Internal Perspectivalism: The Solution to Generality Problems About Proper Function and Natural Norms

In this paper, I argue that what counts as the proper function of a trait is a matter of the de facto perspective that the biological system, itself, possesses on what counts as proper functioning for that trait. Unlike non-perspectival accounts, internal perspectivalism does not succumb to generality problems. But unlike external perspectivalism, internal perspectivalism can provide a fully naturalistic, mind-independent grounding of proper function and natural norms. The attribution of perspectives to biological systems is intended to be neither metaphorical nor anthropomorphic: I do not mean to imply that such systems thereby must possess agency, cognition, intentions, concepts, or mental or psychological states. Instead, such systems provide the grounding for norms of performance when they internally enforce their own standard of (i.e., their own perspective on) what constitutes proper functioning or malfunctioning. By operating with a fixed, determinate level of generality, such systems provide the basis for an account of proper function that is immune to generality problems

Being Emergence vs. Pattern Emergence: Complexity, Control, and Goal-Directedness in Biological Systems

Emergence is much discussed by both philosophers and scientists. But, as noted by Mitchell (2012), there is a significant gulf; philosophers and scientists talk past each other. We contend that this is because philosophers and scientists typically mean different things by emergence, leading us to distinguish being emergence and pattern emergence. While related to distinctions offered by others between, for example, strong/weak emergence or epistemic/ontological emergence (Clayton, 2004, pp. 9–11), we argue that the being vs. pattern distinction better captures what the two groups are addressing. In identifying pattern emergence as the central concern of scientists, however, we do not mean that pattern emergence is of no interest to philosophers. Rather, we argue that philosophers should attend to, and even contribute to, discussions of pattern emergence. But it is important that this discussion be distinguished, not conflated, with discussions of being emergence. In the following section we explicate the notion of being emergence and show how it has been the focus of many philosophical discussions, historical and contemporary. In section 3 we turn to pattern emergence, briefly presenting a few of the ways it figures in the discussions of scientists (and philosophers of science who contribute to these discussions in science). Finally, in sections 4 and 5, we consider the relevance of pattern emergence to several central topics in philosophy of biology: the emergence of complexity, of control, and of goal-directedness in biological systems

Ultra-relativistic spinning particle and a rotating body in external fields

We use the vector model of spinning particle to analyze the influence of spin-field coupling on the particle's trajectory in ultra-relativistic regime. The Lagrangian with minimal spin-gravity interaction yields the equations equivalent to the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Tulczyjew-Dixon (MPTD) equations of a rotating body. We show that they have unsatisfactory behavior in the ultra-relativistic limit. In particular, three-dimensional acceleration of the particle increases with velocity and becomes infinite in the ultra-relativistic limit. The reason is that in the equation for trajectory emerges the term which can be thought as an effective metric generated by the minimal spin-gravity coupling. Therefore we examine the non-minimal interaction through the gravimagnetic moment $\kappa$, and show that the theory with $\kappa=1$ is free of the problems detected in MPTD-equations. Hence the non-minimally interacting theory seem more promising candidate for description of a relativistic rotating body in general relativity. The Lagrangian for the particle in an arbitrary electromagnetic field in Minkowski space leads to generalized Frenkel and Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equations. The particle with magnetic moment in electromagnetic field and the particle with gravimagnetic moment in gravitational field have very similar structure of equations of motion. In particular, the spin-electromagnetic coupling also produces an effective metric for the particle with anomalous magnetic moment. If we use the usual special-relativity notions for time and distance, then the critical speed, which the particle cannot exceed during its evolution in electromagnetic field, is different from the speed of light. This can be corrected assuming that the three-dimensional geometry should be defined with respect to the effective metric.Comment: 34 pages, close to published version. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1509.0492

Mechanistic Causation and Constraints: Perspectival Parts and Powers, Non-Perspectival Modal Patterns

Any successful account of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation must satisfy at least five key desiderata. In this paper, I lay out these five desiderata and explain why existing accounts of the metaphysics of mechanistic causation fail to satisfy them. I then present an alternative account which does satisfy the five desiderata. According to this alternative account, we must resort to a type of ontological entity that is new to metaphysics, but not to science: constraints. In this paper, I explain how a constraints-based metaphysics fits best with the emerging consensus on the nature of mechanistic explanation

