Four studies tested the hypothesis that a weaker belief in free will would be related to feeling less gratitude. In Studies 1a and 1b, a trait measure of free will belief was positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude. In Study 2, participants whose free will belief was weakened (vs. unchanged or bolstered) reported feeling less grateful for events in their past. Study 3 used a laboratory induction of gratitude. Participants with an experimentally reduced (vs. increased) belief in free (...) will reported feeling less grateful for the favor. In Study 4, a reduced (vs. increased) belief in free will led to less gratitude in a hypothetical favor scenario. This effect was serially mediated by perceiving the benefactor as having less free will and therefore as being less sincerely motivated. These findings suggest that belief in free will is an important part of being able to feel gratitude. (shrink)

The UK government has recently committed to adopting a new policy—dubbed ‘Martha’s Rule’—which has been characterised as providing patients the right to rapidly access a second clinical opinion in urgent or contested cases. Support for the rule emerged following the death of Martha Mills in 2021, after doctors failed to admit her to intensive care despite concerns raised by her parents. We argue that framing this issue in terms of patient rights is not productive, and should be avoided. Insofar as (...) the ultimate goal of Martha’s Rule is the provision of a clinical service that protects patient safety, an approach that focuses on the obligations of the health system—rather than the individual rights of patients—will better serve this goal. We outline an alternative approach that situates rapid clinical review as part of a suite of services aimed at enhancing and protecting patient care. This approach would make greater progress towards addressing the difficult systemic issues that Martha’s Rule does not, while also better engaging with the constraints of clinical practice. (shrink)

Rho GTPases are critically important and are centrally positioned regulators of the actomyosin cytoskeleton. By influencing the organization and architecture of the cytoskeleton, Rho proteins play prominent roles in many cellular processes including adhesion, migration, intra‐cellular transportation, and proliferation. The most important method of Rho GTPase regulation is via the GTPase cycle; however, post‐translational modifications (PTMs) also play critical roles in Rho protein regulation. Relative to other PTMs such as lipidation or phosphorylation that have been extensively characterized, protein oxidation is (...) a regulatory PTM that has been poorly studied. Protein oxidation primarily occurs from the reaction of reactive oxygen species (ROS), such as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), with amino acid side chain thiols on cysteine (Cys) and methionine (Met) residues. The versatile redox modifications of cysteine residues exemplify their integral role in cell signalling processes. Here we review prominent members of the Rho GTPase family and discuss how lipidation, phosphorylation, and oxidation on conserved cysteine residues affects their regulation and function. (shrink)

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider (...) philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics offers the most authoritative and compelling guide to this diverse and fertile field of philosophy. Twenty-four of the world's most distinguished specialists provide brand-new essays about 'what there is': what kinds of things there are, and what relations hold among entities falling under various categories. They give the latest word on such topics as identity, modality, time, causation, persons and minds, freedom, and vagueness. The Handbook's unrivaled breadth and depth make it the definitive reference work (...) for students and academics across the philosophical spectrum. (shrink)

This wide-ranging book reconstructs this debate and places within their contemporary contexts the rival claims concerning the nature of the cosmos and the ...

Philosophical discussions of the morality of suicide have tended to focus on its justifiability from an agent’s point of view rather than on the justifiability of attempts by others to intervene so as to prevent it. This paper addresses questions of suicide intervention within a broadly Kantian perspective. In such a perspective, a chief task is to determine the motives underlying most suicidal behaviour. Kant wrongly characterizes this motive as one of self-love or the pursuit of happiness. Psychiatric and scientific (...) evidence suggests that suicide is instead motivated by a nihilistic disenchantment with the possibility of happiness which, at its apex, results in the loss of the individual’s conception of her practical identity. Because of this, methods of intervention that appeal to agents’ happiness, while morally benign, will prove ineffective in forestalling suicide. At the same time, more aggressive methods violate the Kantian concern for autonomy. This apparent dilemma can be resolved by seeing suicide intervention as an action undertaken in non-ideal circumstances, where otherwise unjustified manipulation, coercion, or paternalism are morally permitted. (shrink)

