Many adoptees face a number of challenges relating to separation from biological parents during the adoption process, including issues concerning identity, intimacy, attachment, and trust, as well as language and other cultural challenges. One common health challenge faced by adoptees involves lack of access to genetic-relative family health history. Lack of GRFHx represents a disadvantage due to a reduced capacity to identify diseases and recommend appropriate screening for conditions for which the adopted person may be at increased risk. In this (...) article, we draw out common features of traditionally understood “health disparities” in order to identify analogous features in the context of adoptees’ lack of GRFHx. (shrink)

This paper argues that it will be important for new genomic technologies to recognize the limits of traditional approaches to informed consent, so that other-regarding implications of genomic information can be properly contextualized and individual rights respected. Respect for individual autonomy will increasingly require dynamic consideration of the interrelated dimensions of individual and broader community interests, so that the interests of one do not undermine fundamental interests of the other. In this, protection of individual rights will be a complex interplay (...) between individual and community concerns. (shrink)

Linguists, biological anthropologists, and cognitive scientists come together in this book to explore the origins and early evolution of phonology, syntax, and semantics. They consider the nature of pre- and proto-linguistic communication, the internal and external triggers that led to its transformation into language, and whether and how language may be considered to have evolved after its inception. Evidence is drawn from many domains, including computer simulations of language emergence, the songs of finches, problem-solving abilities in monkeys, sign language, and (...) the structure of languages today. (shrink)

This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social (...) groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions of underclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory. (shrink)

Based on the examination of 49 Chinese criminal trials transcribed from the audio-visual recordings on the ‘China Court Trial Online’ website ( https://tingshen.court.gov.cn/ ), the institutional participants–prosecutors, defence lawyers, and judges–are found to frequently repeat defendants’ responses (‘other-repetition’), after a question–answer adjacency pair. Other-repetition has been described as a resource for showing participation and familiarity (Tannen 2007), initiating repair and registering receipt (Schegloff 1997), and displaying understanding and emotional stance (Svennevig 2004). However, other-repetition in trial discourse has not been thoroughly (...) researched. Therefore, this article aims to further examine this salient institutional linguistic feature in order to explore stance construction as a third turn. It is common to associate certain prosodic features of a repetition with the stance of the speaker. However, prosody may not be a reliable cue for stance interpretation in Chinese courtrooms, as institutional participants might conceal their stance during a repetition. Though they are more explicit in displaying their stance with turn-initial repeats, the distinction between the prosody of repeats for different functions is not categorical. It is found that defendants are sensitive to the lexicogrammar and multimodal cues for stance interpretation. (shrink)

We propose that children employ specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate “causal map” of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously understood in terms of the formalism of directed graphical causal models, or “Bayes nets”. Children’s causal learning and inference may involve computations similar to those for learning causal Bayes nets and for predicting with them. Experimental results suggest that 2- to 4-year-old children (...) construct new causal maps and that their learning is consistent with the Bayes net formalism. (shrink)

COVID-19 has resulted in extraordinary disruptions to the higher education landscape. Here, we provide a brief report on 295 students’ academic perceptions and emotional well-being in late May 2020. Students reported the high levels of uncertainty regarding their academic futures as well as significant levels of stress and difficulty coping with COVID-19 disruptions. These outcomes were related to the higher levels of neuroticism and an external locus of control. Female students reported worse emotional well-being compared to males, and the students (...) of color reported the significantly higher levels of stress and uncertainty regarding their academic futures compared to White students. These results suggest that some students may be at particular risk for academic stress and poor emotional well-being due to the pandemic and highlight the urgent need for intervention and prevention strategies. (shrink)

Analysis of online mathematics forums can help reveal how explanation is used by mathematicians; we contend that this use of explanation may help to provide an informal conceptualization of simplicity. We extracted six conjectures from recent philosophical work on the occurrence and characteristics of explanation in mathematics. We then tested these conjectures against a corpus derived from online mathematical discussions. To this end, we employed two techniques, one based on indicator terms, the other on a random sample of comments lacking (...) such indicators. Our findings suggest that explanation is widespread in mathematical practice and that it occurs not only in proofs but also in other mathematical contexts. Our work also provides further evidence for the utility of empirical methods in addressing philosophical problems. (shrink)

This chapter explores the suggestion that early attachment underpins the human capacity for empathy, and that empathy, in turn, is a condition of moral competence. We are disposed by nature to seek intimacy with our human conspecifics: the securely attached child learns that, whatever perils the world may hold, his well-being is shielded within the private sphere of personal intimacy. But why should secure attachment also favour—as it does—recognition of moral obligations towards those with whom we have no special standing (...) and share no personal destiny—recognition that the claims of persons as such merit our attention and regard? One answer to this question looks beyond the fact of secure attachment to a further psychological capacity, our capacity for empathy: secure attachment promotes susceptibility to empathy, and an appropriate susceptibility to empathy is a condition of basic moral competence. The chapter proposes that the deeper and more persisting significance of empathy to morality can be understood from a developmental perspective. Looking to mentalization-based attachment theory allows us to understand how empathic mirroring enters into our earliest intimate, interactions with other persons, securing our default commitment to recognizing their reality as bound up with our own. In this way, empathy constitutes one of the natural foundations on which the more complex architecture of moral experience is constructed. Attachment theory helps us to understand the indispensable role empathy plays at the beginning of the circuitous road to virtue. (shrink)

