Background Researchers are required to determine whether a person has capacity to consent to a research study before they are able to participate. The Mental Capacity Act and accompanying Code of Practice for England and Wales provide some guidance on this process, but researchers have identified that it can be difficult to determine capacity to consent when a person has complex cognitive or communication needs. This study aimed to understand the experiences and opinions of researchers who recruit people with dementia (...) to research projects, to inform the future development of training resources. Methods A mixed method, cross-sectional, electronic survey was circulated via social media and research networks in England and Wales. The survey remained open for ten weeks and included open and closed questions exploring respondents’ confidence in determining capacity in the context of recruiting people with dementia to consent, their views on training and support they have experienced and their suggestions for future training and support needs. Results 60 respondents completed the survey from across England and Wales. Although 75% of respondents had experience of determining capacity to consent with people with dementia to research, only 13% rated themselves as feeling ‘very confident’ in this. Qualitative content analysis of open responses led to the generation of six themes, explaining researchers’ confidence, competence and future training needs in this area: (1) Researcher uncertainties, (2) Lack of time, (3) Balancing information complexity with accessibility, (4) Gatekeepers, (5) Existing enablers and (6) Envisioning future training. Conclusions Researchers would benefit from specific training in undertaking conversations around consent with people with dementia. People with dementia may have fluctuating capacity, and despite support from caregivers, researchers have little practical guidance on methods of determining a person’s ability to understand or appreciate the information they have provided during the consent process. Given the development of large complex trials within dementia research, there is an urgency to develop specific and practical guidance and training for researchers working with people with dementia and their families. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Many phenomena appear to be indeterminate, including material macro-object boundaries and certain open future claims. Here I provide an account of indeterminacy in metaphysical, rather than semantic or epistemic, terms. Previous accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy have typically taken this to involve its being indeterminate which of various determinate states of affairs obtain. On my alternative account, MI involves its being determinate that an indeterminate state of affairs obtains. I more specifically suggest that MI involves an object's having a determinable (...) property, but not having any unique determinate of that determinable. I motivate the needed extension of the traditional understanding of determinables, then argue that a determinable-based account of MI accommodates, in illuminating fashion, both ‘glutty’ and ‘gappy’ cases of MI, while satisfactorily treating concerns about MI stemming from Evans’ argument and the problem of the many. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers commonly suppose that any fundamental entities there may be are maximally determinate. More generally, they commonly suppose that, whether or not there are fundamental entities, any determinable entities there may be are grounded in, hence less fundamental than, more determinate entities. So, for example, Armstrong takes the physical objects constituting the presumed fundamental base to be “determinate in all respects” (1961, 59), and Lewis takes the properties characterizing things “completely and without redundancy” to be “highly specific” (1986, 60). (...) Here I look at the usually cited reasons for these suppositions as directed against the case of determinable properties, in particular, and argue that none is compelling (Sections 1 to 3). The discussion in Section 3 moreover identifies positive reason for taking some determinable properties to be part of a fundamental (or relatively fundamental) base. I close (Section 4) by noting certain questions arising from the possibility of fundamental determinables, as directions for future research. (shrink)

This paper defines the form of prior knowledge that is required for sound inferences by analogy and single-instance generalizations, in both logical and probabilistic reasoning. In the logical case, the first order determination rule defined in Davies (1985) is shown to solve both the justification and non-redundancy problems for analogical inference. The statistical analogue of determination that is put forward is termed 'uniformity'. Based on the semantics of determination and uniformity, a third notion of "relevance" is defined, both logically and (...) probabilistically. The statistical relevance of one function in determining another is put forward as a way of defining the value of information: The statistical relevance of a function F to a function G is the absolute value of the change in one's information about the value of G afforded by specifying the value of F. This theory provides normative justifications for conclusions projected by analogy from one case to another, and for generalization from an instance to a rule. The soundness of such conclusions, in either the logical or the probabilistic case, can be identified with the extent to which the corresponding criteria (determination and uniformity) actually hold for the features being related. (shrink)

