Non-modalists about essence reject the idea that metaphysical modality is prior to essence, e.g., in the sense that the latter can be reduced to or defined in terms of the former. On the contrary, according to these theorists, the explanation, if anything, proceeds in the opposite direction: metaphysical modality does not explain, but is instead explained in terms of, essence. Thus, for non-modalists like Aristotle, Kit Fine and E. J. Lowe, one of the primary theoretical roles of essence is to (...) provide an explanatory basis for metaphysical necessity and possibility. This chapter explores a range of different types of explanatory connections which raise the question of how the non-modalist’s program of explaining metaphysical modality in terms of essence is best carried out. The considerations advanced in this chapter suggest that non-modalists must proceed by way of a non-logical case-by-case engagement with specific cases, since no logical “one-size-fits- all” strategy appears to be available. (shrink)

Introduction Introducing Accessibility theory 0.1 On the role of context Utterances cannot be processed and interpreted on their own. ...

Health-care professionals in end-of-life care are frequently confronted with patients who seem to be ‘ambivalent’ about treatment decisions, especially if they express a wish to die. This article investigates this phenomenon by analysing two case stories based on narrative interviews with two patients and their caregivers. First, we argue that a respectful approach to patients requires acknowledging that coexistence of opposing wishes can be part of authentic, multi-layered experiences and moral understandings at the end of life. Second, caregivers need to (...) understand when contradictory statements point to tensions in a patient’s moral experience that require support. Third, caregivers should be careful not to negatively label or even pathologize seemingly contradictory patient statements. (shrink)

Saul Kripke’s thesis that ordinary proper names are rigid designators is supported by widely shared intuitions about the occurrence of names in ordinary modal contexts. By those intuitions names are scopeless with respect to the modal expressions. That is, sentences in a pair like (a) Aristotle might have been fond of dogs (b) Concerning Aristotle, it is true that he might have been fond of dogs will have the same truth value. The same does not in general hold for definite (...) descriptions. If we, like Kripke, account for this difference by means of the intensions of names and descriptions, we have to conclude that names do not in general have the same intension as any normal, identifying description. However, the difference in scope behavior between names and description can be accounted for alternatively by appeal to the semantics of the modal expressions. On the account we suggest, dubbed ‘relational modality’, simple singular terms, like proper names, contribute to modal contexts simply by their actual world reference, not by their (standard) intension. The relational modality account turns out to be fully equivalent with the rigidity account when it comes to truth of modal and non-modal sentences (with respect to the actual world), and hence supports the same basic intuitions. Given an alternative definition of consequence for relational modality, and a restriction to models with reflexive accessibility relations and non-empty world-bound domains, relational modality also turns out to be model theoretically equivalent with rigidity semantics with respect to logical consequence. Here we introduce the semantics, give the truth definition for relational modality models, and prove the equivalence results. (shrink)

Some theories of linguistic meaning, such as those of Paul Grice and David Lewis, make appeal to higher–order thoughts: thoughts about thoughts. Because of this, such theories run the risk of being empirically refuted by the existence of speakers who lack, completely or to a high degree, the capacity of thinking about thoughts. Research on autism during the past 15 years provides strong evidence for the existence of such speakers. Some persons with autism have linguistic abilities that qualify them as (...) speakers, but manifest a severely impaired capacity to understand what it is to have beliefs. (shrink)

This document presents the Bonn PRINTEGER Consensus Statement: Working with Research Integrity—Guidance for research performing organisations. The aim of the statement is to complement existing instruments by focusing specifically on institutional responsibilities for strengthening integrity. It takes into account the daily challenges and organisational contexts of most researchers. The statement intends to make research integrity challenges recognisable from the work-floor perspective, providing concrete advice on organisational measures to strengthen integrity. The statement, which was concluded February 7th 2018, provides guidance on (...) the following key issues: § 1. Providing information about research integrity§ 2. Providing education, training and mentoring§ 3. Strengthening a research integrity culture§ 4. Facilitating open dialogue§ 5. Wise incentive management§ 6. Implementing quality assurance procedures§ 7. Improving the work environment and work satisfaction§ 8. Increasing transparency of misconduct cases§ 9. Opening up research§ 10. Implementing safe and effective whistle-blowing channels§ 11. Protecting the alleged perpetrators§ 12. Establishing a research integrity committee and appointing an ombudsperson§ 13. Making explicit the applicable standards for research integrity. (shrink)

