Happy the elephant is intelligent, social, and self-aware--and considered a thing in the eye of the law. Led by lawyer Steven M. Wise, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed cases on behalf of captive nonhuman animals like Happy since 2013, arguing that their autonomy entitles them to certain legal rights. In Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood, comic artists Sam Machado and Cynthia Sousa Machado bring together Wise's groundbreaking work and their own illustrations in the first graphic (...) nonfiction book about the animal personhood movement. Beginning with Happy's story and the central ideas behind animal rights, Thing then turns to the scientists that are revolutionizing our understanding of the minds of such nonhuman animals as great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales. Combining legal and social history, innovative science, and illustrated storytelling, Thing presents a visionary new way of relating to the nonhuman world. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that there is a version of possibilism—inspired by the modal analogue of Kit Fine’s fragmentalism—that can be combined with a weakening of actualism. The reasons for analysing this view, which I call Modal Fragmentalism, are twofold. Firstly, it can enrich our understanding of the actualism/possibilism divide, by showing that, at least in principle, the adoption of possibilia does not correspond to an outright rejection of the actualist intuitions. Secondly, and more specifically, it can enrich (...) our understanding of concretism, by proving that, at least in principle, the idea that objects have properties in an absolute manner is compatible with transworld identity. (shrink)

In contemporary philosophy, substantive moral theories are typically classified as either consequentialist or deontological. Standard consequentialist theories insist, roughly, that agents must always act so as to produce the best available outcomes overall. Standard deontological theories, by contrast, maintain that there are some circumstances where one is permitted but not required to produce the best overall results, and still other circumstances in which one is positively forbidden to to do. Classical utilitarianism is the most familiar consequentialist view, but it is (...) widely regarded as an inadequate account of morality. Although Professor Scheffler agrees with this assessment, he also believes that consequentialism seems initially plausible, and that there is a persistent air of paradox surrounding typical deontological views. In this book, therefore, he undertakes to reconsider the rejection of consequentialism. He argues that it is possible to provide a rationale for the view that agents need not always produce the best possible overall outcomes, and this motivates one departure from consequentialism; but he shows that it is surprisingly difficult to provide a satisfactory rationale for the view that there are times when agents must not produce the best possible overall outcomes. He goes on to argue for a hitherto neglected type of moral conception, according to which agents are always permitted, but not always required, to produce the best outcomes. (shrink)

La libertad es una de las realizaciones humanas que más se valoran, pero que a la vez es más fácil de perder, la gran mayoría de las veces de forma voluntaria. Los lamentos más usuales son: hemos perdido la libertad, o nuestra libertad está en peligro; pocas veces se dice: hemos entregado la libertad, o, sólo sabemos vivir encadenados. Pero además, se asume la libertad como algo dado, sin más, y no se toma en cuenta que es un estado o (...) condición que hay que preservar, si se tiene, y luchar por incrementarlo. De hecho, la vida es una lucha constante por aumentar la libertad. Otros aspectos incorporados a este ensayo son la fundamentación del sistema de libertades en la libertad individual –siguiendo muy de cerca a Mill-, las características de ese sistema de libertades y el cuestionamiento a las doctrina del “interés nacional” o del “interés general”, como formas veladas de colectivismo, muy estimadas en América Latina. (shrink)

Gils-Schmidt and Salloch recognise that human and climate health are inextricably linked, and that mitigating healthcare-associated climate harms is essential for protecting human health.1 They argue that physicians have a duty to consider how their own practices contribute to climate change, including during their interactions with patients. Acknowledging the potential for conflicts between this duty and the provision of individual patient care, they propose the application of Korsgaard’s neo-Kantian account of practical identities to help navigate such scenarios. In this commentary, (...) we argue that by focusing attention on this physician–patient level, the authors overlook the complexity of climate change, both within the healthcare sector and beyond. We recognise the importance of individual agency in tackling this issue, and we also recognise that the authors do briefly acknowledge the importance of considering these broader complexities; however, we emphasise the need for climate and health discussions/action to be situated in a wider framework of systemic change. Our concern is that overemphasis on patient-level interactions risks normalising the prioritisation of individual-level approaches to addressing climate change, detracting from such a broader approach. Physician training emphasises the need for trust, confidentiality and shared decision-making in the doctor–patient relationship. …. (shrink)

