This paper is focused on the ways of expressing trust and distrust in financial institutions represented in the language and speech culture of the population of the Lipetsk region. Based on 55 semi-structured interviews of three generations (centennials, millennials, elder generations) living in rural and urban settlements, issues of understanding and interpretation of financial institutions, features of trust, positive and negative experiences of interaction with various financial institutions were analyzed. The use of the constructivism made it possible to interpret trust (...) as an internal component of the practices of an agent involved in the current financial situation. The study showed that in regions with an average standard of living, an average level of financial culture and the dominance of a conservative model of financial behaviour, the difference between generations is less noticeable against the backdrop of a significant difference between residents of rural and urban settlements. The analysis of interviews with three generations of residents of the region showed that the conservative model of financial behaviour continues to be reproduced in the speech culture of the informants, where banks and insurance organizations remain the most trustworthy. The images of financial institutions, represented in the language of the interviews, revealed a high level of resentment associated with the experience of past events (the collapse of the USSR, privatization). The content analysis revealed the image of the state as a “collector of payments”, and to a lesser extent, a “helper” supporting a person in his relationship with financial institutions. (shrink)

. The purpose of this article is to analyze the specifics of the mythologizing of time in the historical period dramas "Downton Abbey" and "The Crown" in the context of the transition from the postmodern paradigm to a new metamodern sensibility. The article summarizes the experience of domestic and foreign studies of the metamodern tendencies of the modern TV series and analyzes the theoretical issues of the mythological temporality of TV series production. On the basis of the theoretical concept of (...) retrotopia by Z. Bauman, the concept of layers of cinematic temporality by N.E. Marievskaya and the critical discourse analysis of S. Jäger, the features of the mythologization of horizontal, vertical time, as well as the biographical time of characters in selected period dramas have been analyzed. The scientific novelty of the article lies in the problematization and analysis of the discursive environment of the deployment of the temporal mythology of the modern period drama. The modern historical period drama demonstrates the specifics of turning to retrotopia, as it seeks to represent the current problems of the present through an imaginary past. In the case of the “Downton Abbey”, this happens through the harmonization in the viewer's mind of nostalgia for an imaginary English aristocratic past and an unstable future. In the case of the “The Crown”, the presentation of the private life of the British royal family against the backdrop of historical events contributes to the formation of a more multidimensional image of the present and responds to the demands of the mass audience in the emotional representation of historical events. The result of this representation is a kind of mythology of time, which arises between the cultural demand for retrotopia and the development of modern technologies for the production of cinematographic products, which makes it possible to fully realize the intention of modern metamodernist discourse to achieve a “new sensibility”. This allows us to consider the modern historical period drama not only as a "commercial project", but also as a tool for the development of historical culture, an instrument of cultural orientation in social space and time. (shrink)

The article investigates the possibility of formation of creative competencies of students within the framework of scientific personnel training. It is noted that the available training courses within the framework of general training of scientific personnel allow to prepare a specialist who is able to use existing knowledge, but such a specialist is not trained in creativity. For the formation of creative competences it is necessary to take a training course of the general theory of systems, the purpose of which (...) is to create a universal methodology of reliable representation of models of objects, based on the similarity (isomorphism) of the forms and laws of the universe. A detailed argumentation of the connection between creativity and holistic representation of being, the empirical manifestation of which is isomorphism, is given. The mechanism of knowledge translation within the framework of the mechanism of multisystem integration of human being, the mechanism of knowledge borrowing by human being from sensually comprehended forms of reality is investigated. It is stated that in order to meet the set tasks of cognition, a version of the general theory of systems, extended by the metaphysical component, is required. Further, starting from the metaphysical description of the foundations of the phenomenon of isomorphism observed in the practice of cognition, it is possible to form complete collections of patterns – typical forms, templates of objects and their relations. At present, the work on such a version of the general theory of systems is being finalized. The article concludes with a discussion of the problematics of teaching general systems theory. It emphasizes two components: the issue of positioning the training course "General Theory of Systems" in relation to other courses, as well as taking into account the specifics of the subject area of students in different specialties (directions). (shrink)

