{"title":"From Metaphysics to Methods?: Pluralism in Cancer Research","authors":"Katherine Valde","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00601-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00601-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>There is a growing recognition among many scientists and philosophers that metaphysical presuppositions guide scientific research. These ontological claims, in turn, prescribe a particular methodology for how to go about investigating and explaining those kinds of things. There is thus what I call a move from metaphysics to methods. Using cancer research as a case study, I defend the existence of this move, and I argue for an “agnostic” attitude towards the metaphysical presuppositions guiding cancer research. I defend this agnosticism on two grounds: first, the underdetermination of metaphysical frameworks by empirical research, and second, on the ground of inductive risk, namely that when it comes to cancer research, there are more than just epistemic consequences for making the wrong metaphysical choice. I conclude that one should instead allow for a pluralism of metaphysical frameworks to guide cancer research.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 2","pages":"343 - 361"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141820631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards a Realist Shifty Semantic Account of Moral Vagueness","authors":"Z. Huey Wen","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00603-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00603-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>A widely shared intuition says moral statements like “Aborting at 150 days is permissible” seem vague. But what is the nature of such vagueness? This article proposes a novel, shifty semantic account of moral vagueness which argues: Moral vagueness is essentially a semantic phenomenon existing in our imperfect (moral) language; the referents of vague moral terms may shift under the right circumstance; our usage of vague moral terms may contribute to such shifts, but so may some factors beyond our control. After the account is fleshed out, some distinctions will be drawn to differentiate it from other accounts of moral vagueness, and more importantly, efforts will be made to reconcile this account and moral realism. In conclusion, my account is by far the first (minimal) moral realism-friendly shifty semantic account of moral vagueness that successfully explains our intuitions about vague moral statements.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 2","pages":"229 - 249"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141821463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moral Responsibility in a Vat","authors":"Miloš Kosterec","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00602-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00602-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper investigates an ingenious argument by Andrew Khoury which, if valid, could shed new light on some of the most relevant discussions within the field of moral philosophy. The argument is based on the idea that if we deny the phenomenon of resultant moral luck, then the proper objects of moral responsibility must be internal willings. I analyse the argument and find it unsound. The argument does not adequately account for the positions of all relevant moral actors when it comes to the moral evaluation of agents and their actions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 2","pages":"251 - 258"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00602-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141829064","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Many Bombers of the Principle of Double Effect: An Analysis of Strategic/Terror Bomber Thought Experiment Variants","authors":"Ignacy Kłaput","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00600-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00600-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The strategic/terror bomber thought experiment is often employed in the contemporary debate on the principle of double effect (PDE). It is taken to show the intuitive appeal of PDE. In this paper, it is argued, however, that the thought experiment is used in a confused way. What is taken to be one thought experiments in fact is a series of subtly differing examples. Those differences, although subtle, bear on the applicability of these examples in the argumentation for PDE. The main objectives of this paper are to provide a precise description and analysis of the variants of strategic/terror bomber thought experiments. The analysis shows that some variants are flawed mainly because of underdetermination of the cases by their descriptions and problems with rationality of the presented agents. This result seems to cast some new doubts on employment of the strategic/terror bomber thought experiment as an argumentative device supporting PDE.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 2","pages":"279 - 296"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00600-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141651367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Having a Disposition and Making a Contribution","authors":"Marc Johansen","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00599-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00599-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Dispositional accounts of various phenomena have claimed that dispositions can be intrinsically masked. In cases of intrinsic masking, something has a disposition while also having an intrinsic property that would prevent that disposition from manifesting in the face of its stimulus. This paper develops a theory of disposition ascriptions capable of recognizing such dispositions. The theory is modeled on the view that dispositions are powers. I propose that having a disposition is a matter of exerting a corresponding kind of influence. Unlike powers theories, however, the account largely falls silent on questions of fundamental metaphysics. It does not build dispositions into fundamental ontology, posit necessary connections between properties, or otherwise appeal to sui generis modality.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 1","pages":"173 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00599-y.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141682512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Epistemic Bystander","authors":"Lukas Schwengerer","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00598-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00598-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Epistemic bystanding occurs when an agent has all the competences, knowledge and opportunity to prevent another person from forming a false or risky belief, but does not prevent the belief formation. I provide a definition of an epistemic bystander and explain the mechanism that makes someone an epistemic bystander. I argue that the phenomenon is genuinely epistemic and not merely linguistic. Moreover, I propose an account of the mechanism of epistemic bystanding building on Ishani Maitra’s notion of licensing. An epistemic bystander licenses a risky belief-forming process in another person and thereby performs a blameworthy epistemic action. This form of licensing explains the distinctive wrong of being an epistemic bystander.