I argue that explanation should be thought of as the phenomenological mark of the operation of a particular kind of cognitive system, the theory-formation system. The theory-formation system operates most clearly in children and scientists but is also part of our everyday cognition. The system is devoted to uncovering the underlying causal structure of the world. Since this process often involves active intervention in the world, in the case of systematic experiment in scientists, and play in children, the cognitive system (...) is accompanied by a theory drive, a motivational system that impels us to interpret new evidence in terms of existing theories and change our theories in the light of new evidence. What we usually think of as explanation is the phenomenological state that accompanies the satisfaction of this drive. However, the relation between the phenomenology and the cognitive system is contingent, as in similar cases of sexual and visual phenomenology. Distinctive explanatory phenomenology may also help us to identify when the theory-formation system is operating. (shrink)

The doctrine (or principle) of double effect is often invoked to explain the permissibility of an action that causes a serious harm, such as the death of a human being, as a side effect of promoting some good end. According to the principle of double effect, sometimes it is permissible to cause a harm as a side effect (or “double effect”) of bringing about a good result even though it would not be permissible to cause such a harm as a (...) means to bringing about the same good end. Does the principle of double effect play the important explanatory role that has been claimed for it? To consider this question, one must be careful to clarify just what the principle is supposed to explain. Three misinterpretations of the principle’s force or range of application are common. 1. To ensure that Double Effect is not misunderstood as principle issuing a blanket permission on causing any unintended harm that yields a benefit, applications must require that the agent seek to minimize the harm involved. 2. Since it is widely accepted that it is wrong to aim to produce harm to someone as an end, to rule this out is not part of double effect’s distinctive content. 3. Harms that were produced regretfully and only for the sake of producing a good end may be prohibited by double effect because they were brought about as part of the agent’s means to realizing the good end. (shrink)

A Scientific Integrity Consortium developed a set of recommended principles and best practices that can be used broadly across scientific disciplines as a mechanism for consensus on scientific integrity standards and to better equip scientists to operate in a rapidly changing research environment. The two principles that represent the umbrella under which scientific processes should operate are as follows: Foster a culture of integrity in the scientific process. Evidence-based policy interests may have legitimate roles to play in influencing aspects of (...) the research process, but those roles should not interfere with scientific integrity. The nine best practices for instilling scientific integrity in the implementation of these two overarching principles are Require universal training in robust scientific methods, in the use of appropriate experimental design and statistics, and in responsible research practices for scientists at all levels, with the training content regularly updated and presented by qualified scientists. Strengthen scientific integrity oversight and processes throughout the research continuum with a focus on training in ethics and conduct. Encourage reproducibility of research through transparency. Strive to establish open science as the standard operating procedure throughout the scientific enterprise. Develop and implement educational tools to teach communication skills that uphold scientific integrity. Strive to identify ways to further strengthen the peer review process. Encourage scientific journals to publish unanticipated findings that meet standards of quality and scientific integrity. Seek harmonization and implementation among journals of rapid, consistent, and transparent processes for correction and/or retraction of published papers. Design rigorous and comprehensive evaluation criteria that recognize and reward the highest standards of integrity in scientific research. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are powerful similarities between cognitive development in children and scientific theory change. These similarities are best explained by postulating an underlying abstract set of rules and representations that underwrite both types of cognitive abilities. In fact, science may be successful largely because it exploits powerful and flexible cognitive devices that were designed by evolution to facilitate learning in young children. Both science and cognitive development involve abstract, coherent systems of entities and rules, theories. In both (...) cases, theories provide predictions, explanations, and interpretations. In both, theories change in characteristic ways in response to counterevidence. These ideas are illustrated by an account of children's developing understanding of the mind. (shrink)

Do time travellers retain their normal freedom and abilities when they travel back in time? Lewis, Horwich and Sider argue that they do. Time-travelling Tim can kill his young grandfather, his younger self, or whomever else he pleases—and so, it seems can reasonably deliberate about whether to do these things. He might not succeed. But he is still just as free as a non-time traveller. I’ll disagree. The freedom of time travellers is limited by a rational constraint. Tim can’t reasonably (...) deliberate on killing his grandfather, certain that he’ll fail. If Tim follows his evidence, and appropriately self-predicts, he will be certain he won’t kill his grandfather. So if Tim is both evidentially and deliberatively rational, he can’t deliberate on killing his grandfather. This result has consequences. Firstly, it shows how evidential limits in the actual world contribute to our conception of the future as open. Secondly, it undercuts arguments against the possibility of time travel. Thirdly, it affects how we evaluate counterfactuals in time travel worlds, as well as our own. I’ll use the constraint to motivate an evidential and temporally neutral method of evaluating counterfactuals that holds fixed what a relevant deliberating agent has evidence of, independently of her decision. Using this method, an agent’s local abilities may be affected by what happens globally at other times, including the future. (shrink)

