The iCat is a user-interface robot with the ability to express a range of emotions through its facial features. This article summarizes our research to see whether we can increase the believability and likability of the iCat for its human partners through the application of gaze behaviour. Gaze behaviour serves several functions during social interaction such as mediating conversation flow, communicating emotional information and avoiding distraction by restricting visual input. There are several types of eye and head movements that are (...) necessary for realizing these functions. We designed and evaluated a gaze behaviour system for the iCat robot that implements realistic models of the major types of eye and head movements found in living beings: vergence, vestibulo ocular reflexive, smooth pursuit movements and gaze shifts. We discuss how these models are integrated into the software environment of the iCat and can be used to create complex interaction scenarios. We report about some user tests and draw conclusions for future evaluation scenarios. (shrink)

This article reports on the development and teaching of compulsory courses on ethics and engineering at Delft University of Technology (DUT). Attention is paid to the teaching goals, the educational setup and methods, the contents of the courses, involvement of staff from engineering schools, experiences to date, and challenges for the future. The choices made with respect to the development and teaching of the courses are placed within the European and Dutch context and are compared and contrasted with the American (...) situation and experiences. (shrink)

The return of STS to its historical roots / Baird Callicott -- Phil-tech meets eco-phil / Don Idhe -- Is technology use insidious? / Kyle Whyte, Ryan Gunderson, Brett Clark -- Resistance to risky technologies / Paul Thompson -- Remediation technologies and respect for others / Ben Hale -- Early geoengineering governance / Clare Heyward -- Design for sustainability / Ibo van de Poel -- Industrial ecology and environmental design / Braden Allenby -- Ecodesign in the era of symbolic (...) consumption / Zhang Wei -- Do we consume too much? / Mark Sagoff -- Sustainable technologies for sustainable lifestyles / Philip Brey -- Sustainable animal agriculture and environmental virtue ethics / Raymond Anthony -- Technology, responsibility, and meat / Wyatt Galusky. (shrink)

Van der Poel’s book is a relatively comprehensive essay in ethics or, more properly, moral theology, providing outlines of a theological anthropology necessary for understanding man as a moral agent, a suggested process for determining the value of human actions, a consideration of conscience, and a discussion of virtue and vice. Van der Poel lays great stress on man’s historicity and the conditioned nature of moral laws and principles. He likewise attacks a naive dualism and proposes a view (...) of man influenced to considerable extent by contemporary existential phenomenology. The thought of Merleau-Ponty is quite strongly reflected in the anthropology proposed. Perhaps the most original section of the work is the one dealing with the evaluation of man’s moral acts. Van der Poel sharply distinguishes between the "material result" or physical activity and the agent’s intention and maintains that the "human reality" of the act is an interpenetration of these two aspects and that its moral worth is ultimately to be judged by "its impact upon the well-being of the individual and the human society." This view seems to have some kinship with utilitarian ethics, for it seems to make the final criterion of moral activity rest in its consequences. The comments of Paul Ramsey concerning the function of an "exception-making criterion" seem applicable to Van der Poel’s analysis of moral activity, and his way of describing human acts seems open to the same kind of criticism that Eric D'Arcy applied to the extreme utilitarianism of J. J. C. Smart in his Moral Acts: An Essay in their Evaluation.—W. E. M. (shrink)

Van der Poel’s book is a relatively comprehensive essay in ethics or, more properly, moral theology, providing outlines of a theological anthropology necessary for understanding man as a moral agent, a suggested process for determining the value of human actions, a consideration of conscience, and a discussion of virtue and vice. Van der Poel lays great stress on man’s historicity and the conditioned nature of moral laws and principles. He likewise attacks a naive dualism and proposes a view (...) of man influenced to considerable extent by contemporary existential phenomenology. The thought of Merleau-Ponty is quite strongly reflected in the anthropology proposed. Perhaps the most original section of the work is the one dealing with the evaluation of man’s moral acts. Van der Poel sharply distinguishes between the "material result" or physical activity and the agent’s intention and maintains that the "human reality" of the act is an interpenetration of these two aspects and that its moral worth is ultimately to be judged by "its impact upon the well-being of the individual and the human society." This view seems to have some kinship with utilitarian ethics, for it seems to make the final criterion of moral activity rest in its consequences. The comments of Paul Ramsey concerning the function of an "exception-making criterion" seem applicable to Van der Poel’s analysis of moral activity, and his way of describing human acts seems open to the same kind of criticism that Eric D'Arcy applied to the extreme utilitarianism of J. J. C. Smart in his Moral Acts: An Essay in their Evaluation.—W. E. M. (shrink)

