Precision medicine and digital phenotyping are two prominent data-based approaches within digital medicine. While precision medicine historically used primarily genetic data to find targeted treatment options, digital phenotyping relies on the usage of big data deriving from digital devices such as smartphones, wearables and other connected devices. This paper first focusses on the aspect of data type to explore differences and similarities between precision medicine and digital phenotyping. It outlines different ways of data collection and production and the consequences thereof. (...) Second, it shows how these sorts of data influence dominant beliefs in the field: The field of precision medicine relying on the dominant understanding of ‘genetic determinism’ imported from genetics, digital phenotyping building on the logic of ‘data fundamentalism’. In the end, the analysis shows how digital data informs potentials as well as challenges of precision medicine and digital phenotyping: a better health care for individuals connected with individualisation and responsibilisation for all, with a prognosed shift from reactive to preventive medicine. Additionally, data-based approaches might facilitate epistemological and ontological redirections for the whole field of medicine that will also affect knowledge production and a reassessment of the value of different types of knowledge with all its consequences. Institutionally, it might lead to shifts in distribution of power to experts in big data related technologies, i.e. private companies. (shrink)

In recent years, the debate on the problem of causal exclusion has seen an ‘interventionist turn’. Numerous non-reductive physicalists (e.g. Shapiro and Sober 2007) have argued that Woodward's (2003) interventionist theory of causation provides a means to empirically establish the existence of non-reducible mental-to-physical causation. By contrast, Baumgartner (2010) has presented an interventionist exclusion argument showing that interventionism is in fact incompatible with non-reductive physicalism. In response, a number of revised versions of interventionism have been suggested that are compatible (...) with non-reductive physicalism. The first part of this paper reconstructs the definitional details of these modified interventionist theories. The second part investigates whether the modification proposed in Woodward (2011) is not only compatible with, but moreover supports non-reductive physicalism. In particular, it is examined whether that newest variant of interventionism allows for empirically resolving the problem of causal exclusion as envisaged by Shapiro, Sober and others. (shrink)

While ideal interventions are acknowledged by many as valuable tools for the analysis of causation, recent discussions have shown that, since there are no ideal interventions on upper-level phenomena that non-reductively supervene on their underlying mechanisms, interventions cannot—contrary to a popular opinion—ground an informative analysis of constitution. This has led some to abandon the project of analyzing constitution in interventionist terms. By contrast, this paper defines the notion of a horizontally surgical intervention, and argues that, when combined with some innocuous (...) metaphysical principles about the relation between upper and lower levels of mechanisms, that notion delivers a sufficient condition for constitution. This, in turn, strengthens the case for an interventionist analysis of constitution. (shrink)

As COVID-19 continues to spread, a variety of COVID-19 tracking apps (CTAs) have been introduced to help contain the pandemic. Deployment of this technology poses serious challenges of effectiveness, technological problems and risks to privacy and equity. The ethical use of CTAs depends heavily on the protection of voluntariness. Voluntary use of CTAs implies not only the absence of a legal obligation to employ the app but also the absence of more subtle forms of coercion such as enforced exclusion from (...) certain social and work activities. The protection of individual rights to voluntary use can be enhanced through an ethics by design approach in the development of CTAs that treat the introduction of CTAs for what it is: a complete novelty that is being tested for the first time in democracies. (shrink)

Recent research on thick terms like “rude” and “friendly” has revealed a polarity effect, according to which the evaluative content of positive thick terms like “friendly” and “courageous” can be more easily canceled than the evaluative content of negative terms like “rude” and “selfish”. In this paper, we study the polarity effect in greater detail. We first demonstrate that the polarity effect is insensitive to manipulations of embeddings (Study 1). Second, we show that the effect occurs not only for thick (...) terms but also for thin terms such as “good” or “bad” (Study 2). We conclude that the polarity effect indicates a pervasive asymmetry between positive and negative evaluative terms. (shrink)

The epistemological problems of unification of two distinct theories are discussed. An approach related to the work of Soviet authors (Stepin, Podgoretzky and Smorodinsky) is used and developed. The notion of ‘crossbred objects’—theoretical objects with contradictory properties which are part of the domain of application of two independent theories—is introduced which helps to describe the dynamics of revolutionary theory change. The occurrence of the cross-contradiction of two theories is reconstructed and the reductionistic and the synthetic means of its elimination are (...) proposed. The results of the methodological analysis are applied to the paradox of equivalence. (shrink)

