How do historians, comparative linguists, biblical and textual critics and evolutionary biologists establish beliefs about the past? How do they know the past? This book presents a philosophical analysis of the disciplines that offer scientific knowledge of the past. Using the analytic tools of contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science the book covers such topics as evidence, theory, methodology, explanation, determination and underdetermination, coincidence, contingency and counterfactuals in historiography. Aviezer Tucker's central claim is that historiography as a scientific discipline (...) should be thought of as an effort to explain the evidence of past events. He also emphasizes the similarity between historiographic methodology to Darwinian evolutionary biology. This is an important, fresh approach to historiography and will be read by philosophers, historians and social scientists interested in the methodological foundations of their disciplines. (shrink)

In this invaluable book, Tim Lewens shows in a clear and accessible manner how important Darwin is for philosophy and how his work has shaped and challenged the very nature of the subject. Beginning with an overview of Darwin’s life and work, the subsequent chapters discuss the full range of fundamental philosophical topics from a Darwinian perspective. These include natural selection; the origin and nature of species; the role of evidence in scientific enquiry; the theory of Intelligent Design; evolutionary approaches (...) to the human mind; the implications of Darwin’s work for ethics and epistemology; and the question of how social and political thought needs to be updated in the light of a Darwinian understanding of human nature. A concluding chapter assesses the philosophical legacy of Darwin’s thought. _Darwin_ is essential reading for anyone in the humanities, social sciences and sciences seeking a philosophical introduction to Darwin, or anyone simply seeking a philosophical companion to Darwin’s own writings. (shrink)

Critics have argued that comparative philosophy is inherently flawed or even impossible. What standards can we use to describe and evaluate different cultures' philosophies? How do we avoid projecting our own ways of thinking onto others? Can we overcome the vast divergences in history, language, and ways of organizing reality that we find in China, India, Africa, and the West? Doing Philosophy Comparatively is the first comprehensive introduction to the foundations, problems, and methods of comparative philosophy. It is divided into (...) three parts: . A wide-ranging examination of the basic concepts of comparative philosophy, including "philosophy," "comparison," "tradition," and "culture." . A discussion of the central problems that arise in extending philosophy across cultural boundaries: linguistic, justificatory, and evaluative incommensurability; projection and asymmetry; and the validity of cultural generalizations. . A critical look at the dominant contemporary approaches to comparative philosophy. This book offers a basic tool-kit for doing philosophy at the cross-cultural level. Drawing on many examples from the past and present of comparative philosophy, it engages readers in sustained reflection on how to think comparatively. (shrink)

T. J. Mawson's highly readable and engaging new introduction to the philosophy of religion offers full coverage of the key issues, from ideas about God's nature and character to arguments for and against His existence. Mawson's conversational style, lively wit, and enlightening examples make Belief in God as pleasurable as it is instructive and thought-provoking. It makes an ideal text for beginning undergraduate courses and for anyone thinking about these most important of questions.

I defend a sensitive neo-Moorean invariantism, an epistemological account with the following characteristic features: (a) it reserves a place for a sensitivity condition on knowledge, according to which, very roughly, S’s belief that p counts as knowledge only if S wouldn’t believe that p if p were false; (b) it maintains that the standards for knowledge are comparatively low; and (c) it maintains that the standards for knowledge are invariant (i.e., that they vary neither with the linguistic context of the (...) subject of knowledge nor with the linguistic context of the attributor of knowledge). I argue that this sort of account allows us to respond adequately to some difficult puzzles in epistemology, puzzles such as skeptical puzzles, as well as puzzles that inspire epistemological contextualism. I also maintain that by utilizing what Keith DeRose calls a warranted assertibility maneuver, sensitive neo-Moorean invariantism can account for our epistemic judgments in each of these puzzle cases. (shrink)

In an analysis of the role of emotion in self-deception is presented. It is argued that instances of emotional self-deception unproblematically meet Mele's jointly sufficient criteria. It is further proposed that a consideration of different forms of mental representation allows the possibility of instances of self-deception in which contradictory beliefs (in the form p and ~p) are held simultaneously with full awareness.

