The concepts expressed by social role terms such as artist and scientist are unique in that they seem to allow two independent criteria for categorization, one of which is inherently normative. This study presents and tests an account of the content and structure of the normative dimension of these “dual character concepts.” Experiment 1 suggests that the normative dimension of a social role concept represents the commitment to fulfill the idealized basic function associated with the role. Background information can affect (...) which basic function is associated with each social role. However, Experiment 2 indicates that the normative dimension always represents the relevant commitment as an end in itself. We argue that social role concepts represent the commitments to basic functions because that information is crucial to predict the future social roles and role-dependent behavior of others. (shrink)

Responding to recent concerns about the reliability of the published literature in psychology and other disciplines, we formed the X-Phi Replicability Project (XRP) to estimate the reproducibility of experimental philosophy (osf.io/dvkpr). Drawing on a representative sample of 40 x-phi studies published between 2003 and 2015, we enlisted 20 research teams across 8 countries to conduct a high-quality replication of each study in order to compare the results to the original published findings. We found that x-phi studies – as represented in (...) our sample – successfully replicated about 70% of the time. We discuss possible reasons for this relatively high replication rate in the field of experimental philosophy and offer suggestions for best research practices going forward. (shrink)

The most common approach to understanding the semantics of the concept of pain is third-person thought experiments. By contrast, the most frequent and most relevant uses of the folk concept of pain are from a first-person perspective in conversational settings. In this paper, we use a set of linguistic tools to systematically explore the semantics of what people communicate when reporting pain from a first-person perspective. Our results suggest that only a pluralistic view can do justice to the way we (...) talk about pain from a first-person perspective: The semantic content of the folk concept of pain consists of information about both an unpleasant feeling and a disruptive bodily state. Pain linguistics thus provides new insights into ordinary pain language and poses an interesting challenge to the dominant unitary views of pain. (shrink)

The standard view in philosophy is that responsibility entails causation. Most philosophers treat this entailment claim as an evident insight into the ordinary concepts of responsibility and causation. Further, it is taken to be equally obvious that the reversal of this claim does not hold: causation does not entail responsibility. In contrast, Sytsma and Livengood have put forward an account of the use of ordinary causal attributions (statements like “X caused Y”) that contends that they are typically used interchangeably with (...) responsibility attributions (statements like “X is responsible for Y”). Put in terms of the concepts at play in these attributions, this account suggests that the reversal of the entailment claim may also hold, and, a fortiori, there would be mutual entailment between the ordinary concepts of responsibility and causation. Using the cancellability test, we report the results of three pre-registered studies providing empirical evidence that causation and responsibility are mutually entailed by each other. (shrink)

Commitments are crucial for our lives but there is no consensus on how commitments and preferences relate to each other. In this paper, we present three empirical studies that provide evidence that people sometimes choose a less preferred option when they have made a commitment.

In this paper, we confront two prevailing views of rationality—reason- and coherence-based theories—with empirical facts. While the experimental resolution of the debate between both theories is challenging, we examine two cases in which these theories make distinct predictions regarding whether an agent is deemed rational or not. By directly pitting reason-based against coherence-based theories, our findings indicate that reasons play a more influential role in shaping people's attributions of rationality than coherence.

Kevin Mulligan; VI*—Justification, Rule-breaking and the Mind1, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 99, Issue 1, 1 June 1999, Pages 123–140, https:/.

Kevin Williams; In Defence of Compulsory Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 24, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 285–294, https://doi.org/10.1111/.

Kevin Harris; An Antipodean Philosopher's Stone, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 25, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 135–141, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1.

Kevin Williams; National Sentiment in Civic Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 29, Issue 3, 30 May 2006, Pages 433–440, https://doi.org/10.11.

