Many authors assume that Broca's area subserves the functions that are lost in patients with Broca's aphasia. This commentary attempts to clarify the relationship between Broca's area and Broca's aphasia and suggests that statements about the neurology of patients' specific language functions might be better supported by their individual structural neuroimaging data.

The paper explores insights and limits of Davidson′s minimalistic approach to the problem of the unity of proposition. It argues that the minimalistic way to explain the unity, namely that an object satisfy a predicate, remains at the surface grammar. The author tries to show how Wittgenstein′s later philosophy of language opens up a second level of unity, i. e. a unity of the speech action . It follows that we have to differentiate two kinds of unity-problems, so that Davidson (...) only offers an answer to the first one. The paper ends by drawing some ramifications for the principle of compositionality, theories of meaning and semantic non-factualism. (shrink)

The D-CTC condition, introduced by David Deutsch as a condition to be fulfilled by analogues for processes of quantum systems in the presence of closed timelike curves, is investigated for classical statistical bi-partite systems. It is shown that the D-CTC condition can generically be fulfilled in classical statistical systems, under very general, model-independent conditions. The central property used is the convexity and completeness of the state space that allows it to generalize Deutsch’s original proof for q-bit systems to more general (...) classes of statistically described systems. The results demonstrate that the D-CTC condition, or the conditions under which it can be fulfilled, is not characteristic of, or dependent on, the quantum nature of a bi-partite system. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to explain Wittgenstein’s remark that „It is always by favor of Nature that one knows something.“ In this regard, two positions are distinguished. The first one is the standard interpretation within analytic epistemology. Alternatively, I will suggest another possibility to interpret Wittgenstein’s remark, which is inspired by John McDowell’s epistemological disjunctivism. As I am going to show, the alternative is the better choice.

Payment for performance is widely embraced as a key component of any well-designed executive compensation package. There is a price to be paid, however, for the heavy reliance on incentives as a way of controlling agent behavior. In particular, evidence exists demonstrating that incentives can crowd out an agent’s social preferences towards her principal. Social preferences are pro-social tendencies of people to do things for others for reasons such as fairness, reciprocity, altruism, and ethical or moral beliefs. The use of (...) incentives in compensation can result in self-interested agents. When crowding out occurs, in order to elicit the desired level of performance, principals may need to increase the level of incentive employed. Crowding out therefore provides an additional account for rising levels of executive compensation. In addition, crowding theory can provide a helpful explanation for the tension around the U.S. government’s reaction to preexisting banker incentive contracts during the 2008 financial crisis. (shrink)

The article discusses the phenomenon of Russian Neo-Kantianism in the early twentieth century, looks at the main reasons for interest in Neo-Kantianism, and analyzes why German Neo-Kantian centers were so popular among Russian students and scholars at the turn of the twentieth century. The author points to the institutions where Neo-Kantianism took root and introduces the individuals who became the leaders of these institutions. The article gives a detailed overview of the themes and issues that occupied Russian Neo-Kantians before 1917, (...) as well as the development of these issues in the postrevolutionary period both in Soviet Russia and by Russian Neo-Kantians abroad. An emphasis is made on the original ideas and concepts formulated by Russian Neo-Kantians. (shrink)

There is a widespread notion, both within the sciences and among the general public, that mental deterioration can rob individuals of their identity. Yet there have been no systematic investigations of what types of cognitive damage lead people to appear to no longer be themselves. We measured perceived identity change in patients with three kinds of neurodegenerative disease: frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Structural equation models revealed that injury to the moral faculty plays the primary role in (...) identity discontinuity. Other cognitive deficits, including amnesia, have no measurable impact on identity persistence. Accordingly, frontotemporal dementia has the greatest effect on perceived identity, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has the least. We further demonstrated that perceived identity change fully mediates the impact of neurodegenerative disease on relationship deterioration between patient and caregiver. Our results mark a departure from theories that ground personal identity in memory, distinctiveness, dispositional emotion, or global mental function. (shrink)

