Good Reason Research Articles

Making Law Possible

Making Law Possible

Dynamic properties of the pinyon pine syngameon.

This article is a Commentary on Buck et al. (2023), 237: 2435–2449.

Loose talk, the context of assessment, and skeptical invariantism

ABSTRACT Russell ([2022]. “Fancy Loose Talk About Knowledge.” Inquiry 65: 789–820.) defends a novel form of skeptical invariantism, according to which knowledge ascriptions are hardly ever true because they are so demanding, but nonetheless are ordinarily used loosely to communicate truths, where the felicity of loose talk is relative to the context of assessment as well as the context of use. I argue that while there is very good reason to believe that ‘know’ is a demanding term commonly used loosely, we need not and should not conclude that loose use is assessment relative or that knowledge ascriptions are hardly ever true.

Tough times never last too long: the future of psychopharmacology.

Tough times never last too long: the future of psychopharmacology.

Nothingness, Oneness, and Infinity: Transcendent Experience as a Promising Frontier for Religion and Health Research.

This paper advocates for a renewed focus intothe experiential domain of religious and spiritual expression in research on physical and mental health. Most studies, up to now, have investigated risk or protection associated with behavioral measures of religiousness, whether public behaviors such as religious attendance or private behaviors such as personal prayer. Religious attitudes, beliefs, and identity have been studied, as well, as have religious self-rating scales of various types, but, relatively less emphasized have been subjective experiences, such as feelings of transcendence or unitive connection with the divine. There is good reason to believe that such experiences may impact on well-being, based both on previous studies and on theory and clinical observation. This paper suggests that although researching the domain of such seemingly ineffable experiences may present certain conceptual and methodological challenges, these would be worth facing in order to gain deeper insight into the human spiritual dimension and into connections among body, mind, and spirit.

Are There Really Social Causes?

This article investigates the causal efficacy of social properties, which faces the following puzzle. First, for both intuitive and scientific reasons, it seems social properties have causal import. But, second, social properties are also characteristically extrinsic: to have some social property depends, in typical cases, on what one’s society is like around them. And, third, there is good reason to doubt that extrinsic properties make a genuine causal contribution. After elaborating on these three claims, I defend the following resolution to the puzzle: social causation occurs at the level at which social properties are intrinsic.

A modified Kripkean theory of negative existentials

Abstract In a 2019 paper, Hausmann raised a new and interesting problem for Kripke’s account of negative existentials. He argued that Kripke’s account leads to the absurd consequence that anybody who has good reasons to believe that there are no propositions also has good reasons to believe that he or she does not exist. In this paper I propose a modified Kripkean theory, which is invulnerable to a Hausmann-like argument. As will be seen, the modified theory can be squarely justified in light of the key observations behind Kripke’s original proposal.

The Hypostasis of the Archons: Platonic Forms as Angels

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic.

Divine Command Theory, Robust Normative Realism, and the Argument from Psychopathy: A Reply to Erik Wielenberg

Erik Wielenberg has offered a fascinating argument from moral psychology against a sophisticated theistic account of moral obligations: Divine Command Theory (DCT). This argument focuses on the pathology known as psychopathy—a perennial interest for those concerned with abnormal and moral psychology. The argument can be labeled the argument from psychopathy for convenience. The strength of the argument is that it forces the DCT-ist to maintain that there are some human beings who have no moral obligations yet still do evil actions. This, he argues, is an implausible thesis. Therefore, DCT is false. In this paper, I defend DCT and argue that there is good reason to be neutral or skeptical that psychopaths have moral obligations and, to the degree that they do, they are able to grasp morality in a way consistent with DCT. Furthermore, if the argument does present a serious problem for DCT, then it does so for Wielenberg’s own view, Robust Normative Realism (RNR), just as much as DCT.

“Hark! I Hear the Cannons Roar”: Twenty years in the life of a “new tune”

In 1683 the Ottoman Turks were defeated at Vienna in what was to be a last serious bid to extend their empire further west, crushing the Habsburg dynasty as they did so. They had had good reason to believe the venture viable, as there existed no stable unity among the western powers. But for once the Holy League, a pan-European force comprising representatives from a variety of kingdoms, dukedoms and disinherited adventurers, cohered when it needed to do so and the several-century-long Ottoman threat essentially came to an end, or at least the beginning of the end. In the same year a street ballad appeared on the streets of London relating the defeat of the Turks at Vienna. A Carrouse to the Emperor, the Royal Pole, and the Much-Wrong’d Duke of Lorrain2 is a whimsical piece penned by the irrepressible Thomas D’Urfey that suggests that had the Islam religion permitted the Turkish soldiers to imbibe something stronger than coffee then the Ottoman host would have pressed on further, at least as far as the Rhine.

