Opposing the tendency to read Thucydides as a strong realist, committed to a theory of behaviour that assumes rationality as expected utility maximization, Ned Lebow and Clifford Orwin emphasize Thucydides’ attentiveness to deviations from rationality by individuals and states. This paper argues that Thucydides grasped the principles underlying contemporary prospect theory, which explains why people over-weight small probabilities and under-weight near certain ones. Thucydides offers salient examples of excessive risk-aversion in the face of probable gains and excessive risk-seeking by decision-makers (...) faced with high probability losses. Thucydides suggests that in a democracy, leaders’ rhetoric can limit or exacerbate the political effects of bias in risk assessment. (shrink)

Education often relies on an implicit assumption that decisions are made rationally, and focuses on situations in which there are correct answers that can be known with certainty. The proposal that decision-making is often narrative, especially in contexts of radical uncertainty, suggests important changes to education practice and new questions for education research.

Matthew Walker's article has prompted us to consider neuropsychiatric disorders and pharmacological effects associated with sleep alterations, and aspects of memory affected. Not all disorders involving insomnia show memory impairment, and hypersomnias can be associated with memory deficits. The use of cholinergic medication in dementia indicates that consideration of the link between sleep and memory is more than academic.

It is widely accepted that ethical leadership is beneficial for the organization, the leader, and followers. Yet, little has been said about potential limitations of ethical leadership, particularly boundary conditions involving the same person perceived to display ethical leadership. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we argue that supervisor-induced hindrance stress and job hindrance stress are factors linked to the supervisor and work environment that may limit the positive impact of ethical leadership on employee deviance and turnover intentions. Specifically, we (...) expect that high levels of hindrance stress drain resources, specifically perceptions of social support, by inhibiting the completion of work, particularly in combination with the high expectations of ethical leaders. We test our model across two time-lagged field studies. Our results demonstrate that supervisor-induced hindrance stress mitigates some of the beneficial impact of ethical leadership and that job hindrance stress further strains these relationships. Overall, our results suggest that both forms of hindrance stress jointly impact the effectiveness of ethical leadership on important outcomes, and do so partly because of their influence on perceived social support. We discuss theoretical contributions to the ethical leadership and stress bodies of literature, as well as practical implications for managers and organizations wishing to develop ethical leaders. (shrink)

Demonstratives seem to have posed a severe difficulty for Frege’s philosophy of language, to which his doctrine of incommunicable senses was a reaction. In “The Thought,” Frege briefly discusses sentences containing such demonstratives as “today,” “here,” and “yesterday,” and then turns to certain questions that he says are raised by the occurrence of “I” in sentences (T, 24-26). He is led to say that, when one thinks about oneself, one grasps thoughts that others cannot grasp, that cannot be communicated. However, (...) nothing could be more out of the spirit of Frege’s account of sense and thought than an incommunicable, private thought. In the first part of the paper, I explain the problem demonstratives pose for Frege, and explore three ways he might have dealt with it. I argue that none of these ways provides Frege with a solution to his problem consistent with his philosophy of language. The first two are plausible as solutions, but contradict his identification of the sense expressed by a sentence with a thought. The third preserves the identification, but is implausible. In the second part, I suggest that Frege was led to his doctrine of incommunicable senses as a result of some appreciation of the difficulties his account of demonstratives faces, for these come quickly to the surface when we think about “I.” I argue that incommunicable senses won’t help. I end by trying to identify the central problem with Frege’s approach, and sketching an alternative. (shrink)

A defense of antecedent physicalism, which argues against the idea that if everything that goes on in the universe is physical, our consciousness and feelings ..

When you use the word “I” it designates you; when I use the same word, it designates me. If you use “you” talking to me, it designates me; when I use it talking to you, it designates you. “I” and “you” are indexicals. The designation of an indexical shifts from speaker to speaker, time to time, place to place. Different utterances of the same indexical designate different things, because what is designated depends not only on the meaning associated with the (...) expression, but also on facts about the utterance. An utterance of “I” designates the person who utters it; an utterance of “you” designates the person to whom it is addressed, an utterance of “here” designates the place at which the utterance is made, and so forth. Because indexicals shift their designation in this way, sentences containing indexicals can be used to say different things on different occasions. Suppose you say to me, “You are wrong and I am right about reference,” and I reply with the same sentence. We have used the same sentence, with the same meaning, but said quite different and incompatible things. (shrink)