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence. The article considers the subjectivity of artificial intelligence, determines its necessity for solving intellectual problems depending on the possibility of representing the real world as a deterministic system. Methodological limitations of artificial intelligence, which is based on the use of big data technologies, are stated. These limitations cause the impossibility of forming a holistic representation of the objects of cognition and the world as a whole. As a tool for deterministic (...) description of the universe it is proposed to use empirical-metaphysical general theory of systems, which is an extension of existing general theories of systems due to ontological justification of the phenomenon of isomorphism and definition of a limited set of laws, rules, patterns and primitives of forms and relations of objects in the universe. The distinction of natural (human) and artificial intelligence is considered, including the realization of multisystem integration of intelligence in physical, biological, social and spiritual systems. A philosophically grounded approach to ensuring the evolutionary properties of artificial intelligence is formulated, based on the inclusion of non-equilibrium mechanisms through which stability is realized. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, but by (...) means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)

Generic statements express generalizations about categories. Current theories suggest that people should be especially inclined to accept generics that involve threatening information. However, previous tests of this claim have focused on generics about non-human categories, which raises the question of whether this effect applies as readily to human categories. In Experiment 1, adults were more likely to accept generics involving a threatening property for artifacts, but this negativity bias did not also apply to human categories. Experiment 2 examined an alternative (...) hypothesis for this result, and Experiments 3 and 4 served as conceptual replications of the first experiment. Experiment 5 found that even preschoolers apply generics differently for humans and artifacts. Finally, Experiment 6 showed that these effects reflect differences between human and non-human categories more generally, as adults showed a negativity bias for categories of non-human animals, but not for categories of humans. These findings suggest the presence of important, early-emerging domain differences in people's judgments about generics. (shrink)

The gendered occupational role can have an impact on both employees and organizations they work for. This study aims to explore different sides and factors that are related to experience, challenges, and coping mechanisms of male dry cleaners amidst gendered occupational roles. The methodology used were: Heideggeran Phenomenology, Semi- structured Interview Guide, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) by van Kaam and modified by Moustakas. This st udy had 15 participants. Based on the data collected, the following themes were identified in this (...) study; namely, (1) The Steadf ast, (2) and The Challenged. Likewise, the following sub themes were identified from the data- gathering and are based on their perspectives. Masculinity of a male laundry employee can really affect the perspective of an in dividual, the more the male look masculine the more that the people can easily conclude that his physique is not suitable on the jobs like laundry, because people always expect that men should work on a heavy work like truck, construction sites, etc. (shrink)

Background Only a few studies have been conducted to assess physicians’ knowledge of legal standards. Nevertheless, prior research has demonstrated a dearth of medical law knowledge. Our study explored physicians’ awareness of legal provisions concerning informed consent and confidentiality, which are essential components of the physician-patient relationship of trust. -/- Methods A cross-sectional study assessed attending physicians’ legal knowledge of informed consent and confidentiality regulations. The study was conducted in nine hospitals in Dolj County, Romania. Physicians were given a questionnaire (...) with ten scenarios and instructed to select the response that best reflected their practice. We assessed the responses of physicians who claimed their practice to be entirely legal. Their legal knowledge was evaluated by comparing their answers to applicable laws. We also calculated a score for the physicians who admitted to committing a legal breach. -/- Results Of the 305 respondents, 275 declared they never committed any law violation. However, their median correct answer score was 5.35 ± 1.66 out of 10. The specialty was the strongest predictor of legal knowledge, with emergency physicians rating the lowest and non-surgical physicians scoring the highest. Physicians who worked in both private and public sectors were better knowledgeable about legal issues than those who worked exclusively in the public sector. Results indicate that physicians are aware of the patient’s right to informed consent but lack comprehensive understanding. While most physicians correctly answered simple questions, only a tiny minority identified the correct solution when confronted with ethical dilemmas. The physicians who acknowledged breaching the law, on the other hand, had a slightly higher knowledge score at 5.45 ± 2.18. -/- Conclusion Legal compliance remains relatively low due to insufficient legal awareness. Physicians display limited awareness of legal requirements governing patient autonomy, confidentiality, and access to health data. Law should be taught in all medical schools, including undergraduate programs, to increase physicians’ legal knowledge and compliance. (shrink)

People commonly think of the mind and the brain as distinct entities that interact, a view known as dualism. At the same time, the public widely acknowledges that science attributes all mental phenomena to the workings of a material brain, a view at odds with dualism. How do people reconcile these conflicting perspectives? We propose that people distort claims about the brain from the wider culture to fit their dualist belief that minds and brains are distinct, interacting entities: Exposure to (...) cultural discourse about the brain as the physical basis for the mind prompts people to posit that mind–brain interactions are asymmetric, such that the brain is able to affect the mind more than vice versa. We term this hybrid intuitive theory neurodualism. Five studies involving both thought experiments and naturalistic scenarios provided evidence of neurodualism among laypeople and, to some extent, even practicing psychotherapists. For example, lay participants reported that “a change in a person's brain” is accompanied by “a change in the person's mind” more often than vice versa. Similarly, when asked to imagine that “future scientists were able to alter exactly 25% of a person's brain,” participants reported larger corresponding changes in the person's mind than in the opposite direction. Participants also showed a similarly asymmetric pattern favoring the brain over the mind in naturalistic scenarios. By uncovering people's intuitive theories of the mind–brain relation, the results provide insights into societal phenomena such as the allure of neuroscience and common misperceptions of mental health treatments. (shrink)

