My purpose in this dissertation is to investigate the workings of the imagination. As I argue in Chapter One, such an investigation reveals that we cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of imagining without invoking mental imagery. I thus develop and defend an imagery-based account of the imagination, which I call the imagery model. ;Despite its intuitive appeal and a long philosophical history, the imagery model has nonetheless fallen into disfavor in contemporary discussions of the imagination. This is due, at (...) least in part, to a strong presumption against mental images that has developed in this century. Overcoming this presumption is the primary task of Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, I address a second motivation for the rejection of the imagery model, namely, that there seem to be some mental exercises which are clearly exercises of the imagination but yet which do not consist of imagery. By separating the imagery model from several controversial theses with which it has been associated, I show how the imagery model can protect itself from the threat of these counterexamples. ;Once these obstacles to the acceptance of the imagery model have been removed, the need remains to provide an explanation of the role that the image plays in imagining. As I suggest, although the image is not what is imagined, it is in virtue of the image that anything is imagined at all. More specifically, the image serves to capture the subject of the imagining. My discussion of this claim in Chapter Four is heavily influenced by recent work in the philosophy of language; in particular, I rely on many of the insights of the causal theory of reference developed by Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan. ;Ultimately, having developed a picture of the workings of the imagination, I take up what I call the question of imaginability, namely, "What can we imagine?" The imagery model yields the obvious result that the imaginable is limited to the imageable. I explore the consequences of this result and, in particular, the consequences it has for the use of the imagination as an epistemological guide to modality. (shrink)

It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind-independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind-independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind-dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain possibilities of ignorance (...) and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the everyday world. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy. (shrink)

It is often noted that institutional objects and artifacts depend on human beliefs and intentions and so fail to meet the realist paradigm of mind‐independent objects. In this paper I draw out exactly in what ways the thesis of mind‐independence fails, and show that it has some surprising consequences. For the specific forms of mind‐dependence involved entail that we have certain forms of epistemic privilege with regard to our own institutional and artifactual kinds, protecting us from certain possibilities of ignorance (...) and error; they also demonstrate that not all cases of reference to these kinds can proceed along a purely causal model. As a result, realist views in ontology, epistemology, and semantics that were developed with natural scientific kinds in mind cannot fully apply to the kinds of the social and human sciences. In closing I consider some wider consequences of these results for social science and philosophy. (shrink)

Two major questions have dominated work on the metaphysics of social groups: first, Are there any? And second, What are they? I will begin by arguing that the answer to the ontological question is an easy and obvious ‘yes’. We do better to turn our efforts elsewhere, addressing the question: “What are social groups?” One might worry, however, about this question on grounds that the general term ‘social group’ seems like a term of art—not a well-used concept we can analyze, (...) or can presuppose corresponds to a real kind we can investigate. But while the general notion of ‘social group’ may be a term of art, our terms for clubs and courts, races and genders, are not. It is worth stepping back to ask what function these social group concepts serve. I will argue that individual social group concepts function to give normative structure to our lives together. Paying attention to the role of norms in social groups, I will argue, can enable us to provide a unified understanding of the importance of core social groups, while still respecting the great differences among social groups of different kinds. (shrink)

Those working in experimental philosophy have raised a number of arguments against the use of conceptual analysis in philosophical inquiries. But they have typically focused on a model that pursues conceptual analysis by taking intuitions as a kind of (defeasible) evidence for philosophical hypotheses. Little attention has been given to the constitutivist alternative, which sees metaphysical modal facts as reflections of constitutive semantic rules. I begin with a brief overview of the constitutivist approach and argue that we can defend (...) a role for conceptual analysis, so understood, in ontological disputes against both the general skepticism about the relevance of intuitions, and against the specific worries raised by experimental results. Finally, I argue that even if the constitutivist view is adopted, experimental philosophy may still have quite a useful role to play, though purely empirical inquiries cannot in principle do the ontological work alone. (shrink)