Experience has shown that the application of ethical guidelines developed for research in developed countries to research in developing countries can be, and often is, impractical and raises a number of contentious issues. Various attempts have been made to provide guidelines more appropriate to the developing world context; however, to date these efforts have been dominated by the fields of bioscience, medical research and nutrition. There is very little advice available for those seeking to undertake collaborative social science or natural (...) science research in developing countries and what is there tends to be held within disparate sources. Charting the development of a set of ethics documentation for future use by the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme research community, this paper outlines past and present attitudes towards ethics procedures amongst this community and suggests ways in which ethics procedures might be made more relevant and user-friendly to researchers working in this area. (shrink)

The volume documents, and makes an original contribution to, an astonishing period in twentieth-century philosophy—the progress of Arne Naess's ecophilosophy from its inception to the present. It includes Naess's most crucial polemics with leading thinkers, drawn from sources as diverse as scholarly articles, correspondence, TV interviews and unpublished exchanges. The book testifies to the skeptical and self-correcting aspects of Naess's vision, which has deepened and broadened to include third world and feminist perspectives. Philosophical Dialogues is an essential addition to the (...) literature on environmental philosophy. (shrink)

Sustained neural activity during the delay phase of spatial working memory tasks is compelling evidence for the neural correlate of active storage and maintenance of spatial information, however, it does not provide insight into specific mechanisms of spatial coding. This activity may reflect a range of processes, such as maintenance of a stimulus position or a prepared motor response plan. The aim of our study was to examine neural evidence for the use of different coding strategies, depending on the characteristics (...) and demands of a spatial working memory task. Thirty-one and 44 participants performed a spatial working memory task while we measured their brain activity using fMRI in two separate experiments. Participants were asked to remember the position of a briefly presented target stimulus and, after a delay period, to use a joystick to indicate either the position of the remembered target or an indicated non-matching location. The task was designed so that the predictability of the response could be manipulated independently of task difficulty and memory retrieval process. We were particularly interested in contrasting conditions in which participants could use prospective coding of the motor response or had to rely on retrospective sensory information. Prospective motor coding was associated with activity in somatomotor, premotor, and motor cortices and increased integration of brain activity with and within the somatomotor network. In contrast, retrospective sensory coding was associated with increased activity in parietal regions and increased functional connectivity with and within secondary visual and dorsal attentional networks. The observed differences in activation levels, dynamics of differences over trial duration, and integration of information within and between brain networks provide compelling evidence for the use of complementary spatial working memory strategies optimized to meet task demands. (shrink)

The concept of ‘digital phenotyping’ was originally developed by researchers in the mental health field, but it has travelled to other disciplines and areas. This commentary draws upon our experiences of working in two scientific projects that are based at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute – The RADAR-AD project and The Minerva Initiative – which are developing algorithmic phenotyping technologies. We describe and analyse the concepts of digital biomarkers and computational phenotyping that underlie these projects, explain how they (...) are linked to other research in digital phenotyping and compare and contrast some of their epistemological and ethical implications. In particular, we argue that the phenotyping paradigm in both projects is grounded on an assumption of ‘objectivity’ that is articulated in different ways depending on the role that is given to the computational/digital tools. Using the concept of ‘affordance’, we show how specific functionalities relate to potential uses and social implications of these technologies and argue that it is important to distinguish among them as the concept of digital phenotyping is increasingly being used with a variety of meanings. (shrink)