Non‐genetic forms of antimicrobial (drug) resistance can result from cell‐to‐cell variability that is not encoded in the genetic material. Data from recent studies also suggest that non‐genetic mechanisms can facilitate the development of genetic drug resistance. We speculate on how the interplay between non‐genetic and genetic mechanisms may affect microbial adaptation and evolution during drug treatment. We argue that cellular heterogeneity arising from fluctuations in gene expression, epigenetic modifications, as well as genetic changes contribute to drug resistance at different timescales, (...) and that the interplay between these mechanisms enhance pathogen resistance. Accordingly, developing a better understanding of the role of non‐genetic mechanisms in drug resistance and how they interact with genetic mechanisms will enhance our ability to combat antimicrobial resistance. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/aefGpdh-bgU. (shrink)

A realist theory of truth for a class of sentences holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar, we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The core of our theory is the (...) account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. In contrast to this, we uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity. (shrink)

English translation of an entry on pages 137–42 of the Spanish-language dictionary of logic: Luis Vega, Ed. Compendio de Lógica, Argumentación, y Retórica. Madrid: Trotta. DEDICATION: To my friend and collaborator Kevin Tracy. This short essay—containing careful definitions of ‘counterargument’ and ‘counterexample’—is not an easy read but it is one you’ll be glad you struggled through. It contains some carefully chosen examples suitable for classroom discussion. Using the word ‘counterexample’ instead of ‘counterargument’ in connection with Aristotle’s invalidity proofs leads (...) to a misinterpretation of Aristotle’s intentions. The two relations expressed by these two words are drastically different—as explained in this essay. There is however a subtle overlap: Every argument that is a counterargument for a given argument is a counterexample to the universal proposition that every argument in the same form as the given argument is valid. The word ‘counterexample’ was coined in the 1800s. The word ‘counterargument’ was given this sense in the 1960s. Saying that one argument is a counterexample for another argument is bad English—taking the word ‘counterexample’ in its Standard English sense. The word ‘counterinstance’ is an exact synonym for ‘counterexample’. Which logic books define ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’? Who started using ‘counterinstance’ or ‘counterexample’ in the sense of ‘counterargument’? Did they note that they were not using the word in the Standard sense? Why did it catch on? Also see: https://www.academia.edu/8840909/Argumentations_and_logic_1989_. (shrink)

Within a supportive learning environment, dialogue can allow for the identification and testing of assumptions and tacit beliefs. It can also illustrate the inadequacies in superficial thinking about ethical problems. Internal dialogue allows us to examine our beliefs, and to prepare and evaluate arguments. Each of these elements is important in the study of business ethics. This paper outlines one teaching technique based on Socratic dialogue, and shows how it can be applied to develop business students' thinking about ethics. After (...) justifying the suitability of this technique, and detailing its key elements, the paper offers for consideration an illustration of how the technique may be applied in a classroom setting, using structured role play. The paper concludes with a “teaching agenda”, offering suggestions for how this technique can be applied to teaching business ethics in an undergraduate, or postgraduate module, where it can examine language, structures and practices. (shrink)

I consider three aspects in which machine learning and philosophy of science can illuminate each other: methodology, inductive simplicity and theoretical terms. I examine the relations between the two subjects and conclude by claiming these relations to be very close.

R. M. Hare has argued for and defended a ‘two-level’, view of moral agency. He argues that moral agents ought to rely on the rules of ‘intuitive moral thinking’ for their ‘everyday’ moral judgments. When these rules conflict or when we do not have a rule at hand, we ought to ascend to the act-utilitarian,‘critical’ level of moral thinking. I argue that since the rules at the intuitive level of moral thinking necessarily conflict much more often than Hare supposes, and (...) since we often do not have ready-made rules for our moral judgments, we must necessarily use critical moral thinking very frequently. However, act-utilitarian judgements at this level will sharply conflict with our strongly held ‘intuitive’ moral convictions. I show that Hare's attempt to balance these two aspects of moral judgment requires us to simultaneously adopt two conflicting sets of moral standards, and thus an attempt to inculcate such standards constitutes a ‘schizophrenic’ moral education. Finally, I briefly outline an alternative conception of moral education, based on Aristotelian phronesis. (shrink)

This paper contends that the first argument of Hume's "Of scepticism with regard to reason" entails that humans have no knowledge as Hume understands knowledge. In defending this claim, we also see how Hume's argument anticipates an important aspect of an extremely influential 20th century development: the collapse of the analytic/synthetic distinction.

