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102966.422354
Very short summary: I discuss Cass Sunstein’s recent article on the “AI calculation debate.” I agree with Sunstein that an omniscient AI is impossible, but I nonetheless argue that a “society of AIs” with a division of cognitive labor would probably be better at tackling the knowledge problem than humans. …
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213821.422444
Visual illusions provide a means of investigating the rules and principles through which approximate number representations are formed. Here, we investigated the developmental trajectory of an important numerical illusion – the connectedness illusion, wherein connecting pairs of items with thin lines reduces perceived number without altering continuous attributes of the collections. We found that children as young as 5 years of age showed susceptibility to the illusion and that the magnitude of the effect increased into adulthood. Moreover, individuals with greater numerical acuity exhibited stronger connectedness illusions after controlling for age. Overall, these results suggest the approximate number system expects to enumerate over bounded wholes and doing so is a signature of its optimal functioning.
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215946.422465
Common sense tells us that biological systems are goal-directed, and yet the concept remains philosophically problematic. We propose a novel characterization of goal-directed activities as a basis for hypothesizing about and investigating explanatory mechanisms. We focus on survival goals such as providing adequate nutrition to body tissues, highlighting two key features—normativity and action. These are closely linked inasmuch as goal-directed actions must meet normative requirements such as that they occur when required and not at other times. We illustrate how goal-directed actions are initiated and terminated not by environmental features and goals themselves, but by markers for them. For example, timely blood clotting is the essential response to injury, but platelet activation, required for clotting, is initiated not by the injury itself but by a short sequence of amino acids (GPO) that provides a reliable marker for it. We then make the case that the operation of markers is a prerequisite for common biological phenomena such as mistake-proneness and mimicry. We go on to identify properties of markers in general, including those that are genetically determined and those that can be acquired through associative learning. Both provide the basis for matching actions to changing environments and hence adaptive goal-directedness. We describe how goal-directed activities such as bird nest construction and birdsong learning, completed in anticipation of actions in the environment, have to be evaluated and practiced against a standard of correctness. This characterization of goal-directedness is sufficiently detailed to provide a basis for the scientific study of mechanisms.
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338173.422476
Philosophers interested in medicine and healthcare research should focus on the choice of health concepts. Conceptual choice is akin to conceptual engineering but, in addition to assessing whether a concept suits an objective, or offering a better one, it evaluates objectives, ranks them, and discusses stakeholders’ entitlement. To show the importance of choosing health concepts, I summarize the internal debate in medicine, showcasing definitions, constructs, and scales. To argue it is a philosophical task, I analyze the medical controversy over health as adaptation and self-management. I conclude with a to-do list of conceptual choice tasks, generalizable beyond medicine.
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338193.422486
Since Andrew Jameton first introduced the concept of moral distress, a growing theoretical literature has attempted to identify its distinctive features. This theoretical work has overlooked a central feature of morally distressing situations: disempowerment. My aim is to correct this neglect by arguing for a new test for theories of moral distress. I call this the disempowerment requirement: a theory of moral distress ought to accommodate the disempowerment of morally distressing situations. I argue for the disempowerment requirement and illustrate how to apply it by showing that recent responsibility-based theories of moral distress fail to pass the test.
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342433.422496
I wrote these words about 20 years ago. They seem especially apt these days. Leaders have been known to inspire blind faith. Michels (1962: 93) refers to "the belief so frequent among the people that their leaders belong to a higher order of humanity than themselves" evidenced by "the tone of veneration in which the idol's name is pronounced, the perfect docility with which the least of his signs is obeyed, and the indignation which is aroused by any critical attack on his personality." …
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369074.422506
A firm wishes to persuade a patient to take a drug by making either positive statements like “if you take our drug, you will be cured”, or negative statements like “anyone who was not cured did not take our drug”. Patients are neither Bayesian nor strategic: They use a decision procedure based on sampling past cases. We characterize the firm’s optimal statement, and analyze competition between firms making either positive statements about themselves or negative statements about their rivals. The model highlights that logically equivalent statements can differ in effectiveness and identifies circumstances favoring negative ads over positive ones.
