To what extent do moral judgments depend on conscious reasoning from explicitly understood principles? We address this question by investigating one particular moral principle, the principle of the double effect. Using web-based technology, we collected a large data set on individuals' responses to a series of moral dilemmas, asking when harm to innocent others is permissible. Each moral dilemma presented a choice between action and inaction, both resulting in lives saved and lives lost. Results showed that: (1) patterns of moral (...) judgments were consistent with the principle of double effect and showed little variation across differences in gender, age, educational level, ethnicity, religion or national affiliation (within the limited range of our sample population) and (2) a majority of subjects failed to provide justifications that could account for their judgments. These results indicate that the principle of the double effect may be operative in our moral judgments but not open to conscious introspection. We discuss these results in light of current psychological theories of moral cognition, emphasizing the need to consider the unconscious appraisal system that mentally represents the causal and intentional properties of human action. (shrink)

Na questão do livre-arbítrio, Raimundo Lúlio parte, sem dúvida, de colocações agostinianas referentes às três potências da alma. Mas o pensador mallorquino vive num mundo onde a noção de individuo adquiriu espaços antes desconhecidos. Entretanto, comparando o pensamento de Lúlio, com o de Abelardo e de Duns Scotus, parece que ele se encontra bem mais próximo de Agostinho que do *individualismo' dos pensadores medievais.

In this article, we review the Agrarian Question focusing on dairy farms. We have the dual aim of adding to the debate surrounding the economic profitability of small and large dairy farms and increasing what is known about the decline of dairy farms. The agrarian question at the heart of our research centres on the paradoxical endurance of family farms, despite predictions from both liberal and Marxist perspectives that they would diminish in number over time. By addressing these complex issues, (...) we hope to shed light on the challenges and opportunities facing the dairy industry today. We focus on analysing dairy farms in the European Union countries, using panel regressions from 2008 to 2018 to define the relationship between the average number of cows per farm, profit margins and Farm Net Income. The most important results show that (i) paradoxically, profits were higher on smaller farms; (ii) however, empirical data show that small dairy farms are disappearing; (iii) this is because when including subsidies, farms with a higher number of cows are more profitable than smaller farms. (shrink)

La historia, buen referente para los tiempos de crisis, informa nuestro presente desde esta experiencia. Este libro trata, en primer lugar, de la conexión entre el taller del historiador y la explicación de la historia: cómo se construye este saber. En segundo lugar se identifica a los agentes de la historia (personas, colectivos y fuerzas sociales) se rastrea cómo la producen y se diseña su desarrollo, desde los tiempos del arco y la flecha hasta los de internet. En fin, la (...) tercera de sus claves es tomarle el pulso a la historiografía desde la Antigüedad a nuestros días, incidiéndose en la crisis de certidumbres que desde los años setenta del siglo XX ha afectado a las humanidades y ciencias sociales y ha diversificado y enriquecido los enfoques de la historia social. (shrink)

Marc-Wogau, K. Mina filosofiska fördomar.--Gustafsson, L. Om klassifikation.--Kanger, S. Några synpunkter på begreppet inflytande.--Torstendahl, R. Minikrav, optimumnormer och paradigm i historisk vetenskap.--Lagerberg, D. Punktkommentarer till dialektiken.--Nordenfeldt, L. Om olika former av interaktion.--Puterman, Z. An indeterminist interpretation of Marx's historical determinism.--Carls, R. Kunskap och frihet.--Andersson, J. S. Some notions of pragmatic implication.--Tönisson, I. A preliminary study of interpreting K[subscript x]ø¹.--Bergström, L. Vilken handlingsutilitarism är den riktiga?--Alfredsson, T. Kärlekskoefficienter.--Segerberg, K. The assignment problem as a problem of social choice.--Åqvist, L. En tidslogisk (...) variant av Morgenstjärneparadoxen. (shrink)

