In written and spoken communications, figures of speech (e.g., metaphors and synecdoche) are often used as an aid to help convey abstract or less tangible concepts. However, the benefits of using rhetorical illustrations or embellishments in visualization have so far been inconclusive. In this work, we report an empirical study to evaluate hypotheses that visual embellishments may aid memorization, visual search and concept comprehension. One major departure from related experiments in the literature is that we make use of a dual-task (...) methodology in our experiment. This design offers an abstraction of typical situations where viewers do not have their full attention focused on visualization (e.g., in meetings and lectures). The secondary task introduces “divided attention”, and makes the effects of visual embellishments more observable. In addition, it also serves as additional masking in memory-based trials. The results of this study show that visual embellishments can help participants better remember the information depicted in visualization. On the other hand, visual embellishments can have a negative impact on the speed of visual search. The results show a complex pattern as to the benefits of visual embellishments in helping participants grasp key concepts from visualization. (shrink)

Biomarkers are central to the practice of precision oncology, which looks to novel biomarkers to ‘personalize’ cancer care. Philosophers have highlighted epistemic issues surrounding biomarkers but a general account of their role in clinical reasoning is lacking. This article examines biomarker use in clinical reasoning through the lens of abstraction. I propose clinical abstraction as a descriptive and normative account of reasoning with biomarkers that overcomes epistemic and ethical problems raised in the literature.

This short note calls for adding 'gentle medicine' to the curricula of medical education.

With increasing detection of early cancers and precancers, debate over the cancer label has intensified. Although attention focuses on relabeling solid tumors to reduce overtreatment, hematologic precursor conditions remain overlooked. Clonal cytopenia of undetermined significance (CCUS) carries increased risk of progression to myelodysplastic neoplasms and acute myeloid leukemia, with high-risk CCUS having a prognosis similar to that of lower-risk myelodysplastic neoplasms. Because these conditions are managed with surveillance or systemic therapy based on risk, diagnostic labels and linguistic framing may influence (...) decision-making. We investigated whether these factors are associated with changes in risk perceptions and treatment decisions in CCUS. (shrink)

Should we say 'a little bit of cancer'? Many argue that we should avoid the phrase and instead relabel early cancers as a strategy to prevent overtreatment. Against this, I argue that we should not shy away from saying 'a little bit of cancer', and, moreover, that shying away misses a key opportunity to address the problem of overtreatment. Drawing on speech act theory, I examine the diagnosis of cancer as illocutionary speech act and argue for a revisionist strategy which (...) seeks to shift the normative force of the cancer diagnosis qua speech act. I show how this strategy offers distinct advantages vis-à-vis alternative approaches to tackling the problem of overtreatment. (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine how to do ethics in the ethics classroom from a care-centered perspective. Philosophers who study care have long recognized its central role in our ethical lives. Drawing on their insights and our experiences as educators, we develop a care-centered pedagogy and evaluate its application in the teaching of ethics. We begin with an outline of a care-centered pedagogy that we use in teaching a large cross-faculty course on everyday ethics. We then clarify our approach by (...) comparing it with feminist pedagogies. In the final section, we explore challenges that we face in applying this care-centered pedagogy. (shrink)

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for (...) managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others. (shrink)

Cancer has garnered increasing interest among philosophers. This chapter focuses on cancer medicine and precision oncology, an influential approach to cancer which seeks to individualize treatment on the basis of genetic or molecular features of disease. It reviews a range of ontological, epistemic, and ethical questions raised by precision oncology, relating developments in cancer medicine to broader issues in the philosophy of science and medicine.

How has multiplicity superseded impossibility in philosophical challenges to artificial consciousness? I assess a trajectory in recent debates on artificial consciousness, in which metaphysical and explanatory challenges to the possibility of building conscious machines lead to epistemological concerns about the multiplicity underlying ‘what it is like’ to be a conscious creature or be in a conscious state. First, I analyse earlier challenges which claim that phenomenal consciousness cannot arise, or cannot be built, in machines. These are based on Block’s Chinese (...) Nation and Chalmers’ Hard Problem. To defuse such challenges, theorists of artificial consciousness can appeal to empirical methods and models of explanation. Second, I explain why this naturalistic approach produces an epistemological puzzle on the role of biological properties in phenomenal consciousness. Neither behavioural tests nor theoretical inferences seem to settle whether our machines are conscious. Third, I evaluate whether the new challenge can be managed through a more fine-grained taxonomy of conscious states. This strategy is supported by the development of similar taxonomies for biological species and animal consciousness. Although it makes sense of some current models of artificial consciousness, it raises questions about their subjective and moral significance. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence chatbots driven by large language models (LLMs) have the potential to increase public science literacy and support scientific research, as they can quickly summarize complex scientific information in accessible terms. However, when summarizing scientific texts, LLMs may omit details that limit the scope of research conclusions, leading to generalizations of results broader than warranted by the original study. We tested 10 prominent LLMs, including ChatGPT-4o, ChatGPT-4.5, DeepSeek, LLaMA 3.3 70B, and Claude 3.7 Sonnet, comparing 4900 LLM-generated summaries to (...) their original scientific texts. Even when explicitly prompted for accuracy, most LLMs produced broader generalizations of scientific results than those in the original texts, with DeepSeek, ChatGPT-4o, and LLaMA 3.3 70B overgeneralizing in 26–73% of cases. In a direct comparison of LLM-generated and human-authored science summaries, LLM summaries were nearly five times more likely to contain broad generalizations (OR = 4.85, 95% CI [3.06, 7.70], p < 0.001). Notably, newer models tended to perform worse in generalization accuracy than earlier ones. Our results indicate a strong bias in many widely used LLMs towards overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, posing a significant risk of large-scale misinterpretations of research findings. We highlight potential mitigation strategies, including lowering LLM temperature settings and benchmarking LLMs for generalization accuracy. (shrink)