Natural kind terms have exercised philosophical fancy ever since Kripke, in Naming and Necessity, claimed them to be rigid designators. He there drew attention to the peculiar, name-like behavior of a family of prima facie loosely related general terms of ordinary English: terms such as ‘water’, ‘tiger’, ‘heat’, and ‘red’. Just as for ordinary proper names, Kripke argued that such terms cannot be synonymous with any of the definite descriptions ordinary speakers associate with them. Rather, the name-like behavior of these (...) so-called natural kind terms is to be explained, just as in in the case of proper names, by the doctrine of rigid designation. And as a consequence of thus extending the notion of rigid designation to general terms, he famously endorsed the claim that so-called ‘theoretical identifications’, i.e. statements like (1) Water is H2O, are necessary, if true. (shrink)

Die Arbeit wendet sich einem zentralen Problem der Modernen Sprachphilosophie zu. Mit Kripkes 'Wittgenstein' hat die Sprachphilosophie einen neuen Slogan erhalten: Beudeutung ist normativ. Dass die Sprache nicht naturlich, sondern konventionell sei, gehort dabei seit der griechischen Sophistik zu den Binsenweisheiten dieses Zweigs der Philosophie. Sehen wir jedoch mit Wittgenstein sprachliche Bedeutung als durch den Gebrauch sprachlicher Ausdrucke bestimmt an, wird daraus schnell die These, es seien die 'Regeln' fur den Gebrauch solcher Ausdrucke, die deren Bedeutung bestimmen, die - mit (...) anderen Worten - bestimmen, was korrekter und was inkorrekter Gebrauch ist. Als Normativthese reformuliert, findet die antike Binsenweisheit so auch in der aktuellen Kontroverse breiten Konsens, eint sie Sprachphilosophen unterschiedlicher Couleur. In Auseinadnersetzung u.a. mit Dummett, Kripke, McDowell, Putnam und Wittgenstein arbeitet Kathrin Gluer nicht nur heraus, dass dieser Konsens aufgrund der Unterschiedlichkeit der dabei in Anspruch genommenen Normativitatsverstandnisse ein scheinbarer isr. Daruber hinaus argumentiert sie, an der Normativitatsthese selbst sei so gut wie alles falsch. Auf der Grundlage eines teilweise an der Philosophie Davidsons orientierten nicht-reduktiven Verstandnisses von Bedeutung und Intentionalitat zeige sich vielmehr, dass Normen oder Regeln nicht in den elementaren "Zirkel" intentionaler Begriffe gehoren. Bei der Untersuchung dieser Fragen erweisen sich Sprachphilosophie, Handlungstheorie und Philosophie des Geistes als untrennbar miteinander verbunden. (shrink)

This chapter discusses why the grounding idiom does not perform as well as we have been led to believe in providing a plausible approach to relative fundamentality. Grounding suffers from some of same deficiencies as supervenience: most prominently, grounding also fails to be sufficiently fine-grained to do its intended explanatory work. In addition, there is doubt as to whether the phenomena collected together under the rubric of grounding are really unified by the presence of a single relation. Grounding turns out (...) not to be helpful in capturing and illuminating what is philosophically important about the traditional substance/non-substance distinction. Although grounding performs better than supervenience in some ways, it does not solve all of the problems to which a supervenience-based approach to relative fundamentality falls prey. (shrink)

