Patrick McGrath has argued that my defence of papal infallibility does not succeed. His basic strategy is to establish that, contrary to my arguments, infallible papal utterances are statements and not merely declarations. He wants this result in order to go on to show that the Pope, in possession of no priviliged epistemic access to the world, is not infallible. I agree that the Pope has no priviliged epistemic access; so that is not in dispute. What is in dispute is (...) the fundamental question of whether infallible papal utterances are statements or declarations. I want to show that McGrath's arguments against my position do not work. If I am successful, then the Pope's infallibility is secure. (shrink)

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

It has often been charged that the doctrine of papal infallibility is either false or incoherent. These charges stem, I believe, from a misunderstanding of the logical character of infallible papal utterances, a misunderstanding shared alike by friends and foes of the doctrine. In this paper, I shall argue that the doctrine is both coherent and correct. I devote section I to uncovering some of the sources of this misunderstanding and thereby defending what might be called my negative thesis, namely, (...) that infallible papal utterances are not statements. In section II, I continue defending my negative thesis, not now as an end in itself, but rather as a means of advancing my positive thesis that infallible papal utterances are declarations and have the same logic as other declarations. The latter thesis requires a discussion of the difference between statements and declarations. Section III contains a formal speech act analysis of successful and non-defective statements and declarations with some additional explanatory notes. In section IV, I speak rather generally about the task of philosophical theology in the light of the results and procedures of sections I–III. (shrink)

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

When should we make use of the criminal law? Suppose that a responsible legislature seeks to enact a morally justifiable range of criminal prohibitions. What criteria should it apply when deciding whether to proscribe conduct? Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs is a philosophical analysis of the nature, significance, and ethical limits of criminalisation. The authors explore the scope and moral boundaries of harm-based prohibitions, proscriptions of offensive behaviour, and 'paternalistic' prohibitions aimed at preventing self-harm. Their aim is to develop guiding principles (...) for these various grounds of state prohibition, including an analysis of the constraints and mediating factors that weigh for and against criminalisation. Both authors have written extensively in the field. In Crimes, Harms, and Wrongs they have reworked a number of well-known essays and added several important new essays to produce an integrated, accessible, philosophically-sophisticated account that will be of great interest to legal academics, philosophers, and advanced students alike"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Altered state theories of hypnosis posit that a qualitatively distinct state of mental processing, which emerges in those with high hypnotic susceptibility following a hypnotic induction, enables the generation of anomalous experiences in response to specific hypnotic suggestions. If so then such a state should be observable as a discrete pattern of changes to functional connectivity (shared information) between brain regions following a hypnotic induction in high but not low hypnotically susceptible participants. Twenty-eight channel EEG was recorded from 12 high (...) susceptible (highs) and 11 low susceptible (lows) participants with their eyes closed prior to and following a standard hypnotic induction. The EEG was used to provide a measure of functional connectivity using both coherence (COH) and the imaginary component of coherence (iCOH), which is insensitive to the effects of volume conduction. COH and iCOH were calculated between all electrode pairs for the frequency bands: delta (0.1–3.9Hz), theta (4–7.9Hz) alpha (8–12.9Hz), beta1 (13–19.9Hz), beta2 (20–29.9Hz) and gamma (30–45Hz). The results showed that there was an increase in theta iCOH from the pre-hypnosis to hypnosis condition in highs but not lows with a large proportion of significant links being focused on a central-parietal hub. There was also a decrease in beta1 iCOH from the pre-hypnosis to hypnosis condition with a focus on a fronto-central and an occipital hub that was greater in high compared to low susceptibles. There were no significant differences for COH or for spectral band amplitude in any frequency band. The results are interpreted as indicating that the hypnotic induction elicited a qualitative change in the organization of specific control systems within the brain for high as compared to low susceptible participants. This change in the functional organization of neural networks is a plausible indicator of the much theorized “hypnotic-state”. (shrink)

9 Eastern Christianity and Jesuit Scholarship on Arabic and Islam: Modern History and Contemporary Theological Reflections -- 10 Autonomy, Dignity, Human Rights: Correcting a Popular Error -- 11 Liberal and Authoritarian Approaches to Raising Good Citizens -- 12 Stewardship as Welcome and Respect for the Dignity of the Vulnerable: An Essay in Bioethics -- 13 Dialogue in a Pluralist Context: Theological Ethics and the New Interest in Happiness -- Index.