An account of the source of first-person knowledge is essential not just for phenomenology, but for anyone who takes seriously the apparent evidence that we each have a distinctive access to knowing what we experience. One standard way to account for the source of first-person knowledge is by appeal to a kind of inner observation of the passing contents of one’s own mind, and phenomenology is often thought to rely on introspection. I argue, however, that Husserl’s method of phenomenological (...) reduction was designed precisely to find a route to knowledge of the structures of consciousness that was independent of any appeal to observation of one’s own mental states. The goals of this essay are to explicate Husserl’s method of phenomenological reduction in contemporary terms that (1) show its distance from all inner-observation accounts, (2) exhibit its kinship to and historical influence on outer-observation accounts of selfknowledge popularized by Sellars, and (3) demonstrate that a contemporary ‘cognitive transformation’ view based on Husserl’s method may provide a viable contribution to contemporary debates about the source of self-knowledge. (shrink)

A good phenomenological theory must be able to account equally well for our experiences of veridical perception and hallucination, for our thoughts about universities, colors, numbers, mythical figures and more. For all of these are characteristic mental acts, and a theory of intentionality should be a theory of conscious acts in general, not just of consciousness of a specific kind of thing or of a specific kind of consciousness. In so far as phenomenology purports to be a general (...) study of intentional acts of consciousness, it must be able to account for acts with all kinds of objects and with all kinds of thetic character. Any limitation of these features puts the theory in danger of being an explanation of only some kinds of mental act, and of mis-characterizing the nature of intentionality in general. (shrink)

It is argued that the work of Husserl offers a model for self-knowledge that avoids the disadvantages of standard introspectionist accounts and of a Sellarsian view of the relation between our perceptual judgements and derived judgements about appearances. Self-knowledge is based on externally directed knowledge of the world that is then subjected to a cognitive transformation analogous to the move from a statement to the activity of stating. Appearance talk is (contra Sellars) not an epistemically non-committal form of speech, but (...) talk to which we are fully committed. However, it is a commitment to a certain kind of claim about our experiences, viewed as cognitive phenomena, after a process of transformation. Such reductive and hypostatizing transformations can exhibit the intentional structure of consciousness. Phenomenology thus gives a form of knowledge about our mental states that is first personal but not introspective knowledge in any philosophically problematic sense. The account offered is also, in key respects, dissimilar to Sellars's outer directed view of the origin of self-knowledge. (shrink)

The basic philosophical controversy regarding ordinary objects is: Do tables and chairs, sticks and stones, exist? This paper aims to do two things: first, to explain why how this can be a controversy at all, and second, to explain why this controversy has arisen so late in the history of philosophy. Section 1 begins by discussing why the 'obvious' sensory evidence in favor of ordinary objects is not taken to be decisive. It goes on to review the standard arguments against (...) the existence of ordinary objects – including those based on problems with causal redundancy, parsimony, co-location, sorites arguments, and the special composition question. Section 2 goes on to address what it is about the contemporary approach to metaphysics that invites and sustains this kind of controversy, and helps make evident why debates about ordinary objects lead so readily to debates in metametaphysics about the nature of metaphysics itself. (shrink)

A good phenomenological theory must be able to account equally well for our experiences of veridical perception and hallucination, for our thoughts about universities, colors, numbers, mythical figures and more. For all of these are characteristic mental acts, and a theory of intentionality should be a theory of conscious acts in general, not just of consciousness of a specific kind of thing or of a specific kind of consciousness. In so far as phenomenology purports to be a general (...) study of intentional acts of consciousness, it must be able to account for acts with all kinds of objects and with all kinds of thetic character. Any limitation of these features puts the theory in danger of being an explanation of only some kinds of mental act, and of mis-characterizing the nature of intentionality in general. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger undertakes groundbreaking work in developing an account of structural explanations and the social structures that figure in them. A chief virtue of the account is that it can show the importance of structural explanations while also respecting the role of individual autonomy in explaining many decisions, by demonstrating the way in which social structures may set up a ‘choice architecture’ in which these choices are made. This paper gives an overview of this achievement, and goes on to consider (...) why there may be need to broaden the role of social structural explanations beyond those that involve explicit choice within a choice architecture. It develops the idea, familiar from work by Heidegger and Ingarden, that social artifacts, roles, and nodes in social structures may be constitutively defined by norms. It closes by suggesting that attention to the role of norms in social structures may enable us to broaden the account to include structural explanations of other kinds. (shrink)

