Artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital phenotyping, including computational speech analysis, increasingly allows for the collection of diagnostically relevant information from an ever-expanding number of sources. Such information usually assesses human behaviour, which is a consequence of the nervous system, and so digital phenotyping may be particularly helpful in diagnosing neurological illnesses such as Alzheimer’s disease. As illustrated by the use of computational speech analysis of Alzheimer’s disease, however, neurological illness also introduces ethical considerations beyond commonly recognised concerns regarding machine learning and (...) data collection in everyday environments. Individuals’ decision-making capacity cannot be assumed. Understanding of analytical results will likely be limited even as the personal significance of those results is both highly sensitive and personal. In a traditional clinical evaluation, there is an opportunity to ensure that information is relayed in a way that is highly customised to the individual’s ability to understand results and make decisions, and privacy is closely protected. Can any such assurance be offered as digital phenotyping technology continues to advance? AI-supported digital phenotyping offers great promise in neurocognitive disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, but it also poses ethical challenges. We outline some of these risks as well as strategies for risk mitigation. (shrink)

Many strands of research by different groups, starting from teratocarcinomas in the laboratory mouse, later moving the corresponding human tumors, contributed to the isolation and description of human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). In this review, I highlight the contributions from my own research, particularly at the Wistar Institute during the 1980s, when with my colleagues we characterized one of the first clonal lines of pluripotent human embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells, the stem cells of teratocarcinomas, and identified key features including cell (...) surface antigen markers that have since found a place in the study and exploitation of human PSC. Much of this research depended upon close teamwork with colleagues, many in other laboratories, who contributed different expertise and experience. It was also often driven by circumstance and chance rather than pursuit of a grand design. (shrink)

There is ample evidence that speakers’ linguistic knowledge extends well beyond what can be described in terms of rules of compositional interpretation stated over combinations of single words. We explore a range of multiword constructions to get a handle both on the extent of the phenomenon and on the grammatical constraints that may govern it. We consider idioms of various sorts, collocations, compounds, light verbs, syntactic nuts, and assorted other constructions, as well as morphology. Our conclusion is that MWCs highlight (...) the central role that grammar plays in licensing MWCs in the lexicon and the creation of novel MWCs, and they help to clarify how the lexicon articulates with the rest of the grammar. (shrink)

In order for a state to rightfully exercise self-determination by means of setting policies concerning migrants and migration, they must be legitimate, Gillian Brock argues in _Justice for People on the Move_. Legitimacy, in Brock’s view, requires that states satisfy three (jointly sufficient) conditions: they must respect their own citizens’ human rights; they must be a part of a legitimate state system; and they must adequately contribute to the maintenance of this state system. In her new book, Brock also argues (...) persuasively for a variety of migration-related policies that states ought to adopt (concerning, for example, addressing the needs of refugees, regularization of undocumented migrants, and protections for temporary labor migrants). In previous work (Brock, _Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account_, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009; Brock and Blake, _Debating Brain Drain: May Governments Restrict Emigration?_, Oxford University Press, New York, 2015), Brock has compellingly defended the justice of policies designed to allay the harmful effects of brain drain. In this commentary, I wish to argue that the legitimacy standard Brock defends in _Justice for People on the Move_ is an obstacle to the justified adoption of the migration-related policies Brock demonstrates here and in previous work to be substantively morally justified, if not required by justice. If a state is not legitimate, then it lacks the moral standing to adopt migration policies that are otherwise morally justified. I do not intend to question the importance of the concept of state legitimacy for political philosophy generally. However, I wish to argue that that in the context of migration justice, considerations of state legitimacy may be contrary to the goal of defending a view on what policies a state ought to adopt. It may be more useful simply to consider whether or not there is moral justification for a particular state to adopt a particular policy. (shrink)

I examine a dispute about the nature of practical reason, and in particular moral reason, generated by Thomas Nagel's proposal of an internalist rationalism which claims we can explain motivation in terms of reason and belief alone. In opposition, Humeans contend that such explanations must also appeal to further desires. Arguments on either side of this debate typically assume that a rationalist or Humean conclusion can be reached independently of a claim about the nature of moral judgment. I'll maintain, to (...) the contrary, that a resolution of this dispute can only be achieved on the basis of such a claim. (shrink)

