Physicians place significant weight on the distinction between acts and omissions. Most believe that autonomous refusals for procedures, such as blood transfusions and resuscitation, ought to be respected, but they feel no similar obligation to accede to requests for treatment that will, in the physician’s opinion, harm the patient (e.g., assisted death). Thus, there is an asymmetry. In this paper, we challenge the strength of this distinction by arguing that the ordering of values should be the same in both cases. (...) The reason for respecting refusals is that, in such cases, autonomy outweighs well-being. We argue that the same should be true in request cases, which means that requests should not be denied only due to the treatment being too harmful in the physician’s opinion. Our strategy is to consider and reject a number of arguments for the asymmetrical view, including an appeal to the doing–allowing distinction and positive and negative rights. The duty to respect refusals is still greater than the duty to grant requests on our view, but, by arguing that the ordering of values is the same in both cases, we show that there is less of a distinction in healthcare between requests and refusals than many currently believe. (shrink)

At some point in the future – perhaps within the next few decades – it will be possible for foetuses to develop completely outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, raises substantial issues for the abortion debate. One such issue is that it will become possible for a woman to have an abortion, in the sense of having the foetus removed from her body, but for the foetus to be kept alive. We argue that while there is a (...) right to an abortion, there are reasons to doubt that there is a right to the death of the foetus. Our strategy in this essay is to consider and reject three arguments in favour of this latter right. The first claims that women have a right not to be biological mothers, the second that women have a right to genetic privacy, and the third that a foetus is one's property. Furthermore, we argue that it follows from rejecting the third claim that genetic parents also lack a right to the destruction of cryopreserved embryos used for in vitro fertilization. The conclusion that a woman possesses no right to the death of the foetus builds upon the claims that other pro-choice advocates, such as Judith Jarvis Thomson, have made. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that promoting patient values is a legitimate goal of medicine. Our view offers a justification for certain current practices, including birth control and living organ donation, that are widely accepted but do not fit neatly within the most common extant accounts of the goals of medicine. Moreover, we argue that recognising value promotion as a goal of medicine will expand the scope of medical practice by including some procedures that are sometimes rejected as being outside (...) the scope of acceptable medical practice, such as certain forms of physician-assisted death. We then rebut some common and possible objections to this view. Our aim is not to argue that other accounts are mistaken—except when they argue for a single goal that does not include patient values—but rather to show that value promotion should play a more central role in discussions about the goals of medicine. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that recidivism scoring algorithms like COMPAS have significant racial bias: Black defendants are roughly twice as likely as white defendants to be mistakenly classified as medium- or high-risk. This has led some to call for abolishing COMPAS. But many others have argued that algorithms should instead be given access to a defendant's race, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is likely to improve outcomes. This approach can involve either establishing race-sensitive risk thresholds, or distinct racial ‘tracks’. Is there a (...) moral difference between these two approaches? We first consider Deborah Hellman's view that the use of distinct racial tracks (but not distinct thresholds) does not constitute disparate treatment since the effects on individuals are indirect and does not rely on a racial generalization. We argue that this is mistaken: the use of different racial tracks seems both to have direct effects on and to rely on a racial generalization. We then offer an alternative understanding of the distinction between these two approaches—namely, that the use of different cut points is to the counterfactual comparative disadvantage, ex ante, of all white defendants, while the use of different racial tracks can in principle be to the advantage of all groups, though some defendants in both groups will fare worse. Does this mean that the use of cut points is impermissible? Ultimately, we argue, while there are reasons to be skeptical of the use of distinct cut points, it is an open question whether these reasons suffice to make a difference to their moral permissibility. (shrink)

Most people who defend physician-assisted death (PAD) endorse the Joint View, which holds that two conditions—autonomy and welfare—must be satisfied for PAD to be justified. In this paper, we defend an Autonomy Only view. We argue that the welfare condition is either otiose on the most plausible account of the autonomy condition, or else is implausibly restrictive, particularly once we account for the broad range of reasons patients cite for desiring PAD, such as “tired of life” cases. Moreover, many of (...) the common objections to an Autonomy Only view fail once we understand the extent of the autonomy condition’s requirements—in particular, the importance of one’s values for autonomous choices. If our view is correct, then the scope of permissible PAD is broader than is currently accepted in both the philosophical literature and the law, and therefore poses an important challenge to this widely accepted view on justified PAD. (shrink)