Background The twenty-first century has witnessed an exponential increase in healthcare quality research. As such activities become more prevalent, physicians are increasingly needed to participate as subjects in research and quality improvement (QI) projects. This raises an important ethical question: how should physicians be remunerated for participating as research and/or QI subjects? Financial versus non-monetary incentives for participation Research suggests participation in research and QI is often driven by conditional altruism, the idea that although initial interest in enrolling in research (...) is altruistic or prosocial, decisions to actually perform study tasks are cost–benefit driven. Thus, the three models commonly employed to appropriately compensate participants (in-kind compensation such as travel reimbursement, paying market rates for the subject’s time, and paying market rates for the activity asked of the participant) are a poor fit when the participant is a clinician, largely due to the asymmetry between cost and benefit or value to the participant. Non-monetary alternatives such as protected time for participation, continuing education or maintenance of certification credit, or professional development materials, can provide viable avenues for reducing this asymmetry. Conclusion Research and QI are integral to the betterment of medicine and healthcare. To increase physician participation in these activities as the subject of study, new models are needed that clarify the physician’s role in research and QI as a subject. Non-monetary approaches are recommended to successfully and ethically encourage research and QI participation, and thus incorporate these activities as a normal part of the ethical clinician’s and successful learning healthcare system’s world view. (shrink)

The main focus of this book lies in analyzing singular negative existential statements such as “Sherlock Holmes does not exist”. Chakrabarti’s goal is to preserve the idea that this is a subject-predicate statement involving a singular denial about a particular individual, without committing himself to an unwanted ontology of Meinongian, imaginary, or other nonexistent objects, and without resorting to any kind of free logic.

Over the course of human life, health care decision‐making is often interdependent. In this article, we use “interdependence” to refer to patients’ engagement of nonclinicians—for example, family members or trusted friends—to reach health care decisions. Interdependence, we suggest, is common for patients in all stages of life, from early childhood to late adulthood. This view contrasts with the common bioethical assumption that medical decisions are either wholly independent or dependent and that independence or dependence is tightly coupled with a person's (...) decision‐making capacity. In this article, we array various approaches to decision‐making along a continuum of interdependence. An appreciation of this continuum can empower patients and elucidate ethical challenges that arise when people transition between different kinds of interdependence across the life span. (shrink)

David Lewis has argued that “having an experience is the best way or perhaps the only way, of coming to know what that experience is like”; when an experience is of a sufficiently new sort, mere science lessons are not enough. Developing this Lewisian line, L.A. Paul has suggested that some experiences are epistemically transformative. Until an individual has such an experience it remains epistemically inaccessible to her. No amount of stories and theories and testimony from others can teach her (...) what it is like to have it, nor is she able to achieve this knowledge by way of imaginative projection. It’s this last claim that is the focus of this paper. In particular, I explore the case for the claim that some experiences are in principle imaginatively inaccessible to someone who has not undergone the experience itself or one relevantly similar. As I will suggest, this case is not as strong as is often thought. Close attention to the mechanisms of imagination, and in particular, to cases of skilled imaginers, suggests how techniques of imaginative scaffolding can sometimes be used to give us epistemic access to experiences we have not had, even ones that are radically different from any that we have had before. As a result, considerably fewer experiences remain imaginatively out of reach than proponents of transformative experience would have us believe. Experience may well be the best teacher, but this paper aims to show that imagination comes in a close second. (shrink)