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)

This paper is a brief survey of the history of Altai shamanism in the 20th Century, and of the main influences, both from "inside" (from within the Altai community) and from the outside onto shamanic beliefs and practices of the Altai, especially onto the shamanic revival. Based on my experiences living in 1988 and 1989 in Gorny Altai, the paper reports on aspects of present‐day shamanism, and the emergence of neo‐shamanism in the post‐Soviet period. The decline of shamanism due to (...) the impact of the Old Believers, the Orthodox Church and the emergence of Burkhanism in 1904, as well as the repression during the Soviet period, is described and is noted as influential in contributing to the current revival of shamanism in its "neo‐shamanistic" form. Several factors that facilitate the regeneration of shamanism are identified and discussed. (shrink)

Social conventions are those arbitrary rules and norms governing the countless behaviors all of us engage in every day without necessarily thinking about them, from shaking hands when greeting someone to driving on the right side of the road. In this book, Andrei Marmor offers a pathbreaking and comprehensive philosophical analysis of conventions and the roles they play in social life and practical reason, and in doing so challenges the dominant view of social conventions first laid out by David Lewis. (...) Marmor begins by giving a general account of the nature of conventions, explaining the differences between coordinative and constitutive conventions and between deep and surface conventions. He then applies this analysis to explain how conventions work in language, morality, and law. Marmor clearly demonstrates that many important semantic and pragmatic aspects of language assumed by many theorists to be conventional are in fact not, and that the role of conventions in the moral domain is surprisingly complex, playing mostly an auxiliary and supportive role. Importantly, he casts new light on the conventional foundations of law, arguing that the distinction between deep and surface conventions can be used to answer the prevalent objections to legal conventionalism. Social Conventions is a much-needed reappraisal of the nature of the rules that regulate virtually every aspect of human conduct. (shrink)

The problematics of civilization development and the place of human being in it is a significant area of research, which is additionally actualized nowadays in the conditions of the outlined transition to a new stage - the civilization of cognitive technologies. According to the assessment proposed in the article, three stages of civilization development should be distinguished: agrarian, machine, and the civilization of cognitive technologies, which is currently being formed. It is characterized by the main need in the form of (...) artificial cognitive systems for intellectual control of machines for the production of material goods, and the result of satisfying this need is the replacement of human beings by artificial cognitive systems in the intellectual control of machines. The following several questions are key in the context of the mentioned problems: "What are the functions of human beings in the existence and development of civilization?", "Do these functions change?", "Are there inalienable ones among them?", "What can become the basis for the further development of civilization?". The functions of human beings within civilization are the generation of needs and work to satisfy them. Generation of needs is an inalienable function of human being in civilization, which determines the determining role of the evolution of needs in the development of civilization. The main role in the evolution of needs belongs to social mechanisms of compulsion (motivation) to consumption, which influence not only the satisfaction of social needs, but also stimulate excessive consumption of material goods and intellectual activity. Further development of civilization will preserve the position of human being as an initiator of this development only in case of successful implementation of social coercion mechanisms. The condition for this is social integration: preservation and expansion of ties between human beings, counteraction to the fragmentation of society. (shrink)

