How can we talk meaningfully about the past if it does not exist to be talked about? What gives time its direction? Is time travel possible? This defence of presentism - the view that only the present exists - makes an original contribution to a fast growing and exciting debate.

Most of us would want to say that it is true that Socrates taught Plato. According to realists about past facts,1 this is made true by the fact that there is, located in the past, i.e., earlier than now, at least one real event that is the teaching of Plato by Socrates. Presentists, however, in denying that past events and facts exist2 cannot appeal to such facts to make their past-tensed statements true. So what is a presentist to do?

We propose that scientific representation is a special case of a more general notion of representation, and that the relatively well worked-out and plausible theories of the latter are directly applicable to the scientific special case.

The Internet is rapidly developing into an important medium of communication in modem society, and both psychological research and therapeutic interventions are being increasingly conducted using this new communication medium. As therapeutic interventions using the Internet are becoming more prevalent, it is becoming increasingly important to conduct research on psychotherapeutic Internet interventions to assist in the development of an appropriate standard of practice regarding interventions using this new medium. In this article, we examine the Internet and the current psychological uses (...) which are being initiated using this medium. Ethical concerns related to the psychological use of the Internet are discussed, and guidelines are proposed for the conduct of Internet intervention research. (shrink)

Is there any difference between playing video games in which the player’s character commits murder and video games in which the player’s character commits pedophilic acts? Morgan Luck’s “Gamer’s Dilemma” has established this question as a puzzle concerning notions of permissibility and harm. We propose that a fruitful alternative way to approach the question is through an account of aesthetic engagement. We develop an alternative to the dominant account of the relationship between players and the actions of their characters, and (...) argue that the ethical difference between so-called “virtual murder” and “virtual pedophilia” is to be understood in terms of the fiction-making resources available to players. We propose that the relevant considerations for potential players to navigate concern (1) attempting to make certain characters intelligible, and (2) using aspects of oneself as resources for homomorphic representation. (shrink)

Many believe that quantum mechanics makes the world hospitable to the tensed theory of time. Quantum mechanics is said to rescue the significance of the present moment, the mutability of the future and possibly even the whoosh of time’s flow. It allegedly does so in two different ways: by making a preferred foliation of spacetime into space and time scientifically respectable, and by wavefunction collapse injecting temporal ‘becoming’ into the world. The aim of this paper is to show that the (...) reasoning underlying these claims is wishful thinking. Against the first claim I develop what I call the “coordination problem” for tensers. The upshot of this problem is that if tensers escape the threat of relativity, they do so only by embracing conflict with the branch of physics they believed saved them, quantum mechanics. I then step back from the fray and examine some methodological issues, concluding that scientific methodology will always be “against” tenses as they are currently conceived. The Appendix deals with the confused tangle of issues linking wavefunction collapse to an open future. (shrink)

Personification has received little philosophical attention, but Daniel Nolan has recently argued that it has important ramifications for the relationship between fictional representation and possibility. Nolan argues that personification involves the representation of metaphysically impossible identities, which is problematic for anyone who denies that fictions can have impossible content. We develop an account of personification which illuminates how personification enhances engagement with fiction, without need of impossible content. Rather than representing an identity, personification is something that is done with representations—a (...) matter of use rather than content—and involves only a comparison of possibilities. We illustrate our account using the personification of death in the film Meet Joe Black, and show that there are no grounds for taking it to be fictionally true that there is a metaphysically impossible identity between Death and death. (shrink)

Naive realists hold that experience is to be understood in terms of an intimate perceptual relation between a subject and aspects of the world, relative to a certain standpoint. Those aspects of the world themselves shape the contours of consciousness. But blurriness is an aspect of some of our experiences that does not seem to come from the world. I argue that this constitutes a significant challenge to some forms of naive realism. But I also argue that there is a (...) robust form of naive realism which is unfazed by the blurriness of some of our experiences, even when that blurriness is understood as a subjective modification of consciousness. (shrink)

While heightening the nihilistic tension underlying the discourse of Richard Kearney, I highlight the positive contribution his book The God Who May Be makes to the debate concerning the need for a postmodern revitalization of religious symbolism. I argue for three qualifications of Kearney's argument, suggesting, in response to Kearney's exclusionary approach to the God who “neither is nor is not but may be,” a God whose possibility for meaningfulness arises as an “eschatological theogony” from out of the chaos (confusion (...) and openness) of contemporary religious symbolism. Arguing that such a radical reenvisioning of God must be tempered and given meaning through reentering and reaffirming onto‐theology in a qualified (hermeneutical) sense, I sketch a possible renewal of meaning for the traditional Christian parousia‐concept as a hermeneutical circle between Hegel's systematic closure of Western metaphysics and Heidegger's deconstructive appropriation of the hidden possibilities of presence within the onto‐theological tradition. (shrink)

