How do things persist? Are material objects spread out through time just as they are spread out through space? Or is temporal persistence quite different from spatial extension? This key question lies at the heart of any metaphysical exploration of the material world, and it plays a crucial part in debates about personal identity and survival. This book explores and compares three theories of persistence — endurance, perdurance, and stage theories — investigating the ways in which they attempt to account (...) for the world around us. Having provided valuable clarification of its two main rivals, the book concludes by advocating stage theory. Such a basic issue about the nature of the physical world naturally has close ties with other central philosophical problems. This book includes discussions of change and parthood, of how we refer to material objects at different times, of the doctrine of Humean supervenience, and of the modal features of material things. In particular, it contains new accounts of the nature of worldly vagueness, and of what binds material things together over time, distinguishing the career of a natural object from an arbitrary sequence of events. Each chapter concludes with a reflection about the impact of these metaphysical debates upon questions about our personal identity and survival. (shrink)

Social groups—like teams, committees, gender groups, and racial groups—play a central role in our lives and in philosophical inquiry. Here I develop and motivate a structuralist ontology of social groups centered on social structures (i.e., networks of relations that are constitutively dependent on social factors). The view delivers a picture that encompasses a diverse range of social groups, while maintaining important metaphysical and normative distinctions between groups of different kinds. It also meets the constraint that not every arbitrary collection of (...) people is a social group. In addition, the framework provides resources for developing a broader structuralist view in social ontology. (shrink)

Offers a systematic account of the doctrine of grace of Bonaventure (1221-1274) across his speculative-academic, mystical, hagiographical, and pastoral texts, paying particular attention to his use of the term "hierarchy" in reference to Francis of Assisi and the human soul in general.

Scientific researchers welcome disagreement as a way of furthering epistemic aims. Religious communities, by contrast, tend to regard it as a potential threat to their beliefs. But I argue that religious disagreement can help achieve religious epistemic aims. I do not argue this by comparing science and religion, however. For scientific hypotheses are ideally held with a scholarly neutrality, and my aim is to persuade those who arecommittedto religious beliefs that religious disagreement can be epistemically beneficial for them too.

What kind of entity is a committee, a book group or a band? I argue that committees and other such social groups are concrete, composite particulars, having ordinary human beings amongst their parts. So the committee members are literally parts of the committee. This mereological view of social groups was popular several decades ago, but fell out of favour following influential objections from David-Hillel Ruben. But recent years have seen a tidal wave of work in metaphysics, including the metaphysics of (...) parts and wholes. We now have the resources to rehabilitate the mereological view of social groups. I show how this can be done, and why we should bother. (shrink)

Resolving religious disagreements is difficult, for beliefs about religion tend to come with strong biases against other views and the people who hold them. Evidence can help, but there is no agreed-upon policy for weighting it, and moreover bias affects the content of our evidence itself. Another complicating factor is that some biases are reliable and others unreliable. What we need is an evidence-weighting policy geared toward negotiating the effects of bias. I consider three evidence-weighting policies in the philosophy of (...) religion and advocate one of them as the best for promoting the resolution of religious disagreements. (shrink)

The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has created a quality attestation process for clinical ethics consultants; the pilot phase of reviewing portfolios has begun. One aspect of the QA process which is particularly challenging is assessing the interpersonal skills of individual clinical ethics consultants. We propose that using case simulation to evaluate clinical ethics consultants is an approach that can meet this need provided clear standards for assessment are identified. To this end, we developed the Assessing Clinical Ethics Skills (...) tool, which identifies and specifies specific behaviors that a clinical ethics consultant should demonstrate in an ethics case simulation. The aim is for the clinical ethics consultant or student to use a videotaped case simulation, along with the ACES tool scored by a trained rater, to demonstrate their competence as part of their QA portfolio. The development and piloting of the tool is described. (shrink)

