Perceptual experience is often said to be transparent; that is, when we have a perceptual experience we seem to be aware of properties of the objects around us, and never seem to be aware of properties of the experience itself. This is a introspective fact. It is also often said that we can infer a metaphysical fact from this introspective fact, e.g. a fact about the nature of perceptual experience. A transparency theory fills in the details for these two facts, (...) and bridges the gap between them. We have three aims: to scrutinize Michael Tye’s transparency theory :137–151, 2002; Consciousness revisited: materialism without phenomenal concepts, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2009; Philos Stud 170:39–57, 2014a), introduce a new transparency theory, and advance a meta-theoretical hypothesis about the interest, and import, of transparency theories. (shrink)

The notion that there exists a fundamental need to exert control over or to influence one’s environment has enjoyed a long history in psychology (e.g., DeCharms, 1968; Heider, 1958) and has stimulated considerable theoretical work. Such a need has been characterized by theorists at multiple levels of analysis. Control motivation, for example, has been characterized broadly in terms of proactive (White, 1959) or reactive (e.g., Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978; Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981) strivings for control over general (...) or specific (Brehm & Brehm, 1981) and central or peripheral outcomes (Thompson, 1993). Additionally, various types of control strategies used to gain or maintain a sense of personal control have been proposed (e.g., Averill, 1973; Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995; Rothbaum, Weisz, & Snyder, 1982; Thompson, 1981). Modes of control, for instance, have been categorized as either primary or secondary. Primary strategies involve direct action undertaken to produce desirable and avoid undesirable outcomes in the external world, whereas secondary strategies employ primarily cognitive processes undertaken to produce a change within the person. Recently, Heckhausen and Schulz (1995) have further delineated these primary and secondary forms of control according to whether they are based on veridical or illusory causal understandings of the world and whether they are functional or dysfunctional. While most control theorists view primary control as preferable to secondary control, the latter is viewed as critical in the process of adaptation to control failures and in the promotion of future primary control attempts. (shrink)

Public discussion of new medical trials is desirable, but not moment‐by‐moment disclosure of patients' ups and down. Nor is such disclosure necessary: the public is not entitled to all information about a trial as soon as it is available. What should be given the press, and what withheld, cannot be decided without appreciating the surprising number and intricate interrelations of the parties' needs and interests.

Informal logicians recognise the frequent use of unstated assumptions; some (e.g. Fisher) also recognise entertained arguments and recommend a suppositional approach (such as Mackie's) to conditional statements. It is here argued that these two be put together to make argument diagrams more accurate and subtle. Philosophical benefits also accrue: insights into Jackson's apparent violations of modus tollens and contraposition and McGee's counterexamples to the validity of modus ponens.

The field of “science studies” has often been suspected of dubious moral grounds because of its intensive concern with nonhumans; the accusation is made by those who use a roughly Kantian definition of what it is to occupy the moral high ground. By evaluating four contrasting texts (by Comte-Sponville, Kant, Serres, and Lovelock) in tandem, this article explores what an “objective morality” would look like, and it considers how to compare the Kantian axiology with the actor-network theory's possible definition of (...) a thing-oriented morality. Especially important in this context is the moral intensity of a text, which this article defines semiotically in terms of the ability to feel responsible by responding to the “call” of more beings than the human beings so exclusively attended to in the moralist tradition. (shrink)

This paper argues that Cicero develops a new view of the state as a partnership in his work De republica. Like any other partnership, the Roman state is upheld by the agreement of its members and an allocation of rewards that is proportionate to the contributions. Cicero sketches an outline of this view in his definition of this state. By focusing on how Cicero uses the definition in the construction of his argument, the paper attempts to uncover a detailed view (...) of the state as a partnership. The ancestral Roman constitution, Cicero argues, surpasses all other constitutions in offering the best division of contributions and rewards. Although the state is held together by the agreement of the whole people, there is an enormous disparity in the assessment of contributions and rewards among different social groups. (shrink)