Consciousness as used here, refers to the private, subjective experience of being aware of our perceptions, thoughts, feelings, actions, memories including the intimate experience of a unified self with the capacity to generate and control actions and psychological contents. This compelling, intuitive consciousness-centric account has, and continues to shape folk and scientific accounts of psychology and human behavior. Over the last 30 years, research from the cognitive neurosciences has challenged this intuitive social construct account when providing a neurocognitive architecture for (...) a human psychology. Growing evidence suggests that the executive functions typically attributed to the experience of consciousness are carried out competently, backstage and outside subjective awareness by a myriad of fast, efficient non-conscious brain systems. While it remains unclear how and where the experience of consciousness is generated in the brain, we suggested that the traditional intuitive explanation that consciousness is causally efficacious is wrong-headed when providing a cognitive neuroscientific account of human psychology. Notwithstanding the compelling 1st-person experience that convinces us that subjective awareness is the mental curator of our actions and thoughts, we argue that the best framework for building a scientific account is to be consistent with the biophysical causal dependency of prior neural processes. From a 3rd person perspective,, we propose that subjective awareness lacking causal influence, is than our experience of being aware, our awareness of our psychological content, knowing that we are aware, and the belief that that such experiences are evidence of an agentive capacity shared by others. While the human mind can be described as comprising both conscious and nonconscious aspects, both ultimately depend on neural process in the brain. In arguing for the counter-intuitive epiphenomenal perspective, we suggest that a scientific approach considers all mental aspects of mind including consciousness in terms of their underlying, preceding biological changes, in the realization that most brain processes are not accompanied by any discernible change in subjective awareness. (shrink)

Wood and Spekkens argue that any causal model explaining the EPRB correlations and satisfying the no-signalling constraint must also violate the assumption that the model faithfully reproduces the statistical dependences and independences—a so-called ‘fine-tuning’ of the causal parameters. This includes, in particular, retrocausal explanations of the EPRB correlations. I consider this analysis with a view to enumerating the possible responses an advocate of retrocausal explanations might propose. I focus on the response of Näger, who argues that the central ideas of (...) causal explanations can be saved if one accepts the possibility of a stable fine-tuning of the causal parameters. I argue that in light of this view, a violation of faithfulness does not necessarily rule out retrocausal explanations of the EPRB correlations. However, when we consider a plausible retrocausal picture in some detail, it becomes clear that the causal modelling framework is not a natural arena for representing such an account of retrocausality. _1_ Causal Models, Quantum Mechanics, and Faithfulness _2_ Fine-Tuning _2.1_ Fine-tuning in a retrocausal model _3_ Possible Responses _4_ Quantum Causal Models and Retrocausality _4.1_ A more detailed retrocausal account _4.2_ A model of the EPRB probabilities _4.3_ Mapping to a causal model _5_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The problem of the source of necessity is the problem of explaining what makes necessary truths necessarily true. Simon Blackburn has presented a dilemma intended to show that any reductive, realist account of the source of necessity is bound to fail. Although Blackburn's dilemma faces serious problems, reflection on the form of explanations of necessities reveals that a revised dilemma succeeds in defeating any reductive account of the source of necessity. The lesson is that necessity is metaphysically primitive and irreducible.

The visual arts operated as a touchstone for French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, influencing his thinking on everything from epistemology to politics. Building on the recent publication of a bilingual, six-volume edition of his writings on contemporary art and artists, this special issue of_ Cultural Politics_ provides a focus on Lyotard’s aesthetics. The issue includes a review of Lyotard’s writings on art, a discussion of his early figural aesthetics, and an essay on Lyotard’s little-known work, _Pacific Wall_, as well as two (...) essays on Lyotard and music. Two previously untranslated works by Lyotard himself are also featured: the influential article “Argumentation and Presentation: The Crisis of Foundations” and the interview “What to Paint?,” given at the time of the publication of the book of the same name. Painter Leon Phillips, whose work embodies many of the attributes of painting that were most important to Lyotard, is the featured artist for the issue. Throughout, the contributors argue for the primary importance of aesthetics in understanding Lyotard’s thought. Peter W. Milne is Assistant Professor in the Department of Aesthetics at Seoul National University. (shrink)