In philosophical contexts, logical formalisms are often resorted to as a means to render the validity and invalidity of informal arguments formally transparent. Since Oliver and Massey , however, it has been recognized in the literature that identifying valid arguments is easier than identifying invalid ones. Still, any viable theory of adequate logical formalization should at least reliably identify valid arguments. This paper argues that accounts of logical formalization as developed by Blau and Brun do not meet that benchmark. The (...) paper ends by suggesting different strategies to remedy the problem. (shrink)

mechanism" is frequently encountered in the social science literature, but there is considerable confusion about the exact meaning of the term. The article begins by addressing the main conceptual issues. Use of this term is the hallmark of an approach that is critical of the explanatory deficits of correlational analysis and of the covering-law model, advocating instead the causal reconstruction of the processes that account for given macro-phenomena. The term "social mechanisms" should be used to refer to recurrent processes generating (...) a specific kind of outcome. Explanation of social macro-phenomena by mechanisms typically involves causal regression to lower-level elements, as stipulated by methodological individualism. While there exist a good many mechanism models to explain emergent effects of collective behavior, we lack a similarly systematic treatment of generative mechanisms in which institutions and specific kinds of structural configurations play the decisive role. Key Words: causal regression • correlational analysis • emergent effects • micro-macro processes • social mechanisms • structural determinants. (shrink)

According to a prevalent view among philosophers formal logic is the philosopher’s main tool to assess the validity of arguments, i.e. the philosopher’s ars iudicandi. By drawing on a famous dispute between Russell and Strawson over the validity of a certain kind of argument – of arguments whose premises feature definite descriptions – this paper casts doubt on the accuracy of the ars iudicandi conception. Rather than settling the question whether the contentious arguments are valid or not, Russell and Strawson, (...) upon discussing the proper logical analysis of definite descriptions, merely contrast converse informal validity assessments rendered explicit by nonequivalent logical for-malizations. (shrink)

The first part of this paper finds Craver’s (2007) mutual manipulability theory (MM) of constitution inadequate, as it definitionally ties constitution to the feasibility of idealized experiments, which, however, are unrealizable in principle. As an alternative, the second part develops an abductive theory of constitution (NDC), which exploits the fact that phenomena and their constituents are unbreakably coupled via common causes. The best explanation for this common-cause coupling is the existence of an additional dependence relation, viz. constitution. Apart from adequately (...) capturing the essential characteristics of constitution missed by MM, NDC has important ramifications for constitutional discovery—most notably, that there is no experimentum crucis for constitution, not even under ideal discovery circumstances. (shrink)

There is a strong interconnection between the social and environmental spheres. The efforts of monitoring and forecasting of disastrous events can illustrate benefits and threats of technicization and science. In ecophilosophy the forecasting of hazards is today extremely needed. It is not about creating theoretical unified structures or practical return to holistic harmony of a primordial man with nature. It is about, as Félix Guattari once held it, the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment. Though the (...) desired maintenance of the conflict between industrial society and natural systems now seems impossible, we still can start moving towards it: theoretically, by developing eco-philosophical ideas, and practically, monitoring and forecasting catastrophes and disasters, to protect human life and health and, as eco-philosophers would say, keep land usable for human purposes. The topic of the earthquakes forecast today is more in demand than ever. (shrink)

"This book addresses recent developments in the study of tense from a cross-paradigm and cross-linguistic point of view. Leading international scholars explore challenging ideas about tense at the interfaces between semantics and syntax as well as syntax and morphology. The book is divided into three main subsections: 1) Tense in tenseless languages; 2) Tense, mood, and modality, and 3) Descriptive approaches to some tense phenonema. Although time is a universal dimension of the human experience, some languages encode reference to time (...) without any grammatical tense morphology of the verb. Some of these exceptional "tenseless" languages are investigated in this volume: Kalaallisut, Paraguayan Guaraní and Movima. Modal verbs are polyfunctional in the sense that they express both tense and modality. In this volume, an untypical modal is analyzed, a modal analysis of imperatives is argued for, and sentential mood, which is closely related to modality, is analyzed. It is always interesting to look at the expression of tense in understudied languages, which is done here for Scottish Gaelic, Austronesian Rukai and German dialects. The volume can be used for graduate and undergraduate level teaching."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

