In his metaphysical summa of 1986, The Plurality of Worlds, David Lewis famously defends a doctrine he calls ‘modal realism’, the idea that to account for the fact that some things are possible and some things are necessary we must postulate an infinity possible worlds, concrete entities like our own universe, but cut off from us in space and time. Possible worlds are required to account for the facts of modality without assuming that modality is primitive – that there (...) are irreducibly modal facts. We argue that on one reading, Lewis’s theory licenses us to assume maverick possible worlds which spread through logical space gobbling up all the rest. Because they exclude alternatives, these worlds result in contradictions, since different spread worlds are incompatible with one another. Plainly Lewis’s theory must be amended to exclude these excluders. But, we maintain, this cannot be done without bringing in modal primitives. And once we admit modal primitives, bang goes the rationale for Lewis’s modal realism. (shrink)

First published in 1923 as part of the Cambridge Plain Texts series, this volume contains Descartes' Discours de la méthode in the original French. A short editorial introduction in English is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the works of Descartes and the development of rationalism.

The classic Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterfactuals captures that Sobel sequences are consistent sequences, for example: a.If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro dance. b.But if Sophie had gone to the parade and been stuck behind someone tall, she would not have seen Pedro dance. But reverse a sequence like this one and it no longer sounds so good, which is surprising on the classic semantics. This observation motivated Kai von Fintel and Thony Gillies to (...) propose dynamic semantic accounts of counterfactual conditionals. Subsequently, Sarah Moss defended the classic semantics against the charge that it need be abandoned in the face of these order effects, arguing that the infelicity of the reverse sequences is pragmatic. I argue that both accounts are ultimately untenable, but each account has strengths. Seeing what works and what doesn't in each account points the way to the right positive view. With this in mind, I defend a contextualist account of counterfactuals that takes conversational relevance to play a central role. (shrink)

Reducing prejudice is a critical research agenda, and never before has counterfactual priming been evaluated as a potential prejudice-reduction strategy. In the present experiment, participants were randomly assigned to imagine a pleasant interaction with a homosexual man and then think counterfactually about how an incident of sexual discrimination against him might not have occurred (experimental condition) or to imagine a nature scene (control condition). Results demonstrated a significant reduction in sexual prejudice from baseline levels in the counterfactual simulation group. Importantly, (...) whereas intergroup anxiety and motivation to control prejudice were not predictive factors, number of counterfactual thoughts generated independently predicted variance in prejudice reduction. Mechanisms for, and implications of, prejudice-reduction strategies including counterfactual thinking are discussed. (shrink)

The Pneumatist school of medicine has the distinction of being the only medical school in antiquity named for a belief in a part of a human being. Unlike the Herophileans or the Asclepiadeans, their name does not pick out the founder of the school. Unlike the Dogmatists, Empiricists, or Methodists, their name does not pick out a specific approach to medicine. Instead, the name picks out a belief: the fact that pneuma is of paramount importance, both for explaining health and (...) disease, and for determining treatments for the healthy and sick. In this paper, we re-examine what our sources say about the pneuma of the Pneumatists in order to understand what these physicians thought it was and how it shaped their views on physiology, diagnosis and treatment. (shrink)

Drawing together researchers from diverse theoretical positions, the aim of this book is to work towards a coherent and unified account of how we develop an understanding of one's and others' mental states.

Biographical sketch.--Miscellaneous papers and extracts from letters.--Lectures on logic.--Plato's conception of goodness and the good.--Index.

