This interview with N. Katherine Hayles, one of the foremost theorists of the posthuman, explores the concerns that led to her seminal book How We Became Posthuman, the key arguments expounded in that book, and the changes in technology and culture in the ten years since its publication. The discussion ranges across the relationships between literature and science; the trans-disciplinary project of developing a methodology appropriate to their intersection; the history of cybernetics in its cultural and political context ; (...) the changed role for psychoanalysis in the technoscientific age; and the altering forms of mediated ‘embodiment’ in the posthuman context. (shrink)

An essay review of two books about Kuhn and Kuhnian ideas.

Social groups, including racial and gender groups and teams and committees, seem to play an important role in our world. This article examines key metaphysical questions regarding groups. I examine answers to the question ‘Do groups exist?’ I argue that worries about puzzles of composition, motivations to accept methodological individualism, and a rejection of Racialism support a negative answer to the question. An affirmative answer is supported by arguments that groups are efficacious, indispensible to our best theories, and accepted given (...) common sense. Then, I turn to an examination of the features of social groups. I argue that social groups can be divided into two sorts. Groups of Type 1 are organized social groups like courts and clubs. Groups of Type 2 are groups like Blacks, women, and lesbians. While groups of both sorts have some features in common, they also have marked differences in features. Finally, I turn to views of the nature of social groups. I argue that the difference in features provides evidence that social groups do not have a uniform nature. Teams and committees are structured wholes, while race and gender groups are social kinds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wilhelm Griesinger: Psychiatry between Philosophy and PraxisKatherine Arens (bio)AbstractThis essay discusses Wilhelm Griesinger’s seminal work on mental illness, Mental Pathology and Therapeutics (1867, trans. 1882), in the context of transcendental idealism, as an outgrowth of the work of Kant, Herbart, and Hegel. Griesinger drew on an adaptation of Hegel’s dialectical model of history and science to offer both a new way to interpret mental illness as a product of (...) an individual’s long-term interactions with both nature and culture and a new norm for therapeutic practice based on the patient’s role in his community and history.Mental Pathology and Therapeutics rests on Griesinger’s adaptation of the Hegelian dialectic to the context of pragmatic science, first by adopting its model of the mind, then by describing the etiology of mental disease and a taxonomy of its forms. Griesinger’s work thus stands in a largely unacknowledged tradition alive as late as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.KeywordsGriesinger, history of psychiatry/psychology, idealism, Hegel, dialecticIn the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Griesinger (1817–68) emerged as a leader in a range of fields: modern-day psychiatric clinical practice, neuropathology, and diagnostics of mental diseases. 1 Griesinger was a theoretician, a clinician, a textbook author, and the founding editor of major professional organs in his field during the political and social ferment in the German-speaking world that allowed new, more socially responsible institutional practices to be considered by intellectual communities. As a consequence of 1849 German civil reforms, theory and practice became mutually enlightening, actually allowing Griesinger to implement his theories into concrete institutional reforms in the German mental health system.Wilhelm Griesinger’s education and career were in many ways typical for his generation. He enrolled at the University of Tübingen in 1834 as a medical student; there, he became politically active (as a member of a forbidden fraternity), and, like many of his contemporaries, became familiar with Hegelian philosophy. After holding several private positions, he was appointed an associate professor (ausserordentlicher Professor) for pathology, “materia medica” and history of medicine at Tübingen in 1847. In 1848, he was called to Kiel; in 1850, to Egypt. Tübingen reappointed him as a full professor for clinical medicine and head of the university clinic in 1854. By 1860, he had moved to Zurich in a professorship for the medical clinic, where, starting in 1863, he was a key person in the planning of a new clinic for mental diseases—the Burghölzli, where Jung later worked. By 1865, he went to Berlin, as director of the Charité (mental institution), among other positions, and he wrote extensively about reform in asylum practice until his premature death in 1868.To a degree, the eminence of this career is contradicted today by his reputation. Contemporary wisdom describes Griesinger as a synthesizer [End Page 147] rather than an innovator, a man who mixed medical psychology with psychology and psychiatric practice, allowing neurology to take a major role in the treatment of mental disease. 2 In one version, Griesinger simply pulled the clinic and the laboratory together, and so bridged Romanticism (i.e., speculative natural philosophy) and materialism (i.e., empirical science) while failing to effect crucial modern reforms. 3 In other descriptions, Griesinger is identified as an activist (Doerner 1981), a key player in the debates between the Hegelian left and right about the reformulation of public institutions (cf. Verwey 1985), 4 or a typical (but effective) member of the intellectual elite of his age. 5 None of these options explains the attractive or threatening aspects of his clinical practice, or suggests why a psychiatrist of his rank could have been so thoroughly refuted after his death. 6The discussion which follows will try to remedy this lack by setting Griesinger’s approach to mental illness in the context of a transformation of a model from philosophy into medical practice. Griesinger’s scientific context strongly combined philosophical theorizing and empirical practice, a synthesis that later generations tended to denigrate as a “speculative” approach to a branch of medicine that required a more empirical foundation. Drawing on an adaptation of Hegel’s dialectical model of history and... (shrink)