Despite attempts to apply causal modeling techniques to quantum systems, Wood and Spekkens argue that any causal model purporting to explain quantum correlations must be fine tuned; it must violate the assumption of faithfulness. This paper is an attempt to undermine the reasonableness of the assumption of faithfulness in the quantum context. Employing a symmetry relation between an entangled quantum system and a “sideways” quantum system consisting of a single photon passing sequentially through two polarizers, I argue that Wood and (...) Spekkens’s analysis applies equally to this sideways system also. As a result, we must either reject a causal explanation in this single photon system, or the sideways system must be fine tuned. If the latter, a violation of faithfulness in the ordinary entangled system may be more tolerable than first thought. Thus, extending the classical “no fine-tuning” principle of parsimony to the quantum realm may be too hasty. (shrink)

With the success of cognitive science's interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind, many theorists have taken up the strategy of appealing to science to address long standing disputes about metaphysics and the mind. In a recent case in point, philosophers and psychologists, including Robert Kane, Daniel C. Dennett, and Daniel M. Wegner, are exploring how science can be brought to bear on the debate about the problem of free will. I attempt to clarify the current debate by considering how empirical (...) research can be useful. I argue that empirical findings don't apply to one basic dimension of the problem, namely the dispute between compatibilism and incompatibilism. However, I show that empirical research can provide constraints in connection with another fundamental dimension, namely the dispute between libertarianism, which claims that indeterminacy is, in certain contexts, sufficient for freedom, and hard determinism and compatibilism, which deny this. I argue that the source of the most powerful constraint is psychological research into the accuracy of introspection. (shrink)

Martine Nida-Rümelin (1996) argues that color science indicates behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion is possible and raises this possibility as an objection to functionalist accounts of visual states of color. I show that her argument does not rest solely on color science, but also on a philosophically controversial assumption, namely, that visual states of color supervene on physiological states. However, this assumption, on the part of philosophers or vision scientists, has the effect of simply ruling out certain versions of functionalism. While (...) Nida-Rümelin is quite right to search for empirical tests for claims about the nature of visual states, philosophical issues remain pivotal in determining the correctness of these claims. (shrink)

A first-person proposition is a proposition that only a single subject can assert or believe. When I assert ‘I am on fire’ I assert a first-person proposition that only I have access to, in the sense that no one else can assert or believe this proposition. This is in contrast to third-person propositions, which can be asserted or believed by anyone.

본고는 반성에 대한 리오타르의 후기 저작 두 가지를 논한다. 리오타르는 그의 칸트 독해에서 반성 개념에 대해 논한 바 있다. 본고는 그 중 칸트의 숭고미에 대하여 를 리오타르의 보다 이전의 저술인 비인간 에 포함된 에세이, “Si l’on peut penser sans corps” 와 관련하여 논한다. 이는 칸트의 반성에 대한 리오타르의 보다 자세한 논의인 칸트의 숭고미에 대하여 를 보다 넓은 차원에서 이해하고자 하는 시도이다. 이를 위해 본고는 후기 리오타르 사상에서 주요하게 등장하는, 사유와 신체 모두와 연관을 맺는 정념 개념에 주목한다.

Martine Nida-Rümelin (1996) argues that color science indicates behaviorally undetectable spectrum inversion is possible and raises this possibility as an objection to functionalist accounts of visual states of color. I show that her argument does not rest solely on color science, but also on a philosophically controversial assumption, namely, that visual states of color supervene on physiological states. However, this assumption, on the part of philosophers or vision scientists, has the effect of simply ruling out certain versions of functionalism. While (...) Nida-Rümelin is quite right to search for empirical tests for claims about the nature of visual states, philosophical issues remain pivotal in determining the correctness of these claims. (shrink)

