Abstract(1) There is enough contradictory evidence regarding the role of base rates in category learning to confirm the nonexistence of biases in such learning. (2) It is not always possible to activate statistical reasoning through frequentist representation. (3) It is necessary to use the concept of systematic processing in reconsidering the published work on biases.

Mandatory vaccination, including for COVID-19, can be ethically justified if the threat to public health is grave, the confidence in safety and effectiveness is high, the expected utility of mandatory vaccination is greater than the alternatives, and the penalties or costs for non-compliance are proportionate. I describe an algorithm for justified mandatory vaccination. Penalties or costs could include withholding of benefits, imposition of fines, provision of community service or loss of freedoms. I argue that under conditions of risk or perceived (...) risk of a novel vaccination, a system of payment for risk in vaccination may be superior. I defend a payment model against various objections, including that it constitutes coercion and undermines solidarity. I argue that payment can be in cash or in kind, and opportunity for altruistic vaccinations can be preserved by offering people who have been vaccinated the opportunity to donate any cash payment back to the health service. (shrink)

In an article in this journal, Christopher Cowley argues that we have ‘misunderstood the special nature of medicine, and have misunderstood the motivations of the conscientious objectors’. We have not. It is Cowley who has misunderstood the role of personal values in the profession of medicine. We argue that there should be better protections for patients from doctors' personal values and there should be more severe restrictions on the right to conscientious objection, particularly in relation to assisted dying. We argue (...) that eligible patients could be guaranteed access to medical services that are subject to conscientious objections by: removing a right to conscientious objection; selecting candidates into relevant medical specialities or general practice who do not have objections; demonopolizing the provision of these services away from the medical profession. (shrink)

Brain organoid research raises ethical challenges not seen in other forms of stem cell research. Given that brain organoids partially recapitulate the development of the human brain, it is plausible that brain organoids could one day attain consciousness and perhaps even higher cognitive abilities. Brain organoid research therefore raises difficult questions about these organoids' moral status – questions that currently fall outside the scope of existing regulations and guidelines. This paper shows how these gaps can be addressed. We outline a (...) moral framework for brain organoid research that can address the relevant ethical concerns without unduly impeding this important area of research. (shrink)

It may soon be possible to generate human organs inside of human-pig chimeras via a process called interspecies blastocyst complementation. This paper discusses what arguably the central ethical concern is raised by this potential source of transplantable organs: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs risks perpetrating a serious moral wrong because the moral status of human-pig chimeras is uncertain, and potentially significant. Those who raise this concern usually take it to be unique to the creation of chimeric animals with (...) ‘humanised’ brains. In this paper, we show how that the same style of argument can be used to critique current uses of non-chimeric pigs in agriculture. This reveals an important tension between two common moral views: that farming human-pig chimeras for their organs is ethically concerning, and that farming non-chimeric pigs for food or research is ethically benign. At least one of these views stands in need of revision. (shrink)

If a doctor is trying to decide whether or not to provide a medical treatment, does it matter ethically whether that treatment has already been started? Health professionals sometimes find it harder to stop a treatment (withdraw) than to refrain from starting the treatment (withhold). But does that feeling correspond to an ethical difference? In this article, we defend equivalence—the view that withholding and withdrawal of treatment are ethically equivalent when all other factors are equal. We argue that preference for (...) withholding over withdrawal could represent a form of cognitive bias—withdrawal aversion. Nevertheless, we consider whether there could be circumstances in which there is a moral difference. We identify four examples of conditional nonequivalence. Finally, we reflect on the moral significance of diverging intuitions and the implications for policy. We propose a set of practical strategies for helping to reduce bias in end-of-life decision making, including the equivalence test. (shrink)