In this editorial to the Topical Collection “Innovation under Fire: The Rise of Ethics in Tech”, we provide an overview of the papers gathered in the collection, reflect on similarities and differences in their analytical angles and methodological approaches, and carve out some of the cross-cutting themes that emerge from research on the production of ‘Tech Ethics’. We identify two recurring ways through which ‘Tech Ethics’ are studied and forms of critique towards them developed, which we argue diverge primarily in (...) their a priori commitments towards what ethical tech is and how it should best be pursued. Beyond these differences, we observe how current research on ‘Tech Ethics’ evidences a close relationship between public controversies about technological innovation and the rise of ethics discourses and instruments for their settlement, producing legitimacy crises for ‘Tech Ethics’ in and of itself. ‘Tech Ethics’ is not only instrumental for governing technoscientific projects in the present but is equally instrumental for the construction of socio-technical imaginaries and the essentialization of technological futures. We suggest that efforts to reach beyond single case-studies are needed and call for collective reflection on joint issues and challenges to advance the critical project of ‘Tech Ethics’. (shrink)

The theory of causal Bayes nets [15, 19] is, from an empirical point of view, currently one of the most promising approaches to causation on the market. There are, however, counterexamples to its core axiom, the causal Markov condition. Probably the most serious of these counterexamples are EPR/B experiments in quantum mechanics (cf. [13, 23]). However, these are also the only counterexamples yet known from the quantum realm. One might therefore wonder whether they are the only phenomena in the quantum (...) realm that create problems for causal Bayes nets. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that not only the phenomenon of quantum correlations in EPR/B experiments create problems for causal Bayes nets, but also the temporal evolution of quantum systems, which is described as dualistic by quantum mechanics. For this purpose, it is shown that single photon experiments in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) violate the causal Markov condition as well. It is then argued, however, that the Markov violation does not occur under the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation of Bohmian mechanics. (shrink)

I argue against the common and influential view that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic. The problem with this view, I claim, is not that it conflicts with some antecedently plausible metaphysics of chance or that it fails to capture our everyday use of ‘chance’ and related terms, but rather that it is unstable. Any reason for adopting the position that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic is also a reason for adopting (...) a much stronger, and far less attractive, position. I suggest an alternative account, according to which chances are probabilities that play a certain explanatory role: they are probabilities that explain associated frequencies. (shrink)

Relational reasoning is a hallmark of human higher cognition and creativity, yet it is notoriously difficult to encourage in abstract tasks, even in adults. Generally, young children initially focus more on objects, but with age become more focused on relations. While prerequisite knowledge and cognitive resource maturation partially explains this pattern, here we propose a new facet important for children's relational reasoning development: a general orientation to relational information, or a relational mindset. We demonstrate that a relational mindset can be (...) elicited, even in 4‐year‐old children, yielding greater than expected spontaneous attention to relations. Children either generated or listened to an experimenter state the relationships between objects in a set of formal analogy problems, and then in a second task, selected object or relational matches according to their preference. Children tended to make object mappings, but those who generated relations on the first task selected relational matches more often on the second task, signaling that relational attention is malleable even in young children. (shrink)

I present an argument for the view that laws ground their instances. I then outline two important consequences that follow if we accept the conclusion of this argument. First, the claim that laws ground their instances threatens to undermine a prominent recent attempt to make sense of the explanatory power of Humean laws by distinguishing between metaphysical and scientific explanation. And second, the claim that laws ground their instances gives rise to a novel argument against the view that grounding relations (...) are metaphysically necessary. (shrink)

Otto Weininger’s work entitled Sex and Character is an important text in the intellectual history of Viennese modernism of the f‌in de siècle period. The author makes a pessimistic diagnosis of modern culture, which, according to him, is infected by anti-cultural feminine values. With desperate passion, he looks for a way to heal this state of affairs and finds it in the project of male reorientation in culture. To make this plan a reality, he thoroughly redef‌ines sex and gender. The (...) aim of the article is to investigate various paradoxes and contradictions contained in this famous work. (shrink)

