1. 33368.678176
    This paper explores the theme of human limitedness and the virtues in David McPherson’s The Virtues of Limits. I survey some of the main themes of his discussion— including kinds of human limits and the idea of “limiting-virtues”—and indicate salient themes in Buddhist and classical Chinese philosophical traditions. I then suggest that McPherson is too quick to dismiss forms of moral quietism and that his discussion of our limitedness rests on a latent pessimism worthy of further articulation.
    Found 9 hours, 16 minutes ago on Ian James Kidd's site
  2. 91188.67827
    The notion of malfunction is critical to biological explanation. It provides a test-bed for the normative character of functional attribution. Theories of biological functioning must permit traits to operate but, at the same time, be judged as malfunctioning (in some naturalized, non-arbitrary sense). Whereas malfunctioning has attracted most attention and discussion in evolutionary etiological approaches, systemic and organizational ones have been less discussed. The most influential of the organizational approaches (by Saborido, Moreno and Mossio) takes a dual-order approach to malfunctions, as a set of functions that fit first-order constitutive norms but fail to obey second-order regulatory ones. We argue that this conception is unnecessarily complicated (malfunctions do not need to arise as a result of two conflicting orders of norms) and too narrow (it excludes canonical cases of malfunctioning). We provide an alternative organizational account grounded on viability theory. The dynamics of the traits that constitute an organism define the normative field of its viability space: sugar must be replaced at certain rate, blood must be pumped at a certain pace, etc. A trait operates normatively when its effects on the viability space correlate positively with the normative field.
    Found 1 day, 1 hour ago on PhilSci Archive
  3. 118660.67829
    We draw on value theory in social psychology to conceptualize the range of motives that can influence researchers’ attitudes, decisions, and actions. To conceptualize academic research values, we integrate theoretical insights from the literature on personal, work, and scientific work values, as well as the outcome of interviews and a survey among 255 participants about values relating to academic research. Finally, we propose a total of 246 academic research value items spread over 11 dimensions and 34 sub-themes. We relate our conceptualization and proposed items to existing work and provide recommendations for future scale development. Gaining a better understanding of researchers’ different values can improve careers in science, attract a more diverse range of people to enter science, and elucidate some of the mechanisms that lead to both exemplary and questionable scientific practices.
    Found 1 day, 8 hours ago on Krist Vaesen's site
  4. 249295.678299
    1. You can make your child learn the cello, and refuse to serve them candy for breakfast. Parents have these, and other, rights. What is the source, and extent, of these rights? As for source, the welfare of the child is a natural answer: in general and on average, granting parents certain rights is in the best interest of children. …
    Found 2 days, 21 hours ago on Mostly Aesthetics
  5. 264188.678305
    I argue that chatbots create a peculiar new kind of responsibility gap, which I call the “speech act responsibility gap”. Unlike the responsibility gaps commonly discussed in the context of self-driving cars and autonomous weapons, speech act responsibility gaps arise from the fact that paradigmatic speech acts like assertions (statements), promises or orders always generate linguistic commitments and entitlements. Unlike more familiar kinds of responsibility gaps, speech act responsibility gaps are inherently interpersonal and directed. I first argue that currently dominant treatments of chatbot speech acts as proxy agents cannot bridge these gaps. I also discuss why current arguments against the existence of responsibility gaps don’t apply in the case of chatbots. Instead, responsibility appears to be best attributed to the chatbot itself. However, this poses a dilemma. Either these machines don’t speak (we are fundamentally mistaken about their output), or we need to engineer (broaden) our notion of responsibility.
    Found 3 days, 1 hour ago on PhilSci Archive
  6. 292588.678313
    Mexican existentialism grows out of the encounter, engagement, and appropriation with French and German existentialist philosophies in Mexico mid-way through the twentieth-century. Key players in this tradition were José Gaos (1900–1969), Antonio Caso (1883–1946), and, especially, el grupo Hiperión (the Hyperion Group). Members of Hyperion, but particularly Emilio Uranga (1921–1988), Leopoldo Zea (1912–2004), Jorge Portilla (1918–1963), and Luis Villoro (1922–2014), focused their efforts on existential reinterpretations of that which is Mexican (“lo mexicano” or Mexicanness), a focus that lends this tradition its historical and conceptual uniqueness and importance.