If a guilty offender is justly sentenced to be punished and an innocent volunteer agrees to be punished instead, is that any reason to leave the offender unpunished? In the context of mundane criminal justice, we mostly think not. But in a religious context, some Christians do believe in penal substitution as a theory of the atonement. However, it is not just these Christians, but most of us, who are of two minds. If the punishment is an imprisonment or death, (...) we do not believe in penal substitution. But if it’s a fine, even a big fine, we mostly do. (shrink)

Numerous studies have documented the demand for information regarding corporations’ relationships to society. Much recent research has demonstrated why stakeholders need this information, and how it benefits both companies and the public. These studies suggest numerous methods by which companies can effectively disclose corporate social responsibility (CSR) information to the public, but in practice, reporting this type of information is fraught with legal and ethical uncertainty often unexplored in most literature. This article represents a fresh analysis of the numerous pragmatic (...) consequences and legal and ethical complications inherent in CSR reporting, using Nike Corporation as a case example. The article discusses the theoretical viewpoints surrounding the ethics of CSR disclosure, and presents the case of Nike and the complications it encountered while advertising CSR information. The article ends with an analysis of CSR auditing as a possible solution to companies seeking to improve the method and transparency of social responsibility reporting. (shrink)

Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing phenotypes and their genomic and environmental contexts is perhaps the most pressing scientific bottleneck to integration across many key fields in biology, including genomics, systems biology, development, medicine, evolution, ecology, and systematics. Here we survey the current phenomics landscape, including data resources and handling, and the progress that (...) has been made to accurately capture relevant data descriptions for phenotypes. We present an example of the kind of integration across domains that computable phenotypes would enable, and we call upon the broader biology community, publishers, and relevant funding agencies to support efforts to surmount today's data barriers and facilitate analytical reproducibility. (shrink)

D. H. Hodgson has argued that among highly knowledgeable and rational act-Utilitarians there is no non-Circular reason to be truthful or to expect truthfulness from others; wherefore these utilitarians forfeit the benefits of communication. I reply that hodgson goes wrong by tacitly assuming that his utilitarians have no premises to reason from except those that hodgson lays down in specifying the example under consideration.

El texto que se presenta aquí es la segunda parte de la traducción de New Theory of Universalsy se corresponde con las últimas secciones del artículo original. En el anterior número de Ideas y Valores (157 de abril de 2015) se publicó la primera parte, que corresponde a la introducción y las dos primeras secciones del original.

As a Catholic nun, to suggest Jacqueline Pascal as autonomous might at first glance seem contradictory. We show that her moral deference to the divine is not at all forfeiting her autonomy, but that aligning her own law with God's law is to align her own law with rationality itself, that is, the laws of nature. Her theoretical structure begins with a theory of virtue—viz., how and to whom we have an obligation to be moral. For her, acting in accordance (...) with cultural restrictions or following church orders against her own conscience would be living by the laws of another and so not acting autonomously. Pascal would not live by other's laws, regardless of whether her actions conform to the categories by which society expected her to act. The framework for her laws laid in Pascal's understanding of self-governance: if she wants to act virtuously then she must autonomously follow God's law by making it her own through the sentiments of her heart. Thus, she cannot live by the laws of men, but by the laws of her human nature and in alignment with a rightly ordered universe, that is, God's law, which we show parallels with a Stoic framework of autonomy. (shrink)

Struggles over journalism are often struggles over boundaries. These symbolic contests for control over definition also mark a material struggle over resources. In short: boundaries have consequences. Yet there is a lack of conceptual cohesiveness in what scholars mean by the term "boundaries" or in how we should think about specific boundaries of journalism. This book addresses boundaries head-on by bringing together a global array of authors asking similar questions about boundaries and journalism from a diverse range of perspectives, methodologies, (...) and theoretical backgrounds. (shrink)

'Small businesses do not have the depth to sustain mistakes and losses in the way that large businesses can. It is the view of the management of MacLine that an ethical approach to business is one of the key factors in ensuring the long term survival of the business.’Dr Yehuda Baruch is Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Organisational Research, London Business School, Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London NW1 4SA; and Mr Mark Lewis is Managing Director of MacLine. (...) Teachers interested in having a package of teaching notes and transparencies relevant to this case may contact Dr Baruch at the above address. (shrink)

We show that there exists a properly Σ2 minimal degree b, and moreover that b can be chosen to join with 0′ to 0″ – so that b is a 0″ complement for every degree a such that 0′ ≤ a < 0″.

