This collection of articles and associated discussion papers focuses on a problem that has attracted increasing attention from linguists and psychologists throughout the world during the past several years. Reduced to essentials, the problem is that of discovering the character of the mental capacities that make it possible for human beings to attain knowledge of their language on the basis of fragmentary and haphazard early linguistic experience. A fundamental assumption running through all of these contributions is that people possess strong (...) innate predispositions that are critical for success in this task. (shrink)

According to comparativist theories of quantities, their intrinsic values are not fundamental. Instead, all the quantity facts are grounded in scale-independent relations like "twice as massive as" or "more massive than." I show that this sort of scale independence is best understood as a sort of metaphysical symmetry--a principle about which transformations of the non-fundamental ontology leave the fundamental ontology unchanged. Determinism--a core scientific concept easily formulated in absolutist terms--is more difficult for the comparativist to define. After settling on the (...) most plausible comparativist understanding of determinism, I offer some examples of physical systems that the comparativist must count as indeterministic although the relevant physical theory gives deterministic predictions. Several morals are drawn. In particular: comparativism is metaphysically contingent if true, and it is most natural for a comparativist to accept an at-at theory of motion. (shrink)

The nature of antimatter is examined in the context of algebraic quantum field theory. It is shown that the notion of antimatter is more general than that of antiparticles. Properly speaking, then, antimatter is not matter made up of antiparticles—rather, antiparticles are particles made up of antimatter. We go on to discuss whether the notion of antimatter is itself completely general in quantum field theory. Does the matter–antimatter distinction apply to all field theoretic systems? The answer depends on which of (...) several possible criteria we should impose on the space of physical states. (shrink)

Arguments about temporal becoming often get nowhere. One reason for the impasse lies in the fact that the issue has been formulated as a choice between science on the one hand and common sense (or ordinary language) on the other as the primary source of ontological commitment.' Often' proponents of attributing temporal becoming to the physical universe look to everyday temporal concepts, find them infested with notions involving temporal becoming and conclude that becoming is a basic feature of the physical (...) world. Their opponents may look to physical science, find no reference to temporal becoming and conclude that becoming is not part of the extramental universe.2 Thus construed, the issue of temporal becoming is not directly amenable to argument. This stalemate will be broken, however, if I accomplish my aim: to (re)formulate the question of temporal becoming so that it is subject to adjudication; to show how objections to the thesis of the mind-dependence of becoming can fruitfully be seen (and in a sense unified) as attacks on a single argument for the thesis, an argument from physics; and to defend the con'elusion of the argument from physics from heretofore unanswered objections. The question of the status of temporal becoming is the question of the status of past, present and future.' Events which are at one time in the future, are said to become present and subsequently to recede into the past. Since past and future can be defined as 'earlier than now' and 'later than.. (shrink)

This book outlines the realist and pluralist philosophy of John Anderson, Australia's most original thinker. His teaching at Sydney University and his arti6es have deeply influenced Australian intellectual life. Several main themes run through his work, but Anderson never gave an overall account of his views. This is remedied here: exhibiting the range of Anderson's thought from logic, epistemology and theory of mind, to language and social theory, this volume sketches realism as a systematic philosophical position, while showing something of (...) the history of ideas in Australia. (shrink)

