This study builds on the work of contemporary civic republicans, supplying a detailed analysis of the concept of domination absent in the familiar accounts of political freedom as non-domination.

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

Machiavellians are manipulative and deceitful individuals willing to utilize any strategy or behavior needed to attain their goals. This study explores what occurs when Machiavellian employees have a Machiavellian leader with the same negative, manipulative disposition. We argue that Machiavellian employees have a negative worldview and are likely to trust their leaders less. This reduced trust likely results in these employees experiencing higher stress and engaging in more unethical behavior. In addition, we expect these negative relationships to be exacerbated when (...) such followers experience Machiavellian leadership. Thus, we test a moderated mediation model assessing whether Machiavellianism affects employees and whether combining Machiavellian leaders and Machiavellian employees is toxic in the sense of exacerbating the negative impact of Machiavellianism on employee trust. Results do not support the proposed conditional indirect effect of trust for either stress or unethical behavior. Instead, we find a conditional direct effect of employee Machiavellianism on both trust and stress: When Machiavellian employees have Machiavellian leaders, their trust in their leader significantly decreases, and their level of stress significantly increases. We also find support for an unconditional indirect effect of trust for employee stress, Machiavellianism in employees relates to stress via lowered trust in the leader. For unethical behavior, we only find a main effect of employee Machiavellianism. (shrink)

Suppose that two geysers, about one mile apart, erupt at irregular intervals, but usually erupt almost exactly at the same time. One would suspect that they come from a common source, or at least that there is a common cause of their eruptions. And this common cause surely acts before both eruptions take place. This idea, that simultaneous correlated events must have prior common causes, was first made precise by Hans Reichenbach (Reichenbach 1956). It can be used to infer the (...) existence of unobserved and unobservable events, and to infer causal relations from statistical relations. Unfortunately it does not appear to be universally valid, nor is there agreement as to the circumstances in which it is valid. (shrink)

Moral puzzles about actions which bring about very small or what are said to be imperceptible harms or benefits for each of a large number of people are well known. Less well known is an argument by Warren Quinn that standard theories of rationality can lead an agent to end up torturing himself or herself in a completely foreseeable way, and that this shows that standard theories of rationality need to be revised. We show where Quinn's argument goes wrong, and (...) apply this to the moral puzzles. (shrink)

What is it that troubles and preoccupies us about the anxieties and anguishes of social and private life? Have advances in the disciplines of psychoanalysis, psychology or the social sciences in general ministered to our needs in these areas? In this forcefully argued collection of essays, Frank Cioffi examines Wittgenstein's reflections on the comparative claims of clarification and empirical enquiry. Though writing out of admiration and indebtedness, he expresses reservations as to the limits Wittgenstein places on the relevance and (...) desirability of empirical knowledge. His discusssions extend from Wittgenstein's reflections on human sacrifice and other ritual practices dealt with by Frazer to Freud's account of the sources of anxiety, depression, dreams and laughter. He asks both whether it is empirical investigation or more lucid reflection that these phenomena demand, and what kind of question this itself is. (shrink)

The two envelope paradox can be dissolved by looking closely at the connection between conditional and unconditional expectation and by being careful when summing an infinite series of positive and negative terms. The two envelope paradox is not another St. Petersburg paradox and that one does not need to ban talk of infinite expectation values in order to dissolve it. The article ends by posing a new puzzle to do with infinite expectations.

This note argues that a belief is knowledge if it's true, certain (i.e. a full belief) and obtained by a reliable process.

Menopause is puzzling because life-history theory predicts there should be no selection for outliving one’s reproductive capacity. Adaptive explanations of menopause offered thus far turn on women’s long-term investment in offspring and grandoffspring, all variations on the grandmother hypothesis. Here, I offer a very different explanation. The patriarch hypothesis proposes that once males became capable of maintaining high status and reproductive access beyond their peak physical condition, selection favored the extension of maximum life span in males. Because the relevant genes (...) were not on the Y chromosome, life span increased in females as well. However, the female reproductive span was constrained by the depletion of viable oocytes, which resulted in menopause. (shrink)

Physicians may justifiably limit patients' refusals of medical interventions when the refusal is based on a negative right to noninterference coupled with a request for an unreasonable alternative.