argues that when reproduction is sexual, natural selection can explain why individual organisms possess the traits they do. In stating his argument Matthen makes use of a conception of individual organisms as receptacles for collections of genes—a conception that cannot do the work Matthen requires of it. Either these receptacles are abstract objects, such as bare possibilities for organisms, or they are concrete. The first reading is too weak, since it allows selection to explain individual traits in both sexual and (...) asexual contexts. The only concrete entities we might think of as receptacles for collections of genes are male or female gametes. It is true that in the sexual context selection explains why an individual gamete combines with a second gamete of one type rather than another; however, this is not to say that selection explains why an individual organism has the traits it does. (shrink)

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic there was widespread concern that healthcare systems would be overwhelmed, and specifically, that there would be insufficient critical care capacity in terms of beds, ventilators or staff to care for patients. In the UK, this was avoided by a threefold approach involving widespread, rapid expansion of critical care capacity, reduction of healthcare demand from non-COVID-19 sources by temporarily pausing much of normal healthcare delivery, and by governmental and societal responses that reduced demand through national lockdown. (...) Despite high-level documents designed to help manage limited critical care capacity, none provided sufficient operational direction to enable use at the bedside in situations requiring triage. We present and describe the development of a structured process for fair allocation of critical care resources in the setting of insufficient capacity. The document combines a wide variety of factors known to impact on outcome from critical illness, integrated with broad-based clinical judgement to enable structured, explicit, transparent decision-making founded on robust ethical principles. It aims to improve communication and allocate resources fairly, while avoiding triage decisions based on a single disease, comorbidity, patient age or degree of frailty. It is designed to support and document decision-making. The document has not been needed to date, nor adopted as hospital policy. However, as the pandemic evolves, the resumption of necessary non-COVID-19 healthcare and economic activity mean capacity issues and the potential need for triage may yet return. The document is presented as a starting point for stakeholder feedback and discussion. (shrink)

Linguists have often remarked upon the polysemous nature of love, whereby the term encompasses a wide diversity of emotional relationships. Several typologies have been constructed to account for this diversity. However, these tend to be restricted in scope, and fail to fully represent the range of experiences signified by the term ‘love’ in discourse. In the interest of generating an expanded typology of love, encompassing its varied forms, an enquiry was conducted into relevant concepts found across the world's cultures, focusing (...) on so-called untranslatable words. Through a quasi-systematic search of published and internet sources, 609 relevant words were identified. These were organised through a version of grounded theory into 14 categories, representing 14 different forms or ‘flavours’ of love. The result is an expanded theoretical treatment of love, allowing us to better appreciate the nuances of this most cherished and yet polysemous of concepts. (shrink)

Michael and has argued that species have intrinsic essences. This paper rebuts Devitt’s arguments, but in so doing it shores up the anti-essentialist consensus in two ways that have more general interest. First, species membership can be explanatory even when species have no essences; that is, Tamsin’s membership of the tiger species can explain her stripyness, without this committing us to any further claim about essential properties of tigers. Second, even the views of species that appear most congenial to essentialism—namely (...) phenetic and genotypic cluster accounts—do not entail strong forms of intrinsic essentialism. (shrink)

This study investigates the types of misinformation spread on Twitter that evokes scientific authority or evidence when making false claims about the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19. Specifically, we examined tweets generated after former U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted misinformation about the drug using an unsupervised machine learning approach called the biterm topic model that is used to cluster tweets into misinformation topics based on textual similarity. The top 10 tweets from each topic cluster were content coded (...) for three types of misinformation categories related to scientific authority: medical endorsements of hydroxychloroquine, scientific information used to support hydroxychloroquine’s use, and a comparison group that included scientific evidence opposing hydroxychloroquine’s use. Results show a much higher volume of tweets featuring medical endorsements and use of supportive scientific information compared to accurate and updated scientific evidence, that misinformation-related tweets propagated for a longer time frame, and the majority of hydroxychloroquine Twitter discourse expressed positive views about the drug. Metadata from Twitter accounts found that prominent users within misinformation discourse were more likely to have media or political affiliation and explicitly expressed support for President Trump. Conversely, prominent accounts within the scientific opposition discourse primarily consisted of medical doctors or scientists but had far less influence in the Twitter discourse. Implications of these findings and connections to related social media research are discussed, as well as cognitive mechanisms for understanding susceptibility to misinformation and strategies to combat misinformation spread via online platforms. (shrink)

