Two experiments examine the effects of unreportable hints on anagram solving performance and on solvers' subjective experience of insight. In Experiment 1, after seeing a hint presented too briefly to identify, participants solved anagrams preceded by the solution fastest and solved anagrams preceded by unrelated hints slowest. Participants' “warmth” ratings for solution hints were more insight-like than those for unrelated hints. In Experiment 2 a hint, or no hint, was presented at one of three different exposure durations. Participants benefited from (...) solution-relevant hints that were either unreportable or reportable, but showed a cost only for unrelated hints that were reportable. Participants' ratings of their insight experiences showed that unreportable solution and semantically related hints produced more insight-like experiences than did unrelated hints. The results suggest that unreportable processing of solution-related information is important for the insight experience. (shrink)

The goal of synthetic biology is to create artificial organisms. To achieve this it is essential to understand what life is. Metabolism-replacement systems, or (M, R)-systems, constitute a theory of life developed by Robert Rosen, characterized in the statement that organisms are closed to efficient causation, which means that they must themselves produce all the catalysts they need. This theory overlaps in part with other current theories, including autopoiesis, the chemoton, and autocatalytic sets, all of them invoking some idea of (...) closure. A simple model of an (M, R)-system has been implemented in the computer, and behaves in ways that may shed light on the requirements for a prebiotic self-organizing system. In addition to a trivial steady state in which nothing happens, it can establish a non-trivial steady state in which all intermediates have finite concentrations, with their rates of degradation balanced by their rates of synthesis. The system can be regenerated from the set of food components plus a single intermediate, and maintain itself in that state indefinitely, despite continuous degradation. At the very low compartment volumes that may have existed in prebiotic conditions, for example in cavities in minerals, or in micelles formed by simple amphiphiles, statistical fluctuations in the numbers of molecules need to be taken into account. With the stochastic approach there is no non-trivial steady state in strict mathematical terms, because the system will always collapse to the trivial state after sufficient time. However, the average time before collapse is so long for volumes greater than $10^{-19}\;{\textsc{l}}$ (much smaller than the volume of the order of $10^{-15}\;{\textsc{l}}$ for a typical bacterial cell) that for practical purposes the self-maintaining state of non-null concentrations becomes significant, recalling the situation of bistability that is observed in deterministic analysis. In turn, there exists a minimum size below which the self-organizing system cannot maintain itself on chemically relevant time scales. The value of the critical volume depends on the particular concentrations and rate constants assumed, but the principle could apply generally. (shrink)

Metabolic systems are complicated and contain very large numbers of interacting reactions and many internal regulatory mechanisms. This does not prevent the genetic composition of an organism from influencing its behavior, however, nor does it preclude the possibility that some aspects of its behavior may be amenable to simple explanations.

Ross P. Cameron argues that the flow of time is a genuine feature of reality. He suggests that the best version of the A-Theory is a version of the Moving Spotlight view, according to which past and future beings are real, but there is nonetheless an objectively privileged present. Cameron argues that the Moving Spotlight theory should be viewed as having more in common with Presentism than with the B-Theory. Furthermore, it provides the best account of truthmakers for claims (...) about what was or will be the case. Cameron goes on to defend an account of the open future, and argues that this is a better account than that available to the Growing Block theory. (shrink)

An incisive analysis of Deleuze's philosophy of eventsSean Bowden shows how the Deleuzian event should be understood in terms of the broader metaphysical thesis that substances are ontologically secondary with respect to events. He achieves this through a reconstruction of Deleuze's relation to the history of thought from the Stoics through to Simondon, taking account of Leibniz, Lautman, structuralism and psychoanalysis along the way.This exciting new reading of Deleuze focuses firmly on his approach to events. Bowden also examines (...) and clarifies a number of Deleuze's most difficult philosophical concepts, including sense, problematic Ideas and intensive individuation, and engages with material by Lautman and Simondon that has not yet been translated into English. (shrink)

Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 (...) pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means. (shrink)

I address an intuition commonly endorsed by metaphysicians, that there must be a fundamental layer of reality, i.e., that chains of ontological dependence must terminate: there cannot be turtles all the way down. I discuss applications of this intuition with reference to Bradley’s regress, composition, realism about the mental and the cosmological argument. I discuss some arguments for the intui- tion, but argue that they are unconvincing. I conclude by making some suggestions for how the intuition should be argued for, (...) and discussing the ramifications of giving the justification I think best. (shrink)

What are the ontological commitments of a sentence? In this paper I offer an answer from the perspective of the truthmaker theorist that contrasts with the familiar Quinean criterion. I detail some of the benefits of thinking of things this way: they include making the composition debate tractable without appealing to a neo-Carnapian metaontology, making sense of neo-Fregeanism, and dispensing with some otherwise recalcitrant necessary connections.