Suddenly, in the twenty-first century, religion has become a political power. It affects us all, whether we¿re religious or not. If we¿re not in danger of being blown up by a suicide bomber we¿ve got leaders to whom God speaks, ordering them to start a war. We¿re beset by people who demand that we give ourselves to Jesus while they smugly assure us of their own superiority and inherent goodness. We¿re surrounded by those who noisily reject science while making full (...) use of the benefits science brings; by the ¿spiritual¿ ones; the ones who believe in magic; and there¿s the militant atheists berating us all for our stupidity. We wouldn¿t object to what people believed if only they¿d keep it to themselves. We want to make up our own minds about what we believe, but it¿s difficult to do this. Everyone has to face the dilemma that we all die but no one knows for certain what death actually is. Is it the end of our identity or a doorway to another life? Whichever we choose, our choice is a fantasy that determines the purpose of our life. If death is the end of our identity, we have to make this life satisfactory, whatever ¿satisfactory¿ might mean to us. If it is a doorway to another life, what are the standards we have to reach to go to that better life? All religions promise to overcome death, but there¿s no set of religious or philosophical beliefs that ensures that our life is always happy and secure. Moreover, for many of us, what we were taught about a religion severely diminished our self-confidence and left us with a constant debilitating feeling of guilt and shame. Through all this turmoil comes the calm, clear voice of eminent psychologist Dorothy Rowe. She separates the political from the personal, the power-seeking from the compassionate. She shows how, if we use our beliefs as a defence against our feelings of worthlessness, we feel compelled to force our beliefs on to other people by coercion or aggression. However, it is possible to create a set of beliefs, expressed in the religious or philosophical metaphors most meaningful to us, which allow us to live at peace with ourselves and other people, to feel strong in ourselves without having to remain a child forever dependent on some supernatural power, and to face life with courage and optimism. (shrink)

Ceteris-paribus clauses are nothing to worry about; aceteris-paribus qualifier is not poisonously indeterminate in meaning. Ceteris-paribus laws teach us that a law need not be associated straightforwardly with a regularity in the manner demanded by regularity analyses of law and analyses of laws as relations among universals. This lesson enables us to understand the sense in which the laws of nature would have been no different under various counterfactual suppositions — a feature even of those laws that involve no ceteris-paribus (...) qualification and are actually associated with exceptionless regularities. Ceteris-paribus generalizations of an‘inexact science’ qualify as laws of that science in virtue of their distinctive relation to counterfactuals: they form a set that is stable for the purposes of that field. (Though an accident may possess tremendous resilience under counterfactual suppositions, the laws are sharply distinguished from the accidents in that the laws are collectively as resilient as they could logically possibly be.) The stability of an inexact science's laws may involve their remaining reliable even under certain counterfactual suppositions violating fundamental laws of physics. The ceteris-paribus laws of an inexact science may thus possess a kind of necessity lacking in the fundamental laws of physics. A nomological explanation supplied by an inexact science would then be irreducible to an explanation of the same phenomenon at the level of fundamental physics. Island biogeography is used to illustrate how a special science could be autonomous in this manner. (shrink)

Gender, age, and culturally specific beliefs are often considered relevant to observed variation in social interactions. At present, however, the scientific literature is mixed with respect to the significance of these factors in guiding moral judgments. In this study, we explore the role of each of these factors in moral judgment by presenting the results of a web-based study of Eastern (i.e., Russia) and Western (i.e., USA, UK, Canada) subjects, male and female, and young and old. Participants ( n = (...) 659) responded to hypothetical moral scenarios describing situations where sacrificing one life resulted in saving five others. Though men and women from both types of cultures judged (1) harms caused by action as less permissible than harms caused by omission, (2) means-based harms as less permissible than side-effects, and (3) harms caused by contact as less permissible than by non-contact, men in both cultures delivered more utilitarian judgments (save the five, sacrifice one) than women. Moreover, men from Western cultures were more utilitarian than Russian men, with no differences observed for women. In both cultures, older participants delivered less utilitarian judgments than younger participants. These results suggest that certain core principles may mediate moral judgments across different societies, implying some degree of universality, while also allowing a limited range of variation due to sociocultural factors. (shrink)

This article reflects on the intersection of the New Testament’s witness with current questions of illness, medication, risk, luck, death, and hope. Drawing principally on the Gospel of Matthew and the letters of Paul, I argue that, for Christians, hope in the resurrection—not the ability to avoid suffering and death—provides the best context for prudential judgment in light of the inscrutability of the future and the concomitant opacity that attends medical decision-making. We do not and will not know what we (...) would need to know in order to make decisions we can count on with surety, and we thus read Scripture in order to become the people who can make wise judgments in the meantime called hope. (shrink)