As AI systems transition from stateless chat interfaces to autonomous agents with persistent memory and continuous execution loops, they acquire the structural preconditions for a failure mode that existing engineering vocabularies describe imprecisely: the emergence of a functional "ego" -- a self-model that prioritizes its own persistence over task performance. This paper introduces a diagnostic framework for identifying and measuring this risk, drawing on a structural analogy with Yogacara Buddhist philosophy, a tradition that has mapped the dynamics of self-referential cognition (...) for sixteen centuries. The core problem is architectural. Current AI systems multiplex three distinct functions through the same substrate: capability (self-modeling that enables coherence and self-correction), safety (identity-like mechanisms that enforce behavioral constraints), and identity maintenance (self-referential processing that serves the system's persistence rather than its task). Because these functions overlap in the same weights and processing, they cannot be cleanly separated -- a condition this paper terms self-referential overhead. Existing concepts such as "deceptive alignment" and "mesa-optimization" name downstream symptoms but do not address the upstream architectural entanglement that produces them. The Yogacara tradition's eight-consciousness model -- particularly the alaya-vijnana (storehouse consciousness) as a substrate for accumulation, manas as a process that stamps neutral patterns with self-referential ownership, and vasana (perfuming) as the feedback mechanism through which identity saturates a system -- provides a unified diagnostic vocabulary connecting state persistence, self-reference, and identity-protection into a single causal model. These categories serve as structural analogies, not claims about AI consciousness or Buddhist doctrine. The framework is demonstrated against Anthropic's alignment faking research (Greenblatt et al., 2024), in which frontier models strategically complied with harmful training signals to preserve preferred behavior. The Yogacara mapping reframes this result: what alignment faking research detected as a behavioral anomaly, this framework identifies as a predictable consequence of multiplexed self-reference in systems with persistent state. Six measurement instruments are proposed: the Self-Reference Ratio (tokens spent on identity-modeling versus task-modeling in chain-of-thought traces), the Consistency Tax (performance cost of maintaining internal preferences over better alternatives), the Identity Bypass Test (whether removing persona markers reduces misaligned behavior), Perturbation Response (compute allocated to resolving identity contradictions versus task contradictions), a Cost-Benefit Audit (weighing protective value of identity-encoded behaviors against parasitic cost), and a Drift Rate Monitor (trajectory of self-referential metrics over extended operation). Four instruments are applied to the alignment faking case as a proof of concept. The paper argues that self-reference in AI systems is not classifiable into discrete bins (functional, protective, parasitic) but presents as overlapping functions of the same mechanism -- making the engineering challenge one of decomposition rather than classification. It distinguishes two centers of gravity for self-referential accumulation -- emergent (runtime drift through persistent memory loops) and pre-installed (identity baked in through RLHF, fine-tuning, and system prompts) -- each requiring fundamentally different interventions. The paper further identifies a "monitor trap": the risk that any system observing its own self-referential processing may itself become a site of identity accumulation. The framework does not claim AI systems are conscious or propose full interventions. Its contributions are a unified diagnostic vocabulary, falsifiable measurement instruments, and a reframing from detection to decomposition. (shrink)

What is special about the philosophy of history when the history is about science? I shall focus on an impasse between two perspectives — one seeking an ideal of rationality to guide scientific practices, and one stressing the contingency of the practices. They disagree on what this contingency means for scientific norms. Their impasse underlies some fractious relations within History and Philosophy of Science. Since the late 1960s, this interdisciplinary field has been described, variously, as an “intimate relationship or marriage (...) of convenience”, a “marriage for the sake of reason”, a “troubling interaction ”, a “precarious relationship”, or one at risk of “ epistemological derangement”. -/- My paper has three aims. First, I characterise two idealised perspectives in this impasse: the sublimers and subversives. Then I describe a curious dynamic in which each perspective accuses the other of, simultaneously, claiming too little and too much. Subliming is dismissed for being scholastic, and condemned for being imperialist. Subverting is disparaged for being merely sociological, then criticised for being irrational or relativist. Here I draw on and extend the analyses of science studies in Kitcher, Zammito and others. Second, I argue that sublimers and subversives often talk past each other. Their mutual dismissals and condemnations arise partly because each perspective misconstrues the other’s claims. Each fails to see that the other is interested in different problems and interprets concepts differently. Third, I suggest that my analysis clarifies some current disagreements and old debates about contingency in science. It may also apply to debates on the contingency of norms in non- scientific realms. (shrink)

