This paper reports on a study of crowd-sourcing ‘study aid’ web platforms. Students are sharing completed academic coursework through a growing network of ‘study aid’ web platforms like CourseHero.com. These websites facilitate the crowd-sourced exchange of coursework, and effectively support plagiarism. However, virtually no data exists concerning the scope or extent of coursework being shared through these platforms. This paper reports on two experiments to monitor the frequency of coursework from a sample university uploaded onto CourseHero.com. Ultimately, both experiments failed (...) to produce a clear or meaningful measurement of coursework upload frequency. The apparently widespread use of these crowd-sourcing ‘study aid’ websites and the failure of these experiments demonstrates the need for further investigation into how much coursework is being shared through such platforms, how frequently it is shared, and what kind of coursework is being shared. Addressing these issues is an important step into measuring the impact of these wellsprings of academically dishonest behavior. (shrink)

Asymptomatic COVID‐19 testing programmes are being introduced in higher education institutions, but stakeholder views regarding the acceptability of mandating or incentivizing participation remain little understood. A mixed‐method study (semi‐structured interviews and a survey including open and closed questions) was undertaken in a case study university with a student testing programme. Survey data were analysed descriptively; analysis for interviews was based on the framework method. Two hundred and thirty‐nine people participated in the study: 213 in the survey (189 students, 24 staff), (...) and 26 in interviews (19 students, 7 staff). There was majority (62%) but not universal support for voluntary participation, with a range of concerns expressed about the potentially negative effects of mandating testing. Those who supported mandatory testing tended to do so on the grounds that it would protect others. There was also majority (64%) opposition to penalties for refusing to test. Views on restricting access to face‐to‐face teaching for non‐participants were polarized. Three‐quarters (75%) supported incentives, though there were some concerns about effectiveness and unintended consequences. Participants emphasized the importance of communication about the potential benefits of testing. Preserving the voluntariness of participation in student asymptomatic testing programmes is likely to be the most ethically sound policy unless circumstances change. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 4, Page 434-444, May 2022.

In this paper, I explore the link between consciousness and quantum mechanics. Often explanations that invoke consciousness to help explain some of the most perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics are not given serious attention. However, casual dismissal is perhaps unwarranted, given the persistence of the measurement problem, as well as the mysterious nature of consciousness. Using data accumulated from experiments in parapsychology, I examine what anomalous data with respect to consciousness might tell us about various explanations of quantum mechanics. I (...) examine three categories of quantum mechanics interpretations that have some promise of fitting with this anomalous data. I conclude that explanations that posit a substratum of reality containing pure information or potentia, along the lines proposed by Bohm and Stapp, off er the best fit for various categories of this data. (shrink)

The concern of the present inquiry is whether, and, if so, how, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s conception of hermeneutical understanding can help us grasp the character of our ethical responsibility, and, indeed, a sense of responsibility that remains answerable to the plurality of our always singular and contingent ethical experiences. The focus of this essay, however, is to shed novel light on the responsibility at stake in understanding—or, as this may be referred to more simply, the responsibility to understand—on the motif of (...) Gadamer’s call for us to “elevate” ourselves “to humanity” through “the aptitude [Fähigkeit] for conversation.” This identification of the responsibility to understand with our elevation of ourselves to our humanity appears, initially at least, to stand in opposition to Heidegger’s celebrated (some would say notorious) criticism of humanism in his “Letter on Humanism” and elsewhere. Yet, as we shall see, Gadamer’s call for us to elevate ourselves to our humanity in fact may be grasped as an ‘extreme’ form of humanism that answers to criticisms of the humanist tradition prevalent since they were first raised by Heidegger in his “Letter.”. (shrink)

Translator's Introduction to Günter Figal's Objectivity: The Hermeneutical and Philosophy.

