As we write, U.S. cities and states with extensive community transmission of Covid‐19 are in harm's way—not only because of the disease itself but also because of prior and current failures to act. During the 2009 influenza pandemic, public health agencies and hospitals developed but never adequately implemented preparedness plans. Focused on efficiency in a competitive market, health systems had few incentives to maintain stockpiles of essential medical equipment. Just‐in‐time economic models resulted in storage of only those supplies needed then. (...) At the same time, global purchasing in search of lower prices reduced the number of U.S. suppliers, with hospitals dependent on foreign companies. There is still a possibility that the pandemic will be manageably bad rather than unmanageably catastrophic in this country. Immediate, powerful, and sustained federal action could make the difference. (shrink)

"Der Artikel befasst sich mit den spezifischen Materialien, die dem Zauberkünstler und Kinopionier Georges Méliès seine Illusionen ermöglicht haben. Die Materialität, die die von ihm auf Bühne und Leinwand geschaffenen Illusionen bewerkstelligt, besteht gleichermaßen aus dem Einsatz von Elektrizität, Mechanik, Pneumatik, Optik, Akustik und Chemie. Der Einsatz dieser Ressourcen lässt sich nicht nach Theaterillusionen und Leinwandillusionen unterscheiden, vielmehr ist die Kopräsenz von theatralen und filmischen Techniken in der Reflexion über die von Méliès geschaffenen Effekte des Verschwindens zu berücksichtigen. The article (...) deals with the specific materials that enabled the Magician and cinema pioneer Georges Méliès to produce his illusions. The materiality that accomplished the illusions created by him on stage and screen consists equally of the use of electricity, mechanics, pneumatics, optics, acoustics and chemistry. The use of these resources can not be divided into theater illusions and screen illusions; on the contrary, any reflection on Méliès’ effects of disappearance has to consider the co-presence of theatrical and cinematic techniques. ". (shrink)

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice brings together leading researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe in an interdisciplinary collection of essays to chart the future of critical inquiry in gender and comedy studies.