What did Leibniz have to contribute to the philosophy of mind? To judge from textbooks in the philosophy of mind, and even Leibniz commentaries, the answer is: not much. That may be because Leibniz’s philosophy of mind looks roughly like a Cartesian philosophy of mind. Like Descartes and his followers, Leibniz claims that the mind is immaterial and immortal; that it is a thinking thing ; that it is a different kind of thing from body and obeys its own laws; (...) and that it comes stocked with innate truth-tracking intellectual ideas and an epistemically troubling habit of forming confused sensory ideas on the occasion of external corporeal events. Nothing is new. Of course, Leibniz adds unconscious perceptions to the mind in the form of his famous petites perceptions, and he offers a unique solution to the problem of mind-body interaction in the form of his infamous pre-established harmony. In the overall scheme of things, however, these look like minor alterations in a philosophy of mind that the Cartesians had been advocating for some fifty years. Or so it appears. (shrink)

The last century has seen many disciplines place a greater priority on understanding how people reason in a particular domain, and several illuminating theories of informal logic and argumentation have been developed. Perhaps owing to their diverse backgrounds, there are several connections and overlapping ideas between the theories, which appear to have been overlooked. We focus on Peirce’s development of abductive reasoning [39], Toulmin’s argumentation layout [52], Lakatos’s theory of reasoning in mathematics [23], Pollock’s notions of counterexample [44], and argumentation (...) schemes constructed by Walton et al. [54], and explore some connections between, as well as within, the theories. For instance, we investigate Peirce’s abduction to deal with surprising situations in mathematics, represent Pollock’s examples in terms of Toulmin’s layout, discuss connections between Toulmin’s layout and Walton’s argumentation schemes, and suggest new argumentation schemes to cover the sort of reasoning that Lakatos describes, in which arguments may be accepted as faulty, but revised, rather than being accepted or rejected. We also consider how such theories may apply to reasoning in mathematics: in particular, we aim to build on ideas such as Dove’s [13], which help to show ways in which the work of Lakatos fits into the informal reasoning community. (shrink)

Political realism is frequently criticised as a theoretical tradition that amounts to little more than a rationalisation of the status quo and an apology for power. This paper responds to this criticism by defending three connected claims. First, it acknowledges the moral seriousness of rationalisation, but argues that the problem is hardly particular to political realists. Second, it argues that classical International Relations realists like EH Carr and Hans Morgenthau have a profound awareness of the corrupting effects of rationalisation and (...) see realism as an antidote to this problem. Third, it proposes that Carr and Morgenthau can help us to recognise the particular ways in which realist arguments may nonetheless rationalise existing power relations and affirm the status quo by default, if not by design. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that children can infer causal relations from patterns of events. However, what appear to be cases of causal inference may simply reduce to children recognizing relevant associations among events, and responding based on those associations. To examine this claim, in Experiments 1 and 2, children were introduced to a “blicket detector”, a machine that lit up and played music when certain objects were placed upon it. Children observed patterns of contingency between objects and the machine’s activation that (...) required them to use indirect evidence to make causal inferences. Critically, associative models either made no predictions, or made incorrect predictions about these inferences. In general, children were able to make these inferences, but some developmental differences between 3- and 4- year-olds were found. We suggest that children’s causal inferences are not based on recognizing associations, but rather that children develop a mechanism for Bayesian structure learning. Experiment 3 explicitly tests a prediction of this account. Children were asked to make an inference about ambiguous data based on the base-rate of certain events occurring. Fouryear-olds, but not 3-year-olds were able to make this inference. (shrink)

A plausible thought is that we should evaluate counterfactuals in the actual world by holding the present ‘fixed’; the state of the counterfactual world at the time of the antecedent, outside the area of the antecedent, is required to match that of the actual world. When used to evaluate counterfactuals in the actual world, this requirement may produce reasonable results. However, the requirement is deeply problematic when used in the context of explaining causal asymmetry. The requirement plays a crucial role (...) in certain statistical mechanical explanations of the temporal asymmetry of causation. I will use a case of backwards time travel to show how the requirement enforces certain features of counterfactual structure a priori. For this reason, the requirement cannot be part of a completely general method of evaluating counterfactuals. More importantly, the way the requirement enforces features of counterfactual structure prevents counterfactual structure being derived from more fundamental physical structure—as explanations of causal asymmetry demand. Therefore, the requirement cannot be used when explaining causal asymmetry. To explain causal asymmetry, we need more temporally neutral methods for evaluating counterfactuals—those that produce the right results in cases involving backwards time travel, as well as in the actual world. (shrink)