Metaphysics: Contemporary Readings is a comprehensive anthology that draws together leading philosophers writing on the major themes in Metaphysics. Chapters appear under the headings: Universals Particulars Modality and Possible Worlds Causation Time Persistence Realism and Anti-Realism Each section is prefaced by an introductory essay by the editor which guides students gently into each topic. Articles by the following leading philosophers are included: Allaire, Anscombe, Armstrong, Black, Broad, Casullo, Dummett, Ewing, Heller, Hume, Kripke, Lewis, Mackie, McTaggart, Mellor, Merricks , Parfit, Plantinga, (...) Price, Prior, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Smart, Swinburne, Taylor , Van Cleve, van Inwagen, Williams Featuring a new section on causation, this new edition is highly accessible and provides a broad-ranging exploration of the subject. Ideal for any philosophy student, this reader will prove essential reading for any metaphysics course. The sections and selections of readings have been updated to complement Michael Loux's textbook Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction , third edition. (shrink)

Comparing my historical account of the early years of Laurent Schwartz’s theory of distributions with number theorist Michael Harris’s narrative of the early years of Peter Scholze’s perfectoid theory, I develop a perspective on change and temporality in mathematics that emphasizes the relationships between concepts, expectations, and communities of practice. Contemporary mathematics, understood as mathematics imbued with temporality, reflects the dynamic relationship between the people, ideas, pasts, and prospects of mathematical knowledge. Studying these historically may offer critical perspectives on (...) the social and political conditions and implications of mathematical research and the communities that practice it. (shrink)

Sociology originated in the mid-nineteenth century from a new confidence in the power of science to explain the world on a mathematical foundation. Both mathematics and sociology transformed over the ensuing century, inverting the hierarchical relationship from sociology as a mathematics-based science of complex human configurations to mathematics as a complex science based on social institutions. That is, where sociology began as the hard case for mathematics, it became possible to see mathematics as the hard case for sociology. In this (...) light, we examine a number of motivations and provocations for the sociology of mathematics, from language and social cognition to Marxist and materialist skepticism of ideology, and sample the evidence and arguments brought to bear on the sociology of mathematics at a range of scales. (shrink)

Much of the science and religion debate has focussed on statistics. The chapters in this section go beyond bare statistics by examining more nuanced studies of science, religion and education with the aim of developing a deeper understanding of the issues at play when attempting to deal with the issues of science and religion in the classroom.

Every choice we make is set against a background of massive ignorance about our past, our future, our circumstances, and ourselves. Philosophers are divided on the moral significance of such ignorance. Some say that it has a direct impact on how we ought to behave - the question of what our moral obligations are; others deny this, claiming that it only affects how we ought to be judged in light of the behaviour in which we choose to engage - the (...) question of what responsibility we bear for our choices. Michael Zimmerman claims that our ignorance has an important bearing on both questions, and offers an account of moral obligation and moral responsibility that is sharply at odds with the prevailing wisdom. His book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ethics. (shrink)

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

The principal aim of this book is to develop and defend an analysis of the concept of moral obligation. The analysis is neutral regarding competing substantive theories of obligation, whether consequentialist or deontological in character. What it seeks to do is generate solutions to a range of philosophical problems concerning obligation and its application. Amongst these problems are deontic paradoxes, the supersession of obligation, conditional obligation, prima facie obligation, actualism and possibilism, dilemmas, supererogation, and cooperation. By virtue of its normative (...) neutrality, the analysis provides a theoretical framework within which competing theories of obligation can be developed and assessed. This study is a major contribution to metaethics that will be of particular interest to all philosophers concerned with normative ethical theory. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Albert would reject the need for a separate fourth mode of common personal supposition, and that his view of merely confused supposition has not been fully explicated by modern scholars. I first examine the various examples of conjunct descent given by modern scholars from his Perutilis logica , and show that Albert clearly adopts it in resolving the sophistic examples involved. Second, I explicate the view of merely confused supposition that Albert defends in his (...) Sophismata , and then attempt to answer the question: which view of merely confused supposition was his final view, the view articulated in the Perutilis logica or the view in the Sophismata ? I conclude that based upon his Sophismata view of merely confused supposition, Albert came to realize the logical strength his revised theory of personal supposition afforded, and consequently, that he is one of the earliest 14th-century logicians to adopt conjunct terminal descent to resolve various sophisms, a move which gave his theory of personal supposition a logical symmetry having two sorts of propositional descents to singulars, and two sorts of terminal descents to singulars. (shrink)