Most of us believe that partiality applies in a broad range of relationships. One relationship on which there is much disagreement is co-nationality. Some writers argue that co-national partiality is not justified in certain cases, like killing in war, since killing in defense of co-nationals is intuitively impermissible in other contexts. I argue that this approach overlooks an important structural feature of partiality—namely, that its scope is sometimes restricted. In this essay, I show how some relationships that generate reasons of (...) partiality are restricted in scope—that is, they generate reasons within particular contexts or with respect to particular goods. I then argue that co-national partiality is scope restricted. I then show how this fact helps proponents of co-national partiality overcome the aforementioned objection to its application in cases like war. (shrink)

The COVID-19 global pandemic has shone a light on several important ethical questions, ranging from fairness in resource allocation to the ethical justification of government mandates. In addition to these institutional issues, there are also several ethical questions that arise at the interpersonal level. This essay focuses on several of these issues. In particular, I argue that, despite the insistence in public health messaging that avoiding infecting others constitutes ‘saving lives’, virus transmission that results in death constitutes an act of (...) killing. Whether this killing is wrongful depends on several factors. I consider one intuitively plausible view—namely, that in many cases, killing via unintentional transmission is not wrongful, because the parties in question have implicitly waived their rights against this harm, often via reciprocal risk imposition. I argue that this view is mistaken, but that its central insight can be better captured by identifying the appropriate standards of blame that we ought to apply during a pandemic. I conclude by showing how these conclusions can be fruitfully applied to certain institutional questions, such as helping to justify restricting government mandates. (shrink)

This paper synthesizes scholarship from several academic disciplines to identify and analyze five major ethical challenges facing data-driven policing. Because the term “data-driven policing” emcompasses a broad swath of technologies, we first outline several data-driven policing initiatives currently in use in the United States. We then lay out the five ethical challenges. Certain of these challenges have received considerable attention already, while others have been largely overlooked. In many cases, the challenges have been articulated in the context of related discussions, (...) but their distinctively ethical dimensions have not been explored in much detail. Our goal here is to articulate and clarify these ethical challenges, while also highlighting areas where these issues intersect and overlap. Ultimately, responsible data-driven policing requires collaboration between communities, academics, technology developers, police departments, and policy-makers to confront and address these challenges. And as we will see, it may also require critically reexamining the role and value of police in society. (shrink)

Most philosophers writing on the ethics of war endorse “reductivist individualism,” a view that holds both that killing in war is subject to the very same principles of ordinary morality ; and that morality concerns individuals and their rights, and does not treat collectives as having any special status. I argue that this commitment to individualism poses problems for this view in the case of national defense. More specifically, I argue that the main strategies for defending individualist approaches to national (...) defense either fail by their own lights or yield deeply counterintuitive implications. I then offer the foundations for a collectivist approach. I argue that such an approach must do justice to the collective goods that properly constituted states make possible and protect through certain acts of defensive war; and that any such picture of national defense must make room for some form of national partiality. (shrink)