Organizations such as the EU High-Level Expert Group on AI and the IEEE have recently formulated ethical principles and (moral) values that should be adhered to in the design and deployment of artificial intelligence (AI). These include respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, fairness, transparency, explainability, and accountability. But how can we ensure and verify that an AI system actually respects these values? To help answer this question, I propose an account for determining when an AI system can be said to embody (...) certain values. This account understands embodied values as the result of design activities intended to embed those values in such systems. AI systems are here understood as a special kind of sociotechnical system that, like traditional sociotechnical systems, are composed of technical artifacts, human agents, and institutions but—in addition—contain artificial agents and certain technical norms that regulate interactions between artificial agents and other elements of the system. The specific challenges and opportunities of embedding values in AI systems are discussed, and some lessons for better embedding values in AI systems are drawn. (shrink)

How are we to appraise new technological developments that may bring revolutionary social changes? Currently this is often done by trying to predict or anticipate social consequences and to use these as a basis for moral and regulatory appraisal. Such an approach can, however, not deal with the uncertainties and unknowns that are inherent in social changes induced by technological development. An alternative approach is proposed that conceives of the introduction of new technologies into society as a social experiment. An (...) ethical framework for the acceptability of such experiments is developed based on the bioethical principles for experiments with human subjects: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, and justice. This provides a handle for the moral and regulatory assessment of new technologies and their impact on society. (shrink)

This paper describes a teaching methodology whereby students can gain practical experience of ethical decision-making in the engineering design process. We first argue for the necessity to teach a ‘practical’ understanding of ethical issues in engineering education along with the usual theoretical or hypothetical approaches. We then show how this practical understanding can be achieved by using a collaborative design game, describing how, for example, the concept of responsibility can be explored from this practical basis. We conclude that the use (...) of games in design education can provide an excellent basis for discussing practical and ethical reasoning during the process of design. (shrink)

Three philosophical perspectives on the relation between technology and society are distinguished and discussed: 1) technology as an autonomous force that determines society; 2) technology as a human construct that can be shaped by human values, and 3) a co-evolutionary perspective on technology and society where neither of them determines the other. The historical evolution of the three perspectives is discussed and it is argued that all three are still present in current debates about technological change and how it may (...) affect society. This is illustrated for the case of Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is argued that each of the three perspectives contributes to the debate of AI but that the third has the strongest potential to uncover blind spots in the current debate. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual investigation into the value impacts and relations of algorithms in the domain of justice and security. As a conceptual investigation, it represents one step in a value sensitive design based methodology. Here, we explicate and analyse the expression of values of accuracy, privacy, fairness and equality, property and ownership, and accountability and transparency in this context. We find that values are sensitive to disvalue if algorithms are designed, implemented or deployed inappropriately or without sufficient consideration (...) for their value impacts, potentially resulting in problems including discrimination and constrained autonomy. Furthermore, we outline a framework of conceptual relations of values indicated by our analysis, and potential value tensions in their implementation and deployment with a view towards supporting future research, and supporting the value sensitive design of algorithms in justice and security. (shrink)

The ongoing energy transition toward more sustainable energy systems implies a change in the values for which such systems are designed. The energy transition however is not just about sustainability but also about values like energy security and affordability, and we witness the emergence of new values like energy justice and energy democracy. How can we understand such value changes and how can or should they affect the design of future energy systems? This introduction to the special section on value (...) change in energy systems introduces the main themes and questions. It discusses different understandings of values and value change, explains why the topic is important and how it can be methodologically studied. (shrink)

This paper aims at contributing to a research agenda in engineering ethics by exploring the ethical aspects of engineering design processes. A number of ethically relevant topics with respect to design processes are identified. These topics could be a subject for further research in the field of engineering ethics. In addition, it is argued that the way design processes are now organised and should be organised from a normative point of view is an important topic for research.