Social justice has strong historical roots in public health. This does not mean that we always understand what it entails when conducting an ethical analysis of a particular public health program. This article shows that Powers and Faden’s theory of social justice can provide important insights and nuance to such an analysis. The Ontario human papilloma virus vaccination program that is underway in Canada provides an important and timely case where we can surface ethical issues pertaining to social justice that (...) may otherwise remain unarticulated in the context of this program. This analysis focuses on the normative issues raised by the prioritization of a school-based program for girls only. It also examines the relevant domains of well-being identified in Powers and Faden’s theory to see whether the program is likely to enhance the well-being of those for whom it is most important. Finally, the role of vaccines in general in promoting well-being is discussed. (shrink)

In a morally diverse society, moral agents inevitably run up against intractable disagreements. Civility functions as a valuable constraint on the sort of behaviors which moral agents might deploy in defense of their deeply held moral convictions and generally requires tolerance of other views and political liberalism, as does pluralism. However, most visions of civility are exceptionless: they require civil behavior regardless of how strong the disagreement is between two members of the same society. This seems an excellent idea when (...) those required to do the tolerating might otherwise smash us. However, the demands of civility are universal and fall upon everyone, including ourselves. They may seem to require us to tolerate the intolerable, leading us not into pluralism but rather into functional relativism, and also require the powerless to moderate their demands for redress. They also place moral agents in a very difficult position with respect to realizing our deeply held moral values. Isaiah Berlin’s pluralism, by contrast, allows us to violate tolerance when we come up against values which, put into practice, are incompatible with a form of life we can tolerate. Despite the many fronts on which civility and pluralism align, they are also pitted against each other. Only a qualified (not exceptionless) civility based in respect for persons can cohere with pluralism and thus resolve the double bind in which the moral agent seemed to be placed by exceptionless civility. I develop a rule for Accepted Exceptions that helps to explain how moral agents can be civil, value pluralism, demand redress, and maintain their own deeply held moral commitments. (shrink)

The revision of the Council of International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) International ethical guidelines for health‐related research (2016) heralds a paradigm shift from the ‘protectionist’ policies that emerged following historical research atrocities of the 20th century, towards a more nuanced and inclusive approach to research participation. Adopting this modified approach will enable countries to secure the benefits of research for individuals and for society as a whole, while at the same time minimizing the potential for exploitation and research‐related harms. (...) This article considers the potential impact of Guideline 16 of the CIOMS 2016 from a New Zealand perspective, with respect to research involving adults with impaired capacity and who are incapable of giving informed consent. While the CIOMS 2016 apply a ‘minimal risk’ threshold to guide research involving adults who lack capacity to consent, New Zealand law currently adopts a ‘best interests’ standard which significantly restricts the scope of permissible research that may be performed in this context. This article argues that the CIOMS 2016 should influence change to New Zealand’s legal framework for ethical review of research. CIOMS 2016 provides useful guidance for the necessary standards and processes to enable the responsible and ethical inclusion of adults with impaired capacity in research. (shrink)

Given that explicitly realist perspectives are currently quite unfashionable in applied linguistics, we very much welcome your thorough and careful discussion of the various forms they might take. We find the various categories you identify quite persuasive, and we find much to agree with in your characterisation of several of the positions you outline, particularly in the earlier part of the paper. However, we do take issue with aspects of your characterisation of both “social” and “linguistic systems” realism, and with (...) some of the arguments you adduce particularly against the latter and in favour of your seventh way (“linguistic norm circles realism”). Our response, then, concentrates particularly on the challenges arising from these parts of your paper, and addresses: (1) the ways in which we may define language itself, for the purposes of this debate; (2) the distinction between social and linguistic norms; (3) the properties of language; (4) the role of empirical evidence; and (5) the methodological problems we find with the norm circle approach. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are powerful similarities between cognitive development in children and scientific theory change. These similarities are best explained by postulating an underlying abstract set of rules and representations that underwrite both types of cognitive abilities. In fact, science may be successful largely because it exploits powerful and flexible cognitive devices that were designed by evolution to facilitate learning in young children. Both science and cognitive development involve abstract, coherent systems of entities and rules, theories. In both (...) cases, theories provide predictions, explanations, and interpretations. In both, theories change in characteristic ways in response to counterevidence. These ideas are illustrated by an account of children's developing understanding of the mind. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the immediate philosophical aftermath of Kant's Inaugural Dissertation. I will try to show what Kant himself took to be the problems left unsettled in the dissertation, and how he tried to deal with them. At the end of the paper, I will briefly sketch how he may have proceeded after the famous letter to Marcus Herz of 1772, and what path he would have had to take to recognize the need (...) for a transcendental deduction. (shrink)

