Legal argumentation, like argumentation generally, occurs against a background of shared understanding and competence. This view, inspired by Kuhn's understanding of scientific reasoning, is in stark contrast to more traditional ‘rule-following’ accounts of legal argumentation. Below I consider reasons to reject the more traditional view of legal reasoning in favor of a roughly Kuhnian account of legal reasoning and conclude by raising skeptical questions about the cogency of legal reasoning when the tacitly accepted background conditions that make it possible are (...) not critically examined. (shrink)

Many legal disputes turn on scientific, especially statistical, evidence. Traditionally scientists have accepted only that statistical evidence which satisfies a 95 percent (or 99 percent) rule — that is, only evidence which has less than five percent (or one percent) probability of resulting from chance.The rationale for this rule is the reluctance of scientists to accept anything less than the best-supported new knowledge. The rule reflects the internal needs of scientific practice. However, when uncritically adopted as a rule for admitting (...) legal evidence, the seemingly innocuous 95 percent rule distorts the balance of interests historically protected by the legal system. In particular, plaintiffs in toxic tort and employment discrimination suits are effectively held to a heavier burden of proof in showing that their injuries were more probably than not caused by the defendant's actions. The result is that too many victims of toxic torts or employment discrimination cannot win legal redress for their injuries. (shrink)

s. A: KIuPKB entwickelte in einer einheitIichen Systematik vollstlindige Interpretationen fiir viele Systeme der Modalitatenlogik, die vorber nur syn­ taktisch fixiert waren. Hiermit ergab sich auf dem Wege tiber eine quantoren­ logische Erweiterung des Modalitatensystems S4 zugleich eine Semantik fUr die intuitionistische Priidikatenlogik:. Der vorliegende Ergebnisbericht behandelt im Rahmen der klassischen Priidikatenlogik: zwei Modalitatensysteme, deren aussagenlogische Teile mit den Systemen M von v. WRIGHT und S4 von LEWIS tibereinstimmen. Es gibt verschiedene Moglichkeiten, aussagenlogische Modalitatensysteme quantoren­ logisch zu erweitem. Die (...) hier gewiihlten Erweiterungen sind in einer nabe­ liegenden Weise so vorgenommen, daB die Barcan-Formel (Seite 7) ungiiltig, aber ihre Umkehrung giiltig ist. Fiir die Kripke-Semantik dieser Systeme wird im m. Kapitel ein Voll­ stlindigkeitsbeweis nach den Methoden von KIuPKE [13] durchgefiihrt. Bin einfacherer Vollstiindigkeitsbeweis, der aber wesentIich weniger konstruktiv ist, wird in § 4 in Verallgemeinerung der Methode von HENKIN [7] gegeben. Durch eine Binbettung der intuitionistischen Priidikatenlogik: in das quan­ torenlogische Modalitatensystem S4' flihrt die Semantik des Systems S4' zur Kripke-Semantik der intuitionistischen Priidikatenlogik. Diese Semantik wird im V. Kapitel systematisch behandelt und im VI. Kapitel (iihnlich wie in KIuPKB [J3D mit der Semantik von BETH in Beziehung gebracht. (shrink)

Gerald Sykes -- Aldous Huxley -- Gerald Heard -- Christopher Isherwood -- John van Druten -- Marianna Masin -- J. Crawford Lewis -- Dorothy F. Mercer -- Kurt Friedrichs -- Swami Atulananda -- Jane Molard -- The Countess of Sandwich -- John Yale -- Joan Rayne -- Durgacharan -- Pravrajika Saradaprana.

Although medicolegal challenges to the use of neurologic criteria to declare death in the USA have been well-described, the management of court cases in the United Kingdom about objections to the use of neurologic criteria to declare death has not been explored in the bioethics or medical literature. This article (1) reviews conceptual, medical and legal differences between death by neurologic criteria (DNC) in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world to contextualize medicolegal challenges to DNC; (2) summarizes (...) highly publicized legal cases related to DNC in the United Kingdom, including the nuanced 2022 case of Archie Battersbee, who was transiently considered dead by neurologic criteria, but ultimately determined to be in a vegetative state/unresponsive-wakeful state; and (3) provides an overview of ethical issues raised by medicolegal challenges to DNC in the United Kingdom and a comparison to the management of these challenges in the USA. (shrink)

Our recent review demonstrates that “purity” is a messy construct with at least nine popular scientific understandings. Cultural beliefs about self-control help unify some of these understandings, but much messiness remains. The harm-centric theory of dyadic morality suggests that purity violations can be comprehensively understood as abstract harms, acts perceived by some people (and not others) to indirectly cause suffering.