: In Imagined and delusional pain Jennifer Radden aims to show that experiences of pain – and in particular, the pain associated with depression – cannot be merely delusional. Her reasoning relies crucially on the claim that the feeling of pain is imaginatively beyond our reach. Though she thinks that there are many ways that one can imagine scenarios involving oneself being in pain, she argues that one cannot imagine the feeling of pain itself. In this commentary, I target this (...) claim in an attempt to show that Radden is mistaken. My argument relies on facts about individual differences involving imagination. To my mind, arguments like Radden’s involve an unfortunate slide from an “I can’t imagine…” claim to an “It can’t be imagined claim…” To support my argument, I also call upon empirical findings concerning pain imagination. As I conclude, we have no reason to think that the feeling of pain is something that is, in principle, unimaginable. Keywords: Pain; Imagination; Feeling of Pain; Delusion La possibilità di immaginare il dolore Riassunto: In Imagined and delusional pain Jennifer Radden intende mostrare che le esperienze di dolore – e, in particolare, il dolore associato alla depressione – non possono essere semplicemente illusorie. Il cuore del suo argomento fa leva sull’affermazione per cui provare dolore è immaginativamente al di là della nostra portata. Sebbene ritenga che si possano immaginare scenari nei quali proviamo dolore, Radden afferma che non si possa immaginare l’avvertire dolore di per sé. In questo commento mi concentrerò su questa affermazione nel tentative di mostrare che Radden si sbaglia. Il mio argomento poggia su fatti relativi alle differenze individuali che riguardano l’immaginazione. Dal mio punto di vista argomenti come quelli di Radden implicano un infelice slittamento da una affermazione come “io non posso immaginare…” a una affermazione come “non si può immaginare …”. A sostegno della mia tesi porterò evidenze empiriche relative all’immaginazione del dolore. Come giungerò a sostenere, non abbiamo ragioni per pensare che il provare dolore sia qualcosa in via di principio inimmaginabile. Parole chiave: Dolore; Immaginazione; Sensazioni di dolore; Illusione. (shrink)

__: In this essay I explore the account of imaginative phenomenology developed by Uriah Kriegel in _The Varieties of Consciousness_. On his view, the difference between perceptual phenomenology and imaginative phenomenology arises from the way that they present the existential status of their object: While perceptual experience presents its object as existent, imaginative experience presents its object as non-existent. While I agree with Kriegel that it’s likely that the difference between imaginative phenomenology and perceptual phenomenology is one not just of (...) degree but of kind, I worry about the particular account that he has developed. I thus develop two lines of criticism. First, I question whether Kriegel is right that imagination presents its object as non-existent. Second, I question whether this account of imaginative phenomenology is consistent with other commonly-accepted facts about the nature of imagination. _Keywords_: Imagination; Perception; Phenomenology; J.-P. Sartre; Epistemic Value; Emotion ___Fenomenologia dell’immaginazione e status esistenziale_ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo intendo indagare l’approccio alla descrizione della fenomenologia dell’immaginazione sviluppata da Uriah Kriegel in _The Varieties of Consciousness_. Dal suo punto di vista, la differenza tra fenomenologia della percezione e fenomenologia dell’immaginazione si mostra nel modo in cui queste presentano lo status esistenziale dei loro oggetti: se l’esperienza percettiva presenta il proprio oggetto come esistente, l’esperienza immaginativa lo presenta come non-esistente. Per un verso, concordo con Kriegel sulla probabilità che la differenza tra fenomenologia dell’immaginazione e fenomenologia della percezione non sia di grado ma di genere, mentre, per altro verso, non sono convinta della correttezza del suo approccio. Pertanto vorrei sollevare due criticità. In primo luogo, mi chiedo se Kriegel sia nel giusto quando ritiene che l’immaginazione presenti il proprio oggetto come non-esistente; in secondo luogo, mi chiedo se questa descrizione della fenomenologia dell’immaginazione sia coerente con altri fatti, comunemente accettati, circa la natura dell’immaginazione. _Parole chiave_: Immaginazione; Percezione; Fenomenologia; J.-P. Sartre; Valore epistemico; Emozione. (shrink)