Artificial moral experts: asking for ethical advice to artificial intelligent assistants

In most domains of human life, we are willing to accept that there are experts with greater knowledge and competencies that distinguish them from non-experts or laypeople. Despite this fact, the very recognition of expertise curiously becomes more controversial in the case of “moral experts”. Do moral experts exist? And, if they indeed do, are there ethical reasons for us to follow their advice? Likewise, can emerging technological developments broaden our very concept of moral expertise? In this article, we begin by arguing that the objections that have tried to deny the existence (and convenience) of moral expertise are unsatisfactory. After that, we show that people have ethical reasons to ask for a piece of moral advice in daily life situations. Then, we argue that some Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems can play an increasing role in human morality by becoming moral experts. Some AI-based moral assistants can qualify as artificial moral experts and we would have good ethical reasons to use them.

Going broad and deep: sequencing-driven insights into plant physiology, evolution, and crop domestication.

Deep sequencing is a term that has become embedded in the plant genomic literature in recent years and with good reason. A torrent of (largely) high-quality genomic and transcriptomic data has been collected and most of this has been publicly released. Indeed, almost 1000 plant genomes have been reported (www.plabipd.de) and the 2000 Plant Transcriptomes Project has long been completed. The EarthBioGenome project will dwarf even these milestones. That said, massive progress in understanding plant physiology, evolution, and crop domestication has been made by sequencing broadly (across a species) as well as deeply (within a single individual). We will outline the current state of the art in genome and transcriptome sequencing before we briefly review the most visible of these broad approaches, namely genome-wide association and transcriptome-wide association studies, as well as the compilation of pangenomes. This will include both (i) the most commonly used methods reliant on single nucleotide polymorphisms and short InDels and (ii) more recent examples which consider structural variants. We will subsequently present case studies exemplifying how their application has brought insight into either plant physiology or evolution and crop domestication. Finally, we will provide conclusions and an outlook as to the perspective for the extension of such approaches to different species, tissues, and biological processes.

How incumbent politicians respond to the enactment of a programmatic policy: evidence from snow subsidies

AbstractMore than 50 studies have examined the programmatic incumbent support hypothesis, which posits that once enacted, programmatic policies increase electoral support for the incumbent. Despite the careful attention to causal inference in this work, empirical findings have been strikingly inconsistent. We make the case that these inconsistent results are likely explained by incumbents' strategic responses to the enactment of a programmatic policy. Specifically, incumbents have good reasons to distribute different amounts of non-programmatic goods to voters who do and do not receive a programmatic policy. To examine this conjecture, we turn to the case of Japan, where municipalities receive allocations of non-programmatic goods and vary in their eligibility for a programmatic policy (a snow subsidy) according to plausibly exogenous factors. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design, we find that municipalities receiving the programmatic policy receive systematicallymorenon-programmatic goods than municipalities that do not.

Some further reflections on the effect of employment on attendance

I offer some further reflections on the relationship between student employment and classroom engagement, in response to Hanretty’s discussion of my original article on the topic. First, I note that the data we’d ideally need to study this relationship properly doesn’t exist. Second, I suggest that Hanretty and I are pursuing subtly differing goals – he seeks the best estimate of a statistical relationship, while I am trying to make practical policy recommendations at the level of an academic department. Third, I gently push back against Hanretty’s injunction against the use of a post-treatment variable in my original paper, noting that there are good theoretical reasons for thinking my original argument – that not all hours of employment affect attendance equally – should work. Finally, I conclude that while it is true that students who work more hours are less likely to engage well with their studies, this relationship is conditional in part on factors that academic departments might realistically be able to influence.

