In this essay I consider the role of authorship in balancing epistemological trust and skepticism in e-science. Drawing on studies of the diagnostic practices of doctors in British breast care units and the gate-keeping practices of a Californian publisher of horticultural works, I suggest that conventions of authorial designation have an important role to play in nurturing the skepticism essential for scientific rigor within the framework of epistemological trust that pragmatism and morality require. In so doing I question the assumption (...) of contemporary scholars that scientific works are determinate in fact, while nonetheless supporting the idea of semi-indeterminate authorship as a goal. I then consider the theoretical and practical consequences of that view with an analysis of the Anglo-American legal constraints on attributions of authorship, and the complex of other relevant interests and rights that may require different models of attribution oriented not around authors themselves, but rather their employer, their manager or supervisor, or some pseudonym deemed to be an appropriate organizing mechanism for the works in question. (shrink)

In this article, the categories of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic (LDMA) works in which copyright subsists are considered, and an argument made that the legislature’s division of protected works into categories is appropriate given the psychology of art appreciation, and the fact that in order to perceive a work qua work one must perceive it in relation to a category of work. Nonetheless, an argument is also made that the statutory definitions of LDMA works suffer from the defects of (...) formalist theory. Those defects are outlined, and an alternative theory of works proposed, drawing on the scholarship of art theorist Kendall Walton and the intentional, historical view of the work developed in a recent publication (J Pila, ‘An Intentional View of the Copyright Work’ (2008) 71 MLR 535–58). According to that theory, LDMA works are constituted in part by their properties of form and in part by the history of their individual production. Consistent with this, the statutory categories of work are cast as denoting authorial traditions: evolving practices of LDMA expression that exist and are experienced in a particular social context. In addition to its general explanatory and normative value for copyright, this theory has specific implications for the legislature’s expression of the categories of works in which copyright subsists. (shrink)

Recent events in the United Kingdom have focused attention on the protection at law of academic freedom. Institutional academic freedom may be defined as the freedom of a university to determine its scholarly agenda and system of governance, notwithstanding dependence on external support. Individual academic freedom may be similarly defined as the freedom of individual university members to determine their own scholarly agenda, including how to pursue and present their research, notwithstanding dependence on institutional support. While such freedoms sit in (...) tension, they share a basis in the liberal ideal of the pursuit of truth through teaching, discussion and scholarly research. (shrink)

Generics (UK) Ltd v Lundbeck A/S [2009] UKHL 12 is about the validity of patents for chemical products. It is also about the object of patent protection, and the balance struck by the patent system between the interests of the public and individual inventors. Finally, it is about the development of UK patent law in the era of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents (1973) 13 I.L.M. 268 (European Patent Convention).

Law exists among other things to facilitate social interaction by creating the conditions necessary to enable people to trust each other sufficiently to interact. To that end it is part of a complex web of social mechanisms, variations in any part of which produce ripple effects in all others.

Nine schedules programmes for broadcast by free-to-air television stations. It creates Weekly Schedules of broadcast-related information, including “time and title” information.

This paper responds to an invitation by the editors to consider whether the intellectual property regime suggests an appropriate model for protecting interests in detached human body parts. It begins by outlining the extent of existing IP protection for body parts in Europe, and the relevant strengths and weaknesses of the patent system in that regard. It then considers two further species of IP right of less obvious relevance. The first are the statutory rights of ownership conferred by domestic UK (...) law in respect of employee inventions, and the second are the economic and moral rights recognised by European and international law in respect of authorial works. In the argument made, both of these species of IP right may suggest more appropriate models of sui generis protection for detached human body parts than patent rights because of their capacity better to accommodate the relevant public and private interests in respect of the same. (shrink)