Organisms' environments are thought to play a fundamental role in determining their fitness and hence in natural selection. Existing intuitive conceptions of environment are sufficient for biological practice. I argue, however, that attempts to produce a general characterization of fitness and natural selection are incomplete without the help of general conceptions of what conditions are included in the environment. Thus there is a "problem of the reference environment"—more particularly, problems of specifying principles which pick out those environmental conditions which determine (...) fitness. I distinguish various reference environment problems and propose solutions to some of them. While there has been a limited amount of work on problems concerning what I call "subenvironments", there appears to be no earlier work on problems of what I call the "whole environment". The first solution I propose for a whole environment problem specifies the overall environment for natural selection on a set of biological types present in a population over a specified period of time. The second specifies an environment relevant to extinction of types in a population; this kind of environment is especially relevant to certain kinds of long-term evolution. (shrink)

Ingvar Johansson has argued that there are not only determinate universals, but also determinable ones. I here argue that this view is misguided by reviving a line of argument to the following effect: what makes determinates falling under a same determinable similar cannot be distinct from what makes them different. If true, some similarities — imperfect similarities between simple determinate properties — are not grounded in any kind of property-sharing. I suggest that determinables are better understood as maximal disjunctions of (...) brutely and imperfectly similar determinates. Such brute similarities have been thought to clash with realism about universals. I argue that this worry stems from the mistaken assumption that perfect and imperfect similarities are relations of a same kind. If exact and inexact resemblances are distinct and heterogeneous explananda, the realist about universals might explain the first thanks to property-sharing, while happily leaving imperfect similarities between properties unexplained. (shrink)

How can mental properties bring about physical effects, as they seem to do, given that the physical realizers of the mental goings-on are already sufficient to cause these effects? This question gives rise to the problem of mental causation (MC) and its associated threats of causal overdetermination, mental causal exclusion, and mental causal irrelevance. Some (e.g., Cynthia and Graham Macdonald, and Stephen Yablo) have suggested that understanding mental-physical realization in terms of the determinable/determinate relation (henceforth, 'determination') provides the key to (...) solving the problem of MC: if mental properties are determinables of their physical realizers, then (since determinables and determinates are distinct, yet don't causally compete) all three threats may be avoided. Not everyone agrees that determination can do this good work, however. Some (e.g., Douglas Ehring, Eric Funkhauser, and Sven Walter) object that mental-physical realization can't be determination, since such realization lacks one or other characteristic feature of determination. I argue that on a proper understanding of the features of determination key to solving the problem of MC these arguments can be resisted. (shrink)

This book offers a new account of what it is to act for a normative reason. The first part of the book examines the problems of causal accounts of acting for reasons and suggests to solve them by a dispositional approach. The author argues for a dispositional account which unites epistemic, volitional, and executional dispositions in a complex normative competence. This ‘Normative Competence Account’ allows for more and less reflective ways of acting for normative reasons. The second part of the (...) book clarifies the relation between the normative reason that an agent acts for and his or her motivating reasons. It refutes the widely held ‘identity view’ that acting for a normative reason requires the normative reason to be identical with a motivating reason. The author describes how normative reasons are related to motivating reasons by a relation of correspondence, and proposes a new understanding of how normative reasons explain those actions that are performed for them. Determined by Reasons engages with current debates from a wide range of different philosophical areas, including action theory, metaethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and ontology, to develop a new account of acting for normative reasons. (shrink)

Adverbialist theories of thought such as those advanced by Hare and Sellars promise an ontologically sleek understanding of a variety of intentional states, but such theories have been largely abandoned due to the ‘many-property problem’. In an attempt to revitalize this otherwise attractive theory, in a series of papers as well as his recent book, Uriah Kriegel has offered a novel reply to the ‘many-property problem’ and on its basis he argues that ‘adverbialism about intentionality is alive and well’. If (...) true, Kriegel will have shown that the logical landscape has long been unnecessarily constrained. His key idea is that the many-property problem can be overcome by appreciating that mental states stand in the determinable–determinate relation to one another. The present paper shows that this relation can’t save adverbialism because it would require thinkers to think more thoughts than they need be thinking. (shrink)