This article discusses the term erotology, which was applied to medieval Islamicate ‘ilm al-bah (the science of coitus), as well as other world traditions of sexual knowledge, by European sexologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who contrasted it with their own forms of inquiry into sexual matters in the modern field of sexual science. It argues that the homogenisation and minimisation of all ancient and non-European forms of medical knowledge about sex, even one as substantial as the (...) ‘ilm al-bah tradition, supported a particular story about the origins of sexology's own emergence as a new and unprecedented biomedical and scientific way of knowing, characterised by an opposition assumed between sexuality and religion, by a view of sexual variations as perversions or pathologies, and by a view of Arabs and Muslims as sexually excessive. The article focusses on French, English, German, Austrian, and Italian sources of the 19th century that discussed the history of sexual medicine, relating these accounts to recent attempts to historicise sexology. It considers how forms of colonial hierarchy and exoticist views of non-European cultures impacted the dismissal of ‘ilm al-bah among European sexual scientists and how they may continue to exert an influence on forms of modern historical inquiry that are not attentive to scholarship on medieval Islamicate sexual medicine. (shrink)

Kant's correspondence includes a short letter from a well-wisher named Bertram. The content of the letter is as harmless as it is uninteresting: Bertram invites Kant to visit his brother's estate. ‘Do come,’ he says, ‘because the weather is so beautiful and such travel so beneficial’ . The interest of the letter is entirely exhausted by the date: 20 May 1775. For Kant used the letter to scribble down ideas, some suggestive of themes later to emerge in the first Critique. (...) Similarity of handwriting and train of thought suggests that these scribbles are part of a whole bundle of papers collectively known as the Duisburg Nachlaβ . It was supposedly Kant's practice to use letters as scrap paper shortly after receiving them. If this is true, we can date the Bertram scribbles - and, in all likelihood, the bundle as a whole - to some time in 1775. That would make the Duisburg Nachlaβ one of the few pieces of philosophical writing in Kant's own hand to come down to us from the 1770s, and the only extended piece in his hand from the middle of the decade. It offers a rare glimpse of Kant at work on immediate ancestors of central ideas in the first Critique and might therefore be expected to shed light on an important chapter in Kant's philosophical development. (shrink)

Can you think of a meme that made you laugh or a political post that made you angry? These examples illustrate how social media use (SMU) impacts how people feel. Similarly, how people feel when they initiate SMU may impact the emotional effects of SMU. Someone feeling happy may feel more positively during SMU, whereas someone feeling sad may feel more negatively. Using an experimental design, we examined whether following SMU, those in a happy mood would experience increases in positive (...) affect (PA) and those in a sad mood would experience increases in negative affect (NA). A large sample of college students (N = 703) were randomly assigned to a happy, sad, or neutral mood induction before SMU. PA and NA were assessed at baseline, post-mood induction, and after SMU. Contrary to hypotheses, after SMU, people in happy moods experienced decreases in PA, and those in sad moods experienced decreases in NA, reflecting SMU having a dampening effect on emotions. PA and NA were significantly lower after SMU compared to baseline and did not vary by condition. How young adults feel when they log onto SMU matters in understanding how SMU impacts PA and NA, but on average, emotional experiences are dampened. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. Its central insight is that epistemic advantage may accrue to those who are oppressed by structures of domination and discounted as knowers. Feminist standpoint theorists hold that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that can make such a difference. In response to two longstanding objections I argue that epistemically consequential standpoints need not be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that they do not confer automatic or comprehensive epistemic privilege (...) on those who occupy them. Standpoint theory is best construed as conceptual framework for investigating the ways in which socially situated experience and interests make a contingent difference to what we know (well), and to the resources we have for determining which knowledge claims we can trust. I illustrate the advantages of this account in terms of two examples drawn from archaeological sources. (shrink)

Alison Bailey’s The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance examines how whiteness misshapes our humanity, measuring the weight of whiteness in terms of its costs and losses to collective humanity. People of color feel the weight of whiteness daily. The resistant habits of whiteness and its attendant privileges, however, make it difficult for white people to feel the damage. White people are more comfortable thinking about white supremacy in terms of what privilege does for (...) them, rather than feeling what it does to them. The first half of the book focuses on the overexposed side of white privilege, the side that works to make the invisible and intangible structures of power more visible and tangible. Bailey discusses the importance of understanding privileges intersectionally, the ignorance-preserving habits of “white talk,” and how privilege and ignorance circulate in educational settings. The second part invites white readers to explore the underexposed side of white dominance, the weightless side that they would rather not feel. The final chapters are powerfully autobiographical. Bailey engages readers with a deeply personal account of what it means to hold space with the painful weight of whiteness in her own life. She also offers a moving account of medicinal genealogies, which helps to engage the weight she inherits from her settler colonial ancestors. The book illustrates how the gravitational pull of white ignorance and comfort are stronger than the clean pain required for collective liberation. The stakes are high: Failure to hold the weight of whiteness ensures that white people will continue to blow the weight of historical trauma through communities of color. -/- All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. -/- -/- . (shrink)

