Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language, and analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this book, making it the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject.

Color provides an instance of a general puzzle about how to reconcile the picture of the world given to us by our ordinary experience with the picture of the world given to us by our best theoretical accounts. The Red and the Real offers a new approach to such longstanding philosophical puzzles about what colors are and how they fit into nature. It is responsive to a broad range of constraints --- both the ordinary constraints of color experience and the (...) more theoretical constraints of color science, psychology, semantics, and ontology. (shrink)

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu is known for his critical contribution to Buddhist Abhidharma thought, his turn to the Mahayana tradition, and his concise, influential Yogacara-Vijñanavada texts. _Paving the Great Way_ reveals another dimension of his legacy: his integration of several seemingly incompatible intellectual and scriptural traditions, with far-ranging consequences for the development of Buddhist epistemology and the theorization of tantra. Most scholars read Vasubandhu's texts in isolation and separate his intellectual development into distinct phases. Featuring close studies of Vasubandhu's (...) _Abhidharmakosabhasya_, _Vyakhyayukti_, _Vimsatika_, and _Trisvabhavanirdesa_, among other works, this book identifies recurrent treatments of causality and scriptural interpretation that unify distinct strands of thought under a single, coherent Buddhist philosophy. In Vasubandhu's hands, the Buddha's rejection of the self as a false construction provides a framework through which to clarify problematic philosophical issues, such as the nature of moral agency and subjectivity under a broadly causal worldview. Recognizing this continuity of purpose across Vasubandhu's diverse corpus recasts the interests of the philosopher and his truly innovative vision, which influenced Buddhist thought for a millennium and continues to resonate with today's philosophical issues. An appendix includes extensive English-language translations of the major texts discussed. (shrink)

Evidence is univocal, not equivocal. Its implications don't depend on our beliefs or values, the evidence says what it says. But that doesn't mean there's no room for rational disagreement between people with the same evidence. Evaluating evidence is a lot like polling an electorate: getting an accurate reading requires a bit of luck, and even the best pollsters are bound to get slightly different results. So, even though evidence is univocal, rationality's requirements are not "unique." Understanding this resolves several (...) puzzles to do with uniqueness and disagreement. (shrink)

Renowned moral philosopher Jonathan Glover confronts the brutal history of the twentieth century to unravel the mystery of why so many atrocities occurred. In a new preface, Glover brings the book through the post-September 11 era and into our own time—and asks whether humankind can "weaken the grip war has on us." _Praise for the first edition:_ “It is hard to imagine a more important book. Glover makes an overwhelming case for the need to understand our own inhumanity, and (...) reduce or eliminate the ways in which it can express itself—and he then begins the task himself. _Humanity _is_ _an extraordinary achievement.”—Peter Singer, Princeton University “This is an extraordinary book: brilliant, haunting and uniquely important. Almost 40 years ago a president read a best seller and avoided a holocaust. I like to think that some of the leaders and followers of tomorrow will read _Humanity._”_—_Steven Pinker, _New York Times Book Review_. (shrink)

In the wake of the Scientific Revolution, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the complete demolition of traditional structures of authority, scientific thought, and belief by the new philosophy and the philosophes, including Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. The Radical Enlightenment played a part in this revolutionary process, which effectively overthrew all justification for monarchy, aristocracy, and ecclesiastical power, as well as man's dominance over woman, theological dominance of education, and slavery. Despite the present day interest in the revolutions of (...) the eighteenth century, the origins and rise of the Radical Enlightenment have received limited scholarly attention. The greatest obstacle to the movement finding its proper place in modern historical writing is its international scope: the Racial Enlightenment was not French, British, German, Italian, Jewish or Dutch, but all of these at the same time. In this wide-ranging volume, Jonathan Israel offers a novel interpretation of the Radical Enlightenment down to La Mettie and Diderot, two of its key exponents. Particular emphasis is placed on the pivotal role of Spinoza and the widespread underground international philosophical movement known before 1750 as Spinozism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue in favour of a new definition of presentism that I call ‘existence presentism’ (EP). Typically, presentism is defined as the thesis that ‘only present objects exist’, or ‘nothing exists that is non-present’.1 I assume these statements to be equivalent. I call these statements of presentism ‘conventional presentism’ (CP). First, in §2, I rehearse arguments due to Ulrich Meyer that purport to show that presentism is not adequately defined as CP. In §§2.1–2.4 I show that considerations (...) of the sort raised by Meyer infect attempts to define presentism, due to Thomas Crisp, Tom Stoneham, and Theodore Sider. Thus the first half of the paper is constituted by a negative project that looks to show how extant definitions of presentism fail. In the second half of the paper, I continue in the negative theme in §3, before laying out EP and demonstrating that it solves the problems faced by CP and offering explanations of how to make sense of certain key notions that lie at the heart of EP. I conclude that EP is preferable to CP. (shrink)

