Despite several decades of debate, the concept of disease remains hotly contested. The debate is typically cast as one between naturalism and normativism, with a hybrid view that combines elements of each staked out in between. In light of a number of widely discussed problems with existing accounts, some theorists argue that the concept of disease is beyond repair and thus recommend eliminating it in a wide range of practical medical contexts. Any attempt to reframe the ‘disease’ discussion should answer (...) the more basic sceptical challenge, and should include a meta-methodological critique guided by our pragmatic expectations of what the disease concept ought to do given that medical diagnosis is woven into a complex network of healthcare institutions. In this paper, we attempt such a reframing, arguing that while prevailing accounts do not suffer from the particular defects that prominent critics have identified, they do suffer from other deficits—and this leads us to propose an amended hybrid view that places objectivist approaches to disease on stronger theoretical footing, and satisfies the institutional-ethicaldesiderataof a concept of disease in human medicine. Nevertheless, we do not advocate a procrustean approach to ‘disease’. Instead, we recommend disease concept pluralism between medical and biological sciences to allow the concept to serve the different epistemic and institutional goals of these respective disciplines. (shrink)

How should a group with different opinions (but the same values) make decisions? In a Bayesian setting, the natural question is how to aggregate credences: how to use a single credence function to naturally represent a collection of different credence functions. An extension of the standard Dutch-book arguments that apply to individual decision-makers recommends that group credences should be updated by conditionalization. This imposes a constraint on what aggregation rules can be like. Taking conditionalization as a basic constraint, we gather (...) lessons from the established work on credence aggregation, and extend this work with two new impossibility results. We then explore contrasting features of two kinds of rules that satisfy the constraints we articulate: one kind uses fixed prior credences, and the other uses geometric averaging, as opposed to arithmetic averaging. We also prove a new characterisation result for geometric averaging. Finally we consider applications to neighboring philosophical issues, including the epistemology of disagreement. (shrink)

The idea behind this book is that developing a conception of the physical world and a conception of mind is impossible without the exercise of agency, meaning "the power to alter at will one's perceptual inputs". The thesis is derived from a philosophical account of the role of agency in knowledge - the first time this has been attempted in the context of developmental psychology. The book is divided into three parts. In Part One, Russell argues that purely "representational" (...) theories of mind and of mental development have been overvalued, thereby clearing the ground for the book's central thesis. In Part Two, he proposes that, because objective experience depends upon the experience of agency, the development of the "object concept" in human infants is grounded in the development of executive-attentional capacities. In Part Three, an analysis of the links between agency and self-awareness generates an original theory of the nature of certain stage-like transitions in mental functioning and of the relationship between executive and mentalising deficits in autism. The book will be of particular interest to students and researchers in cognitive-developmental psychology, to philosophers of mind, and to anybody with an interest in cognitive science. (shrink)

An argument defending the view that one cannot derive an ought from an is against the usual (suspect) counterexamples.

Russell's classic examination of the relation between individual experience and the general body of scientific knowledge. It is a rigorous examination of the problems of an empiricist epistemology.

First published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The question which is never entirely resolved is: what is life? Biology, claims to stand for the study of life and living things, yet we would say that it cannot make a thoroughly clear distinction between living and non living, except in some very obvious cases. There are textbook definitions, of course, based on certain notable properties such as the ability to metabolize or reproduce, but these are arbitrary. If we are familiar with the characteristics of a particular animal or (...) plant, we know enough to be able to pronounce that it is dead when certain internal and external behaviours are no longer evident. Even this has difficulties - such as revealed in the arguments about whether to switch off a human life support system or not. When you find a squishy object on the seashore, can you be sure if it is alive or dead - or never living? The same dilemma confronts medical scientists and microbiologists trying to decide, for example, whether viruses are living, or quasi living, or intermittently living, or what. (shrink)

[First published in Italian as: “L’irreligione e lo spettatore imparziale nel sistema morale di Adam Smith”, in Rivista di Filosofia 3 (3):375-403 (2005). -/- Translated by E. Lecaldano.] -/- A number of commentators on Smith’s philosophy have observed that the relationship between his moral theory and his theological beliefs is “exceedingly difficult to unravel.” The available evidence, as generally presented, suggests that although Smith was not entirely orthodox by contemporary standards, he has no obvious or significant irreligious commitments or orientation. (...) Contrary to this view of things, this essay argues that behind the veneer of orthodoxy that covers Smith’s discussion in The Theory of the Moral Sentiments there are significant irreligious themes present in his work. -/- . (shrink)

