Early modern empiricists thought that the nature of perceptual experience is given by citing the object presented to the mind in that experience. Hallucination and illusion suggest that this requires untenable mind-dependent objects. Current orthodoxy replaces the appeal to direct objects with the claim that perceptual experience is characterized instead by its representational content. This paper argues that the move to content is problematic, and reclaims the early modern empiricist insight as perfectly consistent, even in cases of illusion, with the (...) realist contention that these direct objects of perception are the persisting mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. (shrink)

The question how to account for illusion has had a prominent role in shaping theories of perception throughout the history of philosophy. Prevailing philosophical wisdom today has it that phenomena of illusion force us to choose between the following two options. First, reject altogether the early modern empiricist idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience. Instead we must characterize perceptual experience entirely in terms of its (...) representational content. Second, retain the early modern idea that the core subjective character of experience is simply constituted by the identity of its direct objects, but admit that these must be mind-dependent entities, distinct from the mind-independent physical objects we all know and love. I argue here that the early modern empiricists had an indispensable insight. The idea that the core subjective character of perceptual experience is to be given simply by citing the object presented in that experience is more fundamental than any appeal to perceptual content, and can account for illusion, and indeed hallucination, without resorting to the problematic postulation of any such mind-dependent objects. (shrink)

Talbot Brewer offers a new approach to ethical theory, founded on a far-reaching reconsideration of the nature and sources of human agency.

Targeted modifications of the human epigenome, epigenome editing (EE), are around the corner. For EE, techniques similar to genome editing (GE) techniques are used. While in GE the genetic information is changed by directly modifying DNA, intervening in the epigenome requires modifying the configuration of DNA, for example, how it is folded. This does not come with alterations in the base sequence (‘genetic code’). To date, there is almost no ethical debate about EE, whereas the discussions about GE are voluminous. (...) Our article introduces EE into bioethics by translating knowledge from science to ethics and by comparing the risks of EE with those of GE. We, first (I), make the case that a broader ethical debate on EE is due, provide scientific background on EE, compile potential use-cases and recap previous debates. We then (II) compare EE and GE and suggest that the severity of risks of novel gene technologies depends on three factors: (i) the choice of an ex vivo versus an in vivo editing approach, (ii) the time of intervention and intervention windows and (iii) the targeted diseases. Moreover, we show why germline EE is not effective and reject the position of strong epigenetic determinism. We conclude that EE is not always ethically preferable to GE in terms of risks, and end with suggestions for next steps in the current ethical debate on EE by briefly introducing ethical challenges of new areas of preventive applications of EE (III). (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)

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent (...) are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational person, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think. (shrink)

A defense of material implication as implication.

Many evidentialists are impermissivists. But there’s no in-principle reason for this. In this paper, I examine and motivate permissivist evidentialism. Not only are permissivism and evidentialism compatible but there are unique benefits that arise for this combination of views. In particular, permissivist evidentialism respects the importance of evidence while capturing its limitations and provides a plausible and attractive explanation of the relationship between the epistemic and non-epistemic. Permissivist evidentialism is thus an attractive option in logical space that hasn’t received enough (...) attention. (shrink)

Dupras and Bunnik’s strong statement against the normative approach of genetic exceptionalism, which can no longer be justified in the midst of multi-omic research, is of great importance fo...

We welcome Blumenthal-Barby’s et al. (2022) plaidoyer for the integration of philosophy in bioethics because of a perceived mutual benefit. Drawing on experience from a collaborative project, funde...

Together, their work signals a new direction in the field and offers refreshingly original insights into a broad spectrum of texts.

This new collection illuminates and explains the political and moral importance in justifying the exercise of judicial power.Explores enduring questionsFocusing ...

