This book originates from an international research program that is reassessing when and why modern careers emerged. With fifteen essays this volume brings together some of the most important results of this new field of research. Based upon the innovative use of micro-level historical sources, the contributions by economic and social historians reveal the emergence of identifiable career paths in a wide range of occupational settings in Europe and the Americas over the period 1800 to the end of World War (...) II. They highlight the economic and social forces that shaped the creation of both formal and informal career paths and led to their diffusion throughout the workforces of most developed economies by the early 1950s. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Popularisations of evolutionary psychology have had a truly remarkable success. Judging by the popular press one could be forgiven for think that contemporary psychology is essentially co-extensive with evolutionary psychology. In the academy evolutionary psychological has been subject to some extremely hard-hitting and destructive attacks, but to date no approachable, popular critique has been available. The present volume aims to fill this void. I am not completely convinced it succeeds in this, but I find it valuable nevertheless.

This chapter contains sections titled: Practical? Moral? The Moral Alternative Punishing Immorality Morality Regardless What About the Children? Getting Tough Moral Arguments for Prohibition Moral Arguments Against Prohibition Proportionality of Punishment.

This article identifies an ostracism joke in Menander's Samia (364–6) during a climactic scene in which the Athenian Demeas ejects the titular Chrysis from his house. The joke, uttered by a cook who is reacting to Chrysis’ expulsion, plays on the usage of ὄστρακα—broken pieces of pottery—as ballots in the institution of ostracism. The article proposes that the joke references the final abolition of ostracism during Demetrius of Phalerum's reign and reveals Menander's support for the regime.

Provides theories and techniques behind the investigations of intoxication and how subjective experiences relate to addictive potential, which should help ...

The question of truth is bound to the question of the relation between identity and difference. Historically, the bond between truth and the primacy of identity was forged through the conviction that to speak of truth is to speak of being, or what is (the case). Since Parmenides, being becomes intelligible solely in relation to identity, or the One, with difference either being excluded from “what is” altogether, or as in Plato and Aristotle, finding its subordinate “place” within being. After (...) Hegel, whose thought accomplishes this “placing” in an absolute way, philosophy has sought to reverse this priority, while still insisting, necessarily, on thinking and speaking about what is the case, and therefore of truth. This essay raises the question of the coherence of this reversal. Characterizing the past century as the one in which philosophy’s aim was the overcoming of the perennial priority of identity, it attempts to show not only that post-Hegelian thought was at multiple levels divided on this aim, but that what Gillian Rose called the “metaphysics of pure difference” went uniquely awry—both in terms of its consequences and in its failure to maintain a genuinely critical relation to so-called “philosophies of representation.”. (shrink)

Explains relativity--matter and energy, anti-matter, tachyon, etc.--tracing from discovery to discovery the steps that led to the next development in the field.

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

In this paper we explore a connection between descriptive set theory and inner model theory. From descriptive set theory, we will take a countable, definable set of reals, A. We will then show that , where is a canonical model from inner model theory. In technical terms, is a “mouse”. Consequently, we say that A is a mouse set. For a concrete example of the type of set A we are working with, let ODnω1 be the set of reals which (...) are ∑n definable over the model Lω1 , from an ordinal parameter. In this paper we will show that for all n 1, ODnω1 is a mouse set. Our work extends some similar results due to D.A. Martin, J.R. Steel, and H. Woodin. Several interesting questions in this area remain open. (shrink)

Let κ R be the least ordinal κ such that L κ (R) is admissible. Let $A = \{x \in \mathbb{R} \mid (\exists\alpha such that x is ordinal definable in L α (R)}. It is well known that (assuming determinacy) A is the largest countable inductive set of reals. Let T be the theory: ZFC - Replacement + "There exists ω Woodin cardinals which are cofinal in the ordinals." T has consistency strength weaker than that of the theory ZFC + (...) "There exists ω Woodin cardinals", but stronger than that of the theory ZFC + "There exists n Woodin Cardinals", for each n ∈ ω. Let M be the canonical, minimal inner model for the theory T. In this paper we show that A = R ∩ M. Since M is a mouse, we say that A is a mouse set. As an application, we use our characterization of A to give an inner-model-theoretic proof of a theorem of Martin which states that for all n, every Σ * n real is in A. (shrink)

In a Society of Peoples as Rawls conceives it, human rights function as “criteria for toleration.” This paper defends the conception of human rights that appears in Rawls’ The Law of Peoples as normatively and theoretically adequate. I claim that human rights function as criteria for determining whether or not a given society or legal system can be tolerated. As such, “human rights” are not themselves basic facts or judgments or ascriptions, but rather the means by which we collectively attempt (...) to secure public criteria for evaluating what can and cannot be tolerated. Human rights are one expression of the fundamental value commitments of Political Liberalism to reasonableness and tolerance. If correct, this account provides good reasons for concluding that Political Liberalism has a normatively adequate conception of global justice. (shrink)

