In both the philosophy and psychology of emotion there is disagreement regarding the role of biology/genetics and culture/sociality in emotional development and experience. Using recent insights from developmental psychology and biology, and particularly recent developments in metaphysics of mind, I argue that distinctly human emotionality requires the complex interaction of both. Human neonates and caregivers are genetically preadapted to enable emotional ontogenesis in the context only of a complexly interdependent linguistically-mediated social relationship. This relationship provides the requisite sensory-perceptual stimulation to (...) excite intracellular genetic activity and the resultant development/maturation of emotion-related neural substrata. This genetic preadaptation and the close linguistically-mediated social relationship together provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for the gradual development of human adult emotionality. (shrink)

This book surveys research in quantification starting with the foundational work in the 1970s. It paints a vivid picture of generalized quantifiers and Boolean semantics. It explains how the discovery of diverse scope behavior in the 1990s transformed the view of quantification, and how the study of the internal composition of quantifiers has become central in recent years. It presents different approaches to the same problems, and links modern logic and formal semantics to advances in generative syntax. A unique feature (...) of the book is that it systematically brings cross-linguistic data to bear on the theoretical issues, discussing French, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Telugu (Dravidian), and Shupamem (Grassfield Bantu), and pointing to formal semantic literature involving quantification in around thirty languages. -- -/- 1. What this book is about and how to use it; 2. Generalized quantifiers and their elements: operators and their scopes; 3. Generalized quantifiers in non-nominal domains; 4. Some empirically significant properties of quantifiers and determiners; 5. Potential challenges for generalized quantifiers; 6. Scope is not uniform and not a primitive; 7. Existential scope versus distributive scope; 8. Distributivity and scope; 9. Bare numeral indefinites; 10. Modified numerals; 11. Clause-internal scopal diversity; 12. Towards a compositional semantics of quantifier words. (shrink)

There are three questions associated with Simpson’s Paradox (SP): (i) Why is SP paradoxical? (ii) What conditions generate SP?, and (iii) What should be done about SP? By developing a logic-based account of SP, it is argued that (i) and (ii) must be divorced from (iii). This account shows that (i) and (ii) have nothing to do with causality, which plays a role only in addressing (iii). A counterexample is also presented against the causal account. Finally, the causal and logic-based (...) approaches are compared by means of an experiment to show that SP is not basically causal. (shrink)

A well-known paradox of strict verificationism is this one. Suppose we distinguish between evidence-statements and statements for the truth or falsity of which evidence statements are support, and suppose we could not come to know the non-evidential statements except by knowing the truth of the evidential ones. We must say: what we know is after all some set of evidential statements, and what we mean when we assert the non-evidential statement is after all a set of evidential statements. But the (...) point of calling a set of evidential statements evidential is simply to draw the distinction between evidence and what it is evidence for. What was the initial contrast therefore, and how did we come to think of it as a contrast? If what I mean by S is what would normally be considered evidence for the truth of S , then it cannot be evidence for the truth of S. (shrink)

Julia Annas offers a new account of virtue and happiness as central ethical ideas. She argues that exercising a virtue involves practical reasoning of the kind we find in someone exercising an everyday practical skill, such as farming, building, or playing the piano. This helps us to see virtue as part of an agent's happiness or flourishing.

This article is an extended commentary inspired by Alan Drengson's paper “Shifting Paradigms: From Technocrat to Planetary Person” (Drengson 2011). In this article Susan Greenwood and I echo Drengson's criticism that Euro-American science is incomplete, having committed what Thomas Roberts calls “The Singlestate Fallacy: the erroneous assumption that all worthwhile abilities reside in our normal, awake mindbody state” (Roberts 2006:105). This singlestate fallacy is vividly portrayed in Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, whose critique of Euro-American science is revisited in this (...) article. Alternatively, Greenwood and I suggest that what is needed is a multimodel framework “that allows for in-depth analysis of the different modes of consciousness.” Roberts refers to this alternative attitude toward science as the Multistate Paradigm. An awareness of the transformational character of shamanism is also explored in this article as a means to overcome the oppositions between the technocratic and person planetary perspective, and their related gender associations. (shrink)

American healthcare -- Bioterror and bioart -- State of emergency -- Licensed to torture -- Hunger strikes -- War -- Cancer -- Drug dealing -- Toxic tinkering -- Abortion -- Culture of death -- Patient safety -- Global health -- Statue of security -- Pandemic fear -- Bioidentifiers -- Genetic genocide.

One of the essential ethical issues in the employment relationship is the loss of employee voice. Many of the ways employees have previously exercised voice in the employment relationship have been rendered less effective by (1) the changing nature of work, (2) employer preferences for flexibility that often work to the disadvantage of employees, and (3) changes in public policy and institutional systems that have failed to protect workers. We will begin with a discussion of how work has changed in (...) the last 20 years in countries like Australia and the United States, and then take up the issue of employees as organizational stakeholders and the ethical duties that are owed them, with special attention given to issues of power. We will then consider whether voluntary action by employers such as social auditing is sufficient to ensure equity for employees, and conclude with a discussion of how changes in public policy might ensure greater fairness in the employment relationship by bringing employers and employees together in partnership. (shrink)

This article presents the development, validation and application of an instrument to measure everyday moral distress in different health care settings. The concept of moral distress has been discussed and developed over 20 years. A few instruments have been developed to measure it, predominantly in nursing. The instrument presented here consists of two factors: level of moral distress, and tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas. It was tested in four medical departments and three pharmacies, where 259 staff members completed a questionnaire. The (...) two factors were found to be reliable. Differences in levels of moral distress were found between pharmacies and clinical departments, and between the youngest and oldest age groups; departmental staff and the youngest group experienced higher levels of moral distress. Departments reported less tolerance/openness towards moral dilemmas than pharmacies. The instrument needs to be tested further, but its strengths are the focus on everyday ethical dilemmas and its usefulness in different health care settings. (shrink)