Learn to be responsible with Grover and your Sesame Street friends! Young readers will discover how to be a good helper to both themselves and those around them. Now in Spanish!

When used clinically, psychedelics may appear unusual or even unique when compared to more familiar or long-standing medical interventions, prompting some to suggest that the ethical issues raised may likewise be exceptional. If that is correct, then perhaps psychedelics should be treated differently from other medical substances: for example, by being subjected to different ethical or evidentiary standards. Alternatively, it may be that psychedelics have more in common with various existing medical interventions than first meets the eye. We argue in (...) favor of the latter position, drawing on parallels from earlier debates around genetic exceptionalism in bioethics. We suggest there are risks to adopting a stance of “psychedelic ethical exceptionalism,” and propose that consistent ethical rules and evidentiary standards should be applied across all relevant areas of clinical medicine. Importantly, this does not preclude the possibility that changes to existing standards should be made; but if so, this should not be justified by appealing to the alleged uniqueness of psychedelics. (shrink)

This paper explores varieties of scientific structuralism. Central to our investigation is the notion of `shared structure'. We begin with a description of mathematical structuralism and use this to point out analogies and disanalogies with scientific structuralism. Our particular focus is the semantic structuralist's attempt to use the notion of shared structure to account for the theory-world connection, this use being crucially important to both the contemporary structural empiricist and realist. We show why minimal scientific structuralism is, at the very (...) least, a powerful methodological standpoint. Our investigation also makes explicit what more must be added to this minimal structuralist position in order to address the theory-world connection, namely, an account of representation. (shrink)

Stereotypes sometimes lead us to make poor judgements of other people, but they also have the potential to facilitate quick, efficient, and accurate judgements. How can we discern whether any individual act of stereotyping will have the positive or negative effect? How Stereotypes Deceive Us addresses this question. It identifies various factors that determine whether or not the application of a stereotype to an individual in a specific context will facilitate or impede correct judgements and perceptions of the individual. It (...) challenges the thought that stereotyping only and always impedes correct judgement when the stereotypes that are applied are inaccurate, failing to reflect social realities. It argues instead that stereotypes that reflect social realities can lead to misperceptions and misjudgements, and that inaccurate but egalitarian social attitudes can therefore facilitate correct judgements and accurate perceptions. The arguments presented in this book have important implications for those who might engage in stereotyping and those who are at risk of being stereotyped. They have implications for those who work in healthcare and those who have mental health conditions. How Stereotypes Deceive Us provides a new conceptual framework-evaluative dispositionalism-that captures the epistemic faults of stereotypes and stereotyping, providing conceptual resources that can be used to improve our own thinking by avoiding the pitfalls of stereotyping, and to challenge other people's stereotyping where it is likely to lead to misperception and misjudgement. (shrink)