We examine whether Thomsonian constitutivism, a metaethical view that analyses value in terms of ‘goodness-fixing kinds,’ i.e. kinds that themselves set the standards for being a good instance of the respective kind, offers a satisfactory explanation of value change and disagreement. While value disagreement has long been considered an important explanandum, we introduce value change as a closely related but distinct phenomenon of metaethical interest. We argue that constitutivism fails to explain both phenomena because of its commitment to goodness-fixing kinds. (...) Constitutivism explains away disagreement and at best explains the emergence of new values, not genuine change. Therefore, Thomsonian constitutivism is not a good fix for realist problems with explaining value disagreement, and value change. (shrink)

Safe-by-design aims at addressing safety issues already during the R&D and design phases of new technologies. SbD has increasingly become popular in the last few years for addressing the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology and synthetic biology. We ask to what extent SbD approaches can deal with uncertainty, in particular with indeterminacy, i.e., the fact that the actual safety of a technology depends on the behavior of actors in the value chain like users and operators. We argue that while (...) indeterminacy may be approached by designing out users as much as possible in attaining safety, this is often not a good strategy. It will not only make it more difficult to deal with unexpected risks; it also misses out on the resources that users can bring for achieving safety, and it is undemocratic. We argue that rather than directly designing for safety, it is better to design for the responsibility for safety, i.e., designers should think where the responsibility for safety is best situated and design technologies accordingly. We propose some heuristics that can be used in deciding how to share and distribute responsibility for safety through design. (shrink)

Technologies shape who we are, how we organize our societies and how we relate to nature. For example, social media challenges democracy; artificial intelligence raises the question of what is unique to humans; and the possibility to create artificial wombs may affect notions of motherhood and birth. Some have suggested that we address global warming by engineering the climate, but how does this impact our responsibility to future generations and our relation to nature? This book shows how technologies can be (...) socially and conceptually disruptive and investigates how to come to terms with this disruptive potential. Four technologies are studied: social media, social robots, climate engineering and artificial wombs. The authors highlight the disruptive potential of these technologies, and the new questions this raises. The book also discusses responses to conceptual disruption, like conceptual engineering, the deliberate revision of concepts. (shrink)

The Safe-by-Design approach in synthetic biology holds the promise of designing the building blocks of life in an organism guided by the value of safety. This paves a new way for using biotechnologies safely. However, the Safe-by-Design approach moves the bulk of the responsibility for safety to the actors in the research and development phase. Also, it assumes that safety can be defined and understood by all stakeholders in the same way. These assumptions are problematic and might actually undermine safety. (...) This research explores these assumptions through the use of a Group Decision Room. In this set up, anonymous and non-anonymous deliberation methods are used for different stakeholders to exchange views. During the session, a potential synthetic biology application is used as a case for investigation: the Food Warden, a biosensor contained in meat packaging for indicating the freshness of meat. Participants discuss what potential issues might arise, how responsibilities should be distributed in a forward-looking way, who is to blame if something would go wrong. They are also asked what safety and responsibility mean at different phases, and for different stakeholders. The results of the session are not generalizable, but provide valuable insights. Issues of safety cannot all be taken care of in the R&D phase. Also, when things go wrong, there are proximal and distal causes to consider. In addition, capacities of actors play an important role in defining their responsibilities. Last but not least, this research provides a new perspective on the role of instruction manuals in achieving safety. (shrink)

