Many philosophers have noted that normative error theorists appear to be committed to saying ‘Error theory is true, but I have no reason to believe it’, which seems paradoxical. In defence of error...

Normative pluralism is the view that practical reason consists in an irreducible plurality of normative domains, that these domains sometimes issue conflicting recommendations and that, when this happens, there is never any one thing that one ought simpliciter to do. Here I argue against this view, noting that normative pluralism must be either unrestricted or restricted. Unrestricted pluralism maintains that all coherent standards are reason-generating normative domains, whereas restricted pluralism maintains that only some are. Unrestricted pluralism, depending on how it (...) is cashed out, is either nihilism about practical reason or else it is subjectivism. Neither view is consistent with normative pluralism; hence, pluralism must be restricted. Restricted pluralism, however, faces two problems. The first stems from the question: “Why is it that some standards are normative domains while others are not?” The question seems to demand an answer, but it is hard to give any answer without appealing to considerations that imply facts about what we ought simpliciter to do. Second, restricted pluralism has difficulty accounting for our intuitions about cases in which one option is optimal in all domains, but not better than each alternative in any one domain. The unique option that is optimal in every domain seems better than its competitors, though it isn’t better within any domain. This is different than the widely discussed argument from notable-nominal comparisons. So I conclude that we have good reason to reject restricted pluralism, the only form of normative pluralism really worthy of that name. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice occurs when we fail to appropriately respect others as epistemic agents. Philosophers building on the work of Miranda Fricker, who introduced the concept, have focused on epistemic injustices involving certain social categories, particularly race and gender. Can there be epistemic injustice attached to political conviction and affiliation? I argue yes: politics can be a salient social category that draws epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustices might also be intersectional, based on the overlap of politics and some other identity category like (...) race or sex. Further, and more provocatively, I argue that political minorities in academia, in particular conservatives and libertarians, are most likely the victims of epistemic injustice on the basis of their politics. Such epistemic injustices might even be routine. Although more limited in scope and severity than other forms of epistemic injustice, political epistemic injustices in academia ought to be of special concern from a standpoint of social justice because of the academy’s central role in knowledge production and dissemination. (shrink)

Many philosophers have thought that aggregates of small, broadly dispersed evils don’t pose the same sort of challenge to theism that horrendous evils like the Nazi Holocaust do. But there are interesting arguments that purport to show that large enough aggregates of small evils are morally and axiologically equivalent to horrendous evils. Herein lies an intriguing and overlooked strategy for defending theism. In short: small evils, or aggregates of such evils, don’t provide decisive evidence against theism; there’s no relevant difference (...) between horrendous evils and aggregates of small evils; hence horrendous evils must not provide decisive evidence against theism, either. (shrink)

The word ‘extremist’ is often used pejoratively, but it’s not clear what, if anything, is wrong with extremism. My project is to give an account of moral extremism as a vice. It consists roughly in having moral convictions so intense that they cause a sort of moral tunnel vision, pushing salient competing considerations out of mind. We should be interested in moral extremism for several reasons: it’s consequential, it’s insidious – we don’t expect immorality to arise from excessive devotion to (...) morality – and it’s yet to attract much philosophical attention. I give several examples of moral extremism from history and explore their social-political implications. I also consider how we should evaluate people who miss the mark, being either too extreme in the service of a good cause or inconsistent with their righteous convictions. I compare John Brown and John Quincy Adams, who fell on either side of this spectrum, as examples. (shrink)

What does it mean to object to a moral theory, such as maximizing consequentialism, on the grounds that it is too demanding? It is apparently to say that its requirements are implausibly stringent. This suggests an obvious response: Modify the theory so that its requirements are no longer as stringent. A consequentialist may do this either by placing the requirement threshold below maximization – thereby arriving at satisficing consequentialism – or, more radically, by dispensing with deontological notions such as “requirement” (...) altogether – thereby arriving at scalar consequentialism. Suppose, however, that a moral theory’s demandingness is not a matter of its requirements being stringent, but whether it entails that we have most reason, all things considered, to undertake burdensome actions. If this is the right account of demandingness – as I shall argue – then neither modification necessarily alleviates demandingness. We are led to the surprising conclusion that neither satisficing consequentialism nor scalar consequentialism is inherently less demanding than their more familiar maximizing counterpart. They are less demanding only when supplemented with ancillary, and controversial, assumptions. (shrink)

