This paper examines Ockham's development of the formal distinction, especially in contrast to Scotus's presentation of the formal distinction. The claim is that the major differences between the two presentations can be accounted for largely from the different uses to which Scotus and Ockhan employ the distinction. Whereas Scotus develops the distinction in an attempt to make comprehensible what appears to be incomprehensible (e.g. the Trinity), Ockham uses the distinction to establish the fundamental incomprehensibility of the same issues (e.g. the (...) Trinity). (shrink)

Face recognition is impaired in patients with prosopagnosia, which may occur as a side effect of neurosurgical procedures. Face selective regions on the ventral temporal cortex have been localized with electrical cortical stimulation, electrocorticography, and functional magnetic resonance imagining. This is the first group study using within-patient comparisons to validate face selective regions mapping, utilizing the aforementioned modalities. Five patients underwent surgical treatment of intractable epilepsy and joined the study. Subdural grid electrodes were implanted on their ventral temporal cortices to (...) localize seizure foci and face selective regions as part of the functional mapping protocol. Face selective regions were identified in all patients with fMRI, four patients with ECoG, and two patients with ECS. From 177 tested electrode locations in the region of interest, which is defined by the fusiform gyrus and the inferior temporal gyrus, 54 face locations were identified by at least one modality in all patients. fMRI mapping showed the highest detection rate, revealing 70.4% for face selective locations, whereas ECoG and ECS identified 64.8 and 31.5%, respectively. Thus, 28 face locations were co-localized by at least two modalities, with detection rates of 89.3% for fMRI, 85.7% for ECoG and 53.6 % for ECS. All five patients had no face recognition deficits after surgery, even though five of the face selective locations, one obtained by ECoG and the other four by fMRI, were within 10 mm to the resected volumes. Moreover, fMRI included a quite large volume artifact on the ventral temporal cortex in the ROI from the anatomical structures of the temporal base. In conclusion, ECS was not sensitive in several patients, whereas ECoG and fMRI even showed activation within 10 mm to the resected volumes. Considering the potential signal drop-out in fMRI makes ECoG the most reliable tool to identify face selective locations in this study. A multimodal approach can improve the specificity of ECoG and fMRI, while simultaneously minimizing the number of required ECS sessions. Hence, all modalities should be considered in a clinical mapping protocol entailing combined results of co-localized face selective locations. (shrink)

We often feel survivor guilt when the very circumstances that harm others leave us unscathed. Although survivor guilt is both commonplace and intelligible, it raises a puzzle for the standard philosophical account of guilt, according to which people feel guilt only when they take themselves to be morally blameworthy. The standard account implies that survivor guilt is uniformly unfitting, as people are not blameworthy simply for having fared better than others. In this paper, we offer a rival account of guilt, (...) the relational account of guilt, which makes sense of survivor guilt and other forms of guilt without self-blame while preserving the intelligibility of guilt about culpable wrongdoing. According to this account, guilt involves the feeling of being unable to justify ourselves to others, and we lack self-justification when we (however blamelessly) stand on the positive side of an undesirable asymmetry with them. When someone survives something that those around her do not, the disparity in outcome constitutes an asymmetry that is often undesirable, because it arises from luck or violates a requirement of solidarity. Thus, survivor guilt is often fitting. (shrink)

Integrating large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 into medical ethics is a novel concept, and understanding the effectiveness of these models in aiding ethicists with decision-making can have significant implications for the healthcare sector. Thus, the objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of GPT-4 in responding to complex medical ethical vignettes and to gauge its utility and limitations for aiding medical ethicists. Using a mixed-methods, cross-sectional survey approach, a panel of six ethicists assessed LLM-generated responses to eight (...) ethical vignettes.The main outcomes measured were relevance, reasoning, depth, technical and non-technical clarity, as well as acceptability of GPT-4’s responses. The readability of the responses was also assessed. Of the six metrics evaluating the effectiveness of GPT-4’s responses, the overall mean score was 4.1/5. GPT-4 was rated highest in providing technical (4.7/5) and non-technical clarity (4.4/5), whereas the lowest rated metrics were depth (3.8/5) and acceptability (3.8/5). There was poor-to-moderate inter-rater reliability characterised by an intraclass coefficient of 0.54 (95% CI: 0.30 to 0.71). Based on panellist feedback, GPT-4 was able to identify and articulate key ethical issues but struggled to appreciate the nuanced aspects of ethical dilemmas and misapplied certain moral principles.This study reveals limitations in the ability of GPT-4 to appreciate the depth and nuanced acceptability of real-world ethical dilemmas, particularly those that require a thorough understanding of relational complexities and context-specific values. Ongoing evaluation of LLM capabilities within medical ethics remains paramount, and further refinement is needed before it can be used effectively in clinical settings. (shrink)

A recurrent theme in ethnomethodological research is that of instructed actions. Contrary to the classic traditions in the social and cognitive sciences, which attribute logical priority or causal primacy to instructions, rules, and structures of action, ethnomethodologists investigate the situated production of actions which enable such formulations to stand as adequate accounts. Consequently, a recitation of formal structures can not count as an adequate sociological description, when no account is given of the local production ofwhat those structures describe. The natural (...) sciences can be described as a domain of practical action in whichthe use of methods enables the intersubjective reproduction of naturalistic observations and experiments. As numerous sociological studies of laboratory practices have shown, the achievement of intersubjective order cannot be reduced to formal methods; instead, it arises from the work of custom-fitting relevant methods to the local circumstances of the research. In this paper we discuss a possible extension of this idea to cover two intertwined aspects of molecular biology: (1) the work of following instructions on how to perform routine laboratory procedures, and (2) the relationship between cellular orders and the encoded instructions contained in the DNA molecule. We suggest that a classic conception of scientific action is implied by the way formal instructions are treated as a primary basis, both for molecular biologists' actions and the cellular functions they study, and we envision an ethnomethodological alternative to those conceptions of social and biological order. (shrink)