Frank Kermode is one of our most distinguished and beloved critics of English literature. Here, he contributes a new epilogue to his collection of classic lectures on the relationship of fiction to age-old concepts of apocalyptic chaos and crisis. Prompted by the approach of the millennium, he revisits the book which brings his highly concentrated insights to bear on some of the most unyielding philosophical and aesthetic enigmas. Examining the works of writers from Plato to William Burrows, Kermode shows (...) how they have persistently imposed their "fictions" upon the face of eternity and how these have reflected the apocalyptic spirit. Kermode then discusses literature at a time when new fictive explanations, as used by Spenser and Shakespeare, were being devised to fit a world of uncertain beginning and end. He goes on to deal perceptively with modern literaturewith "traditionalists" such as Yeats, Eliot, and Joyce, as well as contemporary "schismatics," the French "new novelists," and such seminal figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Samuel Beckett. Whether weighing the difference between modern and earlier modes of apocalyptic thought, considering the degeneration of fiction into myth, or commenting on the vogue of the Absurd, Kermode is distinctly lucid, persuasive, witty, and prodigal of ideas. (shrink)

Inhabitants of low-lying islands flooded due to anthropogenic climate change will lose their territory and thereby their ability to exercise their right to political self-determination. This paper addresses the normative questions which arise when climate change threatens territorial rights. It explores whether the loss of statehood supports a claim to territorial compensation, and if so, how it can be satisfied. The paper concludes that such claims are well founded and that they should be met by providing compensatory territories. After introducing (...) a differentiation between land rights and territorial rights, previous theoretical responses to the problem of sinking islands are criticized. It is argued that states may be required to give up parts of their territory as compensation. The paper develops criteria of sufficiency for compensatory territories and proposes to base their selection process on a negative auction. Since it is unlikely that unsettled compensatory territories that meet the specified requirements are available, the rights of their original inhabitants are discussed. (shrink)

The strongest objection to (15) is that speaker's meaning is defined in terms of commitment, a notion which is itself something of a challenge and for which no definition has been given. This would be a strong reason to prefer a definition in terms of some more tractable concept, all things being equal; but it does not lessen the probability that commitment or some similar notion is indispensable to the definition of speaker's meaning.The philosophical writings discussed in this paper all (...) proceed something like this: Particular cases are discussed and a description is given of the mechanisms by which communication takes place. An attempt is made to say something that applies to all instances of speaker's meaning. Words like ‘analysis’, ‘account’ ‘explanation’, ‘explication’, and ‘theory’ are used here, the suggestion being that the objective is to provide for all cases at once what has already been provided for particular cases-an explanation of how meaning works. What is produced, however, looks like adefinition of speaker's meaning, a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions. This definition is then evaluated largely in terms of what counterexamples it does or does not allow.It seems that there is some tendency to conflate two quite distinct objectives: (i) a theory of speaker's meaning-a general description of how it is that speakers are able to communicate; and (ii) a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for speaker's meaning. Objective (i) might plausibly be regarded as the goal of the study of communication. Objective (ii) is the definition of a certain intuitive, pretheoretical concept of meaning, which might or might not prove to be an important concept with respect to objective (i). The Gricean mechanism and the notion of conventional meaning, on the other hand, are indispensable to (i)-few instances of speaker's meaning could be adequately described without recourse to at least one of these notions. Thus nothing in this paper should be construed as trying to downgrade the importance of the Gricean mechanism for the theory of communication. If objective (ii) and the Gricean mechanism are not as closely associated as has been claimed, this is, if anything, a reason to doubt the importance of (ii) for the theory of communication. (shrink)

We study hyperdefinable groups, the most general kind of groups interpretable in a simple theory. After developing their basic theory, we prove the appropriate versions of Hrushovski's group quotient theorem and the Weil–Hrushovski group chunk theorem. We also study locally modular hyperdefinable groups and prove that they are bounded-by-Abelian-by-bounded. Finally, we analyze hyperdefinable groups in supersimple theories.

I present a “reduced” version of the fifteen Pragma-dialectical rules and inquire into their theoretical status as necessary conditions for a critical discussion. Questions: In what respect is PD’s non-sufficiency a deficiency, can and must it be remedied? Brief answers: with respect to defining the concept ‘critical discussion,’ possibly, yes, if, and only if, one seeks to identify the concept ‘critical discussion’; no, if PD is for fallacy-detection.