The connection between whole and part is intimate: not only can we share the same space, but I’m incapable of leaving my parts behind; settle the nonmereological facts and you thereby settle what is a part of what; wholes don’t seem to be an additional ontological commitment over their parts. Composition as identity promises to explain this intimacy. But it threatens to make the connection too intimate, for surely the parts could have made a different whole and the whole have (...) had different parts. In this paper I attempt to offer an account of parthood that is intimate enough but not too intimate: the parts generate the whole, but they are not themselves the whole. (shrink)

Throughout the twentieth century, the classical logic of Frege and Russell dominated the field of formal logic. But, as Ross Brady argues, a new type of weak relevant logic may prove to be better equipped to present new solutions to persistent paradoxes. _Universal Logic _begins with an overview of classical and relevant logic and discusses the limitations of both in analyzing certain paradoxes. It is the first text to demonstrate how the main set-theoretic and semantic paradoxes can be solved (...) in a systematic way and as such will be of great interest to both scholars and students of logic. (shrink)

There is widespread disagreement as to what the facts are concerning just when a collection of objects composes some further object; but there is widespread agreement that, whatever those facts are, they are necessary. I am unhappy to simply assume this, and in this paper I ask whether there is reason to think that the facts concerning composition hold necessarily. I consider various reasons to think so, but find fault with each of them. I examine the theory of composition as (...) identity, but argue that the version of this doctrine that entails universalism is implausible. I consider the claim that the a priority of such facts leads to their necessity, but give a defence of substantial contingent a priori truths. I ask whether the contingency of such facts would lead to unwelcome possibilities, but argue that the worrying looking possibilities can be blocked if it is desired. Next, I argue against the thought that the Lewis-Sider argument against restricted composition might give us reason to accept the necessity of universalism. Lastly, I respond to two objections from the 2006 BSPC. I conclude in favour of the contingency of the facts concerning when some things compose some thing. (shrink)

Governments and citizens of nearly every nation have been compelled to respond to COVID-19. Many measures have been adopted, including contact tracing and risk assessment algorithms, whereby citizen whereabouts are monitored to trace contact with other infectious individuals in order to generate a risk status via algorithmic evaluation. Based on 38 in-depth interviews, we investigate how people make sense of Health Code, the Chinese contact tracing and risk assessment algorithmic sociotechnical assemblage. We probe how people accept or resist Health Code (...) by examining their ongoing, dynamic, and relational interactions with it. Participants display a rich variety of attitudes toward privacy and surveillance, ranging from fatalism to the possibility of privacy to trade-offs for surveillance in exchange for public health, which is mediated by the perceived effectiveness of Health Code and changing views on the intentions of institutions who deploy it. We show how perceived competency varies not just on how well the technology works, but on the social and cultural enforcement of various non-technical aspects like quarantine, citizen data inputs, and cell reception. Furthermore, we illustrate how perceptions of Health Code are nested in people’s broader interpretations of disease control at the national and global level, and unexpectedly strengthen the Chinese authority’s legitimacy. None of the Chinese public, Health Code, or people’s perceptions toward Health Code are predetermined, fixed, or categorically consistent, but are co-constitutive and dynamic over time. We conclude with a theorization of a relational perception and methodological reflections to study algorithmic sociotechnical assemblages beyond COVID-19. (shrink)

This article explores how employers can be part of the solution to obesity by offering workplace wellness programs and facilitating opportunities for physical activity, access to healthier foods and beverages, and incentives for disease management and prevention to help prevent weight gain among their employees.

Consumer involvement in clinical research is an essential component of a comprehensive response during emergent health challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the moderation of research policies and regulation to facilitate research may raise ethical issues. Meaningful, diverse consumer involvement can help to identify practical approaches to prioritize, design, and conduct rapidly developed clinical research amid current events. Consumer involvement might also elucidate the acceptability of flexible ethics review approaches that aim to protect participants whilst being sensitive to the challenging context (...) in which research is taking place. This article describes the main ethical challenges arising from pandemic research and how involving consumers and the community could enable resolution of such issues. (shrink)

By exploring the integral relationship between democracy and economic justice, Democratic Distributive Justice seeks to explain how democratic countries with market systems should deal with the problem of high levels of income-inequality. The book acts as a guide for dealing with this issue by providing an interdisciplinary approach that combines political, economic, and legal theory. It also analyzes the nature of economic society and puts forth a new understanding of the agents and considerations bearing upon the ethics of relative pay, (...) such as the nature of individual contributions and the extent of community in capital based market systems. Economic justice is then integrated with democratic theory, yielding what Ross Zucker calls 'democratic distributive justice'. While prevailing theory defines democracy in terms of the electoral mechanism, the author holds that the principles of distribution form part of the very definition of democracy, which makes just distribution a requirement of democratic government. (shrink)

'Chains of Being' argues that there can be infinite chains of dependence or grounding. Cameron also defends the view that there can be circular relations of ontological dependence or grounding, and uses these claims to explore issues in logic and ontology.

