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38295.525555
I’m a non-conformist, but not a reflexive contrarian. My chief goal is to enjoy every day of my life, and my non-conformism is only a means to that end. But what a means it is! By the power of non-conformism, I weasel out of hours of daily drudgery. …
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45940.525607
Behavioral innovativeness—the propensity of an individual organism or higher group to innovate—is frequently invoked as a measurable trait allowing for cross-species comparisons. Individuals or species are often regarded as more innovative or less innovative than others, implying that we can rank order the degree of innovativeness along a single dimension. This paper defends a novel multidimensional understanding of behavioral innovativeness in which innovativeness can be modulated with respect to the generation and capitalization of opportunities, as well as the effectiveness and depth of the innovative behaviors. Besides innovation being multidimensional, it is also multilevel. Here we show how innovativeness at one level (such as the species level) does not automatically translate to innovativeness at another (such as the organism level) and discuss why this matters for cross-species comparisons.
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46040.525615
Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present...But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power…We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. (Valéry 1964 [1928], 225) The passage describes a moment in the history of art in the West in the 20th century characterized by the introduction of new artistic technologies of production and reproduction such as photography. The passage serves as the epigraph to Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in which he contends that the analyses necessitated by the condition described by Paul Valery compels us to “brush aside a number of outmoded concepts, such as creativity and genius, eternal value and mystery…” (Benjamin 1969[1936]).
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217347.525626
It was a particularly cruel heckling. Ketel Marte, a star baseball player for the Arizona Diamondbacks, was brought to tears by a heckler who shouted derogatory comments about Marte’s late mother, Elpidia Valdez, who died in a car crash in 2017. …
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280952.525631
The puzzle of aphantasia concerns how individuals reporting no visual imagery perform more-or-less normally on tasks presumed to depend on it [1]. In his splendid recent review in TiCS, Zeman [2] canvasses four ‘cognitive explanations’: (i) differences in description; (ii) ‘faulty introspection’; (iii) “unconscious or ‘sub-personal’ imagery”; and (iv) total lack of imagery. Difficulties beset all four. To make progress, we must recognize that imagery is a complex and multidimensional capacity and that aphantasia commonly reflects partial imagery loss with selective sparing. Specifically, I propose that aphantasia often involves a lack of visual-object imagery (explaining subjective reports and objective correlates) but selectively spared spatial imagery (explaining Some researchers have suggested that aphantasics may have failed to follow instructions or engage imagery [7]. This is unconvincing. In studies of galvanic skin responses, trials were excluded in which subjects failed to demonstrate ‘proper reading and comprehension’ of the frightening stories. Thus, it remains a mystery why spontaneous imagery did not emerge [6]. Similarly, in studies of pupillary light responses, aphantasics showed a characteristic in-task correlation between pupil and stimulus set size, indicating that they were not “‘refusing’ to actively participate…due to…a belief that they are unable to imagine” [5]. Aphantasics also do voluntarily form images in other tasks despite a lack of incentives [8].
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305057.525636
Scientists decide to perform an experiment based on the expectation that their efforts will bear fruit. While assessing such expectations belongs to the everyday work of practicing scientists, we have a limited understanding of the epistemological principles underlying such assessments. Here I argue that we should delineate a “context of pursuit” for experiments. The rational pursuit of experiments, like the pursuit of theories, is governed by distinct epistemic and pragmatic considerations that concern epistemic gain, likelihood of success, and feasibility. A key question that arises is: what exactly is being evaluated when we assess experimental pursuits? I argue that, beyond the research questions an experiment aims to address, we must also assess the concrete experimental facilities and activities involved, because (1) there are often multiple ways to address a research question, (2) pursuitworthy experiments typically address a combination of research questions, and (3) experimental pursuitworthiness can be boosted by past experimental successes. My claims are supported by a look into ongoing debates about future particle colliders.
