In this paper I present a limitation to what may be called strictly-interventionistic causal-model semantic theories for subjunctive conditionals. And I offer a line of response to Briggs’ counterexample to Modus Ponens—given within a strictly-interventionistic framework—for the subjunctive conditional. The paper also contains some discussion of backtracking counterfactuals and backtracking interpretations. The limitation inherent to strict interventionism is brought out via a class of counterexamples. A causal-model semantics is strictly interventionistic just in case the procedure it gives for evaluating a (...) subjunctive conditional requires making the values of the variables implicated in the antecedent independent from the values of the parents of these antecedent variables. Most causal-model semantic theories that have gained attention are strictly interventionistic. (shrink)

A counterlegal is a counterfactual conditional containing an antecedent that is inconsistent with some set of laws. A backtracker is a counterfactual that tells us how things would be at a time earlier than that of its antecedent, were the antecedent to obtain. Typically, theories that evaluate counterlegals appropriately don’t evaluate backtrackers properly, and vice versa. Two cases in point: Lewis’ ordering semantics handles counterlegals well but not backtrackers. Hiddleston’s :632–657, 2005) causal-model semantics nicely handles backtrackers but not counterlegals. Taking (...) Hiddleston’s account as a starting point, I offer steps toward a theory capable of handling both counterlegals and backtrackers. The core contribution of this paper is a means for evaluating counterlegals relative to minimally-illegal models. (shrink)

Some of Quine’s critics charge that he arrives at a behavioristic account of linguistic meaning by starting from inappropriately behavioristic assumptions (Kripke 1982, 14; Searle 1987, 123). Quine has even written that this account of linguistic meaning is a consequence of his behaviorism (Quine 1992, 37). I take it that the above charges amount to the assertion that Quine assumes the denial of one or more of the following claims: (1) Language-users associate mental ideas with their linguistic expressions. (2) A (...) language-user can have a private theory of linguistic meaning which guides his or her use of language. (3) Language learning relies on innate mechanisms. Call an antecedent denial of one or more of these claims illicit behaviorism. In this paper I show that Quine is prepared to grant, if only for the sake of argument, all three of the above claims. I argue that his claim that there is nothing in linguistic meaning beyond what is to be gleaned from overt behavior in observable circumstances is unscathed by these allowances (Quine 1992, 38). And I show that the behaviorism which Quine does assume should be viewed as a largely uncontroversial aspect of his evidential empiricism. I conclude that if one sets out to dismiss Quine’s arguments for internal-meaning skepticism, this dismissal should not be motivated by the charge that his conclusions rely on the illicitly behavioristic assumptions that some have suggested that they do. (shrink)

Dagfinn Føllesdal: “Developments in Quine's Behaviorism”: Quine insisted throughout his life that he was a behaviorist. He began briefly as an “ontological behaviorist,” that is, he held that there is nothing mental. However, very early he switched to evidential behaviorism: the view that behavior provides the only evidence we have for the mental and its properties. Ultimately, Quine's behaviorism springs from his empiricism. All knowledge about the world around us and about other people reaches us through our senses: “Behaviorism, as (...) far as I'm concerned, is only an intersubjective empiricism.” Quine applied this to language and communication. His acute problem awareness led him from the discussion of stimuli in Word and Object to a much more refined behaviorism in his latest works, in which full‐fledged perception and the individuation of the world into objects play a crucial role. (shrink)

A provocative view has it that word meanings are underdetermined and dynamic, frustrating traditional approaches to theorizing about meaning. Peter Ludlow’s Living Words provides some of the philosophical reasons and motivations for accepting one such view, develops some of its details, and explores some of its ramifications. We critically examine some of the arguments in Living Words, paying particular attention to some of Ludlow’s views about the meanings of predicates, preservation of bivalence and the T-schema, and methods of modulating meaning.

This third edition offers increased coverage of sustainability and more chances for illustration and discussion of ethics in the messy day to day practicalities ...