Bilingualism has been identified as a potential cognitive factor linked to delayed onset of dementia as well as boosting executive functions in healthy individuals. However, more recently, this claim has been called into question following several failed replications. It remains unclear whether these contradictory findings reflect how bilingualism is defined between studies, or methodological limitations when measuring the bilingual effect. One key issue is that despite the claims that bilingualism yields general protection to cognitive processes, studies reporting putative bilingual differences (...) are often focused on domain specific experimental paradigms. This study chose a broader approach, by considering the consequences of bilingualism on a wide range of cognitive functions within individuals. We utilised 19 measures of different cognitive functions commonly associated with bilingual effects, to form a “cognitive profile” for 215 non-clinical participants. We recruited Welsh speakers, who as a group of bilinguals were highly homogeneous, as means of isolating the bilingualism criterion. We sought to determine if such analyses would independently classify bilingual/monolingual participant groups based on emergent patterns driven by collected cognitive profiles, such that population differences would emerge. Multiple predictive models were trained to independently recognise the cognitive profiles of bilinguals, older adults and higher education attainment. Despite managing to successfully classify cognitive profiles based on age and education, the model failed to differentiate between bilingual and monolingual cognitive ability at a rate greater than that of chance. Repeated modelling using alternative definitions of bilingualism, and just the older adults, yielded similar results. In all cases then, using our “bottom–up” analytical approach, there was no evidence that bilingualism as a variable indicated differential cognitive performance – as a consequence, we conclude that bilinguals are not cognitively different from their monolingual counterparts, even in older demographics. We suggest that studies that have reported a bilingual advantage could well have confounded other key variables that may be driving reported advantages. We recommend that future research refine the machine learning methods used in this study to further investigate the complex relationship between bilingualism and cognition. (shrink)

Alienation and Connection addresses social constructs that perpetuate alienation through suffering. The contributors discuss how alienation through suffering in a variety of contexts can be transformed into connection and reconnection: human relationship with the environment, economic and social systems that disconnect and reconnect, cultural constructs that divide or can heal, encountered difference that brings opportunity, and various manifestations of personal pain that can be survived and even overcome.

Alan Tomhave and Mark Vopat have argued that organized boycotts against the expressive acts of companies and their leaders are pro tanto morally wrong because they constitute an attempt to silence voices in the marketplace of ideas. I argue that such boycotts are not best viewed as attempts to silence, but rather as a morally permissible form of withdrawal of support of certain expressive acts.

A common criticism of the use of algorithms in criminal justice is that algorithms and their determinations are in some sense ‘opaque’—that is, difficult or impossible to understand, whether because of their complexity or because of intellectual property protections. Scholars have noted some key problems with opacity, including that opacity can mask unfair treatment and threaten public accountability. In this paper, we explore a different but related concern with algorithmic opacity, which centers on the role of public trust in grounding (...) the legitimacy of criminal justice institutions. We argue that algorithmic opacity threatens the trustworthiness of criminal justice institutions, which in turn threatens their legitimacy. We first offer an account of institutional trustworthiness before showing how opacity threatens to undermine an institution’s trustworthiness. We then explore how threats to trustworthiness affect institutional legitimacy. Finally, we offer some policy recommendations to mitigate the threat to trustworthiness posed by the opacity problem. (shrink)

Violent extremism is often explicitly motivated by commitment to abstract ideals such as the nation or divine law – so-called “sacred” values that are relatively insensitive to material incentives and define our primary reference groups. Moreover, extreme pro-group behavior seems to intensify after social exclusion. This fMRI study explores underlying neural and behavioral relationships between sacred values, violent extremism, and social exclusion. Ethnographic fieldwork and psychological surveys were carried out among young men from a European Muslim community in neighborhoods in (...) and around Barcelona, Spain. Candidates for an fMRI experiment were selected from those who expressed willingness to engage in or facilitate, violence associated with jihadist causes. In the scanner, participants were assessed for their willingness to fight and die for in-group sacred values before and after an experimental manipulation using Cyberball, a toss ball game known to yield strong feelings of social exclusion. Results indicate that neural activity associated with sacred value processing in a sample vulnerable to recruitment into violent extremism shows marked activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, a region previously associated with sacred values and rule retrieval. Participants also behaviorally expressed greater willingness to fight and die for sacred versus non-sacred values, consistent with previous studies of combatants and noncombatants. The social exclusion manipulation specifically affected non-sacred values, increasing their similarities with sacred values in terms of heightened left inferior frontal activity and greater expressed willingness to fight and die. These findings suggest that sacralization of values interacts with willingness to engage in extreme behavior in populations vulnerable to radicalization. In addition, social exclusion may be a relevant factor motivating violent extremism and consolidation of sacred values. If so, counteracting social exclusion and sacralization of values should figure into policies to prevent radicalization. (shrink)