Kant’s distinction between the determining and reflecting power of judgment in the third Critique is not well understood in the literature. A mainstream view unifies these by making determination the telos of all acts of judgment (Longuenesse 1998). On this view, all reflection is primarily in the business of producing empirical concepts for cognition, and thus has what I call a determinative ideal. I argue that this view fails to take seriously the independence and autonomy of the ‘power of judgment’ (...) [Urteilskraft] as a higher cognitive faculty in its own right with its own a priori principle. Instead of seeing merely reflecting judgments as failed or incomplete acts of judgment, I argue that these are in fact paradigmatic of the activity of the power of judgment. More precisely, the reflecting power of judgment just is the power of judgment. Accordingly, reflecting judgment takes precedence over determining judgment; while the former operates according to a law that it gives itself, the latter requires another higher cognitive faculty to provide its principle. On my view, reflecting judgment should be understood as the capacity for purposive subsumption—most clearly seen in the activity of mere reflection. (shrink)

THE PAPER DEFINES AND DEFENDS A PRINCIPLE OF COLLECTIVE SELF-DETERMINATION AS ONE OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE ORDERING OF A JUST SOCIETY. THAT PRINCIPLE SPECIFIES THAT INDIVIDUALS PARTICIPATE EQUALLY IN THE MAKING OF DECISIONS WHICH WILL GOVERN THEIR ACTIONS WITHIN INSTITUTIONS OF SPECIAL COOPERATION. THE PAPER ADOPTS THE STRATEGY OF ARGUING TO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE BY ASKING WHAT PRINCIPLES WOULD BE CHOSEN IN RAWLS' ORIGINAL POSITION. IT ARGUES THAT, CONTRARY TO THE THRUST IMPLICIT IN RAWLS AND OTHER LIBERAL THINKERS, PERSONS (...) IN THE ORIGINAL POSITION WOULD HAVE NO BASIS FOR DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN POLITICAL AND NON-POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF SOCIAL COOPERATION, AND THUS WOULD CHOOSE THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-DETERMINATION DIRECTLY AS APPLYING TO ALL INSTITUTIONS AND ACTIVITIES OF SOCIAL COOPERATION. (shrink)

Several political theorists argue that states have rights to self-determination and these rights justify immigration restrictions. Call this: the self-determination argument for immigration restrictions. In this article, I develop an objection to the self-determination argument. I argue that if it is morally permissible for states to restrict immigration because they have rights to self-determination, then it can also be morally permissible for states to deport and denationalize their own citizens. We can either accept that it is permissible for states to (...) deport and denationalize their own citizens or reject the self-determination argument. To avoid this implication, we should reject the self-determination argument. That is, we should also reject the conclusion that rights to self-determination can justify any significant immigration restrictions. (shrink)

There are arguments for determinism. Admittedly, this is opposed by the fact of everyday experience of autonomy. In the following, it is argued for the compatibility of determinism and autonomy. Taking up considerations of Donald MacKay, a fatalistic attitude can be refuted as false. Repeatedly, attempts have been made to defend the possibility of autonomy with reference to quantum physical indeterminacy. But its statistical randomness clearly misses the meaning of autonomy. What is decisive, on the other hand, is the possibility (...) of knowledge, which opens up opportunities for planning, freedom of choice and ultimately 'self-choice'. Results of neurobiological research, especially Benjamin Libet's and more recently John-Dylan Haynes', seem to refute this: Actions are unconsciously initiated before conscious decision. But, as Libet has also shown, consciousness always has the possibility of a veto – and thus also of knowledge-driven action control. Ultimately, the idea of possible self-choice can thus become the determining condition. Only such a form of rational self-determination establishes a spiritual identity and at the same time represents the maximum of autonomy possible for human beings. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the objection that unilateral secession by a national group (e.g., the Scots) from a legitimate, nonusurping state would wrong minority nationalities within the seceding territory. I show first that most proponents of this objection assume that the ground of the right to national self-determination is the protection of the group’s culture. I show that there are alternative justifications available. I then set out a version of this objection that does not rely on this claim; on (...) this objection, a national minority that seceded and created its own state would commit an expressive wrong against minorities within the territory over which it claimed jurisdiction. I show that this objection is undermotivated: only under a specific set of circumstances would the minorities of the secessionist region be subject to an expressive wrong. Finally, I show that the correct way to think about the claims of minorities in secessionist regions is in terms of a claim to secure access to equal civic status such that they are not at risk of becoming justifiably alienated from their new state. If a secessionist group cannot provide this guarantee to the minority residents of their territory, then their seceding would commit wrongful harm, and the presumption in favour of collective autonomy is defeated. I call this defeater the ‘Alienation Defeater.’With this in hand, we are now in a position to explain why nations are normatively special. Responding to the objections broached by Allen Buchanan and others, I show that even if other kinds of groups, such as religious groups, have the features in virtue of which nations have a claim to self-determination, this does not entail that those groups also have the right to secede. This is because an account of self-determination needs a list of ‘defeaters’—features in virtue of which a group’s claim to self-determination is defeated. I argue that religious groups are the strongest candidate for having a claim to collective autonomy in virtue of sharing many features with nations. I then argue that religious groups will run afoul of the Alienation Defeater; religious identity is too narrow to be the basis of the dominant collective identity of a state. This does not apply to nationality. This, I explain, is because of qualitative differences between religious groups, qua religious groups, and nations. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive discussion of determinables, determinates, and their relation ('determination', for short), covering the historical development of these notions, the theoretical options for understanding them, and certain of their contemporary applications.