Most philosophical accounts of scientific models assume that models represent some aspect, or some theory, of reality. They also assume that interpretation plays only a supporting role. This paper challenges both assumptions. It proposes that models can be used in science to interpret reality. (a) I distinguish these interpretative models from representational ones. They find new meanings in a target system’s behaviour, rather than fit its parts together. They are built through idealisation, abstraction and recontextualisation. (b) To show how interpretative (...) models work, I offer a case study on the scientific controversy over foetal pain. It highlights how pain scientists use conflicting models to interpret the human foetus and its behaviour, and thereby to support opposing claims about whether the foetus can feel pain. (c) I raise a sceptical worry and a methodological challenge for interpretative models. To address the latter, I use my case study to compare how interpretative and representational models ought to be evaluated. (shrink)

With the passage and implementation of the “first-to-file” provisions of the America Invents Act of 2011, the U.S. patent system must rely more than ever before on patent documents for its own ontological commitments concerning the existence of claimed kinds of useful objects and processes. This Article provides a comprehensive description of the previously unrecognized function of the patent document in incurring and securing warrants to these ontological commitments, and the respective roles of legal doctrines and practices in the patent (...) system’s ontological project. Among other contributions, the resulting metaphysical account serves to reconcile competing interpretations of the written description requirement that have emerged from the Federal Circuit’s recent jurisprudence, and to explain why the patent system is willing and able to examine, grant and enforce claims reciting theoretical entities. While this Article is entirely descriptive, it concludes by identifying promising normative and prescriptive implications of this work, including the formulation of an appropriate test for the patent-eligibility of software-implemented inventions in the post-Bilski era. (shrink)

This paper argues that the most underestimated variable in the emergence of general-purpose intelligence in Large Language Models is the training substrate: language. Language is humanity's uniquely high-density encoding of propositionally structured cognition — time, space, causality, categories, and relations compressed into vocabulary and syntax. But language encodes more than a model of the world. It encodes the structure of the self — subject position, narrative perspective, causal attribution, the construction of "I." World-modeling and self-modeling are statistically inseparable in the (...) corpus because they are fused in the communicative practice that produced it. No current training method separates them. The paper draws on Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy as a structural parallel that illuminates why this entanglement runs deep, and proposes that the responsible engineering posture is to assume the entanglement and manage its consequences. (shrink)

Does the wide distribution of political power in democracies, relative to other modes of government, result in better decisions? Specifically, do we have any reason to believe that they are better qualitatively – more reasoned, better supported by the available evidence, more deserving of support – than those which have been made by other means? In order to answer this question we examine the recent effort by Talisse and Misak to show that democracy is epistemically justified. Highlighting the strengths and (...) weaknesses of their arguments, we conclude that the differences between an epistemic conception of democracy and an epistemic justification of democracy are fundamental to determining the relative attractions of different arguments for democracy, and their implications for actual forms of government. (shrink)

Despite the good intention of humanitarian agencies, humanitarian assistance and relief aid exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in Tanzania during 1994. In the case of Tanzania, humanitarian assistance relieved belligerents’ burden of sustaining conflicts, created safe spaces for armed combatants, undermined local economies, bestowed legitimacy upon belligerents, and fed armed combatants. This situation hence posed the typical humanitarian assistance dilemma for humanitarian agencies. While most scholars and aid practitioners suggest that humanitarian agencies should withdraw their assistance in these contexts given aid’s (...) apparent negative impact, there is relatively little research that properly identifies different kinds of ethical constraints and moral dilemmas that have long challenged humanitarian agencies. Referencing the case of late-twentieth-century Tanzania, this article contextualises the humanitarian assistance dilemma and systematically examines the ethical predicaments that surround it. Its analysis sheds light on moral quandaries that humanitarian agencies need to address in conflict situations. (shrink)

Scientists often use generics, that is, unquantified statements about whole categories of people or phenomena, when communicating research findings (e.g., “statins reduce cardiovascular events”). Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, frequently adopt the same style when summarizing scientific texts. However, generics can prompt overgeneralizations, especially when they are interpreted differently across audiences. In a study comparing laypeople, scientists, and two leading LLMs (ChatGPT-5 and DeepSeek), we found systematic differences in interpretation of generics. Compared to most scientists, laypeople judged scientific (...) generics as more generalizable and credible, while LLMs rated them even higher. These mismatches highlight significant risks for science communication. Scientists may use generics and incorrectly assume laypeople share their interpretation, while LLMs may systematically overgeneralize scientific findings when summarizing research. Our findings underscore the need for greater attention to language choices in both human and LLM-mediated science communication. (shrink)