This work has four aims: (i) to provide an overview of the current debate about the semantics of knowledge attributions, i.e. sentences of the form ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; (ii) to ground the debate in a single semantic-pragmatic framework; (iii) to identify a methodology for describing the semantics of knowledge attributions; (iv) to go some way towards describing the semantics of knowledge attributions in light of this methodology, and in particular to defend moderate invariantist semantics against its main current rivals. (...) Aims (i) and (ii) are largely clarificatory; in §1 I set out a single semantic-pragmatic framework and over the course of this work show that it can be modified to explain and distinguish the various theories of the semantics of knowledge attributions currently on offer. Aim (iii) is also met in §1. I argue that a theory of the semantics of knowledge attributions T must be able to account for at least some ordinary speakers’ intuitions about the felicity or infelicity of utterances of the sentence ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ (felicity intuitions) purely in terms of its semantics. I also identify a number of theoretical considerations about knowledge and argue that if T conflicts with any one of these considerations, we should presume that T is false. Aim (iv) is met over the course of this work. According to moderate invariantism ⌜S knows that Φ⌝ is true if and only if S confidently believes the proposition expressed by Φ, this proposition is true and S’s epistemic position with respect to this proposition meets a moderately high epistemic standard. In §§2 – 5 I argue that the main current rivals to moderate invariantism – attributor contextualism, contrastivism, subject-sensitive invariantism and assessor relativism – conflict with at least one of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. In §6 I argue that moderate invariantism accounts for some ordinary speakers’ felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝; I also argue that it is consistent with all of the theoretical considerations identified in §1. Moreover, in §§2 – 6 I argue that no theory is capable of accounting for all felicity intuitions purely in terms of the semantics of ⌜S knows that Φ⌝, and that only moderate invariantism can successfully explain why speakers have all of these intuitions. In §7 I conclude that moderate invariantism correctly describes of the semantics of knowledge attributions, or at least does so better than its main current rivals. (shrink)

This paper examines the ability of countries in Central and Eastern Europe to ensure appropriate protection of research participants in the field of increasingly globalizing biomedical research. By applying an analytical framework for identifying gaps in policies and programs for human subjects protection to four countries of CEE—Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, substantial gaps in the scope and content of relevant policies and major impediments to program performance have been revealed. In these countries, public policies on the protection of research (...) participants lack consistency and reliable mechanisms for their implementation. Impediments to program performance most often relate to inadequacies in the national research ethics systems with regard to organizational structure, budgetary support, supervision, and training. The level of research ethics capacity varies from country to country and depends on socio-economic and political factors of post-communist transition. The breadth and depth of the problems identified suggest that the current level of protection for research participants in CEE might be inadequate to the challenges posed by the globalization of biomedical research. In CEE countries, there is a need for strengthening research ethics capacity through modification of relevant policies and improvement of program management. The differences among the countries call for further research on identifying the best approaches for filling the gaps in the policies and programs aimed at ensuring effective protection of research participants. (shrink)

The following method is popular in some areas of philosophy and linguistics when trying to describe the semantics of a given sentence Φ. Present ordinary speakers with scenarios that involve an utterance of Φ, ask them whether these utterances are felicitous or infelicitous and then construct a semantics that assigns the truth-value True to felicitous utterances of Φ and the truth-value False to infelicitous utterances of Φ. The author makes five observations about this intuition-based approach to semantics; their upshot is (...) that it should be revised in favour of a more nuanced method. The author suggests that this method should be based on corpus linguistics and makes some tentative remarks about what it might look like and which questions we need to address in order to develop it. (shrink)

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...) levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics’ meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse. (shrink)

The following study presents some considerations on different subjects regarding the field of art, from the art of using sounds in theatre and the importance of the Greek tragedy to the subtle differences between opera and theatre. The sound experiment is to be approached knowing that the audience is, in some way, deaf. The renewal of the sounds, even of those coming forth from the remote ages, is part of the author’s lust for a theater that celebrates real contact and (...) real feeling, with a unique expression of force, of intense colors and sharp energies. The main goal is to discover the actor’s or the opera singer’s work with the sounds, with the vibration of the words in his body, thus investigating the “meanings” of the pure sound. (shrink)

There is a long-standing view in epistemology that perception is a way of knowing. There is a less long-standing but increasingly popular view that knowledge attributions have a relativist semantics. I discuss three things here. First, I show that it is a consequence of the logic of RKA that WOK and RKA are incompatible. Second, I argue that, even if WOK is incompatible with the main rivals to RKA, this is not a consequence of the logics of these views. RKA (...) comes with a hitherto unobserved philosophical consequence that its main rivals do not come with. Third, I consider some responses to the effect that it does not matter that RKA comes with this consequence, and argue that they are all unsatisfactory as they stand. I conclude that, at the very least, the onus is placed on relativists to engage with more epistemology than they currently do to show that we do not need to worry about the incompatibility of WOK and RKA. I conclude with some suggestions about the broader relevance and implications of this paper. (shrink)

Moderate invariantism is the orthodox semantics for knowledge attributions. In recent years it has fallen out of favour, in large part because it fails to explain why ordinary speakers have the intuition that some utterances of knowledge attributions are felicitous and others infelicitous in several types of cases. To address this issue moderate invariantists have developed a variety of what I call non-semantic theories which they claim account for the relevant felicity intuitions independently of moderate invariantist semantics. Some critics have (...) responded by arguing that these non-semantic theories are implausible for one or more of the following reasons: they do not have a basis in empirical data or established theory; they do not account for all of the relevant felicity intuitions; they are ad hoc; or they in fact explain too many felicity intuitions and thus undermine the... (shrink)

In this paper I am concerned with the analysis of fragments of a discourse or text that express arguments suspected of being denials of the antecedent. I first argue that one needs to distinguish between two senses of ‘the argument expressed’. Second, I show that, with respect to one of these senses, given a Gricean account of the pragmatics of conditionals, some such fragments systematically express arguments that are valid.