Cartwright (Synthese 121(1/2):3–27, 1999a; The dappled world, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999b) attacked the view that causal relations conform to the Markov condition by providing a counterexample in which a common cause does not screen off its effects: the prominent chemical factory. In this paper we suggest a new way to handle counterexamples to Markov causation such as the chemical factory. We argue that Cartwright’s as well as similar scenarios feature a certain kind of non-causal dependence that kicks in once (...) the common cause occurs. We then develop a representation of this specific kind of non-causal dependence that allows for modeling the problematic scenarios in such a way that the Markov condition is not violated anymore. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists both ask questions about what the world is like. How do these fields interact with one another? How should they? Naturalism Beyond the Limits of Science investigates an approach to these questions called methodological naturalism. According to methodological naturalism, when coming up with theories about what the world is like, philosophers should, whenever possible, make use of the same methodology that is deployed by scientists. Although many contemporary philosophers have implicit commitments that lead straightforwardly to methodological naturalism, (...) few have a clear understanding of how widespread and disruptive methodological naturalism promises to be for the field. By way of a series of case studies involving laws of nature, composition, time and modality, and drawing on historical and contemporary scientific developments including the discovery of the neutrino, the introduction of dark energy, and the advent of relativity theory, this book demonstrates the ways in which scientists rely on extra-empirical reasoning and how that very same extra-empirical reasoning can yield surprising results when applied to philosophical debates. Along the way, Nina Emery's investigation illuminates the complex relationship between philosophy and the sciences, and makes the case that philosophers and scientists alike would benefit from a greater understanding of the connections between the two fields. (shrink)

This paper attempts to clarify the concept of relational work for understanding economic life as proposed by Viviana Zelizer. To do so, it first compares the concept to similar notions used in other disciplinary fields. Second, it reinterprets some exemplary economic sociology studies by using the relational work lens to clarify the concept’s utility for empirical analysis. Third, it speculates about the place of relational work in the theoretical toolkit of economic sociologists, in particular its relation to embeddedness. The paper (...) concludes by arguing for the utility of the concept to integrate structural, cultural, and power-focused analyses of economic life, to highlight the often-overlooked role of emotions in economic exchange, and to ground an alternative to rational action theory in economic sociology. (shrink)

Feminist science studies have given scant regard to non-human animals. In this paper, we argue that it is important for feminist theory to address the complex relationships between humans and other animals, and the implications of these for feminism. We use the notion of performativity, particularly as it has been developed by Karen Barad, to explore the intersections of feminism and studies of the human/animal relationship. Performativity, we argue, helps to challenge the persistent dichotomy between human/culture and animals/nature. It emphasizes, (...) moreover, how animality is a doing or becoming, not an essence; so, performativity allows us to think about the complexity of human/animal interrelating as a kind of choreography, a co-creation of behaviour. We illustrate the discussion using the example of the laboratory rat, who can be thought of both in terms of a materialization of specific scientific practices and as active participants in the creation of their own meaning, alongside the human participants in science. There are three, intertwined, senses in which we might think about performativity - that of animality, of humannness, and of the relationship between the two. Bringing animals into discussions about performativity poses questions for both feminist theory and for the study of human/animal relationships, we argue: both human and animal can conjointly be engaged in reconfiguring the world, and our theorizing must reflect that complexity. We are all matter, and we all matter. (shrink)