The ‘multicultural clinical interaction’ presents itself as a dilemma for the mental health practitioner. Literature describes two problematic areas where this issues emerges - how to make an adequate distinction between religious rituals and the rituals that may be symptomatic of ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ (OCD), and how to differentiate ‘normative’ religious or spiritual beliefs, behaviours, and experiences from ‘psychotic’ illnesses. When it comes to understanding service user’s ‘idioms of distress’, beliefs about how culture influences behaviour can create considerable confusion and (...) ‘normative uncertainty’ for mental health practitioners. In the absence of clear diagnostic and assessment criteria on distinguishing between ‘culture’ and ‘psychopathology’, practitioners have had to rely on their own intuition and seek out possible ‘strategies’ or ‘procedures’ from a contradictory and cross-disciplinary evidence base. Decontextualisation of service users’ experiences may result in the pathologisation of culturally ‘normative’ phenomenon, ‘category fallacy’ errors, and poor health care experiences and outcomes for service users. This paper situates this dilemma within a wider debate that has concerned both the biomedical and social sciences, namely, the unresolved question of ‘normality’ or ‘abnormality’. Indeed, issues that arise from dilemmas surrounding the question of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ are intimately tied to wider cultural ideas about what is considered ‘normal’. The disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and medical anthropology have struggled to establish workable criteria against which to judge behaviour as ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘pathological’. Three models for understanding mental ‘abnormality’ are evident in ‘transcultural psychiatry’ (what is now commonly known as ‘cultural psychiatry’), and these models have corresponded closely to the interpretive models used by anthropologists attempting to make sense of the apparent diversity of human societies. The three models of ‘absolutism’, ‘universalism’ and ‘cultural relativism’ have not only important consequences for the nature and conduct of research enquiry, but also have implications for how the dilemma of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ is attended to in clinical practice. (shrink)

Ambivalence is most naturally characterized as a case of conflicting desires. In most cases, an agent’s intrinsic desires conflict contingently: there is some possible world in which both desires would be satisfied. This paper argues, though, that there are cases in which intrinsic desires necessarily conflict—i.e., the desires are not jointly satisfiable in any possible world. Desiring a challenge for its own sake is a paradigm case of such a desire. Ambivalence of this sort in an agent’s desires creates special (...) problems for the project of reducing all facts about an agent’s desires to facts about his or her preferences over options. If this reductive project fails, there is reason to suspect that the Decision Theory cannot give us a complete theory of Humean rationality. (shrink)

Nature seems to be such that we can describe it accurately with quantum theories of bosons and fermions alone, without resort to parastatistics. This has been seen as a deep mystery: paraparticles make perfect physical sense, so why don’t we see them in nature? We consider one potential answer: every paraparticle theory is physically equivalent to some theory of bosons or fermions, making the absence of paraparticles in our theories a matter of convention rather than a mysterious empirical discovery. We (...) argue that this equivalence thesis holds in all physically admissible quantum field theories falling under the domain of the rigorous Doplicher–Haag–Roberts approach to superselection rules. Inadmissible parastatistical theories are ruled out by a locality-inspired principle we call charge recombination. 1 Introduction2 Paraparticles in Quantum Theory3 Theoretical Equivalence3.1 Field systems in algebraic quantum field theory3.2 Equivalence of field systems4 A Brief History of the Equivalence Thesis4.1 The Green decomposition4.2 Klein transformations4.3 The argument of Drühl, Haag, and Roberts4.4 The Doplicher–Roberts reconstruction theorem5 Sharpening the Thesis6 Discussion6.1 Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics6.2 Structuralism and haecceities6.3 Paraquark theories. (shrink)

A new argument is given for the thesis that only symmetry-invariant physical quantities are real. Non-invariant quantities are dynamically epiphenomenal in that they have no effect on the evolution of invariant quantities, and it is a significant theoretical vice to posit epiphenomenal quantities.

The Cambridge World History of Medical Ethics is the first comprehensive scholarly account of the global history of medical ethics. Offering original interpretations of the field by leading bioethicists and historians of medicine, it will serve as the essential point of departure for future scholarship in the field. The volumes reconceptualize the history of medical ethics through the creation of new categories, including the life cycle; discourses of religion, philosophy, and bioethics; and the relationship between medical ethics and the state, (...) which includes a historical reexamination of the ethics of apartheid, colonialism, communism, health policy, imperialism, militarism, Nazi medicine, Nazi "medical ethics," and research ethics. Also included are the first global chronology of persons and texts; the first concise biographies of major figures in medical ethics; and the first comprehensive bibliography of the history of medical ethics. An extensive index guides readers to topics, texts, and proper names. (shrink)

THE TITLE W. used the title 'Philosophische Untersuchungen, Versuch einer Umar- beitung' as the heading of his 1936 revision of Br. B. in Vol. ...