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder is a multifaceted disability, characterized not only by brain- and body-based challenges, but also high rates of environmental adversity, lifelong difficulties with daily living, and distinct sociocultural considerations. FASD is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disabilities in the Western world and associated with significant social and economic costs. It is important to understand the complexities of FASD and the ways in which FASD requires unique consideration in research, practice, and policy. In this article, we discuss (...) our perspectives on factors that distinguish FASD from other disabilities in terms of complexity, co-occurrence, and magnitude. We provide an overview of select literature related to FASD as a socially rooted disability with intergenerational impacts and multiple layers of stigma. These social issues are intertwined with notable experiences of adversity across the lifespan and high rates of co-occurring health concerns for individuals with FASD, all of which present unique challenges for individuals, caregivers, families, service providers, and policy makers. Understanding these factors is the first step in developing and implementing specialized initiatives in support of positive outcomes for individuals with FASD and their families. Future directions are proposed for advancing research, practice, and policy, and responding to the unique complexities of FASD. (shrink)

In the present paper, we will show that, in their complementary approaches to indirect communication, Erickson and Kierkegaard have something important to offer to one another's theories. While Kierkegaard developed a framework by which Erickson can be more profoundly understood, Erickson's accounts offer clinical cases which support what Kierkegaard described. This mutual trade of benefits not only broadens and deepens the notion of indirect communication, but also alerts us to the fact that it was recognized and developed in two relatively (...) independent disciplines, almost a hundred years apart! This parallel implies that indirect communication is, at the very least, a phenomenon worth investigating from both perspectives. 2012 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

There are moments when things suddenly seem strange - objects in the world lose their meaning, we feel like strangers to ourselves, or human existence itself strikes us as bizarre and unintelligible. Through a detailed philosophical investigation of Heidegger's concept of uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit), Katherine Withy explores what such experiences reveal about us. She argues that while others (such as Freud, in his seminal psychoanalytic essay, 'The Uncanny') take uncanniness to be an affective quality of strangeness or eeriness, Heidegger uses (...) the concept to go beyond feeling uncanny to reach the ground of this feeling in our being uncanny. -/- "Heidegger on Being Uncanny" answers those who wonder whether human existence is fundamentally strange to itself by showing that we can be what we are only if we do not fully understand what it is to be us. This fundamental finitude in our self-understanding is our uncanniness. In this first dedicated interpretation of Heidegger's uncanniness, Withy tracks this concept from his early analyses of angst through his later interpretations of the choral ode from Sophocles's Antigone. Her interpretation uncovers a novel and robust continuity in Heidegger's thought and in his vision of the human being as uncanny, and it points the way toward what it is to live well as an uncanny human being. (shrink)

Although the principle of fair subject selection is a widely recognized requirement of ethical clinical research, it often yields conflicting imperatives, thus raising major ethical dilemmas regarding participant selection. In this paper, we diagnose the source of this problem, arguing that the principle of fair subject selection is best understood as a bundle of four distinct sub-principles, each with normative force and each yielding distinct imperatives: (1) fair inclusion; (2) fair burden sharing; (3) fair opportunity; and (4) fair distribution of (...) third-party risks. We first map out these distinct sub-principles, and then identify the ways in which they yield conflicting imperatives for the design of inclusion and exclusion criteria, and the recruitment of participants. We then offer guidance for how decision makers should navigate these conflicting imperatives to ensure that participants are selected fairly. (shrink)

What is Heidegger talking about when he says that being conceals itself? This is the first study to systematically address that question. Katherine Withy analyses texts from across Heidegger's philosophical career and sorts the various phenomena of concealing and concealment that Heideggerdiscusses into a highly-structured taxonomy. The taxonomy clarifies the relationships and differences between such phenomena as lethe, the nothing, earth, excess, the backgrounding of the world, and un-truth, as well as speaking falsely, talking idly, secrets, mysteries, seeming, andinauthentic (...) discovering. But in relating and differentiating these phenomena, the taxonomy shows that none of them is the self-concealing of being.Having established what the self-concealing of being is not, Withy establishes what it is. She argues that being conceals itself in that it shows up to us as lacking the sorts of contrast cases that render entities determinate and intelligible. This novel and powerful interpretation of theself-concealing of being explains why the secondary literature to date has discussed it in vague and metaphorical terms, as well as why Heidegger tends to collapse being's self-concealing into the concealment of lethe. Withy's interpretation is both a clarification of and a corrective to Heidegger'snotoriously difficult and sometimes misleading discussions of being as self-concealing. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there is a notion of 'counterfactual success' which stands to knowledge how as true belief stands to propositional knowledge. (I attempt to avoid the question of whether knowledge how is a type of propositional knowledge.).