This paper describes how the film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” can be used in the classroom. Drawing on Gilligan’s theory of moral psychology, the paper begins by putting forward a new interpretation of the film. While the central theme of the film is that of miscegenation, another salient topic in the film concerns how to maintain patriarchal privilege in a society that has racial equality. The paper then proceeds to illustrate different ways the film can be used in the (...) classroom, most importantly to illustrate the justice/care distinction. Finally, the pedagogical practice of showing films that support certain ideologies is critically examined. (shrink)

Recent research in the cognitive science of religion suggests that humans intuitively believe that others survive death. In response to this finding, three cognitive theories have been offered to explain this: the simulation constraint theory (Bering, Citation2002); the imaginative obstacle theory (Nichols, Citation2007); and terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Rothschild, & Abdollahi, 2008). First, I provide a critical analysis of each of these theories. Second, I argue that these theories, while perhaps explaining why one would believe in his own personal immortality, (...) leave an explanatory gap in that they do not explain why one would intuitively attribute survival of death to others. To fill in the gap, I offer a cognitive theory based on offline social reasoning and social embodiment which provides for the belief in an eternal social realm in which the deceased survive—the afterlife. (shrink)

A leading political theorist’s groundbreaking defense of ideal conceptions of justice in political philosophy Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question (...) whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? Utopophobia argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. David Estlund does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does he assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. Estlund engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, he counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, Utopophobia stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy. (shrink)

David Hume's Enquiry concerning Human Understanding is the definitive statement of the greatest philosopher in the English language. His arguments in support of reasoning from experience, and against the "sophistry and illusion"of religiously inspired philosophical fantasies, caused controversy in the eighteenth century and are strikingly relevant today, when faith and science continue to clash. The Enquiry considers the origin and processes of human thought, reaching the stark conclusion that we can have no ultimate understanding of the physical world, or (...) indeed our own minds. In either sphere we must depend on instinctive learning from experience, recognizing our animal nature and the limits of reason. Hume's calm and open-minded skepticism thus aims to provide a new basis for science, liberating us from the "superstition" of false metaphysics and religion. His Enquiry remains one of the best introductions to the study of philosophy, and his edition places it in its historical and philosophical context. (shrink)

We identify a particular mouse, [Formula: see text], the minimal ladder mouse, that sits in the mouse order just past [Formula: see text] for all [Formula: see text], and we show that [Formula: see text], the set of reals that are [Formula: see text] in a countable ordinal. Thus [Formula: see text] is a mouse set. This is analogous to the fact that [Formula: see text] where [Formula: see text] is the sharp for the minimal inner model with a Woodin (...) cardinal, and [Formula: see text] is the set of reals that are [Formula: see text] in a countable ordinal. More generally [Formula: see text]. The mouse [Formula: see text] and the set [Formula: see text] compose the next natural pair to consider in this series of results. Thus we are proving the mouse set theorem just past projective. Some of this is not new. [Formula: see text] was known in the 1990s. But [Formula: see text] was open until Woodin found a proof in 2018. The main goal of this paper is to give Woodin’s proof. (shrink)

An inner model operator is a function M such that given a Turing degree d, M is a countable set of reals, d M, and M has certain closure properties. The notion was introduced by Steel. In the context of AD, we study inner model operators M such that for a.e. d, there is a wellorder of M in L). This is related to the study of mice which are below the minimal inner model with ω Woodin cardinals. As a (...) technical tool, we show that the alternative fine structure theory developed by Mitchell and Steel for mice with Woodin cardinals is equivalent to the traditional fine structure theory developed by Jensen for L. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? Drawing on an analogy to practical (...) philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

By means of an example, shows the possibility of beliefs that are separately rational whilst together inconsistent.

Clark and Chalmers (1998) have argued that mental states can be extended outside an organism.

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can (...) just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. --Jean Bricmont, Science Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. --Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. --Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Wilfrid Sellars’ famous Myth of Jones. I argue the myth provides an ontologically austere account of thoughts and beliefs that makes sense of the full range of our folk psychological abilities. Sellars’ account draws on both Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ryle provides Sellars with the resources to make thoughts metaphysically respectable and Wittgenstein the resources to make beliefs rationally criticisable. By combining these insights into a single account, Sellars is able to see reasons as (...) causes and, hence, to respect the full range of our folk psychological generalisations. This is achieved by modelling folk psychological practice on theoretical reasoning. But despite frequent misinterpretation, Sellars does not claim that thoughts and beliefs are theoretical concepts. Thus, folk psychological explanation is not theoretical, and hence, it is not replaceable by scientific theory. Hence, scientific concepts will not eliminate folk psychological concepts. Thus, Sellars avoids eliminativism. (shrink)