ExcerptProfound change in society may involve shifting control of political power, the character of economic systems, or access to resources, but it can also have to do with the structures of meaning we bundle together in various understandings of culture. This issue of Telos looks at the explosive forces located specifically in the intangible dimensions of culture and how they may play out in revolutionary or counter-revolutionary processes. No process has been more disruptive of inherited traditions and stable structures than (...) globalization, the spread of the dynamic economy of capitalism coupled with liberal democracy. In a bold account, Jörg Friedrichs…. (shrink)

In his Treatise of Human Nature Hume makes clear that it is his aim to make moral philosophy more scientific and properly grounded on experience and observation. The “experimental” approach to philosophy, Hume warns his readers, is “abstruse,” “abstract” and “speculative” in nature. It depends on careful and exact reasoning that foregoes the path of an “easy” philosophy, which relies on a more direct appeal to our passions and sentiments . Hume justifies this approach by way of an analogy concerning (...) the relevance of anatomy to painting. “The anatomist,” he says, “ought never to emulate the painter.” At the same time, the painter cannot afford to ignore the anatomist: An anatomist [...] is admirably fitted to give advice to a painter ... We must have an exact knowledge of the parts, their situation and connexion, before we can design with any elegance or correctness. And thus the most abstruse speculations concerning human nature, however cold and uninteresting, become subservient to practical morality; and may render this latter science more correct in its precepts, and more persuasive in its exhortations. As these remarks suggest, Hume’s anatomy of virtue is not without its own practical aims and objectives. It is advanced with a view to identifying and carefully delineating the true foundations of morality in human nature and correcting our practices in light of this. With this improvement in our understanding of the nature and basis of virtue, we can better appreciate the way in which virtue secures happiness for ourselves and others and may also avoid the distortions and corruptions of morality by religious superstition. (shrink)

We commonly identify something seriously defective in a human life that is lived in ignorance of important but unpalatable truths. At the same time, some degree of misapprehension of reality may be necessary for individual health and success. Morally speaking, it is unclear just how insistent we should be about seeking the truth. Robert Sparrow has considered such issues in discussing the manufacture and marketing of robot ‘pets’, such as Sony’s doglike ‘AIBO’ toy and whatever more advanced devices may supersede (...) it. Though it is not his only concern, Sparrow particularly criticizes such robot pets for their illusory appearance of being living things. He fears that some individuals will subconsciously buy into the illusion, and come to sentimentalize interactions that fail to constitute genuine relationships. In replying to Sparrow, I emphasize that this would be continuous with much of the minor sentimentality that we already indulge in from day to day. Although a disposition to seek the truth is morally virtuous, the virtue concerned must allow for at least some categories of exceptions. Despite Sparrow’s concerns about robot pets (and robotics more generally), we should be lenient about familiar, relatively benign, kinds of self-indulgence in forming beliefs about reality. Sentimentality about robot pets seems to fall within these categories. Such limited self-indulgence can co-exist with ordinary honesty and commitment to truth. (shrink)

In this book, Russell Winslow analyzes contemporary discourses in microbiology and evolutionary inheritance theory to foreground the metaphysical prejudices that unreflectively subtend these discourses, highlight and illuminate an emergent prejudice of an ecological ontology in microbiology, and determine what interpretive possibilities it affords.

This special issue of JET deals with questions relating to our radically enhanced future selves or our possible “mind children” – conscious beings that we might bring about through the development of advanced computers and robots. Our mind children might exceed human levels of cognition, and avoid many human limitations and vulnerabilities. In a call for papers earlier this year, the editors asked how far we ought to go with processes that might ultimately convert humans to some sort of post-biological (...) form or replace us with post-biological beings. Are these coherent ideas at all? If so, is it likely, or plausible, that we’ll one day be able to do such things? Even if we can, is that desirable? More generally, how far can all these processes go, and how far should we pursue them? To offer a more personal and pointed question, would you “upload” your personality into some kind of advanced computer or robot if the technology became available? Would you do so even if the process required the destruction of your original organic brain? We are not the first to ask such questions. A large body of relevant literature has built up in recent decades, some of it discussing these and similar questions purely as philosophical thought experiments , but some of it at the level of practical recommendations for a posthuman future. Despite the intensity and quality of the ongoing debate and the eminence of many of the contributors, much work remains to be done to sort it all out and advance the discussion. We have gathered a range of viewpoints, and I predict that some of these pieces will soon be regarded as classics. They may not be the last word – how could they be when they do not all agree with each other? – but they advance our understanding of what is at stake. (shrink)