This paper addresses the challenge of ethically integrating ChatGPT, a sophisticated AI language model, into K-14 economics education. Amidst the growing presence of AI in classrooms, it proposes the “Evaluate, Reflect, Assurance” model, a novel decision-making framework grounded in normative and virtue ethics, to guide educators. This approach is detailed through a theoretical decision tree, offering educators a heuristic tool to weigh the educational advantages and ethical dimensions of using ChatGPT. An educator can use the decision tree to reach a (...) conclusion on using ChatGPT within the classroom environment by using ethical considerations to promote personalized learning and upholding academic integrity. The paper stresses the importance of ongoing professional development for educators in ethical AI usage and calls for institutional support in this pursuit. It also identifies future research directions, including long-term impact studies of ChatGPT and comparative analyses of various AI tools in economics education, underscoring the paper’s relevance to current educational technology discourse. (shrink)

Courses on ethics and technology have become compulsory for many students at the three Dutch technical universities during the past few years. During this time, teachers have faced a number of didactic problems, which are partly due to a growing number of students. In order to deal with these challenges, teachers in ethics at the three technical universities in the Netherlands — in Delft, Eindhoven and Twente — have developed a web-based computer program called Agora (see www.ethicsandtechnology.com). This program enables (...) students to exercise their ethical understanding and skills extensively. The program makes it possible for students to participate actively in moral reflection and reasoning, and to develop the moral competencies that are needed in their later professional practice. The developers of the program have tried to avoid two traps. Firstly, they rejected, from the outset, a cookbook style of dealing with ethical problems that applied ethics is often taken to be and, secondly, they wanted to design a flexible program that respects the student’s as well as the teacher’s creativity, and that tries to engage students in moral reflection. Agora meets these requirements. The program offers possibilities that extend beyond the requirements that are usually accepted for case-exercises in applied ethics, and that have been realised in several other computer models for teaching ethics. In this article, we describe the main considerations in the development of Agora and the features of the resulting program. (shrink)

Editors’ Overview: Moral Responsibility in Technology and Engineering Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-11 DOI 10.1007/s11948-011-9285-z Authors Neelke Doorn, Department of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Ibo van de Poel, Department of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Journal Science and Engineering Ethics Online ISSN 1471-5546 Print ISSN 1353-3452 Journal Volume Volume 18 Journal Issue Volume (...) 18, Number 1. (shrink)

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and resulting health and economic crisis has caused major disruptions in the functioning of food systems and revived the discussion on what forms balanced, effective and responsible crisis management. As part of its thought leadership and its social responsibility in times of crisis, WUR is uniquely placed to contribute to the scientific knowledge base and data collection mechanisms required for early recognition and rapid response. In addition, WUR takes on the challenge to generate timely insights into (...) the possible scenarios for the prevention of a crisis and during and after emergencies to enable our clients and stakeholders to make informed decisions. Lastly, WUR can provide a better understanding of the mechanisms of spillover, and tangible and practical tools to help reduce the risk of spillover events from occurring, prevent pathogen spread, or mitigate the impacts of a future pandemic. In its research institutes and university, WUR brings together expertise in human, animal, plant and environmental health, the global agri-food system, economics, social sciences, food safety and security, ethics, and policy. Here, in the knowledge that COVID-19 will not be the last pandemic, we present WUR’s ambition and capabilities towards an integrated global multi-stakeholder approach to the prevention and management of potentially pandemic diseases, across the four phases of crisis management; prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery and learning. (shrink)

AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) is an evolutionarily conserved cellular switch that activates catabolic pathways and turns off anabolic processes. In this way, AMPK activation can restore the perturbation of cellular energy levels. In physiological situations, AMPK senses energy deficiency (in the form of an increased AMP/ATP ratio), but it is also activated by metabolic insults, such as glucose or oxygen deprivation. Metformin, one of the most widely prescribed anti‐diabetic drugs, exerts its actions by AMPK activation. However, while the functions of (...) AMPK as a metabolic regulator are fairly well understood, its actions in neuronal cells only recently gained attention. This review will discuss newly emerged functions of AMPK in neuroprotection and neurodegeneration. Additionally, recent views on the role of AMPK in autophagy, an important catabolic process that is also involved in neurodegeneration and cancer, will be highlighted. (shrink)

