FADYL JK and NICHOLLS DA. Nursing Inquiry 2013; 20: 23–29 Foucault, the subject and the research interview: a critique of methodsResearch interviews are a widely used method in qualitative health research and have been adapted to suit a range of methodologies. Just as it is valuable that new approaches are explored, it is also important to continue to examine their appropriate use. In this article, we question the suitability of research interviews for ‘history of the present’ studies informed by (...) the work of Michel Foucault – a form of qualitative research that is being increasingly employed in the analysis of healthcare systems and processes. We argue that several aspects of research interviewing produce philosophical and methodological complications that can interfere with achieving the aims of the analysis in this type of study. The article comprises an introduction to these tensions and examination of them in relation to key aspects of a Foucauldian philosophical position, and discussion of where this might position researchers when it comes to designing a study. (shrink)

We report on the small-scale (0.5 13 h - 1M, a large-scale bias of ~2.0 and a satellite fraction of 12 ± 2 per cent. Thus, these galaxies occupy haloes with average masses in between those of the higher redshift BOSS CMASS sample and the original SDSS I/II luminous red galaxy sample © 2012 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society © doi:10.1093/mnras/sts314.

Placeholder essentialism is the view that there is a causal essence that holds category members together, though we may not know what the essence is. Sometimes the placeholder can be filled in by scientific essences, such as when we acquire scientific knowledge that the atomic weight of gold is 79. We challenge the view that placeholders are elaborated by scientific essences. On our view, if placeholders are elaborated, they are elaborated Aristotelian essences, a telos. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments (...) used by traditional essentialists—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2), acquired traits (study 3) and inferences about offspring (study 4)—we find support for the view that essences are elaborated by a telos. And we find evidence (study 5) that teleological essences may generate category judgments. (shrink)

Natural/social kind essentialism is the view that natural kind categories, both living and non-living natural kinds, as well as social kinds (e.g., race, gender), are essentialized. On this view, artifactual kinds are not essentialized. Our view—teleological essentialism—is that a broad range of categories are essentialized in terms of teleology, including artifacts. Utilizing the same kinds of experiments typically used to provide evidence of essentialist thinking—involving superficial change (study 1), transformation of insides (study 2) and inferences about offspring (study 3)—we find (...) support for the view that a broad range of categories—living natural kinds, non-living natural kinds and artifactual kinds—are essentialized in terms of teleology. Study 4 tests a unique prediction of teleological essentialism and also provides evidence that people make inferences about purposes which in turn guide categorization judgments. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that the folk endorse moral universalism. Some have taken the folk view to support moral universalism; others have taken the folk view to reflect a deep confusion. And while some empirical evidence supports the claim that the folk endorse moral universalism, this work has uncovered intra-domain differences in folk judgments of moral universalism. In light of all this, our question is: why do the folk endorse moral universalism? Our hypothesis is that folk judgments of moral universalism (...) are generated in part by a desire to punish. We present evidence supporting this across three studies. On the basis of this, we argue for a debunking explanation of folk judgments of moral universalism. Our results not only further our understanding of the psychological processes underpinning folk judgments of moral universalism. They also bear on philosophical discussions of folk meta-ethics. (shrink)

Many philosophers maintain that causation is to be explicated in terms of a kind of dependence between cause and effect. These “dependence” theories are opposed by “production” accounts which hold that there is some more fundamental causal “oomph”. A wide range of experimental research on everyday causal judgments seems to indicate that ordinary people operate primarily with a dependence-based notion of causation. For example, people tend to say that absences and double preventers are causes. We argue that the impression that (...) commonsense causal discourse is largely dependence-based is the result of focusing on a very narrow class of causal verbs. Almost all of the vignette-based experimental work on causal judgment has been prosecuted using the word “cause”. But much ordinary causal discourse involves special causal verbs, such as “burn” and “crack”. We find that these verbs display a quite different pattern from the verb “cause”. For instance, for absences and double preventers (Studies 1-3), we find that while people are inclined to say that X caused Y to burn, turn, crack or start, they are less inclined to think that X burned, turned, cracked or started Y. In Study 4, we find that for chains involving a distal and proximal event, people are inclined to say that the distal event is not a special cause of the outcome, though it is a “cause” of the outcome. Together, we find a surprising double dissociation between “cause” and a stock of special causal verbs. We conclude by suggesting that much commonsense causal judgment, which heavily trades in special causal verbs, might be better captured by production-based accounts of causation. (shrink)