The term “patent” is an abbreviation of “letters patent”, the open form of document historically issued by the Crown for the purpose of conferring a right or privilege or otherwise communicating the royal will. In contemporary law it denotes the species of intellectual property that is granted as an inducement for the creation and disclosure of novel, inventive and industrially applicable inventions. In the UK that property is conferred under the Patents Act 1977, or with similar effect the European Patent (...) Convention (EPC), and comprises the exclusive right to use and sell a protected invention for up to 20 years. A protected invention may be any subject matter having technical character; a definition derived from the Act’s express exclusion from patentability of (among other things) discoveries, scientific theories, business methods and computer programs “as such”. Also excluded are surgical, therapeutic and diagnostic methods (for lack of industrial applicability), and inventions the commercial exploitation of which would be contrary to public policy or morality. In these and other respects the Patents Act follows the EPC, which it was the explicit purpose of that Act to implement. Patents are territorial, and are thus only valid and infringed in their country of issue. For a UK inventor to obtain protection outside the UK s/he must therefore obtain a patent from that country, either directly by applying under its laws, or if it is a party to the EPC or other intergovernmental agreement, indirectly by applying under that agreement. Inventors seeking protection for an invention in more than one country will often do so by means of the Patent Cooperation Treaty. (shrink)

A patent agent is a person with recognised expertise in the field of intellectual property generally and patents specifically. In the UK patent agents form an elite professional community, membership of which is denoted by inclusion on the Register of Patent Agents. The Register exists under statute and is maintained by The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA), a body empowered by royal charter of which most patent agents are also members.

In March 2010, a United States (U.S.) District Court held that isolated human genes are “products of nature”, and methods of analysis and comparison “abstract mental processes”, for which a U.S. patent cannot validly be granted. Its decision undermined U.S. patent granting practices, and widens the gap between U.S. and European law on what constitutes inherently patentable subject matter (“inventions”), as well as a proportionate patent grant.

This review article offers a European perspective on the pluralistic, principles-based model of intellectual property (IP) advanced by Robert Merges in his book Justifying Intellectual Property. After introducing Merges’s model and theory of IP with reference to IP theories generally, other pluralistic legal models, and patterns of judicial reasoning in the patent and copyright fields, the article argues that European jurisprudence offers broad support for Merges’s operational model of IP, while also challenging certain aspects of his wider analysis. They include (...) his ‘one size fits all’ foundational theory of IP, his account of key IP rules and practices, and his choice and conception of IP’s midlevel principles. Through this critique the article draws attention to the utilitarian bias of Merges’s model; a bias which undermines its pluralistic claims, in part by undermining Merges’s own foundational theory of IP. The result is to underline the limits of a regime unconcerned with its own normative basis, and the need for more rather than less discussion of IP theory, including more work of the type that Merges’s book undertakes. (shrink)

1. Any statutory definition of inherent patentability or other threshold exclusion from patentability should have a clear normative basis. In the case of inherent patentability, that basis should relate to the patent system’s aim of encouraging and rewarding inventive activity for the benefit of society.

The European Patent Convention (EPC) establishes “a system of law, common to the Contracting States, for the grant of patents for inventions” (article 1) and an organisation, the European Patent Organisation, to administer it. A patent granted under the EPC is called a European patent but takes effect as a bundle of national patents under the laws of the Contracting States in which protection is sought.

The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international treaty that was concluded in 1970 as a special agreement under the 1883 Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property. It establishes an international system for the filing and examination of patent applications and the conduct of “prior art” (technical literature) searches that is administered by a network of national and regional patent offices acting as Receiving Offices, International Searching Authorities and/or International Preliminary Examining Authorities. Its specific purpose is to help (...) inventors obtain a patent for the same invention in two or more PCT countries by allowing them to assert their claim internationally have it subjected to preliminary assessment before committing to one or more local applications. It thus reduces the risk of wasted expenditure by enabling an applicant to postpone the decision to pursue an application to grant until confident of its success. By creating a series of pre-grant procedures with recognised validity in each of the PCT’s nearly 140 countries, it also provides a basis for the harmonisation of patentability standards and facilitates the move toward the creation of an international patent. (shrink)

The purpose of the patent system is to provide incentives for the development of new and useful products and processes. Such products and processes are generally referred to as ‘inventions’. Whilst patents have historically been sought and granted for mechanical and chemical inventions only, the biotechnology revolution of the last 30 years has radically changed this by precipitating a mass of patent applications in respect of living and biological matter. Applications of this nature have forced a re-examination by courts and (...) policy makers of traditional understandings of what can be patented. In particular, they have forced consideration of the extent (if any) to which life and nature can be viewed as ‘inventions’ so as to be capable of supporting a patent. In considering this question the central guiding principle has been the distinction, on which all of patent law is said to rest, between man-made inventions on the one hand and discoveries of nature on the other. (shrink)