ExcerptThe high-water mark of globalization has passed. New competitions continue to emerge in a decidedly multipolar international system. As the United States views China and Russia as strategic competitors or worse, an array of mid-level powers—Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, the BRICS, and so forth—try to navigate this complex system and pursue their national interests. Meanwhile, no matter how much the United States and the European Union both believe themselves part of a single “West,” divergent interests tend to (...) drive them apart, even as tensions within the EU itself have grown sharper. In order to describe part of this increasingly competitive environment, an analytic distinction between so-called “civilizational states” and “liberal empires” seems to provide a framework to analyze international political processes in starkly contrasting terms.1 To some extent, the two terms repackage the terminology of the Cold War era that contrasted closed and open societies, and if we are indeed entering a new Cold War, the return of these categories is arguably appropriate. Yet more is surely at stake than a repetition of the historical competition between Communism and democracy, and the focus on the contrast between allegedly civilizational states and liberal empires may be missing a key part of the picture. Let’s take a closer look at the two concepts and then ask whether this binary provides an adequate toolkit to understand, for example, the conflict in Ukraine. To anticipate the conclusion: those who celebrate Russia as a “civilizational state” doing battle with the evil “liberal empire” of the West miss the key point in the conflict, the will of the Ukrainian people to assert their autonomy as a nation and to resist foreign occupation. (shrink)

A biography of Confucius, a Chinese philosopher of the ancient world.

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature was published in the form of three separate books. The first two, "Of the Understanding" and "Of the Pas- sions," were published in London in January 1739 by John Noon. The third, "Of Morals," was published independently in London by Thomas Longman in November 1740.2 The title and subtitles on all three books are the same: A Treatise of Human Nature: Being An Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. On the (...) title page of the first two books Hume employs an epigram from Tacitus: Rara temporumfelicitas, ubi sentire, quae velis; & quae sentias, dicere licet. ["Seldom are men blessed with times in which they may think what they like and say what they think."] On the title page of the third book this epigram is replaced by an epigram taken from the ninth book of Lucan's Pharsalia: Durae semper virtutis amator, Quaere quid est virtus, et posce exemplar honesti. ["Thou that to virtue ever wer't inclined, learn what it is, how certainly defin'd, and leave some perfect Rule to guide Mankind."] Given the context and the prominence of these epigrams, it is a curious fact that they have attracted little or no attention or comment from Hume scholars. -/- In this paper I argue that Hume's use of the epigram from Lucan is directly relevant to his use of the epigram from Tacitus. The epigrams flag very clearly the anti-Christian nature of Hume's intentions in the Treatise and his affiliations with and allegiance to an anti-Christian tradition of thought that stretches from Hobbes and Spinoza in the late seventeenth century to a circle of anti-Newtonian radical freethinkers that appeared in Britain in the first part of the eighteenth century. In more general terms these epigrams are a notable and illuminating example of esoteric communication in this context, and they indicate that the Treatise has an important place in the literature of the radical enlightenment. (shrink)

The programme of physicians and surgeons during the ‘late’ phase of the Paris Hospital incorporated efforts to codify the most efficient ways of defining disease. Those efforts involved reckoning the probability, the specificity, and most consistently, the localization of disease entities. One of the most frequently encountered of such entities was pleuritis. Pleuritis is therefore used here as a ‘marker’ through which to investigate how Auguste Chomel and others carried forward the programme of codification. A conspicuous feature of that programme (...) was a highly ritualized system of pedagogical organization in the clinique médicale. (shrink)

Abstract:Concepts of the everyday typically correlate with the normal and regular, while narratives of climate change are structured by predictions that exceed the normal. Since extreme events of climate change are not assimilable into the everyday, their destabilizing effects heighten destructive feedback loops mediated through fear. Developing psychic and social resilience necessary for re-routing climate change predictions from their direst outcomes thus requires transformed relations to the everyday. After analyzing how a default conception of the everyday hinders existential adaptation, I (...) draw on Jean-Luc Nancy, Alfred North Whitehead, and William James to develop a concept of the everyday that emphasizes precarity, multiplicity, and creativity as better fostering social and psychic resilience amidst destabilization. This different concept of the everyday is necessary for learning how to live meaningful daily lives not predicated on an illusion that all is well or the fantasy that climate change can be resolved through a perpetuation of current norms of the everyday. (shrink)

The art of rational conjecture.--The art of drawing inferences.--The art of reckoning.

How does one categorize Cornel West? He describes himself on multiple occasions as a "neo-Gramscian pragmatist," a "Jesus-centered intellectual bluesman," and a "card-carrying Kierkegaardian—with a strong Chekhovian twist—and a Marxist-informed radical democrat with a tragicomic sense of life." West seems intentionally cagy about being sorted into a particular school of thought. The resources he draws upon are too eclectic and the work he does with them too creative to treat him as a denizen of any one -ism. As he once (...) said in an interview, "I'm less interested in being situated within a philosophical tradition and much more interested in making sense of the world, pulling from whatever intellectual tradition I... (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1946 edition.

An Analytical Study of Four Nikayas. Dipak Kumar Barua. Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta 1971. xviii + 626 pp.