The complete system of knowledge is a standard trope of science fiction, a techno-utopian dream and an aesthetic ideal. It is Solomon’s House, the Encyclopaedia and the Museum. It is also an ideology – of Enlightenment, High Modernism and absolute governance. Far from ending the dream of a total archive, 20th-century positivist rationality brought it ever closer. From Paul Otlet’s ‘Mundaneum’ to Mass-Observation, from the Unity of Science movement to Wikipedia, the dream of universal knowledge dies hard. As a (...) political tool, the total archive encompasses population statistics, gross domestic product, indices of the Standard of Living and the international ideology of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the World Health Organization, the free market and, most recently, Big Data. Questions of the total archive engage key issues in the philosophy of classification, the poetics of the universal, the ideology of surveillance and the technologies of information retrieval. What are the social structures and political dynamics required to sustain total archives, and what are the temporalities implied by such projects? This introduction and the articles that follow describe and place in historical context a series of concrete instances of totality. Our analysis is arranged according to four central themes: the relationship between the Archive (singular) and archives (plural); the image of the archive and the aesthetics of totality; pathologies of accumulation; and the specific historical trajectory of the total archive in the 19th and 20th centuries. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Vexed Pharmacopeia: Musings on Two Thousand Years of Scholarship Regarding the Ancient Spice Trade ROGER MICHEL ALEXY KARENOWSKA GEORGE ALTSHULER MATTHEW COBB Alice went back to the table. She found a little bottle on it, and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words “DRINK ME” beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say “Drink me,” (...) but the wise little Alice was not going to do that in a hurry. “No, I’ll look first,” she said, “and see whether it’s marked ‘poison’ or not.” However, the bottle was not marked “poison,” so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast), she very soon finished it off. “What a curious feeling!” said Alice. —Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) যে ব্যামোর দেখবেন সাতান্ন রকমের ওষুধ, বুঝে নেবেন, সে ব্যামো ওষুধে সারে না।1 —Syed Mujtaba Ali, চাচা কাহিনী (1955) introduction Mankind’s fascination with spice dates back at least 8,000 years—both culinary and medicinal herbs are referenced in the Vedas, Hinduism’s oldest religious text. Spice is also peppered throughout the Old Testament.2 The Song of Solomon recites: “Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikearion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 2 a vexed pharmacopeia nard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.”3 Every one of these fruits, plants and spices remained popular in the West throughout antiquity, into the Middle Ages, and beyond. As early as 3000 bc, trade routes had connected the Mediterranean to the near east. Courtesy of this “Spice Road,” ancient Mediterranean civilizations had access to a wide range of horseradishes, mustards, peppers, gingers and other spices. The Greeks and Romans had a special relationship with black pepper—so much so that four out of five recipes in Apicius’s famous 1st century cookbook4 called for a sprinkling of this sometimes-costly commodity. It is perhaps not coincidental that black pepper contains heat-producing alkaloids very similar to those found in New World chili peppers. Much has been written about the important role of chilis in South and Central American culture—a region that, by the Middle Ages, was in many respects the equal of Europe in “artistic sensibility, social complexity, and political organization.”5 The habanero and its capsainoid cousins were at the heart of the culinary and ceremonial customs of Mesoamerica, their biting heat and florid livery an apt metaphor for the “extravagant feats of human butchery”6 —very much in the tradition of the spectacular venationes of ancient Rome—for which the Aztecs at least were well known. To what extent was hot spice also a significant part of the culinary, medical and cultural landscape of the Old World? At a conference hosted by the Institute for Digital Archaeology at the University of Oxford last December, experts from Europe and North America examined the literary, historical, archaeological and scientific evidence around these questions. Their inquiry received a boost from new and rapidly developing techniques for examining the physical evidence of ancient diet and food production—laboratory techniques not available even five years ago. There was also fresh medical evidence to consider: significant research is being done in the area of chemosensation in the context of spicy foods. This Roger Michel, Alexy Karenowska, George Altshuler, Matthew Cobb 3 includes trying to understand how different so-called “TRP channels” in the nervous system process spice information— in particular, the connection between spice and endorphin levels. It appears that many of the hot spices available in antiquity could potentially trigger the same TRP channels as the capsaicin-charged Mesoamerican peppers. This creates a nice connection between old and new world spice that helps to explain and contextualize both. However, in the end, firm conclusions at the Oxford conference were scarce. It quickly became clear that more work, a greater diversity of viewpoints, better refined questions, and a change of venue were required to make additional progress. To paraphrase William Boot, the accidental protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s autobiographical Scoop (wherein events around... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 1, April 2000, pp. 159-169 Hume and Matthew Prior's "Alma" CHRISTOPHER MACLACHLAN In 1987 M. A. Box identified the verse quotations in Hume's essays "Of Essay Writing" and "The Epicurean."1 It is therefore odd that in their edition of a selection of the essays, Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar should state in a note to "Of Essay Writing" that "the source of this (...) couplet has not been located. In his [1985] edition of the Essays Eugene Miller has suggested that it may belong to the same author or poem as the couplet quoted in 'The Epicurean'."2 Miller of course was quite right, for, as Box showed, both couplets come from Matthew Prior's poem "Alma: or, The Progress of the Mind," first published in 1718.3 The first couplet reads as follows in "Of Essay Writing": Stunn'd and worn out with endless chat, Of Will did this, and Nan did that? (Essays 1) The question mark is not in the original, but is required because Hume is using the quotation to end an interrogative sentence, and Hume has replaced "Nan said that" with "Nan did that," but otherwise these are clearly lines 524 and 525 of the third canto of "Alma" (p. 514). In "The Epicurean" appear these lines: What foolish figure must it make? Do nothing else but sleep and ake. (Essays 79) Christopher MacLachlan is at the School of English, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9AL, Scotland, e-mail: [email protected] 160 Christopher MacLachlan The italics are not in the original, and the first line reads "A foolish figure He must make," but these are clearly lines 116 and 117 of the first canto of "Alma." Beyond these identifications Box's note does not go, except to point out a reference to the poem in Hume's Treatise. Hume is arguing that "shou'd an author compose a treatise, of which one part was serious and profound, another light and humorous, every one wou'd condemn so strange a mixture, and wou'd accuse him of the neglect of all rules of art and criticism," one of which he says "requires a consistency in every performance" since "the mind is incapable of passing in a moment from one passion and disposition to quite a different one." But he immediately adds: Yet this makes us not blame Mr. Prior for joining his Alma and his Solomon in the same volume; tho' that admirable poet has succeeded perfectly well in the gaiety of the one, as well as in the melancholy of the other... because [the reader] considers these performances as entirely different, and by this break in the ideas, breaks the progress of the affections. (T II ii 8)4 This is useful in confirming Hume's acquaintance with the poem. His use of its name, and the contrast with Prior's earlier work, "Solomon on the Vanity of the World,"5 suggests he also expected his readers to be familiar at least with the nature of both poems. Even in 1781, when Samuel Johnson opened the second volume of his Lives of the English Poets with his life of Prior, he could write as though Prior were still a well-known poet, though there are signs in Johnson's comments on the poems themselves that they were not as widely read as before. He does, however, single out "Alma" and "Solomon" for particular comment. Johnson's life of Prior may signal the beginning of the decay of his reputation from the relatively high regard in which he was held in the first part of the eighteenth century, when he could be ranked with Pope and Swift, to his present obscurity. But more striking than the fact that Hume shared a taste for Prior's verse is the prominence he gave to "Alma," and the implication that he knew this poem very well, for the couplets he quotes from it are not only from widely spaced parts of the poem (one just over a hundred lines from its beginning, and the other less than a hundred from its end),6 but they... (shrink)