This article asks under what circumstances controversial technologies would be considered seriously for remediation instead of being rejected out of hand. To address this question, the authors developed a conceptual framework called public acceptability of controversial technologies. PACT considers site-specific, decision-oriented dialogues among the individuals and groups involved in selecting or recommending hazardous waste remediation technologies. It distinguishes technology acceptability, that is, a willingness to consider seriously, from technology acceptance, the decision to deploy. The framework integrates four dimensions: an acceptability (...) continuum that underlies decision-oriented dialogues among individuals and constituency groups, the attributes of these individuals and groups, the attributes of the technology at issue, and the community context—social, institutional, and physical. This article describes and explores PACT as a tool for understanding and better predicting the acceptability of controversial technologies. (shrink)

The idea that incompatibilism is intuitive is one of the key motivators for incompatibilism. Not surprisingly, then philosophers who defend incompatibilism often claim that incompatibilism is the natural, commonsense view about free will and moral responsibility (e.g., Pereboom 2001, Kane Journal of Philosophy 96:217–240 1999, Strawson 1986). And a number of recent studies find that people give apparently incompatibilist responses in vignette studies. When participants are presented with a description of a causal deterministic universe, they tend to deny that people (...) are morally responsible in that universe. Although this suggests that people are intuitive incompatibilists, Eddy Nahmias and Dylan Murray, in a recent series of important papers, have developed an important challenge to this interpretation. They argue that people confuse determinism with bypassing, the idea that one’s mental states lack causal efficacy. Murray and Nahmias present new experiments that seem to confirm the bypassing hypothesis. In this paper, we use structural equation modeling to re-examine the issue. We find support instead for an incompatibilist explanation of the bypassing results, i.e., incompatibilist judgments seem to cause bypassing judgments. We hypothesize that this phenomenon occurs because people think of decisions as essentially indeterministic; thus, when confronted with a description of determinism they tend to think that decisions do not even occur. We provide evidence for this in three subsequent studies which show that many participants deny that people make decisions in a deterministic universe; by contrast, most participants tend to allow that people add numbers in a deterministic universe. Together, these studies suggest that bypassing results don’t reflect a confusion, but rather the depth of the incompatibilist intuition. (shrink)

Measuring neuronal activity with electrophysiological methods may be useful in detecting neurological dysfunctions, such as mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). This approach may be particularly valuable for rapid detection in at-risk populations including military service members and athletes. Electrophysiological methods, such as quantitative electroencephalography (qEEG) and recording event-related potentials (ERPs) may be promising; however, the field is nascent and significant controversy exists on the efficacy and accuracy of the approaches as diagnostic tools. For example, the specific measures derived from an (...) electroencephalogram (EEG) that are most suitable as markers of dysfunction have not been clearly established. A study was conducted to summarize and evaluate the statistical rigor of evidence on the overall utility of qEEG as an mTBI detection tool. The analysis evaluated qEEG measures/parameters that may be most suitable as fieldable diagnostic tools, identified other types of EEG measures and analysis methods of promise, recommended specific measures and analysis methods for further development as mTBI detection tools, identified research gaps in the field, and recommended future research and development thrust areas. The qEEG study group formed the following conclusions: 1. Individual qEEG measures provide limited diagnostic utility for mTBI. However, many measures can be important features of qEEG discriminant functions, which do show significant promise as mTBI detection tools. 2. ERPs offer utility in mTBI detection. In fact, evidence indicates that ERPs can identify abnormalities in cases where EEGs alone are nondisclosing. 3. The standard mathematical procedures used in the characterization of mTBI EEGs should be expanded to incorporate newer methods of analysis including nonlinear dynamical analysis, complexity measures, analysis of causal interactions, graph theory and information dynamics. 4. and 5. are too long to include here. (shrink)

Do young children have a teleological conception of the essence of natural kinds? We tested this by examining how the preservation or alteration of an animal’s purpose affected children’s persistence judgments (N = 40, ages 4 - 12, Mean Age = 7.04, 61% female). We found that even when surface-level features of an animal (e.g., a bee) were preserved, if the entity’s purpose changed (e.g., the bee now spins webs), children were more likely to categorize the entity as a member (...) of a different natural kind (e.g., a spider) and these effects were similar in magnitude to altering the surface-features of a natural kind. Our results suggest that we might view teleological properties as partially constitutive of the essence of natural kinds. (shrink)