The skeptic says that “knowledge” is an absolute term, whereas the contextualist says that ‘knowledge” is a relationally absolute term. Which is the better hypothesis about “knowledge”? And what implications do these hypotheses about “knowledge” have for knowledge? I argue that the skeptic has the better hypothesis about “knowledge”, but that both hypotheses about “knowledge” have deeply anti‐skeptical implications for knowledge, since both presuppose our capacity for epistemically salient discrimination.

Michael Moore’s Causation and Responsibility offers an integrated conception of the law, morality, and metaphysics, centered on the notion of causation, grounded in a detailed knowledge of case law, and supported on every point by cogent argument. This is outstanding work. It is a worthy successor to Harte and Honoré’s classic Causation in the Law, and I expect that it will guide discussion for many years to come.

It is often assumed that, while ordinary actions are events, ‘negative actions’ are absences of events. I claim that a negative action is an ordinary, ‘positive’ event that plays a certain role. I argue that my approach can answer standard objections to the identity of negative actions and positive events.

abstract The most well‐known liberal‐egalitarian defence of cultural rights, provided by Will Kymlicka, presents culture as a primary good, and thus a resource that ought to be distributed according to some fair egalitarian criteria. Kymlicka relies on the intuition that inequalities between persons that are the result of brute luck rather than personal choice are unjust in making the case for various multicultural rights. This article makes two main claims. First, the standard luck egalitarian intuition on which Kymlicka's argument relies (...) cannot justify what he calls ‘polyethnic rights,’ in particular cultural and religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. Second, I argue that such exemptions are justifiable by appealing to the public value of fair equality of opportunity, properly construed. (shrink)

Much of the extant discussion focuses on the question of whether contextualism resolves skeptical paradoxes. Understandably. Yet there has been less discussion as to the internal structure of contextualist theories. Regrettably. Here, for instance, are two questions that could stand further discussion: (i) what is the linguistic basis for contextualism and (ii) what is the parameter that shifts with context?

Conditional learning, where agents learn a conditional sentence ‘If A, then B,’ is difficult to incorporate into existing Bayesian models of learning. This is because conditional learning is not uniform: in some cases, learning a conditional requires decreasing the probability of the antecedent, while in other cases, the antecedent probability stays constant or increases. I argue that how one learns a conditional depends on the causal structure relating the antecedent and the consequent, leading to a causal model of conditional learning. (...) This model extends traditional Bayesian learning by incorporating causal models into agents’ epistemic states. On this theory, conditional learning proceeds in two steps. First, an agent learns a new causal model with the appropriate relationship between the antecedent and the consequent. Then, the agent narrows down the set of possible worlds to include only those which make the conditional proposition true. This model of learning can incorporate both standard cases of Bayesian learning and the non-uniform learning required to learn conditional information. (shrink)

'If' is one of the most important words in the English language, being used to express hypothetical thought. The use of conditional terms such as 'if' distinguishes human intelligence from that of all other animals. In this volume, Jonathan Evans and David Over present a new theoretical approach to understanding conditionals. The book draws on studies from the psychology of judgement and decision making, as well as philosophical logic.

This book offers a novel critique of public-private partnerships in public health. The author argues these relationships create webs of influence that undermine the integrity of public health agencies, and imperil public health. He makes a compelling case that the paradigm interaction between governments and corporations should be at arm's length: separation, not collaboration.