Peacemakers as children of God (Mt 5:9): A pragmatic-linguistic reading. The article investigates different options of the pragmatic meaning (implicature) of the beatitude in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God’ (Mt 5:9). It also explores this Jesus logion’s seemingly contradiction with Jesus’ remark in die Matthean mission discourse, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (...) (Mt 10:34). The pragmatic use of the concept ‘peace’ in Matthew is probed against the background of scribal activity in the context of the restoration of villages in north-Galilee and south-Syria after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. The pax Romana and Josephus’ appeal to the inhabitants of these villages to collaborate with the Romans is described as the context of these Matthean Jesus-logia. It argues that Matthew interprets Jesus as a ‘Mosaic Joshua’ in continuum with the Judaic tradition of Solomon as the ‘king of peace’, especially 1 Chronicles 22:5-11. The macarism about the ‘peacemakers as children of God’ is interpreted in correlation with the macarism ‘blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’ (Mt 5:4). The article concludes with the finding that the sword-motif in Matthew 10:4 does not contradict the beatitude on peace in Matthew 5:9. (shrink)

Peacemakers as children of God (Mt 5:9): A pragmatic-linguistic reading. The article investigates different options of the pragmatic meaning (implicature) of the beatitude in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God’ (Mt 5:9). It also explores this Jesus logion’s seemingly contradiction with Jesus’ remark in die Matthean mission discourse, ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (...) (Mt 10:34). The pragmatic use of the concept ‘peace’ in Matthew is probed against the background of scribal activity in the context of the restoration of villages in north-Galilee and south-Syria after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans. The pax Romana and Josephus’ appeal to the inhabitants of these villages to collaborate with the Romans is described as the context of these Matthean Jesus-logia. It argues that Matthew interprets Jesus as a ‘Mosaic Joshua’ in continuum with the Judaic tradition of Solomon as the ‘king of peace’, especially 1 Chronicles 22:5-11. The macarism about the ‘peacemakers as children of God’ is interpreted in correlation with the macarism ‘blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted’ (Mt 5:4). The article concludes with the finding that the sword-motif in Matthew 10:4 does not contradict the beatitude on peace in Matthew 5:9. (shrink)

Interest in the ethics of research on human subjects, stimulated by atrocious human experimentation during WWII and the resultant Nuremberg Code, has been sustained by examples of unethical research in many countries and by proliferation of codes and guidelines. Such interest has intensified in recent years in association with expanding international collaborative research endeavors. The ongoing controversy in international research ethics takes place at two levels. At the practical level it is about the competing concerns of those predominantly interested in (...) doing research to advance knowledge and those who, while supporting the need for research, are more acutely aware of the potential to exploit vulnerable participants, especially in developing countries. At the level of theory the controversy pits ethical universalism against moral relativism.In her recent review of agreements and controversies in international research ethics, Ruth Macklin has concluded that, despite seeming agreement on several issues, many different viewpoints persist. In her view it is unlikely that these will be resolved easily. (shrink)

This book brings together several directions of work in model theory between the late 1950s and early 1980s.

In meeting the challenges of fashioning a new health care system, South Africa stands poised to contribute to a better future for its own citizens and the subcontinent.

In meeting the challenges of fashioning a new health care system, South Africa stands poised to contribute to a better future for its own citizens and the subcontinent.