Mind wandering is typically operationalized as task-unrelated thought. Some argue for the need to distinguish between unintentional and intentional mind wandering, where an agent voluntarily shifts attention from task-related to task-unrelated thoughts. We reveal an inconsistency between the standard, task-unrelated thought definition of mind wandering and the occurrence of intentional mind wandering (together with plausible assumptions about tasks and intentions). This suggests that either the standard definition of mind wandering should be rejected or that intentional mind wandering is an incoherent (...) category. Solving this puzzle is critical for advancing theoretical frameworks of mind wandering. (shrink)

We sometimes fail unwittingly to do things that we ought to do. And we are, from time to time, culpable for these unwitting omissions. We provide an outline of a theory of responsibility for unwitting omissions. We emphasize two distinctive ideas: (i) many unwitting omissions can be understood as failures of appropriate vigilance, and; (ii) the sort of self-control implicated in these failures of appropriate vigilance is valuable. We argue that the norms that govern vigilance and the value of self-control (...) explain culpability for unwitting omissions. (shrink)

In this anthology, distinguished scholars--Thomas Nagel, T.M. Scanlon, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Samuela Scheffler, Conrad D. Johnson, Bernard Williams, Peter Railton, Amartya Sen, Philippa Foot, and Derek Parfit-- debate arguments for and against the moral doctrine of consequentialism to present a complete view of this important topic in moral philosophy.

Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars and will serve as a reference work for students and nonspecialists. John Rawls is the most significant and influential philosopher and moral philosopher of the twentieth century. His work has profoundly shaped contemporary discussions of social, political and economic justice in philosophy, law, political science, economics and other social disciplines. In this exciting collection of new essays, many of the world's (...) leading political and moral theorists discuss the full range of Rawls's contribution to the concepts of political and economic justice, democracy, liberalism, constitutionalism, and international justice. There are also assessments of Rawls's controversial relationships with feminism, utilitarianism and communitarianism. New readers will find this the most accessible guide to Rawls currently available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Rawls. (shrink)

Suppose that a patient is receiving treatment options from her doctor. In one case, the doctor says, “the surgery has a 90% survival rate.” Now, suppose the doctor instead said, “the procedure has a 10% mortality rate.” Predictably, the patient is more likely to consent on the first description and more likely to dissent on the second. This is an example of a framing effect. A framing effect occurs when “the description of [logically-equivalent] options in terms of gains (positive frame) (...) rather than losses (negative frame) elicits systematically different choices.” Framing effects are ubiquitous, but they are particularly troublesome in medicine. Many worry that there is tension between valuing informed consent and using framing effects in clinical settings. In this paper, I answer this question: if an individual is subject to a framing effect when she gives her consent, does this undermine the validity of her consent? I argue that framing effects do not undermine consent in general. (shrink)

This dissertation is an experiment: what happens if we treat proper names as anaphoric expressions on a par with pronouns? The first thing to notice is that a name's 'antecedent' can occur in a discourse prior to the one containing the name. An individual may be introduced and tagged with a name in one context, and then retrieved using the name in a later context. To allow for discourse crossing anaphora, in addition to the usual cross-sentential anaphora, a revision of (...) discourse semantics is in order. Essentially, we must countenance discourse referents that span contexts, and think of contexts, not as islands, but as nodes connected to each other by the discourse referents they share. Discourse semantics gives rise to a new notion of content determined by discourse reference rather than pure reference. In a space of contexts structured by shared discourse referents, discourse content becomes transmissable. For a piece of content may be sent from one context to another whenever the discourse referents bundled up in the content are held in common by the two contexts. The final step is to treat the cognitive state of an agent as just another kind of context, and so a potential recipient of discourse content. Discourse content is more fine-grained than traditional 'singular' content, and so is a better fit for our pretheoretic intuitions about communication and attitude reporting. This is illustrated by applying the theory to Frege's puzzle, a puzzle of Loar's about communication, Kripke's puzzle about belief, Geach's intentional identity and new breed of 'mixed' de re-de dicto sentence. (shrink)