The kalām cosmological argument proceeds from the claims that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence, and that the universe has a beginning. It follows that the universe has a cause of its existence. Presumably, this cause is God. Some defenders of the argument contend that, since we don’t see things randomly coming into existence, we know from experience that everything with a beginning has a cause of its existence. Against this, some critics argue that we may (...) not legitimately move from observations of material things within the universe to conclusions about the universe itself. I argue that these critics are mistaken. We can after all draw cosmic conclusions from everyday experiences in support of the kalām argument. (shrink)

The literature on epistemic injustice has thus far confined the concept of testimonial injustice to speech expressions such as inquiring, discussing, deliberating, and, above all, telling. I propose that it is time to broaden the horizons of testimonial injustice to include a wider range of expressions. Controversially, the form of communication I have in mind is non-verbal expression. Non-verbal expression is a vital, though often overlooked, form of communication, particularly for people who have certain neurocognitive disorders. Dependency upon non-verbal expression (...) is a common feature of some forms of neurocognitive disorders such as ‘intellectual disabilities’, autism and late-stage dementia. According to the narrow definition of testimonial injustice currently championed in the literature, people who express non-verbally are exempt from testimonial injustice. However, when we consider cases where meaningful communications from non-verbal people are dismissed or ignored in virtue of identity prejudice, there seems to be a distinct testimonial harm at play. Using late-stage dementia as a case study, I argue that the definition of testimonial injustice should be expanded to include all communicative practices, whether verbal or non-verbal, to encompass the epistemic harms inflicted upon some of the most marginalised in our society. (shrink)

This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...) and the well-being of our social groups. These interests generate obligations against others to “do their homework” before closing inquiry. This alternate account makes better sense of puzzles that accounts of doxastic wronging fall prey to. (shrink)

This book tackles how and why 'landscape' (farms, gardens, countryside) set the scene in the first centuries BCE and CE for Romans keen to talk up and about (but also to scrutinize and understand) what it meant to be a citizen. It investigates what 'landscape' means now and reflects upon how contemporary approaches to 'landscape' can enrich our understanding of ancient experience of the interface between natural and artificial space. It encourages examination of 'landscape' from a range of angles, suggesting (...) alternative ways of thinking about what landscape represents. These methodological approaches (presented initially via a set of key terms and definitions and then deployed thematically across four chapters), combined with a detailed interdisciplinary bibliography and a series of case studies of literary texts and material sites, enable readers to use this survey as a starting point for developing their own in-depth study. (shrink)

Excerpt from Passages From the Philosophy of Herbert Spencer Perhaps to the average reader these lines from T be Foundations of Belief, by Arthur James Bal four, would seem to characterize the doctrine of Herbert Spencer. But the real student of his Philosophy Would resent the injustice of such an in terpretation. As though from a glance at a figure upon the border of an intricate piece Of tapestry, one could conceive the design and colour scheme of the (...) whole. Herbert Spencer could not avoid the conviction that there exists no rational foundation for the be lief in the continuance of conscious personality after death. He believed that the human intellect in its present state of development, could offer no solution to the great problem of identity. He neither af firmed nor denied but with unremitting labour and his life's devotion he produced a Philosophy which gave an inestimable impulse to modern thought if not to Science. In his Syntlzetic Pbilosopliy he revealed the mysterious unity of all existence he traced the progress of Evolution in life, mind, society and morality. 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)