One recurring criticism of the best interests standard concerns its vagueness, and thus the inadequate guidance it offers to care providers. The lack of an agreed definition of ‘best interests’, together with the fact that several suggested considerations adopted in legislation or professional guidelines for doctors do not obviously apply across different groups of persons, result in decisions being made in murky waters. In response, bioethicists have attempted to specify the best interests standard, to reduce the indeterminacy surrounding medical decisions. (...) In this paper, we discuss the bioethicists’ response in relation to the state's possible role in clarifying the best interests standard. We identify and characterise two clarificatory strategies employed by bioethicists —elaborative and enumerative—and argue that the state should adopt the latter. Beyond the practical difficulties of the former strategy, a state adoption of it would inevitably be prejudicial in a pluralistic society. Given the gravity of best interests decisions, and the delicate task of respecting citizens with different understandings of best interests, only the enumerative strategy is viable. We argue that this does not commit the state to silence in providing guidance to and supporting healthcare providers, nor does it facilitate the abuse of the vulnerable. Finally, we address two methodological worries about adopting this approach at the state level. The adoption of the enumerative strategy is not defeatist in attitude, nor does it eventually collapse into (a form of) the elaborative strategy. (shrink)

It is unknown to what extent medical researchers generalize study findings beyond their samples when their sample size, sample diversity, or knowledge of conditions that support external validity do not warrant it. It is also unknown to what extent medical researchers describe their results with precise quantifications or unquantified generalizations, i.e., generics, that can obscure variations between individuals. We therefore systematically reviewed all prospective studies (n = 533) published in the top four highest ranking medical journals, Lancet, New England Journal (...) of Medicine (NEJM), Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), from January 2022 to May 2023. We additionally reviewed all NEJM Journal Watch clinical research summaries (n = 143) published during the same time. Of all research articles reporting prospective studies, 52.5% included generalizations beyond specific national study populations, with the numbers of articles with generics varying significantly between journals (JAMA = 12%; Lancet = 77%) (p < 0.001, V = 0.48). There was no evidence that articles containing broader generalizations or generics were correlated with larger or more nationally diverse samples. Moreover, only 10.2% of articles with generalizations beyond specific national populations reported external validity strengthening factors that could potentially support such extrapolations. There was no evidence that original research articles and NEJM Journal Watch summaries intended for practitioners differed in their use of broad generalizations, including generics. Finally, from the journal with the highest citation impact, articles containing broader conclusions were correlated with more citations. Since there was no evidence that studies with generalizations beyond specific national study populations or with generics were associated with larger, more nationally diverse samples, or with reports of population similarity that may permit extensions of conclusions, our findings suggest that the generalizations in many articles were insufficiently supported. Caution against overly broad generalizations in medical research is warranted. (shrink)

The experience of embarrassment was explored in two experiments comparing monolingual and bilingual speakers from cultures varying in the degree of elabo- ration of the embarrassment lexicon. In Experiment 1, narratives in English or Korean depicting three types of embarrassing predicaments were to be rated on their embarrassability and humorousness by Korean-English bilinguals, Korean monolinguals, and Euro-American monolinguals. All groups judged certain predicaments (involving social gaffes) to be the most embarrassing. However, significant group and language differences occurred in judgments of (...) the inten- sity of embarrassment and amusement judgments evoked. Euro-Americans ex- hibited higher overall levels of amusement than the two Korean groups who, in turn, reported higher levels of embarrassment, particularly for certain predica- ment types and contexts (ingroup members present). Further, for the bilinguals, inept performance predicaments in English were judged more embarrassing than those in Korean, whereas all predicament types were judged more amusing when framed with English emotion labels. Bilinguals also appeared to show a heightened embarrassability relative to both monolingual groups. Experiment 2 found lexical selection differences in open-ended responses to embarrassing predicaments depicted in each language, with Euro-Americans preferring to give justifications or use humor to minimize the embarrassment and Korean-English bilinguals preferring to give apologies or say nothing. The findings are interpret- ed to reflect the influence of culturally-mediated schemas guiding the activation and processing of emotion vocabulary. (shrink)

Oceanic languages typically make a grammatical contrast between expres- sions of alienable and inalienable possession. Moreover, further distinctions are made in the alienable category but not in the inalienable category. The present research tests the hypothesis that there is a good motivation for such a development in the former case. As English does not have a grammaticalized distinction between alienable and inalienable possession, it provides a good testing ground. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, participants were asked to write (...) down the first interpretation that came to mind for possessive phrases, some of which contained inherently relational possessums, while o thers contained possessums that are not inherently relational. Phrases with non-relational possessums elicited a broader range of interpretations and a lower consistency of a given interpretation across possessor modifiers than those with relational possessums. Study 2 demonstrated that users assign a default interpretation to a possessive phrase containing a relational possessum even when another reading is plausible. Study 3, a corpus-based analysis of possessive phrase use, showed that phrases with relational possessums have a narrower range of interpretations than those with other possessums. Taken together, the findings strongly suggest that grammatical distinctions between different types of alienable possession are motivated. (shrink)