Drawing on their extensive research, Nichols and Berliner document and categorize the ways that high-stakes testing threatens the purposes and ideals of the American education system. For more than a decade, the debate over high-stakes testing has dominated the field of education. This passionate and provocative book provides a fresh perspective on the issue and powerful ammunition for opponents of high-stakes tests. Their analysis is grounded in the application of Campbell’s Law, which posits that the greater the social consequences associated (...) with a quantitative indicator, the more likely it is that the indicator itself will become corrupted—and the more likely it is that the use of the indicator will corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor. Nichols and Berliner illustrate both aspects of this “corruption,” showing how the pressures of high-stakes testing erode the validity of test scores and distort the integrity of the education system. Their analysis provides a coherent and comprehensive intellectual framework for the wide-ranging arguments against high-stakes testing, while putting a compelling human face on the data marshalled in support of those arguments. (shrink)

The debate over off-line simulation has largely focussed on the capacity to predict behavior, but the basic idea of off-line simulation can be cast in a much broader framework. The central claim of the off-line account of behavior prediction is that the practical reasoning mechanism is taken off-line and used for predicting behavior. However, there's no reason to suppose that the idea of off-line simulation can't be extended to mechanisms other than the practical reasoning system. In principle, any cognitive component (...) can be taken off-line and used to perform some other function. On this view of off-line simulation, such accounts differ radically from traditional information-based accounts of cognitive capacities. And cognitive penetrability provides a wedge for empirically determining whether a capacity requires an information-based account or an off-line simulation account. Stich and Nichols (1992) argued that the simulation theory of behavior prediction was inadequate because behavior prediction seemed to be cognitively penetrable. We present empirical evidence that supports the claim that the behavior prediction is cognitively penetrable. As a result, the simulation account of behavior prediction still seems unpromising. However, off-line simulation might provide accounts of other cognitive capacities. Indeed, off- line simulation accounts have recently been offered for a strikingly diverse set of capacities including counterfactual reasoning, empathy and mental imagery. Goldman, for instance, maintains that counterfactual reasoning and empathy clearly demand off-line simulation accounts. We argue that there are alternative information-based explanations of these phenomena. Nonetheless, the off-line accounts of these phenomena are interesting and clearly worthy of further exploration. (shrink)

This book offers a more challenging appraisal of Newman’s life and thought.

In this paper, we present a set of preregistered studies inspired by both Lockean pluralism about individuation and discussions of conjoined twinning in the contemporary personal identity debate. In combination, these studies provide evidence of folk pluralism about individuation of “individuals like us” and also ways in which individuation judgments are integral to practical interests. First, our studies show that individuation judgments depend on a sortal supplied. Study participants tend to see two people or persons but only one organism in (...) case of dicephalic twins, and they do not find these two verdicts inconsistent. Second, study participants tend to be pluralist in a sense that they find it acceptable to consider dicephalic twins to be—at the same time—two persons sharing one body and one two‐headed person. Third, while both perspectives are available, when reasons for counting are made salient, study participants tend to resolve pluralism in line with practical interests relevant in the context. (shrink)

This book stems from an examination of how Western philosophy has accounted for the foundations of law. In this tradition, the character of the “sovereign” or “lawgiver” has provided the solution to this problem. But how does the sovereign acquire the right to found law? As soon as we ask this question we are immediately confronted with a convoluted combination of jurisprudence and theology. The author begins by tracing a lengthy and deeply nuanced exchange between Derrida and Nancy on the (...) question of community and fraternity and then moves on to engage with a diverse set of texts from the Marquis de Sade, Saint Augustine, Kant, Hegel, and Kafka. These texts—which range from the canonical to the apocryphal—all struggle in their own manner with the question of the foundations of law. Each offers a path to the law. If a reader accepts any path as it is and follows without question, the law is set and determined and the possibility of dialogue is closed. The aim of this book is to approach the foundations of law from a series of different angles so that we can begin to see that those foundations are always in question and open to the possibility of dialogue. (shrink)