In this article, the basic sociological approaches to theorizing human emotions are reviewed. In broad strokes, theorizing can be grouped into several schools of thought: evolutionary, symbolic interactionist, symbolic interactionist with psychoanalytic elements, interaction ritual, power and status, stratification, and exchange. All of these approaches to theorizing emotions have generated useful insights into the dynamics of emotions. There remain, however, unresolved issues in sociological approaches to emotions, including: the nature of emotions, the degree to which emotions are hard-wired neurological or (...) socially constructed, the relevance of analyzing the biology and evolution of emotions, the relationship between cognition and emotions, the number of distinctive emotional states produced by humans, and the relationship between emotions and rationality. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated the relationship between subjective experience and attentional lapses during sustained attention. These experiments employed two measures of subjective experience to examine how differences in awareness correspond to variations in both task performance and psycho-physiological measures . This series of experiments examine these phenomena during the Sustained Attention to Response Task . The results suggest we can dissociate between two components of subjective experience during sustained attention: task unrelated thought which corresponds to an absent minded disengagement from the (...) task and a pre-occupation with one's task performance that seems to be best conceptualised as a strategic attempt to deploy attentional resources in response to a perception of environmental demands which exceed ones ability to perform the task. The implications of these findings for our understanding of how awareness is maintained on task relevant material during periods of sustained attention are discussed. (shrink)

Questions about the ontology of color matter because colors matter. Colors are extremely pervasive and salient features of the world. Moreover, people care about the distribution of these features: they expend money and effort to paint their houses, cars, and other possessions, and their clear preference for polychromatic over monochromatic televisions and computer monitors have consigned monochromatic models to the status of rare antiques. The apparent ubiquity of colors and their importance to our lives makes them a ripe target for (...) ontological questions such as the following: " • What is the nature of colors? " • Are they, as they seem to be, properties of objects? (shrink)

The capacity to self-generate mental content that is unrelated to the current environment is a fundamental characteristic of the mind, and the current experiment explored how this experience is related to the decisions that people make in daily life. We examined how task-unrelated thought varies with the length of time participants are willing to wait for an economic reward, as measured using an inter-temporal discounting task. When participants performed a task requiring minimal attention, the greater the amount of time spent (...) engaged in TUT the longer the individual was prepared to wait for an economic reward. These data indicate that self-generated thought engages processes associated with the successful management of long-term goals. Although immersion in the here and now is undeniably advantageous, under appropriate conditions the capacity to let go of the present and consider more pertinent personal goals may have its own rewards. (shrink)

The everyday expressions of nursing practices are driven by their entanglement in complex flows of social, cultural, political and economic interests. Early expressions of trained nursing practice in the United States and Europe reflect claims of moral, spiritual and clinical exceptionalism. They were both imposed upon—and internalized by—nursing pioneers. These claims were associated with an endogenous narrative of discipline and its physical manifestation in early nursing schools and hospitals, which functioned as “total institutions.” By contrast, the external forces—diffuse yet pervasive—impacting (...) upon contemporary nursing more closely align with the power dynamics explored in Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Society of Control. The example of sensor technology and telemetric monitoring of nurses’ locations in the clinical setting exemplifies the intense presence of surveillance, performance metrics and the “rationalization” of nursing practice. It falls upon nurses to recognize, accept or challenge these dynamics in order to shape the future of nursing practice into a discipline which embodies our values and priorities. (shrink)

We have made huge progress in understanding the biology of mental illnesses, but comparatively little in interpreting them at the psychological level. The eminent philosopher Jonathan Glover believes that there is real hope of progress in the human interpretation of disordered minds. -/- The challenge is that the inner worlds of people with psychiatric disorders can seem strange, like alien landscapes, and this strangeness can deter attempts at understanding. Do people with disorders share enough psychology with other people to (...) make interpretation possible? To explore this question, Glover tackles the hard cases—the inner worlds of hospitalized violent criminals, of people with delusions, and of those diagnosed with autism or schizophrenia. Their first-person accounts offer glimpses of inner worlds behind apparently bizarre psychiatric conditions and allow us to begin to learn the “language” used to express psychiatric disturbance. Art by psychiatric patients, or by such complex figures as van Gogh and William Blake, give insight when interpreted from Glover’s unique perspective. He also draws on dark chapters in psychiatry’s past to show the importance of not medicalizing behavior that merely transgresses social norms. And finally, Glover suggests values, especially those linked with agency and identity, to guide how the boundaries of psychiatry should be drawn. -/- Seamlessly blending philosophy, science, literature, and art, Alien Landscapes? is both a sustained defense of humanistic psychological interpretation and a compelling example of the rich and generous approach to mental life for which it argues. (shrink)