Even without Alzheimer's or dementia, most of us are prone to “ordinary forgetting”. The Good Place and careful philosophical reflection can help us think through memory loss, relationships, and making a place for each other as we live through the human condition. Throughout The Good Place, Chidi and Eleanor help each other develop and sustain their moral selves as well as their relationship. Stories are fundamental to our sense of self, right and wrong, and the kind of people we are. (...) To understand memory as a construction, we must understand the three stages of individual memory: encoding, storage, and retrieval. How we scaffold each other's identities and how we hold space for each other in the real world are ethical issues that have everything to do with memory and the stories we tell ourselves and each other. The Good Place can help us grapple with this. (shrink)

Dementia has rapidly become a major global health crisis. As the aging population continues to increase, the burden increases commensurately on both individual and societal levels. The behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia are a prominent clinical feature of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. BPSD represent a myriad of manifestations that can create significant challenges for persons living with dementia and their care providers. As such, BPSD can result in detriments to social interaction with others, resulting in harm to the (...) psychosocial health of the person with dementia. While brain deterioration can contribute to BPSD as the disease progresses, it may be confounded by language and communication difficulties associated with ADRD. Indeed, when a person with dementia cannot effectively communicate their needs, including basic needs such as hunger or toileting, nor symptoms of pain or discomfort, it may manifest as BPSD. In this way, a person with dementia may be attempting to communicate with what little resources are available to them in the form of emotional expression. Failing to recognize unmet needs compromises care and can reduce quality of life. Moreover, failing to fulfill said needs can also deteriorate communication and social bonds with loved ones and caregivers. The aim of this review is to bring the differential of unmet needs to the forefront of BPSD interpretation for both formal and informal caregivers. The overarching goal is to provide evidence to reframe the approach with which caregivers view the manifestations of BPSD to ensure quality of care for persons with dementia. Understanding that BPSD may, in fact, be attempts to communicate unmet needs in persons with dementia may facilitate clinical care decisions, promote quality of life, reduce stigma, and foster positive communications. (shrink)

Archaeological data are shadowy in a number of senses. Not only are they notoriously fragmentary but the conceptual and technical scaffolding on which archaeologists rely to constitute these data as evidence can be as constraining as it is enabling. A recurrent theme in internal archaeological debate is that reliance on sedimented layers of interpretative scaffolding carries the risk that “preunderstandings” configure what archaeologists recognize and record as primary data, and how they interpret it as evidence. The selective and destructive nature (...) of data capture in archeology further suggests that there may be little scope for putting “legacy” data to work in new ways. And yet archaeologists have been strikingly successful in mining old datasets for new insights. I situate these concerns in the broader context of debate about the epistemic standing of the historical sciences, and then consider three strategies by which archaeologists address the challenges posed by legacy data. The first two – secondary retrieval and recontextualization – are a matter of reconfiguring the scaffolding that underpins evidential reasoning. The third turns on redeploying old data in the context of computational models that support the experimental simulation of the cultural systems and contexts under study. (shrink)

As a working hypothesis for philosophy of science, the unity of science thesis has been decisively challenged in all its standard formulations; it cannot be assumed that the sciences presuppose an orderly world, that they are united by the goal of systematically describing and explaining this order, or that they rely on distinctively scientific methodologies which, properly applied, produce domain-specific results that converge on a single coherent and comprehensive system of knowledge. I first delineate the scope of arguments against global (...) unity theses. However implausible old-style global unity theses may now seem, I argue that unifying strategies of a more local and contingent nature do play an important role in scientific inquiry. This is particularly clear in archaeology where, to establish evidential claims of any kind, practitioners must exploit a range of inter-field and inter-theory connections. At the same time, the robustness of these evidential claims depends on significant disunity between the sciences from which archaeologists draw background assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. This juxtaposition of unity with disunity poses a challenge to standard positions in the debate about scientific unity. (shrink)

We outline a cognitive and computational account of causal learning in children. We propose that children employ specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate “causal map” of the world: an abstract, coherent representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously represented by the formalism of directed graphical causal models, or “Bayes nets”. Human causal learning and inference may involve computations similar to those for learnig causal Bayes nets and for predicting with (...) them. Preliminary experimental results suggest that 2- to 4-year-old children spontaneously construct new causal maps and that their learning is consistent with the Bayes-Net formalism. (shrink)

The bitter, public contest for priority over the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS was officially closed in 1987 with equal credit being awarded to two parties from opposite sides of the Atlantic. One was led by Robert C. Gallo of the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology at the National Cancer Institute in the United States and the other was led by Luc Montagnier of the viral-oncology unit at the Pasteur Institute in France. Using citation counts from articles published (...) by the scientific community, a process of alloca tion of credit is examined and compared with this official settlement. A novel pattern emerges. It is found that the scientific community began to redistribute priority when the dispute became highly publicized and took little notice of the official settlement. This, along with the fact that Gallo has now officially been charged with misconduct by an investigative committee, may mean that Montagnier's team may eventually receive sole creditfor the discovery of the AIDS virus. The importance of examining priority disputes from many different angles and the potential for citation analysis in such cases are highlighted. (shrink)