In early modern theories of ‘proper’ style, ambiguously, difficulty could convey a sense of excellence on one hand (of national belonging, imperial ambition or manly ‘virility’) while also being deployed to denigrate unseemly (too feminine or foreign) speech. Difficulty erupts precisely in the points of friction: when boundaries around ablebodymindedness are drawn or when the available forms of expression are insufficient. Instead of eradicating difficulty altogether, I sift through early modern French, English and Italian writing on rhetoric to make a (...) case for paying closer attention to difficulty, lingering with it, and seeing what these friction points ultimately reveal. The contemporary concept of ‘disability gain’ posits disability not as a defect to be remedied, erased or cured, but rather as a mode of being in the world that allows for innovation, creativity and even added affects, resources or alternative epistemologies. Instead of considering, in the pedagogical domain, how to construct conceptual ‘on-ramps’ for simplifying difficulty, what would we gain by leaning into the unclear, uncertain and potentially joyful ‘other’ forms of communication itself, such as dysfluency, stuttering or Remi Yergeau’s concept of the rhizomatic neuroqueer? (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that agency-based accounts of moral status are more plausible than many have previously thought. I do this by developing a novel account of moral status that takes agency, understood as the capacity for intentional action, to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the possession of moral status. This account also suggests that the capacities required for sentience entail the possession of agency, and the capacities required for agency, entail the possession of sentience. (...) Thus on this account sentient beings possess agency and agents possess sentience. If this is correct, it will show that an Agency Account of moral status can offer a plausible defence of the moral status of all sentient beings, something that previous Agency Accounts have not succeeded in doing. What is more, this account could establish that all sentient animals are not just moral status holders per se, but that they are owed pro tanto obligations regarding continued existence and liberty, similar in kind, though not always in strength, to those owed to humans. (shrink)

I review the brain disease model of addiction promoted by medical, scientific, and clinical authorities in the US and elsewhere. I then show that the disease model is flawed because brain changes in addiction are similar to those generally observed when recurrent, highly motivated goal seeking results in the development of deep habits, Pavlovian learning, and prefrontal disengagement. This analysis relies on concepts of self-organization, neuroplasticity, personality development, and delay discounting. It also highlights neural and behavioral parallels between substance addictions, (...) behavioral addictions, normative compulsive behaviors, and falling in love. I note that the short duration of addictive rewards leads to negative emotions that accelerate the learning cycle, but cortical reconfiguration in recovery should also inform our understanding of addiction. I end by showing that the ethos of the disease model makes it difficult to reconcile with a developmental-learning orientation. (shrink)

Ceteris-paribus clauses are nothing to worry about; aceteris-paribus qualifier is not poisonously indeterminate in meaning. Ceteris-paribus laws teach us that a law need not be associated straightforwardly with a regularity in the manner demanded by regularity analyses of law and analyses of laws as relations among universals. This lesson enables us to understand the sense in which the laws of nature would have been no different under various counterfactual suppositions — a feature even of those laws that involve no ceteris-paribus (...) qualification and are actually associated with exceptionless regularities. Ceteris-paribus generalizations of an‘inexact science’ qualify as laws of that science in virtue of their distinctive relation to counterfactuals: they form a set that is stable for the purposes of that field. (Though an accident may possess tremendous resilience under counterfactual suppositions, the laws are sharply distinguished from the accidents in that the laws are collectively as resilient as they could logically possibly be.) The stability of an inexact science's laws may involve their remaining reliable even under certain counterfactual suppositions violating fundamental laws of physics. The ceteris-paribus laws of an inexact science may thus possess a kind of necessity lacking in the fundamental laws of physics. A nomological explanation supplied by an inexact science would then be irreducible to an explanation of the same phenomenon at the level of fundamental physics. Island biogeography is used to illustrate how a special science could be autonomous in this manner. (shrink)

Efforts to bridge emotion theory with neurobiology can be facilitated by dynamic systems (DS) modeling. DS principles stipulate higher-order wholes emerging from lower-order constituents through bidirectional causal processes cognition relations. I then present a psychological model based on this reconceptualization, identifying trigger, self-amplification, and self-stabilization phases of emotion-appraisal states, leading to consolidating traits. The article goes on to describe neural structures and functions involved in appraisal and emotion, as well as DS mechanisms of integration by which they interact. These mechanisms (...) include nested feedback interactions, global effects of neuromodulation, vertical integration, action-monitoring, and synaptic plasticity, and they are modeled in terms of both functional integration and temporal synchronization. I end by elaborating the psychological model of emotion–appraisal states with reference to neural processes. (shrink)