[Given, If, Then] attempts to conceive a possibility of reading, through a set of readings: reading being understood as the relation to an Other that occurs prior to any semantic or formal identification, and, therefore, prior to any attempt at assimilating, or appropriating, what is being read to the one who reads. As such, it is an encounter with an indeterminable Other, an Other who is other than other -- an unconditional relation, and thus a relation to no fixed object (...) of relation. The first reading by Jeremy Fernando, "Blind Reading," unfolds through an attempt to speak of reading as an event. Untheorisable in itself, it is a positing of reading as reading, through reading, where texts are read as a test site for reading itself. As such, it is a meditation on the finitude and exteriority in literature, philosophy, and knowledge; where blindness is both the condition and limit of reading itself. Folded into, or in between, this (re)reading are a selection of photographs from Jennifer Hope Davy's image archive. They are on the one hand simply a selection of 'impartial pictures' taken, and on the other hand that which allow for something singular and, therefore, always other to dis/appear -- crossing that borderless realm between 'some' and 'some-thing.' Eventually, there is a writing on images on writings by Julia Hölzl. A responding to the impossible response, a re-iteration, a re-reading of what could not have been written, a re-writing of what could not have been read; these poems, if one were to name them such, name them as such, answer (to) the impossibility of answering: answer to no call. (shrink)

Incredible discoveries from the fringes of the universe to the inner workings of our mindsÑall from nothing! It turns out that almost nothing is as curiousÑor as enlighteningÑas, well, nothing. What is nothingness? Where can it be found? The writers of the world's top-selling science magazine investigateÑfrom the big bang, dark energy, and the void to superconductors, vestigial organs, hypnosis, and the placebo effectÑand discover that understanding nothing may be the key to understanding everything: What came before the big bang, (...) and will our universe end? How might cooling matter down almost to absolute zero help solve our energy crisis? How can someone suffer from a false diagnosis as though it were true? Does nothingness even exist? Recent experiments suggest that squeezing a perfect vacuum somehow creates light. Why is it unfair to accuse slothsÑanimals who do nothingÑof being lazy? And more! Contributors Paul Davies, Jo Marchant, and Ian Stewart, along with two former editors of Nature and 16 other leading writers and scientists, marshal up-to-the-minute research to make one of the most perplexing realms in science dazzlingly clear. Prepare to be amazed at how much more there is to nothing than you ever realized. (shrink)

In this brief reply to Stephen Davis, I argue that Davis’s separationist position, wherein those who remain eternally apart from God do so by choice, is internally contradictory in that it leads to universalism.

In this book Jeremy Dunning-Davies deals with the influence that "conventional wisdom" has on science, scientific research and development. He sets out to explode' the mythical conception that all scientific topics are open for free discussion and argues that no-one can openly raise questions about relativity, dispute the 'Big Bang' theory, or the existence of black holes, which all seem to be accepted facts of science rather than science fiction. In today's modern climate with "Britain's radioactive refuse heap already (...) big enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall" (Edmund Conway, Economics Editor The Daily Telegraph 28.11.06), it is alarming that there are potential advances in hadronic mechanics which could conceivably pave the way for new clean energies and even a safe in-house method for the disposal of nuclear waste, that have not even been considered by the present establishment. These examples are from the field of physics but there can be little doubt that outside factors have affected the progress of most, if not all, branches of science for many years. Factors other than purely scientific ones still appear to be exerting tremendous influences on progress in a wide variety of fields. Is it too idealistic or nai;ve, to expect that science should remain pure and stay unaffected by such factors? Dr Dunning-Davies presents a beautifully written argument that if science is to progress, and be of any real use, these external factors must be held at bay. (shrink)