The contemporary US food systemis characterized by both an unprecedentedconcentration of corporate control as well as afragmentation of sourcing and marketingprocesses, introducing both new constraints andnew opportunities for more localized foodsystems. The purpose of our study is to explorethese issues by investigating three keyquestions. First, what are the key trends inthe US grocery industry? Second, how dodifferent kinds of food outlets choose,procure, and promote food products? Finally,what are the implications of recent trends inthe food retailing process for strengtheninglocal flows of (...) the production, distribution,and consumption of food? Background informationon the grocery industry and the results ofseven open-ended interviews conducted withowners and managers of grocery stores in oneupstate New York county indicate that theretailing process differs in complex ways fromstore to store and in most aspects cannot beinferred from store type. The paper concludeswith a discussion of the implications of ourfindings for local food system efforts,specifically in terms of new collaborationsamong producers, distributors, retailers, andshoppers, who play an indispensable role indeveloping viable alternatives to increasingcorporate control. (shrink)

Scholars studying the ethical, legal, and social issues associated with emerging technologies maintain the importance of considering these issues throughout the research and development cycle, even during the earliest stages of basic research. Embedding these considerations within the scientific process requires communication between ELSI scholars and the community of physical scientists who are conducting that basic research. We posit that this communication can be effective on a broad scale only if it links societal issues directly to characteristics of the emerging (...) technology that are relevant to the physical and natural scientists involved in research and development. In this article, we examine nano-ELSI literature from 2003 to 2010 to discern the degree to which it makes these types of explicit connections. We find that, while the literature identifies a wide range of issues of societal concern, it generally does so in a non-specific manner. It neither links societal issues to particular forms or characteristics of widely divergent nanotechnologies nor to any of the many potential uses to which those nanotechnologies may be put. We believe that these kinds of specificity are essential to those engaged in nano-scale research. We also compare the literature-based findings to observations from interviews we conducted with nanoscientists and conclude that ELSI scholars should add technical- and application-related forms of specificity to their work and their writings to enhance effectiveness and impact in communicating with one important target audience—members of the nanoscale science community. (shrink)

This book's importance is derived from three sources: careful conceptualization of teacher induction from historical, methodological, and international perspectives; systematic reviews of research literature relevant to various aspects of teacher induction including its social, cultural, and political contexts, program components and forms, and the range of its effects; substantial empirical studies on the important issues of teacher induction with different kinds of methodologies that exemplify future directions and approaches to the research in teacher induction.

The aim of this book is to investigate the nature and ontological status of fictional characters on the one hand (i. e., entities like Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina) and literary works on the other. The overall question is: What kinds of objects are fictional characters and literary works, and how are they related to our everyday world? Thomasson advocates a realist, non-reductionist theory of fictitious objects whose main principles are: Fictional characters exist – just as literary works exist. (...) Fictional characters as well as literary works are abstract objects (i. e., lack spatiotemporal location), are created (and thus contingent), are brought into existence through the intentional acts of an author, can go on existing without intentional acts of an author, and are existentially dependent objects in a variety of ways. Thomasson develops a subtle theory of ontological dependence. The review contains a detailed account of Thomasson's "artifactual theory" as well as detailed criticism of some pivotal points. While I am, in principle, sympathetic to the non-reductionist approach, I object against some of Thomasson's specific dependency claims. Furthermore, I defend so-called "Meinongian" theories of fiction against Thomasson's objections. Finally, I raise questions concerning, among other things, the relation between a literary work and its "text", the proposed identity conditions for literary works, the relation between a literary work and its (fictitious) objects. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to investigate the nature and ontological status of fictional characters on the one hand (i. e., entities like Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet, or Anna Karenina) and literary works on the other. The overall question is: What kinds of objects are fictional characters and literary works, and how are they related to our everyday world? Thomasson advocates a realist, non-reductionist theory of fictitious objects whose main principles are: Fictional characters exist – just as literary works exist. (...) Fictional characters as well as literary works are abstract objects (i. e., lack spatiotemporal location), are created (and thus contingent), are brought into existence through the intentional acts of an author, can go on existing without intentional acts of an author, and are existentially dependent objects in a variety of ways. Thomasson develops a subtle theory of ontological dependence. The review contains a detailed account of Thomasson's "artifactual theory" as well as detailed criticism of some pivotal points. While I am, in principle, sympathetic to the non-reductionist approach, I object against some of Thomasson's specific dependency claims. Furthermore, I defend so-called "Meinongian" theories of fiction against Thomasson's objections. Finally, I raise questions concerning, among other things, the relation between a literary work and its "text", the proposed identity conditions for literary works, the relation between a literary work and its (fictitious) objects. (shrink)