This article aims to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of green practices in Chinese logistics industry. The determinant factors are composed of technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions. A questionnaire survey on the green practice adoption of Chinese logistics companies was conducted, and 322 samples were analyzed. Research results reveal that relative advantage and compatibility of green practices, organizational support, quality of human resources, regulatory pressure, and governmental support have significantly positive influences on the adoption of green practices for Chinese (...) logistics companies. Environmental uncertainty and green practice's complexity have significantly negative influences on green practice adoption. However, the influence of customer pressure is not significant for Chinese logistics companies. This article also suggests implications and opportunities for future research. (shrink)

Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) scores for 47 countries reported by Transparency International were used to ascertain determinants of bribe taking in international business. Two sets of independent variables – economic and cultural – were used in a multiple regression analysis. Results indicate that bribe taking was more likely to be prevalent in countries with low per capita income and lower disparities in income distribution. Cultural factors such as high power distance and high masculinity in a country were also likely (...) to be associated with high level of bribe taking. Both economic and cultural factors were important explanatory factors of bribery. Implications of the findings for combating bribery are discussed. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution towards understanding the correlation between Úgwú and personal names among the Igbo people of Nigeria. Sacralisation of the natural environment which include hills or mountains is a belief that cuts across religions. Among the Igbo, the perceived sacred value placed on such natural environment prompted a series of socio-cultural changes. Personal names are usually drawn from deified entities such as the earth, sun, rivers, and so on. Studies on Igbo personal names portrayed the environmental determinant (...) for personal names in different Igbo-subcultures. However, the pattern of Nsukka-Igbo names, influenced specifically by Úgwú has hardly gotten any scholarly attention. This study, therefore, provided evidence that Úgwú is the single most environmental element that shaped the culture of naming among the Nsukka-Igbo people with its psycho-social and economic implications. Drawing from the theory of sacralisation, which stresses on placing religious values on objects, this article showed that the deified Úgwú environment influenced an unprecedented frequency and exclusive nature of Úgwú personal names in the study area. Documentary research, observation and interview methods were used to collect and analyse secondary, as well as primary data for this study. The article drew attention to the increasing influence of Úgwú on personal names in Nsukka-Igbo, and its effects which include the conservation of the environment occasioned by the deification of Úgwú.Contribution: This article shows that the deification of natural environment of Úgwú influenced the increasing frequency of Úgwú personal names and its associated variants among the Nsukka-Igbo people of Nigeria. (shrink)