The notion of fuzzy event is introduced in the theory of measurement in quantum mechanics by indicating in which sense measurements can be considered to yield fuzzy sets. The concept of probability measure on fuzzy events is defined, and its general properties are deduced from the operational meaning assigned to it. It is pointed out that such probabilities can be derived from the formalism of quantum mechanics. Any such probability on a given fuzzy set is related to the frequency of (...) occurrence within that set of points in a random sample, where the sample points are themselves fuzzy sets obtained as outcomes of measurements of, in general, incompatible observables on replicas of the system in the same prepared state. (shrink)

The stochastic phase-space solution of the particle localizability problem in relativistic quantum mechanics is reviewed. It leads to relativistically covariant probability measures that give rise to covariant and conserved probability currents. The resulting particle propagators are used in the formulation of stochastic geometries underlying a concept of quantum spacetime that is operationally based on stochastically extended quantum test particles. The epistemological implications of the intrinsic stochasticity of such quantum spacetime frameworks for microcausality, the EPR paradox, etc., are discussed.

There has been much discussion of changing agricultural structure in the United States. In this paper, the author reviews some of the factors contributing to structural change in the United States and describes the policies adopted by the European Community with respect to agricultural structure. The European experience with structural policies suggests that this approach is not very promising for the United States where no specific structural policies exist. The argument developed in this paper is that structural changes in agriculture (...) are simply one example of economic adjustment in a capitalist economy, that economic adjustments are generally desirable although they are not costless, and that discussions of agricultural structure should focus on methods to alleviate the costs of adjustment rather than on efforts to prevent change. (shrink)

As managed care organizations provide an increasing proportion of citizens' health care, the move toward asking individuals to help control costs by taking more responsibility for their health is likely to intensify. Economic, medical, and legal responses to lifestyle‐induced health care costs raise concerns as well as possibilities for using resources responsibly.

The probability pattern emerging in two-slit experiments is a typical quantum feature whose essential ingredients are examined by translating them into the spin- $ \frac{1}{2} $ formalism. In view of the existence of extensions of quantum theory preserving some classical structure, we discuss how the two-slit probabilities behave under such extensions. We consider a generalization of the standard classical probability theory, to be called operational probability theory, that turns out to host the so called quantum probabilities.

Physical foundations for the Lorentz-Dirac equation of a classical point charge are described. It is shown that, under appropriate conditions, this equation is closely related to the ordinary Lorentz force exerted on a particle whose charge is distributed continuously inside a very small volume. A mathematical analysis of Parrott's assault on the Lorentz-Dirac equation shows that most of his claims are unjustified and the rest do not deny the physical meaning of the equation.

A comparative study is made of the eigenvalue problems of electromagnetics and quantum mechanics, with special reference to the operations of spatial inversionP and time inversionT. Electromagnetics, which permits closer agreement with the dictates of relativity (when the latter is extended toP andT), exhibits characteristic differences with respect to quantum mechanics. An evaluation of these distinctions is presented against the backdrop of a choice between absolute scalar action and charge versus pseudoscalar action and charge.

Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics can be derived from real Markov diffusion processes by extending the concept of probability measure to the complex domain. This appears as the only natural way of introducing formally classical probabilistic concepts into quantum mechanics. To every quantum state there is a corresponding complex Fokker-Planck equation. The particle drift is conditioned by an auxiliary equation which is obtained through stochastic energy conservation; the logarithmic transform of this equation is the Schrödinger equation. To every quantum mechanical operator there (...) is a stochastic process; the replacement of operators by processes leads to all the well-known results of quantum mechanics, using stochastic calculus instead of formal quantum rules. Comparison is made with the classical stochastic approaches and the Feynman path integral formulation. (shrink)

I am often asked how one finds isolated people whose whereabouts or existence is unsure. There is even greater curiosity about how one can join such people in the absence of common customs or spoken language. Moreso about how one makes sense of what one sees under such circumstances. After several years of contact with variously acculturated groups of settled and semi‐settled sea nomads in the Sea of Andaman Moken, Moklen, and Urak Lawoi (and its Lonta subgroup) two out‐of‐the‐blue opportunities (...) unexpectedly occurred to travel with fully nomadic pagan ones, a type no longer thought to exist. The first trip was short, but it prepared me for the long next one. The first was a band of unknown origin, the second an aboriginal Moken‐related group off southern Burma. (shrink)