Amid intensifying calls for an international convention on the rights of older persons, it is timely and important to examine the different narratives of aging that are informing and shaping debates on the human rights of older persons and to explore their implications. The article examines the dominant and competing narratives of aging emerging from public policy and gerontological studies, most notably, aging as a crisis or burden; aging as pathology; conceptions of successful, productive or active aging; and finally, aging (...) and vulnerability. The implications of each of these narratives are analysed. The article then explores the extent to which these different narratives are taken up or challenged in advocacy for an international convention on the rights of older persons. The aim of the discussion is to make explicit and interrogate the narratives of aging which advocacy for a new convention on the rights of older persons may be perpetuating or challenging. (shrink)

The question of how the ‘border’ is conceived in international law, and how it shapes identity and peoples’ lives, remains largely unexplored in the international legal literature. This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the meaning of the border in international law, and in the contemporary context, by drawing on the work of the philosopher and political theorist, Étienne Balibar, and by reflecting, in the light of his work, on the recent decision of the House of Lords in (...) R v Immigration Officer at Prague Airport. It is shown that international law's focus on the territorial border may render invisible other borders which are significant for subaltern groups, and thereby fail to address the manner in which borders affect lives and determine outcomes. Borders are not stable and ‘univocal’, but instead, ‘multiple’, shifting in meaning and function from group to group. They are also being ‘exported’ such that a person may experience a foreign border while still within the territory of their own country. In highlighting the multiplicity of borders, the article seeks to prompt further reflection on the articulation and application of norms of international law in a way that addresses the realities of the contemporary context. (shrink)

The vagaries of evidential reasoning in archaeology are notorious: the material traces that comprise the archaeological record are fragmentary and profoundly enigmatic, and the inferential gap that archaeologists must cross to constitute them as evidence of the cultural past is a peren­nial source of epistemic anxiety. And yet we know a great deal about the cultural past, including vast reaches of the past for which this material record is our only source of evidence. The contents of this record stand as (...) evidence only under interpretation, but however much a construct it is, archaeological evidence has a striking capacity to disrupt settled assump­tions, redirecting inquiry and expanding interpretive horizons in direc­tions no one could have anticipated. It is this capacity for constraining inference and interpretation that I am concerned to understand. I outline a model of evidential reasoning based on archaeological practice that integrates insights drawn from philosophical theories of confirmation, model building and hypothesis testing. Given growing interest in the uses of material evidence in fields that had been resolutely text-based, the archaeological principles of evidential reasoning may have much wider reach than this particular social/historical discipline. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the ideal of justice yet disagree radically over what that ideal requires. One persistent problem for thinking about justice is that the unjust social arrangements that originally motivated our questions may also distort our thinking about possible answers. This paper suggests some strategies for improving our thinking about justice in the unjust meantime. As our world becomes more just, we may expect our thinking about justice to improve.

This is the first of two companion articles drawn from a larger project, provisionally entitled Undisciplining Moral Epistemology. The overall goal is to understand how moral claims may be rationally justified in a world characterized by cultural diversity and social inequality. To show why a new approach to moral justification is needed, it is argued that several currently influential philosophical accounts of moral justification lend themselves to rationalizing the moral claims of those with more social power. The present article explains (...) how discourse ethics is flawed just in this way. The article begins by identifying several conditions of adequacy for assessing reasoning practices designed to achieve moral justification and shows that, when used in contexts of cultural diversity and social inequality, discourse ethics fails these conditions. It goes on to argue that the failure of discourse ethics is rooted in its reliance on a broader conception of moral epistemology that is invidiously idealized. It concludes by pointing to the need to rethink both the mission and the method of moral epistemology. (shrink)

What is the future of Philosophy of education? Or as many of scholars and thinkers in this final ‘future-focused’ collective piece from the philosophy of education in a new key Series put it, what are the futures—plural and multiple—of the intersections of ‘philosophy’ and ‘education?’ What is ‘Philosophy’; and what is ‘Education’, and what role may ‘enquiry’ play? Is the future of education and philosophy embracing—or at least taking seriously—and thinking with Indigenous ethicoontoepistemologies? And, perhaps most importantly, what is that (...) ‘Future’? These debates have been located in the work of diverse scholars: from the West, from Global South, from indigenous thinkers. In this collective piece, we purposefully juxtapose diverse takes on the future of these intersections. We have given up the urge to organise, place together, separate with subheadings or connect the paragraphs that follow. Instead, we let these philosophers of education and thinkers who use philosophical texts and ideas to sit together in one long read as potentially ‘strange and unusual bedfellows’. This text urges us to understand how these scholars and thinkers perceive our educational philosophical futures, and how the work and thinking they have done on thinking about what the future of that new key in philosophy of education may look like is embedded in a much deeper and richer literature, and personal experience. (shrink)