A basic problem of daily life is determining who owns what. One way that people may solve this problem is by relying on a ‘first possession’ heuristic, according to which the first person who possesses an object is its owner, even if others subsequently possess the object. We investigated preschoolers’ use of this heuristic in five experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, 3- and 4-year-olds inferred that an object was owned by the character who possessed it first, even though another (...) character subsequently possessed it. Two-year-olds also showed this bias, but only when the object was placed between the characters when children were asked about ownership. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility that children’s bias to select the first possessor results from a tendency to select the character first associated with the object. Experiment 4 showed that 3- and 4-year-olds have difficulty disregarding the first possession heuristic, even when provided with evidence that the character who first possessed an object is not its owner. But Experiment 5 found that children can disregard the heuristic in at least some situations. These five experiments suggest that the first possession heuristic guides children’s ownership inferences. The findings provide the first evidence that preschoolers can infer who owns what, when not explicitly told, and when not reasoning about objects with which they are personally acquainted. (shrink)

Anscombe’s “Causality and Determination” is often cited in the contemporary free will debate, but rarely discussed in much detail. It’s main contribution, it is thought, is the defense of an alternative to deterministic causation, thus clearing the way for an incompatibilist analysis of free actions in terms of probabilistic causation. However, in this paper I will show that the contemporary probabilistic analysis of free action actually stands in direct conflict with Anscombe’s lecture. Instead, I will argue, its true value for (...) incompatibilist accounts of free will lies in Anscombe’s thought that there are various fundamentally different kinds of causality. This variety, I argue, allows for a revised conception indeterminism and an understanding of free will as the manifestation of a particular sort of agent-causal power. (shrink)

This study uses data from the Ghana Demographic and Health Survey of 1993 to examine factors determining the use of maternal–child health services in rural Ghana. The MCH services under study are: use of a doctor for prenatal care; soliciting four or more antenatal check-ups; place of delivery; participation in family planning. Bivariate and multivariate techniques are employed in the analyses. The analyses reveal that the use of MCH services tends to be shaped mostly by level of education, religious background (...) and region of residence, and partially by ethnicity and occupation. The implications of these results are discussed. (shrink)

Requiring family authorization for apnea testing subtracts health professionals control over death determination, a procedure that has traditionally been considered a matter of clinical expertise alone. In this commentary, we first provide evidence showing that health professionals’ (HPs) disposition to act on death determination without family’s prior consent could be much lower than that referred to by Berkowitz and Garrett (2020). We hypothesize that HPs may have reservations about their own expertise as regards death, and may thus hesitate to impose (...) their views on patients’ families. We then address the theoretical question of clinical expertise in death determination by distinguishing judgments about facts (e.g., the presence or absence of spontaneous breathing) from interpretations given of these facts (i.e., their meaning for the vital status of an individual). We argue that, while clinicians may claim some expert authority on the former, they hold no particular authority on the latter. (shrink)

Anselm is known for offering a distinctive definition of freedom of choice as “the ability of preserving uprightness of will for its own sake.” When we turn to Anselm’s account of the devil’s fall in De Casu Diaboli, however, this idiosyncratic understanding of freedom is not at the forefront. In that text, Anselm seemingly assumes a traditional understanding of free will defined in terms of alternative possibilities for the angels. These alternative possibilities must be present so the angels can engage (...) in ‘self-determination.’ God, however, does not face alternative possibilities to achieve His self-determination. Anselm thus explicates his notion of free will in terms of three different concepts: his distinctive definition of free choice, self-determination, and the principle of alternative possibilities. Despite attempts (by both scholars and Anselm) to explain how these three concepts are related, I argue that their relationship is problematic. In particular, I argue that Anselm is guilty of conflating and equivocating with regard to these concepts. I further importantly claim that the conflation obscures the fact that his understanding of self-determination calls into question God’s excellence over that of the good angels. (shrink)

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that (...) doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works-the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world. (shrink)