A guide to retelling your personal, family, and cultural stories to transform your life, your relationships, and the world [bullet] Applies the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy [bullet] Details mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities [bullet] Explores how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with ones that build healthier relationships with each other and the (...) planet We are born into a world of stories that quickly shapes our behavior and development without our conscious awareness. By retelling our personal, family, and cultural narratives we can transform the patterns of our own lives as well as the patterns that shape our communities and the larger social worlds in which we interact. Applying the latest neuroscience research on memory, brain mapping, and brain plasticity to the field of narrative therapy, Lewis Mehl-Madrona and Barbara Mainguy explain how the brain is specialized in the art of story-making and story-telling. They detail mind-mapping and narrative therapy techniques that use story to change behavior patterns in ourselves, our relationships, and our communities. They explore studies that reveal how memory works through story, how the brain recalls things in narrative rather than lists, and how our stories modify our physiology and facilitate health or disease. Drawing on their decades of experience in narrative therapy, the authors examine the art of helping people to change their story, providing brain-mapping practices to discover your inner storyteller and test if the stories you are living are functional or dysfunctional, healing or destructive. They explain how to create new characters and new stories, ones that excite you, help you connect with yourself, and deepen your intimate connections with others. Detailing how shared stories and language form culture, the authors also explore how narrative therapy can help replace dysfunctional cultural stories with those that offer templates for healthier relationships with each other and the planet. (shrink)

The social sciences were founded at the height of the Euromodern era when the belief in infinite expansion coexisted with the willingness to enclose, categorize, and lock up a large part of humanity. The invention of the social sciences was closely linked to this enterprise of disciplinarization of spaces and of populations which accompanied the expansion of capitalism and colonial conquest. Stigmatized, dominated, and colonized groups were constituted as objects by social scientists who considered themselves as pure subjects, and concealed (...) the conditions under which they undertook their research and prohibited the colonized from expressing their own subjectivity. Colonization also imposed a binary cartography of the world and a geography of reason with obligatory references and strict disciplinary divisions. There are many ways to decolonize knowledge, but they remain marginal in a world where white male supremacy is also epistemological. The rejection of disciplinary decadence implies not only a critical but a metacritical gesture, and the refusal of the imperative of objectivation and non-engagement. (shrink)

Throughout history human beings have been preoccupied with personal survival after death. As a consequence, most world religions proclaim that life continues beyond the grave, and they have depicted the Hereafter in a variety of forms. These various conceptions constitute answers to the most perplexing spiritual questions: Will we remember our former lives in the Hereafter? Will we have bodies? Can bodiless souls recognise each other? Will we continue to have personal identity? Will we be punished or rewarded, or absorbed (...) into the Godhead? These issues serve as the basis of this collection of essays which provide a framework for understanding traditional conceptions of the Hereafter as well as new perspectives. (shrink)

Marjorie Lewis draws on her own experience of breaking through the glass ceiling to become the first woman President of the United Theological College of the West Indies. Through this, she considers the theological and biblical perspectives on gender equality, internalized and unrecognized inequality, naming and exorcising abuse in institutional relationships and strategies to survive and thrive. At the heart is a rejection of the notion that all suffering is to be embraced unchallenged as part of the Christian experience (...) and that it is the particular calling of women. This can lead to overwork, burn out and a lack of self care. (shrink)

This article is a short response to two reviews of the book Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education: From Riddles to Radio by Tyson E. Lewis. It discusses the role of aesthetics and memory in cultivating antifascist potentialities in children.

Evaluating the risks and anticipated benefits of medical, behavioral and, social research is a central function of institutional review boards. The calculation that IRBs undertake ultimately determines whether a particular research project involving human participants is permitted to proceed. In medical research the physical harms and even the anticipated benefits of a new procedure or drug are often apparent and quantifiable. In contrast, for social/behavioral research that may involve probing the most intimate feelings, thoughts, and actions of participants, the weighing (...) of risks and anticipated benefits, the calculation of possible harms and the acceptability of that harm require a more intense level of scrutiny.Even the early step of identifying and recruiting participants for a research endeavor may potentially cause harm, making participant selection a focus of IRB analysis. (shrink)