Comments and replies from the 2021 Eastern APA book symposium on Jill North's Physics, Structure, and Reality.

Two principal questions lie at the heart of the philosophy of colour perception. First: how do colour experiences represent the world? Second: do colour representations veridically represent the world? This collection of papers closely examines the various ways in which colour experience may represent the world, and the possibilities regarding the veridicality of these representations. As it turns out, close attention to the above two questions illuminates novel ways of approaching the metaphysics of colour and colour experience. Paper one distinguishes (...) different ways in which colour experience can be veridical or erroneous, and uses these distinctions to motivate realist error theories: a new class of theory regarding the perception of colour. Realist error theories say that colour experience is erroneous regarding the location and/or metaphysics of colour, but is generally veridical regarding the instantiation of colour. I argue that realist error theories provide a new approach to certain tensions between our motivated metaphysics for colour and how experience represents the colours. Paper two falls into two parts. In the first part, I argue that extant subject-dependent theories of colour fail to delineate veridical colour experiences from erroneous colour experiences. In part two, I develop novel subject-dependent theories which successfully delineate veridical colour experiences from erroneous colour experiences. I advocate for mono-minimalism: a view which says that colours are subject-dependent properties which range over at least one standard perceiver in at least one standard condition. Paper three focuses on the distinction between steady and unsteady colours. Extant proposals involve positing that steady colours are subject-independent and unsteady colours are subject-dependent. I argue that the subject-dependent theorist can explain the metaphysical difference between steady and unsteady colours in wholly subject-dependent terms. We can say that steady and unsteady colours are both subject-dependent properties, but steady colours range over a broader range of perceptual conditions compared to unsteady colours. I argue that this bifurcation in the scope of the colours is consistent with the mono-minimalist theory of colour proposed in paper two. (shrink)

My discussion of duress falls into three parts. In part I of the paper, I argue chiefly that Xings done under duress remain clear cases of action, and that they are special cases of acting for a reason. In part II, I propose a five-point analysis of acting under duress. In part III, I examine how duress operates as a defence. I maintain that duress is sometimes an excuse and sometimes a justification for conduct, although I further argue that nevertheless (...) it would not be unreasonable to classify duress as an excuse. (shrink)

Ted Sider has shown that my indeterminism argument for comparativist theories of quantity also applies to Mundy's absolutist theory. This is because Mundy's theory posits only "pure" relations, i.e. relations between values of the same quantity (between masses and other masses, or distances and other distances). It is straightforward to solve the problem by positing additional mixed relations.

Some have argued that the possibility of faultless disagreement gives relativist semantic theories an important explanatory advantage over their absolutist and contextualist rivals. Here I combat this argument, focusing on the specific case of aesthetic discourse. My argument has two stages. First, I argue that while relativists may be able to account for the possibility of faultless aesthetic disagreement, they nevertheless face difficulty in accounting for the intuitive limits of faultless disagreement. Second, I develop a new non-relativist theory which can (...) account for the full range of data regarding faultless disagreement. This view—‘Humean Absolutism’—integrates two of Hume’s central principles from Of the Standard of Taste into a truth-conditional framework, resulting in a non-bivalent theory of aesthetic truth. I argue that Humean Absolutism can underwrite the possibility of faultless disagreement whilst retaining reasonable limits around the phenomenon. I close by relating this positive account of faultless disagreement to broader issues concerning the cognitive role of truth-value gaps. -/- *NB - this is an unpublished paper and is no longer in progress.*. (shrink)