According to the free energy principle biological agents resist a tendency to disorder in their interactions with a dynamically changing environment by keeping themselves in sensory and physiological states that are expected given their embodiment and the niche they inhabit :127–138, 2010. doi: 10.1038/nrn2787). Why would a biological agent that aims at minimising uncertainty in its encounters with the world ever be motivated to seek out novelty? Novelty for such an agent would arrive in the form of sensory and physiological (...) states that are unexpected. Such an agent ought therefore to avoid novel and surprising interactions with the world one might think. Yet humans and many other animals find play and other forms of novelty-seeking and exploration hugely rewarding. How can this be understood in frameworks for studying the mind that emphasise prediction error minimisation? This problem has been taken up in recent research concerned with epistemic action—actions an agent engages in to reduce uncertainty. However that work leaves two questions unanswered, which it is the aim of our paper to address. First, no account has been given yet of why it should feel good to the agent to engage the world playfully and with curiosity. Second an appeal is made to precision-estimation to explain epistemic action, yet it remains unclear how precision-weighting works in action more generally, or active inference. We argue that an answer to both questions may lie in the bodily states of an agent that track the rate at which free energy is being reduced. The recent literature on the predictive brain has connected the valence of emotional experiences to the rate of change in the reduction of prediction error :e1003094, 2013. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003094; Van de Cruys, in Metzinger and Wiese Philosophy and predictive processing, vol 24, MIND Group, Frankfurt am Main, 2017. doi: 10.15502/9783958573253). In this literature valenced emotional experiences are hypothesised to be identical with changes in the rate at which prediction error is reduced. Experiences are negatively valenced when overall prediction error increases and are positively valenced when the sum of prediction errors decrease. We offer an ecological-enactive interpretation of the concept of valence and its connection to rate of change of prediction error. We show how rate of change should be understood in terms of embodied states of affordance-related action readiness. We then go on to apply this ecological-enactive account of error dynamics to provide an answer to the first question we have raised: It may explain why it should feel good to an agent to be curious and playful. Our ecological-enactive account also allows us to show how error dynamics may provide an answer to the second question we have raised regarding how precision-weighting works in active inference. An agent that is sensitive to rates of error reduction can tune precision on the fly. We show how this ability to tune precision on the go can allow agents to develop skills for adapting better and better to the unexpected, and search out opportunities for resolving uncertainty and progressing in its learning. (shrink)

AI researchers have developed sophisticated language models capable of generating paragraphs of 'synthetic text' on topics specified by the user. While AI text generation has legitimate benefits, it could also be misused, potentially to grave effect. For example, AI text generators could be used to automate the production of convincing fake news, or to inundate social media platforms with machine-generated disinformation. This paper argues that AI text generators should be conceptualised as a dual-use technology, outlines some relevant lessons from earlier (...) debates on dual-use life sciences research, and calls for closer collaboration between ethicists and the machine learning community to address AI language models’ dual-use implications. (shrink)

Philosophy of Economics: A Contemporary Introduction is the first systematic textbook in the philosophy of economics. It introduces the epistemological, metaphysical and ethical problems that arise in economics, and presents detailed discussions of the solutions that have been offered. Throughout, philosophical issues are illustrated by and analysed in the context of concrete cases drawn from contemporary economics, the history of economic ideas, and actual economic events. This demonstrates the relevance of philosophy of economics both for the science of economics and (...) for the economy. This text will provide an excellent introduction to the philosophy of economics for students and interested general readers alike. (shrink)

Two approaches to evidential reasoning compete in the biomedical and social sciences: the experimental and the pragmatist. Whereas experimentalism has received considerable philosophical analysis and support since the times of Bacon and Mill, pragmatism about evidence has been neither articulated nor defended. The overall aim is to fill this gap and develop a theory that articulates the latter. The main ideas of the theory will be illustrated and supported by a case study on the smoking/lung cancer controversy in the 1950s.

In this paper we make a proposal for reforming biomedical research that is aimed to align re-search more closely with the so-called fair-share principle according to which the proportions of global resources as-signed to different diseases should agree with the ratios of human suffering associated with those diseases.

Following a brief reconstruction of Hutto & Satne’s paper we focus our critical comments on two issues. First we take up H&S’s claim that a non-representational form of ur-intentionality exists that performs essential work in setting the scene for content-involving forms of intentionality. We will take issue with the characterisation that H&S give of this non-representational form of intentionality. Part of our commentary will therefore be aimed at motivating an alternative account of how there can be intentionality without mental content, (...) which we have called skilled intentionality. Skilled intentionality is the individual’s selective openness and responsiveness to a rich landscape of affordances.A second issue we take up concerns the distinction between ur-intentionality and content-involving intentionality. We will argue that our notion of skilled intentionality as it is found in humans cuts across these two categories. Instead of distinguishing between different forms of intentionality we recommend focusing on how skilled intentionality takes different forms in different forms of life. (shrink)

Después de discutir diversas hipótesis acerca de la especificidad de la poesía, se reivindican sus posibilidades relativas a la expresión de lo paradójico. Ello se ejemplifica en cuatro poemas del libro La línea del tiempo de Luis Fernando Macías. Y a partir de la estructura paradójica del tiempo se realizan algunas consideraciones relativas a la condición paradójica de la existencia y a los orígenes del conflicto trágico.