The current status of localization and related concepts, especially localized statevectors and position operators, within Lorentz-invariant Quantum Theory (LIQT) is ambiguous and controversial.1 Ever since the early work of Newton & Wigner (1949), and the subsequent extensions of their work, particularly by Hegerfeldt (1974, 1985), it has seemed impossible to identify localized statevectors or position operators in LIQT that were not counterintuitive—strange—in one way or another; the most striking strange property being the superluminal propagation of the localized states. The ambiguous (...) and controversial status of these concepts arises from the varied reactions that workers have to the strange properties. Some regard them, particularly the superluminal propagation, as utterly unacceptable, and conclude that no precise concepts of localized statevectors and position operators exist in LIQT (Wigner 1973, p. 325-327; 1983, pp. 310-313; Malament 1996). Others downplay the whole issue, on the grounds that current theoretical and experimental practice has no need of sharply formulated concepts of localization, localized states etc. (Birrell & Davies 1984, pp. 48-59; Haag 1992, p. 34). Still others, including ourselves, believe that the superluminal propagation does not lead to causal contradictions, and is not in conflict with available empirical data: so that it should not be ruled out. We also believe that the other strange properties are merely unfamiliar novelties of LIQT which we must simply learn to accept. (Like the superluminal propagation, they do not lead to causal contradictions, nor conflict with available data.) So in this paper, we aim to help remove the ambiguous and controversial status of localization concepts in LIQT. Overall, our strategy will be to assess a number of localization concepts, and thereby clarify the often complex relationships among them. (shrink)

Waged in 2016, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs has claimed over 20,000 lives according to human rights groups. The Duterte administration’s own count is significantly lower: around 6,000. The huge discrepancy between the government’s official count and that of arguably more impartial organizations about something as concretely material as body count is symptomatic of how disinformation is central to the Duterte administration and how it can sustain the approval of the majority of the Philippine electorate. We suggest that (...) Duterte’s populist politics generates what Boler and Davis call “affective feedback loops,” which create emotional and informational ecosystems that facilitate smooth algorithmic governance. We turn to Patron Saints of Nothing, a recently published novel by Randy Ribay about a Filipino-American who goes back to the Philippines to uncover the truth behind the death of his cousin. Jay’s journey into the “heart of darkness” as a “hyphenated” individual allows him access to locally networked subjectivities but not its affective entanglements. Throughout the novel, he encounters numerous versions of the circumstances of Jun’s demise and the truth remains elusive at the end of the novel. We argue that despite the constant distortion of fact and fiction in the novel, what remains relatively stable or “sticky” throughout the novel are the letters from Jun Reguero that Jay carries with him back to the Philippines. We suggest that these letters can potentially serve as a form of “dissensus” that challenges the constant redistribution of the sensible in the novel. (shrink)

Recently, in this journal, Jeremy Gwiazda has offered a critique of our separationist view of hell. His objection relies on two key assumptions, and we show in our reply that both assumptions can be denied.

The French philosopher Jacques Rancière is well known across the world for his groundbreaking contributions to aesthetic and political theory and for his radical rethinking of the question of equality. This much-needed new collection situates Rancière's thought in a range of practical and theoretical contexts. These specially commissioned essays cover the complete history of Rancière's work and reflect its interdisciplinary reach. They span his early historical research of the 1960s and '70s, his celebrated critique of pedagogy and his later political (...) theory of dissensus and disagreement, as well as his ongoing analysis of literature and 'the aesthetic regime of art'. Rancière's resistance to psychoanalytic thinking is also explored, as are his most recent publications on film and film theory. Contributors include Tom Conley, Carolyn Steedman, Geneviève Fraisse, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jeremy Lane, and many more. The book also includes a brand new interview with Rancière, reflecting on his intellectual project and developing new lines of thought from his latest major work, _Aisthesis_. _Rancière Now_ will be essential reading for students and scholars across the humanities and social sciences; it will stimulate and inspire discussion of Rancière’s work for years to come. (shrink)

Principles of legislation.--Principles of the civil code.--Principles of the penal code.

Jeremy Sherman distills Terrence Deacon's breakthrough natural science hypothesis for the emergence of agents and agency, selves and aims in an otherwise aimless universe. The theory cuts a new path through the dualistic spirit vs. mechanism debate, unifying the hard and soft sciences and suggesting new solutions to philosophical mysteries.