It has often been argued that Humean accounts of natural law cannot account for the role played by laws in scientific explanations. Loewer (Philosophical Studies 2012) has offered a new reply to this argument on behalf of Humean accounts—a reply that distinguishes between grounding (which Loewer portrays as underwriting a kind of metaphysical explanation) and scientific explanation. I will argue that Loewer’s reply fails because it cannot accommodate the relation between metaphysical and scientific explanation. This relation also resolves a puzzle (...) about scientific explanation that Hempel and Oppenheim (Philosophy of Science 15:135–75, 1948) encountered. (shrink)

Many activities impose risks of harm on other people. One such class of risks are those that individuals culpably impose on others, such as the risk arising from reckless driving. Do such risks in themselves constitute a harm, over and above any harm that actually eventuates? This paper considers three recent views that each answer in the affirmative. I argue that each fails to overcome what I call the ‘interference objection’. The risk of harm itself, whether taken as a subjective (...) or an objective risk, is unable to interfere with the interests of victims in order to constitute a harm. This does not mean that a risk of harm cannot itself be wrongful, but the conclusion does weaken the moral objectionableness of impositions of risks of harm. (shrink)

Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, André Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. _ I Am a Beautiful Monster_ is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's (...) poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator. Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational _carpe diem_. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura. I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations. (shrink)

The word “identity,” like too many abstract words, has become a repetitive slogan in contemporary usage, sometimes even a resolute exemption from feeling and thinking. Identity is sacred; it is evident; we can only be for it.We use this little abstract word none too seriously. We rush to build ideological camps on it. However, it conceals abysses that the greatest minds since Plato have sought to explore. We can read in the Timaeus, with respect to being and by opposition to (...) becoming : “It is a solitary and unique circle, but because of its excellence capable of living alone with itself, without needing anyone else, and with respect to relations and friends, it is self-sufficient.”. (shrink)

Logical puzzles like the doctrinal paradox raise the problem of how to aggregate individual judgements into a collective judgement, or alternatively, how to merge collectively inconsistent knowledge bases. In this paper, we view judgement aggregation as a function on propositional logic valuations, and we investigate how logic constrains judgement aggregation. In particular, we show that there is no non-dictatorial decision method for aggregating sets of judgements in a logically consistent way if the decision method is local, i.e., only depends on (...) the individual judgements on the proposition under consideration. (shrink)

Many philosophers have believed that the laws of nature differ from the accidental truths in their invariance under counterfactual perturbations. Roughly speaking, the laws would still have held had q been the case, for any q that is consistent with the laws. (Trivially, no accident would still have held under every such counterfactual supposition.) The main problem with this slogan (even if it is true) is that it uses the laws themselves to delimit qs range. I present a means of (...) distinguishing the laws (and their logical consequences) from the accidents, in terms of their range of invariance under counterfactual antecedents, that does not appeal to physical modalities (or any cognate notion) in delimiting the relevant range of counterfactual perturbations. I then argue that this approach explicates the sense in which the laws possess a kind of necessity. (shrink)

I identify the special sort of stability (invariance, resilience, etc.) that distinguishes laws from accidental truths. Although an accident can have a certain invariance under counterfactual suppositions, there is no continuum between laws and accidents here; a law's invariance is different in kind, not in degree, from an accident's. (In particular, a law's range of invariance is not "broader"--at least in the most straightforward sense.) The stability distinctive of the laws is used to explicate what it would mean for there (...) to be multiple grades (or degrees) of physical necessity. Whether there are is for science to discover. (shrink)

Deux grands philosophes français contemporains, deux regards sur la métaphysique. Le regard de Dominique Janicaud propose de préserver l'inquiétude métaphysique, sans les excès de la métaphysique, avec l'intention d'ébaucher des tâches nouvelles. Le regard de Jean-François Mattéi tente d'instaurer une nouvelle métaphysique, pour réaliser à la fois la conservation et le dépassement de la métaphysique ancienne. Nous ne pouvons pas en rester à la métaphysique. Mais nous ne pouvons pas non plus nous passer de la métaphysique. Nous vivons dans cet (...) inconfort. Janicaud et Mattéi sont conscients de la situation. Le chemin de Janicaud passe par la pensée de la contiguïté et par l'intelligence du partage. Le chemin de Mattéi veut nous conduire vers une renaissance de la métaphysique, qui ne se distinguerait pas d'une critique radicale de la métaphysique. Ces deux chemins s'appellent et se répondent. Ils s'excluent et se complètent. Ils sont, peut-être, les deux seuls chemins possibles pour la métaphysique aujourd'hui. Cet essai interroge tantôt la pensée de Janicaud, tantôt la pensée de Mattéi, tantôt les deux pensées ensemble. Il s'articule autour d'une thèse centrale, qui rassemble les deux pensées, et nous indique la direction à suivre : celle du souci de la métaphysique, dans le double sens de sa critique radicale et de son renouveau. (shrink)