Cross-domain representations provide the foundation for language and are not its unique product. Modularity of a limited kind is confined to early infancy in humans and is succeeded by domain-general thinking and speaking. Representational language becomes accessible to the cognitive system during the preschool years as a supplement to experientially based conceptual processing, resulting in a dual-process system.

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of (...) people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

When William of Ockham lectured on Lombard's "Sentences" in 1317-1319, he articulated a new theory of knowledge.

I outline a number of parallels between trust and distrust, emphasising the significance of situations in which both trust and distrust would be an imposition upon the (dis)trustee. I develop an account of both trust and distrust in terms of commitment, and argue that this enables us to understand the nature of trustworthiness. Note that this article is available open access on the journal website.

Material objects extend through space by having different spatial parts in different places. But how do they persist through time? According to some philosophers, things have temporal parts as well as spatial parts: accepting this is supposed to help us solve a whole bunch of metaphysical problems, and keep our philosophy in line with modern physics. Other philosophers disagree, arguing that neither metaphysics nor physics give us good reason to believe in temporal parts.

In this paper I argue for a view of groups, things like teams, committees, clubs and courts. I begin by examining features all groups seem to share. I formulate a list of six features of groups that serve as criteria any adequate theory of groups must capture. Next, I examine four of the most prominent views of groups currently on offer—that groups are non-singular pluralities, fusions, aggregates and sets. I argue that each fails to capture one or more of the (...) criteria. Last, I develop a view of groups as realizations of structures. The view has two components. First, groups are entities with structure. Second, since groups are concreta, they exist only when a group structure is realized. A structure is realized when each of its functionally defined nodes or places are occupied. I show how such a view captures the six criteria for groups, which no other view of groups adequately does, while offering a substantive answer to the question, “What are groups?”. (shrink)

One reason that fake news and other objectionable views gain traction is that they often come to us in the form of testimony from those in our immediate social circles – from those we trust. A language around this phenomenon has developed which describes social epistemic structures in terms of ‘epistemic bubbles’ and ‘epistemic echo chambers’. These concepts involve the exclusion of external evidence in various ways. While these concepts help us see the ways that evidence is socially filtered, it (...) doesn’t help us understand the social functions that these structures play, which limits our ability to intervene on them. In this paper, I introduce a new concept – that of the epistemic bunker. This concept helps us better account for a central feature of the phenomenon, which is that exclusionary social epistemic structures are often constructed to offer their members safety, either actual or perceived. Recognising this allows us to develop better strategies to mitigate their negative effects. (shrink)

This article explores the relationship between pragmatic encroachment and epistemic permissiveness. If the suggestion that all epistemic notions are interest-relative is viable , then it seems that a certain species of epistemic permissivism must be viable as well. For, if all epistemic notions are interest relative then, sometimes, parties in paradigmatic cases of shared evidence can be maximally rational in forming competing basic doxastic attitudes towards the same proposition. However, I argue that this total pragmatic encroachment is not tenable, and, (...) thus, epistemic permissivism cannot be vindicated in this way. (shrink)