The critics in this volume raise several important challenges to the modal normativist position developed in Norms and Necessity, including whether the relation I claim holds between semantic rules and necessity claims generates spurious claims of metaphysical necessity, whether the view is circular (implicitly relying on a more 'robust' form of modal realism), and whether it conflicts with truth-conditional semantics. They also raise probing questions about how it compares to other views of modality, including a Lewisian view and an essentialist (...) view. In these replies, I respond to these challenges in ways that precisify the relevant understanding of ‘semantic rules' and the forms they can take, that make clearer the direction of explanation in modal normativism in ways that show the view doesn't rely on a more ‘robust’ form of modal realism, and that give reason for thinking that there is actually no conflict between modal normativism and truth-conditional semantics. I also aim to give a fuller assessment of how it compares to other approaches to modality, including an essentialist approach. (shrink)

A Pulitzer Prize–winning dance critic teaches us to appreciate—and enact—grace in every dimension, from the physical to the emotional. Grace has long been taught as essential to civilized living. The Three Graces—goddesses of charm, beauty, and creativity—exemplify ease and harmony with one another and the world around them. But what has happened to this simple, marvelous concept of being at ease in the world? With warmth, humor, and an ever-perceptive eye, Sarah L. Kaufman sifts the graceful from the graceless, celebrating (...) heart-catching moments of physical elegance in sports, movies, dance, fashion, and music; rare sightings of celebrity grace; the secrets of gracious hosts; and grace found unexpectedly, in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant and among strippers in a basement bar. Kaufman’s thought-provoking reflections on these physical and social acts of grace offer hope for even the clumsiest, most awkward among us. Guided by the muse of Cary Grant (with further inspiration from Smokey Robinson, Roger Federer, Nelson Mandela, Margot Fonteyn, Amy Purdy, Beyoncé, and others), Kaufman illuminates the importance of grace in the small moments of everyday life. In The Art of Grace, she inspires us to walk taller, spend time on unnecessary kindnesses, and celebrate the grace notes in our lives and those of others. (shrink)

Arguments that ordinary inanimate objects such as tables and chairs, sticks and stones, simply do not exist have become increasingly common and increasingly prominent. Some are based on demands for parsimony or for a non-arbitrary answer to the special composition question; others arise from prohibitions against causal redundancy, ontological vagueness, or co-location; and others still come from worries that a common sense ontology would be a rival to a scientific one. Until now, little has been done to address these arguments (...) in a unified and systematic way. Ordinary Objects is designed to fill this gap, demonstrating that the mistakes behind all of these superficially diverse eliminativist arguments may be traced to a common source. It aims to develop an ontology of ordinary objects subject to no such problems, providing perhaps the first sustained defense of a common sense ontology in two generations. The work done along the way addresses a number of major issues in philosophy of language and metaphysics, contributing to debates about analyticity, identity conditions, co-location and the grounding problem, vagueness, overdetermination, parsimony, and ontological commitment. In the end, the most important result of addressing these eliminativist arguments is not merely avoiding their conclusions; examining their failings also gives us reason to suspect that many apparent disputes in ontology are pseudo-debates. For it brings into question widely-held assumptions about which uses of metaphysical principles are appropriate, which metaphysical demands are answerable, and how we should go about addressing such fundamental questions as "What exists?". As a result, the work of Ordinary Objects promises to provide not only the route to a reflective understanding of our unreflective common-sense view, but also a better understanding of the proper methods and limits of metaphysics. (shrink)

Amie L. Thomasson; The Ontology of Art and Knowledge in Aesthetics: Thomasson The Ontology of Art and Knowledge in Aesthetics, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art.

