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)

Motivated by the goal of constructing a model in which there are no κ-Aronszajn trees for any regular $k>\aleph_1$, we produce a model with many singular cardinals where both the singular cardinals hypothesis and weak square fail.

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)

Connectionist models provide a promising alternative to the traditional computational approach that has for several decades dominated cognitive science and artificial intelligence, although the nature of connectionist models and their relation to symbol processing remains controversial. Connectionist models can be characterized by three general computational features: distinct layers of interconnected units, recursive rules for updating the strengths of the connections during learning, and “simple” homogeneous computing elements. Using just these three features one can construct surprisingly elegant and powerful models of (...) memory, perception, motor control, categorization, and reasoning. What makes the connectionist approach unique is not its variety of representational possibilities or its departure from explicit rule-based models, or even its preoccupation with the brain metaphor. Rather, it is that connectionist models can be used to explore systematically the complex interaction between learning and representation, as we try to demonstrate through the analysis of several large networks. (shrink)

As the field of clinical ethics consultation sets standards and moves forward with the Quality Attestation process, questions should be raised about what ethical issues really do arise in practice. There is limited data on the type and number of ethics consultations conducted across different settings. At Loyola University Medical Center, we conducted a retrospective review of our ethics consultations from 2008 through 2013. One hundred fifty-six cases met the eligibility criteria. We analyzed demographic data on these patients and conducted (...) a content analysis of the ethics consultation write-ups coding both the frequency of ethical issues and most significant, or key, ethical issue per case. Patients for whom ethics consultation was requested were typically male, white, between 50 and 69 years old, of non-Hispanic origin, and of Roman Catholic faith. Nearly half were in the intensive care unit and 44.2 % died in the hospital. The most frequent broad ethical categories were decision-making, goals of care/treatment, and end-of-life. More specifically, capacity, patient’s wishes/autonomy, and surrogate decision maker were the most frequent particular ethical issues. The most common key ethical issues were withdrawing/withholding treatment, patient wishes/autonomy, and capacity. Our findings provide additional data to inform the training of clinical ethics consultants regarding the ethical issues that arise in practice. A wider research agenda should be formed to collect and compare data across institutions to improve education and training in our field. (shrink)

The growing prominence of computers in contemporary life, often seemingly with minds of their own, invites rethinking the question of moral responsibility. If the moral responsibility for an act lies with the subject that carried it out, it follows that different concepts of the subject generate different views of moral responsibility. Some recent theorists have argued that actions are produced by composite, fluid subjects understood as extended agencies (cyborgs, actor networks). This view of the subject contrasts with methodological individualism: the (...) idea that actions are produced only by human individuals. This essay compares two views of responsibility: moral individualism (the ethical twin of methodological individualism), and joint responsibility (associated with extended agency theory). It develops a view of what joint responsibility might look like, and considers the advantages it might bring relative to moral individualism as well as the objections that are sure to be raised against it. (shrink)

According to the traditional presentation of Bohm's interpretation, we have immediate epistemic access to particle properties but not wavefunction properties, and mental states, pointer states, and ink patterns supervene on particle properties alone. I argue that these claims do not make physical sense, and I offer an alternative account that does.

This article argues that teaching medical and nursing students health care ethics in an interdisciplinary setting is beneficial for them. Doing so produces an education that is theoretically more consistent with the goals of health care ethics, can help to reduce moral stress and burnout, and can improve patient care. Based on a literature review, theoretical arguments and individual observation, this article will show that the benefits of interdisciplinary education, specifically in ethics, outweigh the difficulties many schools may have in (...) developing such courses. (shrink)

This paper unifies the disparate analyses in Heidegger's lecture course, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, in a single therapeutic and philosophical project. By taking seriously the text's claim to lead us towards authenticity, I show how Heidegger's analysis of boredom works together with his comparative analysis of man and animal to diagnose and lead us out of our contemporary complacency about being. This reading puts both analyses in a new light, reveals the hidden strategic unity of the (...) lecture course, and brings out the therapeutic dimension of Heidegger's phenomenology. (shrink)

Response to ’African vital force and the permissibility of euthanasia’ Lougheed’s discussion of vital force in metaphysics in African thought and its implications for euthanasia is not only of interest for African philosophy, but also for bioethics within and outside of Africa. A debate exists as to whether or not there is, or should be, a uniquely African bioethics,1 but equally worthwhile is using the insights of African philosophy to develop bioethics generally speaking, whether African, Western or all-inclusive. The inclusion (...) of African philosophical thought into Western bioethical thought can expand the useful application of bioethical theories outside of the largely Western conceptual areas they now employ and can help resolve some of the challenges that Western bioethics has addressing justice and the moral value of community and family connections. However, the argument that vital force/vitalism is always incompatible with voluntary active euthanasia is an unhelpful inclusion of African thought into bioethics. The concern is not that Lougheed is mistaken; vitalism, understood as treating life as having the highest value, probably does make physician aid in dying by active euthanasia (or assisted suicide) always impermissible. The problem is that this is well-trodden ground in Western bioethics, which has been …. (shrink)