In this issue, Pila (2009) has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. (2005). The disagreement between them turns on the notion of “biographical familiarity” and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, this paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side (...) in this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon—as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained (in the logical sense) within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of X-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a “space of reasons”. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists (and other relevantly similar professionals) make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Pila has criticised the recommendations made by requirements engineers involved in the design of a grid technology for the support of distributed readings of mammograms made by Jirotka et al. The disagreement between them turns on the notion of ‘biographical familiarity’ and whether it can be a sound basis for trust for the performances of professionals such as radiologists. In the first two sections, the paper gives an interpretation of the position of each side in (...) this disagreement and their recommendation for the design of technology for distributed reading, and in the third the underlying reasons for this disagreement are discussed. It is argued that Pila, in attempting to make room for mistrust as well as trust, brings to the fore the question of having and reflecting upon reasons for trust or mistrust. Pila holds that biographical familiarity is not a sound reason for trust/mistrust, as it seems to obliterate the possibility of mistrust. In response to her proposal, an analysis is proposed of the forms of trust involved in biographical familiarity. In particular, implicit trust is focused upon, as a form of trust in advance of reasons, and as a form of trust contained within other reasons. It is proposed that implicit trust has an important role in establishing an intersubjectively shared world in which what counts as a reason for the acceptability of performances such as readings of x-rays is established. Implicit trust, therefore, is necessary for professionals to enter into a ‘space of reasons’. To insist upon judgements made in the absence of the form of implicit trust at play in biographical familiarity is to demand that radiologists make judgements regarding whether to trust or mistrust on the basis of reasons capable of being reflected upon, but at the same time to leave them without reasons upon which to reflect. (shrink)

Since the time of Hippocrates, madness has typically been viewed through the lens of disease, dysfunction, and defect. In 'Madness', philosopher of science Justin Garson presents a radically different paradigm for conceiving of madness and the forms that it takes. In this paradigm, which he calls madness-as-strategy, madness is neither a disease nor a defect, but a designed feature, like the heart or lungs.

Using the latest cognitive and psychological scientific data and theory, this book answers the question "why would anyone believe in God?".

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Philosophy is a collection of essays on important texts and figures in the history of Chinese thought. The essays cover both well-known texts such as the Analects and the Zhuangzi as well as many of the lesser-known thinkers in the classical and post-classical Chinese tradition. Most of the chapters focus on thinkers or texts in one of three important historical movements: Classical ("pre-Qin") Chinese philosophy, Chinese Buddhism, and the Confucian response to Buddhism ("neo-Confucianism" broadly construed).

This paper argues for contrastivism about the deontic modals, 'ought', 'must', and 'may'. A simple contrastivist semantics that predicts the desired entailment relations among these modals is offered.

This is a short overview of the biological functions debate in philosophy. While it was fairly comprehensive when it was written, my short book ​A Critical Overview of Biological Functions has largely supplanted it as a definitive and up-to-date overview of the debate, both because the book takes into account new developments since then, and because the length of the book allowed me to go into substantially more detail about existing views.

The downsides of monogamy are felt by most people engaged in long-term relationships, including restrictions on self-discovery, limits on friendship, sexual boredom, and a circumscribed understanding of intimacy. Yet, a "happily ever after" monogamy is assumed to be the ideal form of romantic love in many modern societies: a relationship that is morally ideal and will bring the most happiness to its two partners. -/- In Why It’s OK to Not Be Monogamous, Justin L. Clardy deeply questions these assumptions. He (...) rejects the claim that non-monogamy among honest, informed and consenting adults is morally impermissible. He shows instead how polyamorous relationships can actually be exemplars of moral virtue. The book discusses how social and political forces sustain and reward monogamous relationships. The book defines non-monogamy as a privative concept; a negation of monogamy. Looking at its prevalence in the United States, the book explains how common criticisms of non-monogamy come up short. Clardy argues, as some researchers have recently shown―monogamy relies on continually demonizing non-monogamy to sustain its moral status. Finally, the book concludes with a focus on equality, asking what justice for polyamorous individuals might look like. (shrink)

