This volume will be the starting point for future discussion and research.

This paper considers Davidson's critique, in his paper 'Causal Relations' of the Millian notion of the 'whole cause' of an event. The paper attempts to show why Davidson's criticisms of Mill, taken to its logical conclusion, entails that we must give up 'the network model of causation', a model which dominates contemporary philosophy of mind (as well as many accounts of the nature of causation in general) and shapes prevailing ideas about the form of some of its most important questions.

Making a Difference presents fifteen original essays on causation and counterfactuals by an international team of experts. Collectively, they represent the state of the art on these topics. The essays in this volume are inspired by the life and work of Peter Menzies, who made a difference in the lives of students, colleagues, and friends. Topics covered include: the semantics of counterfactuals, agency theories of causation, the context-sensitivity of causal claims, structural equation models, mechanisms, mental causation, causal exclusion argument, free (...) will, and the consequence argument. (shrink)

Essentialism--roughly, the view that natural kinds have discrete essences, generating truths that are necessary but knowable only _a posteriori_--is an increasingly popular view in the metaphysics of science. At the same time, philosophers of language have been subjecting Kripke’s views about the existence and scope of the necessary _a posteriori_ to rigorous analysis and criticism. Essentialists typically appeal to Kripkean semantics to motivate their radical extension of the realm of the necessary _a posteriori_; but they rarely attempt to provide any (...) semantic arguments for this extension, or engage with the critical work being done by philosophers of language. This collection brings authors on both sides together in one volume, thus helping the reader to see the connections between views in philosophy of language on the one hand and the metaphysics of science on the other. The result is a book that will have a significant impact on the debate about essentialism, encouraging essentialists to engage with debates about the semantic presuppositions that underpin their position, and, encouraging philosophers of language to engage with the metaphysical presuppositions enshrined in Kripkean semantics. (shrink)

This article presents the findings of a study about the history of aversion therapy as a treatment technique in the English mental health system to convert lesbians and bisexual women into heterosexual women. We explored published psychiatric and psychological literature, as well as lesbian, gay, and bisexual archives and anthologies. We identified 10 examples of young women receiving aversion therapy in England in the 1960s and 1970s. We situate our discussion within the context of post-war British and transnational medical history. (...) As a contribution to a significantly under-researched area, this article adds to a broader transnational history of the psychological treatment of marginalised sexualities and genders. As a consequence, it also contributes to LGBTQIA+ history, the history of medicine, and psychiatric survivor history. We also reflect on the ethical implications of the research for current mental health practice. (shrink)

Van Dijk argues that it is from news that the majority of people obtain most of their social and political knowledge. Therefore, it should concern us that current research evidence suggests that the discourse of public relations is growing in influence over the discourse of journalism to an extent that journalists are relinquishing their agenda-setting function. Using the concepts of intertextuality and genre, the form and content of examples of public relations material and the news stories which resulted from them (...) are discussed. Erjavec’s method of comparative analysis is employed to examine the texts as well as discuss the discourse processes. Fairclough’s argument that texts are a set of options is used to show that the options journalists are choosing are not necessarily based on the accepted rules of news values. (shrink)

The Ethics of War and Peace is a lively introduction to one of the oldest but still most relevant ethical debates. Focusing on the philosophical questions surrounding the ethics of modern war, Helen Frowe presents contemporary just war theory in a stimulating and accessible way. This 2nd edition includes new material on weapons and technology, and humanitarian intervention, in addition to: theories of self-defence and national defence jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum the moral status (...) of combatants the principle of non-combatant immunity and the nature of terrorism and the moral status of terrorists. Each chapter uses examples and concludes with a summary, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading to aid student engagement, learning and revision. The glossary has been expanded to cover the full range of relevant terminology. This is the ideal textbook for students of philosophy and politics approaching this important area for the first time. (shrink)