In this paper, I respond to what is currently the most significant criticism of the principle fair play as a basis for political obligations. In a series of cases in which obligations appear to be established by fair play, important scholars contend that the moral principle at work is not fair play but a natural duty of justice to provide essential benefits to other people. Such natural duty accounts strikingly ignore requirements of reciprocity, to make appropriate return for benefits received. (...) In addition, careful examination of possible natural duty explanations of such cases indicates severe difficulties explaining exactly to whom the natural duties in question are owed and why they may require significant costs. (shrink)

Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin, LSD and DMT are known to induce powerful alterations in phenomenology. Perhaps of most philosophical and scientific interest is their capacity to disrupt and even “dissolve” one of the most primary features of normal experience: that of being a self. Such “peak” or “mystical” experiences are of increasing interest for their potentially transformative therapeutic value. While empirical research is underway, a theoretical conception of the mechanisms underpinning these experiences remains elusive. In the following paper, psychedelic-induced (...) ego-dissolution is accounted for within an active inference framework, as a collapse in the “temporal thickness” of an agent’s deep temporal model, as a result of lowered precision on high-level priors. The argument here is composed of three moves: first, a view of the self-model is proposed as arising within a temporally deep generative model of an embodied organism navigating an affordance landscape in the service of allostasis. Next, a view of the action of psychedelics as lowering the precision of high-level priors within the generative model is unpacked in terms of a high Bayesian learning rate. Finally, the relaxation of high-level priors is argued to cause a “collapse” in the temporal thickness of the generative model, resulting in a collapse in the self-model and a loss of the ordinary sense of being a self. This account has implications for our understanding of ordinary self-consciousness and disruptions in self-consciousness present in psychosis, autism, depression, and dissociative disorders. The philosophical, theoretical and therapeutic implications of this account are touched upon. (shrink)

This paper examines people's reasoning about identity continuity and its relation to previous research on how people value one-of-a-kind artifacts, such as artwork. We propose that judgments about the continuity of artworks are related to judgments about the continuity of individual persons because art objects are seen as physical extensions of their creators. We report a reanalysis of previous data and the results of two new empirical studies that test this hypothesis. The first study demonstrates that the mere categorization of (...) an object as “art” versus “a tool” changes people's intuitions about the persistence of those objects over time. In a second study, we examine some conditions that may lead artworks to be thought of as different from other artifacts. These observations inform both current understanding of what makes some objects one-of-a-kind as well as broader questions regarding how people intuitively think about the persistence of human agents. (shrink)

Many systems of logic diagrams have been offered both historically and more recently. Each of them has clear limitations. An original alternative system is offered here. It is simpler, more natural, and more expressively and inferentially powerful. It can be used to analyze not only syllogisms but arguments involving relational terms and unanalyzed statement terms.

For fifty years, Willard Van Orman Quine's books and articles have stimulated intense debate in the fields of logic and the philosophy of language. Many scholars in fact, regard Quine as the greatest living English-speaking philosopher; yet his views remain widely misunderstood and misinterpreted. This book provides the first major explication and defense of Quine's systematic philosophy and is ideally suited for use as a required or supplementary text in a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy and (...) linguistics.The book explores the far-reaching implications of Quine's views on language for contemporary analytic philosophy. It is unique in providing a lucid and rich description and reconstruction of the historical context from which Quine's work grew, focusing in particular on the role that Russell and Wittgenstein played in shaping the problems inherited by Quine. It presents Quine's difficult later views in an accessible fashion, bringing out as no other study has the very radical nature of his position. One of the book's highlights is its careful examination and assessment of Tarski's theory of truth as it relates to the traditions of Russell and Wittgenstein and to Quine's own philosophy.George D. Romanos took his Ph.D. in philosophy under George D. W. Berry and Paul T. Sagal at Boston University. This book grew out of his dissertation with the active criticism and support of Quine himself. (shrink)