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481644.422516
Chinese Daoism is a Chinese philosophy of natural practice structured
around a normative focus on dào (道 path, way). This naturalist philosophical project treated dào as a
structure of natural possibility for living beings. Unlike similar
Western naturalisms, e.g., pragmatism, Daoism’s foil was
contemporary: the Confucian-Mohist (Ru-Mo) dialectic about
human (人 rén human, social)
dào. Daoism’s critique of Ru-Mo debate
concerns the role of natural (天 tiān
sky-nature) dào vs human dào (socially
constructed guidance). Daoism’s founding
personages[ 1 ]
( Laozi and
Zhuangzi)
did not coin their “-ism.” The two Classical texts,
credited to their titled masters (子 zǐ
son), emerged during the Classical period (5th to
3rd C. BC).
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539702.422526
Very short summary: This essay reflects on how the state and its bureaucratic machinery can shape social reality. The state is unique among human institutions for its performative power. This power is however not unlimited and its use can have adverse consequences. …
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546569.42254
A nameless delivery boy in a nameless city, a refugee from a nameless country, fleeing a nameless Strongman, indentured to a nameless Supervisor, dispatched to nameless customers with unmarked packages, not knowing, yet, the rules of the system, and the language, in which he is trapped—a story told, though we do not know it yet, by a nameless narrator in a nameless city, a refugee from a nameless country, fleeing a nameless Strongman. …
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794827.42255
I’m on holidays this week, spending some time in Cracow (Poland) and Slovakia. Today’s post is a bit off-topic compared to what I’m used to publish here, but still I hope you will enjoy it! If not the case already, do not hesitate to subscribe to receive for free essays on economics, philosophy, and liberal politics in your mailbox! …
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855490.42256
Every week, I tell myself I won’t do yet another post about the asteroid striking American academia, and then every week events force my hand otherwise. No one on earth—certainly no one who reads this blog—could call me blasé about the issue of antisemitism at US universities. …
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857200.42257
In interactions characterized by agential epistemic injustice, the interpreter avoids engaging with the speaker’s perspective and challenges or distorts the speaker’s contribution before taking time to explore it. Where the success of the interaction depends on a genuine knowledge exchange between interpreters and speakers, epistemic injustice compromises the success of the interaction. Building on recent qualitative work on communication in youth mental health, I argue that clinical interactions are less likely to achieve their aims when practitioners fail to engage with the perspective of the person seeking support, and challenge or distort the person’s contribution before taking time to explore it.
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857218.42258
This paper argues that biostatistical theory (BST) cannot categorically exclude pregnancy from pathology. Common harmful conditions in typical pregnancies are integral to the notion of pregnancy per se. Given this definition, there are two potential ways to classify pregnancy as non-pathological within the BST: (i) most common conditions in pregnancy are not pathological within the appropriate reference class; or (ii) pregnancy’s reproductive value counterbalances its pathological survival harms, rendering it non-pathological. I challenge both views, arguing that non-pregnant women of the same age should be the reference class, making pregnancy a survival pathology that cannot be offset by reproductive value.
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915112.42259
This paper examines the historical split of microbiology into the fields of medicine and ecology from a feminist perspective, using Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism and her onto-epistemic view of interactions. Examining microbial interactions is interesting for two reasons, one is ontological as microbial metabolic interactions constitute the bio-geo-chemical cycles that are the driving force of life on Earth. The second reason is epistemic, involving our conceptual challenges in understanding microbial traits and classification, as their activities and ability to evolve are, for the most part, driven by their interactions. I follow the work and methodology of Sergei Vinogradskii (1856-1953) and Robert Koch (1843-1910), as two main founders each of a different microbiology field. Koch focused on medicine, developing pure mass cultures and the Koch postulates. Vinogradskii focused on soil microbiology and ecosystem ecology, developing the elective culture technique, and is known for the Winogradsky Column. I use contextual empiricism to discuss their methodological differences in classification and cultivation and reflect on their position regarding microbial individuality and interactions. For instance, Vinogradskii’s research focused on metabolic interactions and microbial life cycles, considering individual microbes as part of their environment and never in isolation. This view emphasizes the individual, the interactions, and the environment as equally focal in causal explanations.