I first offer a broad taxonomy of models of divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition, both past and present. I then examine the recent model proposed by Hud Hudson (2009, 2014) and Alexander Pruss (2013)—ubiquitous entension—and flag a worry with their account that stems from predominant analyses of the concept of ‘material object’. I then attempt to show that ubiquitous entension has a rich Latin medieval precedent in the work of Augusine and Anselm. I argue that the model of omnipresence (...) explicated by Augustine and Anselm has the resources to avoid the noted worry by offering an alternative account of the divide between the immaterial and the material. I conclude by considering a few alternative analyses of ‘material object’ that make conceptual room for a contemporary Christian theist to follow suite in thinking that at least some immaterial entities are literally spatially located when relating to the denizens of spacetime. (shrink)

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze claims that it is in virtue of a relation of expression which holds between intensive processes of individuation and virtual Ideas that the former determines the latter to be actualised in concrete entities. He is, however, less than forthcoming in this book about exactly how we should understand the relation of expression. This article addresses itself to this lacuna. It clarifies five characteristic features of the expressive relation, partly by drawing on Deleuze's discussion of the (...) relation of expression in Expressionism in Philosophy, party by examining familiar examples of expressive relations. It then maps these characteristic features of expression onto Deleuze's discussion of the relation between Ideas and intensity in Difference and Repetition, showing that virtual Ideas are ontologically inseparable from the intensive processes that both constitute and actualise them in the production of actual entities. By way of conclusion, this expressive account of the relation between the virtual, the actual and the intensive will be compared and contrasted with several leading accounts to be found in the secondary literature. (shrink)

The noble aim of sociologists to "tell the truth" has sometimes involved ignoble assumptions about human beings. In this major discussion of truth in the social science, Ross Abbinnett traces the debate on truth from the "objectifying powers" of Kant through more than 200 years of critique and reformulation to the unraveling of truth by Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida. Truth and Social Science gives students an exciting and accessible guide to the main sociological treatments of truth and can also (...) be read as an account of the collapse of modernity and the rise of new forms of thought, which treat difference and ambivalence as positive values. The book will be of interest to students of sociology, social theory, and philosophy. (shrink)

Works of music do not appear to be concrete objects; but they do appear to be created by composers, and abstract objects do not seem to be the kind of things that can be created. In this paper I aim to develop an ontological position that lets us salvage the creativity intuition without either adopting an ontology of created abstracta or identifying musical works with concreta. I will argue that there are no musical works in our ontology, but nevertheless the (...) English sentences we want to hold true are literally true. I rely on a meta-ontological view whereby ‘a exists’ can be true without committing us to an entity that is a. This meta-ontological view is illustrated by its application to the familiar example of the statue and the clay. I argue that my account of musical ontology fares better on the balance of costs and benefits than its rivals. (shrink)

This paper attempts to locate, within an actualist ontology, truthmakers for modal truths: truths of the form or . In Sect. 1 I motivate the demand for substantial truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 21 criticise Armstrong's account of truthmakers for modal truths. In Sect. 31 examine essentialism and defend an account of what makes essentialist attributions true, but I argue that this does not solve the problem of modal truth in general. In Sect. 41 discuss, and dismiss, a theistic (...) account of the source of modal truth proposed by Alexander Pruss. In Sect. 5 I offer a means of (dis)solving the problem. (shrink)

Two experiments examine the effects of unreportable hints on anagram solving performance and on solvers' subjective experience of insight. In Experiment 1, after seeing a hint presented too briefly to identify, participants solved anagrams preceded by the solution fastest and solved anagrams preceded by unrelated hints slowest. Participants' “warmth” ratings for solution hints were more insight-like than those for unrelated hints. In Experiment 2 a hint, or no hint, was presented at one of three different exposure durations . Participants benefited (...) from solution-relevant hints that were either unreportable or reportable, but showed a cost only for unrelated hints that were reportable. Participants' ratings of their insight experiences showed that unreportable solution and semantically related hints produced more insight-like experiences than did unrelated hints. The results suggest that unreportable processing of solution-related information is important for the insight experience. (shrink)

Quine said that the ontological question can be asked in three words, ‘What is there?’, and answered in one, ‘everything’. He was wrong. We need an extra word to ask the ontological question: it is ‘What is there, really?’; and it cannot be answered truthfully with ‘everything’ because there are some things that exist but which don’t really exist (and maybe even some things that really exist but which don’t exist).