Secular change in sex ratios is examined in relation to experience in the family. Two theoretical perspectives are outlined: Guttentag and Secord’s (1983) adaptation of social exchange theory, and sexual selection theory. Because of large-scale change in number of births and typical age differentials between men and women at marriage, low sex ratios at couple formation ages existed in the U.S. between 1965 and the early 1980s. The currently high sex ratios, however, will persist until the end of the century. (...) High sex ratios appear to be associated with lower divorce rates, male commitment to careers that promise economic rewards, male willingness to engage in child care, higher fertility, and higher rates of sexual violence. Sexual selection theory calls attention to intrasexual competition in the numerically larger sex. (shrink)

Increasing complexities facing physicians negotiating the bedside decision continue to fuel the debate over who is the appropriate party to offer ethics consults, should one be needed, during the decision-making process. Some very good arguments have been put forth on behalf of clinical ethicists as being the proper and best party to engage in ethics consultations. However, serious questions remain about the role of the clinical ethicist and his ability to provide the necessary level of objectivity called for in an (...) ethics consult.I argue that the clinician's professional psyche, or mode of thinking as a professional, leaves him little room to maneuver as an objective and detached third party ethics consultant. Several factors are cited and discussed that greatly influence the analyses applied to a case problem by physicians. The most formidable of these factors are habits and the practice of defensive medicine. I conclude that clinical ethicists are less suited for the overall tasks required of an objective consultant in medical cases that appear to involve insurmountable ethical issues. (shrink)

Tense logics in the bimodal propositional language are investigated with respect to the Finite Model Property. In order to prove positive results techniques from investigations of modal logics above K4 are extended to tense logic. General negative results show the limits of the transfer.

A new hypothesis is proposed to explain the perennially enlarged breasts of human females. The nubility hypothesis proposes that hominid females evolved protruding breasts because the size and shape of breasts function as an honest signal of residual reproductive value. Hominid females with greater residual reproductive value were preferred by males once reliable cues to ovulation were lost and long-term bonding evolved. This adaptation was favored because female-female competition for investing males increased once hominid males began to provide valuable resources.

In The Democratic Horizon: Hyperpluralism and the Renewal of Political Liberalism, Alessandro Ferrara seeks a philosophical breakthrough from what looks like it could be a pending dead-end for democracy. The best hope, Ferrara superbly maintains, lies through an extension or updating – a “renewal,” as he calls it – of lines of thought bequeathed to us, by John Rawls and others, under the name of political liberalism. Somewhere near the crux of Ferrara’s reflection stands a class of institutional fixtures whose (...) name is missing from his title. I mean the class “constitution.” I use that word to name a country’s scriptural basic law, its publicly cognizable corpus of canonically worded sentences ordaining the country’s basic institutional framework. My suggestion will be that it is no less tellingly a “constitutional” than a “democratic” horizon that Ferrara’s work, in conjunction with Rawls’s, shows us to be facing. (shrink)

Based on the results of [11] this paper delivers uniform algorithms for deciding whether a finitely axiomatizable tense logic has the finite model property, is complete with respect to Kripke semantics, is strongly complete with respect to Kripke semantics, is d-persistent, is r-persistent.It is also proved that a tense logic is strongly complete iff the corresponding variety of bimodal algebras is complex, and that a tense logic is d-persistent iff it is complete and its Kripke frames form a first order (...) definable class. From this we obtain many natural non-d-persistent tense logics whose corresponding varieties of bimodal algebras are complex. (shrink)

John Rawls proposed, as what he called “the liberal principle of legitimacy,” that coercive exercises of political power can be justified to free and equal dissenters when “in accordance with a constitution (written or unwritten) the essentials of which all citizens, as reasonable and rational, can endorse.” Does “unwritten constitution” there refer to norms of constitutional import, but that subsist only as custom, not as law? To norms that subsist as common law but not as code law? To empirical regularities (...) of political practice, as opposed to normative rules and standards? Which interpretation is best? (shrink)

Qu'est-ce qu'un 'philosophe', au regard de l'histoire et singulièrement du XXIe siècle? Frank Pierobon, en s'appuyant sur son propre parcours et aussi sur ses dix années d'engagement dans la riche aventure des Matins-Philo à Bruxelles, tente d'apporter une réponse située à la question. Loin des imageries populaires, il fait du philosophe un homme de métier et de savoir-être dont toute l'existence oscillerait entre la création de concepts et, en même temps, une quête incessante du désir de sens. Un texte (...) court et fulgurant qui redit que nul n'est dispensé de philosopher. (shrink)

Avatar, le film de James Cameron (2009), aura ete un succes commercial d'une ampleur exceptionnelle, a considerer davantage comme le symptome d'une certaine societe en crise spirituelle, que comme l'expression personnelle d'un createur, fut-il exceptionnel. Sur cette base, Frank Pierobon, au terme d'une deconstruction tres poussee, en extrait l'embleme de notre postmodernite finissante: un Deus ex Fantasma, soit une derisoire redemption par le reve, faute de tout autre salut.

Combining moral philosophy, political philosophy, political theory, and international relations, this book explores the possibility of using normative international relations as a realistic resolution to the problem of domination of, and discrimination against, minorities, specifically or especially migrants on the African continent.