The first part of this paper argues that if Craver’s ([2007a], [2007b]) popular mutual manipulability account (MM) of mechanistic constitution is embedded within Woodward’s ([2003]) interventionist theory of causation--for which it is explicitly designed--it either undermines the mechanistic research paradigm by entailing that there do not exist relationships of constitutive relevance or it gives rise to the unwanted consequence that constitution is a form of causation. The second part shows how Woodward’s theory can be adapted in such a way that (...) (MM) neither undermines the mechanistic paradigm nor reduces constitution to causation. However, it turns out that this modified theoretical embedding of (MM) makes it impossible to produce empirical evidence for constitutive relations. The paper ends by suggesting an additional criterion, the fat-handedness criterion, which, when combined with (MM), generates indirect empirical evidence for constitutive relevance. (shrink)

An actual cause of some token effect is itself a token event that helped to bring about that effect. The notion of an actual cause is different from that of a potential cause – for example a pre-empted backup – which had the capacity to bring about the effect, but which wasn't in fact operative on the occasion in question. Sometimes actual causes are also distinguished from mere background conditions: as when we judge that the struck match was a cause (...) of the fire, while the presence of oxygen was merely part of the relevant background against which the struck match operated. Actual causation is also to be distinguished from type causation: actual causation holds between token events in a particular, concrete scenario; type causation, by contrast, holds between event kinds in scenario kinds. (shrink)

Presented in this book is a theory of concept formation and understanding that does not make use of a notion of an innate mental language as a means of concept representation. Instead, experimental concepts are treated semantically as stabilising structuring of growing sets of data, which are sets of experienced satisfaction situations for expressions, and theoretical concepts are based on coherent sets of general sentences held true. There are two kinds of structures to be established: general concepts by means of (...) similarity sets under perspectives and historical concepts. This gives rise to a theory of understanding new situations and expressions by integrating new data into established sets of data salva stability, or by extending the conceptual structure in a metaphorical or metonymical way. The theory provides a way to understand what identity between propositional attitudes amounts to, especially how people can have more or less the same belief. (shrink)

For a long time, regularity accounts of causation have virtually vanished from the scene. Problems encountered within other theoretical frameworks have recently induced authors working on causation, laws of nature, or methodologies of causal reasoning – as e.g. May (Kausales Schliessen. Eine Untersuchung über kausale Erklärungen und Theorienbildung. Ph.D. thesis, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, 1999), Ragin (Fuzzy-set social science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), Graßhoff and May (Causal regularities. In W. Spohn, M. Ledwig, & M. Esfeld (Eds.), Current issues in (...) causation (pp. 85–114). Paderborn: Mentis, 2001), Swartz (The concept of physical law (2nd ed.). http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/physical-law/, 2003), Halpin (Erkenntnis, 58, 137–168, 2003) – to direct their attention back to regularity theoretic analyses. In light of the latest proposals of regularity theories, the paper at hand therefore reassesses the criticism raised against regularity accounts since the INUS theory of causation of Mackie (The cement of the universe. A study of causation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). It is shown that most of these objections target strikingly over-simplified regularity theoretic sketches. By outlining ways to refute these objections it is argued that the prevalent conviction as to the overall failure of regularity theories has been hasty. (shrink)

Recent developments around the sharing economy bring to the fore questions of governability and broader societal benefit—and subsequently the need to explore effective means of public governance, from nurturing, on the one hand, to restriction, on the other. As sharing is a predominately urban phenomenon in modern societies, cities around the globe have become both locus of action and central actor in the debates over the nature and organization of the sharing economy. However, cities vary substantially in the interpretation of (...) potential opportunities and challenges, as well as in their governance responses. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 16 leading global cities, our findings reveal four framings of the sharing economy: ‘societal endangerment,’ ‘societal enhancement,’ ‘market disruption,’ and ‘ecological transition.’ Such framings go hand in hand with patterned governance responses: although there is considerable heterogeneity in the combination of public governance strategies, we find specific configurations of framings and public governance strategies. Our work reflects the political and ethical debates on various economic, social, and moral issues related to the sharing economy, and contributes to a better understanding of the field-level institutional arrangements—a prerequisite for examining moral behavior of sharing economy organizations. (shrink)