Increasingly, commissioners and providers of services for people with intellectual disabilities are turning to assistive technology and telecare as a potential solution to the problem of the increased demand for services, brought about by an expanding population of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of relatively static or diminishing resources. While there are numerous potential benefits of assistive technology and telecare, both for service providers and service users, there are also a number of ethical issues. The aim of this (...) paper is to raise these issues and to set them within the ethical framework proposed by Beauchamp and Childress. There is a need for a wider debate as a first step in the development of strategies to address the issues raised in the paper. (shrink)

…those who accept that responsibility for a situation implies an ability to bring it about and, perhaps, an ability to prevent it, must explain how agents are able to do other than they are caused to do. Without it, they can give no defense of their counterexamples. With it, they can be confident that.

Recent critiques of methodological naturalism (MN) claim that it fails by conflicting with Christian belief and being insufficiently humble. We defend MN by tracing the real history of the debate, contending that the story as it is usually told is mythic. We show how MN works in practice, including among real scientists. The debate is a red herring. It only appears problematic because of confusion among its opponents about how scientists respond to experimental anomalies. We conclude by introducing our preferred (...) approach, Science‐Engaged Theology. (shrink)

A DIALOGUE on PERSONAL IDENTITY and IMMORTALITY This is a record of conversations of Gretchen We/rob, a teacher of philosophy at a small mid- western ...

This article introduces and motivates the notion of a “properly extensive” quantity by means of a puzzle about the reliability of certain canonical length measurements. An account of these measurements’ success, I argue, requires a modally robust connection between quantitative structure and mereology that is not mediated by the dynamics and is stronger than the constraints imposed by “mere additivity.” I outline what it means to say that length is not just extensive but properly so and then briefly sketch an (...) application of proper extensiveness to the project of providing a reductive ground for metric quantitative structure. (shrink)

Frege continues by explaining what bothered him in the Begriffsschrift, and motivated his treatment of identity in that work.2 He goes on to criticize that account. By the end of the paragraph, he has introduced his key concept of sinn, abandonning not only the Begriffsschrift account of identity, but its basical semantical framework. In the Begriffsschrift Frege’s main semantic concept was content [Inhalt ]. Already in the Begriffsschrift, he is struggling with this concept. In §3 he..

This article motivates and develops a reductive account of the structure of certain physical quantities in terms of their mereology. That is, I argue that quantitative relations like "longer than" or "3.6-times the volume of" can be analyzed in terms of necessary constraints those quantities put on the mereological structure of their instances. The resulting account, I argue, is able to capture the intuition that these quantitative relations are intrinsic to the physical systems they’re called upon to describe and explain.

In this paper, I shall defend Russell's view that Mont Blanc, with all of its snow elds, is a component part" or constituent of what is actually asserted when one utters Mont Blanc is more than 4000 meters high," and of what one believes, when one believes that Mont Blanc is 4000 meters high. I also claim, however, that a proposition that does not have Mont Blanc as a constituent plays an important role in the assertion and the belief that (...) Mont Blanc is more than 4000 meters high. Taken somewhat out of context, the quotes from Frege and Russell express insights that pull in di erent directions in the contemporary philosophy of language. Behind Frege's remark is the insight that reference is not direct but mediated. When we think and talk about things, our thoughts and words are not in direct contact with the things thought about and talked about. The meanings of our words, and the cognitive roles of our ideas, do not in and of themselves determine their reference. They get at objects via some aspects of.. (shrink)

In our society, some aspects of life are off-limits to commerce. We prohibit the selling of children and the buying of wives, juries, and kidneys. Tainted blood is an inevitable consequence of paying blood donors; even sophisticated laboratory tests cannot supplant the gift-giving relationship as a safeguard of the purity of blood. Like blood, health care is too precious, intimate, and corruptible to entrust to the market.The hospice movement in the United States is approximately 40 years old. During these past (...) four decades, the concept of holistic, multidisciplinary care for patients who are suffering from a terminal illness has evolved from a modest, grassroots constellation of primarily volunteer-run and community-governed endeavors to a multimillion dollar industry where the surviving nonprofits compete with for-profit providers, often publicly traded, managed by M.B.A.-trained executives, and governed by corporate boards. The relatively recent emergence of for-profit hospice reflects an increasing commercialization of health care in the United States, the potentially adverse impact of which has been well documented. (shrink)