In standard belief models, priors are always common knowledge. This prevents such models from representing agents’ probabilistic beliefs about the origins of their priors. By embedding standard models in a larger standard model, however, pre-priors can describe such beliefs. When an agent’s prior and pre-prior are mutually consistent, he must believe that his prior would only have been different in situations where relevant event chances were different, but that variations in other agents’ priors are otherwise completely unrelated to which events (...) are how likely. Due to this, Bayesians who agree enough about the origins of their priors must have the same priors. (shrink)

1. The philosophical version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a) the 'real' properties of matter, (b) the epistemology of sensation, and (c) a contrast challenged by Berkely as illusory. The scientific version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a') the physical properties of matter, (b') a contrast essential within the history of atomism, and (c') a contrast challenged by 20th century microphysics as de facto untenable. 2. The primary-secondary distinction within physics can be interpreted in two ways: a. it can refer (...) to content; e.g. 'Matter has the properties of mass, shape, density... etc. -- it only appears to have the properties of warmth, fragrance, etc.' Or, b. it can refer to form; e.g. 'Whatever properties our best theories accord to primary matter, e.g., electrons, these are by definition primary. All other properties of, e.g., macromatter, are derivative.' Concerning 2.a., this interpretation is simply false when 17th, 18th, or 19th century values for the property-variables are introduced. Concerning 2.b., this either uninformative or misleading. It is uninformative when it constitutes no more than a decision to use the word 'primary' as an umbrella-word for all the properties contemporary micro-physics accords to fundamental material particles, whatever these may be. It is misleading when it turns on an implicit contrast between certain properties particles may be said to have when 'harnessed' to a detector, and certain other properties these particles have when free and unharnessed to any detector. This contrast does not exist. Quantum-theoretic information is always about particles-and-their-detectors-in-combination. Dissolve this combination and you destroy any possible knowledge of the particle. Hence the notion of 'completely objectifiable properties of particles' is in principle unsound. (shrink)

1. Kantian moral theories have been criticized for their inability to make sense of the phenomenology and propriety of regret in the face of difficult moral choices. As Bernard Williams puts it, re...

In a recent article Iddo Landau has defended his distinction between perspectives on and standards of meaning in life to support his rebuttal of a familiar pessimistic objection to the meaningfulness of human life. According to that complaint, human life is meaningless when viewed from a detached, cosmic, or sub specie aeternitatis [SSA] perspective. Landau argues that a cosmic perspective need not entail a comparably high standard of meaningfulness. What counts on his view then is not the perspective, which is (...) compatible with any number of possible standards for what constitutes an adequate amount of meaningfulness, but the standard that sets that threshold. In this article I argue that Landau has 1.a.) underestimated the severity of the pessimists’ critique of the availability of any standards for meaningfulness and has also 1.b.) misunderstood the pessimists to be saying that human lives are meaningless because they make an insufficient spatio-temporal impact. I argue further that 2.a.) Landau has left unexplained on what basis we would locate the standard of meaning, leaving a gap in his account. Finally, I maintain that 2.b.) by acknowledging that the ontological, normative, or theological content of the SSA perspective can influence the placing of that standard, Landau leaves himself open to the plausible alternative possibility that the meaning of a life is settled not by the standard itself but by the character attributed to the SSA perspective. (shrink)

Complaining about humanitarian refugees is rarely an unequivocal activity for society members. Their talk appears dilemmatic: ‘sympathy talk’, comprising rhetorical displays of ‘care’, tolerance and aesthetic evaluations, is woven together with more pejorative messages. In this article we investigate how ‘sympathy talk’ functions as a discursive resource in talk-in-interaction when people give accounts of minority group individuals. A ‘synthetic’ discursive psychological approach was employed to analyse a corpus of 12 talkback radio calls to an evening ‘shock jock’ radio personality in (...) Adelaide, Australia, after the stabbing death of a Sudanese-Australian refugee. Analysis shows how host and callers dialogically negotiate and orientate to various sympathetic and humanitarian descriptions/evaluations. We contend that sympathetic talk advances the activity of conversation, softening complaints that could be made accountable as prejudiced. Sympathy talk also functions as a counter-argument to perceived punitive or ‘racist’ complaints. Moreover, this article proposes that such rhetoric shares an ideological thread that potentially undermines Sudanese refugees’ social positioning. Dialogue that deploys sympathetic formulations may be an element in the increasingly varied and subtle activity of ‘new racism’. We discuss how sympathetic accounts contain, within their semantic structure, their own antithesis for their deployment in anti-racist practice; for the development of counter discourses fundamental to the disruption of pervasive ideological representations and the construction of alternative refugee identities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis research investigated whether precues engage proactive control to reduce emotional interference during speech production. A picture-word interference task required participants to name target pictures accompanied by taboo, negative, or neutral distractors. Proactive control was manipulated by presenting precues that signalled the type of distractor that would appear on the next trial. Experiment 1 included one block of trials with precues and one without, whereas Experiment 2 mixed precued and uncued trials. Consistent with previous research, picture naming was slowed in (...) both experiments when distractors were taboo or negative compared to neutral, with the greatest slowing effect when distractors were taboo. Evidence that precues engaged proactive control to reduce interference from taboo distractors was found in Experiment 1. In contrast, mixing precued trials in Experiment 2 resulted in no taboo cueing benefit. These results suggest that item-level proactive control can b... (shrink)

