What Acquaintance Teaches

In her black and white room, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to see red. Only after undergoing an experience as of something red and hence acquainting herself with red can Mary learn what it is like. But learning what it is like to see red requires more than simply becoming acquainted with it. To be acquainted with something is to know it, but such knowledge, as we argue, is object-knowledge rather than propositional-knowledge. To know what it is like one must know an appropriate propositional answer to the question ‘what is it like?’. Despite this mismatch between object-knowledge and knowing an answer, we believe that acquaintance is crucial to Mary’s epistemic progress. When Mary leaves her black and white room, her new knowledge tempts one to think that she must come to know a candidate answer (a coarse-grained fact) that she didn’t know in her room. Since Mary already knows all the physical facts in her room, any additional facts she might learn appear to threaten physicalism. In reply, many physicalists have been attracted to the phenomenal concept strategy according to which Mary can come to have new knowledge and hence know a new answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ by entertaining a coarse-grained fact under a concept she didn’t possess in her room – Mary learns a new fine-grained fact. We believe both of these accounts of Mary’s epistemic progress are mistaken. As we argue, Mary could know every fact (coarse-grained and fine-grained) that might serve as an answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’ and still not know what it is like. The physical world leaves no leftover coarse-grained facts for Mary to learn and because concepts are sharable, easy to possess, and easy to introduce, there are possible situations in which Mary, while in her black and white room, has every concept that might make a fine-grained difference. In short, even when Mary is granted a great deal of factual knowledge and vast conceptual resources, she may still not know an appropriate answer to the question ‘what is it like to see red?’. But in any such situation, Mary lacks acquaintance with red and on this basis we argue that in order to know what it is like, in order for Mary to know an appropriate answer, Mary’s propositional knowledge must be appropriately related to her acquaintance with red

Are insects sentient?

I comment on the methodology used by Klein & Barron for dealing with the question of insect sentience and I briefly make a proposal of my own. Once it is granted that insects are sentient, a further question arises: which insects are subject to which states of sentience? Do insects feel pain, for example? If so, which ones? On the further question, I note, Klein & Barron have nothing to say

Ribbon homology cobordisms

We study 4-dimensional homology cobordisms without 3-handles, showing that they interact nicely with Thurston geometries, character varieties, and instanton and Heegaard Floer homologies. Using these, we derive obstructions to such cobordisms, with topological applications.Comment: 50 pages, 6 figures. Major reorganization of sections for improved exposition. Result on Dehn surgery extended from Seifert fibered homology spheres to rational homology sphere

Whose land is it anyway? Contesting urban fringe nature-based tourism and recreation in Western Australia

Urban fringe natural areas on public land are important resources for tourism and recreation use. However these contested areas are also in demand for a range of other land uses. How the land is managed can strongly influence opportunities for nature based tourism and recreation, and the benefits that these bring to participants and host communities. This paper examines the case of tourism and recreation access to the forested urban fringe of Perth, Western Australia (WA) using a typology of land occupancy and management priorities originally devised for private land use. A review of legislation and policy relating to tourism and recreation access to land in WA was conducted. Tourism and recreation groups and land managers associated with access to the Perth urban fringe natural areas were interviewed regarding their perceptions of land access management. Most land in the WA study area is publically owned and is therefore technically accessible to the public. In regions dominated by multiple private land owners such as Europe and the UK, varying approaches to land use management may be classified according to a predictable land occupancy typology that tends to be consistently applied. By contrast, the single public land holder in this area of WA, the State Government, lacks consistency in its approach to recreational and tourist access to land. This creates both public and governmental uncertainty and confusion regarding where and how land may be accessed on the Perth urban fringe

The right to roam: a review of policy and management of public access to land

This report presents an international review of policy and management regarding public recreational access to land of varying tenure. This is an increasingly important issue in Australia with a growing population and the associated pressure on natural resources to provide a range of services and needs. Reviewing policy and management in regions where recreation access rights have been established across tenures will inform a strategic research direction for managing public recreational access to land in WA. The report is based on a desktop exercise and collaboration with WA Government representatives to source information relating to recreational access to land legislation in the UK, New Zealand and Western Australia. Information was sourced from published material, official websites and personal communications. The objectives were to: review the various elements that form the current legislative context for recreational access in UK and New Zealand; identify the various elements that form the current context in WA for outdoor recreational access; and develop a summary of implications resulting from comparisons of the WA, UK and NZ contexts

Medical decision making using knowledge of patient identification as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander: what do medical students think?

Objective Best-practices guidelines require Australian health practitioners to ask all patients “are you [is the person] of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin?”. The present study investigated medical student attitudes regarding medical decisions made after asking this standard status question. Methods A hypothetical interaction between a doctor and an Aboriginal patient was presented in a pen-and-paper questionnaire in which: (1) the doctor considered (or did not consider) the patient’s Indigenous status relevant to make a medical diagnosis, and (2) the doctor registered (or did not register) the patient for the Closing the Gap PBS co-payment. Participants were first- and second-year medical students at the Australian National University who evaluated the doctor’s decisions against 20 attributes characterising professionalism and prejudice. Results Students evaluated the doctor more favourably when the doctor registered the patient for the co-payment and when the doctor did not consider Indigenous status relevant to making a medical diagnosis. Conclusions Encouragingly, medical students recognise that withholding registration for the co-payment is unprofessional. At the same time, medical students clearly do not think medical diagnoses should be made using the knowledge a patient identifies as Aboriginal. Implications With the continual development of policy and guidelines (and the prospect of diagnostic guidelines) to improve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, students and practitioners must understand how to use this knowledge of a patient’s status to benefit health outcomes