Are learning processes selection processes? This paper takes a slightly modified version of the account of selection presented in Hull et al. (Behav Brain Sci 24:511–527, 2001) and asks whether it applies to learning processes. The answer is that although some learning processes are selectional, many are not. This has consequences for teleological theories of mental content. According to these theories, mental states have content in virtue of having proper functions, and they have proper functions in virtue of being the (...) products of selection processes. For some mental states, it is plausible that the relevant selection process is natural selection, but there are many for which it is not plausible. One response to this (due to David Papineau) is to suggest that the learning processes by which we acquire non-innate mental states are selection processes and can therefore confer proper functions on mental states. This paper considers two ways in which this response could be elaborated, and argues that neither of them succeed: the teleosemanticist cannot rely on the claim that learning processes are selection processes in order to justify the attribution of proper functions to beliefs. (shrink)

This article argues that there is a discrepancy between Jürgen Habermas's initial plea for critical and rational identities and his more recent glorification of the European model. Initially, Constitutional Patriotism could be apprehended as a critical standard for existing political practices. However, Habermas's recent political texts tend to lose all kind of reflexive distance in their apprehension of the European identity — which is presented as distinct and even superior to its counter-model, the US. Such a `Europatriotic' temptation should be (...) resisted. The `thick' European identity advocated by Habermas has no truly federative dimension and could undermine the unique normative potential of a political entity composed of distinct identities. Consequently, the article suggests an elucidation of liberal postnationalism with a view to explaining its refusal to tie Europe's legitimacy to an identification logic. (shrink)

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a process for managing construction project information in such a way as to provide a basis for enhanced decision-making and for collaboration in a construction supply chain. One impediment to the uptake of BIM is the limited interoperability of different BIM systems. To overcome this problem, a set of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) has been proposed as a standard for the construction industry. Building on IFC, the ifcOWL ontology was developed in order to facilitate representation (...) of building data in a consistent fashion across the Web by using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). This study presents a critical analysis of the ifcOWL ontology and of the associated interoperability issues. It shows how these issues can be resolved by using Basic Formal Ontology (ISO/IEC 21838-2) as top-level architecture. A set of competency questions is used as the basis for comparison of the original ifcOWL with the enhanced ontology, and the latter is used to align with a second ontology – the ontology for building intelligent environments (DOGONT) – in order to demonstrate the added value derived from BFO by showing how querying the enhanced ifcOWL yields useful additional information. (shrink)

The introduction of medical assistance in dying (MAID) in Quebec and Canada raises the question of extending this service to minors. The constant presence of nurses at the patient’s bedside leads them to receive requests related to MAID. The aim of this study is to explore the perceptions of nurses working in paediatric oncology services concerning the possibility for adolescents over 14 years of age requesting MAID. Six nurses working in paediatric oncology or palliative care or in direct contact with (...) adolescents at the end of their lives as part of their nursing work took part in an individual semi-directed interview. The results of this research highlight that: 1) nurses recognise their supportive role in the care of patients at the end of life; 2) most have a professional opinion in favour of the MAID for adults and distinguish this from their personal opinion; 3) they value the discussions around the MAID and are concerned about the establishment of criteria for it; and 4) long experience as a nurse leads to more concerns about the expansion of the MAID, but at the same time makes nurses more comfortable providing information about this subject. In light of these findings, academic and paediatric health care institutions need to recognise and evaluate the need for training nurses on MAID to better equip them to deal with such situations and thus better meet the needs of their patients. (shrink)

Michael Haneke's film Hidden ( Caché, 2005) raises questions about responsibility and guilt in the context of post-colonial inequities that are profoundly discomfiting for the viewer, framing a meditation on identity, consciousness and responsibility that is at once visceral and intellectual. On the reading presented here, this film makes visible and palpable some of the effects of the ' strange suppositions' about personal responsibility and memory that were first articulated by a philosopher who also felt called upon to justify colonialism: (...) John Locke. The perspective provided by the film casts light both on the unpleasant emotional resonances of Locke's theory of personal identity and points to the likely source of its structure in his celebrated theory of private property. (shrink)

, Derek Matravers defends a new version of the arousal theory of musical expressiveness. In this paper it is argued that for various reasons, including especially what the theory implies about the inappropriateness of certain kinds of response to music, we should reject Matravers's theory in favour of some form of cognitivism.