The VIA Classification of Character Strengths and Virtue has received substantial attention since its inception as a model of 24 dimensions of positive human functioning, but less so as a potential contributor to a psychological science on the nature of virtue. The current paper presents an overview of how this classification could serve to advance the science of virtue. Specifically, we summarize previous research on the dimensional versus categorical characterization of virtue, and on the identification of cardinal virtues. We give (...) particular attention to the three-dimensional model of cardinal virtues that includes moral, self-regulatory, and intellectual domains. We also discuss the possibility that these three clusters be treated as fundamental elements of a virtue model, meaning that they clearly and directly contribute to both individual and communal flourishing across various cultures. This discussion includes a summary of previous speculations about the evolution of adaptations underlying the human capacity for using behavioral repertoires associated with the three virtues, as well as discussing ways in which they simultaneously enhance community and individual, in the last case focusing particularly on evidence concerning mating potential. We then discuss the relationship between the evolutionary perspective on virtues and Aristotle’s concept of the reciprocity of the virtues. Finally, we provide speculations about the nature of practical wisdom. While accepting the potential value of future revisions to the VIA model, that model even under its current conditions has the potential to generate a number of intriguing and testable hypotheses about the nature of virtue. (shrink)

Williams syndrome is a genetic disorder that, because of its unique cognitive profile, has been marshalled as evidence for the modularity of both language and social skills. But emerging evidence suggests the claims of modularity based on WS have been premature. This paper offers an examination of the recent literature on WS. It argues the literature gives little support for mental modularity. Rather than being rigidly modular, the WS brain is an extremely flexible organ that that co-opts available neural resource (...) in a highly dynamic manner to cope in the world. (shrink)

How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.

Since social skills are highly significant to the evolutionary success of humans, we should expect these skills to be efficient and reliable. For many Evolutionary Psychologists efficiency entails encapsulation: the only way to get an efficient system is via information encapsulation. But encapsulation reduces reliability in opaque epistemic domains. And the social domain is darkly opaque: people lie and cheat, and deliberately hide their intentions and deceptions. Modest modularity [Currie and Sterelny (2000) Philos Q 50:145–160] attempts to combine efficiency and (...) reliability. Reliability is obtained by placing social skills in un-encapsulated central cognition; efficiency by having the social system sensitive to encapsulated socially tagged cues. In this paper, I argue that this approach fails. I focus on eye-gaze as a plausible example of a socially significant encapsulated cue. I demonstrate contra modest modularity that eye-gaze is subject to influence from central cognition. (shrink)

Performance on the Wason selection task varies with content. This has been taken to demonstrate that there are different cognitive modules for dealing with different conceptual domains. This implication is only legitimate if our underlying cognitive architecture is formal. A non-formal system can explain content-sensitive inference without appeal to independent inferential modules.

I attempt to get as clear as possible on the chain of reasoning by which irreversible macrodynamics is derivable from time-reversible microphysics, and in particular to clarify just what kinds of assumptions about the initial state of the universe, and about the nature of the microdynamics, are needed in these derivations. I conclude that while a “Past Hypothesis” about the early Universe does seem necessary to carry out such derivations, that Hypothesis is not correctly understood as a constraint on the (...) early Universe’s entropy. (shrink)

As the debate over the value of microfinance institutions intensifies, it remains apparent that microfinance may, at the very least, be considered as one tool in the arsenal of the war against poverty in base of pyramid markets. Given the variety of actors in the microfinance arena, stakeholders have placed a relatively new emphasis on performance reporting for MFIs, allowing comparisons and identifications of performance gaps. One result of this scrutiny is an increased importance placed on MFIs’ social performance, with (...) an eye to understanding measures of MFIs’ intent, process, and results in the social realm—in addition to their financial sustainability. While a number of factors may explain differences in social performance, in this paper we take a close look at a particular factor that may have a positive relationship with social performance—that of an MFI’s religious affiliation or religiosity. Using archival data, we derived three sets of randomly paired samples, pairing religious MFIs with non-religious ones, and compared social performance indicators derived from the literature across the samples. We sought to understand whether religiously-affiliated MFIs would, in fact, demonstrate stronger social performance intent, wider social performance reach via service delivery processes, and better social performance outcomes in BoP markets. Statistical analysis provided preliminary evidence that religiously-affiliated MFIs display stronger social performance, suggesting new avenues for future research. (shrink)

We start by presenting three different views that jointly imply that every person has many conscious beings in their immediate vicinity, and that the number greatly varies from person to person. We then present and assess an argument to the conclusion that how confident someone should be in these views should sensitively depend on how massive they happen to be. According to the argument, sometimes irreducibly de se observations can be powerful evidence for or against believing in metaphysical theories.

In response to those who have argued the Internet is amoral at best, and an instrument for immorality at worst, we show that the net can provide a forum for genuine ethical engagement and distinctive forms of wrongdoing. Without deriving the moral value of the Internet from its interface with the non-virtual world and in contrast to presentations of the net as an anarchic utopia or as an unethical or amoral dystopia, we apply a substantive moral test to a selection (...) of online examples and ask can the net accommodate resistance to oppression that is necessary, though not sufficient, for justice? More precisely, we will ask whether Gandhian non-violent action is available to Cyberpunks? (shrink)