As a presumed bastion of the Enlightenment values that support a critical intelligentsia, the university is often regarded as both the bedrock and beneficiary of liberal democracy. By contrast, authoritarian regimes are said to discourage higher education out of fear that the growth of a critical intelligentsia could imperil their survival. The case of China, past and present, challenges this conventional wisdom. Imperial China, the most enduring authoritarian political system in world history, thrived in large part precisely because of its (...) sponsorship of a form of higher education closely tied to state interests. Although twentieth-century revolutions brought fundamental change to Chinese politics and pedagogy, the contemporary party-state also actively promotes higher education, cultivating a mutually advantageous state-scholar nexus and thereby reducing the likelihood of intellectual-led opposition. As in the imperial past, authoritarian rule in China today is buttressed by a pattern of educated acquiescence, with academia acceding to political compliance in exchange for the many benefits conferred upon it by the state. The role of educated acquiescence in enabling Chinese authoritarianism highlights the contributions of a cooperative academy to authoritarian durability and raises questions with prevailing assumptions that associate the flourishing of higher education with liberal democracy. (shrink)

This article critically questions the commercialization of hospice care and the ethical concerns associated with the industry's movement toward “market-driven medicine” at the end of life. For example, the article examines issues raised by an influx of for-profit hospice providers whose business model appears at its core to have an ethical conflict of interest between shareholders doing well and terminal patients dying well. Yet, empirical data analyzing the experience of patients across the hospice industry are limited, and general claims that (...) end-of-life patient care is inferior among for-profit providers or even that their business practices are somehow unseemly when compared to nonprofit providers cannot be substantiated. In fact, non-profit providers are not immune to potentially conflicting concerns regarding financial viability (i.e., “no margin, no mission”). Given the limitations of existing empirical data and contrasting ideological commitments of for-profit versus non-profit providers, the questions raised by this article highlight important areas for reflection and further study. Policymakers and regulators are cautioned to keep ethical concerns in the fore as an increasingly commercialized hospice industry continues to emerge as a dominant component of the U.S. health care system. Both practitioners and researchers are encouraged to expand their efforts to better understand how business practices and commercial interests may compromise the death process of the patient and patient's family — a process premised upon a philosophy and ethical tradition that earlier generations of hospice providers and proponents established as a trusted, end-of-life alternative. (shrink)

One of HLA Hart's main contributions to jurisprudence is his theory of social rules. Hart said, essentially, that a social rule exists if the members of a society act in some way and have a certain attitude. Most legal philosophers think that Hart's account of this attitude is too general, however, and that his theory is overinclusive as a result. In this article, I draw on recent work in the philosophy of action to propose a more precise account of the (...) relevant attitude, and a revised version of Hart's theory. I claim that a social rule exists if the members of a society act in some way and ‘accept’ they ought to act this way, independent of their beliefs about the matter. One of the implications of this idea is that the attitude that underlies a social rule is closely analogous to a presumption or fiction about what ought to be done. -/- . (shrink)

Intentionality is a term for a feature exhibited by many mental states and activities: being directed at objects. Two related things are meant by this. First, when one desires or believes or hopes, one always believes or desires or hopes something. Let’s assume that belief report 1) is true.

The topic of this essay is “the slingshot,” a short argument that purports to show that sentences1 designate (stand for, refer to) truth values. Versions of this argument have been used by Frege 2, Church 3, Quine4 and Davidson5; thus it is historically important, even if it immediately strikes one as fishy. The argument turns on two principles, which I call substitution and redistribution. In “Semantic Innocence and Uncompromising Situations,”6 Jon Barwise and I rejected both principles, as part of our (...) attempt.. (shrink)

This article addresses a stated need within the food justice movement scholarship to increase the attention paid to the political socialization of hired farm hands in industrial agriculture. In Canada, tackling the problem of farm worker equity has particular social and political contours related to the Canadian horticultural industry’s reliance on a state-managed migrant agricultural labour program designed to fill the sector’s labour market demands. As Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program produces relations of ‘unfree labour’, engaging migrant farm workers in (...) social movement initiatives can be particularly challenging. Critical educational interventions designed to encourage migrant farm workers’ contribution to contemporary social movements in Canada must therefore confront the socio-cultural obstacles that constrict migrant farm workers’ opportunities to participate as full members of their communities. In this article, I argue that social justice oriented approaches to community-based arts can provide a means for increasing the social movement contributions of farm workers employed through managed labour migration schema such as Canada’s SAWP. (shrink)