This paper presents a dilemma which it has been alleged by Kim Frost must be faced by any defender of the notion of a two-way power and offers a solution to the dilemma which is distinct from Frost’s own. The dilemma is as follows: assuming that powers are to be individuated by what they are powers to do or undergo, then either there is a unified description of the manifestation-type which individuates the power, or there is not. If there is, (...) then two-way powers are revealed really to be one-way powers, after all. If there is not, then it is difficult to explain why the two-way power does not simply dissolve into a mere combination of two one-way powers. The paper offers an account of what a two-way power is that is distinct from the one Frost takes for granted, and argues that this different conception is the key to avoiding the dilemma. It is also argued that this alternative conception has several further advantages over its rival and also that it has no less of a claim than Frost’s notion to be prefigured in Aristotle’s original discussion. (shrink)

When is it right to go to war? When is a war illegal? What are the rules of engagement? What should happen when a war is over? How should we view terrorism? _The Ethics of War and Peace_ is a fresh and contemporary introduction to one of the oldest but still most relevant ethical debates. It introduces students to contemporary Just War Theory in a stimulating and engaging way, perfect for those approaching the topic for the first time. Helen (...) Frowe explains the core issues in Just War Theory, and chapter by chapter examines the recent and ongoing philosophical? debates on: theories of self defence and national defence Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello, and Jus post Bellum the moral status of combatants the principle of non-combatant immunity the nature of terrorism and the moral status of terrorists. Each chapter concludes with a useful summary, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, to aid student learning and revision. _The Ethics of War and Peace_ is the ideal textbook for students studying philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

The space of possible worlds is vast. Some of these possible worlds are materialist worlds, some may be worlds bottoming out in 0s and 1s, or other strange things we cannot even dream of… and some are idealist worlds. From among all of the worlds subjectively indistinguishable from our own, the idealist ones have uniquely compelling virtues. Idealism gives us a world that is just as it appears; a world that’s fit to literally enter our minds when we perceive it. (...) If the world is an idealist world, we live in a perceptual Eden. We did not fall from Eden. Rather, we deluded ourselves into believing that we couldn’t possibly live in Eden when we committed to materialism. Reflecting on these big-picture issues gives us reason to question this commitment and embrace a radically new account of reality and our relation to it. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question what a continuant is, in the context of a very interesting suggestion recently made by Rowland Stout, as part of his attempt to develop a coherent ontology of processes. Stout claims that a continuant is best thought of as something that primarily has its properties at times, rather than atemporally—and that on this construal, processes should count as continuants. While accepting that Stout is onto something here, I reject his suggestion that we should (...) accept that processes are both occurrents and continuants; nothing, I argue, can truly occur or happen, which does not have temporal parts. I make an alternative suggestion as to how one might deal with the peculiar status of processes without jettisoning a very natural account of occurrence; and assess the consequences for the category of continuant. (shrink)

In her ‘Causality and Determination’, Anscombe argues for the strong thesis that despite centuries of philosophical assumption to the contrary, the supposition that causality and necessity have something essential to do with one another is baseless. In this paper, I assess Anscombe’s arguments and endorse her conclusion. I then attempt to argue that her arguments remain highly relevant today, despite the fact that most popular general views of causation today are firmly probabilistic in orientation and thus show no trace of (...) the assumptions Anscombe hoped to undermine. My suggestion is that Anscombe's interests in causality are distinct from those which mostly animate the modern debate about the general nature of causality and that in those specialized areas of philosophy in which those concerns still dominate, one can still see the effects of the fallacies and confusions to which she alerts us. I conclude by offering two possible complementary explanations of the tendency to suppose that causation is a variety of necessitation. (shrink)

This paper defends a substance-based metaphysics for organisms against three arguments for thinking that we should replace a substantial understanding of living things with a processual one, which are offered by Dan Nicholson and John Dupré in their edited collection, Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology. Dupré and Nicholson consider three main empirical motivations for the adoption of a process ontology in biology. These motivations are alleged to stem from facts concerning metabolism; the life cycles of organisms; and (...) ecological interdependence. The paper discusses each of the three arguments in turn and concludes that none gives us any compelling reason to abandon the metaphysics of things. At best, they are arguments against a kind of caricature substance metaphysics that ought never to have been in the running in any case. Then, at the end of the paper, it is suggested that there may be more positive arguments for insisting on retaining things in our metaphysics, arguments which, perhaps ironically get their main impetus from the phenomenon of life. (shrink)

This paper argues, by attention to the category of sub-intentional agency, that many conceptions of the nature of agency are 'over-mentalised', in that they insist that an action proper must be produced by something like an intention or a reason or a desire. Sub-intentional actions provide counterexamples to such conceptions. Instead, it is argued, we should turn to the concept of a two-way power in order to home in on the essential characteristics of actions.