The Committee on Climate change: A Policy Analysis

Domestic action on climate change is increasingly important in the light of the difficulties with international agreements and requires a combination of solutions, in terms of institutions and policy instruments. One way of achieving government carbon policy goals may be the creation of an independent body to advise, set or monitor policy. This paper critically assesses the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), which was created in 2008 as an independent body to help move the UK towards a low carbon economy. We look at the motivation for its creation in terms of: information provision, advice, monitoring, or policy delegation. In particular we consider its ability to overcome a time inconsistency problem by comparing and contrasting it with another independent body, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. In practice the Committee on Climate Change appears to be the ‘inverse’ of the Monetary Policy Committee, in that it advises on what the policy goal should be rather than being responsible for achieving it. The CCC incorporates both advisory and monitoring functions to inform government and achieve a credible carbon policy over a long time frame. This is a similar framework to that adopted by Stern (2006), but the CCC operates on a continuing basis. We therefore believe the CCC is best viewed as a “Rolling Stern plus” body. There are also concerns as to how binding the budgets actually are and how the budgets interact with other energy policy goals and instruments, such as Renewable Obligation Contracts and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The CCC could potentially be reformed to include: an explicit information provision role; consumption-based accounting of emissions and control of a policy instrument such as a balanced-budget carbon tax.Climate change, Carbon policy, Independent body, Time Inconsistency

Learning to think-with: feminist epistemology and the practice-based medical humanities

This paper begins at the place of practice, immersed in the messy real-life clinical setting, with the tensions, errors, affects and anxieties that suffuse healthcare and its delivery and might perhaps be epitomised, in their most intense iteration, by the very recent case of Dr Hadiza Bawa-Garba’s conviction for manslaughter and lifetime ban from the medical profession, after the death of Jack Adcock, a 6 year-old boy in her care, in 2011 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-42862237). From a feminist perspective, the vocabulary so notably missing from this ‘watershed’ case in the UK, and the societal and structural issues which underpin it, has to do with difference, with the gendered, classed and raced subjectivities of the clinician, patient and family caught up in this tragic set of events. This omission is replicated in the institutional networks that govern medical training and practice, such as the Royal Colleges and the General Medical Council itself, as these struggle with issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in their curricula, their modes of assessment and their governance of the healthcare professions. Such examples from clinical practice and medical culture may seem a very long way indeed from the conceptual fields of medical humanities. This paper argues they are not. It proposes that alongside the new iterations of the field of medical humanities that are emerging – in particular the critical medical humanities and its concomitant deployment of notions of entanglement – we urgently require a new methodology of the practice-based medical humanities that actively deploy the socio-political and cultural vocabularies and conceptual frameworks necessary to expand the capacities of clinical training and practice. In their recent intervention in the debates about what medical humanities is and can do, Julia Kristeva and Eivind Engebretsen argue that ‘tackling entanglement requires more than the mere application of perspectives from the humanities on medicine and healthcare’. As evidence they offer the case study of Souad, a young teenage Muslim girl suffering from refractory anorexia, who finally responds to a multicultural psychotherapeutic team who focus on ‘her new cultural, symbolic and linguistic attachments’. This successful treatment provides them with a model for the productive imbrication of the cultural and the clinical. Of note in this example is the way difference can be thought and felt in clinical practice. Here it is the ways of knowing derived from the humanities that inform practice. As Neville Chiavaroli has argued: ‘An epistemological perspective enables the argument that the medical humanities are valuable not because they are more ‘humane’, but because they help constitute what it means to think like a doctor’ This paper argues that practice-based medical humanities requires an underpinning by feminist epistemology, by modes of thinking that of necessity involve materiality and embodiment. As Virginia Woolf writes in 1938, women ‘have always done their thinking from hand to mouth’. Woolf inspires specific recent modes of thinking in the work of feminist theorists of science, Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret and Isabelle Stengers. Two concepts are central to this paper – Haraway’s notion of ‘sym-poesis’ (making-with) and Despret & Stenger’s notion of ‘thinking-with’. Embedding these models of thinking and acting in clinical practice, it concludes, offers radical potential for reconceptualising the lived experiences of clinical practice and patient care. To ‘think-with’ and to ‘make-with’ as principles of practice require both the recognition of each participant’s individuality and of their interdependency; further, such principles situate clinician and patient (and indeed patients’ families) as equals, thus allowing for the full complexities of identity – vectors of gender, race/ethnicity, disability, age, sexuality, class – to emerge within the clinical setting

Afterword: the body and the senses

Discussion of 'The Body and the Senses' section in The Edinburgh Companion to the Critical Medical Humanities. Exploration of the body's different articulation in the arts and humanities vs the discourses of biomedicine. Consideration of these differences in relation to clinical practice