The claim that common sense regards free will and moral responsibility as compatible with determinism has played a central role in both analytic and experimental philosophy. In this paper, we show that evidence in favor of this “natural compatibilism” is undermined by the role that indeterministic metaphysical views play in how people construe deterministic scenarios. To demonstrate this, we re-examine two classic studies that have been used to support natural compatibilism. We find that although people give apparently compatibilist responses, this (...) is largely explained by the fact that people import an indeterministic metaphysics into deterministic scenarios when making judgments about freedom and responsibility. We conclude that judgments based on these scenarios are not reliable evidence for natural compatibilism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 353 proportionalism that Finnis's theological argument exploits. In this regard, there is no moral theory, good or bad, which overreaches so far as proportionalism does. Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey ROBERT P. GEORGE Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology. By DAVID S. CUNNINGHAM. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. xvii + 312. $29.95 (cloth) ; $16.95 (paper). The relation (...) between words and the Word has always been of in· terest in Christian theology. Earlier in this century a school of writers approached " the Bible as literature " with a view to bringing Scripture into a more persuasive relation with literature at large, but their insistence on the rigorous exclusion of dogmatic elements from literary scrutiny impoverished their work. A later set of procedures and perspectives on rhetoric and language in their relation to reality was bet· ter able to allow the utterances of a text's speakers their own integrity, whether sacred or secular. In any case, a thematic interpretation of the founding texts of Christianity, influenced by Aristotle's Rhetoricwhere form is a means for persuasively communicating an idea-content -had long predominated in ecclesial usage, germane as it was to the didactic concerns of the Church. An alternative tradition, more indebted to Aristotle's Poetics, where form, content, and functions are treated as factors making for the indissoluble whole which is the literary work, has been less conspicuous-though its offer of initiation into the " world " of the sacred writers gives it great exegetical potential. The text's "word " should be encountered at the level of its own patterned imagery and wrought design. In the appreciation of the Gospels this has become in recent decades a commonplace. However, as the T. S. Eliot scholar Helen Gardner warned, one should not so react against the older approach as to treat the biblical text as the product of a disembodied imagination, rather than a human being writing a work that might make his readers "wise unto salvation." David S. Cunningham's Faithful Persuasion extends this discussion of the propriety or impropriety of a rhetorical approach to Scripture to the discourse of Christian theology as a whole. The intent is a laudable one but its execution vitiated, to my mind, by the excessive concessions to scepticism from which the author sets out. Because his theological epistemology, aware of the limitations of the propositions in which we assert the truths of faith, will grant those assertions no more than a 354 BOOK REVIEWS (continuously) revisable character, he falls back on an account of theology as rhetoric so as to make the best of a bad job. For persuasion is what we use when we know demonstration is hopeless. As a result, Professor Cunningham's study, which could most usefully have "placed" a variety of theologies of past, present, and, prospectively, future on the spectrum of (onto-) logic, poetic, and rhetoric, concludes instead that theology must regard itself as rhetorical or perish! This inevitably narrows the several services theologies of different kinds can perform for the Church. Imagine how biblical studies would be reduced were the exegete only to treat his text as paraenesis, and never as history or as a symbolic world. Nonetheless, on the way from its (as I find) unsatisfactory startingpoint and to its depressing conclusion, Faithful Persuasion has worthwhile points to make about a number of authors (of various periods) and topics, though it might have made them more persuasively (its author's key term) had the intended audience (middle-brow or academic?) been more clearly viewed in advance. AIDAN NICHOLS, O.P. Blackfriars Cambridge, England Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860-1914. By THOMAS FRANKLIN O'MEARA, O.P. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x + 260. $35.95 (cloth). " In 1925, Baden's Kultusminister, a Protestant, began an address to the Gorresgesellschaft in Heidelberg by describing this era: ' Brave men like Hertling, Schell, Julius Bachem, and Carl Muth, shook the German Catholic world in order to lead it out of its fortress, to lead it again into the midst of the life and activity of the entire people, even when this seemed at... (shrink)