In §54 of the Grundlagen, Frege advances an interesting proposal on how to distinguish among different sorts of concepts, only some of which he thinks can be associated with number. This paper is devoted to an analysis of the two criteria he offers, isolation and non-arbitrary division. Both criteria say something about the way in which a concept divides its extension; but they emphasize different aspects. Isolation ensures that a concept divides its extension into discrete units. I offer two construals (...) of this: isolation as discreteness, i.e. absence of overlap, between the objects to be counted; and isolation as the drawing of conceptual boundaries. Non-arbitrary division concerns the internal structure of the units we count: it makes sure that we cannot go on dividing them arbitrarily and still find more units of the kind. Non-arbitrary division focuses not only on how long something can be divided into parts of the same kind; it also speaks to the way in which these divisions are made, arbitrarily or non-arbitrarily, as well as to the compositional structure of the objects divided. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to illustrate how a belief in the existence of kinds may be justified for the particular case of natural kinds: particularly noteworthy in this respect is the weight borne by scientific natural kinds (e.g., physical, chemical, and biological kinds) in (i) inductive arguments; (ii) the laws of nature; and (iii) causal explanations. It is argued that biological taxa are properly viewed as kinds as well, despite the fact that they have been by some alleged (...) to be individuals. Since it turns out that the arguments associated with the standard Kripke/Putnam semantics for natural kind terms only establish the non-descriptiveness of natural kind terms and not their rigidity, the door is open to analyze these terms as denoting traditional predicate-extensions. Finally, special issues raised by physical and chemical kinds are considered briefly, in particular impurities, isotopes and the threat of incommensurability. (shrink)

The Assumption of Agency Theory Content Type Journal Article Category Review Pages 523-528 DOI 10.1558/jcr.v11i4.523 Authors Kathrine Elizabeth Anker, Planetary Collegium, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 4 / 2012.

This article is about the governance of expectations of forensic DNA phenotyping (FDP) innovations in Germany used for the prediction of human externally visible traits such as eye, hair, and skin color, as well as biological age and biogeographic ancestry. In 2019, FDP technologies were regulated under the label “extended DNA analysis”. We focus on the expectations of members of the forensic genetics’ community in Germany, in anticipation and response to those of regulators who advocated for such technologies. Confronted with (...) regulators’ expectations of omnipotent technologies and the optimistic promise that they will enhance public security, forensic geneticists responded with attempts to adjust such expectations, specifying limits and risks, along with a particular logic sorting matters of concern. We reflect on how forensic geneticists’ govern expectations through forms of distributed anticipatory governance, delimiting their obligations, and distributing accountability across the criminal justice system. (shrink)

In _Form, Matter, Substance_, Kathrin Koslicki defends a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects (e.g., living organisms). The Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism holds that those entities that fall under it are compounds of matter (hulē) and form (morphē or eidos). Koslicki argues that a hylomorphic analysis of concrete particular objects is well-equipped to compete with alternative approaches when measured against a wide range of criteria of success. A successful application of the doctrine of hylomorphism to the special case of (...) concrete particular objects, however, hinges on how hylomorphists conceive of the matter composing a concrete particular object, its form, and the hylomorphic relations which hold between a matter-form compound, its matter and its form. Through the detailed answers to these questions Koslicki develops in this book, matter-form compounds, despite their metaphysical complexity, emerge as occupying the privileged ontological status traditionally associated with substances, due in particular to their high degree of unity. (shrink)

Literary Nonfiction. Philosophy. Winner of the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Award. Translated from the German by Michael Eskin. In this penetrating, thought-provoking, and deeply personal philosophical meditation on the death of the beloved other and the turmoil into which it throws those who were close to him, philosopher Kathrin Stengel opens hitherto unseen vistas onto one of the most painful human experiences. The author's ruthless clarity of observation, coupled with razor-sharp philosophical intuition and unflinching honesty of judgment, allows her (...) to pinpoint the personal and social complexities of life after death in a way that cannot but make us doubt some of our common practices in dealing with death and survival. Kathrin Stengel, Ph.D., is a philosopher residing in New York City with her husband and their three sons. Also available from SPD is the German language edition of this text, NOVEMBER-ROSE: EINE REDE UEBER DEN TOD. (shrink)