The completion of the human genome project in 2000 dramatically emphasized the imminent success of the genetic revolution. The ethical and social consequences of this scientific development are immense. From human reproduction to life-extending therapies, from the impact on gender and race to public health and public safety, there is scarcely a part of our lives left unaffected by the impact of the new genetics. A Companion to Genethics is the first substantial study of the multifaceted dimensions of the genetic (...) revolution and its philosophical, ethical, social, and political significance. It brings together the best and most influential contemporary writing about genethics. Newly commissioned essays from prominent figures in the current debate provide a wide-ranging and fascinating scholarly analysis of all the issues that arise from this explosive science. (shrink)

The concept of `the granny' is not uncommon in British media texts, in a range of stereotyped representations of older women and in (sometimes playful, sometimes serious) invocations of the grandmother role. `Granny parties' are one genre of recreational social event where young people dress up as grannies. In this paper I bring together data from the media and from an ethnographic study of granny parties in order to assess the age-political and ideological significance of `granny' in these very different (...) contexts. In both cases, representations and performances prove to be fashioned dialectically, in relation to normative assumptions about grannies as conservative, passive and out-dated characters. Despite the ludic frames of many representations, it isargued that the granny concept recycles restrictive ideological values for gendered ageing. (shrink)

After nearly three decades of scientific research, digital mental health (DMH) is having its moment. Millions of dollars of venture capital funding are entering this space (Shah and Berry 2021; Wan...

Book Information A Philosophy of Mass Art. A Philosophy of Mass Art Noël Carroll Oxford Clarendon Press 1998 x + 425 Paperback Aus.$45.00 By Noël Carroll. Clarendon Press. Oxford. Pp. x + 425. Paperback:Aus.$45.00.

Ratio Juris, Volume 34, Issue 2, Page 106-120, June 2021.

Standard agent and action-based approaches in computer ethics tend to have difficulty dealing with complex systems-level issues such as the digital divide and globalisation. This paper argues for a value-based agenda to complement traditional approaches in computer ethics, and that one value-based approach well-suited to technological domains can be found in capability theory. Capability approaches have recently become influential in a number of fields with an ethical or policy dimension, but have not so far been applied in computer ethics. The (...) paper introduces two major versions of the theory – those advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum – and argues that they offer potentially valuable conceptual tools for computer ethics. By developing a theory of value based on core human functionings and the capabilities (powers, freedoms) required to realise them, capability theory is shown to have a number of potential benefits that complement standard ethical theory, opening up new approaches to analysis and providing a framework that incorporates a justice as well as an ethics dimension. The underlying functionalism of capability theory is seen to be particularly appropriate to technology ethics, enabling the integration of normative and descriptive analysis of technology in terms of human needs and values. The paper concludes by considering some criticisms of the theory and directions for further development. (shrink)

In March 2010, a United States (U.S.) District Court held that isolated human genes are “products of nature”, and methods of analysis and comparison “abstract mental processes”, for which a U.S. patent cannot validly be granted. Its decision undermined U.S. patent granting practices, and widens the gap between U.S. and European law on what constitutes inherently patentable subject matter (“inventions”), as well as a proportionate patent grant.

The authors focus on the European Union both as a regional organization with distinctive norms and practices, and as a grouping of states that reflect specific individual traditions and views. The chapter describes two core paradigms: the national and the post‐national. The national paradigm is recognizably realist and state‐centric in approach. It suggests that the focus of external behaviour should be the promotion of order via traditional power‐political means and for traditional state‐based normative ends. The post‐national paradigm, however, reflects a (...) more cosmopolitan understanding of global society in which Europe's institutional and substantive understanding of justice questions can be reflected in its policies beyond EU borders. These propositions are tested in three issue areas. The authors conclude that while the EU may have the capacity to shape an order/justice agenda beyond its borders, its members have not yet agreed what that agenda should be. (shrink)

Nine schedules programmes for broadcast by free-to-air television stations. It creates Weekly Schedules of broadcast-related information, including “time and title” information.

