In this target article by Morain and Largent (2023), the authors focus on an investigator’s duty to patient-subjects specifically regarding incidental or collateral findings within the context of e...

Clark, Robert Victorian Attorney-General the Hon Robert Clark was guest speaker at the 2012 Annual General Meeting of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics. In this extract from his speech, he discusses the relationship between the law and ethics, and the reform of Victoria's laws on guardianship and powers of attorney. While some ethical obligations should not be made into legal duties, he argues that every legal duty is founded upon a moral obligation. The reform of Victoria's laws on (...) guardianship and powers of attorney seeks to make it easier for individuals and their families to provide for their current and future needs, while strengthening the last resort roles of the Office of the Public Advocate and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to protect vulnerable people from neglect, abuse and exploitation. (shrink)

This essay explores the nature of absorbed experience which occurs when we are deeply immersed in a practical activity, such as when we make a work of art. This absorption is at the heart of all concentrated activity and reinforces those moments of engaged creativity when self-consciousness is freed from the calculations of the ego. Such occasions cannot be willed or predicted, but rather appear to arise spontaneously as in a stream of consciousness in which there is recognisable flow that (...) is undisrupted by language. Indeed, there is evidence that in these engaged moments, language itself is held in abeyance and that embodied activity takes over as we lose ourselves in the practical experience of making. Both the literature and artists’ accounts of their practice have tended to overlook the nature of these experiences. (shrink)

_Herder: His Life and Thought_ aims to offer a comprehensive biography of Johann Gottfried von Herder, a pivotal figure in the German Enlightenment and early Romanticism. The book serves two purposes: first, to provide English-speaking readers with a detailed picture of Herder’s life and thought, contextualized within the intellectual climate of his time; and second, to incorporate insights from the last half-century of Herder studies. Given the scarcity of Herder’s works in English, the author quotes extensively from primary texts, supported (...) by an extensive bibliography and detailed documentation. This approach aims to make Herder’s ideas accessible and provide a fresh interpretation of his contributions to philosophy, literature, and cultural thought. The book navigates the challenges of Herder biography by critically engaging with earlier works, such as Rudolf Haym’s 19th-century authoritative biography and the Suphan edition of Herder’s writings. While Haym and his successors, like Kühnemann, provided invaluable factual detail, their Kantian philosophical leanings often led them to undervalue or misinterpret Herder’s original contributions. This biography seeks to redress such imbalances by focusing on Herder as an independent thinker who synthesized Enlightenment rationalism with an appreciation for cultural diversity and creative spontaneity. It challenges long-standing assumptions about Herder’s dependence on figures like Hamann and Rousseau, instead highlighting his nuanced engagement with the broader intellectual currents of his era. By reevaluating Herder’s complex relationship with Rationalism and Romanticism, the book aims to present a balanced and modern perspective on a thinker whose ideas continue to resonate across disciplines. (shrink)

The following dialogue is between two fictional voices that concerns the phenomenological aspects of two closely related and marginal sub-genres: photographs of ships and photographs taken aboard them by their crews. Whereas the first category is defined by its presentation of the external profile of a vessel in a single view, crew’s photographs record their own lived experiences through manifold pictures of the “internal” ship. In light of this, the discussion describes and questions the nature of appearance and temporality arising (...) in both kinds of images, for one of the interlocutors. (shrink)

Volume 6, Issue 1, May 2019, Page 91-93.

This article provides an account of a collaborative teaching and learning project conducted in the English programme at the University of Tasmania in 2015. The project, Blended English, involved the development, implementation, and evaluation of learning and teaching activities using online and mobile technologies for undergraduate English units. The authors draw on the project’s findings from survey and focus group data, and staff reflective practice and peer review, to make the case for increasing technology-enhanced teaching and learning in English literary (...) studies. The blended approach described in this article has the capacity to enhance disciplinary learning; increase accessibility for students in remote and regional areas; facilitate deeper scholarly enquiry; and encourage staff to develop innovative, collaborative, and flexible teaching and learning practices. Appendix 1 presents examples of the project’s practical outcomes, as well as outlines of and reflections on three of the activities develop... (shrink)

