In this article I investigate several "sorts of naturalism" that have been advanced in recent years as possible foundations for virtue ethics: those of Michael Thompson, Philippa Foot, Rosalind Hursthouse, John McDowell, and Larry Arnhart. Each of these impressive attempts fails in illuminatingly different ways, and in the opening sections I analyze what has gone variously wrong. I next use this analysis to articulate four criteria that any successful Aristotelian naturalism must meet (my goal is to show what naturalism (...) must deliver, not yet to show that it can deliver it). I then look at Alasdair MacIntyre's approach, which begins with our natural trajectory from complete dependency toward becoming independent practical reasoners; I argue that this sort of naturalism meets the aforementioned criteria and thus provides a good example of what Aristotelian naturalists must do. I close with a consideration of two important objections to any broadly MacIntyrean sort of naturalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diagnostic WannabesJennifer Radden, PhD (bio)Saunders explores challenges for the clinician faced with self-styled sufferers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and fibromyalgia. The diagnostic system was not meant to be used as “a scaffold for identity,” she points out. Yet wannabe patients now step into the clinic wielding self-proclaimed diagnoses as social identities. Saunders explains the context where such phenomena (...) arise, and offers guidelines for clinicians addressing this new reality. To do so, she enlists Rashed’s innovative normative approach to the so-called boundary problem of assigning, and providing justification for, the contested line between normal and disordered. The boundary problem itself seems to rise to prominence during our current era of increasingly dimensional thinking, it is worth noting, with psychiatric diagnoses taken to refer to points on a continuum, rather than to discrete categorical disease entities.On the likely sources of these ‘diagnostic’ social identities, as well as reasons why certain diagnoses attach to them more commonly than others, Saunders points to social trends (including what she asserts to be a “post-stigma” cultural environment), the failure of efforts to identify neurobiological markers for psychiatric disorder, the ubiquity of social media, the algorithms themselves, and the hyperconnected existence of contemporary times. Such narratives also offer the comforts of a sense of belonging and explanations for perceived inadequacies, she rightly observes.Despite today’s virtual and other inducements, the problem introduced here is not an entirely new one. The first part of the seventeenth century in Europe saw an apparent “epidemic” of what was known as “melancholy,” a condition associated with the spleen, whose symptoms loosely resembled those of today’s depression and anxiety. Much of this suffering was undeniably real, but much was a fashionable, identity-conferring pose. “Every distemper of the body now is complicated with spleen,” the poet John Donne ironically observes in a letter dated 1622, “and when we were young men we scarce ever heard of the spleen. In our declinations now, every accident is accompanied with heavy clouds of melancholy”1 (Gosse, 2019). By then, the Melancholic Man (or homo melancholicus), with his surfeit of spleen, was an unmistakable character type—or social identity, as we would now say. Recognized and saluted in centuries-long literary and illustrative traditions, the type was an anchoring element of the humoral medicine which, despite the gradual emergence of more empirical science, had endured since Galenic times.Melancholy’s closest descendants, affective depressive and anxiety disorders, are today less evident among the troubling identities Saunders discusses—somewhat preempted, she points out, by more cognitively-based diagnoses such as ASD. [End Page 279] This is itself an ironic reminder of the vagaries of cultural attitudes, cautioning us to remember the broader context where these particular social identities are selected for emulation and adoption.The lure of the melancholy man’s2 social identity is well understood: already normalized, within the humoral system in which excess black bile afflicted roughly one in four people, it had been valorized for centuries—arguably by Aristotelian writing (in the dubious ‘Problems’), during the Renaissance by Ficino, and Shakespeare—even by Freud in his 1916 ‘Mourning and Melancholia.’ Through most of Western history, the positive attributes and benefits of the dark moods of melancholy have needed no further explaining or justifying. They glow with glamorous associations.Applying Rashed’s conditions for appropriately acknowledging and recognizing the fit of a person’s chosen social identity, Saunders‘ guidance for clinicians clarifies boundary matters. And it illustrates how to understand, regulate and communicate the appropriate norms in ways that can dissuade those whose personal growth and mental health are not served by claiming such identities.With at least some of the popular social identities Saunders describes, I think we can helpfully continue the comparison with the homo melancholicus. For the ‘neurodiversity’ rhetoric of our own times contains forces promoting both the normalization and the valorization of syndromes such as ASD. Pointing to analogies with differences of gender, ethnicity and culture, neurodiversity theorizing argues for a respect for, and appreciation of, difference. Mental or cognitive variations are equally natural and valuable, it is... (shrink)