We characterize a type of functional explanation that addresses why a homologous trait originating deep in the evolutionary history of a group remains widespread and largely unchanged across the group’s lineages. We argue that biologists regularly provide this type of explanation when they attribute conserved functions to phenotypic and genetic traits. The concept of conserved function applies broadly to many biological domains, and we illustrate its importance using examples of molecular sequence alignments at the intersection of evolution and cell biology. (...) We use these examples to show how the study of conserved functions can integrate knowledge of a trait’s causal effects on fitness and its history of natural selection without invoking adaptation. We also show how conserved function provides a novel basis for addressing objections against evolutionary functions raised by Robert Cummins. (shrink)

Argument mapping is a way of diagramming the logical structure of an argument to explicitly and concisely represent reasoning. The use of argument mapping in critical thinking instruction has increased dramatically in recent decades. This paper overviews the innovation and provides a procedural approach for new teaches wanting to use argument mapping in the classroom. A brief history of argument mapping is provided at the end of this paper.

We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then, we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher’s view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second factor in the (...) aetiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows. But we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Although the pedagogy literature indicates significant relationships between cheating intentions and both personal and situational factors, no published research has examined the joint effect of personal moral philosophy and perceived moral intensity components on students’ cheating intentions. Hence, a structural equation model that relates magnitude of consequences, relativism, and idealism to willingness to cheat, is developed and tested. Using data from undergraduate business students, the empirical results provide insight into these relationships and evidence of mediation for magnitude of consequences on (...) idealism and students’ cheating intentions. Implications for educators are offered. (shrink)

What is critical thinking, especially in the context of higher education? How have research and scholarship on the matter developed over recent past decades? What is the current state of the art here? How might the potential of critical thinking be enhanced? What kinds of teaching are necessary in order to realize that potential? And just why is this topic important now? These are the key questions motivating this volume. We hesitate to use terms such as “comprehensive” or “complete” or (...) “definitive,” but we believe that, taken in the round, the chapters in this volume together offer a fair insight into the contemporary understandings of higher education worldwide. We also believe that this volume is much needed, and we shall try to justify that claim in this introduction. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest Western philosphers and one of the greatest theologians of the Christian church. In this book we at last have a modern, comprehensive presentation of the total thought of Aquinas. Books on Aquinas invariably deal with either his philosophy or his theology. But Aquinas himself made no arbitrary division between his philosophical and his theological thought, and this book allows readers to see him as a whole. It introduces the full range of Aquinas' thinking; (...) and it relates his thinking to writers both earlier and later than Aquinas himself. (shrink)

In considering the debate about the meaning of ‘disease’, the positions are generally presented as falling into two categories: naturalist, e.g., Boorse, and normativist, e.g., Engelhardt and many others. This division is too coarse, and obscures much of what is going on in this debate. I therefore propose that accounts of the meaning of ‘disease’ be assessed according to Hare’s (1997) taxonomy of evaluative terms. Such an analysis will allow us to better understand both individual positions and their inter-relationships. Most (...) importantly, it will show that it is unlikely that there is a single unique disease-concept at issue. Rather, different authors are, for the most part, considering different concepts. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that free will requires alternative possibilities. Other philosophers deny this. There are plenty of philosophical arguments on both sides of this debate, but here I want to highlight various theological pressures that might push Christians into rejecting the principle of alternative possibilities. In this paper, I explore six cases that might push Christians in that direction: the case of divine foreknowledge, the case of prophecy, the case of the blessed in heaven, the case of Christ's human freedom, (...) the case of Mary's fiat in light of her immaculate conception, and the case of prayers for the past. As I will argue, in each of these cases, given certain other standard theological commitments, it seems that Christians are pushed to admit that the agent in question does indeed act freely but also that he or she did not possess alternative possibilities at the moment of decision. (shrink)

Novelty—the value of saying something new—appears to be a good-making feature of a philosophical contribution. Beyond this, however, novelty functions as a metric of success. This paper challenges the presumption and expectation that a successful philosophical contribution will be a novel one. As I show, the pursuit of novelty is neither as desirable nor as feasible as it might initially seem.

