The theory of epistemic vigilance posits that -- to quote the eponymous paper that introduced the theory -- “humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance, targeted at the risk of being misinformed by others." Despite the widespread acceptance of the theory of epistemic vigilance, however, I argue that the theory is a poor fit with the evidence: while there is good reason to accept that people ARE vigilant, there is also good reason to believe that their vigilance (...) is NOT epistemic. Rather, the evidence actually supports an alternative theory, one that I dub the theory of "Machiavellian vigilance": humans have a suite of cognitive mechanisms for Machiavellian vigilance, targeted at tracking others' relative social status and maintaining or enhancing one's own status. The evidence against epistemic vigilance stems from three sources: (a) data demonstrating that people are terrible at detecting honesty or competence, (b) data demonstrating that our vigilance is phylogenetically prior to the development of homo sapiens, and therefore was not designed to be sensitive to linguistic communication, and (c) data demonstrating that people's sources of information are distributed, and not detectable through individual vigilance. The evidence in favor of Machiavellian vigilance is the mirror image of the evidence against epistemic vigilance: (a) data demonstrating that people are very accurate at detecting status, (b) data demonstrating that social species, including bonobos and chimps, track the social status of their conspecifics, and (c) data demonstrating that people can quickly track status even in new social groups. (shrink)

Both mainstream and disability bioethics sometimes contend that the self-assessment of disabled people about their own well-being is distorted by adaptive preferences that are only held because other, better options are unavailable. I will argue that both of the most common ways of understanding adaptive preferences—the autonomy-based account and the well-being account—would reject blanket claims that disabled people’s QOL self-assessment has been distorted, whether those claims come from mainstream bioethicists or from disability bioethicists. However, rejecting these generalizations for a more (...) nuanced view still has dramatic implications for the status quo in both health policy and clinical ethics. (shrink)

Multifunctionality poses significant challenges for human brain mapping. Cathy Price and Karl Friston argue that brain regions perform many functions in one sense and a single function in another. Thus, neuroscientists must revise their “cognitive ontologies” to obtain systematic mappings. Colin Klein draws a different lesson from these findings: neuroscientists should abandon systematic mappings for context-sensitive ones. I claim that neither account succeeds as a general treatment of multifunctionality. I argue that brain areas, like genes or organs, are multifunctional in (...) different ways. I call this the “functional heterogeneity hypothesis.” I contend that different multifunctional parts require different mapping strategies. (shrink)

Pursuing a suggestion made by Christopher Stead in his book Divine Substance and employing distinctions made by Gottlob Frege in his article “Concept and Object,” it becomes possible to answer a common charge against Trinitarian Theism: its alleged inconsistency in claiming that, while there is only one God, there are also three “persons,” each rightly named “God.” The argument advanced, while supporting the logical coherence of traditional Trinitarian Theism, also defends the orthodoxy of the controversial “Social Trinitarianism” associated with Richard (...) of Saint Victor. (shrink)

Actions for which we are responsible constitute our engagement with the world as rational agents. What is the relationship between such actions and our capacities for rational agency? I take this to be a question about responsibility in a particular use of that term, which I shall call ‘responsibility2’. We are not responsible2 for all our intentional actions (actions under hypnosis, for example), but we can nevertheless be responsible2 for actions we do not adequately control, for negligent actions, and for (...) non-intentional omissions. Appreciating this helps show that familiar principles of responsibility are false: those which delimit responsibility to intentional actions or to actions and outcomes under our control. In the attempt to fashion an alternative principle, cases of negligence prove pivotal. We hold ourselves and others responsible2 for conduct within our respective ‘domains of secure competence’, (i.e. that within which we are confident of doing what we set ourselves to do, barring events which defeat our competence), even when actions within that domain fail. The significance of this practice of holding ourselves and others responsible2 lies in the way it maintains our sense of who we are and of how we are related to the world in which we act.1. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions of mechanisms and mechanistic explanation have often been framed by contrast to laws and deductive-nomological explanation. A more adequate conception of lawfulness and nomological necessity, emphasizing the role of modal considerations in scientific reasoning, circumvents such contrasts and enhances understanding of mechanisms and their scientific significance. The first part of the paper sketches this conception of lawfulness, drawing upon Haugeland, Lange, and Rouse. This conception emphasizes the role of lawful stability under relevant counterfactual suppositions in scientific reasoning across (...) the sciences, in place of traditional conceptions of law that are primarily confined to the physical sciences. It also extends lawful stability beyond verbally or mathematically expressed law-statements, to encompass other ways of conjoining patterns in the world with scientific pattern recognition. The remainder of this paper shows how and why mechanisms constructively exemplify this conception of lawfulness in scientific practice: • Mechanisms are robust, counterfactually stable and inductively projectible patterns, even though they are not exceptionless “laws of nature”. • Mechanistic explanations often take non-verbal forms, which consequently resist philosophical inclinations to semantic ascent, but understanding lawfulness in terms of counterfactually stable pattern recognition accounts for these ways in which scientific understanding outruns the expressive capacities of natural languages; • Mechanisms are sometimes characterized as real patterns in the world, and sometimes as epistemic representations; understanding mechanisms as modal patterns shows why both conceptions are needed, as mutually supportive. • Mechanisms are typically open-ended, and only partially specified, in ways open to and directive toward further articulation and revision. Understanding mechanisms as modal patterns incorporates this aspect of mechanistic understanding within a broader conception of scientific understanding as embedded in research practice, rather than in bodies of knowledge extracted from it. • Mechanistic explanation has often been placed on the causal side of an opposition between causal and nomological explanation, but understanding mechanisms as modal patterns helps overcome that opposition, and contributes to a pluralist conception of causal relations and their characteristic forms of counterfactual invariance. • The recognition of mechanisms as modal patterns allows for a new way to think about the relations among distinct levels of a mechanistic hierarchy, and the broader scientific significance of mechanistic understanding. (shrink)