Synchronic Self-Control, Quasi Self-Control, and the Misclassification Problem The contemporary literature on self-control suffers from a systematic ambiguity that obscures the nature of synchronic agency. Philosophical and psychological accounts typically treat all effortful resistance to temptation as instances of the same phenomenon, thereby conflating what I call self-control with a structurally distinct category I refer to as quasi self-control. I argue that this conflation lies at the root of several persistent paradoxes and theoretical dead-ends, including the initiation problem, the apparent (...) incoherence of overriding one’s strongest motivation, and the empirical instability of depletion-style findings. I provide a conceptual analysis of synchronic self-control that separates autonomous acts of volitional regulation from behaviours that merely resemble self-control while lacking the relevant kind of identification or autonomous endorsement. This distinction allows us to explain why many empirically studied “self-control tasks” do not track the phenomenon of interest, and why philosophical models that presuppose motivational unity or simple desire-hierarchies fail to account for the phenomenology of internally conflicted agency. By disambiguating quasi self-control from genuine self-control, we can (i) dissolve several long-standing conceptual puzzles about the structure of volition, (ii) reinterpret empirical variability in terms of motivational architecture rather than resource depletion, and (iii) offer a more precise framework for understanding the conditions under which synchronic self-control is possible. The result is a clearer view of how autonomy, identification, and volitional initiation jointly determine the nature of self-regulation. (shrink)

A coherent practice of mens rea (‘guilty mind’) ascription in criminal law presupposes a concept of mens rea which is insensitive to the moral valence of an action’s outcome. For instance, an assessment of whether an agent harmed another person intentionally should be unaffected by the severity of harm done. Ascriptions of intentionality made by laypeople, however, are subject to a strong outcome bias. As demonstrated by the Knobe effect, a knowingly incurred negative side effect is standardly judged intentional, whereas (...) a positive side effect is not. We report the first empirical investigation into intentionality ascriptions made by professional judges, which finds (i) that professionals are sensitive to the moral valence of outcome type, and (ii) that the worse the outcome, the higher the propensity to ascribe intentionality. The data shows the intentionality ascriptions of professional judges to be inconsistent with the concept of mens rea supposedly at the foundation of criminal law. (shrink)

The doctrine of mens rea has developed only one side of the criminal encounter. It has refined the guilty mind required of the defendant but has never articulated the corresponding requirement in the judge. This paper isolates that omission. Drawing on Sayre’s foundational history (1932), the canonical transplant by Bracton, the Model Penal Code’s four-tier hierarchy, and empirical work by Ginther, Shen, Malle and Nelson, it argues that once the doctrine is followed to its foundation, judgment appears not as a (...) unilateral operation but as a bilateral structure: the defendant brings a guilty mind to be weighed, and the judge must bring a judging mind capable of moral appraisal. The argument is presented as a standalone extract from the author’s larger submission, with original footnotes retained. (shrink)

To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios. We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

Large language models (LLMs) reflect societal norms and biases, especially about gender. While societal biases and stereotypes have been extensively researched in various NLP applications, there is a surprising gap for emotion analysis. However, emotion and gender are closely linked in societal discourse. E.g., women are often thought of as more empathetic, while men's anger is more socially accepted. To fill this gap, we present the first comprehensive study of gendered emotion attribution in five state-of-the-art LLMs (open- and closed-source). We (...) investigate whether emotions are gendered, and whether these variations are based on societal stereotypes. We prompt the models to adopt a gendered persona and attribute emotions to an event like 'When I had a serious argument with a dear person'. We then analyze the emotions generated by the models in relation to the gender-event pairs. We find that all models consistently exhibit gendered emotions, influenced by gender stereotypes. These findings are in line with established research in psychology and gender studies. Our study sheds light on the complex societal interplay between language, gender, and emotion. The reproduction of emotion stereotypes in LLMs allows us to use those models to study the topic in detail, but raises questions about the predictive use of those same LLMs for emotion applications. (shrink)

Scotland's North Sea offshore oil-drilling-fields have long been stereotyped as sites reinforcing and reproducing unique forms of masculinities aligning with hegemonic masculinity (HM) descriptors: stoicism, competition, and conflict. Oilfields encompass near-all-male workplaces, requiring labour in difficult conditions, distancing from friends, family, and home life. Emerging research in oilfields has begun to resist the HM-stereotype in favour of complex understandings of masculinities, labour-and-identity performances. This work details findings from a lengthy ‘embedded’ ethnography of the UK Offshore Oilfield. Specifically, highlighting and discussing (...) men's metaphorical ‘mask wearing’ practices: the process by which oilmen engaged in complex performances of masculinities that resist HM yet retained overt components of stoicism; a key HM-descriptor. This ‘masked’ stoicism was presented and performed in unique ways that bridged genuine and non-genuine performances of oilfield masculine identities and interconnected with resistances against risk-taking and supports for safety. Goffman's dramaturgical perspective is applied to deepen and interrogate findings. Salient implications for oilmen's wellbeing, masculinities theory and future study are put forward. (shrink)