Most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God take the following form: (1) If God exists, the world would not be like this (where 'this' picks out some feature of the world like the existence of evil, etc.) (2) But the world is like this . (3) Therefore, God does not exist. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of our ability to make judgments of the sort expressed by premise (1). According to skeptical theism, if there were a (...) God, it is likely that he would have reasons for acting that are beyond our ken, and thus we are not justified in making all-things-considered judgments about what the world would be like if there were a God. In particular, the fact that we don't see a good reason for X does not justify the conclusion that there is no good reason for X. 1 Thus, skeptical theism purports to undercut most a posteriori arguments against the existence of God. What follows is an account of the nature of skeptical theism, an application of skeptical theism to both the argument from evil and the argument from divine hiddenness, and a review of the cases for and against skeptical theism. (shrink)

Because anticipated and retrospective regret play important roles in practical deliberation and motivation, better understanding them can illuminate the contours of human agency. However, the possibility of self-ignorance and the fact that we change over time can make regret—especially anticipatory regret—not only a poor predictor of where the agent will be in the future but also an unreliable indicator of where the agent stands. Granting these, this paper examines the way in which prospective and, particularly, retrospective regret can nevertheless yield (...) important insight into the sorts of creatures we are, both generally and individually. The experience of retrospective regret can show a person she values something in a way she did not know or that she is (or was) a different person than she had thought, insights which can factor into forward-looking, or prospective, deliberation. Such instances of revelatory regret reveal something to the agent about herself as agent. I examine two cases of agential self-ignorance. In the first, the experience of regret reveals what the agent values, not only to others but even to the agent himself. In the second, the agent anticipates experiencing regret for an action but does not experience the regret, suggesting that the agent did not value the rejected alternative in the way she thought. Anticipatory regret is forward-looking and can play an important role in practical deliberation. But insofar as anticipatory regret flows from one’s imperfect judgment and prospection about oneself, retrospective regret can be an important corrective in helping the agent understand her own standpoint. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on attributions of phenomenal consciousness, leaving to the side interesting questions about how people attribute other types of consciousness. While researchers are not in perfect agreement about how the concept of phenomenal consciousness should be understood, the standard line is that a creature is phenomenally conscious just in case it has phenomenally conscious mental states, and that a mental state is phenomenally conscious just in case it has phenomenal qualities. The chapter explores whether lay people employ the (...) concept of phenomenal consciousness. It begins by looking at the evidence for an affirmative answer to this question, focusing on Joshua Knobe and Jesse Prinz's article, Intuitions About Consciousness: Experimental Studies. The chapter explains the evidence for a negative answer to the target question, focusing on Justin Sytsma and Edouard machery's article, Two Conceptions of Subjective Experience. (shrink)

A crucial tenet of virtue-based or expertise-based theorizing about politics is that there are ways to identify and select morally and epistemically excellent people to hold office. This paper considers historical challenges to this task that come from within Greek and Confucian thought and political practice. Because of how difficult it is to assess character in ordinary settings, we argue that it is even more difficult to design institutions that select for virtue at the much wider political scale. Specifically, we (...) argue that the vast majority of proposals that purport to select for virtue are either (a) unlikely to be effective, (b) not implementable at the scale of most current nations, or (c) have already been incorporated into most democratic states. Thus defenders of meritocratic institutions should take more seriously the practical barriers that will almost certainly arise when trying to implement these proposals at scale. Historical proponents of meritocratic values were well aware of concerns about the feasibility of their political ideals, and we should be too. (shrink)

Contrastivism about ‘ought’ holds that ‘ought’ claims are relativized, at least implicitly, to sets of mutually exclusive but not necessarily jointly exhaustive alternatives. This kind of theory can solve puzzles that face other linguistic theories of ‘ought’, via the rejection or severe restriction of principles that let us make inferences between ‘ought’ claims. By rejecting or restricting these principles, however, the contrastivist takes on a burden of recapturing acceptable inferences that these principles let us make. This paper investigates the extent (...) to which a contrastivist can do this. (shrink)