Legal discourse consists largely of legal claims. These are claims that there is a legal obligation, legal right, or other legal incident. What is the meaning of “legal obligation”, “legal right” and so on in legal claims? The standard view among philosophers of law is that “legal” indicates that, according to law, there is a moral obligation, moral right or other moral incident. Here I set out a new objection to the standard view. The objection is that the standard view (...) is unable to account for the use of legal claims in some common forms of logically complex arguments. (shrink)

This paper examines the argument that moral approval of homosexuality is analogous to the early church's inclusion of gentiles. The analogy has a long but often overlooked history, dating back to the start of the modern gay-rights movement. It has recently gained greater prominence because of its importance to the Episcopal Church's debate with the wider Anglican Communion. Beginning with the Episcopal Church argument, we see that there are five specific areas most in need of further clarification. In this essay (...) I examine significant uses of the analogy from the prior 25 years to see how effectively they address these five areas. I conclude that the conversation surrounding the Gentile Analogy is the current, best hope for mutual understanding among Christians about homosexuality. However, if the analogy is to advance the Christian conversation, much greater care and precision is needed in its application from traditionalists and revisionists alike. (shrink)

In §8 of his Begriffsschrift (1879), Gottlob Frege discusses issues related to identity. Frege begins his most famous essay, “On Sense and Denotation” (1892), published 13 years later, by criticizing the view advocated in §8. He returns to these issues in the concluding paragraph. Controversies continue over these important passages. We offer an interpretation and discuss some alternatives. We defend that in the Begriffsschrift, Frege does not hold that identity is a relation between signs. §8 of the Begriffsschrift is motivated (...) by the conflict between two different criteria for sameness of conceptual content of sentences. To resolve that conflict, Frege introduces ‘≡’ in §8 and, thus, circumstances with names as constituents. To the same end, in “On Sense and Denotation,” Frege introduces senses and Thoughts and abandons both ‘≡’ and circumstances. He solves what we call the Co-instantiation problem, and disregards, but does not solve, the Name problem. (shrink)

According to substantivalism, spacetime points and regions are real entities whose existence is not dependent on matter. In this paper, I motivate and defend a version of substantivalism which takes the totality of spacetime as fundamental, and show how this position avoids certain problem cases, in particular the objection from static Leibniz shifts, and better conforms to how we think about space in physics. I argue that, even though the static Leibniz shifts do not show ordinary substantivalism is committed to (...) in-principle undetectable physical structure ), they do indicate something problematic about the modal profile of space-time and its constituents. While the problem is modal, the solution cannot be solely a matter of revising the substantivalist's modal claims. Rather, I argue, the substantivalist must revise her background ontology of space-time. I show how this can be done by developing substantivalist theory that rejects this picture in favor of an alternative ontology of space-time in the spirit of priority monism. (shrink)

When a toddler knows a word, what does she actually know? Many categories have multiple relevant properties; for example, shape and color are relevant to membership in the category banana. How do toddlers prioritize these properties when recognizing familiar words, and are there systematic differences among children? In this study, toddlers viewed pairs of objects associated with prototypical colors. On some trials, objects were typically colored ; on other trials, colors were switched. On each trial, toddlers were directed to find (...) a target object. Overall, recognition was disrupted when colors were switched, as measured by eye movements. Moreover, individual differences in vocabularies predicted recognition differences: Toddlers who say fewer shape-based words were more disrupted by color switches. “Knowing” a word may not mean the same thing for all toddlers; different toddlers prioritize different facets of familiar objects in their lexical representations. (shrink)

To understand H.L.A. Hart's general theory of law, it is helpful to distinguish betweensubstantiveandmethodologicallegal positivism. Substantive legal positivism is the view that there is no necessary connection between morality and the content of law. Methodological legal positivism is the view that legal theory can and should offer a normatively neutral description of a particular social phenomenon, namely law. Methodological positivism holds, we might say, not that there is no necessary connection between morality and law, but rather that there is no (...) connection, necessary or otherwise, between morality and legal theory. The respective claims of substantive and methodological positivism are, at least on the surface, logically independent. Hobbes and Bentham employed normative methodologies to defend versions of substantive positivism, and in modern times Michael Moore has developed what can be regarded as a variant of methodological positivism to defend a theory of natural law. (shrink)