Information can be public among a group. Whether or not information is public matters, for example, for accounts of interdependent rational choice, of communication, and of joint intention. A standard analysis of public information identifies it with (some variant of) common belief. The latter notion is stipulatively defined as an infinite conjunction: for p to be commonly believed is for it to believed by all members of a group, for all members to believe that all members believe it, and so (...) forth. This analysis is often presupposed without much argument in philosophy. Theoretical entrenchment or intuitions about cases might give some traction on the question, but give little insight about why the identification holds, if it does. The strategy of this paper is to characterize a practical-normative role for information being public, and show that the only things that play that role are (variants of) common belief as stipulatively characterized. In more detail: a functional role for “taking a proposition for granted” in non-isolated decision making is characterized. I then present some minimal conditions under which such an attitude is correctly held. The key assumption links this attitude to beliefs about what is public. From minimal a priori principles, we can argue that a proposition being public among a group entails common commitment to believe among that group. Later sections explore partial converses to this result, the factivity of publicity and publicity from the perspective of outsiders to the group, and objections to the aprioricity of the result deriving from a posteriori existential presuppositions. (shrink)

Meaningful work is a key element of positive functioning of employees, but what makes work meaningful? Based on research on self-determination theory, basic psychological needs, and prosocial impact, we suggest that there are four psychological satisfactions that substantially influence work meaningfulness across cultures: autonomy (sense of volition), competence (sense of efficacy), relatedness (sense of caring relationships), and beneficence (sense of making a positive contribution). We test the relationships between these satisfactions and perceived meaningful work in Finland (n = 594, employees (...) of several organizations), India (n = 342, collected through Mturk), and the USA (n = 373, collected through Mturk). Regression analyses show that – except for competence in USA – all four satisfactions are significantly and independently associated with meaningful work. Moreover, structural equation modeling shows that they fully mediated the relationship between occupational position and work meaningfulness in India and in the USA. In sum, the results support the importance of these four satisfactions in explaining the psychological underpinnings of meaningful work. (shrink)

Living out of silence, out of a fully functioning, lovingly attentive mind, and not just out of thought, out of a partially functioning mind, is requisite for depth or profundity in living or relating. A fully attentive, truly silent or meditative mind sees that there is real dualism of time and the timeless and that time and the timeless each has its own unique value. The timeless, or real silence, that which alone can make for depth in one's living and (...) relating, can be there only when, in one's awareness, time and all that is related to time, have come to an end. An examination of a wide variety of statements made by writers, both past and present, shows that these understandings are seldom there in contemporary writings, just as they were not there in writings that have come down to us from the past. 'Living beyond the One and the Many' invites readers to consider the possibility that what is presented in it can bring deep meaning to one's way of living in the world"--Publisher's description, back cover. (shrink)

It is a pleasure for me to give this opening address to the Royal Institute of Philosophy Conference on ‘Explanation’ for two reasons. The first is that it is succeeded by exciting symposia and other papers concerned with various special aspects of the topic of explanation. The second is that the conference is being held in my old alma mater, the University of Glasgow, where I did my first degree. Especially due to C. A. Campbell and George Brown there was (...) in the Logic Department a big emphasis on absolute idealism, especially F. H. Bradley. My inclinations were to oppose this line of thought and to espouse the empiricism and realism of Russell, Broad and the like. Empiricism was represented in the department by D. R. Cousin, a modest man who published relatively little, but who was of quite extraordinary philosophical acumen and lucidity, and by Miss M. J. Levett, whose translation of Plato's Theaetetus formed an important part of the philosophy syllabus. (shrink)

Advances in the understanding of genetics have led to the belief that it may become possible to use genetic engineering to manipulate the DNA of humans at the embryonic stage to produce certain desirable traits. Although this currently cannot be done on a large scale, many people nevertheless object in principle to such practices. Most often, they argue that genetic enhancements would harm the children who were engineered, cause societal harms, or that the risks of perfecting the procedures are too (...) high to proceed. However, many of these same people do not have serious objections to what is called ‘genetic planning’ procedures (such as the selection of sperm donors with desirable traits) that essentially have the same ends. The author calls the view that genetic engineering enhancements are impermissible while genetic planning enhancements are permissible the ‘popular view’, and argues that the typical reasons people give for the popular view fail to distinguish the two practices. This paper provides a principle that can salvage the popular view, which stresses that offspring from genetic engineering practices have grounds for complaint because they are identical to the pre-enhanced embryo, whereas offspring who are the result of genetic planning have no such grounds. (shrink)

Neuroethics, as a domain of inquiry, was made necessary by this interdisciplinary march of technology that has been much documented and the resulting synergism, which resulted in the development of neuroimaging, deep brain stimulation, and advanced neuropharmaceutics. Closing the loop from discovery of basic mechanisms of illness to knowledge of structure and function en route to restorative therapeutics is a long way from earlier efforts to use electrical stimulation to address human maladies. The most challenging aspect about neuroethics is that (...) the technology used by neuroscientists needs to be understood in order to offer responsible neuroethical critique. The technocentricity of neuroscience makes it especially vulnerable to broader market forces and the sway of political economy, all of which might be exacerbated by the recent fiscal melt down and recent trends in healthcare reform. These challenges are illustrated by investigational work exploring the use of deep brain stimulation in the minimally conscious state. (shrink)

The spirit of Aelius Donatus must be uneasy of late years; so many scholars have attempted to evoke his ghost. Professor H. J. Thomson professes to see in the additional notes to Servius an image once removed from the true Donatus. ‘The question’, he writes, ‘how far we can assume that the words of Donatus are directly reproduced [in the additions first published by Daniel ] can hardly be satisfactorily answered.’ That Donatus was not the immediate source of D, Thomson (...) endeavours to show from three instances, in two of which we know for certain, either from the Glossaries or from Servius himself, the substance of a part, at least, of the note of Donatus on these passages. In the other the argument rests on the comparative meagreness of the note in the enlarged Servius. In all three cases, according to this theory, we have a rehandling of the D comment. The note on the passage from the Aeneid has already been discussed by Professor Thomson in his study of the Virgil scholia in the Abstrusa glossary. The conclusions reached there are repeated, though perhaps not so positively, in the article under discussion. I hold with Professor Rand that we have in Servius auctus substantially the voice of Donatus, though in a fragmentary form, due to the work of a compiler who, with Servius as a basis, has worked in with more or less success explanatory matter which departed from, or was an addition to, the information supplied by an interpreter who himself derived most of his material from Donatus. (shrink)

In his philosophical works Seneca often refers to the views of his predecessors, and sometimes is the sole or the earliest authority for what he says about them, which makes it important for the student of earlier thought to know whether what he says is likely to be true. This I believe can be roughly assessed–and this paper is an attempt to do it–by considering how reliable he is in places where he can be checked: that is, in places where (...) he refers to earlier writings which survive. I shall be principally concerned with his Naturales Quaestiones and with early meteorology: with considering how accurately Seneca reports Aristotle's Meteorologica , and trying to estimate therefrom the reliability of his statements about pre-Socratic meteorology; but I believe that my conclusions should also be applicable to what Seneca says on later thinkers and other subjects. (shrink)