Some theories of linguistic meaning, such as those of Paul Grice and David Lewis, make appeal to higher–order thoughts: thoughts about thoughts. Because of this, such theories run the risk of being empirically refuted by the existence of speakers who lack, completely or to a high degree, the capacity of thinking about thoughts. Research on autism during the past 15 years provides strong evidence for the existence of such speakers. Some persons with autism have linguistic abilities that qualify them as (...) speakers, but manifest a severely impaired capacity to understand what it is to have beliefs. (shrink)

We explore the possibility of characterizing belief wholly in terms of its first-order functional role, its input (evidence) and output (further beliefs and actions), by addressing some common challenges to the view. One challenge concerns the fact that not all belief is evidence-sensitive. In response to this, normativists and teleo-functionalists have concluded that something over and above functional role is needed, a norm or a telos. We argue that both allow for implausibly much divergence between belief and evidence. Others have (...) suggested that belief should be saved as the evidence-sensitive attitude, by making it share its motivational role with an unrecognized state: alief. We argue that the appeal to alief faces a dilemma: Either explanation of intentional action by means of alief is a species of intentional explanation, in which case it becomes hard to distinguish alief from (irrational) belief, or alief is sufficiently different from belief, but then neither the explanation nor the explanandum (action) are recognizably intentional any longer. We conclude that the most promising way forward is an account of belief that makes use of the full functional role of belief, including its role in theoretical reasoning. (shrink)

This inaugural lecture, delivered on 17 November 2021 at the University of Neuchâtel, addresses the question: Are material objects analyzable into more basic constituents and, if so, what are they? It might appear that this question is more appropriately settled by empirical means as utilized in the natural sciences. For example, we learn from physics and chemistry that water is composed of H2O-molecules and that hydrogen and oxygen atoms themselves are composed of smaller parts, such as protons, which are in (...) turn composed of yet smaller parts, such as quarks, and so on. While the question at the center of this lecture might thus appear to fall more appropriately into the empirical domain of natural science, I argue that metaphysics in fact has an important role to play in determining how best to answer the question before us. More concretely, I propose that the Aristotelian doctrine of hylomorphism, when appropriately interpreted, provides the best metaphysical answer to the question of whether and how material objects are analyzable into more basic constituents. Hylomorphism holds that those entities to which this doctrine applies are, in some sense, compounds of matter (“hylē”) and form (“morphē” or “eidos”). Thus, the title of this lecture, “Form, Matter, Substance”, refers to the claim that lies at the center of the doctrine of hylomorphism, as applied to the domain of material objects, namely that sensible substances are the result of combining matter and form in the right sort of way; or, for short, “form + matter = substance”. I begin in Section II by providing some historical background which brings out Aristotle’s motivations for proposing the doctrine of hylomorphism in the context of his analysis of change. Section III turns to some of the main features of the contemporary hylomorphic theory I have defended especially in Koslicki (2008) and Koslicki (2018). Section IV discusses some challenging questions concerning artifacts which arise for both hylomorphic and other approaches to the metaphysics of concrete particular objects. Section V concludes by summarizing why, as contemporary metaphysicians, we should prefer a hylomorphic theory over its competitors as an analysis of concrete particular objects that is compatible with our current scientific understanding of the world. (shrink)

Roughly 80,000 U.S. prisoners are held in solitary confinement at any given time. A significant body of research shows that solitary confinement has severe, long-term effects, and the United Nations has condemned the practice of solitary confinement as torture. For years, prisoners have been organizing hunger strikes in order to protest solitary confinement. But such action is not without consequences, and some inmates have suffered serious injury or death. The question I raise in this paper is whether we ought to (...) force-feed hunger striking prisoners when serious harm is imminent. Both the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association have denounced the practice of force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike, and yet, the practice is common. Such prevalence is likely a result of the tension between the person-as-patient and person-as-prisoner and cannot easily be resolved. Instead, we must take seriously the complaint that solitary confinement is inhumane and avoid placing health professionals in the position where they must choose to force-feed the prisoner against his will or not. I argue that a conventional bioethics debate centering on polarizing principles of prisoner autonomy and a duty-to-protect the prisoner from harm is an inadequate framework for this complex issue. Instead, we must examine the prisoner’s intent and his right to freedom of speech. I argue that when the prisoner’s intent is to raise awareness and communicate with others, his hunger strike is a form of speech. Protest-as-speech is constitutionally protected—even for prisoners—and remains a minimum ethical obligation for society to uphold. (shrink)