In the December 2006 edition of Harvard Business Review, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that by approaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on corporate priorities, strengths and abilities, firms can develop socially and fiscally responsible solutions to current CSR issues, which will provide operational and competitive advantages. We agree that an effective approach to CSR includes a mapping of strategy, risk and opportunity. However, we also caution that the identification of these to the exclusion of societal input may not (...) be to the corporation's advantage. Instead, an investment in both strategic analysis and social capital can pay off from a social and an organizational standpoint. Compared with their larger counterparts, small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) frequently have stronger relationships with their internal and external stakeholders that foster the development of social capital. As such, we believe that the sector offers a unique opportunity to identify additional models and frameworks in order to approach a strategic CSR model as espoused by Porter and Kramer. This paper explores a case study of one Canadian SME that uses a community development framework called Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) for its CSR programming. Because ABCD relies heavily on the development and maintenance of social capital and can be utilized to attain set objectives, we propose that it provides a supplementary framework through which the arguments of Porter and Kramer can be expanded. In applying the ABCD framework for CSR, we can begin to establish a programme that supports strategy, integrates employees and stakeholders towards a common vision, and creates unique and sustainable alternatives towards the resolution of social and corporate goals. (shrink)

In the December 2006 edition of Harvard Business Review , Michael Porter and Mark Kramer argue that by approaching corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on corporate priorities, strengths and abilities, firms can develop socially and fiscally responsible solutions to current CSR issues, which will provide operational and competitive advantages. We agree that an effective approach to CSR includes a mapping of strategy, risk and opportunity. However, we also caution that the identification of these to the exclusion of societal input may (...) not be to the corporation's advantage. Instead, an investment in both strategic analysis and social capital can pay off from a social and an organizational standpoint. Compared with their larger counterparts, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) frequently have stronger relationships with their internal and external stakeholders that foster the development of social capital. As such, we believe that the sector offers a unique opportunity to identify additional models and frameworks in order to approach a strategic CSR model as espoused by Porter and Kramer. This paper explores a case study of one Canadian SME that uses a community development framework called Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) for its CSR programming. Because ABCD relies heavily on the development and maintenance of social capital and can be utilized to attain set objectives, we propose that it provides a supplementary framework through which the arguments of Porter and Kramer can be expanded. In applying the ABCD framework for CSR, we can begin to establish a programme that supports strategy, integrates employees and stakeholders towards a common vision, and creates unique and sustainable alternatives towards the resolution of social and corporate goals. (shrink)

Mental internalists hold that an individuals mental features at a given time supervene upon what is in that individuals head at that time. While many people reject mental internalism about content and justification, mental internalism is commonly accepted regarding such other mental features as rationality, emotion-types, propositional-attitude-types, moral character, and phenomenology. I construct a counter-example to mental internalism regarding all these features. My counter-example involves two creatures: a human and an alien from Pulse World. These creatures environments, behavioral dispositions and (...) histories are such that it is intuitively clear that they are mentally quite different, even while they are, for a moment, exactly alike with respect to whats in their heads. I offer positive reasons for thinking that the case I describe is indeed possible. I then consider ways in which mental internalists might attempt to account for this case, but conclude that the only plausible option is to reject mental internalism and to adopt a particular externalist alternative a history-oriented version of teleo-functionalism. (shrink)

This paper follows the circuitous path of theories concerning the origins of viruses from the early years of the twentieth century until the present, considering RNA viruses in particular. I focus on three periods during which new understandings of the nature of viruses guided the construction and reconstruction of origin hypotheses. During the first part of the twentieth century, viruses were mostly viewed from within the framework of bacteriology and the discussion of origin centered on the “degenerative” or the “retrograde (...) evolution theory.” However, concomitantly, in the context of origin-of-life theorizing, the notion that viruses are vestiges of a prebiotic world was also being contemplated. In the 1960s the idea that viruses were genetic elements that “escaped” from cells became prevalent. These traditional hypotheses are being revisited nowadays by evolutionary virologists, who have placed them within a new conceptual framework that is supported by cutting-edge genomic and proteomic data. Two current, opposing scenarios of virus origin are presented. The philosophical dimensions of “revisiting” the original hypotheses are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Since Austin’s introduction of the locutionary-illocutionary-perlocutionary distinction, it has been a matter of debate within speech act theory whether illocutionary acts like promising, warning, refusing and telling require audience ‘uptake’ in order to be performed. Philosophers on different sides of this debate have tried to support their positions by appealing to hypothetical scenarios, designed to elicit intuitive judgements about the role of uptake. However, philosophers’ intuitions appeared to remain deadlocked, while laypeople’s intuitions have not yet been probed. To begin rectifying (...) that, we ran two experiments probing lay intuitions about the implications of uptake failure. Overall, we found that participants’ responses were skewed towards agreement that speech acts were performed, despite the lack of uptake. There were, however, significant differences across the four different speech act types we investigated (with the highest levels of agreement found for refusing, followed by warning, then telling, and finally promising). We also obtained evidence of complex effects relating to the (high or low) stakes involved in the scenarios. While this study only represents an initial exploration of intuitions about uptake, our results form a basis for further research into their nature and significance, across a range of speech acts, scenarios, and experimental designs. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen has in recent decades made significant and influential contributions to metaphysics. In his Material Beings he advanced a novel ontology according to which chairs and other medium-sized dry goods don’t really exist. He went on to make important contributions to metaontology. Parts of his Ontology, Identity, and Modality and Existence: Essays in Ontology defend a broadly Quinean conception of existence questions and how to address them. I argue that the metaontology articulated in those later works is in (...) fact inconsistent with his defense of his ontology advanced in his earlier work. (shrink)