It has been argued that humans can face an ethical/epistemic dilemma over the automatic stereotyping involved in implicit bias: ethical demands require that we consistently treat people equally, as equally likely to possess certain traits, but if our aim is knowledge or understanding our responses should reflect social inequalities meaning that members of certain social groups are statistically more likely than others to possess particular features. I use psychological research to argue that often the best choice from the epistemic perspective (...) is the same as the best choice from the ethical perspective: to avoid automatic stereotyping even when this involves failing to reflect social realities in our judgements. This argument has an important implication: it shows that it is not possible to successfully defend an act of automatic stereotyping simply on the basis that the stereotype reflects an aspect of social reality. An act of automatic stereotyping can be poor from an epistemic perspective even if the stereotype that is activated reflects reality. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine Lewis's ideas about ontological innocence, ontological commitment and double-counting, in his discussion of composition as identity in Parts of Classes. I attempt to understand these primarily as epistemic or methodological claims: how far can we get down this route without adopting radical metaphysical theses about composition as identity?

Material objects extend through space by having different spatial parts in different places. But how do they persist through time? According to some philosophers, things have temporal parts as well as spatial parts: accepting this is supposed to help us solve a whole bunch of metaphysical problems, and keep our philosophy in line with modern physics. Other philosophers disagree, arguing that neither metaphysics nor physics give us good reason to believe in temporal parts.

Findings from the cognitive sciences suggest that the cognitive mechanisms responsible for some memory errors are adaptive, bringing benefits to the organism. In this paper we argue that the same cognitive mechanisms also bring a suite of significant epistemic benefits, increasing the chance of an agent obtaining epistemic goods like true belief and knowledge. This result provides a significant challenge to the folk conception of memory beliefs that are false, according to which they are a sign of cognitive frailty, indicating (...) that a person is less reliable than others or their former self. Evidence of memory errors can undermine a person’s view of themselves as a competent epistemic agent, but we show that false memory beliefs can be the result of the ordinary operation of cognitive mechanisms found across the species, which bring substantial epistemic benefits. This challenge to the folk conception is not adequately captured by existing epistemological theories. However, it can be captured by the notion of epistemic innocence, which has previously been deployed to highlight how beliefs which have epistemic costs can also bring significant epistemic benefits. We therefore argue that the notion of epistemic innocence should be expanded so that it applies not just to beliefs but also to cognitive mechanisms. (shrink)

Religious communities often discourage disagreement with religious authorities, on the grounds that allowing it would be epistemically detrimental. I argue that this attitude is mistaken, because any social position in a community—including religious authority—comes with epistemic advantages as well as epistemic limitations. I argue that religious communities stand to benefit epistemically by engaging in disagreement with people occupying other social positions. I focus on those at the community’s margins and argue that religious marginalization is apt to yield religiously important insights; (...) so their disagreement with religious authorities should be encouraged. (shrink)

Faith is often regarded as having a fraught relationship with evidence. Lara Buchak even argues that it entails foregoing evidence, at least when this evidence would influence your decision to act on the proposition in which you have faith. I present a counterexample inspired by the book of Job, in which seeking evidence for the sake of deciding whether to worship God is not only compatible with faith, but is in fact an expression of great faith. One might still think (...) that foregoing evidence may make faith more praiseworthy than otherwise. But I argue against this claim too, once more drawing on Job. A faith that expresses itself by a search for evidence can be more praiseworthy than a faith that sits passively in the face of epistemic adversity. (shrink)

In a fallen world fraught with evidence against religious beliefs, it is tempting to think that, on the assumption that those beliefs are true, the best way to protect them is to hold them dogmatically. Dogmatic belief, which is highly confident and resistant to counterevidence, may fail to exhibit epistemic virtues such as humility and may instead manifest epistemic vices such as arrogance or servility, but if this is the price of secure belief in religious truths, so be it. I (...) argue, however, that even in a world full of misleading evidence against true religious beliefs, cultivating epistemic humility is the better way to achieve believers’ epistemic aims. The reason is that dogmatic belief courts certain epistemic dangers, including to the true religious beliefs themselves, whereas epistemic humility empowers believers to counter them. (shrink)

If we are sympathetic to the project of naturalising metaphysics, how should we approach the metaphysics of the social world? What role can the social sciences play in metaphysical investigation? In the light of these questions, this paper examines three possible approaches to social metaphysics: inference to the best explanation from current social science, conceptual analysis, and Haslanger-inspired ameliorative projects.