Since his death in 1997, Isaiah Berlin's writings have generated continual interest among scholars and educated readers, especially in regard to his ideas about liberalism, value pluralism, and "positive" and "negative" liberty. Most books on Berlin have examined his general political theory, but this volume uses a contemporary perspective to focus specifically on his ideas about freedom and liberty. Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom brings together an integrated collection of essays by noted and emerging political theorists that commemorate (...) in a critical spirit the recent 50th anniversary of Isaiah Berlin's famous lecture and essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." The contributors use Berlin's essay as an occasion to rethink the larger politics of freedom from a twenty-first century standpoint, bringing Berlin's ideas into conversation with current political problems and perspectives rooted in postcolonial theory, feminist theory, democratic theory, and critical social theory. The editors begin by surveying the influence of Berlin's essay and the range of debates about freedom that it has inspired. Contributors' chapters then offer various analyses such as competing ways to contextualize Berlin's essay, how to reconsider Berlin's ideas in light of struggles over national self-determination, European colonialism, and racism, and how to view Berlin's controversial distinction between so-called "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." By relating Berlin's thinking about freedom to competing contemporary views of the politics of freedom, this book will be significant for both scholars of Berlin as well as people who are interested in larger debates about the meaning and conditions of freedom. (shrink)

What were Shakespeare's final thoughts on history, tragedy, and comedy? Shakespeare's Last Plays focuses much needed scholarly attention on Shakespeare's "Late Romances." The work--a collection of newly commissioned essays by leading scholars of classical political philosophy and literature--offers careful textual analysis of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, All is True, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The essays reveal how Shakespeare's thought in these final works compliments, challenges, fulfills, or transforms previously held conceptions of the playwright (...) and his political-philosophical views. (shrink)

Engaging a broad range of Platonic dialogues, this collection of essays by distinguished scholars in political theory and philosophy explores the relation of Socratic philosophizing to those activities with which it is typically opposed—such as tyranny, sophistry, poetry, and rhetoric. The essays show that the harder one tries to disentangle Socrates’ own activity from that of its apparent opposite, the more entangled they become; yet, it is only by taking this entanglement seriously that the distinctive character of Socratic philosophy emerges. (...) The collection sheds new light on the ways in which Plato not only represents philosophy in relation to what it is not, but also makes it “strange” to itself. (shrink)

We present a one per cent measurement of the cosmic distance scale from the detections of the baryon acoustic oscillations in the clustering of galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, which is part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. Our results come from the Data Release 11 sample, containing nearly one million galaxies and covering approximately 8500 square degrees and the redshift range 0.2 < z < 0.7. We also compare these results with those from the publicly released (...) DR9 and DR10 samples. Assuming a concordance Λ cold dark matter cosmological model, the DR11 sample covers a volume of 13 Gpc3 and is the largest region of the Universe ever surveyed at this density. We measure the correlation function and power spectrum, including density-field reconstruction of the BAO feature. The acoustic features are detected at a significance of over 7σ in both the correlation function and power spectrum. Fitting for the position of the acoustic features measures the distance relative to the sound horizon at the drag epoch, rd, which has a value of rd,fid = 149.28 Mpc in our fiducial cosmology. We find DV = at z = 0.32 and DV = at z = 0.57. At 1.0 per cent, this latter measure is the most precise distance constraint ever obtained from a galaxy survey. Separating the clustering along and transverse to the line of sight yields measurements at z = 0.57 of DA = and H =. Our measurements of the distance scale are in good agreement with previous BAO measurements and with the predictions from cosmic microwave background data for a spatially flat CDM model with a cosmological constant. © 2014 The Author Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. (shrink)

A collection of personal narratives and essays, Living Professionalism is designed to help medical students and residents understand and internalize various aspects of professionalism. These essays are meant for personal reflection and above all, for thoughtful discussion with mentors, with peers, with others throughout the health care provider community who care about acting professionally.

There are few scientists of the twentieth century whose life's work has created more excitement and controversy than that of physicist David Bohm . For the first time in a single volume, The Essential David Bohm offers a comprehensive overview of Bohm's original works from a non-technical perspective. Including three chapters of previously unpublished material, and a forward by the Dalai Lama, each reading has been selected to highlight some aspect of the implicate order process, and to provide (...) an introduction to one of the most provocative thinkers of our time. (shrink)

Few thinkers have left such an influence across such a diverse range of studies as Michel Foucault has. This book pays homage to that diversity by presenting a multidisciplinary series of analyses dedicated to the question of power today.