This paper presents arguments that challenge what I call the fact/value separability thesis: the idea, roughly, that factual judgements can be made independently of judgements of value. I will look at arguments to the effect that facts and values are entangled in the following areas of the scientific process in economics: theory development, economic concept formation, economic modelling, hypothesis testing, and hypothesis acceptance.

In this paper we make a proposal for reforming biomedical research that is aimed to align re-search more closely with the so-called fair-share principle according to which the proportions of global resources as-signed to different diseases should agree with the ratios of human suffering associated with those diseases.

All univocal analyses of causation face counterexamples. An attractive response to this situation is to become a pluralist about causal relationships. "Causal pluralism" is itself, however, a pluralistic notion. In this article, I argue in favor of pluralism about concepts of cause in the social sciences. The article will show that evidence for, inference from, and the purpose of causal claims are very closely linked. Key Words: causation • pluralism • evidence • methodology.

Bruineberg and colleagues' critique of Friston blankets relies on what we call the “literalist fallacy”: the assumption that in order for Friston blankets to represent real boundaries, biological systems must literally possess or instantiate Markov blankets. We argue that it is important to distinguish a realist view of Friston blankets from the literalist view of Bruineberg and colleagues’ critique.

One way to make philosophy of science more socially relevant is to attend to specific scientific practises that affect society to a great extent. One such practise is biomedical research. This paper looks at contemporary U.S. biomedical research in particular and argues that it suffers from important epistemic, moral and socioeconomic failings. It then discusses and criticises existing approaches to improve on the status quo, most prominently by Thomas Pogge (a political philosopher), Joseph Stiglitz (a Nobel-prize winning economist) and James (...) Robert Brown (a philosopher of science). Finally, it sketches an alternative proposal and argues for its superiority. The proposal has four components: changing the intellectual property regime; instituting independent clinical research; aligning innovators' and patients' interests; and enacting additional regulation. (shrink)

A recent movement in the social sciences and philosophy of the social sciences focuses on mechanisms as a central analytical unit. Starting from a pluralist perspective on the aims of the social sciences, I argue that there are a number of important aims to which knowledge about mechanisms—whatever their virtues relative to other aims—contributes very little at best and that investigating mechanisms is therefore a methodological strategy with fairly limited applicability. Key Words: social science • mechanisms • explanation • critical (...) realism • methodology. (shrink)

There is substantial disagreement among philosophers of embodied cognitive science about the meaning of embodiment. In what follows, I describe three different views that can be found in the current literature. I show how this debate centers around the question of whether the science of embodied cognition can retain the computer theory of mind. One view, which I will label body functionalism, takes the body to play the functional role of linking external resources for problem solving with internal biological machinery. (...) Embodiment is thus understood in terms of the role the body plays in supporting the computational circuits that realize cognition. Body enactivism argues by contrast that no computational account of cognition can account for the role of commonsense knowledge in our everyday practical engagement with the world. I will attempt a reconciliation of these seemingly opposed views. (shrink)

I present an alternative account of causation in the biomedical and social sciences according to which the meaning of causal claims is given by their inferential relations to other claims. Specifically, I will argue that causal claims are inferentially related to certain evidential claims as well as claims about explanation, prediction, intervention and responsibility. I explain in some detail what it means for a claim to be inferentially related to another and finally derive some implication of the proposed account for (...) the epistemology, semantics and metaphysics of causation. (shrink)

Thought experiments are ubiquitous in science and especially prominent in domains in which experimental and observational evidence is scarce. One such domain is the causal analysis of singular events in history. A long‐standing tradition that goes back to Max Weber addresses the issue by means of ‘what‐if’ counterfactuals. In this paper I give a descriptive account of this widely used method and argue that historians following it examine difference makers rather than causes in the philosopher’s sense. While difference making is (...) neither necessary nor sufficient for causation, to establish difference makers is more consistent with the historians’ more ultimate purposes. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Erasmus University, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