Vibrant Death links philosophy and poetry-based, corpo-affectively grounded knowledge seeking. It offers a radically new materialist theory of death, critically moving the philosophical argument beyond Christian and secular-mechanistic understandings. The book's ethico-political figuration of vibrant death is shaped through a pluriversal conversation between Deleuzean philosophy, neo-vitalist materialism and the spiritual materialism of decolonial, queerfeminist poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldua. The book's posthuman deexceptionalizing of human death unfurls together with a collection of poetry, and autobiographical stories. They are analysed through the (...) lens of a posthuman, queerfeminist revision of the method of autophenomenography (phenomenological analysis of autobiographical material). Nina Lykke explores the speaking position of a mourning, queerfeminine "I", who contemplates the relationship with her dead beloved lesbian life partner. She reflects on her enactment of processes of co-becoming with the phenomenal and material traces of the deceased body, and the new assemblages with which it has merged through death's material metamorphoses: becoming-ashes through cremation, and becoming-mixed-with-algae-sand when the ashes were scattered across a seabed made of fiftyfive million-year-old, fossilized algae. It is argued that the mourning "I"'s intimate bodily empathizing (theorized as symphysizing) with her deceased, queermasculine beloved life partner facilitates the processes of vitalist-material and spiritual-material co-becoming, and the rethinking of death from a new and different perspective than that of the sovereign, philosophical subject. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the psychological relevance of a logical model for deductive reasoning. We propose a new way to analyze logical reasoning in a deductive version of the Mastermind game implemented within a popular Dutch online educational learning system (Math Garden). Our main goal is to derive predictions about the difficulty of Deductive Mastermind tasks. By means of a logical analysis we derive the number of steps needed for solving these tasks (a proxy for working memory load). Our (...) model is based on the analytic tableaux method, known from proof theory. We associate the difficulty of Deductive Mastermind game-items with the size of the corresponding logical trees obtained by the tableaux method. We derive empirical hypotheses from this model. A large group of students (over 37 thousand children, 5–12 years of age) played the Deductive Mastermind game, which gave empirical difficulty ratings of all 321 game-items. The results show that our logical approach predicts these item ratings well, which supports the psychological relevance of our model. (shrink)

Information about the structure, function and regulation of the maize Suppressormutator (Spm) transposable element has emerged from the genetic and molecular characterization of both deletion mutations and an unconventional type of reversible genetic change (epimutation). The element is subject to an epigenetic mechanism that can either stably inactivate it or specify one of a variety of heritable programs of differential element expression in development. The essay explores the relationship between the Spm element's epigenetic developmental programming mechanism and the determinative events (...) central to plant development and differentiation. (shrink)

A long tradition of psychological research has explored the distinction between characteristics that are part of the self and those that lie outside of it. Recently, a surge of research has begun examining a further distinction. Even among characteristics that are internal to the self, people pick out a subset as belonging to the true self. These factors are judged as making people who they really are, deep down. In this paper, we introduce the concept of the true self and (...) identify features that distinguish people’s understanding of the true self from their understanding of the self more generally. In particular, we consider recent findings that the true self is perceived as positive and moral, and that this tendency is actor-observer invariant and cross-culturally stable. We then explore possible explanations for these findings and discuss their implications for a variety of issues in psychology. (shrink)

It is divided into four sections covering science as a whole, the new technologies of the postmodern era, bio-medical discourses, and nature. A distinguished cast of contributors explores the central feminist concerns in each arena, through the central metaphors of monster, mother goddess and cyborg. They look at the consequences of gynogenesis, postmodern eco-buddhism in heathcare, sexual violence in cyberspace, the postmodernization of menopause, the dolphin as androgyne and feminist environmentalism.

I argue that there are such things as nomological probabilities—probabilities that play a certain explanatory role with respect to stable, long-run relative frequencies. Indeed, I argue, we should be willing to accept nomological probabilities even if they turn out to be metaphysically weird or even wholly sui generis entities. I then give an example of one way in which this argument should shape future work on the metaphysics of chance by describing a challenge to a common group of analyses of (...) objective probability—Humean analyses— understood as analyses of nomological probability. (shrink)

This paper responds to a recent challenge for the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge from laboratory animals to humans. According to this challenge, experimental neurobiology, and thus neuroscience, is in a state of crisis because the knowledge produced in different laboratories hardly generalizes from one laboratory to another. Presumably, this is so because neurobiological laboratories use simplified animal models of human conditions that differ across laboratories. By contrast, I argue that maintaining a multiplicity of experimental protocols and simple models (...) is well justified. It fosters rather than precludes the validity of extrapolation of neurobiological knowledge. The discipline is thriving. (shrink)