The levels that compose biological hierarchies each have their own energetic, spatial and temporal structure. Indeed, it is the discontinuity in energy relationships between levels, as well as the similarity of sub-systems that support them, that permits levels to be defined. In this paper, the temporal structure of living hierarchies, in particular that pertaining to Human society, is examined. Consideration is given to the period defining the lifespan of entities at each level and to a periodic event considered fundamental to (...) the maintenance of that level. The ratio between the duration of these two periods is found to be approximately 2.5 × 104. A similar relationship is found when lower, non-living levels of molecules and atoms are considered. This suggests that there is a constant factor of amplification between analogous periodic events at successive levels of the Human hierarchy. (shrink)

_Current Issues in Business Ethics_ analyzes the questions which underlie business activities, arguing that the prime object for a legitimate business must be sustainability. It also looks at the issues between individuals and business and asks whether businesses can support their employees as an alternative to family and church. Finally it assesses the impact of most recent trends in business looking at: * the activities of multinational companies * the changing gender balance * privatization * the loss of power of (...) the trade unions. (shrink)

The problem of the nature of color is typically put in terms of the following question about the intentional content of visual experiences: what’s the nature of the property we attribute to physical objects in virtue of our visual experiences of color? This problem has proven to be tenacious largely because it’s not clear what the constraints are for an answer. With no clarity about constraints, the proposed solutions range widely, the most common dividing into subjectivist views which hold that (...) attributed colors are mental properties or mental events} and a variety of realist views, which hold that colors are properties of physical objects. These realist views, in turn, divide into views that hold that attributed colors are dispositions of physical objects to produce color experiences (dispositionalism),° nondispositional relations between objects and perceivers (the relational view)," physical properties of physical objects (physicalism),‘ or sui generis properties of physical objects (primitivism and impressionism).‘ I’ll examine a proposed constraint which Mark Johnston (1992) calls Revelation. According to Revelation, the appearance of color in our ordinary visual experience provides us with unqualified access to the nature of color. While every proposal about the nature of color must take a stand on how the.. (shrink)

In Ruling Passions, Simon Blackburn contends that we should reject sensibility theory because it serves to support a conservative complacency. Blackburn's strategy is attractive in that it seeks to win this metaethical dispute – which ultimately stems from a deep disagreement over antireductionism – on the basis of an uncontroversial normative consideration. Therefore, Blackburn seems to offer an easy solution to an apparently intractable debate. We will show, however, that Blackburn's argument against sensibility theory does not succeed; it is no (...) more supportive of conservative complacency than Blackburn's noncognitivism. A victory for noncognitivism cannot be so easily won. (shrink)

Karl Marx’s acerbic observation in the opening lines of _The Eighteenth Brumaire_ that “all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur the first time as tragedy, the second as farce” may be profitably applied to a reconsideration of literary farce sui generis, a genre represented in this article by a long-neglected work of utopian fiction, Archibald Marshall’s _Upsidonia_ (1915). Although _Upsidonia_’s current disregard is arguably undeserved, the article’s chief interest is not to reclaim the novel on aesthetic (...) grounds but to illuminate the mechanics of what Marx would call its “serious buffoonery.” In its persistent reversal of capitalist principles and relations, _Upsidonia_ naturally invites readers to revisit Marx, whose mordant gambit may serve as a key to Marshall’s own farcical plot and praxis, rooted in return and repetition, the essential maneuvers of farce itself. (shrink)

Using Marcuse's theory of the total mobilization of advanced technology society along the lines of what he calls “the performance principle,” I attempt to describe the complex composition of class oppression in the classroom. Students conceive of themselves as economic units, customers pursuing neutral interests in a morally neutral, socio‐economic system of capitalist competition. The classic, unreflective conception of the classroom responds to this by implicitly endorsing individualism and ideals of humanist citizenship. While racism and cultural diversity have come to (...) count as elements of liberal intelligence in most college curricula, attempts to theorize these aspects of social and individual identity and place them in a broader content of class appear radical and inconsistent with the humanistic notion that we all have control over who we are and what we achieve. But tags such as “radical” and “unrealistic” mark a society based on the performance principle. Marcuse allows us to recognize a single author behind elements of psychology, metaphysics, and capitalism. The fact that bell hooks hits upon a similar notion suggests that we might use Marcuse's theory of the truly liberatory potential of imagination to transform and reconceive our classrooms so that the insidious effects of class, racism, and individualistic apathy might be subverted. Specifically, I outline and place into this theoretical context three concrete pedagogical practices: (a) the use of the physical space of the classroom; (b) the performance of community through group readings and short full‐class ceremonies, and (c) the symbolic modeling represented by interdisciplinary approaches to teaching. All three of these practices engage students in ways that co‐curricularly subvert class (and, incidentally, race divisions) and allow students to imagine, and so engage in, political action for justice as they see it. (shrink)