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949958.422602
A friend and I were discussing whether there’s anything I could possibly say, on this blog, in 2025, that wouldn’t provoke an outraged reaction from my commenters. So I started jotting down ideas. Let’s see how I did. …
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1063148.422612
Social institutions—such as the government of Canada, the National Football League in the United States, the Japanese monetary system, and the Catholic Church—often seem as real to us as mountains, oceans, and forests. And yet, social institutions seem to be real in an importantly different, more human-dependent way. This distinctive feature of institutional reality motivates the key question behind the metaphysics of social institutions: what, precisely, makes it the case that social institutions exist? Or in other words: what are the metaphysical determinants of institutional reality? Here we are asking not the empirical question of what historical events caused particular institutions to exist, but rather the metaphysical question of the kinds of states of affairs in virtue of which institutions exist.
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1295456.422628
Bet On It reader Ian Fillmore recently sent me a very insightful email on natalism, which I encouraged him to expand upon. In fact, I’ll put it squarely in the obvious-once-you-think-about-it category. …
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1313811.422637
In a recent essay, I explained that the right to exit is often given great importance in liberal thought. In some cases, it is almost as if nothing else matters than the guarantee that individuals can —in principle or effectively— exit a group, a community, or a society. …
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1358254.422648
Karl Marx rejected the ideal of equality as bourgeois. And yet, the most significant attempt in recent years to distinguish socialist theory from liberal egalitarian theory, G.A. Cohen's critique of John Rawls, relies almost entirely on an egalitarian principle. Although Cohen’s critique often seems to have a great deal of intuitive force, a number of Rawls’ defenders have argued, quite convincingly, that Cohen’s critique is unsuccessful. For those of us attracted to broadly socialist ideals, there does seem to be something importantly right about Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls, and more substantively, something deeply problematic in the kinds of market-based leveraging of productive abilities that would be permitted in a fully just Rawlsian society. My diagnosis is that Cohen has the right target, but the wrong fundamental value. I develop an alternative to these liberal egalitarian approaches in contemporary socialist ethics, building on the famous slogan: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’ This alternative ideal of Caring Solidarity draws on rich socialist, Christian, and feminist traditions, and emphasizes the importance of care, recognition, and solidarity in political and economic organisation. This alternative approach leaves a certain amount of inequality legitimately in place, whilst providing a moral framework for a radical reorganisation of production.
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1379954.42266
On my flight back from Spain, I watched Subservience, yet another a cautionary tale of artificial general intelligence. I kept laughing at its many absurdities. If Robin Hanson viewed it, I fear that his head might explode in social scientific outrage. …
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1519993.42267
This entry takes as its focal point the philosophical contributions of
Anna Julia Cooper with an emphasis on her scholarship and some
attention to her commitments as an educator and activist. Authoring
one of the earliest book-length analyses of the unique situation of
Black women in the United States, Cooper offers clearly articulated
insights about racialized sexism and sexualized racism without
ignoring the significance of class and labor, education and
intellectual development, and conceptions of democracy and
citizenship.[ 1 ]
With an academic training deeply rooted in the history of Western
philosophy and the classics, Cooper’s philosophical significance
also lies in her foundational contributions to feminist philosophy,
standpoint theory, and epistemology, as well as critical philosophy of
race and African-American philosophy (including African American
political philosophy).
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1549449.42268
Despite widespread scientific agreement that human biological diversity is real, the question of whether “race” corresponds to a natural kind remains deeply contested. While some philosophers and scientists continue to explore ways of biologically grounding racial categories, this paper argues that the project of racial naturalism—whether in its essentialist or reformulated variants—remains conceptually, empirically, and metaphysically untenable. Yet this is not a rejection of the reality of race. Rather, I contend that race is a real and powerful social construct, historically forged and materially entrenched, but not a natural kind in the biological or taxonomic sense.