Many of the major self-determination movements of the 20th and early 21st Centuries did not go smoothly, but resulted in forced or semi-forced transfers of groups of people from one country to another. Forced population transfers are not, of course, supported by major theorists of self-determination and secession. However, the problems that make population transfers extremely common in actual cases of self-determination and secession, are not squarely faced in many theories of self-determination. And, I shall argue, certain leading theories of (...) self-determination and secession would make population transfers almost inevitable in practice, even if not called for or sanctioned in theory. This is a major stumbling block for any attempt to move from an abstract account of self-determination towards a working theory. In this paper I take a first step towards addressing this problem. I shall show how any approach to dealing with secession, including “primary rights” accounts, “remedial rights only” accounts, and even “consensual” accounts, must be able to deal with the inevitable problem of population transfers, if it is to be a complete and plausible theory. I shall also show how population transfers, to the extent that we can always expect them to take place, can be made as just as possible, in light of any approach to the problem of secession. I will not here attempt to adjudicate between different approaches to secession and self-determination. To that extent, my argument may be seen as a friendly addition to all of the above approaches, showing how they may try to meet an objection which they have not yet faced. (shrink)

Everything red is colored, and all squares are polygons. A square is distinguished from other polygons by being four-sided, equilateral, and equiangular. What distinguishes red things from other colored things? This has been understood as a conceptual rather than scientific question. Theories of wavelengths and reflectance and sensory processing are not considered. Given just our ordinary understanding of color, it seems that what differentiates red from other colors is only redness itself. The Cambridge logician W. E. Johnson introduced the terms (...) determinate and determinable to apply to examples such as red and colored. Chapter XI, of Johnson's Logic, Part I (1921), “The Determinate and the Determinable,” is the main text for discussion of this distinction. (shrink)

This article makes a contribution towards understanding the correlation between Úgwú (hill or mountain) and personal names among the Igbo people of Nigeria. Sacralisation of the natural environment which include hills or mountains is a belief that cuts across religions. Among the Igbo, the perceived sacred value placed on such natural environment prompted a series of socio-cultural changes. Personal names are usually drawn from deified entities such as the earth, sun, rivers, and so on. Studies on Igbo personal names portrayed (...) the environmental determinant for personal names in different Igbo-subcultures. However, the pattern of Nsukka-Igbo names, influenced specifically by Úgwú has hardly gotten any scholarly attention. This study, therefore, provided evidence that Úgwú is the single most environmental element that shaped the culture of naming among the Nsukka-Igbo people with its psycho-social and economic implications. Drawing from the theory of sacralisation, which stresses on placing religious values on objects, this article showed that the deified Úgwú environment influenced an unprecedented frequency and exclusive nature of Úgwú personal names in the study area. Documentary research, observation and interview methods were used to collect and analyse secondary, as well as primary data for this study. The article drew attention to the increasing influence of Úgwú on personal names in Nsukka-Igbo, and its effects which include the conservation of the environment occasioned by the deification of Úgwú. Contribution: This article shows that the deification of natural environment of Úgwú influenced the increasing frequency of Úgwú personal names and its associated variants among the Nsukka-Igbo people of Nigeria. (shrink)

Background: The division of non-paid labor in heterosexual parents in the West is usually still gender-based, with mothers taking on the majority of direct caregiving responsibilities. However, in same-sex couples, gender cannot be the deciding factor. Inspired by Feinberg’s ecological model of co-parenting, this study investigated whether infant temperament, parent factors (biological relatedness to child, psychological adjustment, parenting stress, and work status), and partner relationship quality explained how first-time gay, lesbian, and heterosexual parents divided labor (childcare and family decision-making) when (...) their infants were four months and 12 months old. We also tested whether family type acted as a moderator. Method: Participants were drawn from [MASKED FOR REVIEW]. Only those who provided information about their biological relatedness (yes or no) to their child (N = 263 parents) were included. When infants were four months (T1), parents completed a password-protected online questionnaire exploring their demographic characteristics including work status and standardized online-questionnaires on task division (childcare and family decision-making), infant temperament, parental anxiety, parental depression, parental stress, and partner relationship satisfaction. When infants were 12-months-old (T2), parents provided information about task division and their biological relatedness to their children. Results: Linear mixed models showed that no factor explained the division of family decision making at T1 and T2. For relative time spent on childcare tasks at T1, biological relatedness mattered for lesbian mothers only: biologically related mothers appeared to spend more time on childcare tasks than did non-related mothers. Results showed that, regardless of family type, parents who were not working or were working part-time at T1 performed more childcare tasks at T1. This was still true at T2. The other factors did not significantly contribute to relative time spent on childcare tasks at T2. Conclusion: We had the opportunity to analyze the division of non-paid tasks in families where parenting was necessarily planned and in which gender could not affect that division. Although Feinberg’s model of co-parenting suggests that various factors are related to task division, we found that paid work outside the home was most important during the first year of parenthood in determining caregiving roles. (shrink)