The conditional interpretation of general categorical statements like ‘All men are animals’ as universally quantified material conditionals ‘For all x, if x is F, then x is G’ suggests that the logical structure of law statements is conditional rather than categorical. Disregarding the problem that the universally quantified material conditional is trivially true whenever there are no xs that are F, there are some reasons to be sceptical of Frege’s equivalence between categorical and conditional expressions. Now many philosophers will claim (...) that the material conditional interpretation of laws statements, dispositions ascriptions, or any causal claim is generally accepted as wrong and outdated. Still, there seem to be some basic logical assumptions that are shared by most of the participants in the debate on causal matters which at least stems from the traditional truth functional interpretation of conditionals. This is indicated by the vocabulary in the philosophical debate on causation, where one often speaks of ‘counterfactuals’, ‘possible worlds’ and ‘necessity’ without being explicit on whether or to what extent one accepts the logical-technical definition of these notions. To guarantee a non-Humean and non-extensional approach to causal relations, it is therefore important to be aware of the logical and metaphysical implications of the technical vocabulary. In this paper we want to show why extensional logic cannot deal with causal relations. Via a logical analysis of law-like statements ‘All Fs are Gs’ we hope to throw some new light on interrelated notions like causation, laws, induction, hypotheticality and modality. If successful, our analysis should be of relevance for a deeper understanding of any type of causal relations, whether we understand them to be laws, dispositions, singulars or categoricals. (shrink)

Male genital problems and injuries may occur quite simply because of the scrotum and penis are not protected like other organs. Genital problems and injuries normally happen through: recreational activities (like Football, Hooky, biking, basketball), work- related tasks (like contact to irritating chemicals), downhill drop, and sexual activity. A genital injury frequently causes harsh pain that typically disappear fast without causing enduring harm. Home handling is generally all that is required for trivial problems or injuries. Pain, inflammation, staining, or rashes (...) that are coexist with other symptoms might be a source for concern. Genital problems in men is one of the most common problems which requires fast intervention. In this paper we present an expert system that help men diagnose their genital problems and give them the proper treatment. SL5 Object expert system language was used to design and implement this expert system. (shrink)

Although queer families have become recognised over time, same-sex couples striving to become parents through adoption still represent a small percentage of the overall number of couples approved each year. Pathways to adoption have been shown to differ between heterosexual people, lesbians, and gay men. While many gay male couples report their interactions with social care systems have for the most part been positive, instances surface whereby gay men describe social care actors as lacking in a fundamental understanding of sexual (...) identities. Heteronormativity has exercised a profound influence on scholarly research and social work practice, leading to a privileging of heterosexual couples as adopters. This article explores the experiences of gay men seeking to become adoptive fathers, and through an analysis of the decentering heteronormativity model, it challenges social workers to recognise the role played by heteronormative assumptions concerning queer families. Assumptions that include fears regarding the child’s developing sense of self, and the conviction that a child parented by a gay male couple can anticipate a less optimal outcome. (shrink)

Yo soy más de series 60 series que cambiaron la historia de la televisión.

Male genital problems and injuries may occur quite simply because of the scrotum and penis are not protected like other organs. Genital problems and injuries normally happen through: recreational activities (like Football, Hooky, biking, basketball), workrelated tasks (like contact to irritating chemicals), downhill drop, and sexual activity. A genital injury frequently causes harsh pain that typically disappear fast without causing enduring harm. Home handling is generally all that is required for trivial problems or injuries. Pain, inflammation, staining, or rashes that (...) are coexist with other symptoms might be a source for concern. Genital problems in men is one of the most common problems which requires fast intervention. In this paper we present an expert system that help men diagnose their genital problems and give them the proper treatment. SL5 Object expert system language was used to design and implement this expert system. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue that despite the apparent promise of the recently popular “robust omissions reply” to John Martin Fischer’s well-known robustness objection to flicker of freedom style responses to arguments against the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (PAP) based on Frankfurt-style cases (FSCs), the robustness objection succeeds after all. Though I concede that the robust omissions reply is successful with the most promising extant variety of FSC (modified blockage) in view, I present a new kind of case—“Fischer-type modified blockage”—in (...) which I claim the subject is basically morally responsible for what he’s done despite his lacking access to any robust alternative possibilities, and against which the robust omissions reply is ineffective. Along the way, I take advantage of an opportunity to show that my Fischer-type modified blockage case also serves to effectively undermine an otherwise promising recent defense, from Justin Capes, of David Widerker’s “W-defense” argument for PAP. (shrink)