Insofar as empirical inquiry involves the coevolution of descriptive language and theoretical commitments, a satisfactory model of empirical knowledge should describe the coordinated evolution of both language and theory. But since we do not know what conceptual resources we might need to express our future theories or to provide our best future faithful descriptions of the world, we do not now know even what the space of future descriptive options might be. One strategy for addressing this shifting-resource problem is to (...) track the predictive and linguistic dispositions of inquirers rather than to track their theories and conceptual resources directly. Sender-predictor games, a variant of Skyrms–Lewis sender-receiver games, provide very simple models for the coordinated coevolution of predictive and linguistic dispositions. Such models explain how it is possible for (1) predictive and descriptive dispositions of inquirers to coevolve, (2) term-wise incommensurable, but nevertheless descriptively faithful languages, to sequentially evolve, and (3) a sort of underdetermination to occur where inquirers might satisfy their descriptive and predictive aims by revising their linguistic dispositions, their theoretical dispositions, or both. Such models also provide an elementary characterization of what it might mean for descriptions of the world to be faithful and hence for empirical inquiry to be successful. In doing so they provide a relatively weak, but perfectly clear, endogenous account of epistemic norms. (shrink)

Status updates on social network sites (SNSs) as a new medium for people to express “what is on your mind” on the Internet can provide much information. In the current study, we statistically analysed survey data to examine whether individuals utilize impression management in their status updates on SNSs, whether their attempts at impression management are successful, and whether users who post these status updates can infer how others view them based on these contents, whether the status updates posted (...) on SNSs reflect information about users’ Big Five personality traits. The findings suggested that the meta–perception and perceivers’ judgments of all five traits are quite accurate, despite users’ aim to create different impression of most traits in their status updates. This study offers new empirical evidence about the model of interpersonal perception on SNSs and shows that status updates on SNSs can provide considerable information about their authors. (shrink)

Previous studies have identified the critical role of the left fusiform cortex in visual word form processing, learning, and memory. However, this so-called visual word form area's other functions are not clear. In this study, we used fMRI and the subsequent memory paradigm to examine whether the putative VWFA was involved in the processing and successful memory encoding of faces as well as words. Twenty-two native Chinese speakers were recruited to memorize the visual forms of faces and Chinese words. (...) Episodic memory for the studied material was tested 3. h after the scan with a recognition test. The fusiform face area and the VWFA were functionally defined using separate localizer tasks. We found that, both within and across subjects, stronger activity in the VWFA was associated with better recognition memory of both words and faces. Furthermore, activation in the VWFA did not differ significantly during the encoding of faces and words. Our results revealed the important role of the so-called VWFA in face processing and memory and supported the view that the left mid-fusiform cortex plays a general role in the successful processing and memory of different types of visual objects. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. (shrink)

Crossing the road within the traffic system is an example of an action human agents perform successfully day-to-day in complex systems. How do they perform such successful actions given that the behaviour of complex systems is often difficult to predict? The contemporary literature contains two contrasting approaches to the epistemology of complex systems: an analytic and a post-modern approach. We argue that neither approach adequately accounts for how successful action is possible in complex systems. Agents regularly perform (...) class='Hi'>successful actions without obeying (explicit or implicit) algorithmic rules (as the analytic approach suggests) and without an existential leap to action (as the post-modern approach suggests). We offer an alternative: A common-sense pragmatist epistemology, one that focuses on the kind of actions making up most agents’ successful moment-to-moment actions in complex systems. Successful actions obtain when agents apply ceteris paribus rules-of-thumb during predictive and decisional practices while achieving some desired goal. (shrink)