Beta‐oxidation of fatty acids and detoxification of reactive oxygen species are generally accepted as being fundamental functions of peroxisomes. Additionally, these pathways might have been the driving force favoring the selection of this compartment during eukaryotic evolution. Here we performed phylogenetic analyses of enzymes involved in beta‐oxidation of fatty acids in Bacteria, Eukaryota, and Archaea. These imply an alpha‐proteobacterial origin for three out of four enzymes. By integrating the enzymes' history into the contrasting models on the origin of eukaryotic cells, (...) we conclude that peroxisomes most likely evolved non‐symbiotically and subsequent to the acquisition of mitochondria in an archaeal host cell. (shrink)

The objects we encounter in ordinary life and scientific practice - cars, trees, people, houses, molecules, galaxies, and the like - have long been a fruitful source of perplexity for metaphysicians. The Structure of Objects gives an original analysis of those material objects to which we take ourselves to be committed in our ordinary, scientifically informed discourse. Koslicki focuses on material objects in particular, or, as metaphysicians like to call them "concrete particulars", i.e., objects which occupy a single region of (...) space-time at each time at which they exist and which have a certain range of properties that go along with space-occupancy, such as weight, shape, color, texture, and temperature. The Structure of Objects focuses in particular on the question of how the parts of such objects, assuming that they have parts, are related to the wholes which they compose. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson and other proponents of author-intention-based accounts of artifacts hold that an artifact is what its original author(s) intended it to be. By contrast, according to the user-based framework developed by Beth Preston, an artifact’s function is determined by the practices of users and reproducers. In this chapter, I argue that both author-intention-based and user-based frameworks suffer from an overly agent-centric orientation: despite their many interesting differences, both approaches run into difficulties with scenarios in which the attitudes or dispositions (...) of the relevant agents, whether they are authors, users or reproducers, do not serve as a reliable guide on which to base an artifact’s classification as a member of a certain artifact kind. Such alternative categorizations, which conflict with both author-intentions and user-practices, demonstrate the need for a more object-centered alternative perspective concerning prototype production and the nature of artifacts more generally. (shrink)

When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of “ethics” and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

Implicit bias is one of the most successful cases in recent memory of an academic concept being translated into practice. Its use in the National Science Foundation ADVANCE program—which seeks to promote gender equality in STEM careers through institutional transformation—has raised fundamental questions about organizational change. How do advocates translate theories into practice? What makes some concepts more tractable than others? What happens to theories through this translation process? We explore these questions using the ADVANCE program as a case study. (...) Using an inductive, theory-building approach and combination of computational and qualitative methods, we investigate how the concept of implicit bias was translated into practice through the ADVANCE program and identify five key features that made implicit bias useful as a change framework in the academic STEM setting. We find that the concept of implicit bias works programmatically because it is demonstrable, relatable, versatile, actionable, and impartial. While enabling the concept’s diffusion, these characteristics also limit its scope. We reflect on implications for gender theories of organizational change and for practitioners. (shrink)

Inspired by the Enlightenment readings of Hebrew biblical texts generated in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Mira Morgenstern's _Reframing Politics in the Hebrew Bible_ goes beyond the pioneering interpretations of various biblical texts penned by such noted Bible students as Spinoza, Rousseau, and Angelina Grimké to present an introduction to the Hebrew Bible as a whole from the perspective of a modern-day political theorist. In doing so, it offers a brilliant thematic guide to the Hebrew Bible's most politically (...) salient passages, complete with text and commentary. Morgenstern's account of the significance of these ancient yet strangely modern texts will fascinate students of both ancient and modern political theory—as well as all readers of the Hebrew Bible itself. (shrink)