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to the (...) empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

: In a short and much-neglected passage in the second Critique, Kant discusses the threat posed to human freedom by theological determinism. In this paper we present an interpretation of Kant’s conception of and response to this threat. Regarding his conception, we argue that he addresses two versions of the threat: either God causes appearances directly or he does so indirectly by causing things in themselves which in turn cause appearances. Kant’s response to the first version is that God cannot (...) cause appearances directly because they depend essentially on the passive sensibility of finite beings. Kant’s response to the second version is that human beings are endowed with transcendental freedom, which blocks the causal transitivity that is presupposed by this version. We also contrast his position on this topic with Leibniz’s and Spinoza’s. (shrink)

One way to challenge the substantiveness of a particular philosophical issue is to argue that those who debate the issue are engaged in a merely verbal dispute. For example, it has been maintained that the apparent disagreement over the mind/brain identity thesis is a merely verbal dispute, and thus that there is no substantive question of whether or not mental properties are identical to neurological properties. The goal of this paper is to help clarify the relationship between mere verbalness and (...) substantiveness. I first argue that we should see mere verbalness as a certain kind of discourse defect that arises when the parties differ as to what each takes to be the immediate question under discussion. I then argue that mere verbalness, so understood, does not imply that the question either party is attempting to address is a non-substantive one. Even if it turns out that the parties to the mind/brain dispute are addressing subtly different questions, these might both be substantive questions to which their respective metaphysical views provide substantive answers. One reason it is tempting to reach deflationary conclusions from the charge of mere verbalness is that we fail to distinguish it from the claim that a sentence under dispute is, in a certain sense, indisputable. Another reason is that we fail to distinguish mere verbalness from a certain sort of indeterminacy. While indisputability and indeterminacy plausibly capture forms of nonsubstantiveness, I argue that mere verbalness is insufficient to establish either indisputability or indeterminacy. (shrink)

What can we learn about management ethics from other cultures and societies? In this textbook, cross-cultural management theory is applied and made relevant to management ethics. To help the reader understand different approaches that global businesses can take to operate successfully and ethically, there are chapters focusing on specific countries and regions. As well as giving the wider geographical, political and cultural contexts, the book includes numerous examples in every chapter to help the reader critique universal assumptions of what is (...) ethical. By taking a closer look at the way we view other cultures and their values, the author challenges us to rethink commonly held assumptions and approaches in cross-cultural management, and to apply a more critical approach. (shrink)

Slightly modified excerpt from the section 13.4 Zusammenfassung und Ausblick (translated into englisch): This chapter is based on an analysis of ethical debates on epigenetics and genome editing, debates, in which ethical arguments relating to future generations and justice play a central role. The analysis aims to contextualize new developments in genetic engineering, such as genome and epigenome editing, ethically. At the beginning, the assumptions of "genetic determinism," on which "genetic essentialism" is based, of "epigenetic determinism" as well as "genetic" (...) and "epigenetic exceptionalism" are analyzed and critically discussed. The remarks on the ethical discourse on epigenetics show that the notion of "epigenetic determinism" can sometimes be discerned not only in popular scientific discourse but also in ethical discourse. Ethical debates on epigenetics, however, have distanced themselves from this deterministic understanding. As a result, the focus in the ethical discourse on epigenetics shifts from responsibility for one's own health and that of subsequent generations to justice. What is meant here is justice, for example, in terms of access to healthy environmental conditions, regardless of whether these contribute to health with or without epigenetic agency. An analysis of the discourse on genome editing reveals that it is primarily germline interventions that are being ethically examined, with a concentration on the aspect of inheritance. The question is whether this is accompanied by an implicit "genetic determinism" or even a "genetic essentialism": the determinism could lie in the centrality of the aspect of heritability, since only genetic information is inherited. Does the aspect of heritability and genome modification play a more decisive role in debates on genome editing than the safety issue? Is the problem of embryos and their potential offspring not being able to consent to germline intervention given such a high priority because it is a genetic intervention? Under such a premise of "strong genetic determinism" supplemented by "epigenetic determinism," not only genome editing but also epigenome editing would be ethically relevant precisely because it too would have an influence on the genome. How this influence of genome editing and epigenome editing is ethically evaluated in each case therefore depends initially on whether the assumptions of "genetic" and "epigenetic determinism" are advocated. These assumptions are increasingly viewed critically in ethical discourse because they cannot be confirmed from a scientific perspective. In popular scientific debates in particular, however, they seem to persist, which ultimately also influences the public discussion. Since a broad public discussion is required especially on genome editing, a reflective approach to the various "-isms" analyzed in this chapter is central. DOI: 10.5771/9783748927242. (shrink)