This paper considers Kant's understanding of conceptual representation in light of his view of geometry.

Many philosophers have attempted to provide a solution to the paradox of fiction, a triad of sentences that lead to the conclusion that genuine emotional responses to fiction are irrational. We suggest that disagreement over the best response to this paradox stems directly from the formulation of the paradox itself. Our main goal is to show that there is an ambiguity regarding the word ‘exist’ throughout the premises of the paradox. To reveal this ambiguity, we display the diverse existential commitments (...) of several leading theories of emotion, and argue that none of the theories we consider are committed to notions of ‘exist’ employed by the paradox. We conclude that it is unclear whether or not there remains a paradox of fiction to be solved—rather than to be argued for—once this ambiguity is addressed. (shrink)

This paper proposes and defends the multifactorial view of stereotyping. According to this view, multiple factors determine whether or not any act of stereotyping increases the chance of an accurate judgment being made about an individual to whom the stereotype is applied. To support this conclusion, various features of acts of stereotyping that can determine the accuracy of stereotyping judgments are identified. The argument challenges two existing views that suggest that it is relatively easy for an act of stereotyping to (...) increase the chance of an accurate judgment being made. In the process, it shows why stereotyping that associates black people more strongly than white people with criminality in the United States cannot be defended, and actions to reduce the stereotyping criticized, on the basis that engaging in this form of stereotyping increases the chance of accurate judgments. As each of these important conclusions is supported by results from empirical psychology, the discussion exemplifies and vindicates the naturalistic approach to epistemology, according to which psychological findings provide an important contribution to understanding the epistemic standing of beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter explores the connections between David Lewis's perdurance theory and his Humean supervenience, arguing that his influential argument about temporary intrinsics is best seen in this light. It presents domestic dispute within the anti‐endurantist camp and analyzes the following questions: why does Lewis identify ordinary objects with world‐bound parts of transworld objects, but not with time‐bound parts of transtemporal objects? Given that Lewis is a counterpart theorist about modality, why isn't he a stage theorist about persistence? Humean supervenience in (...) isolation does not entail perdurance theory, even for the actual world. Lewis's treatment of temporary intrinsics in On the Plurality of Worlds forms part of a discussion of both persistence and its modal analogue, for which there is no neutral term. Perdurance theory is challenged by the stage theory of persistence, which identifies ordinary objects with brief stages instead of transtemporal sums of those stages. (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of “gendered seeing”: the capacity to visually perceive another person's gender and the role that one's own gender plays in that perception. Assuming that gendered properties are actually perceptible, my goal is to provide some support from the philosophy of perception on how gendered visual experiences are possible. I begin by exploring the ways in which sociologists and psychologists study how we perceive one's sex and the implications of these studies for the sex/gender distinction. I (...) then discuss feminist philosopher Linda Alcoff's concept of “interpretative horizons,” which highlights the role that one's social and political identities play in how we understand the world around us. I also discuss Elizabeth Grosz's notion of double sensation. I then apply some work in the philosophy of perception on perceptual learning and the cognitive penetration of perception to gendered seeing. My hypothesis is that we can explain how one's interpretative horizons are acquired through some notion of perceptual learning. I conclude by suggesting some of the epistemic and ethical implications of gendered seeing. (shrink)

In his paper in the same volume, Sider argues that, of maximalism and quantifier variance, the latter promises to let us make better sense of neo-Fregeanism. I argue that neo-Fregeans should, and seemingly do, reject quantifier variance. If they must choose between these two options, they should choose maximalism.