Ross Cameron (2022) argues that metaphysical infinitists should reject the generally accepted idea that metaphysical determination relations back metaphysical explanations. Otherwise it won’t be possible for them to come up with successful explanations for the existence of dependent entities in non-wellfounded chains of dependence. I argue that his argument suffers from what he calls the finitist dogma, although indirectly so. However, there is a better way of motivating Cameron’s conclusion. Assuming Cameron’s principle of Essence, explanations for the existence of dependent (...) entities turn out to be circular if determination relations back explanations. This latter argument provides a stronger case as it puts the foundationalist under significant pressure, besides putting the infinitist under some pressure, to deny the idea that determination relations back explanations. (shrink)

Some remarks on determination, physicalism, model theory, and logical truth.//An attempt to defend physicalism against objections that its bases are indeterminate.

Yablo suggests that we can understand the possibility of mental causation by supposing that mental properties determine physical properties, in the classic sense of determination according to which red determines scarlet. Determinates and their determinables do not compete for causal relevance, so if mental and physical properties are related as determinable and determinates, they should not compete for causal relevance either. I argue that this solution won''t work. I first construct a more adequate account of determination than that provided by (...) Yablo. I then consider two common accounts of the mental, token identity theories and dispositional theories, and argue that on neither do mental and physical properties satisfy the requirements for determination. (shrink)

Earnings management behavior is a concern of standard-setters, regulators and the accounting profession. This study examines the ethics of this practice using a national sample of 763 accounting practitioners, faculty and students. Possible determinants of the ethics of this practice such as perceived role of ethics and social responsibility, and personal moral philosophies (i.e. idealism and relativism) are explored. Results indicate a positive relationship between social responsibility, focus on long-term gains, idealism, and the ethical perception of earnings management and (...) negative relationship between focus on short-term gains, relativism and the ethical perception of this practice. Implications for the accounting profession as it deals with the issue of earnings management are discussed. (shrink)

In The legal determinants of health: Harnessing the power of law for global health and sustainable development, Gostin et al. provide a sustained account of how law can and should be used as an instrument of health promotion. We pick up on the themes of this report with a specific focus of the importance of abortion for women’s sexual and reproductive health and the impact that particular ways of framing abortion in law can have on the lives of women (...) and girls. In this short comment, we wish to emphasize that abortion regulations need to move beyond frameworks based on narrow understandings of harm towards more progressive agendas that take into account the social determinants of health in order to reduce barriers to care. This contribution is particularly relevant to the Commission’s criticism that those ‘[l]aws that stigmatise or discriminate against marginalized populations are especially harmful and exacerbate health disparities’. (shrink)

What determines the subjective intensity of emotions? Four major groups of determinants are hypothesised: concerns (strength and relevance), appraisal, regulation, and individual differences. During six weeks subjects reported an emotion every week and answered questions on a computer. It appears that all four groups of supposed determinants are correlated with emotional intensity, the concern variables show the highest correlations. The importance of the determinants is not always the same, there are differences between the emotions and between the (...) dimensions of emotional intensity. The relation between regulation and emotional intensity is complex: Causal relations are expected in both directions. On the one hand, a more intense emotion requires more regulation (positive causal effect), and on the other, regulation will decrease the intensity (negative causal effect). Indications of the existence of both relations are found. Regulation and intensity are positively correlated. The canonical correlation of overall felt intensity and the regulation effort with the determinants is higher than the multiple correlation of only the overall felt intensity with the determinants. (shrink)

It is fairly widely accepted that Saul Kripke, Keith Donnellan, and others showed in the 1960s–1980s that proper names, in particular uses by speakers, can refer to things free of anything like the epistemic requirements posited by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. This paper separates two aspects of the Frege–Russell view of name reference: the metaphysical thesis that names in particular uses refer to things in virtue of speakers thinking of those things and the epistemic thesis that thinking of things (...) requires a means of determining which thing one is thinking of. My question is whether the Kripke–Donnellan challenge should lead us to reject,, or both. Contrary to a popular line of thinking that sees practices or conventions, rather than singular thinking, as determinative of linguistic reference, my answer is that we should reject only the epistemic thesis, not the metaphysical one. (shrink)