How, in a secular world, should we resolve ethically controversial and troubling issues relating to health care? Should we, as some argue, make a clean sweep, getting rid of the Hippocratic ethic, such vestiges of it as remain? Jennifer Jackson seeks to answer these significant questions, establishing new foundations for a traditional and secular ethic which would not require a radical and problematic overhaul of the old. These new foundations rest on familiar observations of human nature and human needs. (...) Jackson presents morality as a loose anatomy of constituent virtues that are related in different ways to how we fare in life, and suggests that in order to address problems in medical ethics, a virtues-based approach is needed. Throughout, attention is paid to the role of philosophy in medical ethics, and how it can be used to clarify key notions and distinctions that underlie current debates and controversial issues. By reinstating such concepts as justice, cardinal virtue, and moral duty, Jackson lays the groundwork for an ethics of health care that makes headway toward resolving seeming dilemmas in medical ethics today. This penetrating and accessible book will be invaluable to students of sociology and health care, as well as those who are interested in the ethical uncertainties faced by the medical world. (shrink)

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue (...) that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

This article presents an impact assessment framework that allows for the evaluation of positive and negative local-level impacts that have resulted from "responsible trade" interventions such as fair trade and ethical trade. The framework investigates impact relating to (1) livelihood impacts on primary stakeholders; (2) socio-economic impacts on communities; (3) organizational impacts; (4) environmental impacts; (5) policies and institutional impacts; and (6) future prospects. It identifies relevant local-level stakeholders and facilitates the analysis of conflicting interests. The framework was developed in (...) the context of, and is applied in this article to, the fair trade coffee industry in northern Nicaragua. It was designed, however, so that it can be applied across commodity sectors and responsible trade initiatives. It is able to do this by accommodating for differences in the social, environmental, political and institutional contexts of different areas, and by taking into account the distinct nature of an initiative's overall objectives, different levels of intervention, and the full range of stakeholders involved. (shrink)

Zu seinen Lebzeiten war Kurt Gödel außerhalb der Fachwelt der Mathematiker, Philosophen und theoretischen Physiker kaum bekannt. Zu Beginn seiner Karriere schuf er beeindruckende Arbeiten zur Vollständigkeit und Beweisbarkeit formaler logischer Systeme, die zu seiner Dissertation und seiner Habilitations-schrift wurden und ihn unter Fachleuten weltberühmt machten. Seine Unvoll-ständigkeitssätze läuteten das Ende der formal-logischen Programme der Logizisten (Russell et al.) und der Formalisten (Hilbert et al.) ein. Später erzielte er auch signifikante Ergebnisse in der Mengenlehre. Nach seiner Emigration in die USA (...) (Princeton), widmete er sich mehr der Philosophie, dem Leitmotiv seines Lebens, und er fand auch eine einzigartige Lösung zu Einsteins Feld-gleichungen der Gravitation, sein "Gödel-Universum". Dieses Buch beschreibt sowohl den Gödel, der ein genialer Wissenschaftler war, und der gewagte und neuartige Hypothesen zu den Fundamenten der Mathe-matik und Physik hervorbrachte, ‒ als auch den Gödel, der ein perfekter Rationalist war, aber sein Alltagsleben nur mit Mühe meistern konnte und zeitlebens unter Depressionen, Angstneurosen und Hypochondrie litt. Ein Leben voller Paradoxen, in dem er trotz all seiner psychischen Probleme Beachtliches leistete und zu einem Vorbild für viele jüngere Wissenschaftler wurde. Das Buch liefert den Kontext zu seinen Errungenschaften, die ein verblüffend breites Spektrum intellektueller Unternehmungen darstellen, und zu seiner zunehmenden Geisteskrankheit; und es zeigt, wie er eine lange und erfolgreiche Karriere mit Hilfe seiner loyalen Ehefrau Adele und einigen seiner Freunde durchlaufen konnte. Dies ist eine faszinierende Geschichte der wissen-schaftlichen Genialität und der menschlichen Natur. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief—belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, bringing in (...) faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. (shrink)

Bill Brewer presents an original view of the role of conscious experience in the acquisition of empirical knowledge. He argues that perceptual experiences must provide reasons for empirical beliefs if there are to be any determinate beliefs at all about particular objects in the world. This fresh approach to epistemology turns away from the search for necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and works instead from a theory of understanding in a particular area.