Open peer commentary on the article “Perception-Action Mutuality Obviates Mental Construction” by Martin Flament Fultot, Lin Nie & Claudia Carello. Upshot: In my view, the clash between ecological psychology, enactivism, and constructivism in general has more to do with irreconcilable metaphysical and theoretical incommensurabilities than disagreements about specific mechanisms or processes of perception. Even with mutual enabling of action and perception, some internal process of self-modification is still needed if novel behavior is to be adequately explained.

Integrated information theory (IIT) is a candidate theory of consciousness that highlights the role of complex interactions between parts of a system as the basis of consciousness – and, due to its general information-theoretic formulation, is capable of making statements about consciousness in neural and non-neural systems alike. Here, we argue that a system radically different to a human brain, host to complex physiological and functional structures capable of integrating information, can be found in the meristems and vascular system of (...) higher plants. Following a pragmatic and ontologically innocent approach, neither taking for granted that plants are conscious nor dismissing the possibility that they are, we argue that the time is ripe to apply analysis tools inspired by IIT to plants, taking advantage of recent developments in both plant imaging and information theory. We introduce and discuss the relevant literature, and pro information and integration in plant behaviour, assessing the plausibility of plant sentience. If successful, these experiments could position plants as the next frontier in consciousness science, and urge us to rethink our perspectives on consciousness, how to measure it, and its prevalence amongst living beings. (shrink)

It is often alleged that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves a negative interpersonal response for that transgression, blaming responses such as resentment and indignation being paradigms. Aside from a few exceptions, guilt is cited in recent discussions of moral responsibility, if at all, as merely an effect of being blamed, or as a reliable indicator of moral responsibility, but not itself an explanation of moral responsibility. In this paper, (...) I argue that an agent is morally responsible in a liability sense for a transgression just in case s/he deserves to feel moral guilt for that transgression. I argue that this alternative view offers all that the predominant blame-focused view offers, while also solving some puzzling features of moral responsibility. Specifically, it offers a compelling way to reconcile conflicting intuitions about the suberogatory, and allows those who do not understand what Darwall calls ‘second-personal’ reasons to be morally responsible for their immoral acts. (shrink)

The present volume draws together original and significant essays from a number of leading authorities which identify areas of the modern criminal law where there are significant conceptual difficulties. The project developed from a series of seminars in Cambridge University, in which leading Anglo-American philosophers, criminal lawyers and legal theorists explored subjects such as attempts, intention, justification, excuses, coercion, complicity, drug-dealing and criminal harm.

Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) has undergone dramatic transformations since its emergence as a distinct discipline. This paper aims to highlight the scope, power, and future promise of evo-devo to transform and unify diverse aspects of biology. We articulate key questions at the core of eleven biological disciplines—from Evolution, Development, Paleontology, and Neurobiology to Cellular and Molecular Biology, Quantitative Genetics, Human Diseases, Ecology, Agriculture and Science Education, and lastly, Evolutionary Developmental Biology itself—and discuss why evo-devo is uniquely situated to substantially improve (...) our ability to find meaningful answers to these fundamental questions. We posit that the tools, concepts, and ways of thinking developed by evo-devo have profound potential to advance, integrate, and unify biological sciences as well as inform policy decisions and illuminate science education. We look to the next generation of evolutionary developmental biologists to help shape this process as we confront the scientific challenges of the 21st century. (shrink)

I argue that four-dimensionalism and the desire satisfaction account of well-being are incompatible. For every person whose desires are satisfied, there will be many shorter-lived individuals (‘person-stages’ or ‘subpersons’) who share the person’s desires but who do not exist long enough to see those desires satisfied; not only this, but in many cases their desires are frustrated so that the desires of the beings in whom they are embedded as proper temporal parts may be fulfilled. I call this the frustrating (...) problem for four-dimensionalism. In the first half of the paper I lay the groundwork for understanding the frustrating problem, and then in the second half, I will examine six possible responses to the frustrating problem on behalf of the four-dimensionalist, (i) the Parfit (1984) inspired claim that identity is not what matters, (ii) the personal pronoun revisionism of Noonan (2010), (iii) the indirect concern account of Hudson (2001), (iv) the sensible stages account of Lewis (1986), (v) a multiple-concepts account of desire satisfaction, and (vi) a No Desire View according to which subpersons have no mental states and thus no desires to frustrate. I argue that none of these solutions will help the four-dimensionalist; she does better to reject the desire satisfaction theory, while the defender of the desire satisfaction theory does better to reject four-dimensionalism. (shrink)