I respond to some challenges raised by my critics. In particular, I argue in favour of six claims. First, against Alexandrova and Northcott, I point out that to deny the explanatoriness of economic models by assuming an ontic (specifically, causal) conception of explanation is to beg the question. Second, against defences of causal realism (by Hausman, Mäki, Rol and Grüne-Yanoff) I point out that they have provided no criterion to distinguish those claims a model makes that can be interpreted realistically (...) (the model's ?causal content? or claims it makes about causal powers or mechanisms) and those the realist can safely ignore. Third, I point out that Hausman's and Rol's claims about robustness plus the empirical observation that economic models are hardly ever robust to the right kinds of specification changes imply that these models do not explain (which is problematic as my original article argued). Fourth, I point out that Sugden's response still leaves an important question unanswered, viz. what makes economic models explanatory. Fifth, I sketch an alternative, instrumentalist account of explanation and argue that it would fit Sugden's bill. Sixth, I point out that under this account of explanation, economic models would come out as non-explanatory, which brings us back to Alexandrova and Northcott's account and its associated difficulties. The ?explanation paradox?, therefore, remains unscathed. (shrink)

A theoretical assumption of this chapter on time in mind is that people ought to take phenomenological descriptions of temporal experience at face value. The chapter begins with a brief review of Rick Grush's trajectory estimation model of temporal representation – the predictive inference model. It introduces the issues of whether temporal properties as they appear should be thought of as primary or secondary qualities. A constraint runs from the best science of the mind back to phenomenology that the best (...) phenomenological descriptions of experience cohere with the best science of the human mind. Grush's model bears a close resemblance to computational theories in neuroscience that take perception to consist in predictive inference. A section explains the relationship between the Orwellian interpretation of postdiction and the Husserlian view of temporal experience. The chapter also presents a discussion on “the time as its own representation view” (TOR) and supervenience thesis (SUP). (shrink)

One objection to embryonic stem (ES) cell research is that it ‘cannibalizes’ human beings, that is, kills some human beings to benefit others. I grant for argument’s sake that the embryo is a person. Nonetheless, killing it may be justified. I show this through the Embryonic Stem Cell Lottery. Whether killing a person is justified depends on: (1) whether innocent people at risk of being killed for ES cell research also stand to benefit from the research and (2) whether their (...) overall chances of living are higher in a world in which killing and ES cell research is conducted. I call this kind of killing ‘risk reductive.‘. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTo whom is a duty owed? Contractualism answers with an interest theory of direction. As such, it faces three challenges. The Conceptual Challenge requires acknowledgment that a duty is conceptually distinct from an interest. The Extensional Challenge requires an account of cases in which one who is owed a duty does not take an interest in the duty, or does not take as much of an interest as someone who is not owed the duty. The Positivist Challenge requires explanation of (...) the great flexibility of law and other social practices in positing duties that do not reflect the landscape of moral interests. Contractualism can be shown to meet these challenges once we acknowledge the centrality of the idea of a generic interest. Focusing on generic interests also illuminates the distinctive form of respect involved in directedness. (shrink)

Over the past 10 years, John Harris has made important contributions to thinking about distributive justice in health care. In his latest work, Harris controversially argues that clinicians should stop prioritising patients according to prognosis. He argues that the good or benefit of health care is providing each individual with an opportunity to live the best and longest life possible for him or her. I call this thesis, opportunism. For the purpose of distribution of resources in health care, Harris rejects (...) welfarism (the thesis that the good of health care is well-being) and argues that utilitarianism in general may lead to de facto discrimination against groups of people needing health care. I argue that well-being is a superior theory of the good of health care to Harris' opportunism. Harris' concerns about utilitarianism can be better addressed by: (i) relating justice more closely to reasons for action; (ii) by conceptualising the relationship between reasons for action and the value of the consequences of those actions as a plateau rather than scalar relationship. Justice can be understood as satisfying as many equally rational claims on resources as possible. The rationality of a person's claim on health resources turns on the strength of that person's reasons to promote certain health-related states of affairs. I argue that the strength of that reason does not track the expected value of that state of affairs in a fully scalar fashion. Rather a person can have most reason to promote some state of affairs, even though he or she could promote other more valuable states of affairs. Thus there can be equal reason for a distributor of public resources to save either of two people, even though one will have a better and more valuable life. This approach, while addressing many of Harris' concerns about utilitarianism, does not imply that doctors should give up prioritising patients according to prognosis altogether, but it does allow that patients with lower but reasonable prognosis should have a share of public resources. (shrink)