I will discuss a variety of cases such that the subject's believing truly is somewhat of an accident, but less so than in a Gettier case. In each case, this is because her reasons are not ultimately undefeated full stop, but they are ultimately undefeated with certain qualifications. For example, the subject's reasons might be ultimately defeated considered in themselves but ultimately undefeated considered as a proper part of an inference to the best explanation that is undefeated without (...) qualification. In each section of the paper, I consider different qualifications and show how in each case we get an epistemic standing I call “coach-class knowledge”. First-class knowledge requires justifying reasons that are undefeated without qualification. Coach-class knowledge only requires qualified lack of defeat. I will use this distinction to bring debates over knowledge from falsehood and fake barns to an ecumenical resolution. In both cases, the subject enjoys coach-class rather than first-class knowledge. I will also show that the defeasible reasoning tradition can better account for graded accidental truth than safety theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present a problem for reductive accounts of knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. By “reductive” I mean accounts that try to analyze epistemic luck in non-epistemic terms. I will begin by briefly considering Jennifer Lackey's (2006) criticism of Duncan Pritchard's (2005) safety-based account of epistemic luck. I will further develop her objection to Pritchard by drawing on the defeasible-reasoning tradition. I will then show that her objection to safety-based accounts is an instance of a more general problem with (...) reductive accounts of epistemic luck. In short, they face a dilemma: they can either fail to vindicate the intuitive verdicts about cases or they can illicitly appeal to the epistemic vocabulary they are trying to reduce. The upshot is that we can only understand epistemic luck in terms of the assessment of the subject's reasons and we can't give a reductive account of that. (shrink)

AMONG the many cases of malpractices by solicitors recently brought to light, one is especially striking as seeming at variance with all probability. ...

The concordance of results that are “robust” across multiple scientific modalities is widely considered to play a critical role in the epistemology of science. But what should we make of those cases where such multimodal evidence is discordant? Jacob Stegenga has recently argued that robustness is “worse than useless” in these cases, suggesting that “different kinds of evidence cannot be combined in a coherent way.” In this article I respond to this critique and illustrate the critical methodological role that robustness (...) plays as an aim of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

John Worrall and Nancy Cartwright have both argued that randomized controlled trials are “testing the wrong theory.” They claim that RCTs are designed to test inferences about the causal relationships in the study population, but this does not guarantee a justified inference about the causal relationships in the more diverse population in clinical practice. In this article I argue that the epistemology of theory testing in trials is more complicated than either Worrall’s or Cartwright’s accounts suggest. I illustrate this more (...) complex theoretical structure with case studies in medical theory testing from Alzheimer’s research and anticancer drugs in personalized medicine. (shrink)

What makes a high-quality biomarker experiment? The success of personalized medicine hinges on the answer to this question. In this paper, I argue that judgment about the quality of biomarker experiments is mediated by the problem of theoretical underdetermination. That is, the network of biological and pathophysiological theories motivating a biomarker experiment is sufficiently complicated that it often frustrates valid interpretation of the experimental results. Drawing on a case-study in biomarker diagnostic development from neurooncology, I argue that this problem (...) of underdetermination can be overcome with greater coordination across the biomarker research trajectory. I then sketch an account for how coordination across a research trajectory can be evaluated. I ultimate conclude that what makes a high-quality biomarker experiment must be judged by the epistemic contribution it makes to this coordinated research effort. (shrink)

Retributive theories of punishment argue that punishing a criminal for a crime she committed is sufficient reason for a justified and morally permissible punishment. But what about when the state gets lucky in its decision to punish? I argue that retributive theories of punishment are subject to “Gettier” style cases from epistemology. Such cases demonstrate that the state needs more than to just get lucky, and as these retributive theories of punishment stand, there is no anti-luck condition. I’ll argue that (...) Gettier-style cases demonstrate an impermissible instance of punishment, even though they meet the conditions of retributive theories of punishment. Retributive theories are, therefore, too weak. The safety condition from epistemology provides the anti-luck condition needed for permissible punishment. I argue that two forms of retributivism, rights-forfeiture and what I call standard retributivism, are both subject to Gettier-style cases. Unlike the literature on standards of proof, this paper argues that safety is a condition on punishment itself, i.e., in all nearby possible worlds, the accuser must correctly accuse the convicted for the crime they actually committed. (shrink)

In the classic Miners case, an agent subjectively ought to do what they know is objectively wrong. This case shows that the subjective and objective ‘oughts’ are somewhat independent. But there remains a powerful intuition that the guidance of objective ‘oughts’ is more authoritative—so long as we know what they tell us. We argue that this intuition must be given up in light of a monotonicity principle, which undercuts the rationale for saying that objective ‘oughts’ are an authoritative (...) guide for agents and advisors. (shrink)