In 1992, Law and Philosophy published an account of the paradigm case of intended action; one which gestured at, and did not pursue, an explanation of the requirement that a person be an agent in respect of her behaviour before that behaviour can constitute intended action. This paper completes that account by supplying an analysis of agency. The paper falls into three parts. It begins by casting doubt upon the possibility of specifying a causal account along the lines once envisaged (...) by Davidson. An alternative approach is adopted: one that involves modifications to Frankfurt's depiction of action as behaviour under the agent's guidance, including a rejection of the view held by many writers that action requires intentional movement. Doubts about conventional wisdoms are also raised in the conclusion, which considers why philosophers and lawyers should be interested in the issue of agency at all. (shrink)

Antony Duff's recent account of intended action has aroused considerable interest, particularly amongst English commentators, as an attempt to provide criteria that might be utilised by a judge or legislator. While Duff's analysis is instructive, and although it may be desirable to find conditions capturing the central notion of intention in action, this paper demonstrates that the specific conditions proposed by Duff are unsatisfactory. They require extensive modification in order to circumvent a number of difficulties presented here.

Chimpanzees, bonobos, and human foragers share a fission-fusion social system and a mating system of joint male resource defense polygyny. Within-community skew in male strength varies among and within species. In this study, we extend a mathematical model of within-group male coalition formation among primates to derive the conditions for between-community conflicts in the form of raids. We show that the main factor affecting the presence of successful raiding is the likelihood of major discrepancies in party strength, which are set (...) by party size distributions (and thus community size) and the skew in strength. This study confirms the functional similarities between the raiding of chimpanzees and human foragers, and it supports the “imbalance of power” hypothesis for raiding. However, it also proposes two amendments to this model. First, the absence of raiding in bonobos may be attributable more to potential female involvement in defense against raids, which increases the size of defensive coalitions. Second, the model attributes some of the raiding in humans to major contrasts in instantaneous fighting ability created by surprise raids on unarmed victims; it also draws attention to the distinction between minor raids and major raids that involve multiple bands of the same community. (shrink)

Supercommentary on Tantravārtika of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, exegesis on Mīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śabarasvāmī, classical commentary on Mīmāṃsāsūtra by Jaimini.

The study of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) function has shown to provide useful indicators for risk stratification and early detection on a variety of cardiovascular pathologies. However, data gathered during different tests of the ANS are difficult to analyse, mainly due to the complex mechanisms involved in the autonomic regulation of the cardiovascular system (CVS). Although model-based analysis of ANS data has been already proposed as a way to cope with this complexity, only a few models coupling the main (...) elements involved have been presented in the literature. In this paper, a new model of the CVS, representing the ventricles, the circulatory system and the regulation of the CVS activity by the ANS, is presented. The models of the vascular system and the ventricular activity have been developed using the Bond Graph formalism, as it proposes a unified representation for all energetic domains, facilitating the integration of mechanic and hydraulic phenomena. In order to take into account the electro-mechanical behaviour of both ventricles, an electrophysiologic model of the cardiac action potential, represented by a set of ordinary differential equations, has been integrated. The short-term ANS regulation of heart rate, cardiac contractility and peripheral vasoconstriction is represented by means of continuous transfer functions. These models, represented in different continuous formalisms, are coupled by using a multi-formalism simulation library. Results are presented for two different autonomic tests, namely the Tilt Test and the Valsalva Manoeuvre, by comparing real and simulated signals. (shrink)

This essay is a refutation of Hume on causal inference. The decisive point of the refutation is that Hume's argument is invalid unless it is assumed, contrary to his own relational theory of time, that mere difference in dates can affect the course of nature. In the preliminary discussion of sections II and III the words “cause,” “effect,” and “causal relation” are employed in a nontechnical sense, which is exemplified in such statements as “Fire causes heat”, “Lightning and thunder are (...) causally related”, “When one turns the steering wheel to the right, the effect is that the car moves to the right”, and so on. But in order to forestall rebuttals in defense of Hume one needs a greater precision in terminology as well as in conception of causality. Section IV aiming at precision gives a statement of the principles of causality which is in accordance with the position of modern science. An examination of this statement shows that the validity of causal inference must be accepted along with a relational theory of time. A comment on causal inference in relation to induction brings the discussion to a close. (shrink)