This is a concise introduction to the life and work of the Italian militant and political thinker, Antonio Gramsci. As head of the Italian Communist Party in the 1920s, Gramsci was arrested and condemned to 20 years' imprisonment by Mussolini's fascist regime. It was during this imprisonment that Gramsci wrote his famous Prison Notebooks – over 2,000 pages of profound and influential reflections on history, culture, politics, philosophy and revolution. An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci retraces the trajectory of Gramsci's life, (...) before examining his conceptions of culture, politics and philosophy. Gramsci's writings are then interpreted through the lens of his most famous concept, that of 'hegemony'; Gramsci's thought is then extended and applied to 'think through' contemporary problems to illustrate his distinctive historical methodology. The book concludes with a valuable examination of Gramsci's legacy today and useful tips for further reading. George Hoare and Nathan Sperber make Gramsci accessible for students of history, politics and philosophy keen to understand this seminal figure in 20th-century intellectual history. (shrink)

George Grant's magnificent four-part meditation sums up much that is central to his own thought, including a critique of modern liberalism, an analysis of John Rawls's Theory of Justice, and insights into the larger Western philosophical ...

RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL ATTENTION TO THE LANGUAGE OF DISEASE HAS FOCUSED PRIMARILY ON THE QUESTION OF ITS VALUE-NEUTRALITY OR NON-NEUTRALITY. PROPONENTS OF THE VALUE-NEUTRALITY THESIS SYMBOLICALLY COMBINE POLITICAL AND OTHER CRITICISMS OF MEDICINE IN AN ATTACK ON WHAT THEY SEE AS VALUE-INFECTED USES OF DISEASE LANGUAGE. THE PRESENT ESSAY ARGUES AGAINST TWO THESES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS VIEW: A METHODOLOGICAL THESIS WHICH TENDS TO DIVORCE THE ANALYSIS OF DISEASE LANGUAGE FROM THE CONTEXT OF THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE AND A SUBSTANTIVE THESIS WHICH (...) HOLDS THAT DISEASE LANGUAGE IS EVALUATIVELY NEUTRAL. IN PARTICULAR, THE ESSAY CRITICALLY FOCUSES ON THE VALUE NEUTRAL POSITION ADOPTED BY CHRISTOPHER BOORSE, WHICH HE TERMS A FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF DISEASE. THE ARGUMENT CONCERNS WHETHER OR NOT ONE CAN HAVE VALUE NEUTRAL DESCRIPTION OF DISEASE STATES OR WHETHER DISEASE LANGUAGE ESSENTIALLY INVOLVES VALUES. (shrink)

The British have often denied the very existence of a tradition of English literary theory. George Watson redeems that denial in his latest book, the first study of 20th Century English theory. The book begins with Yeats, Pound and Eliot, who made England their home. In subsequent chapters, based on personal recollection as well as published sources, it assesses the contribution of I.A. Richards, William Empson, F.R. Leavis, C.S. Lewis, Isaiah Berlin and Wittgenstein, as well as Marxists like E.P. (...) Thompson and Raymond Williams. English literary theory is a tradition that has suffered in reputation, paradoxically, by the sheer fertility of its invention. In this seminal work the author celebrates that fertility from the First World War downto the death of Iris Murdoch in 1999, showing that England pioneered the academic study of theories of literature years in advance of France or the USA. (shrink)

In the Bible, the human God-relationship is typically established through and by the phenomenon of “calling”. However, for much subsequent theology, this has been displaced by “vision”, “taste” or “feeling”. Referring to the notion of an inner word, the paper follows Kierkegaard's treatment of silence as, alternatively, a mode of inattention and attention to such an inner word. With Heidegger, the paper turns to the notion of vocation, both as in the discussion of the call of conscience in Being and (...) Time and the poetic vocation exemplified in the figure and poetry of Hölderlin. Finally, it considers the possible difference between such a poetic vocation and a divine calling. (shrink)