The first collection of Leibniz's key writings on the binary system, newly translated, with many previously unpublished in any language. -/- The polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is known for his independent invention of the calculus in 1675. Another major—although less studied—mathematical contribution by Leibniz is his invention of binary arithmetic, the representational basis for today's digital computing. This book offers the first collection of Leibniz's most important writings on the binary system, all newly translated by the authors with many (...) previously unpublished in any language. Taken together, these thirty-two texts tell the story of binary as Leibniz conceived it, from his first youthful writings on the subject to the mature development and publication of the binary system. -/- As befits a scholarly edition, Strickland and Lewis have not only returned to Leibniz's original manuscripts in preparing their translations, but also provided full critical apparatus. In addition to extensive annotations, each text is accompanied by a detailed introductory “headnote” that explains the context and content. Additional mathematical commentaries offer readers deep dives into Leibniz's mathematical thinking. The texts are prefaced by a lengthy and detailed introductory essay, in which Strickland and Lewis trace Leibniz's development of binary, place it in its historical context, and chart its posthumous influence, most notably on shaping our own computer age. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The most common answers to metasemantic questions regarding context-sensitive expressions appeal primarily to speakers' intentions. Having rejected intentionalism in Lewis [.” Erkenntnis 85: 1527–1555.], this paper takes a non-intentionalist perspective in answering the metasemantic question: how does a context determine the value of context-sensitive expressions? It focuses on the case of gradable adjectives, i.e. expressions like ‘tall’, ‘expensive’, and ‘rich’, which require a contextually determined standard in the unmarked positive form, as in ‘Pia is tall’. I argue that (...) this standard is determined by a salient comparison class, which, when embedded in the relevant facts, provides input into statistical reasoning which outputs a standard in accordance with conversational domain goals. (shrink)

Phenomenology gives rise to certain ontological considerations that have far-reaching implications for standard conceptions of patient autonomy in medical ethics, and, as a result, the obligations of and to patients in clinical decision-making contexts. One such consideration is the phenomenological reduction in classical phenomenology, a core feature of which is the characterisation of our primary experiences as immediately and inherently meaningful. This paper builds on and extends the analyses of the phenomenological reduction in the works of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty (...) in order to identify and explain its implications for our current understanding of the principle of respect for patient autonomy and the norms of clinical decision making. (shrink)