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1552613.42269
This paper argues that lockdown was racist. The terms are broad, but the task of definition is not random, and in §2 we motivate certain definitions as appropriate. In brief: “lockdown” refers to regulatory responses to the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic involving significant restrictions on leaving the home and on activities outside the home, historically situated in the pandemic and widely known as “lockdowns”; and “racist” indicates what we call negligent racism, a type of racism which we define. Negligent racism does not require intent, but beyond this constraint, we do not endorse any definition of racism in general. With definitions in hand, in §3 we argue that lockdown was harmful in Africa, causing great human suffering that was not offset by benefits and amounted to net harm, far greater than in the circumstances in which most White people live. Since 1.4
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1552663.4227
Agents are said to be “clueless” if they are unable to predict some ethically important consequences of their actions. Some philosophers have argued that such “cluelessness’’ is widespread and creates problems for certain approaches to ethics. According to Hilary Greaves, a particularly problematic type of cluelessness, namely, “complex” cluelessness, affects attempts to do good as effectively as possible, as suggested by proponents of “Effective Altruism,” because we are typically clueless about the long-term consequences of such interventions. As a reaction, she suggests focusing on interventions that are long-term oriented from the start. This paper argues for three claims: first, that David Lewis’ distinction between sensitive and insensitive causation can help us better understand the differences between genuinely “complex” and more harmless “simple” cluelessness; second, that Greaves’ worry about complex cluelessness can be mitigated for attempts to do near-term good; and, third, that Greaves’ recommendation to focus on long term-oriented interventions in response to complex cluelessness is not promising as a strategy specifically for avoiding complex cluelessness. There are systematic reasons why the actual effects of serious attempts to beneficially shape the long-term future are inherently difficult to predict and why, hence, such attempts are prone to backfiring.
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1552701.422711
I argue that there are Kantian grounds to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and that Kant’s practical philosophy can contribute to current debates about the ethics of UBI. I will make two points that mutually support each other. Firstly, there is a pro tanto argument for Kantians to work towards a UBI. A UBI, more so than conditional welfare schemes, enables agents to live up to their duty to be a useful member of the world. This should be conceptualized as an indirect duty to implement a UBI. Secondly, Kant’s ethics suggests a way to tackle the most pressing ethical objection against a UBI, the unfairness or surfer objection. The requirement that agents be useful for others is ethical and thus cannot be enforced externally. Yet, there is rational pressure on agents to do their part. Kant and UBI advocates can learn a great deal from each other.
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1552750.422721
LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View.
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1681907.422846
1. Milton’s final work, Samson Agonistes, is built on an historical and aesthetic foundation many layers deep—as one might expect from this poet: ancient greek tragedy; the Aristotelian theory of tragedy it inspired; the Biblical story of Samson, of which this is a transformational re-telling; and Samson’s place in the larger history of Israel. …
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1944250.422856
Philosophy and Society Vol. 30, No. 4, 463–644 Mega-Labs is a Challenging Task That Requires a Combination of Case-Based and Formal Epistemic Approaches. Data-Driven Studies Suggest That Projects Pursued by Smaller Master-Teams (Fewer Members, Fewer Sub-Teams) Are Substantially More Efficient Than Larger Ones Across Sciences, Including Experimental Particle Physics. Smaller Teams Also Seem to Make Better Project Choices Than Larger, Centralized Teams. Yet the Epistemic Requirement of Small, Decentralized, and Diverse Teams Contradicts the Often Emphasized and Allegedly Inescapable Logic of Discovery That Forces Physicists Pursuing the Fundamental Levels of the Physical World to Perform Centralized Experiments in Mega-Labs at High Energies. We Explain, However, That This Epistemic Requirement Could Be Met, Since the Nature of Theoretical and Physical Constraints in High Energy Physics and the Technological Obstacles Stemming From Them Turn Out to Be Surprisingly Open-Ended.
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2068298.422868
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.