Although it is commonly believed that the concept of brain death was developed to benefit organ transplants, it evolved independently. Transplantation owed its development to advances in surgery and immunosuppressive treatment; BD owed its origin to the development of intensive care. The first autotransplant was achieved in the early 1900s, when studies of increased intracranial pressure causing respiratory arrest with preserved heartbeat were reported. Between 1902 and 1950, the BD concept was supported by the discovery of EEG, Crile’s definition of (...) death, the use of EEG to demonstrate abolition of brain potentials after ischaemia, and Crafoord’s statement that death was due to cessation of blood flow. Transplantation saw the first xenotransplant in humans and the first unsuccessful kidney transplant from a cadaver. In the 1950s, circulatory arrest in coma was identified by angiography, and the death of the nervous system and coma dépassé were described. Murray performed the first successful kidney transplant. In the 1960s, the BD concept and organ transplants were instantly linked when the first kidney transplant using a brain-dead donor was performed; Schwab proposed to use EEG in BD; the Harvard Committee report and the Sydney Declaration appeared; the first successful kidney, lung and pancreas transplants using cadaveric donors were achieved; Barnard performed the first human heart transplant. This historical review demonstrates that the BD concept and organ transplantation arose separately and advanced in parallel, and only began to progress together in the late 1960s. Therefore, the BD concept did not evolve to benefit transplantation. (shrink)

P. Kyle Stanford defends the problem of unconceived alternatives, which maintains that scientists are unlikely to conceive of all the scientifically plausible alternatives to the theories they accept. Stanford’s argument has been criticized on the grounds that the failure of individual scientists to conceive of relevant alternatives does not entail the failure of science as a corporate body to do so. I consider two replies to this criticism and find both lacking. In the process, I argue that Stanford does not (...) provide evidence that there are likely scientifically plausible unconceived alternatives to scientific theories accepted now and in the future. (shrink)

Kerridge et al recently published a paper in the journal about organ transplantation and the diagnosis of death.1 Although I appreciate the authors’ efforts to present their arguments about such a controversial issue, I found some inconsistencies in this article that I would like to discussWhen Kerridge and his collaborators discussed the origins of the concept of brain death , they emphasised that after the report of the medical consultants on the diagnosis of death to the US President’s Commission was (...) published in 1981,2 clinicians equated the concept of BD with brainstem death. In fact, the brainstem criterion was first proposed by Mohandas and Chou in Minnesota, in 1971.3 The Minnesota criteria inspired the UK code, which was mainly adopted in UK commonwealth countries.4 This view was afterwards powerfully defended by Christopher Pallis.5 After the US President’s Commission report,2 a lot of countries, and most US states, accepted the whole brain, and not the brainstem, criterion.6Regarding the “dead donor rule”, with the advent of transplant surgery, interest in definitions and diagnosis of death based on brain formulations really acquired a new urgency. None the less, it is important to point out that the concept of BD as death of the individual, did not appear to benefit organ transplantation, but was a consequence of the development of intensive care. As Pallis emphasised, if organ transplant techniques had never been developed, intensive care procedures would have provided the possibility of supplying life support to those cases with destroyed brains and preserved heart function, and physicians would need to face the clinical syndrome called BD.5 When French neurophysiologists and neurologists described the death of the nervous system and coma dépassé, organ transplant techniques were only in the very early stages of development. …. (shrink)

Dentro da relação entre a necessidade humana de compreensão e os “murros fechados do mundo” que o absurdo camusiano ocorre. O absurdo, vindo dessa dicotomia entre ser humano e mundo, decorrente dessa impossibilidade, ou com maior precisão, da irracionalidade do mundo descoberto pelo ser humano, é o que pauta a filosofia de Camus. Nesse contexto, a relação do absurdo com a ciência se torna um tema central de um dos ensaios de Camus, O mito de Sísifo. O autor expressa toda (...) sua revolta com a ciência moderna por nunca lhe oferecer o mundo, a ciência apenas descreve e elucida, nunca fornece o mundo à compreensão do ser humano. Essa situação pode ser esclarecidase atendo aos livros de alguns cientistas do século XX, principalmente Werner Heisenberg, o qual elucida, em A parte e o Todo, uma discussão ao redor do tema da compreensão na física moderna. Sendo assim, o propósito deste artigo é estabelecer uma relação entre o absurdo e a revolta de Camus com a ciência com o que Heisenberg demostra como os limites da compreensão na física. No final, parece que ambos autores convergem a conclusão de que o ser humano não é capaz de chegar a compreensão do mundo por meio da ciência. (shrink)