This article analyses individual level support for a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) using the European Social Survey. At the country level, support is highest in South and Central Eastern Europe, but variation does not otherwise seem to follow established differences between varieties of capitalisms or welfare state regimes. At the individual level, findings are broadly in line with the expectations of the political economy literature. Left-leaning individuals facing high labour market risk and/or on low incomes are more supportive of a (...) BIG, whereas current union members are less likely to support a BIG, consistent with the insider-outsider literature. However, when controlling for confounding variables, union membership is not statistically significant, suggesting that it is not membership per se, but the characteristics of unionised workers that make them less supportive. In many countries, a coalition between centrist and left-leaning individuals therefore seems most promising, but its political feasibility depends on whether enough union members are favourable to a BIG and on the level of opposition from high income and/or conservative parts of the electorate. (shrink)

I raise an objection to Stewart Shapiro's version of ante rem structuralism: I show that it is in conflict with mathematical practice. Shapiro introduced so-called ‘finite cardinal structures’ to illustrate features of ante rem structuralism. I establish that these structures have a well-known counterpart in mathematics, but this counterpart is incompatible with ante rem structuralism. Furthermore, there is a good reason why, according to mathematical practice, these structures do not behave as conceived by Shapiro's ante rem structuralism.

In On Liberty, Mill says that ‘the same causes which make … [a person] a Churchman in London, would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Pekin’. Despite Mill's not having drawn it out, there is an argument implicit in his comments that is germane to both externalist and internalist understandings of the epistemic justification of religious beliefs, even though some of these understandings would not wish to use the term ‘epistemic justification’ to refer to whatever it is (...) that they suggest must be added to true belief for it to count as knowledge. In this paper, we shall articulate this argument; examine how it challenges those religious believers who would wish to claim their religious beliefs as knowledge; and consider what they may do to meet this challenge. (shrink)

Human development is a matter of complex interactions between nutritional regimes, genes, educational regimes and other diverse developmental resources. I argue that there is no ethically salient difference between the contributions made to development by genes and the contributions made by these other resources. Since we think nutrition and schooling should be included in the calculus of distributive justice, we should include at least some genes in this calculus too. What is more, under the right circumstances genetic engineering may become (...) a useful tool for the distribution of developmental resources. This said, attention to the parity of genetic and environmental causation can also help to articulate the legitimate suspicions many groups have of genetic engineering. (shrink)

The environmental crisis is most frequently viewed through the lens of science, policy, law, and economics. In recent years the moral and spiritual dimensions of this crisis are becoming more visible. Indeed, the world religions are bringing their texts and traditions, along with their ethics and practices, into dialogue with environmental problems. In a lecture delivered at the University of Utah, Tucker explores this growing movement and highlights why it holds great promise for long term changes for the flourishing (...) of the Earth community. Mary Evelyn Tucker delivered this lecture on April 11, 2013, at the 18th annual symposium sponsored by the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources and the Environment at the S. J. Quinney College of Law, The University of Utah. (shrink)

Detlef Dürr was a remarkable figure in many different ways. I recall some adventures we had with him in Abu Dhabi.

Fallibilism is a precondition for the conversation between culturally distinct philosophies that comparative philosophy tries to bring about. Without an acknowledgement that our own tradition’s claims may be incomplete or mistaken, we would have no reason to engage members of other communities. Were the early Confucians fallibilists? While some contemporary commentators have seen fallibilism as an essential characteristic of the Confucian tradition, others have argued that the tradition is characterized instead by an “epistemological optimism,” and must be substantially revised if (...) it is to meet the challenges of the modern world. What both sets of commentators have in common is that they see fallibilism as a kind of intellectual virtue. If, to adapt a statement from Peirce, fallibilism’s consequences are antagonistic to Confucianism, then so much the worse for Confucianism. In this paper, I want to look at the issue of fallibilism in the central text of Confucianism, the Analects. At the heart of this text I find a puzzle that complicates both of the above-mentioned views. Confucius’ teachings advocate personal humility, flexibility, and listening to others, on the one hand, while at the same time considering the central teachings themselves to be infallible. In the first half of the paper I look at some textual evidence that shows that Confucius advocates a fallibility of persons but not a full-fledged epistemic one, and in the second half I give an explanation of why this is the case. (shrink)