    Found 3 days, 9 hours ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  7. 300527.678319
    "Pirate" training of generative AI is fair use and in the public interest Property is essentially coercive: property rights exclude others from use of the “owned” good. But there are obvious reasons why property is nonetheless a socially valuable institution (especially for “rival” goods, like a sandwich, that cannot be shared without loss). …
    Found 3 days, 11 hours ago on Good Thoughts
  8. 338754.678326
    Sunwin chính chủ sở hữu bộ core game cùng hệ thống chăm sóc khách hàng vô địch. Sunwin hiện nay giả mạo rất nhiều anh em chú ý check kĩ uy tín đường link để đảm bảo an toàn và trải nghiệm game đỉnh cao duy nhất. …
    Found 3 days, 22 hours ago on PEA Soup
  9. 338754.678332
    Sunwin chính chủ sở hữu bộ core game cùng hệ thống chăm sóc khách hàng vô địch. Sunwin hiện nay giả mạo rất nhiều anh em chú ý check kĩ uy tín đường link để đảm bảo an toàn và trải nghiệm game đỉnh cao duy nhất. …
    Found 3 days, 22 hours ago on PEA Soup
  10. 379546.678338
    Knowledge brokers, usually conceptualized as passive intermediaries between scientists and policymakers in evidence-based policymaking, are understudied in philosophy of science. Here, we challenge that usual conceptualization. As agents in their own right, knowledge brokers have their own goals and incentives, which complicate the effects of their presence at the science-policy interface. We illustrate this in an agent-based model and suggest several avenues for further exploration of the role of knowledge brokers in evidence-based policy.
    Found 4 days, 9 hours ago on PhilSci Archive
  11. 437359.678346
    Technological understanding is not a singular concept but varies depending on the context. Building on De Jong and De Haro’s (2025) notion of technological understanding as the ability to realise an aim by using a technological artefact, this paper further refines the concept as an ability that varies by context and degree. We extend its original specification for a design context by introducing two additional contexts: operation and innovation. Each context represents a distinct way of realising an aim through technology, resulting in three types (specifications) of technological understanding. To further clarify the nature of technological understanding, we propose an assessment framework based on counterfactual reasoning. Each type of understanding is associated with the ability to answer a specific set of what-if questions, addressing changes in an artefact’s structure, performance, or appropriateness. Explicitly distinguishing these different types helps to focus efforts to improve technological understanding, clarifies the epistemic requirements for different forms of engagement with technology, and promotes a pluralistic perspective on expertise.
    Found 5 days, 1 hour ago on PhilSci Archive
  12. 497194.678355
    The philosopher Joseph S. Ullian died late last year. He is probably best-known for an introduction to epistemology co-authored with W. V. Quine, that is very much of its time. But what caught my eye in the obits was his reputation as a baseball fanatic. …
    Found 5 days, 18 hours ago on Under the Net
  13. 504999.678361
    This is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but I think it’s fun, and there’s a moral about the nature of mathematical research. Act 1 Once I was interested in the McGee graph, nicely animated here by Mamouka Jibladze: This is the unique (3,7)-cage, meaning a graph such that each vertex has 3 neighbors and the shortest cycle has length 7. …
    Found 5 days, 20 hours ago on Azimuth
  14. 609250.678367
    We develop a theory of policy advice that focuses on the relationship between the competence of the advisor (e.g., an expert bureaucracy) and the quality of advice that the leader may expect. We describe important tensions between these features present in a wide class of substantively important circumstances. These tensions point to the presence of a trade-off between receiving advice more often and receiving more informative advice. The optimal realization of this trade-off for the leader sometimes induces her to prefer advisors of limited competence – a preference that, we show, is robust under different informational assumptions. We consider how institutional tools available to leaders affect preferences for advisor competence and the quality of advice they may expect to receive in equilibrium.
    Found 1 week ago on Dimitri Landa's site
  15. 610337.678374
    There are two main strands of arguments regarding the value-free ideal (VFI): desirability and achievability (Reiss and Sprenger 2020). In this essay, I will argue for what I will call a compatibilist account of upholding the VFI focusing on its desirability even if the VFI is unachievable. First, I will explain what the VFI is. Second, I will show that striving to uphold the VFI (desirability) is compatible with the rejection of its achievability. Third, I will demonstrate that the main arguments against the VFI do not refute its desirability. Finally, I will provide arguments on why it is desirable to strive to uphold the VFI even if the VFI is unachievable and show what role it can play in scientific inquiry. There is no single definition of the VFI, yet the most common way to interpret it is that non-epistemic values ought not to influence scientific reasoning (Brown 2024, 2). Non-epistemic values are understood as certain ethical, social, cultural or political considerations. Therefore, it is the role of epistemic values, such as accuracy, consistency, empirical adequacy and simplicity, to be part of and to ensure proper scientific reasoning.