Pendant les années 1968-1977, l'héritage culturel et politique de Mai 68 se diffuse dans la société française. Dans cet ensemble d'idées le maoïsme et le féminisme constituent les courants les plus importants. L'objectif de cette étude qui se veut une contribution à l'histoire des idées, est d'analyser comment le maoïsme et le féminisme ont été accueillis par trois revues intellectuelles prestigieuses : Tel Quel, Les Temps modernes et Esprit. Cette approche permet également d'évoquer le lien qui relie Sartre aux maoïstes (...) et la relation qui s'est établie entre les militantes du Mouvement des femmes et Simone de Beauvoir. De même, le quatrième chapitre traite l'influence du maoïsme sur la théorie de texte de Tel Quel, tandis que le chapitre neuf se termine par une analyse du rapport qui existe entre l'écriture de Julia Kristeva et les prémisses féministes du groupe Psych et Po. La description chronologique du corpus permet de mieux saisir l'évolution de certaines idées qui ont dominé l'histoire intellectuelle de l'après-Mai 68, comme celle d'une " révolution de la pensée ". Le matériel fourni par l'histoire sert aussi de pont de départ à une analyse sociologique de la rivalité qui existe entre les revues féministes d'une part, et entre Tel Quel et le surréalisme d'autre part. (shrink)

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

Deals with such questions as: What is engineering? In what respect does engineering differ from science? What ethical problems does engineering raise? By what ethical principles are engineers guided? How do engineers themselves conceive of their profession? What do they see as the main philosophical challenges confronting them in the 21st century?

A study of the philosophical and theological thought of Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1486-1535). It contains new perspectives on Agrippa's place in the world of humanism and offers a new approach to the interpretation of Renaissance declamations.

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

In this editorial contribution, two issues relevant to the question, what should be at the top of the research agenda for ethics and technology, are identified and discussed. Firstly: can, and do, engineers make a difference to the degree to which technology leads to morally desirable outcomes? What role does professional autonomy play here, and what are its limits? And secondly, what should be the scope of engineers’ responsibility; that is to say, on which issues are they, as engineers, morally (...) obliged to reflect? The research agendas proposed by the authors contributing to this special section, implicitly, give different answers to these questions. We suggest that an explicit discussion of these issues would greatly help in constructing a common research agenda. (shrink)

We propose a new approach for tracing value change. Value change may lead to a mismatch between current value priorities in society and the values for which technologies were designed in the past, such as energy technologies based on fossil fuels, which were developed when sustainability was not considered a very important value. Better anticipating value change is essential to avoid a lack of social acceptance and moral acceptability of technologies. While value change can be studied historically and qualitatively, we (...) propose a more quantitative approach that uses large text corpora. It uses probabilistic topic models, which allow us to trace values that are latent. We demonstrate the approach for five types of value change in technology. Our approach is useful for testing hypotheses about value change, such as verifying whether value change has occurred and identifying patterns of value change. The approach can be used to trace value change for various technologies and text corpora, including scientific articles, newspaper articles, and policy documents. (shrink)

In recent years, informed consent has been suggested as a way to deal with risks posed by engineered nanomaterials. We argue that while we can learn from experiences with informed consent in treatment and research contexts, we should be aware that informed consent traditionally pertains to certain features of the relationships between doctors and patients and researchers and research participants, rather than those between producers and consumers and employers and employees, which are more prominent in the case of engineered nanomaterials. (...) To better understand these differences, we identify three major relational factors that influence whether valid informed consent is obtainable, namely dependency, personal proximity, and existence of shared interests. We show that each type of relationship offers different opportunities for reflection and therefore poses distinct challenges for obtaining valid informed consent. Our analysis offers a systematic understanding of the possibilities for attaining informed consent in the context of nanomaterial risks and makes clear that measures or regulations to improve the obtainment of informed consent should be attuned to the specific interpersonal relations to which it is supposed to apply. (shrink)