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 1","pages":"77 - 94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00598-z.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143109586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Truth-Ratios, Evidential Fit, and Deferring to Informants with Low Error Probabilities","authors":"Michael Roche, William Roche","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00597-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00597-0","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Suppose that an informant (test, expert, device, perceptual system, etc.) is unlikely to err when pronouncing on a particular subject matter. When this is so, it might be tempting to defer to that informant when forming beliefs about that subject matter. How is such an inferential process expected to fare in terms of <i>truth</i> (leading to true beliefs) and <i>evidential fit</i> (leading to beliefs that fit one’s total evidence)? Using a medical diagnostic test as an example, we set out a formal framework to investigate this question. We establish seven results and make one conjecture. The first four results show that when the test’s error probabilities are low, the process of deferring to the test can score well in terms of (i) both truth and evidential fit, (ii) truth but not evidential fit, (iii) evidential fit but not truth, or (iv) neither truth nor evidential fit. Anything is possible. The remaining results and conjecture generalize these results in certain ways. These results are interesting in themselves—especially given that the diagnostic test is not sensitive to the target disease’s base rate—but also have broader implications for the more general process of deferring to an informant. Additionally, our framework and diagnostic example can be used to create test cases for various reliabilist theories of inferential justification. We show, for example, that they can be used to motivate evidentialist process reliabilism over process reliabilism.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 1","pages":"1 - 19"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00597-0.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143109126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Antipathy as an Emotion","authors":"Bertille De Vlieger","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00596-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00596-1","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Antipathy is an affective phenomenon which has not received much attention by philosophers and psychologists, unlike its antonym, sympathy. However, antipathy is a phenomenon that contributes to and fuels many of the challenges related to our social behaviours and interpersonal relationships. Antipathy’s exact nature needs to be identified, if only because of the importance it has, for example, in political opposition, in loss of civility, but also in situations that cause poor psychological well-being. It would be then essential to be able to determine whether antipathy is a phenomenon that could be felt on a short term (an episode) or last in the long term (a disposition), since it would allow to study and measure more precisely the nature of the acts it gives rise to, the range of its intensity or/and its social consequences. Like sympathy, antipathy is most often understood as an affective phenomenon that lasts over time. Antipathy is often presented as an instinctive and irrational aversion to something or someone. Yet this common definition is too similar to the definition of other affective phenomena such as disgust or even fear. This article will therefore examine the nature of antipathy by differentiating it from other emotional phenomena that resemble it. But more importantly, the limited existing literature on antipathy mostly characterises it as an affective disposition. In this paper, I will rather argue that antipathy is a conscious emotion, i.e., an emotion that occurs consciously and has a phenomenology.</p>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 1","pages":"133 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141370078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Knowing What One Likes: Epistemicist Solution to Faultless Disagreement","authors":"Maciej Tarnowski","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00593-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00593-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, I argue that the phenomenon of faultless disagreement for predicates of taste may be fruitfully explained by appealing to the vagueness of predicates of taste and the epistemicist reading of vagueness as defended by Timothy Williamson (1994). I begin by arguing that this position is better suited to explain both the “faultless” and “disagreement” intuition. The first is explained here by appealing to the necessary ignorance of the predicate’s boundaries and a plausible account of constitutive norms of taste assertions, while the second by insisting on classical, absolutist semantics for judgments containing predicates of taste. Furthermore, I analyze the arguments against the reading of taste predicates as vague based on the alleged epistemic privilege concerning one’s taste and on the lack of definite cases. Responding to these objections, I develop a plausible account of constitutive norms of taste assertions, comment on the assumed epistemic privilege concerning taste ascriptions and provide a more detailed account of sources of the vagueness of predicates of personal taste, which I dub “super-vagueness.”</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"40 1","pages":"57 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-05-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00593-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140997644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"False Authorities","authors":"Christoph Jäger","doi":"10.1007/s12136-024-00594-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s12136-024-00594-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>An epistemic agent <i>A</i> is a false epistemic authority for others if they falsely believe <i>A</i> to be in a position to help them accomplish their epistemic ends. A major divide exists between what I call <i>epistemic quacks</i>, who falsely believe themselves to be relevantly competent, and <i>epistemic charlatans,</i> i.e., false authorities who believe or even know that they are incompetent. Neither type of false authority covers what Lackey (2021) calls <i>predatory experts</i>: experts who systematically misuse their social-epistemic status as a cover for predatory behavior. Qua experts, predatory experts are competent and thus <i>could</i> (and maybe sometimes do) help their clients. But should we count them as genuine epistemic authorities? No. I argue that they are false epistemic authorities because in addition to their practical and moral misconduct, such experts systematically deceive their clients, thereby thwarting the clients’ epistemic ends.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":44390,"journal":{"name":"Acta Analytica-International Periodical for Philosophy in the Analytical Tradition","volume":"39 4","pages":"643 - 661"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12136-024-00594-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140688388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}