This review article offers a European perspective on the pluralistic, principles-based model of intellectual property (IP) advanced by Robert Merges in his book Justifying Intellectual Property. After introducing Merges’s model and theory of IP with reference to IP theories generally, other pluralistic legal models, and patterns of judicial reasoning in the patent and copyright fields, the article argues that European jurisprudence offers broad support for Merges’s operational model of IP, while also challenging certain aspects of his wider analysis. They include (...) his ‘one size fits all’ foundational theory of IP, his account of key IP rules and practices, and his choice and conception of IP’s midlevel principles. Through this critique the article draws attention to the utilitarian bias of Merges’s model; a bias which undermines its pluralistic claims, in part by undermining Merges’s own foundational theory of IP. The result is to underline the limits of a regime unconcerned with its own normative basis, and the need for more rather than less discussion of IP theory, including more work of the type that Merges’s book undertakes. (shrink)

1. Any statutory definition of inherent patentability or other threshold exclusion from patentability should have a clear normative basis. In the case of inherent patentability, that basis should relate to the patent system’s aim of encouraging and rewarding inventive activity for the benefit of society.

L’exercice artistique suppose un rapport au temps spécifique : l’homme s’exerçant à son art répète, reprend, corrige ses gestes. Mais en va-t-il de même concernant la réception des œuvres : la perception du spectateur s’exerce-t-elle par répétition et variation des expériences esthétiques? L’objet de cet article est de montrer qu’il existe un type d’exercice dont le mécanisme repose plutôt sur la déstabilisation des habitudes de perception. À partir des réflexions valéryennes sur l’informe dans l’Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de (...) Vinci et Degas, Danse, Dessin, nous proposons de penser un exercice de la perception qui passe par la décomposition de ses mécanismes. Cette idée trouve sa réalisation dans des dispositifs artistiques labyrinthiques tels que l’exposition Contact d’Olafur Eliasson (Fondation Louis Vuitton, 2014-2015) qui, en perturbant les échelles d’espace et de temps, oblige le récepteur à produire consciemment le travail de cohérence de la synthèse perceptive. (shrink)

L’exercice artistique suppose un rapport au temps spécifique : l’homme s’exerçant à son art répète, reprend, corrige ses gestes. Mais en va-t-il de même concernant la réception des œuvres : la perception du spectateur s’exerce-t-elle par répétition et variation des expériences esthétiques? L’objet de cet article est de montrer qu’il existe un type d’exercice dont le mécanisme repose plutôt sur la déstabilisation des habitudes de perception. À partir des réflexions valéryennes sur l’informe dans l’_Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de (...) Vinci_ et _Degas, Danse, Dessin_, nous proposons de penser un exercice de la perception qui passe par la décomposition de ses mécanismes. Cette idée trouve sa réalisation dans des dispositifs artistiques labyrinthiques tels que l’exposition _Contact_ d’Olafur Eliasson qui, en perturbant les échelles d’espace et de temps, oblige le récepteur à produire consciemment le travail de cohérence de la synthèse perceptive. (shrink)

To have the burden of proof is to be rationally required to argue for or provide evidence for your position. To have a heavier burden than an opponent is to be rationally required to provide better evidence or better arguments than they are required to provide. Many commentators suggest that differential or uneven distribution of the burden of proof is ubiquitous. In reasoned discourse, the idea goes, it is almost always the case that one party must prove the claim at (...) issue to prevent the opposing view winning by default. The following passage is typical of the sort of thing one finds in critical thinking textbooks. (shrink)

Achieving genuine engagement and understanding between communities with radically divergent worldviews is challenging. If there is no common ground on which to stand and have a discussion, the likely outcomes of an apparent intercultural disagreement are a stalemate, or the (sometimes colonialist) imposition of a single worldview, or a kind of relativistic tolerance that falls short of genuine engagement. In this paper, we suggest a way forward that takes as its starting point the philosophical discussion of deep disagreement, using the (...) example of taniwha (powerful water beings that must be treated with respect) to outline a strategy for building intercultural understanding and enabling constructive intercultural dialogue. (shrink)

With an upsurge of interest and investment in new legal technologies comes consideration of who is making them and whether these individuals or entities should be subject to regulation. This article looks at how such regulation might function in light of the existing regulatory regimes governing lawyers and the capacities of legal regulators. It considers the ramifications both of maintaining the existing system, or in extending some form of regulation to these new entrants to the legal services market.