Preference utilitarians are concerned to maximize the autonomous choices of individuals; for this reason, they argue that nurses ought to advocate for those patients who desire assistance with ending their lives. This approach prompts us to consider, then, the moral validity of nursing involvement in measures intended to end the lives of patients. In this article, the terms of preference utilitarianism are set out and considered in order to determine whether this approach offers sufficient philosophical support for sanctioning a role (...) for nursing in euthanasia. Ultimately, it is found that preference utilitarianism is lacking in this respect, as well as in its fitness for guiding nursing activity in general. In particular, it is found that nurses are required to exchange a handmaiden relationship with the medical profession for an equally undignified relationship with patients. If nursing involvement in measures intended to end the lives of patients is to find sufficient philosophical support, then we need to look elsewhere. (shrink)

This paper argues for the replacement of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities by an alternative principle, the Principle of Possible Non-Performance, which it is argued represents an important improvement on the Principle of Alternate Possibilities in the context of Frankfurt-style examples. The suggestion that the principle offers only the possibility of something insufficiently 'robust' to supply a decent replacement to PAP is countered.

What is the thesis of determinism? Though it is obvious that in principle there is more than one possible thesis that might be given this name, it seems to be the case that philosophers working on the free will problem have gradually gravitated towards a more-or-less standard definition, minor variations on which can now be found widely scattered through the free will literature. I call it the ‘entailment definition’ and it states, roughly, that determinism is the thesis that for any (...) given time, a complete statement of the facts about that time, together with a complete statement of the laws of nature, entails every truth as to what happens after that time. In this paper, I argue that acceptance of the entailment definition has been a mistake—and that we need a definition of determinism which, by contrast with the entailment definition, makes explicit mention of the notion of natural necessity. (shrink)

In an earlier article, it was found that the terms of preference utilitarianism are insufficiently sound for guiding nursing activity in general, including in relation to nursing involvement in euthanasia. In this article, I shall examine the terms of a more traditional philosophical approach in order to determine the moral legitimacy, or otherwise, of nursing engagement in measures intended to end the lives of patients. In attempting this task, nursing practice is considered in light of what I shall call a (...) ‘nursing‐as‐healing‐praxis’ approach which includes an account of the moral purpose of nursing and the virtues necessary for realizing that purpose. Ultimately, it is concluded that the terms of this approach rule out the involvement of nurses in euthanasia such that if euthanasia can be justified at all, those outside the nursing profession must provide for its administration. (shrink)

This paper considers the analogies and disanalogies between a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about free will and a certain sort of argument designed to oppose scepticism about the external world. In the case of free will, I offer the ancient Lazy Argument and an argument of my own, which I call the Agency Argument, as examples of the relevant genre; and in the case of the external world, I consider Moore’s alleged proof of an external world. (...) I draw attention to analogies and disanalogies between the arguments offered in each case in order to suggest that although the Agency Argument shares with its Moorean relative the unfortunate property of being dialectically ineffective against some of those it is mainly hoping to convince, it will not be dialectically ineffective against all of them. It is also argued that the Agency Argument is less vulnerable than Moore’s proof to worries about its justificatory structure. (shrink)

Are animals agents? This question demands a prior answer to the question of what an agent is. The paper argues that we ought not to think of this as merely a matter of choosing from a range of alternative definitional stipulations. Evidence from developmental psychology is offered in support of the view that a basic concept of agency is a very early natural acquisition, which is established prior to the development of any full-blown propositional attitude concepts. Then it is argued (...) that whatever one makes of the developmental evidence, it is in any case arguable on other grounds that the concept of agency as we have it in adulthood remains perfectly comprehensible independently of any reference to the more sophisticated propositional attitudes. Any reluctance we might feel to ascribe such things as beliefs to non-human animals, therefore, need not stand in the way of the claim that they are agents, nevertheless. The paper attempts to characterise the core of this basic agency concept, and discusses, albeit briefly, the question how we ought to decide which animals are to be thought of as falling under it. It concludes with some speculations about the nature of the intellectual currents which have made the shape of this important concept so hard for us to discern. (shrink)

