of the dependent choice principle to infinite well-founded trees is used.

The risks of materials containing nanoscale components are in the public debate discussed as if a manufactured nanomaterial will remain invariant with time and environmental exposure, and as if we can identify its risks by the risks of its nanoscale components. Additionally, the debate on mitigation of specific nanorisks by new legislation implicitly assumes that we can have full and accurate knowledge of the distribution and composition of nanomaterials in a product or the environment. In this discussion note, I argue (...) that physical laws intrinsic to the behavior of nanoparticles both lead to limits on the risks to which we are likely exposed and on our technological ability to verify compliance with new regulations. My conclusion is that governmental actors should be careful not to overreact in their response to a technological revolution that only in few areas is likely to lead to increased public exposure, and in doing so using legal measures for which compliance cannot be monitored. (shrink)

Research on motivation has mainly concentrated on the role of goal orientation and self?evaluation in conducting learning activities. In this paper, we examine the relative importance of teachers? teaching and their efficacy beliefs to explain variation in student motivation. Questionnaires were used to measure the well?being, academic self?efficacy, mastery goal orientation, performance avoidance, intrinsic motivation and school investment of students (n = 3462) and the teaching practices and teachers? sense of self?efficacy (n = 194) in primary schools. Results of the (...) multi?level analyses show that connection to the students? world and cooperative learning methods had a positive effect on students? motivation, while process?oriented instruction by the teacher had a negative effect on motivational behaviour and motivational factors of students. Finally, the results lend credence to the argument that teachers? sense of self?efficacy has an impact on both teachers? teaching and students? motivation to learn. (shrink)

The ethics of hope has often been understood as a conflict between duties: do not lie versus do not destroy hope. However, such a way of framing the ethics of hope may easily place healthcare professionals at the side of realism and patients at the side of hope. That leaves unexamined relational dimensions of hope. The objective of this study was to describe a relational ethics of hope based on the perspectives of palliative care patients, their family members and their (...) healthcare professionals. A qualitative longitudinal method based on narrative theories was used. Semi-structured interviews on hope were conducted with twenty-nine palliative care patients, nineteen friends or family members, and fifty-two healthcare professionals, which were recorded and transcribed. Data on hope were thematically analyzed. The researchers wrote memos and did member checking with participants. When participants spoke about hope, they referred to power and empowerment, like the powerful bonding of hope between patients and physicians. They also associated hope with the loss of hope and suffering. Several participating healthcare professionals tried to balance both sides, which involved acknowledgment of hope and suffering. Hope and power were reflected in the ethical concept of empowerment, whereas suffering and the loss of hope were reflected in the ethical concept of compassion. Empowerment and compassion can be balanced in solicitude. In conclusion, a relational ethics of hope requires solicitude, in which healthcare professionals are able to weigh empowerment and compassion within particular relationships. (shrink)

The rise of technologies that can inexpensively sequence entire genomes means that researchers and clinicians have access to ever vaster stores of genomic data, some of which could be of great use to research participants or patients, and most of which, at least for today, will be of little, uncertain, or no use. Those facts are essential features of a new ethical territory we are now entering with genetics research. As we explore that territory, we should try to be as (...) clear as possible about the issues at hand. Clarity about the ethical issues that delineate this new territory requires that we be wary about too hastily importing into it concepts from the old territory. We want to suggest a way in which the term “incidental findings” can impede our ability to see clearly some of the most important issues we face. To show how that term can sometimes obscure more than it illuminates, we focus on how it is being deployed in the context of research. Although it may have been useful, when considering older forms of genetic research, to speak about researchers stumbling across clinically significant findings, and although that way of speaking has certainly not yet become wholly obsolete, it is ever less appropriate as the technology becomes ever more powerful. (shrink)

In this article, I want to make the following points, none of which are totally new, but their constellation here is meant to be challenging. First, world is not a (Cartesian) thing but an event, the event of sense. This event is opening and meaning – verbal tense. God may be a philosophical name of this event. This is recognized by late-modern religious atheist thought. This thought differs from modern scientific rationalism in that the latter’s so-called areligious atheism is actually (...) a hyperreligious theism. On the way, the alleged opposition between philosophy and theology, between thought and faith is seen to erode. The core matter of this philosophy of religion will be the absolute reference, the system of objectivity and the holiness of the name. All this because of a prefix a- that has its sense turned inside out by the death of God. (shrink)