J. H. Lambert proved important results of what we now think of as non-Euclidean geometries, and gave examples of surfaces satisfying their theorems. I use his philosophical views to explain why he did not think the certainty of Euclidean geometry was threatened by the development of what we regard as alternatives to it. Lambert holds that theories other than Euclid's fall prey to skeptical doubt. So despite their satisfiability, for him these theories are not equal to Euclid's in justification. Contrary (...) to recent interpretations, then, Lambert does not conceive of mathematical justification as semantic. According to Lambert, Euclid overcomes doubt by means of postulates. Euclid's theory thus owes its justification not to the existence of the surfaces that satisfy it, but to the postulates according to which these "models" are constructed. To understand Lambert's view of postulates and the doubt they answer, I examine his criticism of Christian Wolff's views. I argue that Lambert's view reflects insight into traditional mathematical practice and has value as a foil for contemporary, model-theoretic, views of justification. (shrink)

B- theorists frequently argue that the A- theoretic views are incompatible with the Special Theory of Relativity (STR) and that this is a problem for the A- theoretic views. however, the B- theory needs to be revised in light of implications of STR. in particular, it follows from STR that some events stand in genuine temporal relations to each other while others do not. Consequently, there isn’t a single temporal order of all events. instead, there are multiple B- series. Some (...) B- theorists defend a view of the passage of time according to which passage is simply temporal succession. This paper argues that, in Minkowski spacetime, time passes in each of the multiple B- series, but there is no passage spanning across all events because some events stand in no genuine temporal relations to each other. (shrink)

This is a short response to Aaron Cotnoir's 'Composition as General Identity', in which I suggest some further applications of his ideas, and try to press the question of why we should think of his 'general identity relation' as a genuine identity relation.

Personal narratives can let us in on aspects of reality which we have not experienced for ourselves, and are thus important sources for philosophical reflection. Yet a venerable tradition in mainstream philosophy has little room for arguments which rely on personal narrative, on the grounds that narratives are particular and testimonial, whereas philosophical arguments should be systematic and transparent. I argue that narrative arguments are an important form of philosophical argument. Their testimonial aspects witness to novel facets of reality, but (...) their argumentative aspects help us to understand those facets for ourselves. My argument takes the form of a case study of the exemplary narrative argument penned by Rachel Moran, a former prostitute who uses her experiences to argue that prostitution amounts to sexual abuse. We’ll see that narrative arguments can enjoy expository Advantages over analytic ones. (shrink)

Analysis of Emmy Noether's 1918 theorems provides an illuminating method for testing the consequences of coordinate generality, and for exploring what else must be added to this requirement in order to give general covariance its far-reaching physical significance. The discussion takes us through Noether's first and second theorems, and then a third related theorem due originally to F. Klein. Contact will also be made with the contributions of, principally, J.L. Anderson, A. Trautman, P.A.M. Dirac, R. Torretti and the father of (...) the whole business, A. Einstein. (shrink)

The rapidly expanding aging population presents an urgent global challenge cutting through just about every dimension of worldly life, including the social, political, cultural, and economic. Developing innovations in health and assistive technology (AT) are poised to support effective and sustainable health care in the face of this challenge, yet there is scant (but growing) discussion of the ethical issues surrounding AT for older persons with dementia. Demands for ethical frameworks that can respond to frontline dilemmas regarding AT development and (...) provision, and how the needs of aging persons themselves are defined throughout this development process, are increasing. This article suggests that fulfilling the promises of AT to provide effective and ethically informed solutions may demand shifting away from standard bioethical analyses that centralize the principle of respect for autonomy. An autonomy-centric paradigm is dubiously equipped to theorize the foundational ethical issues in dementia care and to effectively guide AT development and implementation. An agency-centered approach to dementia care, which could engage more adaptively with the perspectives and choices of older persons themselves while offering strong support to AT research and stakeholders, may offer an attractive alternative. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that reading history of physics as a contribution to history of philosophy is important for contemporary philosophy of physics. My argument centers around a particular case: special relativity versus presentism. By means of resources drawn from reading aspects of Newton's work as contributions to philosophy, I argue that there is in physics an alternative way to approach what we mean by "present" such that presentism remains an open empirical question whose refutation requires resources that go (...) beyond those of special relativity. I offer this as an example of one fruitful way in which we pursue integrated HPS. (shrink)