In the debates regarding the ethics of human organoid biobanking, the locus of donor autonomy has been identified in processes of consent. The problem is that, by focusing on consent, biobanking processes preclude adequate engagement with donor autonomy because they are unable to adequately recognise or respond to factors that determine authentic choice. This is particularly problematic in biobanking contexts associated with organoid research or the clinical application of organoids because, given the probability of unforeseen and varying purposes for which (...) a donor’s organoids could be employed and given the different ways in which a donor can relate to her biospecimens, a donor can value her organoids differently in different contexts and her reasons for autonomously permitting use of her cells and tissues in one case may not support an autonomous decision in another. In response, this paper has three aims: firstly, to make the case for why organoid biobanks ought to respect donor autonomy conceived as authentic choice; secondly, to explore the autonomy-respecting limits of established and widely prevalent models of biobank consent; and thirdly, to propose certain conditions that organoid biobanks ought to support or facilitate in order to respect donor autonomy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Seven Poems NICOLAS CALAS (Translated by Avi Sharon) hellenizing surrealism: a greek door to europe Nicolas calas (Kalamares) may be considered merely a minor Greek poet, but he had a major global persona and influence. In the middle of the last century he played a catalyzing role in the international avant garde: He was a Zelig-like polemicist in three languages (Greek, French, and English) and across three cultural (...) capitals (Athens, Paris, and New York). But he always fought on a singular front: surrealism. Born in Lausanne in 1907, he grew up in Athens and by the later 1920s began to stand out in literary circles (he was over 6' 4") for his modernist if not revolutionary views. Starting from an interest in Freud and Marx, the subconscious and the revolutionary, Calas soon arrived at their natural synthesis—surrealism. Around the time when a distinctly Greek form of surrealist poetry emerged, with the 1935 publication of “Blast Furnace” by Andreas Embiricos, Calas was on his way to becoming its unofficial spokesman. He moved to the epicenter of the movement in Paris and with the 1938 publication of Foyers d’Incendie became the “most lucid and audacious” of founder André Breton’s acolytes, both prophet and demagogue of the group. Carried along in the current of European artists and thinkers leaving Europe for New York, he would continue the fight on the western wing of the faction (literally, coming to blows at a cocktail party with Clement Greenberg, representing the opposing Abstract Expressionist side). In 1942 he published another clarion pamphlet, Confound the Wise, giving the movement voice in English and befriending its most visible local supporters and practitioners, from Peggy Guggenheim to Marcel Duchamp. arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 The Wyndham Lewis of the operation, Calas was a cross-border catalyst, evangelizing the role of surrealism as a liberating and generative force in modern literature and art. For him and other writers and poets, the weapon that would most effectively derange the reader’s habitual conformism into revelatory and revolutionary perception was the surrealist image, poetry’s lingua franca. For Greek practitioners it was completely natural for that magical representation to arise out of their god-infested, sun-filled landscape. Here they had a force that was both blinding and enlightening, penetrating and transformative, local and universal. For Calas, the primary echo or reflection of that essential image was the island of Santorini, referenced in several of the translations here (and reminiscent of his fellow national Nikos Gatsos’s use of the island of Amorgos in a similar context). It stood as the very symbol of fiery transformation, an image monstrous enough to shock the reader into a super-rational embrace of its own form of logic. This Hellenization of surrealism, like the Hellenization of modernism itself, was to become an important, transformative power in its own right. For many, the origin (and likewise, for many, the enclosing border ) of surrealism was France. “But it is French. It is their invention,” was how William Carlos Williams saw it, to his chagrin. Williams was convinced that the objective concentration on the image itself (“no ideas but in things”) could offer a salutary corrective to American poetry of his time. “It is the surrealists who have invented the living defense of literature,” he wrote in a 1929 essay. But for a poet so at one with the American Grain to be reconciled with surrealism’s ‘Francite’ he needed some way to cross the divide. His admiration for Calas’s work in clarifying and promoting the group’s ideas enabled the Greek poet to serve as a mediator, to allow the creative transference of its rebellious wisdom into Williams’s poetry. To borrow the title of one of his early American essays, Calas provided Williams a “Greek door to Europe.” In translating four of Calas’s French poems into English, published in 1941 with a frontispiece by the surrealist painter and magician Kurt Seligman, Williams leveraged Calas as the vehicle through which the “enabling foreignness” of surrealism could be grafted into the grain of his American modernist work, just as he set out on his magnum opus, Paterson. In a similar way... (shrink)

Throughout philosophical history, there has been a recurring argument to the effect that determinism, naturalism, or both are self-referentially incoherent. By accepting determinism or naturalism, one allegedly acquires a reason to reject determinism or naturalism. _The Epistemological Skyhook_ brings together, for the first time, the principal expressions of this argument, focusing primarily on the last 150 years. This book addresses the versions of this argument as presented by Arthur Lovejoy, A.E. Taylor, Kurt Gödel, C.S. Lewis, Norman Malcolm, Karl (...) Popper, J.R. Lucas, William Hasker, Thomas Nagel, Alvin Plantinga, and others, along with the objections presented by their many detractors. It concludes by presenting a new version of the argument that synthesizes the best aspects of the others while also rendering the argument immune to some of the most significant objections made to it. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the ‘It's OK to be White’ Senate motion made by Australian far-right politician Pauline Hanson in 2018. Deliberately innocuous, the ‘It's OK to be white’ slogan was designed by online white supremacist groups with the intention of ‘triggering liberals’ and provoking outrage. Drawing on critical discourse analysis, I demonstrate that Hanson's ‘It's OK to be white’ motion was an act of calculated ambivalence, which served to address multiple audiences simultaneously. I argue that the motion provided Hanson (...) with a novel way to discuss so-called ‘anti-white’ or ‘reverse’ racism which succeeded in generating the desired controversy and media attention. I further argue that the success of the motion exposed the Australian media's illiteracy on contemporary alt-right/white supremacist tactics and discourses. I also critically examine the implications of the motion and Hanson's promotion of white victimhood narratives. Despite its innocuous framing, the ‘It's OK to be white’ motion represented the successful co-optation of a racist white supremacist political project, the implications of which should not be understated. This research furthers our understanding of the strategies and tactics employed by the far-right, as well as the interrelationship between the populist radical right and online white supremacist groups. (shrink)