Epiphenomenalist dualists hold that certain physical states give rise to non-physical conscious experiences, but that these non-physical experiences are themselves causally inefficacious. Among the most pressing challenges facing epiphenomenalists is the so-called “paradox of phenomenal judgment”, which challenges epiphenomenalism’s ability to account for our knowledge of our own conscious experiences. According to this objection, we lack knowledge of the very thing that epiphenomenalists take physicalists to be unable to explain. By developing an epiphenomenalist theory of subjects and mental states, this (...) paper argues that there is nothing paradoxical or problematic about the epiphenomenalist’s understanding of phenomenal judgments or phenomenal self-knowledge. The appearance of paradox emerges from inconsistently combining (epiphenomenalist) dualism about qualia with a physicalistic conception of subjects of experience. The lesson we should take from this is not that there is anything wrong with epiphenomenalism, but that epiphenomenalist dualists should be “dualists all the way down”—embracing a picture of mind that gives phenomenology a central place, in its understanding of both subjects and their knowledge of their own minds. Epiphenomenalist-friendly accounts of reference and memory are also developed, showing that neither of these issues creates a paradox for the epiphenomenalist. (shrink)

The paper argues that the reconciliation of the Causal Theory of Perception with Disjunctivism requires the rejection of causal particularism – the idea that the ontology of causation is always and everywhere an ontology of particulars (e.g., events). The so-called ‘Humean Principle’ that causes must be distinct from their effects is argued to be a genuine barrier to any purported reconciliation, provided causal particularism is retained; but extensive arguments are provided for the rejection of causal particularism. It is then explained (...) how the reconciliation of the causal theory with disjunctivism can proceed on the basis of an ontology of facts. (shrink)

This article builds theory at the intersection of ecological sustainability and strategic management literature—specifically, in relation to dynamic capabilities literature. By combining industrial organization economics–based, resource-based, and dynamic capability–based views, it is possible to develop a better understanding of the strategies that businesses may follow, depending on their managers’ assumptions about ecological sustainability. To develop innovative strategies for ecological sustainability, the dynamic capabilities framework needs to be extended. In particular, the sensing–seizing–maintaining competitiveness framework should operate not only within the boundaries (...) of a business ecosystem but in relation to global biophysical ecosystems; in addition, two more dynamic capabilities should be added, namely, remapping and reaping. This framework can explicate core managerial beliefs about ecological sustainability. Finally, this approach offers opportunities for managers and academics to identify, categorize, and exploit business strategies for ecological sustainability. (shrink)

As the author of A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), I respond to each of the preceding eight papers in this Special Issue.

The paper offers the outlines of a response to the often-made suggestion that it is impossible to see how indeterminism could possibly provide us with anything that we might want in the way of freedom, anything that could really amount to control, as opposed merely to an openness in the flow of reality that would constitute the injection of chance, or randomness, into the unfolding of the processes which underlie our activity. It is suggested that the best first move for (...) the libertarian is to make a number of important concessions to the compatibilist. It should be conceded, in particular, that certain sorts of alternative possibilities are neither truly available to real, worldly agents nor required in order that those agents act freely; and it should be admitted also that it is the compatibilist who tends to give the most plausible sorts of analyses of many of the 'can' and 'could have' statements which seem to need to be assertible of those agents we regard as free. But these concessions do not bring compatibilism itself in their wake. The most promising version of libertarianism, it is argued, is based on the idea that agency itself (and not merely some special instances of it which we might designate with the honorific appellation 'free') is inconsistent with determinism. This version of libertarianism, it is claimed, can avoid the objection that indeterminism is as difficult to square with true agential control as determinism can sometimes seem to be. (shrink)