We further develop the mathematical theory of causal interventions, extending earlier results of Korb, Twardy, Handfield, & Oppy, (2005) and Spirtes, Glymour, Scheines (2000). Some of the skepticism surrounding causal discovery has concerned the fact that using only observational data can radically underdetermine the best explanatory causal model, with the true causal model appearing inferior to a simpler, faithful model (cf. Cartwright, (2001). Our results show that experimental data, together with some plausible assumptions, can reduce the space of viable explanatory (...) causal models to one. (shrink)

Bayesian networks are computer programs which represent probabilitistic relationships graphically as directed acyclic graphs, and which can use those graphs to reason probabilistically , often at relatively low computational cost. Almost every expert system in the past tried to support probabilistic reasoning, but because of the computational difficulties they took approximating short-cuts, such as those afforded by MYCIN's certainty factors. That all changed with the publication of Judea Pearl's Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems, in 1988, which synthesized a decade of (...) research making accurate graphical probabilistic reasoning computationally achievable.Bayesian network technology is now one of the fastest growing fields of research in artificial intelligence. That it has become a publication industry in its own right is shown by a search on Google scholar :This development, together with a parallel related growth in the use of causal discovery algorithms which automate the learning of Bayesian networks from sample data, has generated considerable interest, and controversy, within the philosophy-of-science community.Three central questions bringing together AI researchers and philosophers of science are: Are Bayesian networks Bayesian? What is the relation between probability and causality? Are the assumptions behind causal discovery of Bayesian networks realistic or fantastical?Jon Williamson, as a philosopher of science with a keen interest in the technology, asks and answers these questions in his new book. Although it is self-contained, his book is not very likely as an introduction to the technology , nor is it optimal even as an introduction to the philosophical problems in interpreting Bayesian networks . Rather Williamson's book is an attempt to move the debate forward by solving the central problems of the …. (shrink)

This paper addresses a range of theoretical issues which are the topic of recent social psychological and related research concerned with the “new racism.” We critically examine examples of such research in order to explore how analyst concerns with anti-racist political activism are surreptitiously privileged in explanations of social interaction, often at the expense of and in preference to the work of examining participants' own formulations of those same activities. Such work is contrasted with an ethnomethodologically-informed, discursive psychology which seeks (...) to the explore how participants' talk is responsively oriented to foreclosing the same sort of critique implicitly made available in new racism research as a way for speakers to account for their own and others' activities within the controversy which that same body of research seeks to settle. More specifically, we examine how the rhetorical context of controversy surrounding race and racism is imminent to the situated activities whereby speakers provide for its relevance and not, as assumed in new racism research, some independent factor affecting that interaction. Finally, we conclude with an analysis of an episode of talk recorded in a social science interview having as its topic the nature of cross-cultural contact in which the participants take up the issue of racism as a way of managing the conflicting demands with which they are confronted in accounting for their involvement as Western expatriates living in the Middle East. Throughout our analysis of these materials, the issue of racism is approached for how it features as a participant concern, raised by speakers in the course of attending to the immediate situated interactional business in which they are engaged. (shrink)

Despite much discussion of thedigital divide, little academic work hasdirectly analyzed the specific political andpolicy contexts in which the concept is beingdeveloped and deployed. This paper undertakesan analysis of one such initiative, theactivity of the supranational DigitalOpportunity Task Force (DOT Force). Theanalysis provides a critical discursiveanalysis of the final report of the DOT Force,together with thick description of theprocesses by which it was produced. Theresolution of numerous antagonisms between theparticipants in the narrative of the finalreport reflects the field of power (...) in which theDOT Force operates. The issue of the digitaldivide can be best understood as providing agenerative resource through which the variouspolitical interests represented in the DOTForce process can normatively reconfigure theconceptual and ethical possibilities itsignifies to renew a dominant, singular'secular salvation story' of the global. Thespecific closure, articulation and legitimationof the digital divide instantiates anaction-oriented temporality and a transformedmoral agenda, from a concern with inequality toa pressing inclusionary imperative to connectwith the promise of technology and development. (shrink)

The study of decision making has multiple implications for business ethics. This paper outlines some commonly used frameworks for understanding choice in business. It characterises the dominant model for business decision making as rational choice theory (RCT) and contrasts this with a more recent, naturalistic theory of decision-making, image theory. The implications of using RCT and image theory to model decision making are discussed with reference to three ethical systems. RCT is shown to be consistent with Utilitarian ethics, but not (...) with Kantian or Virtue-based ethics. Image theory is shown to be consistent with each. The paper identifies a number of implications following from this analysis. (shrink)