High altitude, enhancement, and the ‘spirit of sport’

ABSTRACT The World Anti-Doping Code (2021) includes a substance on the prohibited list if it meets at least two of the following: (1) it has the potential to enhance or enhances sport performance; (2) it represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete; (3) it violates the spirit of sport. This paper uses a case study to illustrate points of tension between this code and enhancements that are appropriate to ban; we argue that there are banned drugs (e.g., acetazolamide and dexamethasone) the use of which we have good reason to not only permit but encourage for high-altitude sports. Drawing on lessons from this case study, we propose a reformulation of the Code that requires (1–3) be met but offers preferable ways of unpacking conditions (1) and (3) – and in a way that better preserves how the spirit of sport condition should be indexed to particular sports. Our formulation is inclusive enough to rule in drugs like acetazolamide and dexamethasone as permissible in high-altitude sports while at the same time ruling out problem cases – including many drugs already on the prohibited list. The result is an attempted alignment between the conditions specified and those drugs that should be banned.

Good Reasons Why the Local Option Land Tax (LOL Tax) Could be a Bad Idea

Good Reasons Why the Local Option Land Tax (LOL Tax) Could be a Bad Idea

Analysis on the three methods of economic analysis with specific examples

Cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness, and cost-utility analyses are part of a group of methods that measure the efficiency of interventions and achieving desired outcomes. These types analyses can help organizations analyze the value of an intervention or program relative to its cost. Cost-effectiveness analysis can also be used to evaluate the expenditure of management. Developing countries often worry, with good reason, that regulation of the environment and public health could drag down economic development or exacerbate poverty. Cost-benefit analysis can show that well-designed regulations produce net economic benefits, allinging concerns that environmental and health protections are a drag on economic development. The effective consumption of a given product. Under certain production conditions is certain, is relatively fixed; For the acquisition of a certain product of ineffective consumption, is relative change, is universal. The latter is the object of control, to control this consumption through a series of measures to reduce it to the lowest point.

Good and Bad Reasons for Licensed, Unlicensed, Shared, and Satellite Spectrum

Good and Bad Reasons for Licensed, Unlicensed, Shared, and Satellite Spectrum

М. Уокер. Ветвление — это не баг, а фича: тождество личности и юридическая (моральная) ответственность / пер.с англ. В. А. Пилипенко

Prospective developments in computer and nanotechnology suggest that there is some possibility – perhaps as early as this century — that we will have the technological means to attempt to duplicate people. For example, it has been speculated that the psychology of individuals might be emulated on a computer platform to create a personality duplicate — an ‘upload’. Physical duplicates might be created by advanced nanobots tasked with creating molecule-for-molecule copies of individuals. Such possibilities are discussed in the philosophical literature as (putative) cases of ‘fission’: one person ‘splitting’ into two. Many philosophers, perhaps most, reject the idea of fission, appealing to some form of a ‘no-branching’ condition to rule out such possibilities. I argue, to the contrary, that there are good moral reasons to think that any account of personal identity that does not permit fission is deeply problematic, especially in connection with theorizing about criminal punishment. I discuss and reject David Lewis’ famous account of personal identity that invokes ‘multiple occupancy’ to allow for branching. In contrast, I offer an account of personal identity that permits branching using the type/token distinction to help with such puzzling cases.

DisAVR: Disentangled Adaptive Visual Reasoning Network for Diagram Question Answering.

Diagram Question Answering (DQA) aims to correctly answer questions about given diagrams, which demands an interplay of good diagram understanding and effective reasoning. However, the same appearance of objects in diagrams can express different semantics. This kind of visual semantic ambiguity problem makes it challenging to represent diagrams sufficiently for better understanding. Moreover, since there are questions about diagrams from different perspectives, it is also crucial to perform flexible and adaptive reasoning on content-rich diagrams. In this paper, we propose a Disentangled Adaptive Visual Reasoning Network for DQA, named DisAVR, to jointly optimize the dual-process of representation and reasoning. DisAVR mainly comprises three modules: improved region feature learning, question parsing, and disentangled adaptive reasoning. Specifically, the improved region feature learning module is designed to first learn robust diagram representation by integrating detail-aware patch features and semantically-explicit text features with region features. Subsequently, the question parsing module decomposes the question into three types of question guidance including region, spatial relation and semantic relation guidance to dynamically guide subsequent reasoning. Next, the disentangled adaptive reasoning module decomposes the whole reasoning process by employing three visual reasoning cells to construct a soft fully-connected multi-layer stacked routing space. These three cells in each layer reason over object regions, semantic and spatial relations in the diagram under the corresponding question guidance. Moreover, an adaptive routing mechanism is designed to flexibly explore more optimal reasoning paths for specific diagram-question pairs. Extensive experiments on three DQA datasets demonstrate the superiority of our DisAVR.