I argue that we should question the orthodox way of thinking about epistemological disjunctivism. I suggest that we can formulate epistemological disjunctivism in terms of states of seeing things as opposed to states of seeing that p. Not only does this alternative formulation capture the core aspects of epistemological disjunctivism as standardly formulated, it has two salient advantages. First, it avoids a crucial problem that arises for a standard formulation of epistemological disjunctivism—the basis problem. And second, it is less committed (...) than standard formulations are in the metaphysics of perception. (shrink)

Data from 949 families of Caucasian and 400 families of Japanese ancestry who took part in the Hawaii Family Study of Cognition were used to ascertain the associations of parental cognitive ability, parental education and paternal occupation with offspring cognitive ability. In particular, analyses were focused on testing the possible moderating effects of parental socioeconomic status on the familial transmission of cognitive abilities. Parental cognitive ability was substantially associated and parental education and paternal occupation only trivially associated with offspring performance. (...) In contrast to the findings of Turkheimer etal. (2003), there was no evidence in these data that familiality for cognitive abilities was lower in the lower as opposed to upper levels of socioeconomic status. These results were consistent across measures, ethnicity and sex of offspring. (shrink)

This paper examines the argument that scientific thinkers who embrace a religious tradition can promote intellectual integration between religion and science rather than fragmented discourse. It is argued that God’s Word as an event and the concept of structural directedness, an organized movement toward a future that does not demand a consciously intended end, may be helpful in understanding God’s actions in an indeterminant way.

This study interprets the movement of Heidegger's famous "turn" through an analysis of his critique of Kant, Schelling, and Hegel in the period spanning roughly 1925 to 1936. Heidegger's "turn" sought to overcome the traditional metaphysical conception of being that had come to absolute expression through Hegel's method of dialectical reflection. Heidegger was successful to the extent that he provided the final "con-text" of being as a discourse that both frames the historical "text" of being and permeates it, allowing the (...) coherence of that text to appear in a new light. Heidegger's interpretation of the original sense of time as temporality opposed the latent dogmatism in Kant's critique of reason by shifting the locus of unity in experience away from the spontaneity of the self toward an intuitional transcending of the self as "being-in-the-world." This pointed Heidegger toward a novel revelatory conception of freedom as "letting being be," which he posed as an alternative to the absolutizing of subjectivity that took place in German idealism. Heidegger used Schellings anti-Hegelian conception of the origination of freedom from nature to clarify the meaning of Hegel's key metaphysical notion of reflection. In so doing he developed an alternative interpretation of the "nothing," in contrast to Hegel's method of double negation, that set the meaning of negation into a greater contextual perspective. Heidegger's goal of uncovering the meaning and possibility of reflection as the original possibility of evil led him to a qualified retrieval of his early Roman Catholic orientation to thinking. Transforming these paradigms into a new deconstructive discourse, Heidegger advanced beyond Schellings critique of Hegel, allowing him to establish a hermeneutical relationship with Hegel's system that simultaneously confronts and preserves it. Heidegger's early phenomenological interpretation of Pauline eschatology and Augustinian original sin thus, finally situates his interpretation of the "nothing" as the abyss of being retrieved from the primal Greek conception of nature . Heidegger thereby provides the ultimate "con-text" of metaphysics in its necessary and reciprocal relation to Hegel's conception of presence as an all-encompassing, "self-absolving" system. (shrink)

Contemporary science presents us with the remarkable theory that the universe began to exist about fifteen billion years ago with a cataclysmic explosion called "the Big Bang." The question of whether Big Bang cosmology supports theism or atheism has long been a matter of discussion among the general public and in popular science books, but has received scant attention from philosophers. This book sets out to fill this gap by means of a sustained debate between two philosophers, William Lane (...) class='Hi'>Craig and Quentin Smith, who defend opposing positions. Craig argues that the Big Bang that began the universe was created by God, while Smith argues that the Big Bang has no cause. Alternating chapters by the two philosophers criticize and attempt to refute preceding arguments. Their arguments are based on Einstein's theory of relativity and include a discussion of the new quantum cosmology recently developed by Stephen Hawking and popularized in A Brief History of Time. (shrink)

It is difficult to exaggerate Alasdair MacIntyre's influence on contemporary Christian ethics. Under his influence, many have sought to show the distinctive features of a Christian account of the virtues, even while discovering that they have needed to go further than MacIntyre himself does. In an attempt to illustrate why some Christian ethicists and theologians have noted MacIntyre's reluctance to follow through on some of his own projects’ most salient aspects, this article examines his 1994 lectures on truthfulness and lying. (...) In particular, I ask why he unexpectedly proposes a rule that suffers from Kantian abstraction. Even though articulating rules can be a crucial task, Christian ethics can often do better. Rather than search for a rule or even practices that require truthfulness, I suggest instead that Christian witness be explored as itself a truth-telling practice. (shrink)

Public debate on nanotechnology is a large topic within governments, research agencies, industry and non-government organisations. But depending who you talk to the perception of what the public thinks about nanotechnology can be very varied. To define coherent policy and to invest in research and development that aligns with public preferences, needs more than just perceptions of public perceptions. Public attitude studies are vital in understanding what the public really think, but they need to go further than simplistic polling and (...) should examine factors such as changes over time, drivers of attitude change, different attitudes to different applications and be supported by qualitative data. This paper summarises the findings of a three year tracking study of public attitudes towards nanotechnology, highlighting both concerns and aspirations for nanotechnology and discusses the impacts of that data on public engagement programs. (shrink)