Role-failure acts (Waters and Bird, 1989) have been described as a form of morally questionable activity involving a failure to perform the managerial role. The present study examined employee perceptions and reactions with regard to one form of role-failure act, failure to maintain adequate privacy of performance appraisal information. The study assessed employees' attitudes toward various performance appraisal facets as an invasion of privacy and determined the relationships between these privacy-related attitudes and employees' satisfaction with components of their appraisal system, (...) the system as a whole, and their jobs. Responses that organizations might take to counteract appraisal privacy concerns were also discussed. (shrink)

This paper explores how providing the inferential basis to argue for a range of equally plausible interpretations features as a way of managing issues of accountability in talk about armed confrontation. We examine conversation produced in open-ended interviews with diplomatic representatives of the United States and Great Britain in discussion about those countries'' involvement in the Persian Gulf conflict of 1990–91. By providing the inferential basis upon which to argue for a range of equally plausible interpretative scenarios, speakers attend to (...) the potential for any one account to be privileged over another. Further, in speculating upon the relationship between interpretative particulars and the inferential outcome to be drawn for some specific version of events in question, speakers work to establish the parameters of an admissible narrative trajectory with which to account for those events. In so doing, they manage the implications that excluded versions would otherwise make relevant. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Kevin Krein’s Philosophy and Nature Sports. Gunnar Breivik, Jim Parry and Irena Martínková, and Rebekah Humphreys provide critical commentary on the text. The critical comments are followed by a response from Krein. The discussion covers a broad range of topics. These include the definition of “sport,” comparisons between nature sports and friluftsliv, the role of risk in nature sports, the experience of flow and the sublime in nature sports, and the understanding of nature. (...) Krein argues, as he does in the book and elsewhere, that nature sports provide a framework that facilitates intimate and meaningful interactions with nature. He argues further that the discussion included here shows how deeply our understanding of nature, and our understanding of nature sports, influence both our experiences within those sports and our broader experience of the world. (shrink)

Timpe, Kevin. Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Kevin Scharp proposes an original theory of the nature and logic of truth on which truth is an inconsistent concept that should be replaced for certain theoretical purposes. He argues that truth is best understood as an inconsistent concept, and proposes a detailed theory of inconsistent concepts that can be applied to the case of truth. Truth also happens to be a useful concept, but its inconsistency inhibits its utility; as such, it should be replaced with consistent concepts that (...) can do truth's job without giving rise to paradoxes. To this end, Scharp offers a pair of replacements, which he dubs ascending truth and descending truth, along with an axiomatic theory of them and a new kind of possible-worlds semantics for this theory. He goes to develop Davidson's idea that truth is best understood as the core of a measurement system for rational phenomena (e.g., belief, desire, and meaning), and offers a semantic theory that treats truth predicates as assessment-sensitive (i.e., their extension is relative to a context of assessment) and solves the problems posed by the liar and other paradoxes. (shrink)

Kevin Lynch's books are the classic underpinnings of modern urban planning and design, yet they are only a part of his rich legacy of ideas about human purposes and values in built form. City Sense and City Design brings together Lynch's remaining work, including professional design and planning projects that show how he translated many of his ideas and theories into practice. An invaluable sourcebook of design knowledge, City Sense and City Design completes the record of one of the (...) foremost environmental design theorists of our time and leads to a deeper understanding of his distinctively humanistic philosophy. The editors, both former students of Lynch, provide a cogent summary of his career and of the role he played in shaping and transforming the American urban design profession during the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Each of the seven thematic groupings of writings and projects that follow begins with a short introduction explaining their content and their background. The essays in part I focus on the premises of Lynch's work: his novel reading of large-scale built environments and the notion that the design of an urban landscape should be as meaningful and intimate as the natural landscape. In part II, excerpts from Lynch's travel journals reveal his early ideas on how people perceive and interpret their surroundings—ideas that culminated in his seminal work, The Image of the City. This part of the book also presents Lynch's experiments with children and his assessment of environmental-perception research. The examples of both small-scale and large-scale analysis of visual form in part III are followed by three parts on city design. These include Lynch's more theoretical works on complex planning decisions involving both functional (spatial and structural organization) and normative (how the city works in human terms) approaches, articles discussing the principles that guided Lynch's teaching and practice of city design, and descriptions of Lynch's own projects in the Boston area and elsewhere. The book concludes with essays written late in Lynch's career, fantasy pieces describing utopias and offering new design freedoms and scenarios warning of horrifying "cacotopias.". (shrink)

Philosophical logicians proposing theories of rational belief revision have had little to say about whether their proposals assist or impede the agent's ability to reliably arrive at the truth as his beliefs change through time. On the other hand, reliability is the central concern of formal learning theory. In this paper we investigate the belief revision theory of Alchourron, Gardenfors and Makinson from a learning theoretic point of view.