This challenging study places fiction squarely at the centre of the discussion of metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally treated fiction as involving a set of narrow problems in logic or the philosophy of language. By contrast Amie Thomasson argues that fiction has far-reaching implications for central problems of metaphysics. The book develops an 'artifactual' theory of fiction, whereby fictional characters are abstract artifacts as ordinary as laws or symphonies or works of literature. By understanding fictional characters we come to understand how (...) other cultural and social objects are established on the basis of the independent physical world and the mental states of human beings. (shrink)

White matter tracts are known to be susceptible to injury following concussion. The objective of this study was to determine whether contact play in sport could alter white matter metabolite levels in female varsity athletes independent of changes induced by long-term exercise. Metabolite levels were measured by single voxel proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy in the prefrontal white matter at the beginning and end of season in contact and non-contact varsity athletes. Sedentary women were scanned once, at a time equivalent to (...) the Off-Season time point. Metabolite levels in non-contact athletes did not change over a season of play, or differ from age matched sedentary women except that non-contact athletes had a slightly lower myo-inositol level. The contact athletes had lower levels of myo-inositol and glutamate, and higher levels of glutamine compared to both sedentary women and non-contact athletes. Lower levels of myo-inositol in non-contact athletes compared to sedentary women indicates long-term exercise may alter glial cell profiles in these athletes. The metabolite differences observed between contact and non-contact athletes suggest that non-contact athletes should not be used as controls in studies of concussion in high-impact sports because repetitive impacts from physical contact can alter white matter metabolite level profiles. It is imperative to use athletes engaged in the same contact sport as controls to ensure a matched metabolite profile at baseline. (shrink)

Philosophical theories often hinge on claims about what is necessary or possible. But what are possibilities and necessities, and how could we come to know about them? This book aims to help demystify the methodology of philosophy, by treating such claims not as attempted descriptions of strange facts or distant 'possible worlds', but rather as ways of expressing rules or norms.

Modality presents notorious philosophical problems, including the epistemic problem of how we could come to know modal facts and metaphysical problems about how to place modal facts in the natural world. These problems arise from thinking of modal claims as attempts to describe modal features of this world that explain what makes them true. Here I propose a different view of modal discourse in which talk about what is “metaphysically necessary” does not aim to describe modal features of the world, (...) but, rather, provides a particularly useful way of expressing constitutive semantic and conceptual rules in the object language. The result is a “modal normativist” view that enables us to avoid the epistemic problems of modality and mitigate the metaphysical worries, while also leaving open the possibility of a unified account of the function of modal language. Finally, I address a serious challenge: we have the norms we do in order to track the modal facts of the world, so that the order of explanation must go in the opposite direction. I close by showing how the normativist may answer that challenge. (shrink)

Talk of the functions of language or concepts plays a central role in developing an appealing pragmatic approach to conceptual engineering. But some have expressed skepticism that we can make any good sense of the idea of function as applied to concepts or language, or argued that the most we can say is that the function of ‘F’ is to refer to the Fs. In this paper, however, I argue that identifying linguistic functions is not hopeless, and that we can (...) make progress by working at the level of system functions, and drawing on work in systemic functional linguistics. For that enables us to develop a better framework for thinking about the functions that language serves, and the ways its subsystems contribute to those functions. This approach to understanding linguistic functions enables us to develop a pragmatic approach to conceptual engineering that provides standards for conceptual engineering without metaphysical mysteries. It also enables us to make progress in figuring out what functions certain philosophically interesting parts of language serve, and how they are introduced into language, in ways that may disentangle us from a range of old philosophical problems. (shrink)

The challenge of handling fictional discourse is to find the best way to resolve the apparent inconsistencies in our ways of speaking about fiction. A promising approach is to take at least some such discourse to involve pretense, but does all fictional discourse involve pretense? I will argue that a better, less revisionary, solution is to take internal and fictionalizing discourse to involve pretense, while allowing that in external critical discourse, fictional names are used seriously to refer to fictional characters. (...) I then address two objections to such realist theories of fiction: One, that they can’t adequately account for the truth of singular nonexistence claims involving fictional names, and two, that accepting that there are fictional characters to which we refer is implausible or ontologically profligate. (shrink)

While fights about ontology rage on in the ring, there’s long been a suspicion whispered in certain corners of the stadium that some of the fights aren’t real. Granted the disputants all think they are really disagreeing—it’s not the sincerity of the serious ontologists that’s in question, but rather their judgment that they are engaged in a real debate about genuine issues of substance.