: In this brief commentary, we reflect on the recent study by Siminoff, Burant, and Youngner of public attitudes toward "brain death" and organ donation, focusing on the implications of their findings for the rules governing from whom organs can be obtained. Although the data suggest that many seem to view "brain death" as "as good as dead" rather than "dead" (calling the dead donor rule into question), we find that the study most clearly demonstrates that understanding an individual's definition (...) of death is neither a straightforward task nor a good predictor of views about donation. Reflecting on the implications for ongoing debates over the dead donor rule, we suggest that perhaps it is not a change in policy that is warranted, but rather a change in the priorities that have garnered such intense focus on this issue within the field of bioethics. (shrink)

1. The Situation in Cognition 2. Situated Cognition: A Potted Recent History 3. Extensions in Biology, Computation, and Cognition 4. Articulating the Idea of Cognitive Extension 5. Are Some Resources Intrinsically Non-Cognitive? 6. Is Cognition Extended or Only Embedded? 7. Letting Nature Take Its Course.

The Internet has drastically changed how people interact, communicate, conduct business, seek jobs, find partners, and shop. Millions of people are using social networking sites to connect with others, and employers are using these sites as a source of background information on job applicants. Employers report making decisions not to hire people based on the information posted on social networking sites. Few employers have policies in place to govern when and how these online character checks should be used and how (...) to ensure that the information viewed is accurate. In this article, we explore how these inexpensive, informal online character checks are harmful to society. Guidance is provided to employers on when and how to use these sites in a socially responsible manner. (shrink)

Background Over-/undertreatment are pervasive in older adults with cancer, and challenges arise in applying the principles of bioethics: beneficence, nonmaleficence, justice, and patient autonomy. The objective of this study was to determine whether these ethical principles relate to over-/undertreatment for older adults, and how tensions among the principles may contribute. Methods We conducted a modified Delphi study with 13 experts in biomedical ethics for iterative rounds of data collection. In the first round, we presented via electronic questionnaire our previously published (...) definitions of over-/undertreatment in older adults with cancer. We then asked which ethical principles related to each definition, followed by how over-/undertreatment might arise from conflicts among different ethical principles. Consensus for each question was defined as ≥ 75% of experts answering “agree” or “strongly agree”. The second round consisted of a virtual discussion with nine of the panel experts led by a qualitative researcher to summarize round one results and review questions that did not reach consensus, followed by a second questionnaire including those questions. Findings Experts reached consensus that beneficence, non-maleficence, and autonomy were related to over-/undertreatment in older adults with cancer. Consensus was reached (92%) that overtreatment can occur when oncologists overemphasize beneficence valuing the potential benefit of cancer treatments, while underemphasizing non-maleficence with respect to treatment toxicities. Consensus was also reached (85%) that undertreatment reflects a lack of justice in equitable consideration of cancer treatments that could provide similar net benefits in older adults compared to younger adults. Lastly, consensus was reached that, in most cases, it is unethical to make a treatment recommendation without (1) formal assessment of patient frailty (e.g., via a geriatric assessment) or (2) the opportunity for the patient to share their values, goals, and preferences. Interpretation Our findings elucidate the ethical principles underpinning over- and undertreatment in older adults with cancer. (shrink)

Recent research has relied on the use of fine-tuning techniques to incorporate philosophical knowledge into Large Language Models (LLMs). The present paper outlines an alternative approach to the development of such systems—one that is rooted in a technique known as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). In contrast to fine-tuning, RAG does not seek to adjust the internal parameters (or internal memory) of an LLM. Instead, RAG relies on the retrieval of information from an externally-situated store, which functions as a form of non-parametric (...) (or external) memory. Applying this technique to the works of the contemporary philosopher Andy Clark yields Digital Andy: an LLM that is able to respond to questions about the extended mind. This serves as a practical demonstration of RAG-based techniques, highlighting how philosophical knowledge can be ‘incorporated’ into an LLM without the need for additional machine learning. But Digital Andy’s reliance on extra-systemic resources also raises questions about the scope of active externalist theorizing, encouraging us to consider Digital Andy’s status as an extended cognitive/computational system. Addressing these questions reveals some interesting points of convergence between the philosophical effort to understand the extended mind and the technological effort to build the next generation of LLMs. (shrink)