One popular theory of moral responsibility locates responsible agency in exercises of control. These control-based theories often appeal to tracing to explain responsibility in cases where some agent is intuitively responsible for bringing about some outcome despite lacking direct control over that outcome’s obtaining. Some question whether control-based theories are committed to utilizing tracing to explain responsibility in certain cases. I argue that reflecting on certain kinds of negligence shows that tracing plays an ineliminable role in any adequate control-based theory (...) of responsibility. (shrink)

This volume contains articles covering a broad spectrum of proof theory, with an emphasis on its mathematical aspects. The articles should not only be interesting to specialists of proof theory, but should also be accessible to a diverse audience, including logicians, mathematicians, computer scientists and philosophers. Many of the central topics of proof theory have been included in a self-contained expository of articles, covered in great detail and depth. The chapters are arranged so that the two introductory articles come first; (...) these are then followed by articles from core classical areas of proof theory; the handbook concludes with articles that deal with topics closely related to computer science. (shrink)

Resumo No Manifesto surrealista, de 1924, Breton explicita o produto da atividade surrealista como uma “luz de imagem”, gerado pela aproximação involuntária de duas realidades distantes. Essa estrutura dupla da imagem surrealista tem um caráter disruptivo, que rompe com a nossa percepção da realidade cotidiana. Com isso, abre-se a possibilidade de um espaço para a crítica social e histórica, bem como para uma intervenção estético-política justamente em uma sociedade na qual as formas tradicionais de crítica parecem estar neutralizadas. Essa experiência (...) surrealista e esse espaço aberto por ela Walter Benjamin caracteriza respectivamente com a fórmula “iluminação profana” e “espaço de imagem”. Ambos apresentam uma grande semelhança com alguns pontos e consequências, em seus conceitos, tanto de “imagem do pensamento”, como de “imagem dialética”, sobretudo na medida em que esses conceitos também são formulados em meio à crise cultural da sociedade europeia, nos 1920, e buscam uma saída revolucionária para a mesma. Trata-se de investigar aqui, por meio de uma análise comparativa dessas concepções de imagem, até onde vai a influência e a relevância do surrealismo para o pensamento figurativo-dialético de Benjamin e para sua compreensão da história.In the Surrealistic manifest from 1924, Andre Breton explains the product of surrealistic action as a “light of image” resulting from an arbitrary approach of two distant realities. This double structure of surrealistic image has a disrupting character that breaks our common perception of reality. Thus can open a space for social and historical criticism as well as for an aesthetical-political intervention in a society where traditional forms of criticism seem to be neutralized. Walter Benjamin defines this surrealistic experience and its opened space respectively with the expressions “profane illumination” and “image space”. Both have similarities with Benjamin’s ideas of “thought image” and “dialectical image”, especially because they were elaborated amidst the cultural european crisis in the 1920ies looking to find a revolutionary way out of it. Through a comparative analysis of these notions of image, this paper proposes to investigate the influence and the relevance of surrealism for Benjamin’s dialectical-figural way of thinking and his comprehension of history. (shrink)

On 5 August 1968, publication of the Harvard Committee’s report on the subject of “irreversible coma” established a standard for diagnosing death on neurological grounds. On the same day, the 22nd World Medical Assembly met in Sydney, Australia, and announced the Declaration of Sydney, a pronouncement on death, which is less often quoted because it was overshadowed by the impact of the Harvard Report. To put those events into present-day perspective, the authors reviewed all papers published on this subject and (...) the World Medical Association web page and documents, and corresponded with Dr A G Romualdez, the son of Dr A Z Romualdez. There was vast neurological expertise among some of the Harvard Committee members, leading to a comprehensible and practical clinical description of the brain death syndrome and the way to diagnose it. This landmark account had a global medical and social impact on the issue of human death, which simultaneously lessened reception of the Declaration of Sydney. Nonetheless, the Declaration of Sydney faced the main conceptual and philosophical issues on human death in a bold and forthright manner. This statement differentiated the meaning of death at the cellular and tissue levels from the death of the person. This was a pioneering view on the discussion of human death, published as early as in 1968, that should be recognised by current and future generations. (shrink)