Isaac Levi has claimed that our reliance on the testimony of others, and on the testimony of the senses, commonly produces inconsistency in our set of full beliefs. This happens if what is reported is inconsistent with what we believe to be the case. Drawing on a conception of the role of beliefs in inquiry going back to Dewey, Levi has maintained that the inconsistent belief corpus is a state of ``epistemic hell'': it is useless as a basis for inquiry (...) and deliberation. As he has also noticed, the compatibility of these two elements of his pragmatist epistemology could be called into question. For if inconsistency means hell, how can it ever be rational to enter that state, and on what basis could we attempt to regain consistency? Levi, nonetheless, has tried to show that the conflict is only apparent and that no changes of his theory are necessary. In the main part of the paper I argue, by contrast, that his attempts to reconcile these components of his view are unsuccessful.The conflict is real andthus presents a genuine threat to Deweyan pragmatism, as understood by Levi. After an attempt to pinpoint exactly where the source of the problem lies, I explore some possibilities for how to come to grips with it. I conclude that Levi can keep his fundamental thesis concerning the role of beliefs in inquiry and deliberation, provided that he (i) gives up the view that the agent can legitimately escape from inconsistency, and (ii) modifies his account of prediction alias deliberate expansion by acknowledging a third desideratum, besides probability and informational value, namely, not to cause permanent breakdown further down the line of inquiry. The result is a position which is more similar to Peter Gärdenfors's than is Levi's original theory, while retaining the basic insights of the latter. (shrink)

Persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities cannot speak about their Quality of Life, which makes it necessary to involve others. In current approaches, these ‘others’ are seen as assessors trying to describe QoL as objectively as possible, which involves a reduction of their experiences, through which they develop knowledge on the QoL of the person with PIMD. The objective of this paper is to give caregivers’ knowledge on the QoL of a person with PIMD a theoretical basis that values (...) these experiences. We will argue that caregivers should be seen as witnesses, not assessors, and their statements on QoL as testimonies, not assessments. Audiences judge the trustworthiness of these witnesses intersubjectively, which implies a relationship characterized by trust and suspicion. Trust supports the witness to tell in her own words about the QoL of the person with PIMD; it demands receptivity, indicating that both the witness and the audience are willing to reconsider their perspective on QoL. Suspicion is necessary too, which helps the witness to critically approach her own interpretations and supports her to create more trustworthy testimonies. We conclude that the concept of witnessing helps to acknowledge caregivers’ experiential knowledge of QoL of a person with PIMD, which may also apply to other persons who cannot speak about their own QoL. We hope that our study will empower caregivers to give testimonies on QoL of a person with PIMD, which is crucial when complex decisions about the life of this person have to be made. (shrink)

Discussions of information produced by genetics research are often guided by two mistaken theoretical moves. Enthusiasts tell us not to worry because genetic tinkering can alter only our body, never our soul; worriers suggest that discovering links between our behavior and our different bodies threatens important democratic ideas like moral equality. If we understand the body and soul to be inseparable and equality to be undiminished by difference, we can begin to take seriously the information produced by genetics research.

People often remember what they attend to in the world. Such memory can be cast as a kind of mental catalog or index of attended objects. To investigate how such an index is acquired and used, protocol data were collected from a programmer who scrolled to off‐screen objects from time to time as she worked. These protocol data were modeled using Soar, which constrains how the index is constructed. In the model, an index entry is an episodic trace encoded during (...) attention. The trace associates the attention event with a time symbol denoting the event's occurrence. Later, the model can ask itself whether it saw that object by calling to mind an image of the attention event. If this image retrieves a time symbol, then the model infers that the object exists and can reason about bringing the object back into view. Episodic indexing is a theory of these encoding and retrieval processes. It posits that information about attention events is encoded automatically, but that retrieval requires effort and knowledge. Episodic indexing is congruent with a range of results on episodic and temporal codes and recognition and recall processes. It incorporates source monitoring (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993) and is a simple and pervasive form of long‐term working memory (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). (shrink)