The Introduction to philosophy written by Porphyry at the end of the second century AD is the most successful work of its kind ever to have been published. It was translated into most respectable languages, and for a millennium and a half every student of philosophy read it as his first text in the subject. Porphyry's aim was modest: he intended to explain the meaning of five terms, 'genus', 'species', 'difference', 'property', and 'accident' - terms which he took to be (...) important to Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, and hence to philosophy in general. Thus in principle the Introduction is simple and elementary. In fact, there are sometimes difficulties and doubts on the surface of the text - and beneath the surface there are frequent depths or profundities. The work raises, directly or indirectly, a number of perennial philosophical questions. In addition, the Introduction became, in Boethius's Latin translation, the point of reference for one of the longest-lasting of philosophical disputes - the dispute over the status of 'universals'.This book contains a new English translation of the Introduction, preceded by a study of the life and works of Porphyry, the purpose and nature of the Introduction, and the history of the text. It is accompanied by a discursive commentary the primary aim of which is to analyse and assess the philosophical theses and arguments which the Introduction puts forward. The twentieth century turned away from Aristotelian logic, and the Introduction lost its position on the syllabus. Barnes does not argue that it should be put back in its old place; but his commentary - the first to be published in English, and the fullest to be published for a century - suggests that there is blood in the old man yet. CLARENDON LATER ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERSGeneral Editors: Jonathan Barnes and A. A. Long This series, which is modelled on the familiar Clarendon Aristotle and Clarendon Plato series, is designed to encourage philosophers and students of philosophy to explore the fertile terrain of later ancient philosophy. The texts range in date from the first century BC to the fifth century AD, and will cover all the parts and all the schools of philosophy. Each volume contains a substantial introduction, an English translation, and a critical commentary on the philosophical claims and arguments of the text. The translations aim primarily at accuracy and fidelity; but they are also readable and accompanied by notes on textual problems that affect the philosophical interpretation. No knowledge of Greek or Latin is assumed. (shrink)

This paper discusses Jessica Flanigan’s book, _Pharmaceutical Freedom_. The paper advances two main claims. First, the paper argues that, despite what Flanigan claims, there is a coherent way to endorse the Doctrine of Informed Consent while resisting the view that there is a right to self-medicate. Second, the paper argues that Flanigan is committed to a more radical conclusion than she acknowledges in the book; namely, that under some conditions it is morally permissible for people to take medications from drug (...) manufacturers or pharmacies without paying the full price for those medications. The paper concludes by suggesting that this thesis about permissible theft, when combined with some further premises regarding the morality of defensive force, implies some even more radical conclusions regarding the use of force to obtain these medications. (shrink)

It is, I think, possible to generate a variation of McTaggart’s (Mind 17:457–474, 1908 ) paradox that infects all extant versions of presentism. This is not to say that presentism is doomed to failure. There may be ways to modify presentism and I can’t anticipate all such modifications, here. For the purposes of the paper I’ll understand ‘presentism’ to be the view that for all x , x is present (cf. Crisp ( 2004 : 18)). It seems only right that, (...) at a conference devoted to McTaggart’s work on time, we continue to pursue new ways in which his now infamous arguments remain relevant to us today. (shrink)

Moral injury results from the violation of deeply held moral commitments leading to emotional and existential distress. The phenomenon was initially described by psychologists and psychiatrists associated with the US Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs but has since been applied more broadly. Although its application to healthcare preceded COVID-19, healthcare professionals have taken greater interest in moral injury since the pandemic’s advent. They have much to learn from combat veterans, who have substantial experience in identifying and addressing moral injury—particularly (...) its social dimensions. Veterans recognise that complex social factors lead to moral injury, and therefore a community approach is necessary for healing. We argue that similar attention must be given in healthcare, where a team-oriented and multidimensional approach is essential both for ameliorating the suffering faced by health professionals and for addressing the underlying causes that give rise to moral injury. (shrink)

This article makes four claims. First, that the analytic/Continental split in political theory stems from an unarticulated disagreement about human nature, with analytics believing we have an innate set of mostly compatible moral and political inclinations, and Continentals seeing such things as alterable products of historical contingency. Second, that we would do better to talk of Continental-political-theory versus Rawlsian-political-philosophy, given that the former avoids arguments over principles, whilst the latter leaves genuine analytic philosophy behind. Third, that Continentals suffer from a (...) lack of such arguments, even by their own lights, whilst Rawlsians suffer from inconsistencies within the thought-patterns on which their principles depend. Fourth, that there is an alternative method – ‘normative behaviourism’ – that at least tries to move beyond the problems of both approaches, whilst sharing an idea of ‘praxis’ with the first, and an idea of deriving-principles-from-existing-judgements with the second. (shrink)

This book explores the associative duties we owe to our children, parents, friends, colleagues, associates and compatriots and defends a novel account which justifies such duties through the realization of values that are produced in these various kinds of social relationships. Seglow engages with several key contemporary debates including parental rights over children’s education, the burdens of eldercare, permissible partiality to friends, and global justice versus compatriot duties.