A recent article by Galitski and Roth(1) characterizes adaptive reversion of chromosomal lac− mutations in Salmonella typhimurium LT2. Using a classical genetic approach they show that adaptive reversion, as characterized by the appearance of late revertant colonies, is an exception rather than a general phenomenon for reversion of nonsense, missense, frameshift and insertion mutations. For certain mutations, however, the number of late revertants exceeds the predicted number. These excess revertants suggest that adaptive mutability is applicable to chromosomal genes as well (...) as to genetic changes involving F plasmids and lysogenic phages. (shrink)

In the last 30 years there has been growing interest in and a greater appreciation of the unique contributions that medieval authors have made to the history of logic. In this thesis, we compare and contrast the modal logics of Robert Kilwardby and John Buridan and explore how their two conceptions of modality relate to and differ from modern notions of modal logic. We develop formal reconstructions of both authors' logics, making use of a number of different formal techniques. In (...) the case of Robert Kilwardby we show that using his distinction between per se and per accidens modalities, he is able to provide a consistent interpretation of the apodictic fragment of Aristotle's modal syllogism and that, by generalising this distinction to hypothetical construction, he can develop an account of connexive logic. In the case of John Buridan we show that his modal logic is a natural extension of the usual Kripke-style possible worlds semantics, and that this modal logic can be shown to be sound and complete relative to a proof-theoretic formalisation of Buridan's treatment of the expository syllogism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial CultureSpencer Hawkins (bio)Mufti, Aamir. Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture. Princeton UP, NJ: Princeton, 2007. xv + 325 pp.Mufti’s comparison of the Jewish question and the Indian Partition invites readers to join building projects that delineate and then endanger minorities within nations. Literature about minorities speaks a language deliberately (...) distant from the national one. Minority status has little to do with population numbers for Aamir Mufti; instead it signifies [End Page 61] tential victimization through disproportional rights, since “minority is always potentially exile” (Mufti 13). This definition of minority suits his two examples—Jews in Germany and Muslims in India—since in the twentieth century both fledgling nations adopted forms of nationalism that regarded the lives of these minorities as contaminants to the purity of the emergent national body. The prologue catalogues the brutality in India that prompted Mufti to write this book. Among the horrors listed were the destruction of Babri Mosque at Ayodhya in 1992 and the videotaped gang rapes of Muslim women that became a widespread form of entertainment in India. While Mufti reads violence toward minorities as correlative with the rise of nationstates, he considers similarities and differences between nation building in the West and in the subcontinent. In both cases, the new establishment of political equality for citizens came along with the desire to pare down the number of officially recognized citizens. Muslim and Jewish minorities migrated to “minority” nations in the collapsing British Empire, in present-day Pakistan and Israel, respectively, during the respective formations of India and Germany. By founding nations on formerly British-occupied territory, minorities potentially would enjoy the role of nationalist majorities. This solution strikes Mufti as spreading the nationalist contagion onto the minority.The whole book lets literature mark broad cultural attitudes and phenomena. The first chapter observes incipient Jewish nationalism in a work by a British author, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, who spent time in Germany and grew fascinated with the Jewish question while abroad. Her Britishness reinforces a pattern in Mufti’s schema: British powers facilitate the rise of nationalism among minorities in India and in Germany. Daniel Deronda comes at the tail end of a long discourse on Jews’ relation to Europe. The first of Mufti’s cases within canonical literature is the hope for tolerance and a dialogue of cultures, which G. E. Lessing allegorizes through a drama about Saladin, the Muslim sultan of Egypt and Syria, who learns to trust the eponymous Jewish merchant in Nathan the Wise. “Muslim” stands in for “Christian” since Nathan’s alienation is allegorical for the alienation of Jews in Lutheran Germany. Heinrich Heine weighs in on the advantages to assimilation in this period with his fragmentary novel The Rabbi from Bacherach, where religiously raised Jewish children feel comforted when they hear the Tale of the Nibelungen from Father Rhein, the personification of a river that figures generally for German national myth and, in Heine’s story, as a possible source of comfort for partially assimilated minorities. If we read literature as a barometer of cultural pressures, then the appeal of assimilation for European Jews declines in the late colonial nineteenth century when George Eliot inscribed religion into the “secular” discourse of national citizenship.Since the Israeli state is outside of the range of his argument, we leave the Jewish Question with George Eliot’s philo-Semitism in Daniel Deronda, where the only hope for European Jews is to become a nation and to occupy the Palestinian territory. Mufti compares the concerns of early Zionism and Pakistani nationalism side by side in chapter 2. Pakistani issues dominate chapters 3 to 5. In chapter 2, he launches the comparison with the parallel between Hebrew’s development as a national language to identify [End Page 62] Jews secularly and culturally, not just religiously, and Urdu’s transition from a vernacular language to a national language with the secular goal of creating a Pakistani culture freed from Hindi’s erstwhile predominance. When he depicts language choice as mimetic of specific cultural trends, Mufti indicates the shape of... (shrink)