In this article we use a hybrid methodology to better understand the skilful performance of sports teams as an exemplar of distributed cognition. We highlight key differences between a team of individual experts and an expert team, and outline the kinds of shared characteristics likely to be found in an expert team. We focus on the way that shared knowledge contributes to expert team performance. In particular, we suggest that certain kinds of shared knowledge and shared skill, potentially developed through (...) a team’s history of playing and training together, facilitate successful coordination. These kinds of shared knowledge and skill may be less developed in a team of experts without a shared history. Exploring the expert performance of sports teams informs our understanding of distributed cognition and collaboration more generally and creates avenues for further philosophical and empirical investigation. (shrink)

Supporters of conceptual engineering often use Haslanger’s ameliorative project as a key example of their methodology. However, at face value, Haslanger’s project is no cause for optimism about conceptual engineering. If we interpret Haslanger as seeking to revise how people in general use and understand words such as ‘woman’, ‘man’, etc., then her project has been unsuccessful. And if we interpret her as seeking to reveal the meaning of those words, then her project does not involve conceptual engineering. I develop (...) and defend an alternative interpretation of Haslanger’s project and argue that, so interpreted, it is a successful conceptual engineering project after all. In so doing, I develop what I call a particularist account of the success conditions for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Alle Versuche von Trainern, auf Psyche, Einstellungen und Verhalten von Athleten einzuwirken, sind immer nur auf dem Wege von Kommunikation möglich. Wenn Trainer ihre Athleten steuern wollen, dann müssen sie Experten in Sachen Kommunikation sein. Was aber macht Trainer zu solchen Experten? Der vorliegende Beitrag geht dieser Frage nach, indem er die Trainer-Athlet-Kommunikation einer soziologischen Analyse unterzieht und auf der Basis systemtheoretischer Überlegungen Erfolgsstrategien im Hinblick auf die Probleme „Verständigung“ und „Steuerung“ ableitet.

The psychological literature now differentiates between two types of psychopath:successful (with little or no criminal record) and unsuccessful (with a criminal record). Recent research indicates that earlier findings of reduced autonomic activity, reduced prefrontal grey matter, and compromised executive activity may only be true of unsuccessful psychopaths. In contrast, successful psychopaths actually show autonomic and executive function that exceeds that of normals, while having no difference in prefrontal volume from normals. We argue that many successful psychopaths are (...) legally responsible for their actions, as they have the executive capacity to choose not to harm (and thus are legally rational). However, many unsuccessful psychopaths have a lack of executive function that should at least partially excuse them from criminal culpability. Although a successful psychopath's increased executive function may occur in conflict with, rather than in consonance with their increased autonomic activity - producing a cognitive style characterized by self deception and articulate-sounding, but unsound reasoning - they may be capable of recognizing and correcting their lack of autonomic data, and thus can be held responsible. (shrink)

The integration of computer science, biology, and engineering has resulted in the emergence of rapidly growing interdisciplinary fields such as bioinformatics, bioengineering, DNA computing, and systems and synthetic biology. Ideas derived from computer science and engineering can provide innovative solutions to biological problems and advance research in new directions. Although interdisciplinary research has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, the scientists contributing to these efforts largely remain specialists in their original disciplines and are not fully capable of covering the many (...) facets of multidisciplinary problems, which impedes the development of truly integrated solutions. It would be .. (shrink)

The “Puerto Rican wannabe” is one contemporary, local expression of contested racial identities—identities that are also inflected with class and gender meanings. This study uses interviews with local youth and young adults to explore their use of the caricature of the wannabe to create and contest race, class, and gender boundaries. The wannabe’s challenge to racially designated categories provides a symbol onto which nonwannabe kids project their own stereotypes, anxieties, and desires. The stories told about the (...) class='Hi'>wannabe in this study reveal both the persistence and the fragility of race, class, and gender identities and underline the centrality of sexuality in bolstering and undermining them. Boundary negotiations in one category rely on and affect other categories: In this study, the contestation of racial boundaries reestablishes heteronormative and hierarchical gender relations. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on the role of curiosity as a key motivating factor in successful collaboration for interdisciplinary research. I argue that curiosity is an important, perhaps essential component of successful collaboration for interdisciplinary teams. I begin by defining curiosity and highlighting the significance of the characteristic motivation of the virtue for successful collaboration. I argue that curiosity initiates, maintains, and coordinates successful collaborative interdisciplinary research. Moreover, if curiosity is a foundational intellectual virtue, then (...) it is not only important but essential for successful collaboration. I then draw attention to a specific type of curiosity, namely inquisitiveness, and argue that the defining feature of inquisitiveness – good questioning – renders it a particularly valuable form of curiosity for collaborative projects, including (although not limited to) interdisciplinary research. I conclude by deriving some practical recommendations for successful collaboration in interdisciplinary research. (shrink)