Some language encourages essentialist thinking. While philosophers have largely focused on generics and essentialism, I argue that nouns as a category are poised to refer to kinds and to promote representational essentializing. Our psychological propensity to essentialize when nouns are used reveals a limitation for anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Even ameliorated nouns can continue to underpin essentialist thinking. I conclude by arguing that representational essentialism does not doom anti-essentialist ameliorative projects. Rather it reveals that would-be ameliorators ought to attend to the (...) propensities for our representational devices to essentialize and to the complex relationship between essentialism and prejudice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lessons Learned in Room 208Katherine BakkeAuthor's Note. Parts of this story were previously shared here: https://theinterstitium.home.blog/2020/06/01/journeying-to-a-time-of-death/I remember the first time I saw a patient die. I was a medical student on my surgery rotation. Pushed to the sidelines of the resuscitation bay while the trauma team tended to a teenager injured in a motorcycle crash, my attention was drawn to the drama unfolding next door. There, a team of (...) physicians performed CPR on a man. While a curtain and a comforting social worker separated the patient's wife and daughter from the horrors of the resuscitation, I had a full view of everything. I watched as each chest compression threw the man's belly upward, like he had a bad bout of the hiccups. I watched as each pulse check yielded no return of blood flow. I watched as his wife and daughter clenched their hands in prayer, muttering, "Please, please, please." Then, the physician called the code. The instant the doctor pronounced him dead, I felt the presence of one less person in the room. I was surprised by how visceral this departure felt. It seemed like a sacred moment, a small proof that our bodies do indeed house our souls.I started paying close attention to how surgeons talked about death. Discussions of death seemed frequent in windowless work rooms amongst doctors, or in hushed conversations at the nurses station. Discussions of death were notably absent when talking with patients or their families. Sometimes, it seemed that the sicker the patient, the less likely their possible death was acknowledged. I [End Page E12] was fascinated by how challenging it was to speak honestly about our inevitable mortality. I began reading everything I could find about discussing end-of-life issues. I even conducted and published a systematic review on the subject. When it came time for me to begin my own surgical training, I carried with me a naive confidence, eager to engage in these conversations at the bedside.My time finally came eight months into my intern year. I was working in the intensive care unit and was "up" for the next admission. I got a call from the emergency department, saying a 68-year-old woman needed an ICU bed for a heart failure exacerbation. Her breathing was labored. They had given her IV Lasix, but I was told she might need BiPAP or other respiratory support while her heart failure was managed.Ten minutes later, she rolled into Room 208, and the ICU nurses started their work transferring her from the stretcher to the bed, applying EKG leads, a blood pressure cuff, and a pulse oximeter. I stood at the foot of the bed and quickly realized I had never taken care of a patient so ill. Her head drooped to her chest, every ounce of energy used to draw her next breath. She could only mumble indiscernible words; she hardly had the energy to open her eyes. I glanced at the monitor displaying her vitals: heart rate 120, SpO2 84%, BP 70/40. A foley catheter hung at the bedside, and no urine was present. "They gave her Lasix downstairs, right?" I asked the nurse. We both looked at the foley bag, and then at each other. I glanced at the patient's lips, which were dry and cracked. I pinched the skin at the top of the patient's hand, and it tented. I was pleased with my exam skills, and my ability to deduce that she was dehydrated. "This isn't heart failure," I thought, as I considered other reasons for her illness. The nurse awoke me from my self-congratulating stupor and reminded me sternly, "We need orders."The situation rapidly became more critical. The patient's arterial blood gas (ABG) showed a pattern of impending respiratory failure. Her daughters arrived at the bedside; one was wearing hospital scrubs. I introduced myself to them as the resident doctor caring for their mom. I asked if the daughter wearing scrubs had a healthcare background, foolishly thinking that doing so would build rapport. She curtly replied, "I... (shrink)

The geometrical results included in De Corpore were intended to demonstrate the power of Hobbes’s approach to philosophy and cement his standing as a mathematician. They were promptly refuted, making his geometry an object of derision. I defend Hobbes’s mathematical program by showing that it addressed important needs and that similar ideas formed the basis of Newton’s calculus. In closing, I consider how placing Hobbes’s geometrical doctrine in its historical setting can further our understanding of his philosophy.