Collateral legal consequences attached to criminal convictions (CLCs) are often criticised because they expose criminal offenders to various forms of harmful and/or wrongful treatment. In this article, we argue that CLCs are problematic because they undermine the power to punish, a distinct normative power that allows the relevant powerholders to directly change the offender's normative situation. The article identifies important features of the power to punish construed as the normative ability that judges should hold in liberal polities. In particular, we (...) examine how CLCs undermine two of the features – viz., robustness and attributability – that are central to the non-deficient functioning of the normative power to punish. Acknowledging the implausibility of a forthcoming demise of CLCs, we conclude with an outline of non-ideal proposals that would marginally mitigate the unwarranted effects that CLCs have on the exercise of the normative power to punish. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is twofold: to demystify the ancient concept of courage, making it more palpable for the modern reader, and to suggest the reasonably specific constraints that would restrict the contemporary tendency of indiscriminate attribution of this virtue. The discussion of courage will incorporate both the classical interpretations of this trait of character, and the empirical studies into the complex relation between the emotion of fear and behavior. The Aristotelian thesis that courage consists in overcoming the fear (...) of significant harm for a worthy cause will be further developed by exploring its relevance for military professionals today. Specific criteria will be offered in order to restrict the application of the term?courageous? to a certain type of action, as well as to demarcate this virtue from the related vices, such as recklessness. The normative aspect of our study aims to make sense of what could qualify as a worthy goal of a fearless action in the modern world. It will be argued that a courageous agent aims at alleviating or preventing harm for others in a situation of potential risk for the agent himself, while respecting the factual conditions that determine the probability of success. (shrink)

When Aristotle limits the manifestation of true courage to the military context only, his primary target is an overly inclusive conception of courage presented by Plato in the Laches. At the same time, Aristotle explicitly tries to demarcate his ideal of genuine courage from the paradigmatic examples of courageous actions derived from the Homeric epics. It remains questionable, though, whether Aristotle is truly earnest in his efforts to distance himself from Homer. It will be argued that Aristotle's attempt to associate (...) with Homer the two forms of specious courage—courage of the citizen troops and spirit-caused courage—fails to provide sufficient criteria for the demarcation in question. All the essential elements of the Aristotelian account of courage, such as a voluntary choice, a noble goal, and a thumos-driven reaction guided by reason are exemplified by a number of Homeric characters as well. It is thus likely that the philosopher's account of courage largely incorporates the poetic tradition at a new level, rather than supersedes it. (shrink)

In Philosophy of Law, Andrei Marmor provides a comprehensive analysis of contemporary debates about the fundamental nature of law—an issue that has been at the heart of legal philosophy for centuries. What the law is seems to be a matter of fact, but this fact has normative significance: it tells people what they ought to do. Marmor argues that the myriad questions raised by the factual and normative features of law actually depend on the possibility of reduction—whether the legal domain (...) can be explained in terms of something else, more foundational in nature. In addition to exploring the major issues in contemporary legal thought, Philosophy of Law provides a critical analysis of the people and ideas that have dominated the field in past centuries. It will be essential reading for anyone curious about the nature of law. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive defence of legal positivism on the basis of a novel account of social conventions. Marmor argues that the law is founded on constitutive conventions, and that consequently moral values cannot determine what the law is.

John Greco has recently raised two worries for epistemic contextualism, viz it deprives epistemology of its subject matter and renders objective knowledge impossible. He argues that these problems are not restricted to contextualism, but apply to rival theories, like subject sensitive invariantism, and that they are overstated. I develop Greco's worries, which show that contextualism suggests either that there is no such thing as knowledge, or a weird view of knowledge: as disparately varied and undisciplined, individual-dependent and arbitrary. I then (...) argue that these issues are not overstated and that they can be avoided if one opts for moderate insensitive invariantism. (shrink)

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that, given God's just and loving character, it would be most rational for Him to maintain an open-door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with Him. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. The first (...) is an argument from religious luck offered by Russell Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labelled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)