This superbly crafted account of the notion of moral responsibility and of its relations to freedom, control, ignorance, negligence, attempts, omissions, compulsion, mental disorders, virtues and vices, desert, and punishment fills that gap. The treatment of character and luck is particularly sophisticated and well-argued.

At the heart of ethics reside the concepts of good and bad; they are at work when we assess whether a person is virtuous or vicious, an act right or wrong, a decision defensible or indefensible, a goal desirable or undesirable. But there are many varieties of goodness and badness. At their core lie intrinsic goodness and badness, the sort of value that something has for its own sake. It is in virtue of intrinsic value that other types of value (...) may be understood, and hence that we can begin to come to terms with questions of virtue and vice, right and wrong, and so on. This book investigates the nature of intrinsic value: just what it is for something to be valuable for its own sake, just what sort of thing can have such value, just how such a value is to be computed. In the final chapter, the fruits of this investigation are applied to a discussion of pleasure, pain, and displeasure and also of moral virtue and vice, in order to determine just what value lies within these phenomena. (shrink)

This essay focuses on a recently prominent notion of ground which is distinctive for how it links metaphysics to explanation. Ground is supposed to serve both as the common factor in diverse in virtue of questions as well as the structuring relation in the project of explaining how some phenomena are “built” from more fundamental phenomena. My aim is to provide an opinionated synopsis of this notion of ground without engaging with others. Ground, so understood, generally resists illumination by appeal (...) to more familiar models of explanation. Nevertheless, its distinctive explanatory and metaphysical aspects guide us on characterizing its explanatory logic and its metaphysical features. Some issues concerning the meta-question of what grounds ground are explored, as well as some recent skeptical challenges to ground. (shrink)

There is currently an explosion of interest in grounding. In this article we provide an overview of the debate so far. We begin by introducing the concept of grounding, before discussing several kinds of scepticism about the topic. We then identify a range of central questions in the theory of grounding and discuss competing answers to them that have emerged in the debate. We close by raising some questions that have been relatively neglected but which warrant further attention.

Michael J. Zimmerman explores whether and how our ignorance about ourselves and our circumstances affects what our moral obligations and moral rights are. He rejects objective and subjective views of the nature of moral obligation, and presents a new case for a 'prospective' view.

Intrinsic value has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics. Philosophers use a number of terms to refer to such value. The intrinsic value of something is said to be the value that that thing has “in itself,” or “for its own sake,” or “as such,” or “in its own right.” Extrinsic value is value that is not intrinsic.

Bringing together researchers from across the cognitive sciences, the book is valuable for philosophers of mind, developmental and comparative psychologists, and neuroscientists.

I defend (metaphysical) ground against recent, unanswered objections aiming to dismiss it from serious philosophical inquiry. Interest in ground stems from its role in the venerable metaphysical project of identifying which facts hold in virtue of others. Recent work on ground focuses on regimenting it. But many reject ground itself, seeing regimentation as yet another misguided attempt to regiment a bad idea (like phlogiston or astrology). I defend ground directly against objections that it is confused, incoherent, or fruitless. This vindicates (...) the very attempt to regiment ground. It also refocuses our attention on the genuine open questions about ground and away from the distracting, unpersuasive reasons for dismissing them. (shrink)