In the first half of this dissertation, I develop a heuristic methodology for analyzing scientific solutions to the problem of underdetermination. Heuristics are rough-and-ready procedures used by scientists to construct models, design experiments, interpret evidence, etc. But as powerful as they are, heuristics are also error-prone. Therefore, I argue that they key to prudently using a heuristic is the articulation of meta-heuristics---guidelines to the kinds of problems for which a heuristic is well- or ill-suited. Given that heuristics will introduce certain (...) errors into our scientific investigations, I emphasize the importance of a particular category of meta-heuristics involving the search for robust evidence. Robustness is understood to be the epistemic virtue bestowed by agreement amongst multiple modes of determination. The more modes we have at our disposal, and the more these confirm the same result, the more confident can we be that a result is not a mere artifact of some heuristic simplification. Through an analysis of case-studies in the philosophy of biology and clinical trials, I develop a principled method for modeling and evaluating heuristics and robustness claims in a qualitative problem space. The second half of the dissertation deploys the heuristic methodology to address ethical and epistemological issues in the science of clinical trials. To that end, I develop a network model for the problem space of clinical research, capable of representing the various kinds of experiments, epistemic relationships, and ethical justifications intrinsic to the domain. I then apply this model to ongoing research with the antibacterial agent, moxifloxacin, for the treatment of tuberculosis, tracking its development from initially successful and promising in vitro and animal studies to its disappointing and discordant performance across five human efficacy trials. Given this failure to find a robust result with moxifloxacin across animal and human studies, what should researchers now do? While my final analysis of this case does not definitively answer that question, I demonstrate how my methodology, unlike a statistical meta-analysis, helps to clarify the directions for further research. (shrink)

Excerpt from A Study in the Ethics of the Early Romantic School in Germany It is very probable that any writer or group of writers will be subjected to the pen of the critic, whether they abound in deficiencies or not. But, should the ethics of the individual or group diverge somewhat from the line drawn by society, there is no limit to the untold severity of merciless criticism, no element of defense in the many comments. Still it must be (...) remembered that no one can calculate the depth of a body of water by merely scanning the surface: nor can anyone fully realize the profundity of any situation by viewing it superficially. In other words, it is absolutely necessary that the critic resort to detailed investigation. He must go below the surface to solve the complicated problems which may be presented. Thereby he will acquaint himself with the factors that mould the pattern for the times. Then again, the average human being does or says as he or she sees fit, and can very often furnish justifiable reasons therefor. Everyone reserves for oneself the privileged right of personal opinion and belief. But herein lies a decisive difference. Some people are lovers of the truth, and therefore speak candidly and act openly; others are prone to lose courage and try to hide behind a transparent veil of false modesty. Those, who can be included within this latter category, are only reticent and untrue to themselves, simply because they are in the majority. If the proportion be reversed, they would be more than glad to feel the relief from the pressure removed. But those poor unfortunates, who are forced by their nature and spurred on by their immediate environment to be outspoken, become down-trodden social outcasts. If we ask ourselves why this is so, the answer is: primarily because they are in the minority, as all persecuted classes are. No credit or encouragement is given them for their originality. Yet they are as determined as ever in their aim, and proceed with the innovations that are criteria for their own development. 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)