A long-standing theme in discussion of perception and thought has been that our primary cognitive contact with individual objects and events in the world derives from our perceptual contact with them. When I look at a duck in front of me, I am not merely presented with the fact that there is at least one duck in the area, rather I seem to be presented withthisthing (as one might put it from my perspective) in front of me, which looks to (...) me to be a duck. Furthermore, such a perception would seem to put me in a position not merely to make the existential judgment that there is some duck or other present, but rather to make a singular, demonstrative judgment, that that is a duck. My grounds for an existential judgment in this case derives from my apprehension of the demonstrative thought and not vice versa. (shrink)

Featuring a unique systematic approach to dealing with ethical problems known as the 'ethical cycle, ' the book utilizes an abundance of real-life case studies ...

This book defends antitheodicism, arguing that theodicies, seeking to excuse God for evil and suffering in the world, fail to ethically acknowledge the victims of suffering. The authors argue for this view using literary and philosophical resources, commencing with Immanuel Kant's 1791 "Theodicy Essay" and its reading of the Book of Job. Three important twentieth century antitheodicist positions are explored, including "Jewish" post-Holocaust ethical antitheodicism, Wittgensteinian antitheodicism exemplified by D.Z. Phillips and pragmatist antitheodicism defended by William James. The authors argue (...) that these approaches to evil and suffering are fundamentally Kantian. Literary works such as Franz Kafka'sThe Trial, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, are examined in order to crucially advance the philosophical case for antitheodicism. (shrink)

Peterson's objection to my proposal to treat new technologies as social experiments seems straightforward. Doing so would replace the old question ‘Is technology X ethically acceptable?’ (Let us ca...

Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence deals with the history of temporal logic as well as the crucial systematic questions within the field. The book studies the rich contributions from ancient and medieval philosophy up to the downfall of temporal logic in the Renaissance. The modern rediscovery of the subject, which is especially due to the work of A. N. Prior, is described, leading into a thorough discussion of the use of temporal logic in computer science and the (...) understanding of natural language. Temporal Logic: From Ancient Ideas to Artificial Intelligence thus interweaves linguistic, philosophical and computational aspects into an informative and inspiring whole. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of moral uncertainty in explaining the morally disruptive character of new technologies. We argue that existing accounts of technomoral change do not fully explain its disruptiveness. This explanatory gap can be bridged by examining the epistemic dimensions of technomoral change, focusing on moral uncertainty and inquiry. To develop this account, we examine three historical cases: the introduction of the early pregnancy test, the contraception pill, and brain death. The resulting account highlights what we call “differential (...) disruption” and provides a resource for fields such as technology assessment, ethics of technology, and responsible innovation. (shrink)

In the value sensitive design literature, there has been little attention for how values may change during the adoption and use of a sociotechnical system, and what that implies for design. A value change taxonomy is proposed, as well as a number of technical features that allow dealing with value change.

When many people are involved in an activity, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to pinpoint who is morally responsible for what, a phenomenon known as the ‘problem of many hands.’ This term is increasingly used to describe problems with attributing individual responsibility in collective settings in such diverse areas as public administration, corporate management, law and regulation, technological development and innovation, healthcare, and finance. This volume provides an in-depth philosophical analysis of this problem, examining the notion of moral (...) responsibility and distinguishing between different normative meanings of responsibility, both backward-looking and forward-looking. Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, the authors develop a coherent conceptualization of the problem of many hands, taking into account the relationship, and possible tension, between individual and collective responsibility. This systematic inquiry into the problem of many hands pertains to discussions about moral responsibility in a variety of applied settings. (shrink)

In his last book, David Armstrong sets out his metaphysical system in a set of concise and lively chapters each dealing with one aspect of the world. He begins with the assumption that all that exists is the physical world of space-time. On this foundation he constructs a coherent metaphysical scheme that gives plausible answers to many of the great problems of metaphysics. He gives accounts of properties, relations, and particulars; laws of nature; modality; abstract objects such as numbers; and (...) time and mind. (shrink)