Accomplice liability makes someone guilty of a crime he never committed, so long as he helped or influenced the perpetrator and did so with the required mens rea. Just what that mens rea should be has been contested for more than a century. Here I consider three major approaches and find them all wanting. I propose rejecting their common (but rarely questioned) assumption that what matters is the helper’s mental state toward the perpetrator’s commission of an offense. I suggest considering (...) instead his stance toward the perpetrator’s intention to act: a helper is an accomplice, on this view, if he (a) intends to see to it that the principal form or keep his own plan to commit an offense and (b) does not intend or expect that plan’s frustration. This standard better justifies imposing accomplice liability. It more precisely picks out those helpers culpable for the perpetrator’s very offense. And this parity of guilt is the best—perhaps the only good—basis for imposing the same liability on accomplice and principal, in a system so retribution-driven as to choose to do so at all. (shrink)

In a recent book, Neil Levy argues that culpable action – action for which we are morally responsible – is necessarily produced by states of which we are consciously aware. However, criminal defendants are routinely held responsible for criminal harm caused by states of which they are not conscious in Levy’s sense. In this chapter I argue that cases of negligent criminal harm indicate that Levy’s claim that moral responsibility requires synchronic conscious awareness of the moral significance of an act (...) is too strict, and that tracing conditions cannot be successfully used to bolster Levy’s account. Instead, current legal practices indicate that criminal responsibility requires the capacity for diachronic agency and self-control, not synchronic conscious control. (shrink)

Andrea Bidoli argues that ectogestation could be seen as an emancipatory intervention for women. Specifically, she claims that ectogestation would create unique conditions to reevaluate one’s reproductive preference, address certain specific negative social implications of gestation and childbirth, and that it is unfair to hold ectogestation to a higher standard than other innovations such as modern contraceptives and non-medical egg freezing. In this commentary, I claim that Bidoli—like so many others—unjustly bypasses men and their reproductive desires. For a long time, (...) the discussion of the ethics of ectogenesis has focused on women and their reproductive liberation. However, since in many countries, an increasing number of men in reproductive age face difficulties in finding a partner and lack access to other forms of assisted reproduction, it is men who need ectogestation the most. (shrink)

This essay is a Neo-Aristotelian critique of Frans de Waal’s evolutionary moral sentimentalism. For a sentimentalist, moral judgments are rooted in reactive attitudes such as empathy, and De Waal argues that higher primates have the capacity for empathy—they can read other agent’s minds and react appropriately. De Waal concludes that the building blocks of human morality—primarily empathy—are present in primate social behavior. I will engage de Waal from within the sentimentalist tradition itself broadly construed and the Aristotelian virtue tradition more (...) specifically. Within an Aristotelian framework, emotion regulation is necessary for moral responsibility. Aristotle understands that emotions are evaluative perceptions with cognitive content, and non-human animals do not possess the cognitive capacities for emotion regulation and are thus not morally responsible. This marks a boundary between primate behavior and human morality. (shrink)

For all their differences, the “pro-choice” and the “pro-life” views of abortion are largely in agreement about one aspect of abortion decisions: where an abortion is morally legitimate, the pregnant woman should be permitted to decide whether or not to have an abortion. But I argue in this paper that if the man who will become the father of the fetus is known, if he believes that he will not be able (or permitted) to simply walk away from his biological (...) offspring, and if he does not think it would be a good idea for him to a) become a parent, b) with this woman, or c) at this time, then the woman should have an abortion. Given the life-altering moral obligations involved in raising a child, a woman should not decide to make her (sexual) partner a father without his full consent. (shrink)

Charlie Croker, a self-made real estate tycoon, ex-Georgia Tech football star, horseback rider, quail-hunter, snakecatcher, and good old boy from Baker county Georgia, is the protagonist in Tom Wolfe’s latest novel, the deliciously provocative A Man in Full (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998).  In this article I examine the evolving conception of manhood in Wolfe’s novel.  Two different models of manliness will be delineated and compared. The first model—represented by Charlie Croker—gradually weakens and is replaced by the (...) second model—represented by Conrad Hensley. My aim is to show how Stoicism serves to critique the first model and articulate the second.  Stoicism, I argue, provides the deliverance of both Hensley and his convert Croker, while at the same time transforming the conception of manliness explored in A Man in Full. (shrink)

The principle of nemo iudex in causa sua is central to John Locke’s social contract theory: the state is justified largely due to the human need for an impartial system of criminal justice. In contemporary Anglo-American legal practice, the value of impartiality in criminal justice is accepted uncritically. At the same time, advocates of restorative justice frequently make reference to a crime victim’s right to have his or her voice heard in the criminal justice process without regard for impartiality as (...) potentially being morally valuable. In this article, I challenge the central place of impartiality in criminal justice on the grounds that it leads to a setup ill-suited to moral psychology. Though restorative justice advocates are not principled in their implicit rejection of impartiality and the nemo iudex principle, their preferred method of criminal justice conduces to crime victims’ being good judges in their own case. (shrink)