Drunk drivers and other culpably incapacitated wrongdoers are often taken to pose a problem for reasons-responsiveness accounts of moral responsibility. These accounts predicate moral responsibility upon an agent having the capacities to perceive and act upon moral reasons, and the culpably incapacitated wrongdoers lack exactly those capacities at the time of their wrongdoing. Many reasons-responsiveness advocates thus expand their account of responsibility to include a tracing condition: The culpably incapacitated wrongdoer is blameworthy despite his incapacitation precisely because he is responsible (...) for becoming incapacitated. As some skeptics have suggested, it is not clear that we need tracing. Here, however, I make a stronger case against tracing: I show that tracing gets things wrong. I consider a new sort of case, the case of the Odysseus agent, whose incapacitation is non-culpable (sometimes merely permissible and sometimes praiseworthy). Tracing would have us hold responsible and therefore blame unlucky Odysseus agents, Odysseus agents who commit a wrongdoing in the throes of their non-culpably induced incapacitation. But we should not hold these unlucky Odysseus agents responsible for their incapacitated wrongdoing. Because tracing gets these cases wrong, we should reject tracing. (shrink)

New social movements of the post-war era have brought to prominence the idea that identity can be a crucial focus for political struggle. Linked to an increasing recognition that social theory itself must put the politics of identity on center stage, this volume impels social theorists not only to make sense of the "world out there", but also to make sense of differences within the discourse of theory.

DeLancey shows that our understanding of emotion provides essential insight on key issues in philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence. He offers us a bold new approach to the study of the mind based on the latest scientific research and provides an accessible overview of the science of emotion.

In recent years, several prominent biologists have pointed to the relatively new field of evolutionary developmental biology as evidence of an Extended Synthesis in evolutionary biology. More particularly, these biologists claim that theoretical and empirical EvoDevo research is extending the Modern Synthesis framework of evolutionary theory through investigation of evolutionarily important concepts that are not part of the framework developed during the 20th century. To describe the current changes in evolutionary biology as an Extended Synthesis, however, is incorrect. Through review (...) of Extended Synthesis arguments and analysis of the same biological concepts used to support these arguments, I argue that the foundation of the Modern Synthesis framework, theoretical population genetics, faces significant, perhaps insurmountable challenges from the concepts highlighted by EvoDevo research. As the foundation of the Modern Synthesis framework will require considerable remodeling—if possible—in light of the concepts emphasized by EvoDevo, it is incorrect to describe the ongoing changes in evolutionary biology as an Extended Synthesis. (shrink)

We provide a critical assessment of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) “broader impacts criterion” for peer review, which has met with resistance from the scientific community and been characterized as unlikely to have much positive effect due to poor implementation and adherence to the linear model heuristic for innovation. In our view, the weakness of NSF's approach owes less to these issues than to the misguided assumption that the peer review process can be used to leverage more societal value from (...) research. This idea, although undoubtedly well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed. Retooling or refining the Broader Impacts Criterion does not alter the fact that conventional peer review, based on specialized scientific and technical expertise, is not up to the task of ensuring adequate judgements about social impact. We consider some possible alternative approaches to providing greater social impact in science and include in our assessment past and current efforts at NSF and throughout the federal research establishment that address, in some cases having addressed for decades, the intentions and goals of the Broader Impacts Criterion, albeit using alternate mechanisms. We conclude that institution-building and explicit and targeted policy-making are more useful and democratically legitimate approaches to ensuring broad social impacts. (shrink)

"Iago's 'I am not what I am' epitomises how Shakespeare's work is rich in philosophy, from issues of deception and moral deviance to those concerning the complex nature of the self, the notions of being and identity, and the possibility or impossibility of self-knowledge and knowledge of others. The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy examines the following important topics: - What roles can be played in an approach to Shakespeare by drawing on philosophical frameworks and the work of philosophers? (...) - What can philosophical theories of meaning and communication show about the dynamics of Shakespearean interactions, and vice versa? - How are notions such as political and social obligation, justice, equality, love, agency, and the ethics of interpersonal relationships demonstrated in Shakespeare's works? - What do the plays and poems invite us to say about the nature of knowledge, belief, doubt, deception and epistemic responsibility? - How can the ways in which Shakespeare's characters behave illuminate existential issues concerning meaning, absurdity, death and nothingness? - What might Shakespeare's characters and their actions show about the nature of the self, the mind, and the identity of individuals? - How can Shakespeare's works inform philosophical approaches to notions such as beauty, humour, horror and tragedy? - How do Shakespeare's works illuminate philosophical questions about the nature of fiction, the attitudes and expectations involved in engagement with theatre, and the role of acting and actors in creating representations? The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy is essential reading for students and researchers in aesthetics, philosophy of literature and philosophy of theatre"--. (shrink)