This paper analyzes aesthetic courage, a virtue directed towards aesthetic objects when subjects are asked to confront content that is psychologically or socially risky. I examine aesthetic courage to explore how it plays a role in a virtue theoretic account of the good life. I contend that the virtue theoretic concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, plays a strong role in guiding the virtuous agent to make decisions about the course of action that promotes her good life. The concept of (...) phronesis in service of the good life acts as the foundation for my concept of aesthetic courage. I analyze several examples of aesthetic courage, including the controversy surrounding the contemplative garden at Stanford University in honor of Chanel Miller and other survivors of sexual assault. (shrink)

What is epistemic self-trust? There is a tension in the way in which prominent accounts answer this question. Many construe epistemic trust in oneself as no more than reliance on our sub-personal cognitive faculties. Yet many accounts – often the same ones – construe epistemic trust in others as a normatively laden attitude directed at persons whom we expect to care about our epistemic needs. Is epistemic self-trust really so different from epistemic trust in others? I argue that it is (...) not. We certainly do rely on our cognitive faculties to achieve epistemic ends; but I argue that we also have the normatively rich sort of epistemic trust in ourselves. Moreover, there is a theoretical need for this normatively rich notion of epistemic self-trust: positing it yields the best account of how we secure important epistemic goods, including knowledge and recognition as knowers. I argue this by giving an account of epistemic trust in others and showing that it can be generalized to epistemic trust in oneself. (shrink)

Symmetry considerations dominate modern fundamental physics, both in quantum theory and in relativity. Philosophers are now beginning to devote increasing attention to such issues as the significance of gauge symmetry, quantum particle identity in the light of permutation symmetry, how to make sense of parity violation, the role of symmetry breaking, the empirical status of symmetry principles, and so forth. These issues relate directly to traditional problems in the philosophy of science, including the status of the laws of nature, the (...) relationships between mathematics, physical theory, and the world, and the extent to which mathematics suggests new physics.This entry begins with a brief description of the historical roots and emergence of the concept of symmetry that is at work in modern science. It then turns to the application of this concept to physics, distinguishing between two different uses of symmetry: symmetry principles versus symmetry arguments. It mentions the different varieties of physical symmetries, outlining the ways in which they were introduced into physics. Then, stepping back from the details of the various symmetries, it makes some remarks of a general nature concerning the status and significance of symmetries in physics. (shrink)

In his Material Beings, Peter van Inwagen distinguishes two questions about parthood. What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for some things jointly to compose a whole? What are the conditions necessary and sufficient for a thing to have proper parts? The first of these, the Special Composition Question (SCQ), has been widely discussed, and David Lewis has argued that an important constraint on any answer to the SCQ is that it should not permit borderline cases of composition. This is (...) a far-reaching claim, since many plausible-seeming accounts of composition do permit borderline cases. Ned Markosian has recently directed our attention to the second, the neglected Inverse Special Composition Question (ISCQ). I will argue that those who accept Lewis’s constraint on answers to the SCQ should accept an analogous constraint on answers to the ISCQ, and I will discuss the effects of such a constraint. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, such as God or a religious community? Doxastic partialists say that it is. Some hold that it is good, from the viewpoint of faith, to form positive beliefs about the object of your faith even when your evidence favours negative ones. Others try to maintain respect for evidence by appealing to a highly permissive epistemology. I argue against both forms of doxastic partiality, on the grounds that (...) they foster an epistemically problematic noetic entrenchment. I instead defend evidentialism—the view that it is good to strive for true beliefs about the object of your faith, be they positive or negative, given relatively stringent evidential norms. I address the objection that evidentialism fosters disloyalty to the other party, not least because it risks losing your faith altogether. What emerges are not just epistemic norms for beliefs about religious matters, but an evidentialist account of what makes for good faith itself. (shrink)