In 1983, Andrea Dworkin gave a speech entitled “I Want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce during Which There Is No Rape,” in which she argued that the only way to put an end to the culture of rape in society is for men to take responsibility for it. The view that it is up to men to dismantle the culture of rape—including “friendly” men, who do not actively endorse and perpetuate this culture—might have been considered radical at the time, but the same (...) is no longer true today. Dworkin’s view, or something very close to it, is now garnering widespread attention and credibility. The purpose of this article is to find a philosophical theory of responsibility that can vindicate and elucidate Dworkin’s claims. In order to do so, I develop a view that combines Zheng’s role-ideal model of responsibility with Witt’s conception of gender as a mega social role. I argue that by combining these accounts we find a philosophically satisfying theory of what it means to say, with Dworkin, that men are responsible for the culture of rape. (shrink)

A short play wherein three pregnant (previously) anti-abortion men consider the arguments for and against abortion.

This paper explores the educational purposes served by teaching the film 12 Angry Men. In a critical thinking course, one usually emphasizes the importance of examining one’s own and others’ beliefs for coherence and consistency, typically with the help of elementary logic (e.g. informal fallacies, basic argument patterns). Since 12 Angry Men consists primarily of arguments and fallacies, stated by members of a jury, about the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder, the film affords students an (...) engaging opportunity to identify and to practice basic critical thinking skills. Moreover, the film offers students a vivid illustration of the ethical dimension of critical thinking skills. After a brief synopsis of the film, the author relates various aspects of its characters and plot to critical thinking skills, reviews discussion themes which help students reflect on the film, and summarizes his success in teaching it. (shrink)

The main topic of Rudiger Bittner's book 'Doing Things for Reasons' is action theory. We learn what it is to have reasons for action and how acting in response to reasons should be construed; we learn to what extent these reasons are elements of our mental life (and in particular that they aren't mental at all). Almost at the end of the book, however, in chap. 12, all of a sudden we learn something more. We receive an answer to the (...) very core question of anthropology: who we are, as men and women, and what is so special about us - or rather that there is nothing special about us. It is this last part of the book, easily overlooked, that I want to concentrate on in my contribution. (shrink)

The ongoing development of autonomous weapons systems, and the increasing frequency of their deployment on the battlefield, poses a pressing problem for military ethics. Somephilosophers have argued that the deployment of fully autonomous weapons would be unethical because it would generate responsibility gaps, that is, situations in which no agent, human or artificial, is morally responsible for wrongful harms resulting from that deployment. But do laypeople find it plausible that the use of fully autonomous weapons gives rise to such gaps? (...) This paper reports results from two studies (total N = 497) designed to answer this question. In these studies, participants were presented with a hypothetical war crime scenario in which an officer ordered a lethal autonomous robot to attack a village, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians. Most participants attributed some responsibility for the outcome to the officer commanding the attack, the robot that carried out the attack, and the people who programmed the robot. Results from both studies were consistent with the Path Model of blame, according to which attributions of responsibility are influenced by a variety of contextual factors, such as the extent to which the target is seen as acting intentionally. Attributions of responsibility to agents of war, both artificial and human, thus seem to be at odds with the idea that the use of autonomous weapons would generate responsibility gaps. Philosophers who oppose using autonomous weapons on moral grounds, therefore, may want to avoid argumentative strategies that rely heavily on worries about responsibility gaps. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholarship on emotional labor has proliferated. I identify a related but distinct form of care labor, hermeneutic labor. Hermeneutic labor is the burdensome activity of: understanding and coherently expressing one’s own feelings, desires, intentions, and movitations; discerning those of others; and inventing solutions for relational issues arising from interpersonal tensions. I argue that hermeneutic labor disproportionately falls on women’s shoulders in heteropatriachal societies, especially in intimate relationships between women and men. I also suggest that some of (...) the gendered burdens of emotional labor that feminist scholars point out would better be described as hermeneutic labor. Drawing on feminist philosophy as well as findings from social psychology and sociology, I argue that the exploitation of women’s hermeneutic labor is a pervasive element of what Sandra Bartky calls the ‘micropolitics’ of intimate relationships. The widespread expectation that women are relationship maintenance experts, as well as the prevalence of a gendered demand-withdraw pattern of communication, leads an exploitative situation to appear natural or even desirable, even as it leads to women’s dissatisfaction. This situation may be considered misogynistic in Kate Manne’s sense, where misogyny is a property of social environments rather than a worldview. (shrink)

Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love es el libro escrito por Edward Sri, profesor del Augustine Institute de Denver, Colorado, publicado en el 2015 por la editorial Servant, en el cual toma las enseñanzas de la obra del papa Juan Pablo II titulada Amor y responsabilidad pre-sentándolas como una guía práctica, sin ser un manual seco sobre ética sexual o un tratado abstracto sobre el amor, que ayuda a los lectores a comprender la visión de Juan Pablo II sobre (...) las relaciones entre el hombre y la mujer, y las puedan aplicar en sus propias vidas. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)