In this paper I examine the objection to truthmaker theory, forcibly made by David Lewis and endorsed by many, that it violates the Humean denial of necessary connections between distinct existences. In Sect. 1 I present the argument that acceptance of truthmakers commits us to necessary connections. In Sect. 2 I examine Lewis’ ‘Things-qua-truthmakers’ theory which attempts to give truthmakers without such a commitment, and find it wanting. In Sects. 3–5 I discuss various formulations of the denial of necessary connections (...) and argue that each of them is either false or compatible with truthmaker theory. In Sect. 6 I show how the truthmaker theorist can resist the charge that they are committed to necessary exclusions between possible existents. I conclude that there is no good objection to truthmaker theory on the grounds that it violates the Humean dictum. (shrink)

In _Caring_, Peta Bowden extends and challenges recent debates on feminist ethics. She takes issue with accounts of the ethics of care that focus on alleged principles of caring rather than analysing caring in practice. Caring, Bowden argues, must be understood by 'working through examples'. Following this approach, Bowden explores four main caring practices: mothering, friendship, nursing and citizenship. Her analysis of the differences and similarities in these practices - their varying degrees of intimacy and reciprocity, formality (...) and informality, vulnerability and choice - reveals the practical complexity of the ethics of care. _Caring_ recognizes that ethical practices constantly outrun the theories that attempt to explain them, and Bowden's unique approach provides major new insights into the nature of care without resorting to indiscriminate unitary models. It will be essential reading for all those interested in ethics, gender studies, nursing and the caring professions. (shrink)

Action must be taken to combat climate change. Yet, how the costs of climate action should be allocated among states remains a question. One popular answer—the polluter-pays principle (PPP)—stipulates that those responsible for causing the problem should pay to address it. While intuitively plausible, the PPP has been subjected to withering criticism in recent years. It is timely, following the Paris Agreement, to develop a new version: one that does not focus on historical production-based emissions but rather allocates climate burdens (...) in proportion to each state’s annual consumption-based emissions. This change in carbon accounting results in a fairer and more environmentally effective principle for distributing climate duties. (shrink)

This book starts from the proposition that the field of intelligence lacks any systematic ethical review, and then develops a framework based on the notion of harm and the establishment of Just Intelligence Principles. As the professional practice of intelligence collection adapts to the changing environment of the twenty-first century, many academic experts and intelligence professionals have called for a coherent ethical framework that outlines exactly when, by what means and to what ends intelligence is justified. Recent controversies, including reports (...) of abuse at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, allegations of extraordinary rendition programmes and the ever-increasing pervasiveness of the ‘surveillance state’, have all raised concerns regarding the role of intelligence in society. As a result, there is increased debate regarding the question of whether or not intelligence collection can be carried out ethically. _The Ethics of Intelligence_ tackles this question by creating an ethical framework specifically designed for intelligence that is capable of outlining under what circumstances, if any, different intelligence collection activities are ethically permissible. The book examines three of the main collection disciplines in the field of intelligence studies: imagery intelligence, signals intelligence and human intelligence. By applying the ethical framework established at the beginning of the book to these three important intelligence collection disciplines, it is possible to better understand the ethical framework while also demonstrating its real-life applicability. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, ethics, war and conflict studies, security studies and IR. (shrink)

In this paper I further elucidate and defend a metaontological position that allows you to have a minimal ontology without embracing an error-theory of ordinary talk. On this view 'there are Fs' can be strictly and literally true without bringing an ontological commitment to Fs. Instead of a sentence S committing you to the things that must be amongst the values of the variables if it is true, I argue that S commits you to the things that must exist as (...) truthmakers for S if it is true. I rebut some recent objections that have been levelled against this metaontological view. (shrink)

Western Political Thought in Dialogue with Asia is a unique collection of essays that examines the exchange of political ideas between Western Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. The contributors to the volume call for globalizing the scope of research and teaching in the history of political thought.

The doxastic view (DV) of trust maintains that trust essentially involves belief. In a recent paper, Arnon Keren (Citation2020) gestures toward a new objection to the view, labeled Trust’s Meno Problem (TMP), which calls into question the DV’s ability to explain the widely held intuition that trust has distinct and indispensable value. As of yet, there has been no attempt to take up TMP on behalf of DV. This paper aims to fill precisely this lacuna. I do so in three (...) main stages. In §1 I contextualize and elucidate the problem, to which Keren gestures but does not address in detail. In §2 I disambiguate multiple possible interpretations of TMP, seeking to identify the most philosophically challenging. Finally, in §3, I argue that DV can solve even this interpretation. In order to do so, I make use ofthe highly plausible claim we find in the work of Katherine Hawley (Citation2012, 2019): that trust pays a compliment to the trustee. The payoffs of exploring the doxastic view in the context of Trust’s Meno Problem are twofold: we better understand the nature of the problem itself, and we see that the doxastic view can give a satisfying answer. (shrink)