In the first place, Hans Albert is famous as the spokesperson of Karl Popper’s critical rationalism in the German-speaking world. This is chronologically a bit odd, given that Popper’s first vintage, his Logik der Forschung, appeared in German in 1935 and that his The Open Society and Its Enemies of 1945 appeared in German in 1958. Yet Albert did much to earn this fame: his decades-long indefatigable response to criticisms of Popper’s views in the post-war German philosophical literature and his (...) constant contrast between Popper’s critical rationalism and competing views that were popular in Germany at the time. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Science and Philosophy in Being and Time BACHELARD The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.

Dancy's main thesis is that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an action, and indeed that makes the reasoning practical. I trace his argument, suggest improvements to its superficial deficien...

This book explores the ways in which Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy provides exactly the kind of support F.R. Leavis was hoping to find when looking for support for his critical approach to literature after failing to find the support he sought for his argument in the dominance of logical positivism at that time.

The title of the film by Steve Kloves (1989) refers to the dual-piano, languishing lounge act performed by two brothers. The resurgence and demise of the musical team is brought about by the addition of a sultry, female vocalist--Susie Diamond. Embedded within the story is an exploration of integrity and its augmentation by the virtues of courage and honesty. Integrity marks an individual whose self is a coherent, consistent whole. Important elements of the individual’s personality are mutually supportive rather than (...) being disparate or in conflict. The integrity scrutinized by the film is Jack’s; it involves the younger brother’s inconsistent fidelity to his considerable musical talent. Late in the story we learn that he despises performing the popular musical fare with his brother and that he really wants to be creative, playing jazz. Although Jack is shown playing piano with modulated passion at a jazz club, we infer that he does so infrequently. Jack’s older brother is not in conflict with himself because his talent is suited to playing the bland tunes that are the staple of the act. Jack’s integrity is compromised because his commitment to his art is half-hearted; he cannot make the leap of faith--in himself. He knows that he hates playing the lounge music, is moved by jazz, and has considerable ability. Jack therefore realizes, however vaguely, that he ought to give himself to the music he loves, despite the risks this would entail. The trajectory of the film-story can be viewed as Jack finally summoning the courage to honestly confront his struggle with integrity and deciding to do something about it. (shrink)

Egalitarian principles should be distinguished from principles, which merely state relevantly complete grounds for the distribution of goods, and which thereafter enjoy a generality of application to those who meet the relevant conditions. Strict or paradigmatic egalitarian principles aim at an equal distribution of a certain good, on grounds generated by existing inequalities in the distribution of that good. Strict egalitarianism should be distinguished from rhetorical egalitarianism, in which equality is invoked simply as a way of drawing attention to the (...) bad effects of inequality; effects that might have arisen in the absence of inequality. Strict egalitarian principles cannot be applied to diminishing principles of entitlement, which already have distributive commitments built into them. Strict egalitarian principles could be applied to non‐diminishing principles of entitlement, but these principles are of doubtful significance to political morality. (shrink)

A view of socially constructed values created and sustained by social practices is examined. In many cases, it may be that the social dependence of evaluative beliefs testifies not to the social construction of value but to the social dependence of access to value. It is argued that if we maintain the view that some values are socially constituted, we do not have to fall prey to the seemingly inescapable conclusion of additional arguments and puzzles that bedevil some theses affirming (...) the social constitution of value. The social dependence of value has nothing to do with the affirmation of social practices as reasons for their own validity. Relevant social practices are sustaining practices necessary for the existence of value. (shrink)