Several alleged counterexamples to the definition of ‘intrinsic’ proposed in Rae Langton and David Lewis, ‘Defining “Intrinsic”’, are unconvincing. Yet there are reasons for dissatisfaction, and room for improvement. One desirable change is to raise the standard of non-disjunctiveness, thereby putting less burden on contentious judgements of comparative naturalness. A second is to deal with spurious independence by throwing out just the disjunctive troublemakers, instead of throwing out disjunctive properties wholesale, and afterward reinstating those impeccably intrinsic disjunctive properties that (...) are not troublemakers. (The second of these changes makes the first more affordable.) A third, suggested by Brian Weatherson, would be to invoke the general principle that the intrinsic and the extrinsic characters of things are independent, rather than relying just on one special case of this principle; but it is none too obvious how to do this. (shrink)

According to Xenophon, Socrates tried to persuade his associate Aristippus to moderate his excessive indulgence in wine, women, and food, arguing that only hard work can bring happiness. Aristippus wasn’t convinced. Instead, he and his followers espoused the most radical form of hedonism in ancient Western philosophy. Before the rise of the better known but comparatively ascetic Epicureans, the Cyrenaics pursued a way of life in which moments of pleasure, particularly bodily pleasure, held the highest value. In The Birth of (...) Hedonism, Kurt Lampe provides the most comprehensive account in any language of Cyrenaic ideas and behavior, revolutionizing the understanding of this neglected but important school of philosophy. -/- The Birth of Hedonism thoroughly and sympathetically reconstructs the doctrines and practices of the Cyrenaics, who were active between the fourth and third centuries BCE. The book examines not only Aristippus and the mainstream Cyrenaics, but also Hegesias, Anniceris, and Theodorus. Contrary to recent scholarship, the book shows that the Cyrenaics, despite giving primary value to discrete pleasurable experiences, accepted the dominant Greek philosophical belief that life-long happiness and the virtues that sustain it are the principal concerns of ethics. The book also offers the first in-depth effort to understand Theodorus’s atheism and Hegesias’s pessimism, both of which are extremely unusual in ancient Greek philosophy and which raise the interesting question of hedonism’s relationship to pessimism and atheism. Finally, the book explores the “new Cyrenaicism” of the nineteenth-century writer and classicist Walter Pater, who drew out the enduring philosophical interest of Cyrenaic hedonism more than any other modern thinker. (shrink)

The accuracy-first program attempts to ground epistemology in the norm that one’s beliefs should be as accurate as possible, where accuracy is measured using a scoring rule. We argue that considerations of scientific progress suggest that such a monism about epistemic value is untenable. In particular, we argue that counterexamples to the standard scoring rules are ubiquitous in the history of science, and hence that these scoring rules cannot be regarded as a precisification of our intuitive concept of epistemic value.

'The Rational and the Moral Order' is a significant book providing a comprehensive theory of morality. The opening chapter is simply marvellous. Baier provides a cogent response to Hume's conundrums on practical reasoning: logical entailment, he argues, is not the correct model of the relation between reasons and that for which they are reasons. Indeed, the giving of reasons is, in part, a social enterprise, and there is no necessary connection between rationality and self-interest. Just as the giving of reasons (...) is a social enterprise taught to succeeding generations, so too is the moral enterprise, for a moral order is a social order of some sort. It is a social order that encourages a critical stance toward, and permits the correction of, its mores. Moral precepts can be sound or unsound, and yet can be relative to a moral order. In the concluding chapter Baier shows how his theoretical framework can be used to confront some of the moral problems people face, problems which have also exercised contemporary philosophers. Though there are many philosophers who believe that killing is worse than letting anyone die, there are few that defend the view other than by raw intuition. Baier deploys the resources of his theory of morality in support of this widely shared but poorly defended viewpoints. "Along the way, Baier deals with virtually all the problems that have taxed moral philosophers for a very long time -- rationality, responsibility, morality's relation to law, the good life, prisoner's dilemma, moral motivation, and others. The Rational and the Moral Order is careful, insightful, and convincing." --Theodore M. Benditt, University of Alabama. (shrink)

According to many of its proponents, shared decision making ("SDM") is the right way to interpret the clinician-patient relationship because it respects patient autonomy in decision-making contexts. In particular, medical ethicists have claimed that SDM respects a patient's relational autonomy understood as a capacity that depends upon, and can only be sustained by, interpersonal relationships as well as broader health care and social conditions. This paper challenges that claim. By considering two primary approaches to relational autonomy, this paper argues that (...) standard accounts of SDM actually undermine patient autonomy. It also provides an overview of the obligations generated by the principle of respect for relational autonomy that have not been captured in standard accounts of SDM and which are necessary to ensure consistency between clinical practice and respect for patient autonomy. (shrink)