Contemporary metaphysics is dominated by the view that every object belongs to a kind permanently in the sense that it cannot cease to belong to that kind without thereby ceasing to exist. For example, some philosophers think that a person is destroyed if they cease to be a person, a statue is destroyed if it ceases to be a statue, and so on. I believe that this standard view is false. Being a person, or a statue, or etc., is like (...) being a child: just as I did not cease to exist when I ceased to be a child, so people and statues need not cease to exist when they cease to be people and statues. Borrowing a term from Daniel Korman (who uses it in a similar but perhaps not identical way), I call this view phasalism because it entails that the kind-properties which ordinary objects instantiate are phase sortal properties, i.e., kind-properties that an object can instantiate for a temporary phase of its career. This dissertation is a partial defense of phasalism. I develop a phasalist metaphysics in detail, highlighting its virtues and rebutting objections along the way. After some stage-setting (Chapter 1), I defend a phasalist criterion of identity over time for ordinary objects (Chapter 2), as well as a phasalist account of the role that sortal properties play in the identity over time of ordinary objects (Chapter 3). Then I defend a phasalist-friendly approach to the identity over time of lumps, hunks, pieces, etc. of matter (Chapter 4). The material in these chapters amounts to a phasalist solution to certain material coincidence puzzles, such as the puzzle of the statue and the piece of clay. I go on to show that familiar puzzles about undetached parts (Chapter 5) and fission (Chapter 6) can be solved within the confines of my phasalist metaphysics as well. (shrink)

Beliefs have genealogies. Can tracing a belief’s genealogy illuminate the epistemic quality of the belief? This paper sets out a general epistemology of genealogies. As it turns out, genealogies for beliefs come in two sorts: those that trace a belief to some mental event that doubles as evidence for the belief and those that do not. The former have the potential to undercut the belief, rebut the belief, or—importantly—both. The latter have the potential to reinforce the belief or rebut the (...) belief but—importantly—not undercut it. The ultimate conclusion is that there is a role for genealogies in the epistemic appraisal of our beliefs, but this role will be circumscribed by the availability of clear and compelling genealogies. (shrink)

Scholars have suggested that leaders’ ethical failures at the beginning of the twenty-first century have raised awareness about the importance of ethical leadership (EL). Yet, there has been no systematic effort to evaluate whether this awareness indeed led to changes in EL or how followers react to this leadership style over time. To address this gap, we examine the evolution in EL means, variability, and its associations with follower outcomes between 2004 and 2019. Our cross-temporal meta-analysis included 359 independent samples (...) from 314 studies published between 2005 and 2020 and focused on followers’ ratings of their leaders using the Ethical Leadership Scale (ELS; Brown et al., in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 97(2), 117–134, 2005). Using cubic spline meta-regressions, our results indicated no global changes in EL mean levels and variability across the 15-year period. Nevertheless, country-level comparisons revealed different EL-trends in China (i.e. decrease) versus the United States (i.e. stable), and further moderation analyses highlighted the role of cultural value dimensions and national corruption rates. Finally, we also found that the relationship between EL and desirable follower outcomes (e.g. organizational citizenship behavior) became gradually stronger over time on a global level. These results provide a solid empirical basis to evaluate cross-temporal trends in EL and its (changing) impact on follower outcomes across the globe. (shrink)

In "Saving One Another: Philodemus and Paul on Moral Formation in Community" Justin Reid Allison compares how the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus and the Christian apostle Paul envisioned the members of their communities helping one another to grow into moral maturity. Allison establishes that Philodemus and Paul are more similar than previously noticed in their conception and practice of moral formation in community, and that these similarities offer a critical opportunity to consider important differences between the two as well. By deepening (...) the comparison to include differences alongside similarities, and to include theological and socio-economic facets of communal moral formation, Allison shows that Philodemus and Paul uniquely shed fresh light on one another's texts when understood in comparative perspective. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive collection of essays that explores cutting-edge work in experimental philosophy, a radical new movement that applies quantitative and empirical methods to traditional topics of philosophical inquiry. Situates the discipline within Western philosophy and then surveys the work of experimental philosophers by sub-discipline Contains insights for a diverse range of fields, including linguistics, cognitive science, anthropology, economics, and psychology, as well as almost every area of professional philosophy today Edited by two rising scholars who take a broad (...) and inclusive approach to the field Offers a complete introduction for non-specialists and students to the central approaches, findings, challenges, and controversies in experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Moral luck is a puzzling aspect of our psychology: Why do we punish outcomes that were not intended (i.e. accidents)? Prevailing psychological accounts of moral luck characterize it as an accident or error, stemming either from a re‐evaluation of the agent's mental state or from negative affect aroused by the bad outcome itself. While these models have strong evidence in their favor, neither can account for the unique influence of accidental outcomes on punishment judgments, compared with other categories of moral (...) judgment. Why might punishment be particularly sensitive to moral luck? We suggest that such sensitivity is easily understood from the broader perspective of punishment's ultimate adaptive goal: Changing others’ behavior by exploiting their capacity to learn. This pedagogical perspective accounts for the exceptional influence of outcomes on punitive sentiments and makes predictions for additional moderators of punishment. We review evidence supporting the pedagogical hypothesis of punishment and discuss fruitful directions for future research. (shrink)