Alain Locke is most known for his involvement in the Harlem Renaissance. However, he received his PhD in philosophy from Harvard University in 1918, and produced a very large corpus of philosophical work. His work shows him to have been a sophisticated philosopher who thought through practical and theoretical problems regarding the nature of cosmopolitanism, democracy, race, value, religion, art, and education. Although Locke’s philosophical work has been discussed in parts, there has been no theorizing about how his different philosophical (...) commitments fit together. In this book Corey L. Barnes begins to systematize Locke’s philosophical thought, showing how his democratic theory, philosophy of race, and value theory are connected to and undergirded by a commitment to cosmopolitanism. In so doing, Barnes unearths aspects of Locke’s thought—for example, his economic thinking—that have not been accorded attention and reimagines parts of his work about which have been theorized, all while bringing Locke into current debates about each subject. (shrink)

An investigation of Handke's play by means of an analysis of the elements of the Tractatus, known to have influenced Handke at the time he wrote Kaspar. This approach yields a much more plausible account of Handke's representation of his central character's alienation than are available from now-standard semiotic and post-structuralist analyses.

The paper introduces a new model of telepresence. First, it criticises the standard model of presence as epistemic failure, showing it to be inadequate. It then replaces it with a new model of presence as successful observability. It further provides reasons to distinguish between two types of presence, backward and forward. The new model is then tested against two ethical issues whose nature has been modified by the development of digital information and communication technologies, namely pornography and privacy, and (...) shown to be effective. (shrink)

Lachman, Grace and Gaylord have argued that for bioethics education for undergraduate nursing students, a preferred combination of instruction involves a clinically-based nurse with ethics training and a philosophically-based ethicist with clinical training. At the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, undergraduate nursing ethics instruction takes this form. The course director is a philosopher with extensive clinical experience in ethics. The course utilises four distinct forms of nursing clinical inputs to educate undergraduate nursing students using a unique combination of didactic (...) and experiential learning exercises to simulate real ethics cases. This paper describes how the course was developed and refined over the past several years and suggests several ideas for improvements in nursing ethics education at an undergraduate level. (shrink)

An experimental breast-feeding education programme conducted at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila demonstrated that women could be motivated to improve their breast-feeding practices and lengthen their period of lactational amenorrhoea in comparison to a control group. Mothers who participated in the programme breast-fed their babies more frequently, delayed the introduction of regular supplements, used fewer bottles and pacifiers and maintained night feeding longer than mothers who were not exposed to the positive breast-feeding messages. The programme was successful in (...) lengthening the period of amenorrhoea among women with elementary, high school, or technical school education, but not among college-educated women. Different educational approaches may be necessary for women of different education levels. (shrink)

My aim is to figure out whether Aristotle’s response to the argument for fatalism in De Interpretatione 9 is successful. By “response” here I mean not simply the reasons he offers to highlight why fatalism does not accord with how we conduct our lives, but also the solution he devises to block the argument he provides for it. Achieving my aim hence demands that I figure out what exactly is the argument for fatalism he voices, what exactly is his (...) solution, whether his solution is coherent, and whether it does indeed succeed. I find that the argument is essentially bivalence plus that the truth of a proposition stating that an event will happen in the future entails that this event will necessarily happen, that Aristotle’s solution is to restrict bivalence when it comes to propositions about contingent future events, that this solution is coherent, and that while it does not rule out the possibility of fatalism, it does succeed in blocking the argument for fatalism offered within chapter 9. (shrink)