    Found 1 week ago on PhilSci Archive
  16. 610354.678381
    There is an overwhelmingly abundance of works in AI Ethics. This growth is chaotic because of how sudden it is, its volume, and its multidisciplinary nature. This makes difficult to keep track of debates, and to systematically characterize goals, research questions, methods, and expertise required by AI ethicists. In this article, I show that the relation between ‘AI’ and ‘ethics’ can be characterized in at least three ways, which correspond to three well-represented kinds of AI ethics: ethics and AI; ethics in AI; ethics of AI. I elucidate the features of these three kinds of AI Ethics, characterize their research questions, and identify the kind of expertise that each kind needs. I also show how certain criticisms to AI ethics are misplaced, as being done from the point of view of one kind of AI ethics, to another kind with different goals. All in all, this work sheds light on the nature of AI ethics, and set the grounds for more informed discussions about scope, methods, and trainings of AI ethicists.
    Found 1 week ago on PhilSci Archive
  17. 638747.678389
    Critical theory arose as a response to perceived inadequacies in Marxist theory, and perceived changes in modern capitalism. Critical theorists emphasized the ability of capitalism to shape the thought and experience of individuals: it distorts how modern society and its products appear to us, and how we think about them. So, aesthetic experience – like all other experience – is moulded to and compromised by capitalism. For critical theory, if we seek to understand aesthetics we need to acknowledge this distorting effect. Critical theorists ask us to pay attention to how art, and aesthetic experience, suffer under capitalism, and become part of the way in which capitalism prevents the formation of a better life.
  18. 696419.678395
    Prioritarianism is generally understood as a kind of moral axiology. An axiology provides an account of what makes items, in this case outcomes, good or bad, better or worse. A moral axiology focuses on moral value: on what makes outcomes morally good or bad, morally better or worse. Prioritarianism, specifically, posits that the moral-betterness ranking of outcomes gives extra weight (“priority”) to well-being gains and losses affecting those at lower levels of well-being. It differs from utilitarianism, which is indifferent to the well-being levels of those affected by gains and losses.[ 1 ] Although it is possible to construe prioritarianism as a non-axiological moral view, this entry follows the prevailing approach and trains its attention on axiological prioritarianism.
    Found 1 week, 1 day ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  19. 696433.678401
    Dehumanization is widely thought to occur when someone is treated or regarded as less than human. However, there is an ongoing debate about how to develop this basic characterization. Proponents of the harms-based approach focus on the idea that to dehumanize someone is to treat them in a way that harms their humanity; whereas proponents of the psychological approach focus on the idea that to dehumanize someone is to think of them as less than human. Other theorists adopt a pluralistic view that combines elements of both approaches. In addition to explaining different views on what it means to dehumanize someone, this article focuses on related issues, such as how to resolve the so-called “paradox of dehumanization”; the causes and consequences of dehumanization; the sorts of contexts in which dehumanization typically occurs; and the relation between dehumanization and objectification.
    Found 1 week, 1 day ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  20. 725761.678407
    In a recent publication, Kukla (2014) has argued that we should we abandon naturalistic and social constructivist considerations in attempts to define health due to their alleged failure to account for their normativity and instead define them purely in terms of ‘social justice’. Here, I shall argue that such a purely normativist project is self-defeating, and hence, that health and disease cannot be defined through recourse to social justice alone.