Why do we form strong emotional attachments to unlikeable and immoral characters during our engagements with fictions? These pro-attitudes persist even as we realize that we would loathe these people if we were to encounter them in real-life. In this paper, I explore the implications of the sympathy for the devil phenomenon. I begin by considering several popular explanations, including simulation, aesthetic distancing, pre-focusing, and the ‘best of all characters’. I conclude that each one is inadequate. I then propose my (...) own explanation of the phenomenon, the fascinated attention approach. (shrink)

The self-concealing of being is a primary preoccupation of Heidegger's later thought, but neither Heidegger nor his interpreters have made clear precisely what it is. In this paper, I identify the self-concealing of being as the concealing of the worlding of the world, which is essential to and simultaneous with that worlding. In order to establish this, I sketch a taxonomy of the various phenomena of concealing and concealment in Heidegger's work by building on Mark Wrathall's four ‘planks’ of unconcealing (...) and concealment. Importantly, I distinguish the procedurally prior concealment that all unconcealing presupposes from the simultaneous concealing that Heidegger frequently confuses it with. This distinction not only allows us to get clear on what it means to say that being conceals itself but also reveals various confusions and obscurities in Heidegger's own thought as well as in that of his readers. (shrink)

Reflection in medical education is becoming more widespread. Drawing on our Jesuit Catholic heritage, the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine incorporates reflection in its formal curriculum and co–curricular programs. The aim of this type of reflection is to help students in their formation as they learn to step back and analyze their experiences in medical education and their impact on the student. Although reflection is incorporated through all four years of our undergraduate medical curriculum, this essay will focus (...) on three areas where bioethics faculty and medical educators have purposefully integrated reflection in the medical school, specifically within our bioethics education and professional development efforts: 1) in our three–year longitudinal clinical skills course Patient Centered Medicine (PCM), 2) in our co–curricular Bioethics and Professionalism Honors Program, and 3) in our newly created Physician’s Vocation Program (PVP). (shrink)

Are animals not ours to use? According to proponents of veganism such as Gary Francione, any and all use of animals by humans is exploitative and wrong. It is wrong because animals have intrinsic worth and humans' use of animals fails to respect that worth. Contra Francione, I argue that that there are conditions under which it may be morally appropriate to collect, consume, sell, or otherwise use animal products. Francione is mistaken in his belief that assigning intrinsic worth to (...) a being is impossible if said being is also conceived as a resource. Using and (non-instrumental) valuing are not mutually exclusive; if they were, many if not most human relationships would be deemed morally unacceptable. Through a series of thought experiments involving intra-human relationships, I suggest that moral condemnation of relationships within which a less dependent party regularly takes from a more dependent party is indefensible. In fact, relationships of use between asymmetrically dependent parties are essential to the functioning of cooperative society, and are therefore desirable. My aims with this article are to convince readers of the need to reject principled veganism, and to garner support for new philosophical accounts of morally appropriate human-nonhuman animal relationships. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis research investigated whether precues engage proactive control to reduce emotional interference during speech production. A picture-word interference task required participants to name target pictures accompanied by taboo, negative, or neutral distractors. Proactive control was manipulated by presenting precues that signalled the type of distractor that would appear on the next trial. Experiment 1 included one block of trials with precues and one without, whereas Experiment 2 mixed precued and uncued trials. Consistent with previous research, picture naming was slowed in (...) both experiments when distractors were taboo or negative compared to neutral, with the greatest slowing effect when distractors were taboo. Evidence that precues engaged proactive control to reduce interference from taboo distractors was found in Experiment 1. In contrast, mixing precued trials in Experiment 2 resulted in no taboo cueing benefit. These results suggest that item-level proactive control can b... (shrink)