This paper argues that, notwithstanding the remarkable popularity of Woodward's (2003) interventionist analysis of causation, the exact definitional details of that theory are surprisingly little understood. There exists a discrepancy in the literature between the clarity about the logical details of interventionism, on the one hand, and the enormous work interventionism is expected to do, on the other. The first part of the paper distinguishes three significantly different readings of the logical form of Woodward's (2003) interventionist theory and identifies the (...) reading that best captures the basic intuitions behind interventionism. In the second part, I show that this preferable reading is far from doing all the work that friends of interventionism would like it to do. (shrink)

In this paper I shall compare two models of concept formation, both inspired by basic convictions of philosophical empiricism. The first, the connectionist model, will be exemplified by Kohonen maps, and the second will be my own dynamic theory of concept formation. Both can be understood in probabilistic terms, both use a notion of convergence or stabilization in modelling how concepts are built up. Both admit destabilization of concepts and conceptual change. Both do not use a notion of representation in (...) some pregiven language, such as a language of thought or some logical language. Representation in a formal language only plays a role on the meta-level, namely within the theory about concept formation. (shrink)

If dominating functions in ω ω are adjoined repeatedly over a model of GCH via a finite-support c.c.c. iteration, then in the resulting generic extension there are no long towers, every well-ordered unbounded family of increasing functions is a scale, and the splitting number s (and hence the distributivity number h) remains at ω 1.

A regularity theory of causation analyses type-level causation in terms of Boolean difference-making. The essential ingredient that helps this theoretical framework overcome the problems of Hume’s and Mill’s classical accounts is a principle of non-redundancy: only Boolean dependency structures from which no elements can be eliminated track causation. The first part of this paper argues that the recent regularity theoretic literature has not consistently implemented this principle, for it disregarded an important type of redundancies: structural redundancies. Moreover, it is shown (...) that a regularity theory needs to be underwritten by a hitherto neglected metaphysical background assumption stipulating that the world's causal makeup is not ambiguous. Against that background, the second part then develops a new regularity theory that does justice to all types of redundancies and, thereby, provides the first all-inclusive notion of Boolean difference-making. (shrink)

This paper offers a contribution to ecophilosophy from the perspective of the scientific research of the environment. The problem considered in the paper deals with a specific issue of environmental risk, namely, the problem of radon ionizing radiation and the highest permissible security norms of it. This problem, now rarely discussed in ecological communities, is one of more important for humankind’s health and safe existence. The awareness of harmful and beneficial biological effects of various environmental factors is a basic step (...) towards ensuring the security of public health. The admissible norms of radon radiation are different in different countries. The article suggests possible causes of these differences and puts forward the thesis that today’s science alone is not a sufficient ground of resolving ecological problems. (shrink)

In der technisierten Welt kann die Wissenschaft keine Antwort auf die Frage nach dem inneren Charakter des Todesphänomens geben. Die These von dem Ende der Metaphysik, die diese Frage stellt, ist selbst eine geschichtsphilosophiesche Spekulation. Nach dem Verfasser gibt es keinen Beweis weder für die Sterblichkeit noch für Unsterblichkeit der Seele. In Platons Dialog kommt die Hoffnung auf Unsterblichkeit zum Ausdruck, die Hoffnung, die wie Kants Glaube, unserstörbar sei.

Reviewed Works:Edwin W. Miller, On a Property of Families of Sets.Ben Dushnik, E. W. Miller, Partially Ordered Sets.P. Erdos, Some Set-theoretical Properties of Graphs.G. Fodor, Proof of a Conjecture of P. Erdos.P. Erdos, R. Rado, A Partition Calculus in Set Theory.P. Erdos, R. Rado, Intersection Theorems for Systems of Sets.A. Hajnal, Some Results and Problems on Set Theory.P. Erdos, A. Hajnal, On a Property of Families of Sets.A. Hajnal, Proof of a Conjecture of S. Ruziewicz.P. Erdos, A. Hajnal, R. Rado, (...) Partition Relations for Cardinal Numbers.P. Erdos, A. Hajnal, On a Problem of B. Jonsson.P. Erdos, A. Hajnal, On Chromatic Number of Graphs and Set-Systems. (shrink)