The concept of intersectionality is on its way to becoming a new paradigm in gender studies. In its current version, it denominates reciprocities between gender, race and class. However, it also allows for the integration of other socially defined categories, such as sexuality, nationality or age. On the other hand, it is widely left unclear as to which level these reciprocal effects apply: the level of social structures, the level of constructions of identity or the level of symbolic representations. This (...) article advocates an intersectional multi-level analysis which takes into account reciprocal effects between the various levels. This approach includes an analytical grasp of and methodical reflection on these reciprocal effects as well as making them empirically accessible. (shrink)

This article offers a comprehensive review of Political Choreographies, Decolonial Theo-ries, Trans Bodies, the latest book, a volume edited by Marina Gržinić and Jovita Pristovšek in intensive collaboration with Nomusa Makhubu and Tjaša Kancler, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2023. This volume takes as its starting point the body as a structural signifier, which is conceptualized in seven chapters. Each of them addresses the question of movement, politics, revolt, action, etc., in a variety of ways to de-link ourselves (especially (...) us Whites) from colonial modernity as the organizing principle not only of capitalism but of a whole range of processes that emanate from modernity, i.e., forms of domination and oppression such as racism, sexism, Eurocentrism, and environmental destruction. What makes this book special, however, is not only the positions presented but also the way in which they are presented. Each conversation begins with a carefully selected starting point, linked to the interlocutor’s* work and accompanied by a rich citation system of references and additional information. This opens up the formation of epistemic counter-narratives that confront the violent history of capitalism and form possibilities for yet unidentified bodies, movements, politics, and political action as future potentialities. (shrink)

In the context of animal experimentation, laboratory workers fluctuate between seeing animals used in research as tools or objects and seeing them as sentient living beings. Most laboratory workers do not wholly lose their empathy and their ability to connect with other living beings. To deal with the fact that their job involves harming and killing animals on a regular basis, they employ various coping strategies, such as rationalizing the use of animals in research and minimizing their emotional attachment to (...) the animals. The evidence compiled in this article suggests that researchers, technicians, and caregivers who are involved in animal experimentation experience stress, anxiety, guilt, and trauma. I conclude that inflicting pain and death on nonhuman animals causes laboratory workers to suffer as well. Thus, in animal research, the suffering of nonhuman animals and humans is directly linked. The consideration of human suffering adds another dimension to ethical discussions of animal research, namely the relation between the suffering of human and nonhuman animals. A comprehensive ethical discussion of animal experiments should therefore include the suffering of nonhuman animals, the suffering of humans, and the relation between the two. (shrink)

In 1979 the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioural Research in the US delivered a set of guidelines for the ethical conduct of research on human research subjects.1 In developing these guidelines, subsequently known as The Belmont Report, the Commission was “...directed to consider: the boundaries between biomedical and behavioural research and the accepted and routine practice of medicine”; and outline a set of ethical principles which would specifically govern research activities. The Report notes (...) that maintaining this distinction is important to ensure that all research activities are subjected to ethical review and, while it acknowledges that distinguishing research and clinical care is less easy in some cases, it suggests that this is a relatively simple and straightforward task. Forty years later, biomedical activities appear more complex: clinical activities are hybridised, trial design is no longer solely aimed at improving the evidence base, but at fostering closer integration with clinical activities and learning health systems reuse individuals’ health data to generate real-time improvements in patient care.2 In short, the conceptual boundaries between research and clinical care do not appear to be as distinct as the Belmont Report implies. Two papers in this issue and Ballantyne and Schaefer ) address some of the ethical challenges generated by merging of research and clinical care. The UK’s 100 000 Genomes Project is an example of a biomedical development in which research and clinical care are no longer understood as distinct activities. Patients in the 100kGP are offered clinical genomic sequencing on the understanding that their health data will be used for research purposes. Dheensa et al note that the 100kGP was designed with the dual purpose of providing patients with …. (shrink)