According to Johansson (2009: 22) an infinite regress is vicious just in case “what comes first [in the regress-order] is for its definition dependent on what comes afterwards.” Given a few qualifications (to be spelled out below (section 3)), I agree. Again according to Johansson (ibid.), one of the consequences of accepting this way of distinguishing vicious from benign regresses is that the so-called Russellian Resemblance Regress (RRR), if generated in a one-category trope-theoretical framework, is vicious and that, therefore, the (...) existence of tropes only makes sense if trope-theory is understood (minimally) as a two-category theory which accepts, besides the existence of tropes, also the existence of at least one universal: resemblance.1 I disagree. But how can that be? How can Johansson and I agree about what distinguishes a vicious from a benign regress, yet disagree about which regresses are vicious and which are benign? In this paper I attempt to answer that question by first setting out and defending the sense of viciousness which both Johansson and I accept, only to then argue that to be able to determine if a particular regress is vicious in this sense, more than features intrinsic to the regress itself must be taken into account. This is why, although the RRR as originally set out by Russell is vicious, the seemingly identical resemblance regress which ensues in a one-category (standard) trope-theoretical context is not (provided, that is, that we accept certain views about how the nature of tropes relates to the resemblance between tropes, and given that we set our theory in a truthmaker theoretical framework – all of which are standard assumptions for proponents of (the standard-version of) the trope-theory).2. (shrink)

One of the essential ethical issues in the employment relationship is the loss of employee voice. Many of the ways employees have previously exercised voice in the employment relationship have been rendered less effective by (1) the changing nature of work, (2) employer preferences for flexibility that often work to the disadvantage of employees, and (3) changes in public policy and institutional systems that have failed to protect workers. We will begin with a discussion of how work has changed in (...) the last 20 years in countries like Australia and the United States, and then take up the issue of employees as organizational stakeholders and the ethical duties that are owed them, with special attention given to issues of power. We will then consider whether voluntary action by employers such as social auditing is sufficient to ensure equity for employees, and conclude with a discussion of how changes in public policy might ensure greater fairness in the employment relationship by bringing employers and employees together in partnership. (shrink)

In this Introduction we introduce the central themes of the Evaluative Perception volume. After identifying historical and recent contemporary work on this topic, we discuss some central questions under three headings: (1) Questions about the Existence and Nature of Evaluative Perception: Are there perceptual experiences of values? If so, what is their nature? Are experiences of values sui generis? Are values necessary for certain kinds of experience? (2) Questions about the Epistemology of Evaluative Perception: Can evaluative experiences ever justify evaluative (...) judgments? Are experiences of values necessary for certain kinds of justified evaluative judgments? (3) Questions about Value Theory and Evaluative Perception: Is the existence of evaluative experience supported or undermined by particular views in value theory? Are particular views in value theory supported or undermined by the existence of value experience? (shrink)

Edited by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader is a unique and accessible introduction to the richness of ancient philosophy. Featuring a topical--as opposed to chronological--organization, this text introduces students to the wide range of approaches and traditions in ancient philosophy. In each section Annas presents the ancient debates on a particular philosophical topic, drawing on a greater diversity of ancient sources than a chronological approach allows. The book is divided (...) into six sections: Fate and Freedom; Reason and Emotion; Knowledge, Belief, and Skepticism; Metaphysical Questions; How Should You Live?; and Society and the State. Annas includes a generous selection of the works of Plato and Aristotle, as well as those of the Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. She also includes selections from less familiar philosophers and from authors in whose works philosophical issues arise, such as poets, medical writers, historians, and Jewish and Christian writers. The volume features biographical sketches of the philosophers, a timeline, and short discussions of the major movements in ancient philosophy. An excellent text for courses in ancient philosophy and history of philosophy, Voices of Ancient Philosophy: An Introductory Reader will also be of interest to scholars and general readers. (shrink)

In Valuing Health, Dan Hausman argues that well-being is not measurable, at least not in the way that science and policy would require. His argument depends on a demanding conception of well-being and on a pessimistic verdict upon the existing measures of subjective well-being. Neither of these reasons, I argue, warrant as much skepticism as Hausman professes.

The nineteenth-century museum and auction house are seemingly distinct spaces with opposing functions: while the former represents a contemplative space that accumulates objects of art and science, the latter provides a forum for lively sales events that disperse wares to the highest bidders. This contribution blurs the border between museums and marketplaces by studying the Berlin Zoological Museum's duplicate specimen auctions between 1818 and the 1840s. It attends to the operations and tools involved in commodifying specimens as duplicates, particularly the (...) auction catalogue. The paper furthermore contextualizes the museum's sales in a broader history of duplicate auctions across Berlin's collection landscape. (shrink)

In the tradition of Western philosophy since the fifth century BC, the default form of ethical theory has been some version of what is nowadays called virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is best approached by looking at the central features of the classical version of the tradition. Modern virtue ethical theories have not yet achieved such a critical mass of argument and theory, and most are as yet partial or fragmentary. This article builds up, cumulatively, a picture of the entire structure (...) of classical virtue ethics, and then sees how different versions of it result from ignoring or rejecting parts of that structure. The result, while unavoidably schematic, helps to clarify the various debates that are growing up in virtue ethics, and helps to orient those who are less familiar with the terrain and are sometimes puzzled by the recent proliferation of theories with the name virtue ethics. (shrink)