In this paper, I defend the agent/patient distinction against critics who argue that causal interactions are symmetrical. Specifically, I argue that there is a widespread type of causal interaction between distinct entities, resulting in a type of ontological asymmetry that provides principled grounds for distinguishing agents from patients. The type of interaction where the asymmetry is found is when one of the entities undergoes a change in kind, structure, powers, or intrinsic properties as a result of the interaction while the (...) other does not. Interactions of this type are widespread in molecular biology and chemistry. I focus specifically on (i) the actions of enzymes on substrates and (ii) water molecules breaking the bonds of polarized molecules. Finally, I respond to objections by laying out and to a limited extent defending three commitments of my account: emergent entities and powers, realism about chemical kinds or structures, and the assumption of the agent/patient distinction in functional attributions in biology. (shrink)

A rigorous, authoritative new anthology which brings together some of the most significant contemporary scholarship on the theory of knowledge Carefully-calibrated and judiciously-curated, this strong and contemporary new anthology builds upon Epistemology: An Anthology, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) by drawing a concise and well-balanced selection of higher-level readings from a large, diverse, and evolving body of research. Includes 17 readings that represent a broad and vital part of contemporary epistemology, including articles by female philosophers and emerging thought leaders Organized (...) into seven thoughtful and distinct sections, including virtue epistemology, practical reasons for belief, and epistemic dysfunctions among others Designed to sit alongside the highly-successful anthology of canonical essays, Epistemology: An Anthology, Second Edition (Wiley Blackwell, 2008) Edited by a distinguished editorial team, including Ernie Sosa, one of the most influential active epistemologists Highlights cutting edge methodologies and contemporary topics for advanced students, instructors, and researchers. (shrink)

"Arguing that debates over legitimacy, political violence, freedom, and justice would benefit greatly from cross-tradition theorizing, this book shows how putting analytic and continental political theory in conversation would help us to overcome these intractable problems"--.

The epsilon calculus is a logical formalism developed by David Hilbert in the service of his program in the foundations of mathematics. The epsilon operator is a term-forming operator which replaces quantifiers in ordinary predicate logic. Specifically, in the calculus, a term εx A denotes some x satisfying A(x), if there is one. In Hilbert's Program, the epsilon terms play the role of ideal elements; the aim of Hilbert's finitistic consistency proofs is to give a procedure which removes such terms (...) from a formal proof. The procedures by which this is to be carried out are based on Hilbert's epsilon substitution method. The epsilon calculus, however, has applications in other contexts as well. The first general application of the epsilon calculus was in Hilbert's epsilon theorems, which in turn provide the basis for the first correct proof of Herbrand's theorem. More recently, variants of the epsilon operator have been applied in linguistics and linguistic philosophy to deal with anaphoric pronouns. (shrink)

We have two aims. The main one is to expound the idea of renormalization in quantum field theory, with no technical prerequisites. Our motivation is that renormalization is undoubtedly one of the great ideas—and great successes--of twentieth-century physics. Also it has strongly influenced in diverse ways, how physicists conceive of physical theories. So it is of considerable philosophical interest. Second, we will briefly relate renormalization to Ernest Nagel's account of inter-theoretic relations, especially reduction. One theme will be a contrast between (...) two approaches to renormalization. The old approach, which prevailed from ca. 1945 to 1970, treated renormalizability as a necessary condition for being an acceptable quantum field theory. On this approach, it is a piece of great good fortune that high energy physicists can formulate renormalizable quantum field theories that are so empirically successful. But the new approach to renormalization explains why the phenomena we see, at the energies we can access in our particle accelerators, are described by a renormalizable quantum field theory. For whatever non-renormalizable interactions may occur at yet higher energies, they are insignificant at accessible energies. Thus the new approach explains why our best fundamental theories have a feature, viz. renormalizability, which the old approach treated as a selection principle for theories. That is worth saying since philosophers tend to think of scientific explanation as only explaining an individual event, or perhaps a single law, or at most deducing one theory as a special case of another. Here we see a framework in which there is a space of theories. And this framework is powerful enough to deduce that what seemed “manna from heaven” is to be expected: the good fortune is generic. We also maintain that universality, a concept stressed in renormalization theory, is essentially the familiar philosophical idea of multiple realizability; and that it causes no problems for reductions of a Nagelian kind. (shrink)