Animal welfare has been a subject of intellectual and academic study for a long time. In the past philosophers, thought-leaders and scientists have contributed to the debate, and seismic changes such as the advent of post-war industrial farming have brought about changes in attitudes to the way animals are farmed. Animal welfare as a science and philosophy can be understood as a trajectory through history of our understanding of our relationship with animals, enhanced in recent years through studies into animal (...) behaviour and cognition and societal changes in the way we view animals. --From back cover. (shrink)

It is not infrequently heard in architectural circles that architecture is an inherently political enterprise and pursuit, such that build structures are, correspondingly, inherently political objects. But does architecture, by its nature as practice or artifact, universally serve political ends? Taking ends of something X to be political iff X serves the projection of power by state or government, or advances policy-making, ideologies, or the body politic, it may be thought that AP1. Architecture, in its products, always serves political ends. (...) on the grounds that, roughly speaking, wherever one looks, one finds cases providing evidence that AP2. Buildings (built structures, generally) always serve political ends, and AP3. Buildings (built structures) are the only products of architecture. On the supposition that this fairly tracks the common view, I take for granted that the argument goes through if the premises are defensible. I propose, though, that neither AP2 nor AP3 are defensible, at least in the grand, universal fashion that they are offered. (shrink)

I sketch a version of the right to the city (RTTC) that is (a) feasible, (b) generic, and so (c) broadly amenable to many of its adherents. This right, I suggest, entails special sorts of responsibilities or obligations for architects and others tending to our built environment and the spaces—especially public space—so structured and defined. Along the way, I provide a brief account of some historical motivations for embracing the right to the city, as well as reasons for endorsing my (...) generic account. Typical reasons for supporting a right to the city are grounded in traditional rights considerations: for one, benefits of urban life point to a positive right, along the lines of an entitlement; and for another, dangers and impediments to life—and quality of life—in the city point to a negative right, along the lines of freedoms from harm and liberties to voluntary engagements. How all this has a particularly urban focus and character, and how such a right or rights translate into specifically architectural responsibilities, depends at least in part on the sorts of things cities are and how they are constituted. (shrink)

In Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy, C.D. Broad advanced a distinctive ontology of things and processes. He argues that neither things nor processes are reduced to each other but instead are reduced to some further kind of entity: “absolute process.” This paper will present Broad's theory of absolute processes and argue that they are best understood as tropes by developing a version of Donald C. Williams's trope ontology. This process ontology of tropes is then defended against objections in the contemporary metaphysics (...) literature. (shrink)

Objective Recent legislation mandating the inclusion of children in clinical trials has resulted in an increase in the number of children participating in research. We reviewed the literature regarding the reasons parents chose to accept or decline an invitation to enrol their children in clinical research. Methods We searched for qualitative studies, written in the English language that considered the experiences of parents who had been invited to enrol their children in research. SCOPUS and Web of Knowledge electronic databases and (...) reference lists of retrieved articles and review papers were searched. Retrieved articles were synthesised using the narrative synthesis method. Results 16 qualitative studies exploring the experiences of parents living in five countries whose children had a range of health conditions of varying severity were included. The health status of the child appeared to influence parents' reasons for participation. Parents whose children had life threatening conditions often considered they had no choice but to participate and many welcomed the innovation offered through research participation. Such parents also viewed the risks of research less negatively than those whose children were healthy or in the stable stage of a chronic condition. This raises questions regarding the voluntariness of informed consent by such parents. Conclusions A tailored approach is needed when discussing research participation with parents of eligible children. While parents of healthy children may be more open to discussions of altruism, those whose children have life threatening illnesses should be given adequate information about the alternatives to, and risks of, research participation. (shrink)

Urban environmental stewardship and civic engagement -- Several million trees : how planting trees is changing our civic landscape -- Digging together : understanding environmental stewardship in New York City -- Seriously digging : why engaged stewards are different and why it matters -- Tangled roots : how volunteer stewards intertwine local environmental stewardship and democratic citizenship -- Implications for urban environmentalism, the environmental movement, and civic engagement in America.