    Found 1 week, 1 day ago on PhilSci Archive
  21. 806736.678427
    Political disagreement tends to display a “radical” nature that is partly related to the fact that political beliefs and judgments are generally firmly held. This makes people unlikely to revise and compromise on them. …
    Found 1 week, 2 days ago on The Archimedean Point
  22. 900936.678434
    Common moral intuitions are an unprincipled mess. That’s “the trolley problem” in a nutshell. It’s also demonstrated by attempts to distinguish Singer’s drowning child case from our everyday failures to donate to life-saving charities. …
    Found 1 week, 3 days ago on Good Thoughts
  23. 1100853.67844
    Comparative philosophy of religion is a subfield of both philosophy of religion and comparative philosophy. Philosophy of religion engages with philosophical questions related to religious belief and practice, including questions concerning the concept of religion itself. Comparative philosophy compares concepts, theories, and arguments from diverse philosophical traditions. The term “comparative philosophy of religion” can refer to the comparative philosophical study of different religions or of different philosophies of religion. It can thus be either a first-order philosophical discipline—investigating matters to do with religion—or a second-order philosophical discipline, investigating matters to do with philosophical inquiry into religion.
    Found 1 week, 5 days ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  24. 1347033.678446
    I've been exploring in this newsletter recently how people's growing inability to understand and control the institutions that shape their lives affects their political views (see here or here for instance). …
    Found 2 weeks, 1 day ago on The Archimedean Point
  25. 1592016.678452
    At the start of the pandemic, Peter Singer and I argued that our top priority should be to learn more, fast. I feel similarly about AI, today. I’m far from an expert on the topic, so the main things I want to do in this post are to (i) share some resources that I’ve found helpful as a novice starting to learn more about the topic over the past couple months, and (ii) invite others to do likewise! …
    Found 2 weeks, 4 days ago on Good Thoughts
  26. 1701086.678458
    According to classical utilitarianism, well-being consists in pleasure or happiness, the good consists in the sum of well-being, and moral rightness consists in maximizing the good. Leibniz was perhaps the first to formulate this doctrine. Bentham made it widely known. For a long time, however, the second, summing part lacked any clear foundation. John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and Richard Hare all gave arguments for utilitarianism, but they took this summing part for granted. It was John Harsanyi who finally presented compelling arguments for this controversial part of the utilitarian doctrine.
    Found 2 weeks, 5 days ago on Johan E. Gustafsson's site
  27. 1735313.678465
    [Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Juliana Bidadanure and David Axelsen replaces the former entry on this topic by the previous author.] Egalitarianism is a school of thought in contemporary political philosophy that treats equality as the chief value of a just political system. Simply put, egalitarians argue for equality. They have a presumption in favor of social arrangements that advance equality, and they treat deviations from equality as prima facie suspect. They recommend a far greater degree of equality than we currently have, and they do so for distinctly egalitarian reasons.
    Found 2 weeks, 6 days ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  28. 1908422.67847
    Organ sale – for example, allowing or encouraging consenting adults to become living kidney donors in return for money – has been proposed as a possible solution to the seemingly chronic shortage of organs for transplantation. Many people however regard this idea as abhorrent and argue both that the practice would be unethical and that it should be banned. This entry outlines some of the different possible kinds of organ sale, briefly states the case in favour, and then examines the main arguments against.
    Found 3 weeks, 1 day ago on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  29. 1936826.678476
    This paper considers the mundane ways in which AI is being incorporated into scientific practice today, and particularly the extent to which AI is used to automate tasks perceived to be boring, “mere routine” and inconvenient to researchers. We label such uses as instances of “Convenience AI” — that is situations where AI is applied with the primary intention to increase speed and minimize human effort. We outline how attributions of convenience to AI applications involve three key characteristics: (i) an emphasis on speed and ease of action, (ii) a comparative element, as well as (iii) a subject-dependent and subjective quality. Using examples from medical science and development economics, we highlight epistemic benefits, complications, and drawbacks of Convenience AI along these three dimensions. While the pursuit of convenience through AI can save precious time and resources as well as give rise to novel forms of inquiry, our analysis underscores how the uncritical adoption of Convenience AI for the sake of shortcutting human labour may also weaken the evidential foundations of science and generate inertia in how research is planned, set-up and conducted, with potentially damaging implications for the knowledge being produced. Critically, we argue that the consistent association of Convenience AI with the goals of productivity, efficiency, and ease, as often promoted also by companies targeting the research market for AI applications, can lower critical scrutiny of research processes and shift focus away from appreciating their broader epistemic and social implications.
    Found 3 weeks, 1 day ago on PhilSci Archive
  30. 2053696.678484
    A. I guess because I'm exploring the format in some of my own writing. Q. A. It's not ready to show to anyone. In fact the project is more notional than actual—a few notes in a plain text file, which I peek at from time to time. …
    Found 3 weeks, 2 days ago on Mostly Aesthetics