The properties colored and red stand in a special relation. Namely, red is a determinate of colored, and colored is determinable relative to red. Many other properties are similarly related. The determination relation is an interesting topic of logical investigation in its own right, and the prominent philosophical inquiries into this relation have, accordingly, operated at a high level of abstraction.1 It is time to return to these investigations, not just as a logical amusement, but for the payoffs such investigation (...) can yield in solving some basic metaphysical problems. The goal in what follows is twofold. First, I argue for a novel understanding of the determination relation. Second, this understanding is applied to yield insights into property instance (e.g., trope) individuation, how different property types can share an instance, the relation between property types and property instances, as well as applications to causation (mental causation, in particular). (shrink)

In December 1990, an empirical study assessing hospital ethics committee (HEC) success was completed. Success was measured in terms of the number of interventions undertaken by the committees in four functional areas: education, guidelines development, prospective and retrospective case review. Some commonly quoted success determinants, such as multidisciplinarity, physician chairpersons, and a high institutional status of the chairperson were found not to foster success; the latter two, actually decreased committee success.

This paper defends Flatland—the view that there exist neither determination nor dependence relations, and that everything is therefore fundamental—from the objection from explanatory inefficacy. According to that objection, Flatland is unattractive because it is unable to explain either the appearance as of there being determination relations, or the appearance as of there being dependence relations. We show how the Flatlander can meet the first challenge by offering four strategies—reducing, eliminating, untangling and omnizing—which, jointly, explain the appearance as of determination relations (...) where no such relations obtain. Since, plausibly, dependence relations just are asymmetric determination relations, we argue that once we come mistakenly to believe that there exist determination relations, the existence of other asymmetries (conceptual and temporal) explains why it appears that there are dependence relations. (shrink)

This paper investigates the determinants of regulatory compliance in corporate organizations. Exploiting a unique enforcement and reporting framework for insider trading in Italy, we present three main findings. First, board governance, such as chief executive–chairman duality and the proportion of non-executive directors, does not increase the propensity of firms to comply with regulation. Second, family firms and firms with a high degree of separation of ownership from control are most likely to comply with regulation. Third, corporate ethos is more (...) important in predicting regulatory compliance than explicit corporate governance structures. (shrink)

Marcelo Fischborn discusses the significance of neuroscience for debates about free will. Although he concedes that, to date, Libet-style experiments have failed to threaten “libertarian free will”, he argues that, in principle, neuroscience and psychology could do so by supporting local determinism. We argue that, in principle, Libet-style experiments cannot succeed in disproving or even establishing serious doubt about libertarian free will. First, we contend that “local determination”, as Fischborn outlines it, is not a coherent concept. Moreover, determinism is unlikely (...) to be established by neuroscience in any form that should trouble compatibilists or libertarians—that is, anyone who thinks we might have free will. We conclude that, in principle, neuroscience will not be able undermine libertarian free will and explain why these conclusions support a coherent compatibilist notion of causal sourcehood. (shrink)

Several philosophers (e.g., Ehring (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 30:461–480, 1996 ); Funkhouser (Nous (Detroit, Mich.) 40:548–569, 2006 ); Walter (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37:217–244, 2007 ) have argued that there are metaphysical differences between the determinable-determinate relation and the realization relation between mental and physical properties. Others have challenged this claim (e.g., Wilson (Philosophical Studies, 2009 ). In this paper, I argue that there are indeed such differences and propose a “mechanistic” account of realization that elucidates why these differences hold. This (...) account of realization incorporates two distinct roles that mechanisms play in the realization of mental (and other special science) properties which are implicit, but undeveloped, in the literature—what I call “constitutive” and “integrative” mechanisms. I then use these two notions of mechanism to clarify some debates about the relations between realization, multiple realizability, and irreducibility. (shrink)