Ignorance can excuse otherwise blameworthy action, but only if the ignorance itself is blameless. One way to avoid culpable ignorance is to pay attention when epistemic peers disagree. Expressed disagreements place an obligation on the agent to pay attention when an interlocutor disagrees, or risk culpable ignorance for which they might later be found blameworthy. Silence, on the other hand, is typically taken as assent. But in cases of suppressed disagreement, the silenced interlocutor has information that could save the agent (...) from ignorance in scenarios where that ignorance might lead to harmful action, and silence does not actually indicate assent. The problem is further complicated because the agent might not be aware of the fact that a silenced interlocutor has information that could prevent ignorance, and consequent harmful action. In this paper, I provide a new account of excuses from ignorance in situations of suppressed disagreement. I do this in the context of two cases; Kelly’s hypothetical case of the Tyrannical Dictator, and the real-world case of former South African President Thabo Mbeki and his AIDS denialist policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s. (shrink)

This paper focuses on smallholder agriculture and livelihoods in north-central Tanzania. It traces changes in agricultural production and asset ownership in one community over a 28 year period. Over this period, national development policies and agriculture programs have moved from socialism to neo-liberal approaches. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, we explore how farmers have responded to these shifts in the wider political-economic context and how these responses have shaped their livelihoods and ideas about farming and wealth. This (...) case study clearly debunks the idea that rural farmers are slow to respond to “modern” farming methods or that smallholder farming is stagnant and cannot reduce poverty. While changes overall are very positive in this rural community, challenges remain as land sizes are small and markets often unreliable. This research cautions against a shift in emphasis to large-scale farming as a strategy for national development. It suggests instead that increased investment in supporting smallholder farming is critical for addressing poverty and rural well-being. (shrink)

As Heidegger presents it in the existential analytic in Being and Time, the primary challenge of being the sort of entity that we are is having the right sort of regard for our frailty. We usually think of human frailties as arising from the vulnerabilities of the body – to injury, sickness, debility, and death. But, for Heidegger, our frailty is not tied to our embodiment, since we are not essentially bodies but instead cases of Dasein, the entity that understands (...) being. The understander of being will be vulnerable in a distinctively existential-ontological way. I argue that our existential-ontological finitude rests not on our human bodies but on our being-amidst-entities and being-with-others, and I suggest that having proper regard for this finitude is what allows us to manifest the very best of our humanity. (shrink)

Chalmers is right: we should expect our civilization to, within centuries, have vastly increasedmental capacities, surely in total and probably also for individual creatures and devices.We should also expect to see the conflicts he describes between creatures and devices with more versus less capacity. But Chalmers' main prediction follows simply by extrapolating historical trends, and the conflicts he identifies are common between differing generations. There is value in highlighting these issues, but once one knows of such simple extrapolations and standard (...) conflicts, it is hard to see much value in Chalmers' added analysis. (shrink)

This study assesses the disconnect between television news directors' and journalism students' perceptions of issues in media ethics. Responses from 60 news directors and 166 students enrolled in ethics courses at three universities offer insight into what issues practitioners actually face, what issues students think they will face, and how serious each group perceives potential ethical dilemmas to be. Both groups agree that ethics is best learned on the job.