Este artigo aborda as motivações para a docência e os desafios enfrentados por licenciandos em psicologia. A metodologia utilizada foi a abordagem qualitativa, e o instrumento de coleta de dados questionário online com questões abertas e fechadas. Participaram do estudo, onze estudantes de cursos de licenciatura em psicologia de quatro instituições universitárias das regiões sul e sudeste do Brasil. Os resultados demonstraram que a escolha pela licenciatura se deu, sobretudo, pelo interesse e curiosidade na área da educação, apropriação dos saberes (...) pedagógicos, ampliação do mercado de trabalho, bem como as possibilidades de atuação profissional. As dificuldades apontadas revelaram: a falta de informações sobre as especificidades do curso de licenciatura e da atuação do professor de psicologia e a ausência de docentes com saberes pedagógicos para atuar na licenciatura em psicologia. Embora seja considerada formação complementar entre os estudantes, observou-se possibilidades de um ensino-aprendizagem de psicologia engajada e inventiva. (shrink)

Confabulation is typically understood to be dysfunctional. But this understanding neglects the phenomenon’s potential benefits. In fact, we think that the benefits of non-clinical confabulation provide a better foundation for a general account of confabulation. In this paper, we start from these benefits to develop a social teleological account of confabulation. Central to our account is the idea that confabulation manifests a kind of willful ignorance. By understanding confabulation in this way, we can provide principled explanations for the difference between (...) clinical and non-clinical cases of confabulation and the extent to which confabulation is rational. (shrink)

La física durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX experimentó una silenciosa pero profunda revisión de sus fundamentos. A pesar de su importancia para los desarrollos posteriores de la física, los estudios históricos y filosóficos sobre dicho periodo son escasos comparados con aquellos de principios del siglo XX. Este trabajo reconstruye algunos aspectos de la física de este periodo usando dos herramientas conceptuales: espacios controversiales de Oscar Nudler y estilo de razonamiento científico de Ian Hacking. El objetivo es mostrar los (...) elementos que produjeron el desbloqueo conceptual de la controversia sobre el determinismo durante la segunda mitad del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. (shrink)

The controversy over the equivalence of continuous sedation until death (CSD) and physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia (PAS/E) provides an opportunity to focus on a significant extended use of CSD. This extension, suggested by the equivalence of PAS/E and CSD, is designed to promote additional patient autonomy at the end-of-life. Samuel LiPuma, in his article, “Continuous Sedation Until Death as Physician-Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia: A Conceptual Analysis” claims equivalence between CSD and death; his paper is seminal in the equivalency debate. Critics contend that sedation (...) follows proportionality protocols for which LiPuma’s thesis does not adequately account. Furthermore, sedation may not eliminate consciousness, and as such LiPuma’s contention that CSD is equivalent to neocortical death is suspect. We not only defend the equivalence thesis, but also expand it to include additional moral considerations. First, we explain the equivalence thesis. This is followed by a defense of the thesis against five criticisms. The third section critiques the current use of CSD. Finally, we offer two proposals that, if adopted, would broaden the use of PAS/E and CSD and thereby expand options at the end-of-life. (shrink)

Humans have always sought to change their environment—building houses, monuments, temples, and roads. In the process, they have remade the fabric of the world into newly functional objects that are also works of art to be admired. In this second edition of his popular Existential Pleasures of Engineering, Samuel Florman explores how engineers think and feel about their profession. A deeply insightful and refreshingly unique text, this book corrects the myth that engineering is cold and passionless. Indeed, Florman celebrates (...) engineering not only crucial and fundamental but also vital and alive he views it as a response to some of our deepest impulses, an endeavor rich in spiritual and sensual rewards. Opposing the "anti-technology" stance, Florman gives readers a practical, creative, and even amusing philosophy of engineering that boasts of pride in his craft. (shrink)

This article challenges the association between realist methodology and ideals of legitimacy. Many who seek a more “realistic” or “political” approach to political theory replace the familiar orientation towards a state of justice with a structurally similar orientation towards a state of legitimacy. As a result, they fail to provide more reliable practical guidance, and wrongly displace radical demands. Rather than orienting action towards any state of affairs, I suggest that a more practically useful approach to political theory would directly (...) address judgments, by comparing the concrete possibilities for action faced by real political actors. (shrink)

This article is divided into three sections. In the first and second, I examine Sartorio’s account of the causal structure of the famous Thirsty Traveler thought experiment. I argue that this account does not withstand critical scrutiny. In the third, I turn to a novel kind of moral luck that Sartorio uses the Thirsty Traveler to expose. I expand the scope of my argument to look also at other recently proposed categories of moral luck. I argue that these proposals are (...) overhasty. (shrink)