The year 1980 might become a basic reference year for the study of «political stability» and «governmental maintenance» in Belgium.Indeed, within this year, four different cabinet formulae have been used. The first cabinet included the two christian-democratic parties, the two socialist parties and the Brussels regionalist party. When the latter was fired, the combination of the remaining did not last long, for the cabinet fell in parliament - rare exception in Belgium -, by not obtaining a 2/3 majority. Therefore, a (...) cabinet of the traditional parties had to be formed to pass the devolution bill. Within a short time, this third coalition broke down on proposals on cuts in the budgets. A new negociation between socialists and christian-democrats led to the fourth Martens' cabinet. Although the Belgian classe politica favoured a cabinet that would last an entire legislature, all these coalitions arosefrom only one general election. (shrink)

Is GDP a good proxy for social welfare? Building on economic theory, this book confirms that it is not, but also that most alternatives to it share its basic flaw, i.e., a focus on specific aspects of people's lives without sufficiently taking account of people's values and goals. A better approach is possible.

Hempel and Giere contend that the existence of provisos poses grave difficulties for any regularity account of physical law. However, Hempel and Giere rely upon a mistaken conception of the way in which statements acquire their content. By correcting this mistake, I remove the problem Hempel and Giere identify but reveal a different problem that provisos pose for a regularity account — indeed, for any account of physical law according to which the state of affairs described by a law-statement presupposes (...) a Humean regularity. These considerations suggest a normative analysis of law-statements. On this view, law-statements are not distinguished from accidental generalizations by the kind of Humean regularities they describe because a law-statement need not describe any Humean regularity. Rather, a law-statement says that in certain contexts, one ought to regard the assertion of a given type of claim, if made with justification, as a proper way to justify a claim of a certain other kind. (shrink)

Scientific essentialism aims to account for the natural laws' special capacity to support counterfactuals. I argue that scientific essentialism can do so only by resorting to devices that are just as ad hoc as those that essentialists accuse Humean regularity theories of employing. I conclude by offering an account of the laws' distinctive relation to counterfactuals that portrays laws as contingent but nevertheless distinct from accidents by virtue of possessing a genuine variety of necessity.

A number of writers have noted affinities between the form and style of Wittgenstein′s Philosophical Investigations and the Christian confessional tradition. 1 , 2 In this paper, however, If the Christian tradition, than of the Christian inheritance refracted through, and secularized by, German Romanticism. I shall argue that Wittgenstein′s work is less a direct continuation on this context, not only do many of the features of the Investigations which seem eccentric or wilful become naturalized, but light is also thrown on (...) Wittgenstein′s claim that the twentieth and late nineteenth century play no part in his spiritual makeup, and that his ‘cultural ideal’ derives from ‘Schumann′s time.’ 3. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher has actively looked into the possibility that psychopathologies involving “thought insertion” might supply a counterexample to the Cartesian principle according to which one can always recognize one’s own thoughts as one’s own. Animated by a general distrust of a priori demonstrations, Gallagher is convinced that pitting clinical cases against philosophical arguments is a worthwhile endeavor. There is no doubt that, if true, a falsification of the immunity to error through misidentification would entail drastic revisions in how we conceive (...) the boundary between self and other. However, I argue that (1) the idea of unearthing an exception to the Cartesian thesis is, on further reflection, not a realistic prospect and that (2) this casts doubt on the attempt to conjoin first-person phenomenology and third-person cognitive science in the service of philosophical debates. (shrink)

I argue that cultural conventions such as social etiquette facilitate a specific (non‐Lewisian) kind of action coordination—role–interaction coordination—that is required for division of labour. Playing one's roles and coordinating them with those of others is a form of multitasking. Such multitasking is made possible on a large scale because we can offload cognition aimed at coordination onto a stable infrastructure of cultural conventions. Our natural tendency to prefer multitasking in instances where one task requires low cognitive control can thus explain (...) our preference for and expectation of familiar cultural conventions—that is, their perceived normativity. (shrink)