To carry out a bibliographic review of the factors associated with behavioral difficulties in children, but there are global data on these variables. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to review the literature on the factors associated with behavioral difficulties in boys and girls to identify the most influential countries, authors, magazines and institutions, their structures and research directions. Design: This review is based on bibliometric and network analysis of literature published in Scopus and Web of Science. A total (...) of 110 scientifically mapped articles were found in this area. (shrink)

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) served as a test case for determining the role of extant vocabulary knowledge, endogenous attention, and phonological working memory abilities in cross-situational word learning. First-graders (Mage = 7 years; 3 months), 44 with typical development (TD) and 28 with DLD, completed a cross-situational word-learning task comprised six cycles, followed by retention tests and independent assessments of attention, memory, and vocabulary. Children with DLD scored lower than those with TD on all measures of learning and (...) retention, a performance gap that emerged in the first cycle of the cross-situational protocol and that we attribute to weaknesses in initial encoding. Over cycles, children with DLD learned words at a similar rate as their TD peers but they were less flexible in their strategy use, demonstrating a propose-but-verify approach but never a statistical aggregation approach. Also, they drew upon different mechanisms to support their learning. Attention played a greater role for the children with DLD, whereas extant vocabulary size played a greater role for the children with TD. Children navigate the problem space of cross-situational learning via varied routes. This conclusion is offered as motivation for theorists to capture all learners, not just the most typical ones. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 2, February 2022.

Excerpt: 1. Introduction This chapter provides insight into the diverse ethical debates on genetics and epigenetics. Much controversy surrounds debates about intervening into the germline genome of human embryos, with catchwords such as genome editing, designer baby, and CRISPR/Cas. The idea that it is possible to design a child according to one’s personal preferences is, however, a quite distorted view of what is actually possible with new gene technologies and gene therapies. These are much more limited than the editing and (...) design metaphors suggest. Such metaphors are therefore highly problematic phrases in the context of new gene technologies, for two reasons. On one hand, to design a child of choice by modifying the genome would require modifying any gene of choice, which is more than can be done with current gene technologies, such as CRISPR/Cas. On the other hand, a modification of genes would need to be enough to create any characteristic of choice in the future child. The latter presupposes the assumption of genetic determinism. Moreover, the CRISPR/Cas technology can not only be used in a potentially therapeutic manner at the germline level. In addition, there is the (more likely) scenario of a future clinical therapeutic use of these new gene technologies for modifying the DNA sequence of other cells of the body (somatic genome editing). There is also the option of modifying the epigenome, that is, the spatial configuration of DNA (epigenome editing) (see table 1). Like genetics and genome editing, epigenetics has been at the center of recent popular scientific and ethical discourse as well as scientific debates. The concept of epigenetics has given rise to very different notions of inheritability and responsibility for health, which, however, are oftentimes based on scientifically controversial basic assumptions. That there continues to be covert genetic determinism in the form of epigenetic determinism (see table 2) in debates about epigenetics has been pointed out in ethical analyses of epigenetics. Neither genetic determinism nor epigenetic determinism has been confirmed scientifically. It is therefore important to recognize the concepts that are discussed (and sometimes harshly criticized) in debates about genome editing and epigenetics—for example, concepts about the causal role of DNA for our own life course. This importance is based on the fact that if we understand such controversial concepts, we will be able to remain critical when evaluating scientific knowledge and ethical arguments about genome editing and epigenetics. This chapter, therefore, explains some of these concepts. For an ethical analysis of epigenetics as well as of genome editing, it is necessary to understand and critically reflect upon the underlying concepts of genetic determinism and other, related -isms. The following section offers a detailed introduction to these -isms (section 2; see also table 2). Section 3 provides an ethical analysis of genome editing and epigenetics based on the explanations in section 2. Section 3 focuses on inheritability and responsibility, justice, safety, the problem of consent, and the effects of genome editing and epigenetics on embryos and future generations. This section does not discuss in detail further points that can be found in ethical debates about epigenetics as well as in ethical debates about genome editing. These points include (among others): • fear that the findings of epigenetics and that the methods of genome editing are misused—this also with respect to eugenics and enhancement; • naturalness—an issue we mention in passing a few times in the following analysis; • a possible connection between the genome/epigenome and the concept of human dignity, and the derived danger of instrumentalization and infringement of autonomy when intervening in the genome or epigenome. Since current discourse about ethical issues associated with genome editing focuses mainly on germline interventions, which are, for instance, interventions into a human embryo’s genome, we mainly focus on germline interventions when comparing the debates on genome editing and on epigenetics in section 3. (shrink)