Humans often display extensive forms of prosocial behavior, frequently beyond what is predicted by inclusive fitness. This observation has led to various models attempting to explain the unique extent of human altruism. While many of these models have been empirically tested, one model, the ancestor–descendant conflict model, which is based on a maximum descendant-leaving strategy, has yet to be explicitly examined with observational human data. The ancestor–descendant conflict model posits that ancestors influence the behavior of their descendants, through traditions passed (...) down from generation to generation, and predicts that humans in traditional societies will favor, both altruistically and cooperatively, their closer kin even at greater genealogical distances than predicted by inclusive fitness. In this paper, we specifically examine the strength of ancestor influence on prosociality using observational (n = 863) and interview (n = 28) data collected with the Iban of West Kalimantan, Indonesia (Borneo). We evaluate kinship cooperation norms, kinship’s role in cooperative interactions, and the strength of ancestor influence on those interactions with dyadic data (unique dyads = 668). We find strong norms and behaviors for individuals cooperating more often with closer kin, while also finding limited support for the influence of ancestors on actual cooperative behavior. (shrink)

I want to motivate an account of what it is for an object to have a property, which may as well be called a deflationary view about properties. Such a view follows from a conception of predication I ground in the work of Donald Davidson, some of which remains unpublished. I claim that if we take seriously Davidson’s account of predication, by maintaining that sentences are the primary linguistic unit, we can define properties in terms of predicates. The aim of (...) this paper is twofold. First, I argue that this account is present in Davidson’s systematic treatment of the problem of predication. Second, I claim that this account is serviceable and economical, as it can accommodate a wide scope of properties and abstract objects without appealing to entities such as truthmakers or joints in nature. (shrink)

If certain versions of the correspondence theory of truth are correct, then truth can be informatively defined as correspondence to facts; facts would be truth-makers, and we could explain truth in terms of truth-bearers, correspondence, and truth-makers. I explain how slingshot arguments work generally, as collapsing arguments (regardless of their targets). Working through the slingshots of Davidson, and Gödel, I claim that Davidson’s slingshot involves dubitable premises, but that Gödel’s slingshot is terminal to certain versions of the correspondence theory, as (...) it poses a fatal dilemma between what I call fact fission and fact fusion. My claim is that it is impossible to informatively define truth in terms of correspondence to facts. (shrink)

Moral rationalism, the belief that acting contra a moral requirement is always irrational, is a strong claim; if true, seems to greatly reduce in scope the number of plausible moral theories due to what has been called the demandingness objection. One response to this consequence of moral rationalism has been to adopt moral anti-rationalism. Dale Dorsey thinks one can escape the demandingess objection with a weak form of anti-rationalism that still grants morality pride of place among normative systems. In this (...) paper I’ll argue that the demandingness objection is a formidable challenge to moral rationalism, and that Dorsey is correct in arguing that his weak anti-rationalism neatly offers a way to evade the objection. I’ll maintain, however, that weak anti-rationalism opens theories up to another powerful objection, the permissiveness objection, which ought to lead someone comfortable abandoning moral rationalism to abandon weak anti-rationalism as well, accepting moral anti-rationalism. (shrink)

In this dissertation I defend the claim, long held by Donald Davidson, that truth is a primitive concept that cannot be correctly or informatively defined in terms of more basic concepts. To this end I articulate the history of the primitive thesis in the 20th century, working through early Moore, Russell, and Frege, and provide improved interpretations of their reasons for advancing and eventually abandoning the primitive thesis. I show the importance of slingshot-style arguments in the work of Frege, Church, (...) Davidson, and Gödel for resisting certain versions of the correspondence theory of truth. I argue that most slingshots fail to convincingly establish a collapsing conclusion, but that a Gödelian version of the slingshot is terminal to certain varieties of the correspondence theory of truth. I then provide a Davidsonian theory of truth and interpretation that is consistent with and makes use of the primitive thesis. Finally, I provide an account of predication, properties, and universals that I argue is both serviceable and consistent with Davidson’s overall program. (shrink)