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305080.525642
The question of which scientific ideas are worth pursuing is a fundamental challenge in science, particularly in fields where the stakes are high, and resources are limited. When the research is also time-sensitive, then the challenge becomes even greater. Philosophers of science have analyzed the pursuitworthiness of science from multiple perspectives, on topics ranging from whether there is a logic of pursuit (Feyerabend 1975; Shaw 2022), whether scientific standards ought to be relaxed in times of “fast science” (Friedman and Šešelja 2023; Stegenga 2024) as well as the role of criticism in evaluating scientific pursuits (DiMarco and Khalifa 2022).
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305105.525647
This article revisits Taurek’s famous question: Should the greater number be saved in situations of resource scarcity? At the heart of this debate lies a central issue in normative ethics—whether numerical superiority can constitute a moral pro tanto reason. Engaging with this question helps to illuminate core principles of normative theory. Welfarismmin presents a pro-number position. The article first outlines Taurek’s original argument. It then examines non-welfarist responses and explains why they remain unsatisfactory. Finally, it identifies the main shortcomings of the hybrid welfarismmin approach and suggests a possible alternative for more adequately addressing the Taurek problem.
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378473.525671
Tarot is widely disdained as a way of finding things out. Critics claim it is bunk or—worse— a wretched scam. This disdain misunderstands both tarot and the activity of finding thing out. I argue that tarot is an excellent tool for inquiry. It initiates and structures percipient conversation and contemplation about important, challenging, and deep topics. It galvanises creative attention, especially towards inward-looking, introspective inquiry and openminded, collaborative inquiry with others. Tarot can cultivate virtues like epistemic playfulness and cognitive dexterity.
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390065.525679
Very short summary: This is a two-part essay on the crisis of contemporary liberalism. I argue that this crisis reflects the growing influence of a conception of the political as a praxis that is beyond human rationality and reason. …
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617451.525684
▼ AbStrACt Since the early days of its professionalization, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the history of science has been seen as a bridge between the natural sciences and the humanities. However, only one aspect of this triadic nexus, the relations between the history of science and the natural sciences, has been extensively discussed. The other aspect, the relations between the history of science and the humanities, has been less commented upon. With this paper I hope to make a small step towards redressing this imbalance, by discussing the relationships between the history of science and two other humanistic disciplines that have been historically and institutionally associated with it: the philosophy of science and general history. I argue that both of these relationships are marked by the characteristics of an unrequited friendship: on the one hand, historians of science have ignored, for the most part, calls for collaboration from their philosopher colleagues; and, on the other hand, historians specializing in other branches of history have been rather indifferent, again for the most part, to the efforts of historians of science to understand science as a historical phenomenon.
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657469.52569
Imagine living in a society where most people (at least in the privileged classes) regularly participate in perpetuating a moral atrocity—slavery, say, or factory farming; any practice you’re deeply appalled by will do. …
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860585.525695
Synthetic media generators, such as DALL-E, and synthetic media artifacts, such as deepfakes, undermine our fundamental epistemic standards and practices. Yet, the nature of their epistemic threat remains elusive. After all, fictional or distorted representations of reality are as old as photography. We argue that the novel epistemic threat of synthetic media is that, for the first time, synthetic media tools afford ordinary computer users the practicable possibility to cheaply and effortlessly create and widely share fictional worlds indistinguishable from the real world or credible representations of it. We further argue that a synthetic media artifact is epistemically malignant in a given media context for a person acquainted with the context when the person is misled to confuse the version of the world depicted in it with the real world in an epistemically or morally significant way.
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986811.525701
Political meritocracy is the idea that political institutions should aim to empower those people who are particularly well-suited to rule. This article surveys recent literature in democratic theory that argues on behalf of institutional arrangements that aim to realize the ideal of political meritocracy. We detail two prominent families of meritocratic proposals: nondemocratic meritocracy and weighted voting. We then describe and briefly evaluate five potentially important criticisms of political meritocracy related to the coherence of merit as an ideal, the demographic objection, rent-seeking, political inequality, and social peace. We also consider the key ways in which existing electoral democracies create spaces for institutionally meritocratic forms. Finally, we highlight the importance of exploring institutional innovations that allow democracies to effectively incorporate expertise without, at the same time, becoming vulnerable to the criticisms of political meritocracy that we discuss.