Abstract: This working paper focuses on the question whether there is a therapeutic imperative that, in specific situations, would oblige us to perform genome editing at the germline level in the context of assisted reproduction. The answer to this central question is discussed primarily with reference to specific scenarios where preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) does not represent an acceptable alternative to germline genome editing based on either medical, or ethical, or – from the perspective of the potential parents – moral (...) or religious grounds. This article deals with four different types of case constellations that result from these possible reasons against PGD as well as from the necessity or dispensability of a subsequent “control PGD.” These cases are discussed based on hypotheses concerning contextual factors and theoretical assumptions. In conclusion, we point out that if our assumptions are correct, there is probably no therapeutic imperative for genome editing at the germline level. We draw this rationale from the fact that germline interventions are likely not person-affecting. However, we caution the reader that our result is preliminary and needs to be more carefully examined in future work in light of the bioethical debate and potential objections. -/- // Abstract: Im Zentrum dieses Working Papers steht die Frage, ob es einen therapeutischen Imperativ geben kann, der uns, in bestimmten Situationen, verpflichten würde, eine Genomeditierung (genome editing) auf Keimbahnebene im Rahmen der assistierten Befruchtung vorzunehmen. Die Antwort auf diese zentrale Frage wird insbesondere mit Bezug auf Fälle diskutiert, in denen das Verfahren der Präimplantationsdiagnostik (PID) keine aus entweder medizinischen oder ethischen oder – aus Sicht der potentiellen Eltern – moralischen bzw. religiösen Gründen akzeptable Alternative zu einem Keimbahneingriff darstellt. Die möglichen Gründe gegen die PID sowie die Erforderlichkeit oder Verzichtbarkeit einer nachfolgenden «Kontroll-PID» ergeben vier verschiedene Fallkonstellationen, denen sich der Beitrag zuwendet. Auf Grundlage von Hypothesen zu kontextuellen Faktoren und theoretischen Annahmen diskutieren wir diese Fälle. Im Ergebnis verweisen wir darauf, dass es, wenn unsere Annahmen zutreffen, vermutlich keinen therapeutischen Imperativ zum genome editing auf Keimbahnebene gibt. Dies begründet sich daraus, dass der Keimbahneingriff vermutlich nicht als personenbezogen (person-affecting) zu bezeichnen ist. Wir weisen jedoch darauf hin, dass unser Ergebnis vorläufig ist und unter Berücksichtigung der bioethischen Debatte und möglicher Einwände genauer geprüft werden muss. -/- // Résumé: Ce Working Paper se concentre sur la question de l’existence d’un impératif thérapeutique qui, dans des situations spécifiques, nous obligerait à réaliser une édition du génome au niveau de la lignée germinale dans le cadre de la procréation assistée. Afin de répondre à cette question centrale nous développons quatre scénarios spécifiques dans lesquels le diagnostic préimplantatoire (DPI) ne représente pas une alternative acceptable à l’édition du génome germinal pour des raisons médicales, éthiques ou – du point de vue des futurs parents – morales ou religieuses. Cet article traite de quatre constellations différentes de cas résultant des raisons mises en avant pour s'opposer au DPI ainsi que de la nécessité ou de l’inutilité d’un ultérieur « DPI de contrôle » Ces cas sont discutés sur la base d’hypothèses portant sur les facteurs contextuels et sur les présupposés théoriques. En conclusion, nous soulignons que si nos hypothèses sont correctes, il n’y a probablement aucun impératif thérapeutique justifiant l’édition du génome au niveau de la lignée germinale. Nous arrivons à cette conclusion parce qu’une intervention au niveau de la lignée germinale n’est probablement pas susceptible d’affecter la personne. Cependant, nous mettons en garde le lecteur sur le fait que notre conclusion est préliminaire et qu’elle doit être examinée avec soin dans des futurs travaux instruits par le débat bioéthique et par les éventuelles objections. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