This book examines a main theme in religious epistemology, namely, the possibility of knowledge of God. Most often philosophers consider the rationality or justification of propositional belief about God, particularly beliefs about the existence and nature of God; and they will assess the conditions under which, if there is a God, such propositional beliefs would be knowledge, particularly in light of counter-evidence or the availability of religious disagreement. This book surveys such familiar areas, then turns toward newer and less-developed terrain: (...) interpersonal epistemology, namely what it is to know another person. It then explores the prospects for understanding what it might take to know God relationally, the contours of which are significant for many theistic traditions. (shrink)

In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes “attract” the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to (...) increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut) generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing. (shrink)

Too often, since the 19th century, sensitivity is dismissed as mere “sentimentality” in philosophy and in literature. It is charged that sentimentality is distorting, self-indulgent, self-deceptive. I argue that all of these charges are misplaced or themselves distorted and betray a suspicion of emotions and the tender sentiments that is unwarranted.

Spirituality is often dismissed as mere sentimentality. It is also often opposed to science and the scientific worldview, as if the one is anathema to the other. I suggest that spirituality has distinct advantages over religion and is not at all opposed to science or scientific thinking.

Pragmatism has enjoyed a considerable revival in the latter part of the twentieth century, but what precisely constitutes pragmatism remains a matter of dispute. In reconstructing the pragmatic tradition in political philosophy, Matthew Festenstein rejects the idea that it is a single, cohesive doctrine. His incisive analysis brings out the commonalities and shared concerns among contemporary pragmatists while making clear their differences in how they would resolve those concerns. His study begins with the work of John Dewey and the (...) moral and psychological conceptions that shaped his philosophy. Here Festenstein lays out the major philosophic issues with which first Dewey, and then his heirs, would grapple. The book's second part traces how Dewey's approach has been differently developed, especially in the work of three contemporary pragmatic thinkers: Richard Rorty, Jurgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. This first full-length critical study of the relationship between the pragmatist tradition and political philosophy fills a significant gap in contemporary thought. (shrink)

Ḥeleḳ Rishon, kerekh 1. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot ṿe-tsoraf la-hen Sefer Minḥat ḳenaʼot le-R. Aba Mari de-Lunil [Haḳdamah-pereḳ 37] -- Ḥeleḳ Rishon, kerekh 2. Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Miḳra Midrash ṿe-deʻot ṿe-tsoraf la-hen Sefer Minḥat ḳenaʼot le-R. Aba Mari de-Lunil [pereḳ 38-pereḳ 127] -- Ḥeleḳ sheni. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Masekhet Berakhot ṿe-Seder Zeraʻim -- Ḥeleḳ shelishi. Teshuvot ha-shayakhot le-Masekhet Shabat ṿe-ʻEruvin.

This paper explores a fundamental similarity between cognitive models for crying and conceptions of insight, enlightenment or, in the context of art, “aesthetic experience.” All of which center on a process of initial discrepancy, followed by schema change, and conclude in a personal adjustment or a “transformation” of one’s image of the self. Because tears are argued to mark one of the only physical indicators of this cognitive outcome, and because the process is particularly salient in examples with art, I (...) argue that crying may provide an intriguing marker for empirical study of perceiving art. To explore this parallel, I offer a review of crying theory as well as of tearful cases with art, pointing out the key cognitive elements. I then introduce an expanded crying model, based upon our recent model of art experience which does consider insight and adjustment or application of the self. I also consider multiple emotional and evaluative factors, which may co-vary with crying response. This theoretical discussion is then applied in three exploratory, survey-based studies, conducted within U.K., Japan and U.S. museums, and including what is claimed to be the 20th century’s most tear-inducing abstract paintings. Results showed—with cross-cultural consistency—significant correlation between “feeling like crying” and a collection of responses posited to indicate a full progression to aesthetic experience. This also found correlation to positive assessment of artwork goodness, beauty, understanding of meaning, and to final reported self reflection and epiphany. I argue that, beyond the question of why we may cry, by considering implications of what tears may indicate for information processing, feeling like crying may be a compelling basis for identifying outcomes of perceptual (art) experience. (shrink)

In ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Turing, sceptical of the question ‘Can machines think?’, quickly replaces it with an experimentally verifiable test: the imitation game. I suggest that for such a move to be successful the test needs to be relevant, expansive, solvable by exemplars, unpredictable, and lead to actionable research. The Imitation Game is only partially successful in this regard and its reliance on language, whilst insightful for partially solving the problem, has put AI progress on the wrong foot, prescribing (...) a top-down approach for building thinking machines. I argue that to fix shortcomings with modern AI systems a nonverbal operationalisation is required. This is provided by the recent Animal-AI Testbed, which translates animal cognition tests for AI and provides a bottom-up research pathway for building thinking machines that create predictive models of their environment from sensory input. (shrink)