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1224909.525707
I was delighted that Good Thoughts passed 5,000 (mostly free) subscribers a few months ago: that’s at least 4,800 more people interested in moral philosophy than I was expecting! (And it continues to grow at ~100 new subscribers each month, with no sign of a cap as yet.) …
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1391544.525712
There is large consensus across clinical research that feelings of worthlessness (FOW) are one of the highest risk factors for a patient’s depression becoming suicidal. In this paper, I attempt to make sense of this empirical relationship from a phenomenological perspective. I propose that there are purely reactive and pervasive forms of FOW. Subsequently, I present a phenomenological demonstration for how and why it is pervasive FOW that pose a direct suicidal threat. I then outline criteria, contingent upon empirical verification, by which clinicians can more confidently identify when a patient’s FOW place them at high risk of suicide.
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1506876.525718
Several anecdotal claims about the relationship between philosophical discourse and the subject of autism have been forwarded in recent years. This paper seeks to verify or debunk these descriptive claims by carefully examining the philosophical literature on autism. We conduct a comprehensive scoping review to answer the question, what do philosophers talk about when they talk about autism? This empirical work confirms that the philosophy of autism is underdeveloped as a subfield of philosophy. Moreover, the way that philosophers engage with autism is often unreflective and uncritical.
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1506900.525723
Hyperscanning has been increasingly used to quantify the quality of social relationships by tracking the neural correlates of interpersonal interactions. This paper critically examines the use of hyperscanning to track the neural correlates of psychotherapeutic change, e.g., the patient-therapist relationship. First, we motivate our project by diagnosing a lack of complex models in this domain and, looking for the causes of this issue, we highlight the epistemic blindspots of current methodologies that prioritize neural synchrony as a marker of therapeutic success. Drawing on empirical studies and theoretical frameworks, we identify an asymmetry between the neural and behavioral conceptual toolkits, with the latter remaining underdeveloped. We argue that this imbalance stems from two key issues: the underdetermined qualitative interpretation of brain data and the neglect of strong reciprocity in neuroscientific second-person paradigms. In light of our critical analysis, we suggest that further research should address the complexity of reciprocal, dynamic interactions in therapeutic contexts. Specifically, drawing on enactivism, we highlight that the autonomy of interactions is one of the factors that undermines the synchrony paradigm. This approach emphasizes the co-construction of meaning and shared experiences through embodied, reciprocal interactions, offering a more integrative understanding of therapeutic change that accounts for neural correlates of the emergent and dynamic nature of social cognition.
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1506985.525728
In his comprehensive survey of the contemporary debate over scientific progress in philosophy of science, Rowbottom observes that philosophers of science have mostly relied on interpretations of historical cases from the history of science and intuitions elicited by hypothetical cases as evidence for or against philosophical accounts of scientific progress. Only a few have tried to introduce empirical evidence into this debate, whereas most others have resisted the introduction of empirical evidence by claiming that doing so would reduce the debate to empirical studies of science. In this paper, I set out to show how empirical evidence can be introduced into the scientific progress debate. I conduct a corpus-based, quantitative study whose results suggest that there is a positive linear relationship between knowledge that talk and knowledge how talk in scientific articles. These results are contrary to Niiniluoto’s view according to which there is a clear distinction between scientific progress and technological progress such that knowledge that belongs to the former, whereas knowledge how belongs to the latter.
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1518597.525734
A confession: at any given moment, I am liable to know the amount of money in my savings account, my uber rating, my Wordle scores from the last five days, and my h-index on Google scholar. For at least three months after publication, and probably more like six, I would be able to tell you the goodreads rating of my latest book. …
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1622050.52574
It is now a more or less biennial event: a professional philosopher, employed in an Anglophone philosophy department, publishes a book denouncing “analytic philosophy,” the predominant mode of the discipline in which they work. …
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1712433.525745
The target article highlights research known to have promoted unjustified politicized claims. It also points out that, although researcher political biases might account for this, there are often alternative explanations. It then discusses areas of research in which those alternative explanations are unlikely, so that the best explanation is political bias. The target article is fundamentally correct. Nonetheless, we argue that political bias is a characteristic of the claims made in research articles rather than primarily a characteristic of scientists. Inasmuch as some claim is not wrong simply by virtue of supporting an ideological narrative, to detect politically biased research, we identify four questions to be answered. Test 0 is necessary but not sufficient to infer political bias. If Test 0 is passed, then at least one of Tests 1, 2, or 3 must also be passed. Test 0: Does the study vindicate some political narrative? Test 1: Did they misinterpret or misrepresent their results in ways that unjusti fiably advance a particular politicized narrative? Test 2: Do the authors systematically ignore papers and studies inconsistent with their ideology-af firming conclusions? Test 3: Did they leap to ideology-affirming conclusions based on weak data? We close with recommendations for preventing politically biased conclusions.