In What is Philosophy?, Deleuze and Guattari make the claim that ‘[i]t may be that believing in this world, in this life, becomes our most difficult task, or the task of a mode of existence still to be discovered on our plane of immanence today. This is the empiricist conversion.’ What are we to make of such a calling? The paper explicates why and in what sense this statement is of exemplary significance both for an appropriate understanding of Deleuze's political (...) thought and for a most timely conceptualisation of politics in a world so clearly defined by immanence, and nothing but immanence. I argue that Deleuze's rigorously constructive approach to the world is not beyond politics, as some recent readings have declared. Rather, we have to appreciate that in Deleuze and Guattari's demand for a ‘belief in this world’ the political intersects with the dimension of the ethical in such a way that our understanding of both is transformed. Only after this ‘empiricist conversion’ can we truly think of a Deleuzian politics that does justice to a plane of immanence ‘immanent only to itself’. (shrink)

Hands are notoriously hard to draw. To compellingly capture their detail, proportion, and movement is generally considered a mark of an artist’s mastery of tech.

At first glance the three eukaryotic protein translocation machineries – the ER‐associated degradation (ERAD) transport apparatus of the endoplasmic reticulum, the peroxisomal importomer and SELMA, the pre‐protein translocator of complex plastids – appear quite different. However, mechanistic comparisons and phylogenetic analyses presented here suggest that all three translocation machineries share a common ancestral origin, which highlights the recycling of pre‐existing components as an effective evolutionary driving force.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssays ERAD ubiquitin ligases Abstract.

This chapter reviews several varieties of grounding skepticism as well as responses that have been proposed by grounding enthusiasts to considerations raised by grounding skeptics. Grounding skeptics, as I conceive of them here, are theorists who belong to one of the following two schools of thought. “Old-school” grounding skeptics doubt the theoretical utility of the grounding idiom by denying one of its presuppositions, viz., that this notion is at least intelligible or coherent. “Second-generation” grounding skeptics call into question the theoretical (...) utility of the grounding idiom for other reasons; their skeptical doubts tend to focus on one of the following three purported theoretical virtues grounding enthusiasts ascribe to their idiom: (i) its alleged power to unify an apparently heterogeneous collection of phenomena; (ii) its alleged power to capture and/or elucidate the distinction between the fundamental and the non-fundamental; or (iii) the alleged metaphysical (as opposed to mind-dependent, epistemic, or psychological) utility of grounding claims. Grounding enthusiasts have already formulated responses to many of the objections described in this chapter. At this point, however, it is fair to say that the state of the literature is still evolving, and no conclusive judgment can therefore be reached as of yet as to whether grounding enthusiasts or grounding skeptics have gained the upper hand in these debates. In the meantime, though, grounding skeptics continue to maintain that the classification of factual and/or nonfactual connections under the rubric of grounding does not really help us illuminate the nature of the connections at issue; instead, from the view of the grounding skeptic, we are better off studying these various connections separately and in their own right. (shrink)

The psychopathological phenomenon of delusions of influence comprises variable disturbances of the self-environment-border leading to the feeling of external influence on thoughts, feelings, impulses or behaviors. Delusions of influence are a hallmark in psychotic illness, but nevertheless, attenuated forms can also appear in healthy individuals. Here we present a newly developed paradigm to induce and assess feelings of external influence during instructed imaginations in healthy individuals. In the current study, we asked 60 healthy individuals to visually imagine different objects. To (...) induce feelings of external influence, we applied one of three different physical setups, and informed the participants whether or not an external influence was attempted during the respective trial. The physical setup as well as the information given to the participants alone were able to modulate the feeling of external influence in all three interventions. The impact of information significantly exceeded the impact of the physical setup on the ratings of experienced external influence. Moreover, the response latency correlated with the estimated feeling of external influence. Additional analyses addressed the influence of the emotional content of imagined objects and examined the intensity and emotional valence of the imaginations. Further supplemental analyses correlated external influence estimation of the participants with other psychopathological measures. In conclusion, this study endorses a quantitative model of psychopathological characteristics, in this case feelings of external influence that can be induced by external cues. (shrink)