American healthcare -- Bioterror and bioart -- State of emergency -- Licensed to torture -- Hunger strikes -- War -- Cancer -- Drug dealing -- Toxic tinkering -- Abortion -- Culture of death -- Patient safety -- Global health -- Statue of security -- Pandemic fear -- Bioidentifiers -- Genetic genocide.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of Thomas Hobbes's philosophy and political writings. The author argues that Hobbes was not only a philosopher, but also a publicist who played an important role in shaping political discourse in his time. This is an essential resource for anyone interested in political philosophy and the history of ideas. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work (...) is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The mother discipline of organisational behaviour has deep roots in psychology, particularly industrial and organisational psychology. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that new and theoretically incommensurate findings involving human moral behaviour have been met with calls for a more psychologically informed investigation of ethical behaviour in organisational contexts (DeCremer and Tenbrunsel, 2012; Reynolds and Ceranic, 2009). This project, aimed at a fuller understanding of the psychology of ethical behaviour, typically falls under the label of Organisational Ethical Behavior (OEB).

An important fact about human labor is that it can result not just in reproduction of what it started with, but in something new, a surplus product. When the latter is a means of production, it makes possible a mechanism of change consisting of reproduction by means of the expanded means of production. Each iteration of the labor process can differ from the preceding one insofar as it incorporates the surplus generated previously. Over the long-term, this cyclical process can lead (...) to the self-transformation of labor and, through it, of human societies and cultures. In this paper, I argue that this mechanism of change is also at work in the history of science. I argue that the form this mechanism takes in science is that of a feedback loop between discovery and instrument construction. This process requires the integration, and transformation into material form, of different kinds of knowledge. Based on this mechanism, I defend a concept of scientific progress as transcendence of the limitations of native human epistemic abilities. I also criticize narrowly biologistic approaches to the history of science for ignoring the role of surplus generation in transforming the labor process, and discuss some problems associated with viewing science as labor. (shrink)

Modern philosophy in the West has been haunted since Descartes by his ontological dichotomy between extended unthinking substances and thinking unextended substances, which leads to the epistemological problem of whether perceptions by the mind can be judged as truly representing objects external to it. The typical solution has been to reduce one kind of substance to the other: to fashion some version of either idealism or materialism. Attempts at a solution that affirms real differences between physical bodies and conscious minds (...) but allows for their interaction, for each to have an effect on the other, are a characteristic strategy of analytic philosophers. However, Professor Hedrick finds their proposed... (shrink)

Aesopic fables constitute an important case in folk and popular literature. This genre went through various stages of development; its plasticity, pedagogical dimension, and mainly its ability to convey messages through an indirect and pleasant way prompted many to take interest in it, reading, adapting, or even creating new fables. As a result, fables became a favorite topic in literature and, especially, children's literature through many and various adaptations, translations, and metanarratives. In this paper, considering fables as an early form (...) of utopic/dystopic discourse, we aim to demonstrate some cases of such references through examples taken from the corpus of Aesopic fables. (shrink)

Heidegger revisits German idealism after the “turn” in his thought in the mid-1930’s. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is philosophical, if not “theological” in his sense of that term. The other is personal. This later reason is emphasized by Otto Pöggeler, who suggests that after 1945 Heidegger sought to understand what had gone wrong in the tragic European debacle. Heidegger will lay the blame at the doorstep of what he terms onto-theology and the subjectivism he sees (...) as endemic to the German idealist tradition, above all as exemplified in Hegel’s “onto-theo-ego-logy.” The article explores Heidegger’s reading of this tradi­tion of German philosophy as it begins with Leibniz and culminates in Nietzsche. It is the Event itself that makes possible the overcoming of metaphysics and its onto-theology. As Heidegger says in Contributions to Philosophy (From the Event), the ens realissimum (das Seiendste) “is” no more. It is the Event (Ereignis) that is the “most real,” since it is the Event that shows up and manifests itself as the revelation of the truth of Beinge in Da-sein, the being that is there in the Event. (shrink)