Ethical issues of architecture arise relative to its processes of creation, its reception and use, and its maintenance and life cycle—all as a function of architecture’s aesthetic or artistic character and values, though not exclusively so. While autonomism and moralism in architecture are much debated, the focus is generally on architecture as art, to the neglect of architectural aesthetics beyond architecture as art. Moreover, as an artform deeply integrated with other, nonart pursuits and domains, architecture generates more complex ethical issues (...) than do artforms that solely count as art. Harder ethical questions, then, include how—in light of such complexities—one may identify morally warranted conditions for architectural works and for gauging their propriety or relevant preferences and, as conceptually prior, what the nature is of moral agency, objects, actions, obligations, properties, virtues, and values in architecture. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Aesthetic preservationism Aesthetic value The biophilia hypothesis What is an aesthetic response to nature? Perceiving nature as nature Positive aesthetics Mixed and influenced environments Conclusion.

This roundtable discussion is based on an online symposium – The Promise of Photography: Scale, Measure and Proportion in a Conflicted Visual Milieu – which took place on 17 September 2021. Since its inception, photography has promised to set things to scale, to grant them measure and proportion, a series of promises that have also entailed moments of irrationality or conflict that persist in and continue to shape the era of global networked digital imaging technologies. The symposium started out from (...) the diagnosis that, whilst photography continues to promise an ordered, proportionate and measured world in which things can be set to their proper scale, it also acts in many ways as an agent of dismeasure, disproportion and the unscalable. In light of this, the roundtable discussion presented here examines a range of different meanings that scale, measure and proportion have accrued in the photographic context and sets out to explore conceptual frameworks and research methodologies through which the current situation might be understood. (shrink)

Religion, defined as ‘the idea of a state that transcends ourselves and our world and the working out of the consequences of that idea’, may influence the ethical thinking of scientists and engineers in two ways. The first is at the level of the individual and how personal beliefs affect the choice of research, design or development projects, relationships with other researchers and the understandings of the consequences of research on other aspects of life. The second level is that of (...) the social and cultural setting in which scientists and engineers work; how society decides which research to sponsor, how to apply the results of scientific discovery and which technology it chooses to develop and for what purposes. In neither of these areas is religious belief a necessary condition for scientists and engineers to pursue one course of action rather than another. The existence of religious belief within the individual and society is, though, part of the ethical framework in which scientist and engineers work and therefore something to which attention should be paid. Religion provides a particular perspective on what should be. Conversely science and technology provide information on the nature of the person and the universe in which we live, which must be taken into account when theologians and religious moralists apply their ethical norms and principles. (shrink)

First Edition 1995, Second Edition 2012.

A traditional defense of God in the face of pain and suffering is that humans learn from encounters with suffering – learn something wonderfully valuable that could not be learned in any other way. God is a teacher, and we humans are the students. This article examines the Problem of Evil through this paradigm. It argues that any God-as-teacher defense of evil fails on its face because God does not meet even the most lax standard for teacher behavior and action.

The address of the President to his colleagues at the Medieval Academy is an invitation to speak about a subject close to the heart. I was told by the aunt who met me at the boat when I returned from Persia at the age of fourteen — a typical Kipling child, leaving my family on the other side of the world and returning home to school — that when she asked me what I was going to do when I grew (...) up, I said firmly, “I am going to teach Chaucer.” Well, it has been my privilege to study and teach and edit and write about Chaucer for nearly half a century. So there is no subject that I could speak about closer to my heart. (shrink)

Libertarianism has a problem, perhaps an insurmountable one, and its problem lies squarely in the domain from which it is sourced: the intellectual and political elite of the West. As such, it rests on an ontological viewpoint far outside the purview and experience of quotidian man. Furthermore, it rests on an epistemology of the person as sovereign, Natural Law, which requires a concomitant education or understanding of the Classics, or at least self-awareness and the ability to think logically. Many non-intellectuals (...) are either uninterested or incapable of following the Libertarian arguments of personal sovereignty and instead submit. This unconscious submission to the authority of a government, father figure, or other self-appointed “authority” relieves the individual of the psychological pain of breaking out of the herd. C. G. Jung (1875-1961) was adamant that to be an individual is a radical act: “To develop one’s own personality is indeed an unpopular undertaking, a deviation that is highly uncongenial to the herd, an eccentricity smelling of the cenobite, as it seems to the outsider [11, Para. 298]. Further, Alexander Hamilton (1755 or 1747-1804) noted that the elite are more than happy to have the masses submit to their authority without question as it advances their control: “a fondness for power is implanted in most men, and it is natural to abuse it when acquired” [9]. The rest of this article explores this psychosis of authority and how Libertarianism suffers in popularity as a result. (shrink)