We describe a class of semantic extensive entailment game with algorithmic players, related to game-theoretic semantics, and generalized to classical first-order semantic entailment. Players have preferences for parsimonious spending of computational resources, and compute partial strategies, under qualitative uncertainty about future histories. We prove the existence of local preferences for moves, and strategic fixpoints, that allow to map eeg game-tree to the building rules and closure rules of Smullyan's semantic tableaux. We also exhibit a strategy profile that solves the fixpoint (...) selection problem, and can be mapped to systematic constructions of semantic trees, yielding a completeness result by translation. We conclude on possible generalizations of our games. (shrink)

ABSTRACTProfessional associations, once the bodies responsible for professional self-regulation, have lost regulatory power. Some have entered into co-regulatory arrangements with state or independ...

ObjectiveHead and neck cancer treatments are known to significantly affect functionality and appearance, leading to an increased risk for body image disturbances. Yet, few longitudinal studies exist to examine body image in these patients. Based on a conceptual model, the current study aimed to determine, in patients newly diagnosed with HNC: the prevalence, level, and course of body image concerns; correlates of upon cancer diagnosis body image concerns; predictors of immediate post-treatment body image concerns; and association between body image concerns (...) and levels of anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, support, and alcohol and drug misuse.MethodsTwo hundred and twenty-three, newly diagnosed with a primary HNC were assessed using structured clinical interviews and psychometric measures at three, and 6 months after diagnosis. Primary outcome was 3-month, as it was most salient to body image disturbance. Multiple linear regression analyses were conducted on the potential body image predictors, based on the model.ResultsSixty-eight percent of patients with HNC presented some level of body image concerns. Body image concerns at baseline and post-treatment were significantly related and significantly increased from pre- to post-treatment. Immediately post-treatment, 89% presented some level of body image concerns. Correlates of body image concerns in patients with HNC at baseline included: physical symptom burden, difficulties with communication and eating, coping with the cancer diagnosis using denial, suicidal ideation, and having had a past anxiety diagnosis. When controlling for sociodemographic and medical variables, body image concerns in patients with HNC in the immediate post-treatment were predicted by: baseline body image, physical symptom burden, and neuroticism.ConclusionThis longitudinal study helps identify patients more susceptible to experience body image disturbance following head and neck cancer. Clinicians ought to pay special attention to body image concerns upon cancer diagnosis, physical symptom burden, and neuroticism, and may want to target these factors in future preventive interventions. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the prospects for an account of good argument that takes the character of the arguer into consideration. We conclude that although there is much to be gained by identifying the virtues of the good arguer and by considering the ways in which these virtues can be developed in ourselves and in others, virtue argumentation theory does not offer a plausible alternative definition of good argument.

Developing and implementing a meaningful code of conduct by managers or consultants may require a change in orientation that modifies the way these precepts are determined. The position advocated herein is for a different approach to understanding and organizing the guiding parameters of the firm that requires individual reflection and empowerment of the entire organization to advance their shared values. The processes involved are discussed using four discrete stages that move from the personal to the work team and to the (...) unit to the full company, followed by the board of directors’ evaluation. The hoped-for end product is dynamic, employee-driven, codes of conduct that recognize the systemic and far-reaching impact of organizational activities across internal and external stakeholders. Operational details for and some issues associated with its implementation are also provided. (shrink)

Instructions in Wason’s Selection Task underdetermine empirical subjects’ representation of the underlying problem, and its admissible solutions. We model the Selection Task as an interrogative learning problem, and reasoning to solutions as: selection of a representation of the problem; and: strategic planning from that representation. We argue that recovering Wason’s ‘normative’ selection is possible only if both stages are constrained further than they are by Wason’s formulation. We conclude comparing our model with other explanatory models, w.r.t. to empirical adequacy, and (...) modeling of bounded rationality. (shrink)

The Barth–Krabbe–Hintikka–Hintikka Problem, independently raised by Barth and Krabbe and Hintikka and Hintikka Sherlock Holmes confronts modern logic: Toward a theory of information-seeking through questioning. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1983), is the problem of characterizing the strategic reasoning of the players of dialogical logic and game-theoretic semantics games from rational preferences rather than rules. We solve the problem by providing a set of preferences for players with bounded rationality and specifying strategic inferences from those preferences, for a variant of logical (...) dialogues. This solution is generalized to both game-theoretic semantics and orthodox dialogical logic. (shrink)

Millikan and Her Critics offers a unique critical discussion of Ruth Millikan's highly regarded, influential, and systematic contributions to philosophy of mind and language, philosophy of biology, epistemology, and metaphysics. These newly written contributions present discussion from some of the most important philosophers in the field today and include replies from Millikan herself.