: John Haugeland's distinctive approach to Heidegger's ontology rests on taking scientific explanation to be a paradigmatic case of understanding the being of entities. I argue that this paradigm, and the more general account that Haugeland develops from it, misses a crucial component of Heidegger's picture: the dynamic character of being. While this dimension of being first comes to the fore after Being and Time, it should have been present all along. Its absence grounds Heidegger's persistent confusion about whether world (...) is an entity, as well as problems that both Haugeland's Heidegger and Heidegger's Plato run into with the ontological difference. Retrieving the dynamic character of being reveals the proper object of Heidegger's fundamental ontology as well as a distinctive feature of his metaphysics of normativity, which is all but impossible to see if we grasp Heidegger's account through the special case of scientific explanation—at least as usually understood. (shrink)

Roughly speaking, perdurantism is the view that ordinary objects persist through time by having temporal parts, whilst endurantism is the view that they persist by being wholly present at different times. (Speaking less roughly will be important later.) It is often thought that perdurantists have an advantage over endurantists when dealing with objects which appear to coincide temporarily: lumps, statues, cats, tail-complements, bisected brains, repaired ships, and the like. Some cases – personal fission, for example – seem to involve temporary (...) coincidence between objects of the same kind. Other cases – a cat and its flesh, a statue and its lump – seem to involve objects of different kinds. (shrink)

Much of what we learn from talking and listening does not qualify as testimonial knowledge: we can learn a great deal from other people without simply accepting what they say as being true. In this article, I examine the ways in which we acquire skills or knowledge how from our interactions with other people, and I discuss whether there is a useful notion of testimonial knowledge how.Keywords: Knowledge how; Practical knowledge; Tacit knowledge; Testimony; Skills; Assertion.

If you love someone, is it good to believe better of her than epistemic norms allow? The partiality view says that it is: love, on this view, issues norms of belief that clash with epistemic norms. The partiality view is supposedly supported by an analogy between beliefs and actions, by the phenomenology of love, and by the idea that love commits us to the loved one’s good character. I argue that the partiality view is false, and defend what I call (...) the epistemic view. On the epistemic view, love also issues norms of belief. But these say simply that you should adhere to epistemic norms in forming and maintaining beliefs about loved ones. I offer two arguments for the epistemic view. The first appeals to the emotional responses of love, which, when sensitive to what the loved one is really like, can make love great and be morally transformative. The second is a new argument for why caring for a loved one requires true beliefs about him. We see that there may be some boundaries, such as stuffy traditions, that love is right to defy, but that epistemic boundaries are not among them. (shrink)

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has created a quality attestation process for clinical ethics consultants; the pilot phase of reviewing portfolios has begun. One aspect of the QA process which is particularly challenging is assessing the interpersonal skills of individual clinical ethics consultants. We propose that using case simulation to evaluate clinical ethics consultants is an approach that can meet this need provided clear standards for assessment are identified. To this end, we developed the Assessing Clinical Ethics Skills (...) tool, which identifies and specifies specific behaviors that a clinical ethics consultant should demonstrate in an ethics case simulation. The aim is for the clinical ethics consultant or student to use a videotaped case simulation, along with the ACES tool scored by a trained rater, to demonstrate their competence as part of their QA portfolio. The development and piloting of the tool is described. (shrink)

Biomedical research is increasingly globalized with ever more research conducted in low and middle-income countries. This trend raises a host of ethical concerns and critiques. While community engagement has been proposed as an ethically important practice for global biomedical research, there is no agreement about what these practices contribute to the ethics of research, or when they are needed.

What kind of entity is a committee, a book group or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings amongst their parts. So the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago, but fell out of favour following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. But recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of (...) parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done, and why we should bother. (shrink)

Recently several philosophers have argued that racial, gender, and other social generic generalizations should be avoided given their propensity to promote essentialist thinking, obscure the social nature of categories, and contribute to oppression. Here I argue that a general prohibition against social generics goes too far. Given that the truth of many generics require regularities or systematic rather than mere accidental correlations, they are our best means for describing structural forms of violence and discrimination. Moreover, their accuracy, their persistence in (...) the face of counterexamples, and features of the contemporary socio-political context make generics useful linguistic tools in social justice projects. (shrink)