This paper explains the phenomena that compose the experience of the passage of time and argues that this experience represents the temporal direction of causal processes. The experience of the passage of time comprises several more specific experiences, namely: (1) the experience of continuously advancing to later times; (2) the observation of continuous change, both in the things around us and in ourselves; (3) the feeling of a lack of control over (1) and (2); and (4) the experience of a (...) number of phenomena that we describe as animated, dynamic, or flowing. The experience of passage is a causal process whose function is to promote survival and reproductive success by representing the temporal direction of causal processes (including itself). It does this primarily via the specious present, wherein later content is presented as more vivid than earlier content. The experience of passage is veridical and is compatible with either the B‐theory or the A‐theoretic views of time. (shrink)

Richard Waller, Fellow and Secretary of the Royal Society, is probably best remembered for editing Robert Hooke’s posthumously published works. Yet, Waller also created numerous drawings, paintings, and engravings for his own work and the Society’s publications. From precisely observed grasses to allegorical frontispieces, Waller’s images not only contained a diverse range of content, they are some of the most beautiful, colorful, and striking from the Society’s early years. This article argues that Waller played a distinctly important role in shaping (...) the visual program of the Royal Society by virtue of his multiple functions as reliable administrator and translator, competent natural philosopher, and skilled image-maker. It analyzes Waller’s visual works in the context of his graphic training—in part influenced by his mother Mary More—and situates them within the context of English image-making traditions and Waller’s own natural philosophical interests. Examined as a functional whole, Waller’s career as a Fellow of the Royal Society emerges as an important case study in the fusion of visual and scientific practices in early-modern England. (shrink)

Sophocles' Antigone is the only individual whom Heidegger names as authentic. But the usual interpretations of Heidegger's ‘authenticity’ either do not apply to Antigone or do not capture what Heidegger finds significant about her. By working through these failures, I develop an interpretation of Heideggerian authenticity that is adequate to his Antigone. The crucial step is accurately identifying the finitude to which Antigone authentically relates: what Heidegger calls ‘uncanniness'. I argue that uncanniness names being's presencing through self-withdrawal and that Antigone (...) stands authentically towards this in her responsiveness to the call of being and her reticence at the end of explanation. In conclusion, I consider Sophocles' own creative act, which bequeathed to the West an understanding of being and a vision of how to relate to it authentically. I argue that Sophocles' status as a world-historical creator does not provide a competing picture of authenticity but must itself be understood as responsive and reticent. (shrink)

The continuous pursuit and support of medical research on both a societal and individual level is frequently presupposed as laudable, or even obligatory. However, some critics have challenged the assumption that medical research ought to be conducted. These critics reject claims that there is a moral obligation to pursue research, and that medical research may always be justifiable given adequate safeguards and regulations. We align ourselves with critics of the research imperative to the extent that we believe that medical research (...) may only be an imperfect obligation, grounded in the principle of beneficence. Our central purpose in this article, however, is not to advance an original argument concerning the .. (shrink)

This chapter situates Heidegger’s account of moods and affects in its original philosophical and methodological home: his account of disclosing as our original human openness. The dimension of disclosing to which affects belong is finding, or findingness. The chapter argues that to be finding is to be called by vocational projects and to be called by the solicitings of entities, not only in being mooded but also in sensing and in being normatively responsive. This wider perspective on Heidegger’s thinking of (...) affectivity yields the proper context in which to understand and assess what he says about moods, as well as a powerful framework within which to understand affective disclosing generally, as the phenomenon of finding oneself called. (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)

As Heidegger presents it in the existential analytic in Being and Time, the primary challenge of being the sort of entity that we are is having the right sort of regard for our frailty. We usually think of human frailties as arising from the vulnerabilities of the body – to injury, sickness, debility, and death. But, for Heidegger, our frailty is not tied to our embodiment, since we are not essentially bodies but instead cases of Dasein, the entity that understands (...) being. The understander of being will be vulnerable in a distinctively existential-ontological way. I argue that our existential-ontological finitude rests not on our human bodies but on our being-amidst-entities and being-with-others, and I suggest that having proper regard for this finitude is what allows us to manifest the very best of our humanity. (shrink)

Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics is the first in the 10-volume series, Lynchburg College Symposium Readings, 3rd edition. Each volume presents primary texts organized around an interdisciplinary, liberal arts theme such as education, politics, social issues, science and technology, morals and ethics. The series has been developed by Lynchburg College faculty for use in the Senior Symposium and the Lynchburg College Symposium Readings Program (SS/LCSR). While these programs are distinctive to Lynchburg College, the texts are used on many college (...) campuses across the nation, as well as by readers interested in significant original texts on important topics. Addressing Education: Purposes, Plans, and Politics offers primary source readings on a wide range of topics in education. Here are the original writings that readers often only read about. In this volume, the educators speak for themselves in selections and excerpts from Plato (360 B.C. E.) to Paolo Freire (1968). Familiar luminaries Mann, Rousseau, DuBois, Keller, Jefferson, 21 in all gather together all in one volume to deliver these pivotal ideas with incomparable impact. Whether consumed cover-to-cover or piece-by-piece, the volume invites useful, critical debate on this important topic. (shrink)