What is the role of conscious experience in the epistemology of perceptual knowledge: how should we characterise what is going on in seeing that o is F in order to illuminate the contribution of seeing o to their status as cases of knowing that o is F? My proposal is that seeing o involves conscious acquaintance with o itself, the concrete worldly source of the truth that o is F, in a way that may make it evident to the subject (...) that o is an instance of ‘x is F’ as she understands this, and hence evident that o is F. Seeing that o is F is thus a way of its being evident that o is F and is therefore a way of knowing that o is F. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes two facets of mindfulness for servant leadership of B-Corporations, which is an emerging form of social enterprise. One facet concerns inner states and motivations for leading business for non-instrumental reasons. This facet encompasses an ethics-in-practice dimension alongside of merely theoretical approaches, a dimension well suited for leadership of B-Corps, whose governance structure places ethics and sustainability at the center of the non-instrumental quest for the creation of social value and respect for human rights by business enterprises. The (...) motivation for care of the mindful servant leader matches the investors’ expectations of social impact for the firm. The other facet concerns leadership decisions and actions fulfilling the mission of B-Corporations in creating social value alongside of economic value for a broad spectrum of stakeholders. Concerning this second facet, mindfulness is vitally involved in that servant leaders pay attention to the whole business and its explicit social benefit, not just this or that element of the firm’s operations. The chapter advances two arguments. The first argument—tied to the first facet—posits that the virtue of mindfulness contributes a key element of non-instrumental motivation for leadership generally missing from extant leadership approaches. The second argument—tied to the second facet—addresses the decision-making side of mindfulness. It asserts that the virtue of mindfulness is especially poised to equip servant leadership for the B-Corporation movement for two vital challenges: balancing demands from multiple stakeholders; and assimilating multiple criteria and values—both financial and non-financial. (shrink)

The Human Mind undertakes two tasks. One is to demonstrate that centuries of debate over how to state correctly the nature of the human mind and its relation to the human body arise from muddled thinking. By attending with care to ordinary, everyday language, this bogus thinking is exposed. The traditional distinction between the human mind and the human body is revealed as misbegotten. For that reason it is to be junked, along with centuries of misguided competing theories. The second (...) task is to draw attention to an alternative distinction we already make in everyday language. It is the distinction between a person and that person’s body. A previously undetected set of arrangements in everyday language is teased into full view to expose the character of a person’s physical and mental capacities. This set of arrangements applies to talk of all human capacities, such as the capacities to think, make a promise, dislike, be annoyed, turn left or reach for a banana. There is one simple pattern or formula that personal capacities have in common. To understand this arrangement in everyday language is to have the key to authentic understanding of the human mind and its place in the universe. (shrink)

Physical objects are such things as stones, tables, trees, people and other animals: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in. therefore expresses a commonsense commitment to physical realism: the persisting macroscopic constituents of the world we live in exist, and are as they are, quite independently of anyone.

On pp. 47-51, "Fifth Scenario: The Nazi and His Jew", discusses Adorno's theory of mimesis applied to the phenomenon of Nazi antisemitism. Influenced by Freud's theory, Adorno discussed in "Dialektik der Aufklärung" (1947) the Nazi phobic and distorted image of the Jew. In Adorno's interpretation, the imaginary portrait of the Jew created by the Nazis is in fact their self-portrait, expressing their longing for unlimited power and identification with an imaginary aggressor in order to be themselves the real aggressor.

Biases and misunderstanding stemming from pre-training in Generative Pre-Trained Transformers are more likely for users of underrepresented English varieties, since the training dataset favors dominant Englishes (e.g., American English). We investigate (potential) bias in GPT-4 when it interacts with Trinidadian English Creole (TEC), a non-hegemonic English variety that partially overlaps with standardized English (SE) but still contains distinctive characteristics. (1) Comparable responses: we asked GPT-4 18 questions in TEC and SE and compared the content and detail of the responses. (2) (...) Accurate translation: we assessed how accurate and authentic 29 TEC and 34 SE translations were. (3) Language knowledge and attitudes: we asked what language the prompts were written in and categorized the responses and examined any language attitudes that were exhibited. Content and detail in prompts were comparable. The model was proficient at translating TEC pronouns and many grammatical categories. It was weaker at processing spelling and vocabulary items. In addition, it produced several inauthentic features. Only 39% of TEC-generated sentences were fully grammatical. While GPT-4 was perfect at identifying SE, it was 21% accurate at identifying TEC, which it sometimes classified as English with “errors” and “corrected”. GPT-4’s scope of use is limited for non-hegemonic English users. It is problematic that some of its analyses perpetuate bias against underrepresented Englishes. Increased research on lesser-documented Englishes is necessary and we anticipate that this problem affects dialects of other languages. We intend to partner with Trinidadian stakeholders to train GPT-4 in the future. (shrink)