In 1935/1936 Kurt Gödel wrote three notebooks on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which have now been entirely transcribed for the first time. Whereas a lot of the material is rather technical in character, many of Gödel's remarks have a philosophical background and concentrate on Leibnizian monadology as well as on vitalism. Obviously influenced by the vitalistic writings of Hans Driesch and his ‘proofs’ for the existence of an entelechy in every living organism, Gödel briefly develops the idea of a (...) computing machine which closely resembles Turing's groundbreaking conception. After introducing the notebooks on quantum mechanics, this article describes Gödel's vitalistic Weltbild and the ideas leading to the development of his computing machine. It investigates a notion of lawlike sequence which closely resembles Turing's concept of a computable number and which Gödel himself calls ‘problematic’, and compares it to the opposed concept of randomness, drawing upon the notion of program-size complexity. Finally, Gödel's machine is implemented in a dialect of the Lisp programing language. (shrink)

The air pollution generated by motor vehicles and by static sources is, in certain geographic areas, a very serious problem, a problem that exists because of a failure of the marketplace. To address this marketplace failure, the State of California has mandated that by 2003, 10% of the Light-Duty Vehicle Fleet (LDV) be composed of Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEVs). However, the policy-making process that was utilized to generate the ZEV mandate was problematic and the resulting ZEV mandate is economically unsound. Moreover, (...) an ethical analysis, based primarily upon the work of John Rawls, suggests that implementation of the California ZEV mandate is—in spite of the wide latitude that ought to be given to policy decision makers—unethical. A more ethical and economically efficient approach to the pollution caused by marketplace failure is one that relies on market incentives and thereby achieves the desired improvement in air quality by appealing both to the self-interest of motorists and to those businesses that are directly or indirectly involved with the automobile industry. Such an approach would take better advantage of the creative forces of the market and improvements in technology over time and avoid the infringements on individual liberty and fairness embodied in the ZEV mandate. (shrink)

As Nietzsche famously declared, only that which has no history can be defined. Robert Sparling's superb book shows that corruption is a concept with a history. Although Political Corruption is ordered chronologically, it is expressly not a linear account of how one modern definition of corruption evolved. History instead discloses how the concept has been deployed in a variety of modes in occidental political philosophy, seven of which are recovered here: from Erasmus's focus on the moral integrity of the prince (...) to Weber's ethics of bureaucratic office, via Machiavelli, Étienne de la Boétie, Bolingbroke, Robespierre, and Kant. Pursuant to the book's nonlinearity, these philosophers are not placed in conversation... (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor centuries, universities have supported the pursuit of knowledge through the academic disciplines while also preparing students for the professions. These two purposes are frequently in...

Universities are subject to considerable changes as environmental pressures increasingly place their futures in question. As core sites of social scientific activity, it is important to understand not only why these changes are occurring, but their consequences for practices within universities. Without this and a concern with the future, their distinction and value as sites of activity are left to those whose instrumental practices are short-term and act according to apparent economic necessities. Frequently, explanations for this state of affairs focus (...) upon the problems of increasing management and bureaucracy, but remain relatively silent concerning the activities of academics. This article argues that there is an affinity between forms of academic professionalism and the managerialism we find in universities as an answer to the changing pressures to which they are subject. Both exhibit an individualism and separate knowledge from knowing. Overall, this detracts from the cultures of universities and how these contexts relate to the content of the work that is produced within them. (shrink)

Violations of Bell's Inequality can only be reliably produced if some information about the apparatus setting on one wing is available on the other, requiring superluminal information transmission. In this paper I inquire into the minimum amount of information needed to generate quantum statistics for correlated photons. Reflection on informational constraints clarifies the significance of Fine's Prism models, and allows the construction of several models more powerful than Fine's. These models are more efficient than Fine claims to be possible and (...) work for the full range of possible analyzer settings. It also demonstrates that the division of theories into those that violate parameter independence and those that violate outcome independence sheds no light on the question of superluminal information transmission. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary analysis presents an innovative examination of the nature of pride and humility, including all their slippery nuances and points of connection. By combining insights from visual art, literature, philosophy, religious studies, and psychology, this volume adapts a complementary rather than an oppositional approach to examine how pride and humility reinforce and inform one another. This method produces a robust, substantial, and meaningful description of these important concepts. The analysis takes into account key elements of pride and humility, including (...) self-esteem and self-confidence, human interconnectedness, power's function and limitations, and the role of fear. Shawn R. Tucker explores the many inflections of these terms, inflections that cast them by turns as positive or negative, emboldening or discouraging, and salubrious or vicious depending upon the context and manner in which they are used. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 6, September 2019, Page 657-661.