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1737601.525751
In this contribution I will start in Section 2 by introducing epistemic competence. I will stress that like Bussmann, I regard it as fundamental that people in a democratic society possess epistemic competence and that it would be important to teach epistemic competence at school. In Section 3 I show that even for countries where the epidemiological situation is roughly the same or very similar such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland, there are often very different recommendations concerning vaccinations. In Section 4 I will identify and discuss five rational reasons that can alone or in combination lead to different vaccine recommendations. Finally, section 5 will reflect on epistemic competence and vaccine recommendations. In particular, I will point out that different vaccine recommendations are an example where students can develop epistemic competence. Further, I will stress that different vaccine recommendations are an example where epistemic competence among the general population is desirable; if it is not present, this can lead to science scepticism and mistrust about science.
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1826969.525757
What are the conditions under which an agent is morally responsible
for some action that they have performed? Put another way, and
acknowledging that this rephrasing might be contentious, what are the
conditions under which it would be appropriate to praise or blame the
agent for something they have done? (Strawson 1962; Wallace 1998;
Coates & Tognazzini 2013). An account of moral responsibility
supplies answers to these questions. (See the entry on
“Moral Responsibility” ). Most theorists agree that moral responsibility requires satisfying at
least two core conditions. The first is a control condition;
the agent must have the right sort of control over what they do
(Dennett 1984; Fischer & Ravizza 1998; Shepherd 2014).
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1827935.525762
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted. This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ . Subject to this licence, all rights are reserved.
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1874884.525767
Very short summary: This essay argues that local governance is less prone to succumb to populism because, compared to national politics, citizens are more empowered and monitoring of elected officials is easier. …
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1910721.525772
Although William Herschel (1738-1822) is most well-known as an astronomer and instrument-maker, he also had interests in speculative philosophy (e.g., metaphysics), as several papers he read at the Bath Philosophical Society reveal. These papers, arguably, are the context in which Herschel engaged most directly in philosophical argumentation and are thus worthy of greater scholarly attention. In this article, I focus on Herschel’s paper entitled “On the Utility of Speculative Inquiries,” in which he debates the legitimacy of speculation with an unnamed interlocutor, referred to as the “Gentleman.” In section 1, I briefly discuss Herschel’s intellectual background.
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1941710.525778
Greetings from Kyoto, Japan! Here’s an excerpt from Unbeatable’s last chapter. [from Chapter 6: Four Candid Conversations]
This is the dialogue chapter, where I argue against a wide variety of fictional archetypes. …
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1993660.525784
Guess I’m A Rationalist Now
A week ago I attended LessOnline, a rationalist blogging conference featuring many people I’ve known for years—Scott Alexander, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Zvi Mowshowitz, Sarah Constantin, Carl Feynman—as well as people I’ve known only online and was delighted to meet in person, like Joe Carlsmith and Jacob Falkovich and Daniel Reeves. …
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2026091.525788
In the “information age”, the world’s knowledge is at everybody’s fingertips: all one needs is a device connected to the internet. As information becomes more accessible than ever, optimists expected a corresponding rise in scientific education and knowledge—with the passing of time, superstitions and misconceptions that fly in the face of scientific consensus would be destined to disappear. Yet, as we know all too well, this reassuring prophecy did not come true. Scientifically disproven misconceptions are still alive and well, and continue to be fairly widespread among digital citizens.