Modern political philosophers have been notoriously reluctant to recognize desert in their theories of distributive justice.2 A large measure of the philosophical resistance to desert can be attributed to the fact that much of what people possess ultimately derives from brute luck. If a person’s assets come from brute luck, then she cannot be said truly to deserve those assets. John Rawls suggests that this idea is “one of the fixed points of our considered judgments;”3 Eric Rakowski calls it “uncontroversial;”4 (...) Serena Olsaretti claims that a theory must accept it to be “defensible;”5 Peter Vallentyne, to be “plausible.”6 But there is dissent. Two prominent liberal political philosophers, David Miller and David Schmidtz, have recently denied that brute luck nullifies claims of desert and, in turn, articulated.. (shrink)

_Philosophy Through Science Fiction_ offers a fun, challenging, and accessible way in to the issues of philosophy through the genre of science fiction. Tackling problems such as the possibility of time travel, or what makes someone the same person over time, the authors take a four-pronged approach to each issue, providing · a clear and concise introduction to each subject · a science fiction story that exemplifies a feature of the philosophical discussion · historical and contemporary philosophical texts that investigate (...) the issue with rigor, and · glossary, plot profiles of pertinent science fiction stories and films, and questions for further reflection. _Philosophy Through Science Fiction_ includes stories from contemporary science fiction writers including Greg Egan and Mike Resnick, as well as from classic authors like Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein. Philosophy readings include historical pieces by René Descartes and David Hume, and contemporary pieces by John Searle and Mary Midgley. (shrink)

The Anthropocene debates are rooted in epistemological differences. Geologists seek temporal markers of spatially even anthropogenic impact. Thus, they favor geologic data that fit this category. Humanists and social scientists, on the other hand, tend to focus on the negative effects of spatial unevenness. Without linking the Anthropocene’s temporal and spatial components, the official designation, ultimately determined by geologists, will be a futile exercise that will not make good on the Anthropocene Working Group’s intention for it to be useful for (...) wider segments of society. However, if the Anthropocene is divided into an Early, Middle, and Late Anthropocene, each defined by geologic evidence, the uneven spatial distributions of anthropogenic damage can be traced to specific events in human history, thus actualizing the predictive value of geology. Further, this diachronic scheme, unlike the synchronic ones thus far proposed, makes more legible two fundamental dynamics between human and natural trajectories: the intensification of global inequity coterminous with the intensification of natural damage; and humanity’s ever more audacious attempts to control the environment. This ethos, wielded as the prime justification for taking over that which belonged to cultures not espousing it, has resulted in anthropogenic damage disproportionately affecting the most economically and historically vulnerable peoples. However, their alternative modes of coping with the damages—an ineluctable responsiveness to, rather than control over, environment—enables them to survive. As such, they could lead the way through the Anthropocene, modeling adaptation and mitigation strategies, and obviating the global North’s unsound hope for a technological solution. Three metropolitan architects, Rem Koolhaas, David Adjaye, and V. Mitch McEwen, look to global Southern urbanisms––improvisational, creative, minimalist praxes grounded in indigenous lifeways––for alternate modes of inhabiting anthropocenic modernity. Likewise, New Zealand’s government has materially and ethically mitigated its legacy of settler colonialism by combining Western scientific data with indigenous knowledge to formulate more adaptive, responsive, integrative approaches to environment. By expanding the data beyond the stratigraphic, coordinated interdisciplinary research can measure variegated effects of––and responses to––the Anthropocene, thus better equipping humanity to adapt to and/or mitigate climate change and to eschew unsustainable practices. (shrink)

Iteration presents opposing puzzles for a theory of the imagination. The first puzzle, noted by David Lewis, is that when a person pretends to pretend, the iteration is often preserved. Let’s call this the puzzle of ‘pre- served iteration’. At the other pole, Gregory Currie has noted that very often when we pretend to pretend, the iteration does collapse. We might call this the puzzle of ‘collapsed iteration’. Somehow a theory of the imagination must be able to address these (...) two puzzles. I argue that an empirically inspired cognitive theory of the imagination (Nichols & Stich 2000) can accommodate both puzzles. (shrink)

Creativity is fundamental to human experience. In _On Creativity_ David Bohm, the world-renowned scientist, investigates the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery. This is a remarkable and life-affirming book by one of the most far-sighted thinkers of modern times.