A recent series of experiments have demonstrated that a classical fluid mechanical system, constituted by an oil droplet bouncing on a vibrating fluid surface, can be induced to display a number of behaviours previously considered to be distinctly quantum. To explain this correspondence it has been suggested that the fluid mechanical system provides a single-particle classical model of de Broglie’s idiosyncratic ‘double solution’ pilot wave theory of quantum mechanics. In this paper we assess the epistemic function of the bouncing oil (...) droplet experiments in relation to quantum mechanics. We find that the bouncing oil droplets are best conceived as an analogue illustration of quantum phenomena, rather than an analogue simulation, and, furthermore, that their epistemic value should be understood in terms of how-possibly explanation, rather than confirmation. Analogue illustration, unlike analogue simulation, is not a form of ‘material surrogacy’, in which source empirical phenomena in a system of one kind can be understood as ‘standing in for’ target phenomena in a system of another kind. Rather, analogue illustration leverages a correspondence between certain empirical phenomena displayed by a source system and aspects of the ontology of a target system. On the one hand, this limits the potential inferential power of analogue illustrations, but, on the other, it widens their potential inferential scope. In particular, through analogue illustration we can learn, in the sense of gaining how-possibly understanding, about the putative ontology of a target system via an experiment. As such, the potential scientific value of these extraordinary experiments is undoubtedly a significant one. (shrink)

All nursing courses in the UK include ethics in the curriculum, although there is considerable variation in the content of ethics courses and the teaching methods used to assist the acquisition of ethical reasoning. The effectiveness of ethics courses continues to be disputed, even when the perceptions and needs of students are taken into account in their design. This longitudinal study, carried out in the UK, but with implications for nurse education in other developed countries, explored the ethical understanding of (...) nursing students and changes in their understanding and approaches to practice over their four years of training (1995-1999). The data collection tools were a questionnaire originally piloted prior to the 1995 study, from which the present study developed, and five vignettes describing ethical dilemmas in health care also piloted in 1995. Students’ thinking progressed as they became more mature as individuals and professionals, although this progress was not necessarily in the direction of greater certainty. Suggestions are made to help nurse educators to maximize the effectiveness of ethics courses in transmitting the skills of ethical reasoning. (shrink)

Building on self-professed perspectival approaches to both scientific knowledge and causation, I explore the potentially radical suggestion that perspectivalism can be extended to account for a type of objectivity in science. Motivated by recent claims from quantum foundations that quantum mechanics must admit the possibility of observer-dependent facts, I develop the notion of ‘perspectival objectivity’, and suggest that an easier pill to swallow, philosophically speaking, than observer-dependency is perspective-dependency, allowing for a notion of observer-independence indexed to an agent perspective. Working (...) through the case studies of colour perception and causal perspectivalism, I identify two places within which I claim perspectival objectivity is already employed, and make the connection to quantum mechanics through Bohr’s philosophy of quantum theory. I contend that perspectival objectivity can ensure, despite the possibility of perspective-dependent scientific facts, the objectivity of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

Included in the acute response of lowlanders exposed to reduced oxygen availability is an elevated red blood cell count due to increased erythropoietin (Epo) synthesis. According to current thinking, hypoxia is “sensed” by hydroxylases that permit Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1α (HIF‐1α) to complex with HIF‐1β to form a transcriptional activator (HIF‐1) that drives expression of hypoxia‐sensitive genes (such as EPO) under hypoxic conditions. In altitude‐adapted Andean natives, the Epo hypoxic response may be blunted; however, our data indicate that the DNA (...) sequences of the genes encoding Epo (including the 3′ regulatory region) and HIF‐1α appear to be conserved. Hence, adaptive changes in the Andean hypoxic response are not a consequence of changes in the primary sequence of these proteins or of known transcriptional regulatory domains of EPO. These results suggest that the altered erthropoietic response in Andean natives reflects adaptations in hypoxia sensing, rather than hypoxia response, mechanisms. BioEssays 25:515–519, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Byrne & Hilbert (2003; henceforth B&H) do not adequately explain how it is that phenomenal colors are physical, as their physicalism claims. This explanation requires more characterization of the relationship between the epistemology and nature of color than B&H provide. With this characterization, we can see that a physicalist need not accept unknowable color facts, as B&H do.