In 1776, the first living giant anteater to reach Europe arrived in Madrid from Buenos Aires. It survived 6 months in the Real Sitio del Buen Retiro before being transferred to the newly founded Real Gabinete de Historia Natural. In 1853, 77 years later, a second anteater was brought to London by two German showmen and exhibited at a shop in Bloomsbury, where it was visited by the novelist Charles Dickens. The animal was subsequently purchased by the Zoological Society of (...) London, which classed it as one of the most important additions to the menagerie since its formation in 1828. Drawing on recent work in animal biography, this article assesses the reception of the two anteaters and considers their cultural and scientific significance. I examine the logistics of the exotic animal trade and trace the transatlantic networks that permitted anteaters-and knowledge about them-to move between continents. I also study the modes of representation, from painting to taxidermy, that enabled the anteaters to reach new audiences. By focusing in detail on the lives of two exceptional anteaters, the article illuminates understandings of the species more broadly and shows how different spaces and places shaped the creation and dissemination of zoological knowledge. I emphasise, in particular, the tensions that emerged between imperial and colonial science and the competing knowledge regimes of the natural history museum, the menagerie, and the field. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill's System of Logic was a significant early work in the history of the philosophy of science. The goal of this essay is to characterize Mill's views concerning the central purposes of the sciences and the methods that give to scientific inquiry its distinctive quality and power. More broadly, this chapter explores the implications of Mill's philosophy of science for important debates concerning the nature of inductivism and the normativity of scientific practice in the construction of an adequate (...) philosophy of science. To this end, it addresses William Whewell's trenchant criticisms of Mill's views and some the implications of their debates for the discipline of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Existing research highlights the role of partnerships between business and non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) in addressing poverty, climate change, disease and other challenges. But less is known about how such partnerships may also challenge our very understanding of the nature of those problems. This paper draws on Habermas' theoretical ideas about communicative action and deliberative democracy, applying them to an ethnographic study of Concern Universal, an international NGO with a particular focus on working collaboratively with business. The focus of the study (...) is the seam between two apparently different ‘worlds’, along which alternating processes of ‘colonisation’ and resistance are played out. Partnership emerges as an arena for both instrumental and communicative encounters, in which slow progress is occasionally punctuated by leaps in partners' understanding of both themselves and the challenges they seek to address. As such, despite the evolutionary ambitions of participants, partnership emerges as a potential catalyst of social change. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that having ‘leeway’ is part and parcel of what it is to be the agential source of an action, so that embracing source incompatibilism does not, by itself, absolve the incompatibilist of the need to find Frankfurtian agents to be possessors of alternate possibilities. I offer a response to Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities, based on the idea that Frankfurt's Jones exercises the two-way power of agency when he acts – a (...) power whose exercise intrinsically implies the possibility of having done otherwise. I then show how to respond to the objection that the alternative possibility noted is not sufficiently ‘robust’ to ground his moral responsibility. I also distinguish my own argument for the claim that source incompatibilism is not truly independent of leeway incompatibilism from an argument for the same conclusion which has been offered previously by Kevin Timpe, and suggest that my own version has the dialectical advantage that it does not automatically assume from the outset that sourcehood requires indeterminism, and hence is in line with the traditional idea that the alternate possibilities requirement on moral responsibility is the common property of compatibilists and incompatibilists alike. (shrink)

This paper argues that the position on free will which is defended in ‘Freedom: An Impossible Reality’ is not, as Tallis claims, a compatibilist view, but actually a version of libertarianism. While endorsing many aspects of that libertarian view itself, the paper raises questions about how one of the central arguments for Tallis’s view is supposed to work, and queries whether it really follows from the fact that we need to stand apart from nature in a certain sense, in order (...) to develop the kind of abstract knowledge that is constituted by the body of scientific law, that our own actions are not mere manifestations of what Tallis calls the ‘habits of nature’. It is also suggested that while a strong case can be made for many varieties of human exceptionalism, Tallis’s view of animal behaviour may be too simple and that there are examples of animal agency which cannot be explained merely by the associative learning which appears to be the highest grade of animal cognition that Tallis countenances. (shrink)