This essay develops a framework for understanding what I call the ethics of reflexivity, that is, the norms that govern attitudes and actions with respect to one’s own worth. I distinguish five central aspects of the reflexive commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals: the extent to which and manner in which one regards oneself from an evaluative point of view, the extent to which one cares about receiving the respect of others, the degree to which one interprets (...) one’s personal ideals in an individualistic or collective manner, the degree to which one’s commitment to living in accordance with one’s personal ideals is rigid or flexible, and the worthiness of one’s personal ideals. This framework, I argue, illuminates the nature and moral significance of virtuous and vicious forms of the character trait of pride. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Harmonial Philosophy: A Compendium and Digest of the Works of Andrew Jackson Davis, the Seer of Poughkeepsie His Natural and Divine Revelations, Great Harmonia, Spiritual Inter course, Answers to ever-recurring Questions, Inner Life, Summer. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst (...) repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

What is it about the nature of "soul" that makes it so difficult to adequately capture its complexity in a strictly discursive account? Why do some of the most profound human experiences elude our attempts to theorize them? How can a written document do justice to the dynamic activity of thinking, as opposed to merely presenting a collection of thoughts-as-artifacts? Finally, what can we learn about the activity of philosophizing, and about the human soul, by reflecting on the possibilities and (...) limitations of writing? These concerns, in various forms and in different registers, have preoccupied Michael Davis throughout his distinguished career. This volume is in honor of, and in dialogue with, Davis's work, which spans ancient philosophy and literature, continental philosophy and political philosophy. It includes original essays by numerous distinguished scholars in the fields of philosophy and political science. The remarkable range and caliber of the contributions attest to the breadth and depth of Davis's influence. The essays in Part I of the volume explore the nature of soul through the lens of tragedy. Part II consists of three essays that explore the human longing for perfect knowledge and completion--and the obstacles to the fulfilment of that longing--in relation to the divine. In Part III, the essays address the distinctive challenges of the political sphere and philosophy's relation to it. And while the relationship between philosophy and poetry is an implicit theme throughout the volume, the essays in Part IV focus directly on philosophy's aestheticizing tendencies. Many different philosophical and literary works are discussed throughout these chapters, including ancient works such as Plato's Republic, Euthydemus and Laws, Homer's Iliad, and Euripides' Trojan Women, as well as works by modern philosophers such as Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. In addition, three essays analyze some of Shakespeare's plays in relation to the thought of Plato and Machiavelli. All of the essays are thematically linked by a common thread as they attend to the poetic dimension of philosophical thinking. Michael Davis is Professor of Philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College, where he has taught since 1977 and has been the Sarah Yates Exley Chair in Teaching Excellence (2003-2005). He has also taught on the graduate faculty at Fordham University and the New School for Social Research. He is the author of numerous articles and books, which include: Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science; The Poetry of Philosophy: On Aristotle's Poetics; The Politics of Philosophy: A Commentary on Aristotle's Politics; The Autobiography of Philosophy; Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker; Wonderlust: Ruminations on Liberal Education; and The Soul of the Greeks: An Inquiry. He is also co-translator (with Seth Benardete) of Aristotle's On Poetics. Contributors include: Abraham Anderson, Jonathan Badger, Robert Berman, Ronna Burger, Kenneth DeLuca, Gwenda-lin Grewal, Scott Hemmenway, Paul Kirkland, Mary Nichols, Denise Schaeffer, Paul Stern, Richard Velkley, Lisa Pace Vetter, Ann Ward, Lee Ward, Catherine Zuckert and Michael Zuckert. About the Editor: Denise Schaeffer is Professor of Political Science at the College of the Holy Cross. She is the author of Rousseau on Education, Freedom and Judgment and contributing co-editor (with Christopher Dustin) of Socratic Philosophy and Its Others. She is co-editor (with Gregory McBrayer and Mary P. Nichols) of the Focus Philosophical Library edition of Plato's Euthydemus, for which she authored the Introduction and co-authored the Interpretive Essay. (shrink)