Type specimens are used to designate species. What is the nature of the relation between a type specimen and the species it designates? If species names are rigid designators, and type specimens ostensively define species, then that relation is, at the very least, a close one. Levine :325–338, 2001) argues that the relationship of type specimen to a named species is one of necessity—and that this presents problems for the individuality thesis. Namely, it seems odd that a contingently selected specimen (...) should belong to a species of necessity. In considering Levine’s argument, LaPorte suggests that recognizing the distinction between de re and de dicto necessity resolves Levine’s worries. I reconsider the motivating question: does a type specimen belong of necessity to the species that it designates? In light of taxonomic cases and practice the answer is clear: definitively not. This is particularly clear in the case of re-designation of types by taxonomic decree. I explain how this helps reveal how taxonomists prioritize competing theoretical commitments, and offer a defense of the individuality thesis as applied to these particular cases. In short, I demonstrate how to misidentify a type specimen. (shrink)

The attention paid to the influence of organizational philanthropy on consumer responses has precipitated a shift in the role this practice plays in organizational dynamics—with philanthropy becoming an increasingly strategic marketing tool. The authors develop and test a model predicting that: (1) perceived organizational credibility will mediate the relationship between awareness of philanthropy and the outcomes of advocacy and financial sacrifice; (2) consumer social consciousness will moderate the relationship between awareness of philanthropy and firm credibility, and between credibility and the (...) outcome variables; and (3) these moderated relationships will be mediated by perceived credibility. Data obtained from a sample of professional golf patrons support our assertions. Notably, the findings implicate perceived credibility as a key intervening variable in the hypothesized relationships for the PGA Tour. (shrink)

Recently, many philosophers of religion have sought to defend the rationality of religious belief by shifting the burden of proof onto the critic of religious belief. Some have appealed to extraordinary religious experience in making their case. Religious Experience, Justification, and History restores neglected explanatory and historical considerations to the debate. Through a study of William James, it contests the accounts of religious experience offered in recent works. Through reflection on the history of philosophy, it also unravels the philosophical use (...) of the term justification. Matthew Bagger argues that the commitment to supernatural explanations implicit in the religious experiences employed to justify religious belief contradicts the modern ideal of human flourishing. (shrink)

While many political theorists have focused on the question of whether states have a duty to grant citizenship to noncitizens, this article examines the issues associated with the state’s withdrawal of citizenship. Denationalization powers have recently emerged as a controversial political issue in a number of liberal states, making their ethical scrutiny important. I begin by considering the historical practice of banishment and how denationalization power emerged and became consolidated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the first (...) half of the twentieth century. I then discuss the nature of liberal objections to the power. My focus next shifts to the United Kingdom’s Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002, which attempted to create a “liberal” denationalization power. In the final section of the article, I discuss whether the Act successfully addresses liberal concerns and in so doing shed light on the possibility of reconciling liberal principles with conditional citizenship. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the difference between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in metaethics. It considers the main arguments for and against each view, as well as arguments that the distinction cannot survive critical scrutiny.

This paper builds upon, but substantially revises, John Harsanyi's concept of ‘extended preferences’. An individual ‘history’ is a possible life that some person (a subject) might lead. Harsanyi supposes that a given spectator, formulating her ethical preferences, can rank histories by empathetic projection: putting herself ‘in the shoes’ of various subjects. Harsanyi then suggests that interpersonal comparisons be derived from the utility function representing spectators’ (supposedly common) ranking of history lotteries. Unfortunately, Harsanyi's proposal has various flaws, including some that have (...) hitherto escaped scholarly attention. In particular, it ignores the limits of personal identity. If the subject has welfare-relevant attributes that the spectator cannot acquire without changing who she is, full empathetic identification of the latter with the former becomes impossible. This paper proposes instead to usesympathyas the attitude on a spectator's part that allows us to make sense of her extended preferences. Sympathy – an attitude of care and concern – is a psychological state quite different from empathy. We should also allow for hetereogeneity in spectators’ extended preferences. Interpersonal comparisons emerge from a plurality of sympathetic spectators, not (as per Harsanyi) from a common empathetic ranking. (shrink)