_The Metaphysics of Perfect Beings_ addresses the problems an Anselmian perfect being faces in contexts involving unlimited options. Recent advances in the theory of vagueness, the metaphysics of multiverses and hyperspace, the theory of dynamic or sequential choice, the logic of moral and rational dilemmas, and metaethical theory provide the resources to formulate the new challenges and the Anselmian responses with an unusual degree of precision. Almeida shows that the challenges arising in the unusual contexts involving unlimited options sometimes produce (...) metaphysical surprise. (shrink)

A commonly held view is that a central aim of metaphysics is to give a fundamental account of reality which refers only to the fundamental entities. But a puzzle arises. It is at least a working hypothesis for those pursuing the aim that, first, there must be fundamental entities. But, second, it also seems possible that the world has no foundation, with each entity depending on others. These two claims are inconsistent with the widely held third claim that the fundamental (...) just is the foundational. It is tempting to resolve the puzzle by rejecting the first or second claim, perhaps because it is obscure how the third claim might plausibly be challenged. But I develop a new analysis of fundamentality which challenges the third claim by allowing for an entity to be fundamental without being foundational. The analysis, roughly, is that an entity is fundamental just in case not all facts about it are grounded in facts about other entities. The possibility of fundamentality without foundations not only provides for a novel resolution to the puzzle, but has applications to some live debates: for example, it undermines Jonathan Schaffer's modal argument for priority monism. (shrink)

This paper introduces two new paradoxes for standard deontic logic (SDL). They are importantly related to, but distinct from Ross' paradox. These two new paradoxes for SDL are the simple weakening paradox and the complex weakening paradox. Both of these paradoxes arise in virtue of the underlaying logic of SDL and are consequences of the fact that SDL incorporates the principle known as weakening. These two paradoxes then show that SDL has counter-intuitive implications related to disjunctive obligations that arise in (...) virtue of deontic weakening and in virtue of decisions concerning how to discharge such disjunctive obligations. The main result here is then that theorem T1 is a problematic component of SDL that needs to be addressed. (shrink)

The following argument is addressed: (1) a person is morally responsible for an event's occurring only if that event's occurring was not a matter of luck; (2) no event is such that its occurring is not a matter of luck; therefore, (3) no event is such that someone is morally responsible for its occurring. Two notions of control are distinguished: restricted and complete. (2) is shown false on the first interpretation, (1) on the second. The discussion involves a distinction between (...) resultant and situational luck, And it is argued that, Even when luck's role in life, And the unfairness that stems from it, Is acknowledged, Moral responsibility remains possible. (shrink)

Michael J. Almeida presents a bold new defence of the existence of God. He argues that entrenched principles in philosophical theology which have served as basic assumptions in apriori, atheological arguments are in fact philosophical dogmas. Almeida argues that not only are such principles false - they are necessarily false.

In _The Immorality of Punishment_ Michael Zimmerman argues forcefully that not only our current practice but indeed any practice of legal punishment is deeply morally repugnant, no matter how vile the behaviour that is its target. Despite the fact that it may be difficult to imagine a state functioning at all, let alone well, without having recourse to punishing those who break its laws, Zimmerman makes a timely and compelling case for the view that we must seek and put (...) into practice alternative means of preventing crime and promoting social stability. (shrink)

A liberal society seeks not to impose a single way of life, but to leave its citizens as free as possible to choose their own values and ends. It therefore must govern by principles of justice that do not presuppose any particular vision of the good life. But can any such principles be found? And if not, what are the consequences for justice as a moral and political ideal? These are the questions Michael Sandel takes up in this penetrating (...) critique of contemporary liberalism. Sandel locates modern liberalism in the tradition of Kant, and focuses on its most influential recent expression in the work of John Rawls. In the most important challenge yet to Rawls' theory of justice, Sandel traces the limits of liberalism to the conception of the person that underlies it, and argues for a deeper understanding of community than liberalism allows. (shrink)