Le défi le plus important auquel doivent faire face les tenants d’une conception déflationniste de la vérité est l’argument de l’action réussie. Celui-ci fut défendu par Kitcher : afin de rendre compte d’une action réussie, il faudrait expliquer pourquoi une et une même action peut être à la fois psychologiquement et effectivement pertinente. Pour lui, seule la vérité-adéquation permet de répondre à cette exigence. Dans cet article, je soutiens qu’afin de rendre compte d’une action réussie, il convient d’expliquer en quoi (...) l’action d’un agent lui est un moyen approprié d’atteindre ses fins, et que cette explication même, dans le cadre d’une conception déflationniste, suffit à répondre à l’exigence théorique de Kitcher. (shrink)

This paper raises some fundamental questions about two of the most important issues in the world today: first, questions about the nature and relationship between power, responsibility and leader ship. Second, how this is related to the whole subject of learning. The core of the debate about leadership should be more about how and what we learn about responsibility, rather than the traditional preoccupation with power. If we want to improve the quality of life in the twenty-first century, the one (...) thing that we have to do today is to try to improve the quality of our learning. Why we learn? How we learn? What we learn? What we do with that learning? (shrink)

Multiarm bandit problems have been used to model the selection of competing scientific theories by boundedly rational agents. In this paper, I define a variable-arm bandit problem, which allows the set of scientific theories to vary over time. I show that Roth-Erev reinforcement learning, which solves multiarm bandit problems in the limit, cannot solve this problem in a reasonable time. However, social learning via preferential attachment combined with individual reinforcement learning which discounts the past, does.

In reaction to growing critics regarding ecological and ethical aspects of intensive animal husbandry, different initiatives of ethical poultry production try to establish alternative food supply chains on the market. To be able to stabilise these niche innovations parallel to the mainstream regime, new forms of cooperation along the value added chain and with the consumers play an important role. Based on a case study of integrated egg and meat production from a dual-purpose breed by small multifunctional farms in Northeast (...) of Germany, the paper exemplifies the challenges for the different partners of the food supply chain and cooperation management. Empirical data were obtained via nine qualitative interviews with actors along the value chain and via participatory observation of workshops and meetings. The research was embedded in a transdisciplinary project, where different measures to meet the existing challenges were taken and evaluated. Analysing the existing cooperation reveals possibilities for improving cooperation management by e.g. clarifying the goals of the cooperation, including the points of sale as part of the food supply chain and communication of the ethical and sustainability qualities of the product to the consumers. However, the analysis also shows the limits of cooperation in an environment dominated by the paradigm of specialisation, economies of scale and cost reduction, which is also characteristic for parts of the organic sector. The paper discusses if the challenges of establishing this radical niche innovation can be met without a fundamental change of framework conditions as e.g. regulation on animal husbandry. (shrink)

The infection rates of COVID-19 have been exponential in some countries despite the imposition of infectious disease control measures such as lockdowns and physical distancing, which form one of the basic principles of public health and infectious disease control. There have been significant problems with leaders and citizenry deliberately ignoring and not complying with such measures and which have directly resulted in sudden rises in infection numbers. Here, I show the nature and extent of the widespread problem and argue that (...) the problem is in large part due to our modern society characterised by liberal individualism. I apply the philosophy proposed by philosopher Alasdair MacIntrye to show that one key underlying cause of the non-compliant behaviour of citizenry is due to modern liberal individualism that has deprived the modern nation state of the opportunities and authority for it to teach or to dictate what is the common good of the society as a whole to individuals in its community. This is the first time MacIntyre’s philosophy has been applied to public health, and this paper demonstrates the need for ethics education to counter-balance liberal individualism in order to contain and to prevent another pandemic and public health crisis in modern society. (shrink)

Normal aging is typically associated with declines in navigation and spatial memory abilities. However, increased interindividual variability in performance across various navigation/spatial memory tasks is also evident with advancing age. In this review paper, we shed the spotlight on those older individuals who exhibit exceptional, sometimes even youth-like navigational/spatial memory abilities. Importantly, we (1) showcase observations from existing studies that demonstrate superior navigation/spatial memory performance in late adulthood, (2) explore possible cognitive correlates and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying these preserved spatial abilities, (...) and (3) discuss the potential link between the superior navigators in late adulthood and SuperAgers (older adults with superior episodic memory). In the closing section, given the lack of studies that directly focus on this subpopulation, we highlight several important directions that future studies could look into to better understand the cognitive characteristics of older superior navigators and the factors enabling such successful cognitive aging. (shrink)