This series helps practitioners to redefine and recreate their daily practice in ways that are healthier for both patients and practitioners. The books provide a welcome antidote to demoralisation and burn-out amongst practitioners, reversing cynicism and reviving our feeling of pride in health practice. The fifth book in this series, The Integrated Practitioner: Food for Thought, written for readers who prefer a more academic and reflective understanding of the themes of books 1-4. It incorporates the theoretical background for each of (...) the concepts discussed in the first four workbooks, giving context to, and providing an underpinning of, modern medical practice. (shrink)

Offers a concise, expert account of Aristotle's life and ideas, and explains their influence on man's struggle to understand his existence in the world.

This accessibly written book offers an approach to cultural engagement that is attentive to the hunger for meaning, beauty, and justice and governed by the gospel virtues of faith, love, and hope.

This book addresses a longstanding controversy concerning whether Frankfurt cases—thought experiments of a sort devised by Harry Frankfurt—are counterexamples to the principle of alternative possibilities (roughly, the principle that a person is morally responsible for what he did only if he could have avoided doing it). Frankfurt and many others contend that they are, but here it is argued that, far from being counterexamples to the principle, Frankfurt cases actually provide further confirmation of it, a conclusion that has important implications (...) for our understanding of free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

La famille a longtemps t considre comme une unit sociale compose de trois relations simples : mari-femme, parent-enfant et matre-serviteur. Mais la fin du dix-huitime sicle, la dimension affective de la famille devient prpondrante, ce qui en exclut progressivement les serviteurs. Cette tude se penche sur le moment crucial de l'histoire des ides ou le paradigme familial est en train de changer, en s'intressant aux discours sur la famille d'une srie de penseurs issus de la tradition du droit naturel moderne (...) et des Lumires cossaises. Dans un effort constant de replacer chaque relation analyse dans le cadre de la famille, et la famille dans l'argument politique et philosophique plus gnral dfendu par ces auteurs, cette tude montre que la famille, loin d'tre une question subsidiaire, joue un role important dans la comprhension des rapports sociaux cette poque. (shrink)

This chapter examines the convention concerning the theories of generation and form in the field of natural philosophy in Great Britain during the seventeenth century. It explains that natural philosophers treated the questions of biological generation interchangeably with those coming from chemistry, mineralogy, and meteorology, and considers Antoine Goudin's argument that there are both efficient and final causes at work in the earth's production of rocks that resemble animals or parts of animals. The chapter also suggests that the ‘chymists’ were (...) consistently presented as a challenging third party, alongside Aristotelianism and traditional atomism, in the effort to account for the composition of natural bodies. (shrink)

In "Mathematical Truth", Paul Benacerraf articulated an epistemological problem for mathematical realism. His formulation of the problem relied on a causal theory of knowledge which is now widely rejected. But it is generally agreed that Benacerraf was onto a genuine problem for mathematical realism nevertheless. Hartry Field describes it as the problem of explaining the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, realistically construed. In this paper, I argue that the Benacerraf Problem cannot be made out. There simply is no intelligible problem (...) that satisfies all of the constraints which have been placed on the Benacerraf Problem. The point generalizes to all arguments with the structure of the Benacerraf Problem aimed at realism about a domain meeting certain conditions. Such arguments include so-called "Evolutionary Debunking Arguments" aimed at moral realism. I conclude with some suggestions about the relationship between the Benacerraf Problem and the Gettier Problem. (shrink)