In this essay, I evaluate the extent to which some currents in classical Christian mysticism might count as properly ‘Christian’ against the rules of faith and theological methodology of thinkers like Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. I begin by expounding this methodology as it relates to non-Christian philosophical traditions, and from there explore the rules these thinkers offer, suggesting that the beating heart of these rules is not a string of propositions to affirm so much as it is a commitment (...) to a certain rendition of biblical narrative grammar. After exploring this grammar, I turn to a brief discussion of the foundations of Christian mysticism and the thought of Evagrius Ponticus. The aim here is to illustrate the theoretical foundations of much Christian mysticism, as well as to provide a test case to evaluate how far some prominent elements of this discourse might, or might not, cohere with the biblical narrative grammar elucidated above. I argue that there is ample room to question the legitimacy of Evagrius’s claim to properly Christian theorizing, and suggest this has serious implications for future Christian work in the philosophy of mysticism. (shrink)

A material simple is a material object that has no proper parts. Some philosophers have argued for the possibility of extended simples. Some have even argued for the possibility of heterogeneous simples or simples that have intrinsic variations across their surfaces. There is a puzzle, though, that is meant to show that extended, heterogeneous simples are impossible. Although several plausible responses have been given to this puzzle, I wish to reopen the case against extended, heterogeneous simples. In this paper, (...) I briefly canvass responses to this puzzle which may be made in defense of extended, heterogeneous simples. I then present a new version of this puzzle which targets simples that occupy atomic yet extended regions of space. It seems that none of the traditional responses can be used to successfully save this particular kind of extended simple from the new puzzle. I also consider some non-traditional defenses of heterogeneous extended simples and argue that they too are unsuccessful. Finally, I will argue that a substantial case can be made against the possibility of extended heterogeneous simples of any kind. (shrink)

This article develops the concept of wrongful depathologization, in which a psychiatric disorder is simultaneously stigmatized and trivialized. We use OCD as a case study to argue that cumulatively these two effects generate a profound epistemic injustice to OCD sufferers, and possibly to those with other mental disorders. We show that even seemingly positive stereotypes attached to mental disorders give rise to both testimonial injustice and wilful hermeneutical ignorance. We thus expose an insidious form of epistemic harm that has (...) been overlooked in the literature. (shrink)

This article discusses a case study that explored the potential of nonfiction graphic novels to develop pre-service teachers’ understanding of agency in a social studies methods course. White pre-service teachers were aske'd to read one graphic novel and then add frames, re-narrate frames, and reflect on their decisions. The positionalities of researchers, who are White males, and participants were part of our analysis. The researchers found that pre-service teachers made revisions to the graphic novels to change the historical actors’ (...) decisions: within the constraints of the historical situation's circumstances; to better fit their own ethical framework; and to critique the author's interpretation of the historical event and the amount of agency assigned to certain historical actors. We also reported findings related to shifts in understanding related to positionality. The pre-service teachers’ revisions demonstrated their understanding of historical actors’ ability to make choices; however, for most pre-service teachers those decisions were limited by, and insignificant in comparison to, the constraints of societal structures. Most pre-service teachers viewed these structures as operating outside of the realm of ethics that they used to articulate and identify agency, and thus, these structures were not responsive to changes in individual or collective agency. Implications are provided for social studies teacher educators. (shrink)

The world is said to contain crystal balls whenever the present carries news of the as-yet-undetermined parts of the future. Many philosophers believe that crystal balls are metaphysically possible. In this essay, I argue that they are not. Whether crystal balls are possible matters, for at least two reasons. The first is epistemological. According to a simple, user-friendly chance norm for credence, which I call the Present Principle, agents are rationally required to conform their credences to their expectations of the (...) present chances, deferring to the present chances as they would to an expert. I would like to defend the Present Principle since its truth would do much to simplify the relation between chance and credence. But the Present Principle is counterexample-free, and hence defensible, only if crystal balls are impossible. The second reason is decision-theoretic. The problem of crystal balls is one of the main objections to causal decision theory. But crystal ball cases can be counterexample to causal decision theory only if crystal balls are possible, and, as I argue, crystal balls are not possible. (shrink)