Expert-informed public policy often depends on a degree of public trust in the relevant expert authorities. But if lay citizens are not themselves authorities on the relevant area of expertise, how can they make good judgements about the trustworthiness of those who claim such authority? I argue that the answer to this question depends on the kind of trust under consideration. Specifically, I maintain that a distinction between epistemic trust and recommendation trust has consequences for novices judging the trustworthiness of (...) experts. I argue for this by identifying the unique difficulties that emerge when a novice is asked not just to believe expert testimony, but to follow expert recommendations. I outline criteria for novice judgements of expert trustworthiness that have been proposed by Elizabeth Anderson and show that novel problems emerge for her criteria when we shift focus from epistemic trust to recommendation trust. More is needed when we are asked not just to believe the experts but to act as they recommend, because novices looking for trustworthy expert recommendations need to establish whether the recommended course of action supports what is important to them and accords with their values. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new and testable view about the nature of species and other evolving lineages, according to which they are feedback systems. On this view, it is a mistake to think gene flow, niche sharing, and trait frequency similarities between populations are among variables that interact to cause some further downstream variable that distinguishes evolving lineages from each other, some sort of “species cohesion” for example. Instead, gene flow, niche sharing, similarities between populations, and other causal variables feed (...) into each other—instances of these at earlier times help cause instances of these same variables at later times. And any lineage-identifying cohesion just is the recurrence or cycling of these feedback relations within metapopulations over generations. Such cohesion can then be represented as variable M within multi-dimensional variable spaces, where values of M vary dynamically with the frequency and magnitude of feedback relations. Related conditions for being a species or other evolving lineage are then clarified. To argue for the development and testing of this view, the paper shows how it improves upon others. (shrink)

Emotional clarity and attention to emotions represent the extent to which people understand and attend to their own emotions, respectively, and are broad facets of emotional awareness, alexithymia, and emotional intelligence. To examine the extent to which these two constructs are associated, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies including well-validated self-report measures of trait clarity and attention to emotion. Clarity and attention were moderately, positively associated. Assessment instrument, but not sample gender or age, moderated the association between clarity and attention. (...) Analyses of between-study heterogeneity and publication bias suggested that results were valid and generalizable. We discuss potential causes of the association between clarity and attention, and elaborate on the implications of our results for emotion regulation, well-being, and psychopathology. (shrink)

By scholarly consensus, extant fragments from, and testimony about, Aristotle’s lost dialogue Eudemus provide strong evidence for thinking that Aristotle at some point defended the human soul’s unqualified immortality (either in whole or in part). I reject this consensus and develop an alternative, deflationary, speculative, but textually supported proposal to explain why Aristotle might have written a dialogue featuring arguments for the soul’s unqualified immortality. Instead of defending unqualified immortality as a doctrine, I argue, the Eudemus was most likely offering (...) a dramatically engaging propaedeutic to the sort of philosophical inquiry about the soul and its prospects that Aristotle pursues more scientifically in the De anima and Parva naturalia. (shrink)

Recent philosophical discussions of intersubjectivity generally start by stating or assuming that our ability to understand and interact with others is enabled by a ‘folk psychology’ or ‘theory of mind’. Folk psychology is characterized as the ability to attribute intentional states, such as beliefs and desires, to others, in order to predict and explain their behaviour. Many authors claim that this ability is not merely one amongst many constituents of interpersonal understanding but an underlying core that enables social life. For (...) example, Churchland states that folk psychology ‘embodies our baseline understanding’ of others. Currie and Sterelny similarly assert that ‘our basic grip on the social world depends on our being able to see our fellows as motivated by beliefs and desires we sometimes share and sometimes do not’. And, as Frith and Happé put it, ‘this ability appears to be a prerequisite for normal social interaction: in everyday life we make sense of each other’s behaviour by appeal to a belief-desire psychology’. (shrink)

A categorial dualist, John Heil includes substance and property in his ontology. But in his case for dualism, there are pressures to drop substance or property and endorse monism, as well as pressures to include both. Rather than defend monism or dualism, I introduce a distinction. If a category is a kind of entities, then substance is the only category. If an accounting of categories is to include property, then property must enter not as a kind of entities but a (...) kind of aspects of reality. The distinction is worth deploying for two main reasons. First, it makes plain an important difference between substances and properties, which categorial dualism obscures. Second, the distinction reduces puzzlement about whether and how to include relation in an accounting of categories. (shrink)