ObjectivesTo compare changes in the number and amount of payments received by orthopedic and non-orthopedic surgeons from industry between 2014 and 2017.MethodsUsing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payment database from 2014 to 2017, we conducted a retrospective cohort study of industry payments to surgeons, including general payments and research payments.ResultsAmong orthopedic surgeons, the total number of general payments decreased from 248,698 in 2014 to 241,966 in 2017, but their total value increased from $97.1 million in 2014 (...) to $110.2 million in 2017. Among non-orthopedic surgeons, the total number decreased from 604,884 in 2014 to 582,490 in 2017, while the total value remained stable at approximately $159 million. Between 2014 and 2017, there was a differential increase in the median number of general payments received by non-orthopedic when compared to orthopedic surgeons (incidence rate ratio, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.08–1.09; p < 0.001), but a differential decline in the median value of general payments (− 8.9%; 95% CI, − 9.5%, − 8.4%; p < 0.001). Findings were consistent when stratified by nature of payment. In contrast, between 2014 and 2017, there was neither a differential change in the median number nor median value of research payments received by non-orthopedics.ConclusionExamination of a natural experiment of prior public disclosure of payments to orthopedic surgeons suggests that the Physician Payment Sunshine Act was associated with an increase in the number, but a decline in the value, of general payments received by non-orthopedic surgeons, but not on research payments received. (shrink)

Plato's rhetorical cosmology: the unity of the world as foundational myth -- The dominance of the unity cosmology from Plato to Galileo -- William Whewell and Alfred Russel Wallace: unity cosmology in the modern era -- Quantum unity -- Unity in the twenty-first century -- Humanity as the measure vs. the unity of the world.

This paper addresses one particular understanding, based in the Catholic intellectual tradition, of ethical and anthropological foundations of the formation of social and economic attitudes in the family, and how these might be related to the understanding of humanityHumanity at the foundation of participation in an inclusive economy. What is at stake is how the primordial subjectivity of the human person, formed in the family, may be related to the formation of social and economic attitudes in the wider societySociety. Building (...) on the position, expressed in the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes (52), that “the family is a kind of school of a deeper humanityHumanity,” I will investigate the development of the notion of “humanityHumanity” in the thought of Karol WojtyłaJohn Paul II, Pope (the future Pope John Paul IIJohn Paul II, Pope) to situate the question of economic inclusion in a context of human ecologyEcologyHuman. I will treat the question of human consumptionConsumption within this perspective, as related not only to the human vocation to participate in community, but also to the consequences for persons of consumerist attitudes. (shrink)

In the original publication of the article, the corresponding author used pseudonym as ‘M. Lisagor’. The correct name is given in this correction.

The philosophy of physics literature contains conflicting claims on the heuristic significance of general covariance. Some authors maintain that Einstein's general relativity distinguishes itself from other theories in that it must be generally covariant, for example, while others argue that general covariance is a physically vacuous and trivial requirement applicable to virtually any theory. Moreover, when general covariance is invested with heuristic significance, that significance as a rule is assigned to so-called “active” general covariance, underwritten by the principle of background (...) independence, rather than to general covriance as Einstein understood it. While agreeing with the latter group of commentators that general covariance indeed carries heuristic significance, I argue that a background independent theory need not be generally covariant and that instead the Principle of Equivalence as Einstein understood it provides the key to understanding the heuristic power of general covariance as a “mathematical sieve” for determining the gravitational field law. However, heuristic significance accrues to general covariance only indirectly, by its encompassing the relativity of frames underwritten by Einstein's principle of equivalence. (shrink)

Physicists were asked the question, “What do you think are the most important qualities needed to be successful at the type of work you do?” The results demonstrate which qualities physicists value and how values vary among the qualities they identified. The results also show how physicists’ beliefs about success vary by the rank of their department, age, productivity, and gender. More generally, the findings cast light on the moral order of physics by eliciting how members of an occupation construe (...) the structure of success in their line of work. (shrink)

Economics is a science - at least positive economics must be. And science is in part applied mathematics, in part empirical observations and tests. Looking at the history of economics, one cannot find much testing done before the twentieth century, and even the collection of data, even in the manner Marx engaged in, was not common in his day. It is true that economic policy is an older field, and in that field much information is deployed for the purpose of (...) prescribing a course of action. But this is not to say that the information procured for that purpose is either based on observation or has been tested. In the seventeenth century some alchemists and economists hoped to boost the economy by manufacturing gold, others feared inflation; and the British Parliament legislated against manufacturing gold. David Hume proved in the eighteenth century - quite a priori - that doubling the quantity of gold will only double the price of each commodity and he thus set things at rest for a while. Later the question was opened again when Marx, for example, showed historically how the gold robbed from the Americas started Europe's boom. Yet the theory - the quantity theory of money, as it is called - which Hume proved a priori, is still contested and still hardly tested to economists' satisfaction: is the price level fixed mainly by the amount of available money? Some economists answer yes, others no. (shrink)

The Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics interviewed Vogl about his intellectual career, his relationship to the history and philosophy of economics, and his perspective on the analysis of contemporary capitalism.