Predicate nominals (e.g., “is a female”) seem to label or categorize their subjects, while their adjectival correlates (e.g., “is female”) merely attribute a property. Predicate nominals also elicit essentializing inferential judgments about inductive potential and stable explanatory membership. Data from psychology and semantics support that this distinction is robust and productive. I argue that while the difference between predicate nominals and predicate adjectives is elided by standard semantic theories, it ought not be. I then develop and defend a psychologically motivated (...) semantic account on which predicate nominals attribute kind membership and trigger a presupposition that underpins our essentialist judgments. (shrink)

If the property _being a methane molecule_ is a universal, then it is a structural universal: objects instantiate _being a methane molecule_ just in case they have the right sorts of proper parts arranged in the right sort of way. Lewis argued that there can be no satisfactory account of structural universals; in this paper I provide a satisfactory account.

Closest-continuer or best-candidate accounts of persistence seem deeply unsatisfactory, but it’s hard to say why. The standard criticism is that such accounts violate the ‘only a and b’ rule, but this criticism merely highlights a feature of the accounts without explaining why the feature is unacceptable. Another concern is that such accounts violate some principle about the supervenience of persistence facts upon local or intrinsic facts. But, again, we do not seem to have an independent justification for this supervenience claim. (...) Instead, I argue that closest continuer accounts are committed to unexplained correlations between distinct existences, and that this is their fundamental flaw. We can have independent justification for rejecting such correlations, but what the justification is depends upon much broader issues in ontology. There is no one-size-fits all objection to closest-continuer accounts of persistence. (shrink)

Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be epistemically beneficial for them too.

People are described as suffering from impostor syndrome when they feel that their external markers of success are unwarranted, and fear being revealed as a fraud. Impostor syndrome is commonly framed as a troubling individual pathology, to be overcome through self-help strategies or therapy. But in many situations an individual’s impostor attitudes can be epistemically justified, even if they are factually mistaken: hostile social environments can create epistemic obstacles to self-knowledge. The concept of impostor syndrome prevalent in popular culture needs (...) greater critical scrutiny, as does its source, the concept of impostor phenomenon which features in psychological research. (shrink)

This paper focuses on how experiences of trauma can lead to generalized fear of people, objects and places that are similar or contextually or conceptually related to those that produced the initial fear, causing epistemic, affective, and practical harms to those who are unduly feared and those who are intimates of the victim of trauma. We argue that cases of fear generalization that bring harm to other people constitute examples of injustice closely akin to testimonial injustice, specifically, mnemonic injustice. Mnemonic (...) injustice is a label that has been introduced to capture how injustice can occur via the operation of human memory systems when stereotypes shape what is remembered. Here we argue that injustices can also occur via memory systems when trauma leads to a generalized fear. We also argue that this calls for a reformulation of the notion of mnemonic injustice. (shrink)

Highlighting main issues and controversies, this book brings together current philosophical discussions of symmetry in physics to provide an introduction to the subject for physicists and philosophers. The contributors cover all the fundamental symmetries of modern physics, such as CPT and permutation symmetry, as well as discussing symmetry-breaking and general interpretational issues. Classic texts are followed by new review articles and shorter commentaries for each topic. Suitable for courses on the foundations of physics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, (...) the volume is a valuable reference for students and researchers. (shrink)

The editors of this collection set out with the intention of extending the debate in the ethics of belief beyond its traditional topics, such as whether it is ever permissible to form beliefs on insufficient evidence, and if pragmatic concerns should play a role in responsible belief formation. The result is that this collection covers an expansive range of material.Some of the topics that are covered are in keeping with the traditional bounds of the literature, such as whether direct doxastic (...) control is possible , and whether normativity in epistemology is properly thought of as epistemic or ethical .Somewhat less orthodox, but still in keeping with traditional subject matter, is Battaly’s chapter, in which she usefully clarifies various ways of thinking about virtue and vice in both ethics and epistemology. Battaly’s chapter is slightly outside of th .. (shrink)