This article analyses the Hegelian notion of death, presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit. In this work, Hegel names death the “absolute master” and this idea appears in two different sections of the text. The first mention of the absolute master is in the death struggle for recognition, whereby the slave, who is aware of death and due to it experiments the anguish of its arrival, abandons the struggle to live at the service of his master. Thus, overcoming his own (...) fear of death, the slave finds in its expression the transformation of the world. The second mention takes place in the analysis of the terror lived during the French Revolution. In this part, Hegel describes how the abstraction of absolute freedom is imposed upon all citizens, generating death and terror among individuals. In both experiences that the subjects respectively face, death appears as an experience that opens us to reflection and allows us to overcome immediacy. (shrink)

Health care providers’ interpretation of law can have intended and unintended effects on health care delivery in Canada. At times, health care providers encounter situations where they perceive the law to conflict with their sense of what is most ethically justified. In many cases, these health care providers feel especially torn because they assume that the legal requirements must dictate the decision, and cannot be explored or questioned. We challenge this assumption: the law is not as cut-and-dried as some assume; (...) therefore, its significance to health care decisions should be carefully considered. Within a systematic ethics process, legal considerations can be a source of values and information and can create opportunities for further dialogue. This approach is justified because it appropriately reflects the relationship of the law to ethics. This way of thinking about the law and ethics also avoids potentially harmful consequences of legalistic approaches to decision-making, such as breakdowns in communication, adversarial relationships, and a reduction of ethically complex decisions to simple rule following. (shrink)

The field of psychology has emphasized quantitative laboratory research as a defining character of its role as a science, and has generally de-emphasized qualitative research and theorizing throughout its history. This article reviews some of the effects of this emphasis in two areas, intelligence testing, and learning and memory. On one side, quantitative measurement produced the widely used IQ test but shed little light on the construct of intelligence and its role in human cognition. On the other side, reductive quantification (...) and experimental constraints limited the investigation and understanding of human memory systems and complex learning throughout the first century of the field’s history. Recent research under fewer constraints has made greater progress in these areas. (shrink)

Wegen der Globalisierung und der Säkularisierung ist heute nicht mehr selbstverständlich davon auszugehen, dass die eigenen religiösen Überzeugungen richtig sind. Wie können Gläubige darauf reagieren? Eine nachvollziehbare Reaktion wäre zu versuchen, das eigene religiöse Glaubenssystem vor aller scheinbaren Konkurrenz zu schützen, indem man religiösen Dissens innerhalb oder außerhalb der Glaubensgemeinschaft unterbindet oder unterdrückt. Die Autorin argumentiert jedoch dafür, dass die Förderung von solchem Dissens die religiöse Erkenntnis eigentlich begünstigt und zwar selbst für diejenigen, die ihr eigenes religiöses Glaubenssystem möglichst bewahren (...) wollen. (shrink)

Mental health professionals frequently work with family caregivers in the provision of psychotherapy services to individuals with serious mental illness. To address the need for ethical guidelines for working with family caregivers, an analysis of relevant ethical and legal issues is provided within the context of dynamic mental health care and legal systems. When working with family caregivers, practitioners utilize the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Code (2010), legal codes, and a complex decision-making plan; identify and communicate ethical obligations to family (...) caregivers; consider the unmet needs of this population; avoid harm resulting from multiple relationships; and balance ethical duties of beneficence and respect for autonomy. (shrink)

Simone Weil’s supernaturalist interpretations of tragedy challenge not only the philosophical skepticism but also the religious rationalism characteristic of the modern age. This book boldly points out a supernaturalist alternative to contemporary, post-structuralist literary theory. This study of classical tragic drama offers a sacralizing impetus to secular discussions of literature. The book’s Platonic premises and its grounding in the transcendental outlook of the religious traditions furnish a sacred illumination. Religious mystery and the cross of Christ both overshadow and deepen philosophical (...) approaches to literary criticism, including theories of tragedy. Simone Weil’s conception of tragic art, rooted in a mystical Christian metaphysics, offers original insight into the nature of tragedy. In contradiction of the prevailing secular outlook, Weil regards classical tragedy as a sacred art form. Tragic masterpieces evoke not the chaotic or irrational, as modernist interpreters hold, but rather a good which is absolute. (shrink)

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.