Recent investigations indicate that, around 7-months-of-age, infants begin to show some ability to recognize words in fluent speech. In segmenting and recognizing words, infants rely on information available in the speech signal. We consider what implications these findings have for adult word recognition models in general, and for Merge, in particular.

Palmer demarcates the bounds of our understanding of color experience by symmetries in the color space. He claims that if there are symmetries, there can be functionally undetectable color transformations. However, even if there are symmetries, Palmer's support for the possibility of undetectable transformations assumes phenomenal internalism. Alternatively, phenomenal externalism eliminates Palmer's limit on our understanding of color experience.

ABSTRACTWhile Lyotard's first book was an introduction to phenomenology, most of the work that follows can be said to openly challenge the limits of phenomenological analysis. This is particularly...

To deal with syntactic structure, one needs to go beyond a simple model based on associative structures, and to adopt a dynamical systems perspective, where each phrase and sentence of a language is represented as a trajectory in a syntactic phase space. Neural assemblies could possibly be used to produce dynamics that in principle could handle syntax along these lines.

According to color subjectivism, colors are mental properties, processes, or events of visual experiences of color. I first lay out an argument for subjectivism founded on claims from visual science and show that it also relies on a philosophical assumption. I then argue that subjectivism is untenable because this view cannot provide a plausible account of color perception. I describe three versions of subjectivism, each of which combines subjectivism with a theory of perception, namely sense datum theory, adverbialism, and the (...) virtual color proposal, and argue that each version faces serious objections. Considering these three theories of perception to be exhaustive of those available to the subjectivist, I conclude that subjectivism is untenable and that the scientifically motivated argument for this view is unsound. I then offer the diagnosis that the philosophical assumption on which this argument relies is mistaken. (shrink)

There has been in recent years a huge surge of interest in the so-called extended Wigner’s friend scenario (EWFS). In short, a series of theorems (with some variation in detail) puts pressure on the ability of different agents in the scenario to account for each of the others’ measured outcomes: the outcomes cannot be assigned single well-defined values while also satisfying other reasonable physical assumptions. These theorems have been interpreted as showing that there can be no absolute, third-person, ‘God’s eye’ (...) description of our reality. The focus of this paper is the strongest of these no-go theorems, the ‘local friendliness’ theorem of Bong et al. (2020, _Nature Physics_, _16_, 1199–1205), which gives earnest consideration to the possibility of a measurement that unitarily reverses an entire lab system, including a conscious agent, thereby erasing the agent’s memory. The purpose of this paper is to begin the philosophical conversation regarding key questions concerning this process: Are the events in the lab merely ‘erased’, or do they in some sense not exist at all? What would it be like to be unitarily reversed? Should an agent care about any experiences they have inside the lab before they are reversed? This analysis employs a parallel case of memory erasure, to which this case can be contrasted, arising in the context of drug-induced amnesia as a result of administering anaesthesia during medical procedures (Carbonell, 2014, _Bioethics_, _28_(5), 245–254). I argue that the consequences of unitarily reversing an agent are much more dramatic than simply memory erasure—the set of events themselves, and the personal timeline of the agent, leave no record at all inside or outside the lab. I consider the ramifications of this for the picture of reality that arises from the EWFS. (shrink)

I take issue with Saunders & van Brakel's claim that neural processes play no interesting role in determining color categorizations. I distinguish an aspect of color categorization, namely, color discrimination, from other aspects. The law of trichromacy describes conditions under which physical properties cannot be discriminated in terms of color. Trichromacy is explained by properties of neural processes.