We argue that uncomputability and classical scepticism are both re ections of inductive underdetermination, so that Church's thesis and Hume's problem ought to receive equal emphasis in a balanced approach to the philosophy of induction. As an illustration of such an approach, we investigate how uncomputable the predictions of a hypothesis can be if the hypothesis is to be reliably investigated by a computable scienti c method.

The role of values in scientific research has become an important topic of discussion in both scholarly and popular debates. Pundits across the political spectrum worry that research on topics like climate change, evolutionary theory, vaccine safety, and genetically modified foods has become overly politicized. At the same time, it is clear that values play an important role in science by limiting unethical forms of research and by deciding what areas of research have the greatest relevance for society. Deciding how (...) to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate influences of values in scientific research is a matter of vital importance.Recently, philosophers of science have written a great deal on this topic, but most of their work has been directed toward a scholarly audience. This book makes the contemporary philosophical literature on science and values accessible to a wide readership. It examines case studies from a variety of research areas, including climate science, anthropology, chemical risk assessment, ecology, neurobiology, biomedical research, and agriculture. These cases show that values have necessary roles to play in identifying research topics, choosing research questions, determining the aims of inquiry, responding to uncertainty, and deciding how to communicate information. Kevin Elliott focuses not just on describing roles for values but also on determining when their influences are actually appropriate. He emphasizes several conditions for incorporating values in a legitimate fashion, and highlights multiple strategies for fostering engagement between stakeholders so that value influences can be subjected to careful and critical scrutiny. (shrink)

In the literature on transitional justice, there is disagreement about whether countries like the United States can be characterized as transitional societies. Though it is widely recognized that transitional justice mechanisms such as truth commissions and reparations can be used by Global North nations to address racial injustice, some consider societies to be transitional only when they are undergoing a formal democratic regime change. We conceptualize the political situation of low-income Black communities under the U.S. imprisonment and policing regime in (...) terms of three criteria for identifying transitional contexts: normalized collective and political wrongdoing, pervasive structural inequality, and the failure of the rule of law. That these criteria are met, however, does not necessarily mean that a transition is taking place. Drawing on the American political development and abolition democracy literatures, we discuss what it would mean for the United States to transition out of its present imprisonment and policing regime. A transitional justice perspective shows the importance of not only pushing for truth and reparation, but for an actual transition. (shrink)

Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI 10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of (...) Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relevance of social roles and hierarchies for the attribution of blame and causation in five culturally different countries, namely China, Germany, Poland, the United Arabic Emirates, and the United States of America. We demonstrate that in all these countries, hierarchical differences between the social roles occupied by two agents and associated differences in duties to care for others affect how these two agents are morally and causally judged when they make a decision together. Agents higher in (...) a hierarchy are attributed more blame and considered more causally responsible for an action’s consequences. We also demonstrate that the degree of this effect depends on culture-specific differences in how hierarchies are conceived. (shrink)

This book tells a compelling story about love, friendship, and the Divine that took over a thousand years to unfold. It argues that mind and feeling are intrinsically connected in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus; that Aristotle developed his theology and physics primarily from Plato’s Symposium (from the “Greater” and “Lesser Mysteries” of Diotima-Socrates’ speech); and that the Beautiful and the Good are not coincident classes, but irreducible Forms, and the loving ascent of the Symposium must be interpreted (...) in the light of the Republic, as the later tradition up to Ficino saw. Against the view that Platonism is an escape from the ambiguities of ordinary experience or opposed to loving individuals for their own sakes, this book argues that Plato dramatizes the ambiguities of ordinary experience, confronts the possibility of failure, and bequeaths erotic models for the loving of individuals to later thought. Finally, it examines the Platonic-Aristotelian heritage on the Divine to discover whether God can love us back, and situates the dramatic development of this legacy in Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. (shrink)