According to Aristotle, the medical art aims at health, which is a virtue of the body, and does so in an unlimited way. Consequently, medicine does not determine the extent to which health should be pursued, and “mental health” falls under medicine only via pros hen predication. Because medicine is inherently oriented to its end, it produces health in accordance with its nature and disease contrary to its nature—even when disease is good for the patient. Aristotle’s politician understands that this (...) inherent orientation can be systematically distorted, and so would see the need for something like the Hippocratic Oath. (shrink)

Some people believe that the demands of morality coincide with the requirements of an enlightened self-interest. Others believe that morality is diametrically opposed to considerations of self-interest. This book argues that there is another position, intermediate between these extremes, which makes better sense of the totality of our moral thought and practice. Scheffler elaborates this position via an examination of morality's content, scope, authority, and deliberative role. Although conflicts between morality and self-interest do arise, according to this position, nevertheless morality (...) is fundamentally a reasonable and humane phenomenon. Moreover, the psychological bases of effective moral motivation have sources deep within the self, and morally motivated individuals try to shape their own interests so as to avoid conflict with morality. Since human practices and institutions help to determine the prevalence of these motives, and since in this and other ways they influence the degree to which conflicts between morality and self-interest actually occur, the extent of such conflict is not fixed or immutable, and is in part a social and political issue. (shrink)

Este artículo propone que las actitudes proposicionales doxásticas, o creencias, funcionan en una estructura de dos niveles, uno básico o fundacional, concebido a partir del lenguaje, y otro epistémico o no fundacional, creado a partir del proceso confiabilista. Lo anterior representa sólo un modelo del funcionamiento de la mente en relación con los procesos que originan conocimientos, sin suponer que existan físicamente tales niveles. Lo que sí existiría, puesto que observamos que sus resultados se adecúan al modelo expuesto, son, por (...) un lado, procesos que generan conocimientos y cuyo comportamiento puede describirse mediante conceptos de carácter probabilístico, y por el otro, procesos cuya viabilidad depende del uso adecuado del lenguaje. (shrink)

Samuel Clarke was by far the most gifted and influential Newtonian philosopher of his generation, and A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, which constituted the 1704 Boyle Lectures, was one of the most important works of the first half of the eighteenth century, generating a great deal of controversy about the relation between space and God, the nature of divine necessary existence, the adequacy of the Cosmological Argument, agent causation, and the immateriality of the soul. Together (...) with the other texts presented in this edition, it also provides the best introduction to Clarke's philosophical views, which, in addition to their intrinsic interest, are historically important for the light they shed both on the philosophical positions within the Newtonian circle and on the exchange between Clarke and Leibniz, the most famous philosophical controversy of the eighteenth century. (shrink)

Taking the title of his book from Isaiah Berlin's famous essay distinguishing a negative concept of liberty connoting lack of interference by others from a positive concept involving participation in the political realm, Samuel Fleischacker explores a third definition of liberty that lies between the first two. In Fleischacker's view, Kant and Adam Smith think of liberty as a matter of acting on our capacity for judgment, thereby differing both from those who tie it to the satisfaction of our (...) desires and those who translate it as action in accordance with reason or "will." Integrating the thought of Kant and Smith, and developing his own stand through readings of the Critique of Judgment and The Wealth of Nations, Fleischacker shows how different acting on one's best judgment is from acting on one's desires--how, in particular, good judgment, as opposed to mere desire, can flourish only in favorable social and political conditions. At the same time, exercising judgment is something every individual must do for him- or herself, hence not something that philosophers and politicians who reason better than the rest of us can do in our stead. For this reason advocates of a liberty based on judgment are likely to be more concerned than are libertarians to make sure that government provides people with conditions for the use of their liberty--for example, excellent standards of education, health care, and unemployment insurance--while at the same time promoting a less paternalistic view of government than most of the movements associated for the past thirty years with the political left. (shrink)

Cognitive theorists routinely disagree about the evidence supporting claims in cognitive science. Here, we first argue that some disagreements about evidence in cognitive science are about the evidence available to be drawn upon by cognitive theorists. Then, we show that one’s explanation of why this first kind of disagreement obtains will cohere with one’s theory of evidence. We argue that the best explanation for why cognitive theorists disagree in this way is because their evidence is what they rationally grant. Finally, (...) we explain why our view does not lead to a pernicious kind of relativism in cognitive science. (shrink)