In intensive care, disputes sometimes arise when patients or surrogates strongly desire treatment, yet health professionals regard it as potentially inappropriate. While professional guidelines confirm that physicians are not always obliged to provide requested treatment, determining when treatment would be inappropriate is extremely challenging. One potential reason for refusing to provide a desired and potentially beneficial treatment is because (within the setting of limited resources) this would harm other patients. Elsewhere in public health systems, cost effectiveness analysis is sometimes used (...) to decide between different priorities for funding. In this paper, we explore whether cost-effectiveness could be used to determine the appropriateness of providing intensive care. We explore a set of treatment thresholds: the probability threshold (a minimum probability of survival for providing treatment), the cost threshold (a maximum cost of treatment), the duration threshold (the maximum duration of intensive care), and the quality threshold (a minimum quality of life). One common objection to cost-effectiveness analysis is that it might lead to rationing of life-saving treatment. The analysis in this paper might be used to inform debate about the implications of applying cost-effectiveness thresholds to clinical decisions around potentially inappropriate treatment. (shrink)

Current and future possibilities for enhancing human physical ability, cognition, mood, and lifespan raise the ethical question of whether we should enhance normal human capacities in these ways. This chapter offers such an account of enhancement. It begins by reviewing a number of suggested accounts of enhancement, and points to their shortcomings. The chapter then identifies two key senses of “enhancement”: functional enhancement, the enhancement of some capacity or power (e.g. vision, intelligence, health) and human enhancement, the enhancement of a (...) human being's life. The latter notion is the notion of enhancement most relevant to ethical debate. The chapter argues that it is best understood in welfarist terms. It illustrates this welfarist approach to enhancement by applying it to the case of cognitive enhancement. Unlike the sociological pragmatic and functional approaches, the welfarist account is inherently normative. It ties enhancement to the value of well‐being. (shrink)

In the case of Re M, summarised in the paper by Julian Sheather, Justice Baker faced the difficult task of weighing up objectively whether or not it was in Mâs best interests to withdraw artificial feeding and to let her die.1 The judge concluded that M was ârecognisably aliveâ, and that the advantages of continued life outweighed the disadvantages. He compared her minimally conscious state favourably to that of a persistent vegetative state .2 It was clear that artificial feeding (...) would have been withdrawn if she had been in a PVS , but because she was in fact minimally conscious, the judge decided that treatment must continue. But does it make sense to treat MCS differently from PVS in this way? Is it better to be minimally conscious than unconscious? Similar questions have been raised before.3 In 2006, scientists reported results of sophisticated neuroimaging studies which suggested that some patients in persistent vegetative state , long thought to be unaware, had evidence of minimal consciousness.4 The question then was on the moral significance of this level of consciousness, and whether the presence of such evidence meant that treatment such as artificial nutrition must be continued.5 ,6There are several potential reasons why the presence of minimal consciousness might warrant continuing life-sustaining treatment. The first is that patients in minimally conscious state might have a better prognosis than those who are in PVS. There are relatively few studies …. (shrink)

The idea that humans are by nature social and political animals can be traced back to Aristotle. More recently, it has also generated great interest and controversy in related disciplines such as anthropology, biology, psychology, neuroscience and even economics. What is it about humans that enabled them to construct a social reality of unrivalled complexity? Is there something distinctive about the human mind that explains how social lives are organised around conventions, norms, and institutions? The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of (...) the Social Mind is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. An international team of contributors present perspectives from diverse areas of research in philosophy, drawing on comparative and developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural economics. The thirty-two original chapters are divided into five parts: _The Evolution of Social Mind_: including the social intelligence hypothesis, co- evolution of culture and cognition, ethnic cognition, cooperation; _Developmental and Comparative Perspectives_: including primate and infant understanding of mind, shared intentionality, and moral cognition; _Mechanisms of the Moral Mind:_ including norm compliance, social emotion, and implicit attitudes; _Naturalistic Approaches to Shared and Collective Intentionality_: including joint action, team reasoning and group thinking, and social kinds; _Social Forms of Selfhood and Mindedness_: including moral identity, empathy and shared emotion, normativity and intentionality. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind _is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and sociology. (shrink)