This paper starts from a premise relating to the act of fictional writing about eugenics and the way it may be understood as the embodiment and enactment of social imaginaries. It proposes that literature frequently, if not habitually, expresses the underside of what is expressed in public discourse. That is, far from being the implement of state policy or intervention, it acts in counterpoint to the state, constituting a type of social fantasy in that it explores through the realm of (...) the imagination what might happen. It becomes the arena for contestation, exploration, and nuancing as it essays how ideas from public, ‘real’ life, might transform when acted out. The paper considers two sorts of literary case. First it looks at that of ‘naïve’ literature, harnessed unashamedly to a specific sociological discourse of eugenics. Then, using primarily Ibsen, it considers a subset, the case of literature that does not set out to be explicitly in the service of the cause of eugenics, but is appropriated and disseminated from a platform of eugenics. Lastly, taking the example of Unamuno’s Amor y pedagogía the paper considers literature that exists in a quite different sphere of public awareness. It shows awareness of the arguments and precepts of eugenics and related beliefs and practices, but acts as a transitional space to enable such ideas to be entertained and thought about, without a requirement of acceptance or belief. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe acquisition of a skill, or knowledge-how, on the one hand, and the acquisition of a piece of propositional knowledge on the other, appear to be different sorts of epistemic achievements. Does this difference lie in the nature of the knowledge involved, marking a joint between knowledge-how and propositional knowledge? Intellectualists say no: All knowledge is propositional knowledge. Anti-intellectualists say yes: Knowledge-how and propositional knowledge are different in kind. What resources or methods may we legitimately and fruitfully employ to adjudicate (...) this debate? What is the right way to show the nature of the knowledge knowers know? Here too there is disagreement. I defend the legitimacy of the anti-intellectualist appeal to cognitive neuroscientific findings against a recent claim that anti-intellectualists conflate the scientific categories of procedural and declarative knowledge with the mental kinds of skill and propositional knowledge, respectively. I... (shrink)

Current theories of reasoning such as mental models or mental logic assume a universal cognitive mechanism that underlies human reasoning performance. However, there is evidence that this is not the case, for example, the work of Ford (1995), who found that some people adopted predominantly spatial and some verbal strategies in a syllogistic reasoning task. Using written and think-aloud protocols, the present study confirmed the existence of these individual differences. However, in sharp contrast to Ford, the present study found few (...) differences in reasoning performance between the two groups, in terms of accuracy or type of conclusion generated. Hence, reasoners present an outward appearance of ubiquity, despite underlying differences in reasoning processes. These findings have implications for theoretical accounts of reasoning, and for attempts to model reasoning data. Any comprehensive account needs to account for strategic differences and how these may develop in logically untrained individuals. (shrink)

Research on the status and experience of women in academia in the last 30 years has challenged conventional explanations of persistent gender inequality, bringing into sharp focus the cumulative impact of small scale, often unintentional differences in recognition and response: the patterns of 'post-civil rights era' dis­crimination made famous by the 1999 report on the status of women in the MIT School of Science. I argue that feminist standpoint theory is a useful resource for understanding how this sea change in (...) understanding gender inequity was realized. At the same time, close attention to activist research on workplace environment issues suggests ways in which our understanding of standpoint theory can fruitfully be refined. I focus on the implications of two sets of distinctions: between types of epistemic injustice (and correlative advantage) that may affect marginalized knowers; and between the resources of situated knowledge and those of a critical standpoint on knowledge production. (shrink)

Good communication is vital in healthcare both among healthcare professionals and be tween healthcare professionals and their patients And well written documents describing and or explaining the information in structured databases may be easier to comprehend more edifying and even more convincing than the structured data even when presented in tabu lar or graphic form Documents may be automatically generated from structured data using techniques from the eld of natural language generation These techniques are concerned with how the content organisation (...) and language used in a document can be dynamically selected depending on the audience and context They have been used to generate health education ma terials explanations and critiques in decision support systems and medical reports and progress notes.. (shrink)

McLeod focuses her book on what she calls "typical refusals in reproductive healthcare." She defines this at several points, describing these as primarily refusals that "target services that are standard and that the objectors believe will result in the death of a human being that has the moral or religious status of a person ". Abortion is one procedure that is commonly targeted by "typical refusals." McLeod notes that clinicians engaging in such refusals may refuse not only the procedure itself (...) but also to make a referral for a procedure because they find this kind of indirect complicity to still be a violation of conscience. This... (shrink)

Power, Prose, and Purse is an edited collection of essays that draw connections between literature, economics and law. The essays discuss novels that explore the time period between the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression and analyze the insights that novelists may offer to law and economics, while noting the tensions among these paradigms.