. Through examining a case study of a major fluids modelling code, this paper charts two key properties of software as a material for building models. Scientific software development is characterized by piecemeal growth, and as a code expands, it begins to manifest frustrating properties that provide an important axis of motivation in the laboratory. The first such feature is a tendency towards brittleness. The second is an accumulation of supporting technologies that sometimes cause scientists to express a frustration (...) with the bureaucracy of highly regulated working practices. Both these features are important conditions for the pursuit of research through simulation. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate the merits of an argument in the philosophy of mysticism which, if sound, appears to have serious implications for our estimation of various Christian saints, mystics, and theologians and some of their most profound spiritual experiences. After giving an initial statement of this argument, I offer a defense of the two main premises at play and conclude the argument is plausibly sound. Following this, I turn to a discussion of Nelson Pike’s important objection to this (...) argument and contend that, while doubtless more interesting than commonly supposed, it ultimately falls short of the mark. (shrink)

words express the sentiment which sways the British nation in its dealings with the Boer republics; and this sentiment it is which, definitely displayed in this case, pervades indefinitely the political feeling now manifesting itself as Imperialism. Supremacy, where not clearly imagined, is vaguely present in the background of consciousness. Not the derivation of the word only, but all its uses and associations, imply the thought of predominance – imply a correlative subordination. Actual or potential coercion of others, individuals (...) or communities, is necessarily involved in the conception. (shrink)

In “A Tale of Two Simples,” I presented an argument against the possibility of extended heterogeneous simples that relied on the possibility of extended atomic regions of space. Andrew Jaeger has presented a parody of one part of my argument for a clearly absurd conclusion. In this short paper, I defend my argument by showing that there is a significant disanalogy between my support for a key premise in my argument and Jaeger’s support for the corresponding premise in his parody (...) argument. Also, in opposition to my previous position, I present a case against the possibility of extended atomic regions of space. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 29, Number 1, April 2003, pp. 89-98 Another "Curious Legend" about Hume's An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature MARK G. SPENCER I In 1938, J. M. Keynes and P. Sraffa edited and introduced for Cambridge University Press a reprinting of An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature.1 The Abstract they claimed in their subtitle was "A Pamphlet hitherto unknown by DAVID HUME." (...) Arguing against a number of nineteenth and early-twentieth -century scholars who attributed authorship of an abstract of the Treatise to Adam Smith, Keynes and Sraffa convincingly documented in their introductory essay many solid reasons for thinking that the pamphlet being reprinted was Hume's.2 Sixty years on, their account dispelling this "curious legend" of Smith's authorship has now become the received opinion. T.E. Jessop accepted Keynes and Sraffa's argument (having seen it in proof before the edition was published) in his bibliography of 1938, and Norman Kemp Smith gave their version an early supportive review.3 E.C. Mossner, in his well-known biography of Hume, accepted wholeheartedly Keynes and Sraffa's findings.4 When in 1978 the Selby-Bigge's edition of Hume's Treatise saw its second edition the text of the Abstract was appended and a note gave P.H. Nidditch's opinion that "Hume's authorship is overwhelmingly likely."5 More recently Mark G. Spencer is Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of History, University of Toronto. Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario MSS 3GS, Canada. spencer@uwo.ca 90 Mark G. Spencer in the pages of this journal, Jeff Broome, David Raynor, and David Fate Norton have all helped buttress the case for Hume's authorship, as did R. W. Connon and M. Pollard elsewhere.6 Despite an occasional dissenting voice,7 the Abstract is now widely, and rightly (or so it seems to this author), thought to have been Hume's. But with all of this scholarly attention focused on confirming Hume's authorship, another much more contentious aspect of Keynes and Sraffa's interpretation has gone largely unnoticed. Keynes and Sraffa's billing of the Abstract as "A Pamphlet hitherto unknown by DAVID HUME," suggested that before 1938 the Abstract had not been attributed publicly to Hume and that the contents of the pamphlet also had been completely unknown. "Students of Hume have known that an abstract of the Treatise was made and intended for publication," wrote a reviewer of Keynes and Sraffa, "[b]ut no copy of this abstract was known to exist: indeed it was usually supposed that the abstract had never been printed at all."8 Relying on Keynes and Sraffa it would be easy to suppose that the Abstract was never publicly ascribed to Hume and even that the contents of the pamphlet had been overlooked entirely until Keynes and Sraffa came along. One of the purposes of the present short essay is to dispel, once and for all, that misunderstanding about the Abstract. Norman Kemp Smith went part of the way toward that end in 1938 when he reviewed Keynes and Sraffa's edition. But in the process Kemp Smith introduced another "curious legend" that has slipped into scholarly acceptance with little comment and no debate. We will see that it is a mistake to argue, as Kemp Smith did, that Hume's authorship of a sixpenny pamphlet was known to readers of An universal biographical and historical dictionary, published in 1800. There is no discussion of Hume's Abstract in that book. However, the Abstract was discussed in print in at least three different publications between 1818 and 1827, long after its initial publication in 1740 and long before Keynes and Sraffa brought it to the attention of their audience in 1938. While pre-1938 Hume scholars had overlooked the Abstract, at least one of Hume's early nineteenth-century critics knew of the Abstract's existence, attributed the work to Hume, and even quoted extensively from Hume's "Preface." Most interesting of all, Hume's authorship of the Abstract was interpreted in ways that are telling of the historical reception of... (shrink)