We raise the new possibility that people diagnosed with developmental dyslexia (DD) are specialized in explorative cognitive search, and rather than having a neurocognitive disorder, play an essential role in human adaptation. Most DD research has studied educational difficulties, with theories framing differences in neurocognitive processes as deficits. However, people with DD are also often proposed to have certain strengths – particularly in realms like discovery, invention, and creativity – that deficit-centered theories cannot explain. We investigate whether these strengths reflect (...) an underlying explorative specialization. We re-examine experimental studies in psychology and neuroscience using the framework ofcognitive search, whereby many psychological processes involve a trade-off between exploration and exploitation. We report evidence of an explorative bias in DD-associated cognitive strategies. High DD prevalence and an attendant explorative bias across multiple areas of cognition suggest the existence of explorative specialization. An evolutionary perspective explains the combination of findings and challenges the view that individuals with DD have a disorder. In cooperating groups, individual specialization is favored when features that confer fitness benefits are functionally incompatible. Evidence for search specialization suggests that, as with some other social organisms, humans mediate the exploration–exploitation trade-off by specializing in complementary strategies. The existence of a system of collective cognitive search that emerges through collaboration would help to explain our species’ exceptional adaptiveness. It also aligns with evidence for substantial variability during our evolutionary history and the notion that humans are adapted not to a particular habitat but to variability itself. Specialization creates interdependence and necessitates balancing complementary strategies. Reframing DD therefore underscores the urgency of changing certain cultural practices to ensure we do not inhibit adaptation. Key improvements would remove cultural barriers to exploration and nurture explorative learning in education, academia, and the workplace, as well as emphasize collaboration over competition. Specialization in complementary search abilities represents a meta-adaptation; through collaboration, this likely enables human groups (as a species and as cultural systems) to successfully adapt. Cultural change to support this system of collaborative search may therefore be essential in confronting the challenges humanity now faces. (shrink)

Originally published in 1910, this book attempts to describe knowledge from the point of view of a philosophical psychology. Wodehouse treats the text as a 'psychological preface to metaphysics', and splits her examination into three sections: knowledge as resulting from judgements in the actual world; the philosophical problem of fallible knowledge; and the question of imagination and 'the variousness of reality'. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Wodehouse's work or in the overlap of psychology (...) and philosophy. (shrink)

During the 1870s animal morphologists and embryologists at Cambridge University came to dominate British zoology, quickly establishing an international reputation. Earlier accounts of the Cambridge school have portrayed this success as short-lived, and attributed the school's failure to a more general movement within the life sciences away from museum-based description, towards laboratory-based experiment. More recent work has shown that the shift in the life sciences to experimental work was locally contingent and highly varied, often drawing on and incorporating aspects of (...) museum work. Thus in order to understand the more general changes, studies of particular sites are needed. Here I examine the organisation of teaching at Cambridge, both in terms of the spaces in which it was taught and the ways in which teaching and examining were organised, to bring out the complexities of the 'revolt from morphology' and to show in more detail the institutional aspects that intertwined with intellectual change. Francis Maitland Balfour, as head of the Cambridge school, was able to make use of family connections and his own personal wealth to promote morphology. His successor lacked these resources, and one competition within the natural sciences at Cambridge intensified, morphology was unable to compete properly. (shrink)

Disabled women were absent for many years from the discipline that has become known as women and gender studies. This field of study had its origins in the late 1970s following the second wave of feminism. In the latter decades of the twentieth century, disabled women and their allies introduced the necessary task of exploring disabled women's embodiment to the wider feminist community. A wealth of research now exists that incorporates disabled women's bodies into a range of disciplines: from literature, (...) film, art, social sciences, geography, and the environment to many other areas of scholarship. Indeed, many of the themes covered in this special issue have been addressed in different contexts in the disciplines .. (shrink)

This chapter traces Hume’s search for the impression-source of the idea of necessary connection through Book 1 of the Treatise. It then sketches and evaluates the main interpretative positions concerning Hume’s account of causation. These positions characterize Hume either as a regularity theorist who thinks that causation is merely a matter of temporal priority, contiguity, and constant conjunction, a projectivist who takes causal talk to have an essential non-representational element, or a skeptical realist who believes in, and believes that we (...) genuinely refer to, real causal powers. Finally, it briefly discusses rival interpretations of Hume’s famous “two definitions” of causation. (shrink)

Presents profiles of such well-known authors and celebrities as Susan Sontag, Beverly Sills, Bernard Malamud, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Joseph Brodsky.