I argue that the ontological status of fictional characters is determined by the beliefs and practices of those who competently deal with works of literature, and draw out three important consequences of this. First, heavily revisionary theories cannot be considered as ‘discoveries’ about the ‘true nature’ of fictional characters; any acceptable realist theory of fiction must preserve all or most of the common conception of fictional characters. Second, once we note that the existence conditions for fictional characters are extremely minimal, (...) it makes little sense to deny the existence of fictional characters, leaving anti-realist views of fiction unmotivated. Finally, the role of ordinary beliefs and practices in determining facts about the ontology of fictional characters explains why non-revisionary theories of fiction are bound to yield no determinate or precise answer to certain questions about fictional characters, demonstrating the limits of a theory of fiction. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a host of ethical challenges, but key among these has been the possibility that health care systems might need to ration scarce critical care resources. Rationing p...

Philosophy Compass, Volume 1. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.

I argue that thinking of existence questions as deep questions to be resolved by a distinctively philosophical discipline of ontology is misguided. I begin by examining how to understand the truth-conditions of existence claims, by way of understanding the rules of use for ‘exists’ and for general noun terms. This yields a straightforward method for resolving existence questions by a combination of conceptual analysis and empirical enquiry. It also provides a blueprint for arguing against most common proposals for uniform substantive (...) ‘criteria of existence’, whether they involve mind-independence, possession of causal powers, observability, etc., and thus for showing that many arguments for denying entities (numbers, ordinary objects, fictional characters, propositions…) on grounds of their failure to meet one or more of these proposed existence criteria are mistaken. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that ontological questions (properly understood) are easy—too easy, in fact, to be subjects of substantive and distinctively philosophical debates. They are easy, roughly, in the sense that they may be resolved straightforwardly—generally by a combination of conceptual and empirical enquiries. After briefly outlining the view and some of its virtues, I turn to examine two central lines of objection. The first is that this ‘easy’ approach is itself committed to substantive ontological views, including an implausibly (...) permissive ontology. The second is that it, like neo-Fregean views, relies on transformation rules that are questionable on both logical and ontological grounds. Ultimately, I will argue, the easy view is not easily assailed by either of these routes, and so remains (thus far) a tenable and attractive approach. (shrink)

The existence of a social world raises both the metaphysical puzzle: how can there be a “reality” of facts and objects that are genuinely created by human intentionality? and the epistemological puzzle: how can such a product of human intentionality include objective facts available for investigation and discovery by the social sciences? I argue that Searle’s story about the creation of social facts in The Construction of Social Reality is too narrow to fully solve either side of the puzzle. By (...) acknowledging different forms of rules for constructing social reality paralleling rules for creating ‘make-believe’ truths, we can build a more comprehensive social ontology and allow for a more appropriate range of discovery for the social sciences. Nonetheless, I argue that despite the parallels between methods for constructing make-believe and social facts, it would be mistaken to treat talk about social reality as involving a mere pretense to refer. (shrink)

Several prominent attacks on the objects of 'folk ontology' argue that these would be omitted from a scientific ontology, or would be 'rivals' of scientific objects for their claims to be efficacious, occupy space, be composed of parts, or possess a range of other properties. I examine causal redundancy and overdetermination arguments, 'nothing over and above' appeals, and arguments based on problems with collocation and with property additivity. I argue that these share a common problem: applying conjunctive principles to cases (...) in which the claims conjoined are not analytically independent. This unified diagnosis provides a way of defending ordinary objects against these common objections, while also yielding warnings about certain uses of general conjunctive principles. (shrink)