The similarities between contemporary externalist theories of knowledge and classical Indian and Tibetan theories of knowledge are striking. Drawing on comparisons with Timothy Williamson's recent work, I address related topics in Indo‐Tibetan epistemology and show that correct analysis of these issues requires externalist theories of mind and knowledge. The topics addressed range from a discussion of possible Gettier cases in the Tibetan philosophical tradition to an assessment of arguments for and against the existence of factive mental states/events that fail to (...) be knowledge states/events. I conclude by explaining how these matters in Indian and Tibetan epistemology can inform us about the viability of externalist epistemologies of the sort articulated by Williamson. (shrink)

Truths depend upon what there is. So say many. A significant subset of that group say more; they say that the best way—perhaps the only way—to make sense of the claim that truth depends upon what there is, is to adopt a form of truth-maker theory. Truth-maker theorists claim that truths require ground; what’s true must depend upon what there is. Typically, truth-maker theory isn’t seen as a theory about the nature of truth. Rather, it’s seen as a theory about (...) what truths must do. Truths must depend. Relatedly, the claim that truths require ‘truth-makers’, that is, some putative ontological grounds, is used as a methodological tool in metaphysics. Put somewhat crudely, fix on what truths there are and locate the truth-makers—if necessary, add to your ontology until you satisfy this demand for truth-makers. Truth-making is thus at once both narrow and broad. It’s narrow insofar as it’s not a theory (it’s not a claim) about the nature of truth, and yet it’s broad insofar as it enables us to determine our ontological commitments. We take this to be a two-part orthodoxy about truth-making. We reject the orthodoxy on both counts. (shrink)

The Introduction to philosophy written by Porphyry at the end of the second century AD is the most successful work of its kind ever to have been published. Porphyry's aim was modest, but he gave highly influential treatments of a number of perennial philosophical questions. Jonathan Barnes presents a complete new English translation, preceded by a substantial introduction and followed by an invaluable commentary, the first to be published in English and the fullest for a century, whose primary aim (...) is to analyse and assess the philosophical theses and arguments which the Introduction puts forward. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to motivate and then defend a restricted version of the truth-maker theory. In defending such a theory I hope to do away with the perceived need for ‘negative existents’ such as totality facts and the like.

Embodied cognition has attracted significant attention within cognitive science and related fields in recent years. It is most noteworthy for its emphasis on the inextricable connection between mental functioning and embodied activity and thus for its departure from standard cognitive science's implicit commitment to the unembodied mind. This article offers a review of embodied cognition's recent empirical and theoretical contributions and suggests how this movement has moved beyond standard cognitive science. The article then clarifies important respects in which embodied cognition (...) has not departed fundamentally from the standard view. A shared commitment to representationalism, and ultimately, mechanism, suggest that the standard and embodied cognition movements are more closely related than is commonly acknowledged. Arguments against representationalism and mechanism are reviewed and an alternative position that does not entail these conceptual undergirdings is offered. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is two fold: first, I look to show Oaklander’s theory of time to be false. Second, I show that the only way to salvage the B-theory is via the adopting of the causal theory of time, and allying this to Oaklander’s claim that tense is to be eliminated. I then raise some concerns with the causal theory of time. My conclusion is that, if one adopts eternalism, the unreality of time looks a better option than (...) the B-theory. (shrink)

We focus on assessments in conversation, paying particular attention to a distinction between object-side and subject-side assessments. O-side assessments are predicated of an object, whereas S-side assessments formulate a disposition of the speaker toward that object. Despite looking somewhat interchangeable, logically, these different ways of making assessments serve different interactional functions. In particular, S-side assessments allow for contrasting assessments of the same object by different persons. They are therefore useful in the management and avoidance of conflict and misalignment in the (...) performance of actions such as compliment receipts, avoiding giving offense and disagreeing. We link the analysis to conversation analytic work on assessments and to discursive psychology’s focus on the everyday management of relations between mental states and an external world. (shrink)