Catholic philosophical anthropologists have defended views of the human person on which we are not reducible to anything non-personal. For example, it is not the case that we are nothing but matter, souls, or parts of society. Nevertheless, most Catholic anthropologies have been reductionistic in other ways. Mark K. Spencer presents a philosophical portrait of human persons on which we are entirely irreducible to anything non-personal, by synthesizing claims from many strands of the Catholic tradition. These include Thomism, (...) Scotism, phenomenology, personalism, nouvelle théologie, analytic philosophy, Greek and Russian thought, and several others. It adjudicates among these traditions' claims by considering whether they are grounded in how we appear in experience and whether they are non-reductionistic. While many metaphysical claims about persons are defended, the picture that ultimately results is one on which persons are best grasped not through abstract concepts but through aesthetic perception, as unique kinds of beauty. This portrait also shows how we have many irreducible parts, principles, and powers. Various chapters explore the irreducibility of our subjectivity, senses, intellect, freedom, and affections, and of our souls, bodies, acts of existence, and activities. Readers will also find explorations of divine simplicity and causality, the nature of matter, organisms, and artifacts, all of which must be understood to fully grasp our own irreducibility. In considering how to synthesize various traditions' claims, the book also offers new solutions to a number of prominent debates in contemporary Catholic philosophy. These include debates over natural law, the natural desire to see God, the separated soul, the nature of gifts, integralism and personalism, idealist and realist phenomenology, and various scholastic accounts of the act of existence. The picture of persons thereby developed helps the reader to perceive persons more perfectly. (shrink)

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. If that is right, it really is too bad in the case of Andrew Sabl’s Hume’s Politics. It is too bad because the reviewer’s job would be exceedingly easy, and very pleasant. By any measure this book has a strikingly fine cover. Its image is drawn from John Byam Liston Shaw’s depiction of Queen Mary and Princess Elizabeth entering London in 1553. Hume’s interpretation of Elizabeth I plays a prominent (...) role in Hume’s Politics, so I will come back to her. But first, looking beneath the cover, what else does Sabl’s book yield?The short answer is that it yields plenty. There are several important points being... (shrink)

The semantics of belief reports has recently received a great deal of attention. Speech reports have largely been left behind in this discussion. Here I extend a familiar recent account of attitude reports, the Russellian theory, to the special case of speech reports. I then consider how it compares to Davidson’s paratactic theory with respect to a few examples that raise special problems about speech reports. Neither theory accounts for everything we want to say about these cases. I suggest (...) that the problem lies in an assumption common to both theories, that in reporting what others say, we aim to represent what was said exactly as the original speaker represented it, in so far as this is possible. (shrink)

Hospital ethics committees have become widespread over the last 25 years, stimulated by the Quinlan decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the report of a President's Commission, and most recently by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Care Organizations, which now man dates that each hospital seeking accreditation have a functioning process for the consideration of ethical issues in patient care. Laws and regulations in several states require that hospitals establish ethics committees, and some states stipulate that certain (...) types of cases and disputes be taken to such committees. At least one state grants legal immunity to those who implement recommendations of an ethics committee. (shrink)