If death is a harm then it is a harm that cannot be experienced. The proponent of death’s harm must therefore provide an answer to Epicurus, when he says that ‘death, is nothing to us, since when we are, death is not present, and when death is present, then we are not’. In this paper I respond to the two main ways philosophers have attempted to answer Epicurus, regarding the subject of death’s harm: either directly or via analogy. The direct (...) way argues that there is a truth-maker (or difference-maker) for death’s harm, namely in virtue of the intrinsic value the subject’s life would have had if they had not died. The analogy argues that there are cases analogous to death, where the subject is harmed although they experience no pain as a result. I argue that both accounts beg the question against the Epicurean: the first by presupposing that one can be harmed while experiencing no displeasure as a result and the second by conflating a de re with a de dicto reading of death’s harm. Thus, I argue, until better arguments are provided, one is best to agree with Epicurus and those who follow him that death is not a harm. (shrink)

Thomas Reid developed an important theory of freedom and moral responsibility resting on the concept of agent-causation, by which he meant the power of a rational agent to cause or not cause a volition resulting in an action. He held that this power is limited in that occasions occur when one's emotions or other forces may preclude its exercise. John Martin Fischer has raised an objection – the not enough ‘Oomph’ objection – against any incompatibilist account of freedom and moral (...) responsibility. In this essay I argue that Fischer's not enough ‘Oomph’ objection fails to provide any reasons for rejecting Reid's incompatibilist, agent-causation account of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Poet, painter, self-described funny guy, idiot, failure, pickpocket, and anti-artist par excellence, Francis Picabia was a defining figure in the Dada movement; indeed, André Breton called Picabia one of the only "true" Dadas. Yet very little of Picabia's poetry and prose has been translated into English, and his literary experiments have never been the subject of close critical study. _ I Am a Beautiful Monster_ is the first definitive edition in English of Picabia's writings, gathering a sizable array of Picabia's (...) poetry and prose and, most importantly, providing a critical context for it with an extensive introduction and detailed notes by the translator. Picabia's poetry and prose is belligerent, abstract, polemical, radical, and sometimes simply baffling. For too long, Picabia's writings have been presented as raw events, rule-breaking manifestations of inspirational _carpe diem_. This book reveals them to be something entirely different: maddening in their resistance to meaning, full of outrageous posturing, and hiding a frail, confused, and fitful personality behind egoistic bravura. I Am a Beautiful Monster provides the texts of of Picabia's significant publications, all presented complete, many of them accompanied by their original illustrations. (shrink)

The prevalent views of animal liberty among animal advocates suggest that liberty is merely instrumentally valuable and invasive paternalism is justified. In contrast to this popular view, I argue that liberty is intrinsically good for animals. I suggest that animal well-being is best accommodated by an Objective List Theory and that liberty is an irreducible component of animal well-being. As such, I argue that it is good for animals to possess liberty even if possessing liberty does not contribute towards their (...) subjective well-being, and even in some cases where it has a negative effect upon their subjective well-being. To establish this view I argue that if animals are agents, as I assume they are, then like humans they must be able to determine the course of their own lives (to some extent). Further, having the opportunity to self-determine one’s life just is the very same thing as liberty, and having the opportunity to determine the course of one’s life is intrinsically good. Thus liberty has intrinsic value for humans and animals. So, in addition to the instrumental harms of having one’s liberty restricted, I claim that restricting animals’ liberty in principle harms them because it undermines their capacity for self-determination and fails to acknowledge their authority as agents to make their own choices. (shrink)

Symmetry principles are commonly said to explain conservation laws—and were so employed even by Lagrange and Hamilton, long before Noether's theorem. But within a Hamiltonian framework, the conservation laws likewise entail the symmetries. Why, then, are symmetries explanatorily prior to conservation laws? I explain how the relation between ordinary (i.e., first-order) laws and the facts they govern (a relation involving counterfactuals) may be reproduced one level higher: as a relation between symmetries and the ordinary laws they govern. In that event, (...) symmetries are meta-laws; they are not mere byproducts of the dynamical and force laws. Symmetries then explain conservation laws whereas conservation laws lack the modal status to explain symmetries. I elaborate the variety of natural necessity that meta-laws would possess. Proposed metaphysical accounts of natural law should aim to accommodate the distinction between meta-laws and mere byproducts of the laws just as they must accommodate the distinction between laws and accidents. (shrink)