In medieval writers we find a distinction between body as a substance – corpus-substantia – and body as a quantity – corpus-quantitas (or quantum). One of the earliest uses of this distinction is in works written by Robert Grosseteste in the 1220s. In this paper I explore his use and understanding of this distinction. I argue that he understands corpus-substantia as such as a dimensionless composite of a first corporeal form, corporeity, and prime matter. Corporeity itself is an active power (...) for three dimensions. Through its infinite and necessary self-multiplication corporeity extends the prime matter it informs into three dimensions, thereby resulting in corpus-quantum. I explore how Grosseteste’s conception of corporeity, though probably based on ideas found in Avicenna, diverges from different understandings of Avicenna’s conception of corporeity proposed by medieval and modern commentators. (shrink)

Background Studying global health problems requires international multidisciplinary teams. Such multidisciplinarity and multiculturalism create challenges in adhering to a set of ethical principles across different country contexts. Our group on health system responses to violence against women (VAW) included two universities in a European high-income country (HIC) and four universities in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study aimed to investigate professional and policy perspectives on the types, causes of, and solutions to ethical challenges specific to the ethics approval stage of (...) the global research projects on health system responses to VAW. Methods We used the Network of Ethical Relationships model, framework method, and READ approach to analyse qualitative semi-structured interviews (n = 18) and policy documents (n = 27). In March-July 2021, we recruited a purposive sample of researchers and members of Research Ethics Committees (RECs) from the five partner countries. Interviewees signposted policies and guidelines on research ethics, including VAW. Results We developed three themes with eight subthemes summarising ethical challenges across three contextual factors. The global nature of the group contributed towards power and resource imbalance between HIC and LMICs and differing RECs’ rules. Location of the primary studies within health services highlighted differing rules between university RECs and health authorities. There were diverse conceptualisations of VAW and vulnerability of research participants between countries and limited methodological and topic expertise in some LMIC RECs. These factors threatened the timely delivery of studies and had a negative impact on researchers and their relationships with RECs and HIC funders. Most researchers felt frustrated and demotivated by the bureaucratised, uncoordinated, and lengthy approval process. Participants suggested redistributing power and resources between HICs and LMICs, involving LMIC representatives in developing funding agendas, better coordination between RECs and health authorities and capacity strengthening on ethics in VAW research. Conclusions The process of ethics approval for global research on health system responses to VAW should be more coordinated across partners, with equal power distribution between HICs and LMICs, researchers and RECs. While some of these objectives can be achieved through education for RECs and researchers, the power imbalance and differing rules should be addressed at the institutional, national, and international levels. Three of the authors were also research participants, which had potential to introduce bias into the findings. However, rigorous reflexivity practices mitigated against this. This insider perspective was also a strength, as it allowed us to access and contribute to more nuanced understandings to enhance the credibility of the findings. It also helped to mitigate against unequal power dynamics. (shrink)

More often than not, notes are conceptualized as a technology for helping students stay focused on and attentive to subject matter deemed educationally valuable. This article concerns itself, however, with how notes may interrupt and render inoperative this learning function. To probe the question of attention and distraction, the authors devised an experiment in note taking. Our question is whether or not these forms of rendering the learning function of notes inoperative have any educational value. In conclusion, we suggest that (...) such activities, while divorced from official, outcomes-based learning, do indeed have educational meaning: they make present the potentiality for thinking and acting without forcing such potentiality into measurable forms. What remains is the notes themselves, and the notational effects they in turn generated and continue to generate. (shrink)

This article discusses G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s contentions about the effect of Helotage on Spartan foreign policy articulated in chapter IV of Origins of the Peloponnesian War, namely that Sparta’s Helot population was uniquely dangerous, constraining Sparta’s ability to send large numbers of citizen hoplites abroad lest it be exposed to the threat within. It shows that while certain arguments advanced by Ste. Croix are no longer tenable in light of subsequent research, others still stand up to critical scrutiny fifty (...) years on; furthermore, other points neglected by Ste. Croix reinforce his overall claims. (shrink)

This article explores some of the ways in which ideas about and attempts to construct a European identity and sense of belonging inscribe an imaginary of Europe that is exclusionary and elitist. It suggests that the symbolic figure of ‘the immigrant woman’ is a container category that simultaneously signifies the non-European and tests and destabilizes claims to Europe's essential characteristics. It also argues that traces of this imaginary of Europe can be found in feminist scholarship on global care chains and (...) that the spatial category of ‘the domestic’ is the invisible seam that ties this scholarship to the hegemonic imaginary of Europe. (shrink)

Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing argues that Jacques Derrida's philosophical understanding of language should be supplemented by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic approach to the symbolic order. Lacan adopts a non-philosophical, genetic or developmental approach to the question of language and in doing so isolates a dimension that Derrida cannot properly envisage: the imaginary. Michael Lewis argues that the real must be understood not just in relation to the symbolic but also in relation to the imaginary. The existence of an alternative (...) approach to the real that is other than language allows us to identify the idiosyncrasies of Derrida's purely transcendental approach, an approach that addresses language in terms of its conditions of possibility. Lacan shows us that an attention to the genesis of the symbolic order of language and culture should lead us to understand this real other in a different way.This book relates transcendental thought to the insights of non-philosophical thought, and, more specifically, it proposes a way in which philosophy might relate to the insights of the human and natural sciences. By critically juxtaposing Derrida and Lacan, Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing attempts to systematise Slavoj Zizek's presentation of a Lacanian alternative to Derridean deconstruction. This work should be of interest to all readers in continental thought and transcendental philosophy, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and literary studies. (shrink)

This essay examines why some introductory ethics students are averse to any sort of moral requirement. It provides a series of descriptions and techniques to help teachers recognize, diagnose, and engage such students. After discussing the nature of student aversions to moral obligations, I discuss three causes and several ways to engage each: 1) Student Relativism; 2) student fears and misunderstandings of obligations; and 3) the phenomenon of what I call fetishized liberty, which leads to the “liberty paradox”—where students actively (...) fight for liberties, yet actively give up or fail to use the ones they currently have. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:A wide range of research uses patterns of genetic variation to infer genetic similarity between individuals, typically referred to as genetic ancestry. This research includes inference of human demographic history, understanding the genetic architecture of traits, and predicting disease risk. Researchers are not just structuring an intellectual inquiry when using genetic ancestry, they are also creating analytical frameworks with broader societal ramifications. This essay presents an ethics framework in the spirit of virtue ethics for these researchers: rather than focus on (...) rule following, the framework is designed to build researchers’ capacities to react to the ethical dimensions of their work. The authors identify one overarching principle of intellectual freedom and responsibility, noting that freedom in all its guises comes with responsibility, and they identify and define four principles that collectively uphold researchers’ intellectual responsibility: truthfulness, justice and fairness, anti-racism, and public beneficence. Researchers should bring their practices into alignment with these principles, and to aid this, the authors name three common ways research practices infringe these principles, suggest a step-by-step process for aligning research choices with the principles, provide rules of thumb for achieving alignment, and give a worked case. The essay concludes by identifying support needed by researchers to act in accord with the proposed framework. (shrink)

Counterpart theory affords an especially flexible form of essentialism. Gideon Rosen and the author suggested that by endowing the entire world with peculiar essences, they could likewise provide truth makers for negative existential propositions. Thus they avoid the need for states of affairs or non‐transferable tropes as truth makers. States of affairs are somehow constructed from particular things and the properties they instantiate. A legitimate counterpart relation can exist which validates only one direction of set‐theoretical essentialism, but under which any (...) counterpart of a state of affairs must be a state of affairs. States of affairs or tropes are not needed for purposes of truth making. But also, if we help ourselves to the flexibility of counterpart theory, the principal difficulties that stand in the way of using states of affairs or tropes as truth makers vanish. (shrink)

An inductive method Cλ in the λ-system of Carnap [1] is immodest, on evidence e, iff its estimate, on e, of its own accuracy is higher than its estimate, on e, of the accuracy of any rival method Cλ′. Immodesty seems to be a condition of stable trust: if you trusted a modest Cλ, you should start by trusting its advice to replace it by a rival that it estimates to be more accurate. One might guess that any Cλ would (...) be immodest on any evidence. But in [2] I proved that, under a certain accuracy measure taken from Carnap [1], §§ 20–21, there would be exactly one immodest Cλ. Unfortunately, that one sometimes turns out to be C0 ; and since nobody in his right mind would trust C0 we are then left with no acceptable Cλ. Stephen Spielman [3] has proposed a remedy: an estimate of accuracy, on evidence e, should disregard accuracy under circumstances that are ruled out by e. Spielman proves that if this change is made, any Cλ is immodest on any evidence. (shrink)