Most democratic theorists agree that concentrations of wealth and power tend to distort the functioning of democracy and ought to be countered wherever possible. Deliberative democrats are no exception: though not its only potential value, the capacity of deliberation to ‘neutralise power’ is often regarded as ‘fundamental’ to deliberative theory. Power may be neutralised, according to many deliberative democrats, if citizens can be induced to commit more fully to the deliberative resolution of common problems. If they do, they will be (...) unable to get away with inconsistencies and bad or private reasons, thereby mitigating the illegitimate influence of power. I argue, however, that the means by which power inflects political disagreement is far more subtle than this model suggests and cannot be countered so simply. As a wealth of recent research in political psychology demonstrates, human beings persistently exhibit ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that even when we are sincerely committed to the deliberative resolution of common problems, and even when we are exposed to the same reasons and evidence, we still disagree strongly about what ‘fair cooperation’ entails. Motivated reasoning can be counteracted, but only under exceptional circumstances such as those that enable modern science, which cannot be reliably replicated in our society at large. My analysis suggests that in democratic politics – which rules out the kind of anti-democratic practices available to scientists – we should not expect deliberation to reliably neutralise power. (shrink)

Despite claims to the contrary, the science of ecology has a long history of building theories. Many ecological theories are mathematical, computational, or statistical, though, and rarely have attempts been made to organize or extrapolate these models into broader theories. The Theory of Ecology brings together some of the most respected and creative theoretical ecologists of this era to advance a comprehensive, conceptual articulation of ecological theories. The contributors cover a wide range of topics, from ecological niche theory to population (...) dynamic theory to island biogeography theory. Collectively, the chapters ably demonstrate how theory in ecology accounts for observations about the natural world and how models provide predictive understandings. It organizes these models into constitutive domains that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of ecological understanding. This book is a milestone in ecological theory and is certain to motivate future empirical and theoretical work in one of the most exciting and active domains of the life sciences. (shrink)

Josh is a typical 27-year-old in a career that he enjoys and a successful marriage. Josh begins to exhibit the symptoms of a manic episode. He is soon diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While non-manic, Josh’s preferences are typical. While manic, his preferences change dramatically. He quits his job, cheats on his partner, and squanders his savings. These are behaviors that Josh, when non-manic (euthymic), would never agree to. When Josh returns to a euthymic state, he regrets these decisions. Should those (...) close to Josh have prevented him from making these decisions, or does his competence to decide persist despite his acute mania? In this paper, I examine the connections be-tween bipolar disorder and consent. I defend the view that many (although far from all) individuals with bipolar disorder are competent to consent to a wide variety of things when they are in a manic state. This means that mania should not be presumed to undermine competence in clinical settings. -/- I have several goals in this paper. I want to bring philosophy to bear on the connection between consent and bipolar disorder. Additionally, I intend this paper to contribute to the general debate about the conditions of informed consent. Bipolar disorder presents novel challenges to existing conceptions of competence to consent which require stable core of values for an agent to be competent. For example, Buchanan and Brock endorse such a view. In showing that shifting values do not undermine the competence of a person experiencing acute mania, I show that the aforementioned views of competence are false. Overall, this paper makes substantive contributions to the debate about competence to consent and presents the first sustained philosophical treatment of consent among people with bipolar disorder. (shrink)

According to the attentional resources account, mind wandering (or “task-unrelated thought”) is thought to compete with a focal task for attentional resources. Here, we tested two key predictions of this account: First, that mind wandering should not interfere with performance on a task that does not require attentional resources; second, that as task requirements become automatized, performance should improve and depth of mind wandering should increase. Here, we used a serial reaction time task with implicit- and explicit-learning groups to test (...) these predictions. Providing novel evidence for the attentional resource account’s first prediction, results indicated that depth of mind wandering was negatively associated with learning in the explicit, but not the implicit, group, indicating that mind wandering is associated with impaired explicit, but not implicit, learning. Corroborating the attention resource account’s second prediction, we also found that, overall, performance improved while at the same time depth of mind wandering increased. From an implicit learning perspective, these results are consistent with the claim that explicit learning is impaired under attentional load, but implicit learning is not. (shrink)