Never before has there been a greater need for deeper listening and more open communication to cope with the complex problems facing our organizations, businesses and societies. Renowned scientist David Bohm believed there was a better way for humanity to discover meaning and to achieve harmony. He identified creative dialogue, a sharing of assumptions and understanding, as a means by which the individual, and society as a whole, can learn more about themselves and others, and achieve a renewed sense (...) of purpose. (shrink)

This essay considers the work of G.K. Chesterton, and in particular The Everlasting Man, in relation to narrative theology. It discusses the apparent contradiction between Aidan Nichols’ judgement that this book develops a ‘Christocentric theology of history’ and Chesterton’s own assertion that its approach is ‘historical rather than theological’. It argues that Chesterton employs both natural and narrative theology in The Everlasting Man, and these two forms of theology frame a reading of the book which resolves the seeming contradiction between (...) Nichols’ and Chesterton’s views, while also challenging the conventional chronology used in discussions of narrative theology. (shrink)

Creativity is fundamental to human experience. In _On Creativity_ David Bohm, the world-renowned scientist, investigates the phenomenon from all sides: not only the creativity of invention and of imagination but also that of perception and of discovery. This is a remarkable and life-affirming book by one of the most far-sighted thinkers of modern times.

Don Marquis has argued most abortions are immoral, for the same reason that killing you or me is immoral: abortion deprives the fetus of a valuable future. Call this account the FLOA. A rival account is Jeff McMahan’s, time-relative interest account of the wrongness of killing. According to this account, an act of killing is wrong to the extent that it deprives the victim of future value and the relation of psychological unity would have held between the victim at the (...) time of death and herself at a later time if she had lived. The TRIA supposedly has two chief advantages over Marquis’s FLOA. First, unlike the FLOA, the TRIA does not rely on the controversial thesis that identity is what matters in survival. Second, the TRIA yields more plausible verdicts about cases. Proponents of the TRIA use the account to argue that abortion is generally permissible, because there would be little to no psychological unity between the fetus and later selves if it lived. I argue that advocates of the TRIA have failed to establish its superiority to the FLOA, for two reasons. First, the two views are on a par with respect to the thesis that identity is what matters in survival. Second, Marquis’s FLOA does not yield the counterintuitive implications about cases that advocates of the TRIA have attributed to it, and the TRIA yields its own share of implausible judgments about cases. (shrink)

In this volume, Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach present arguments for and against the relevance of ethics to global climate policy. Gardiner argues that climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue, since it is an early instance of a distinctive challenge to ethical action, and ethical concerns are at the heart of many of the decisions that need to be made. Consequently, climate policy that ignores ethics is at risk of.

The best arguments for possible worlds as states of affairs furnish us with equally good arguments for impossible worlds of the same sort. I argue for a theory of impossible worlds on which the impossible worlds correspond to maximal inconsistent classes of propositions. Three objections are rejected. In the final part of the paper, I present a menu of impossible worlds and explore some of their interesting formal properties.

Recent work within psychology demonstrates that unconscious cognition plays a central role in the judgments and actions of individuals. We distinguish between two basic types unconscious social cognition: unconsciousness of the influences on judgments and actions, and unconscious of the mental states that give rise to judgments and actions. Influence unconsciousness is corroborated by strong empirical evidence, but unconscious states are difficult to verify. We discuss procedures aimed at providing conclusive evidence of state unconsciousness, and apply them to recent empirical (...) findings. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a popular approach to addressing philosophical questions. Though not without controversy, this approach has impacted epistemology (Weinberg, Nichols, and...

This volume examines Rawls's theory of international justice as worked out in his controversial last book, The Law of Peoples.

We articulate a holistic understanding of hope, going beyond the common conceptualization of hope in terms of positive affect and cognition by considering what hope means for the underprivileged. In the recognition that hope is always situated in a particular place, we explore the perspective of the privileged and the underprivileged, clarifying how spatial contexts shape their goals for the future and their agency toward attaining these goals. Where some people experience precarity due to their disability, race, gender, sexuality, and (...) social class, others enjoy enhanced agency due to their privilege. In our analysis, this loss of agency does not mean the underprivileged are hopeless; instead, it suggests that hope can incorporate negative affect and cognition. In our view, a spatial understanding acknowledges the power of hope in discouraging situations, and it points to practical measures through which hope can be cultivated by marginalized communities. (shrink)