Few thinkers have had as much impact on contemporary philosophy as has Alvin Plantinga. The work of this quintessential analytic philosopher has in many respects set the tone for the debate in the fields of modal metaphysics and epistemology and he is arguably the most important philosopher of religion of our time. In this volume, a distinguished team of today's leading philosophers address the central aspects of Plantinga's philosophy - his views on natural theology; his responses to the problem of (...) evil; his contributions to the field of modal metaphysics; the controversial evolutionary argument against naturalism; his model of epistemic warrant and his view of epistemic defeat; and his recent work on mind-body dualism. Also included is an appendix containing Plantinga's often referred to, but previously unpublished, lecture notes entitled 'Two Dozen Theistic Arguments', with a substantial preface to the appendix written by Plantinga specifically for this volume. (shrink)

Our paper explores the complex place-based relations of cross-sector partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners. We draw on a longitudinal in-depth case study of the Bundian Way, an Indigenous-led cross-sector partnership of over 40 organisations. Through practices of listening to history and walking ‘on Country’, the non-Indigenous partners and our team came to appreciate the indivisibility of place and time and bear witness to the intergenerational trauma of colonially imposed divisions. By combining a 45-day place-based ethnography with a 36-month participant (...) observation and repeated interviews with the Advisory Committee members, we explain how non-Indigenous members of the cross-sector partnership came to realise, and reverse, these place-time divisions. We contribute to an ethics of custodianship by first contrasting, and then combining, Indigenous and Western ways of knowing place through time. (shrink)

Amie Thomasson has won well-deserved praise for her book, Ordinary Objects. She defends a commonsense world view and gives us “reason to think that there are fundamental particles, plants and animals, sticks and stones, tables and chairs, and even marriages and mortgages.” (p. 181) Ordinary objects comprise a vast array of things—natural objects both scientific and commonsensical, artifacts, organisms, abstract social objects.

"Arranged into four main parts, the book begins by selecting readings from classical theorists in order to review formative ideas on the transition to modern society. It then moves on to address, at length, the modernizationists' discussion of how development changes people and the response from dependency and world-system theorists. A final section assembles eight of the most influential writings on the social effects of globalization."--Jacket.

v. 1. Wittgenstein, understanding and meaning -- v. 2. Wittgenstein, rules, grammar, and necessity -- v. 3. Wittgenstein, meaning and mind -- v. 4. Wittgenstein, mind and will.

After summarizing my own views of 'I' and the first-person perspective, I consider a well-known autistic, Temple Grandin, who claims that she thinks only in pictures, not in language. I argue, to the contrary, that Grandin's mental life as she describes it in fact requires language, which, as a writer, she undoubtedly has. Finally, I turn to the question of whether thought as Temple Grandin describes it is independent of language.

It is no news that you and I are agents as well as persons. Agency and personhood are surely connected, but it is not obvious just how they are connected. I believe that being a person and being an agent are intimately linked by what I call a ‘first-person perspective’: All persons and all agents have first-person perspectives. Even so, the connection between personhood and agency is not altogether straightforward. There are different kinds of agents, and there are different kinds (...) of first-person perspectives. On the one hand, all persons are agents, but not all agents are persons; on the other hand, all moral agents are persons, but not all persons are moral agents. (shrink)

While the Professor stood in uffish thought, his audience waited quietly. Then the Professor began to read.

This article attempts to articulate an understanding of the Augustinian value of Caritas as a call for Augustinian Institutions of Higher Education to promote justice and equity in the world. The author grounds this definition of Caritas by incorporating three primary concepts of Catholic Social Teaching: the dignity of the human person, concern for the common good and a preferential option for the poor and marginalized in society. The article attempts to apply this definition of the value of Augustinian Caritas (...) to the ways in which a concern for social justice and equity is promoted and practiced in an undergraduate teacher preparation program in an Augustinian educational institution. (shrink)

Dictionary-making is an increasingly important avenue for cultural preservation and maintenance for Aboriginal people. It is also one of the main jobs performed by linguists working in Aboriginal communities. However, current tools for making dicitionaries are either not specifically designed for the purpose (Word, Nisus), with the result that dictionaries written in them are difficult to maintain, to keep consistent, and to manipulate automatically, or are too complex for many people to use (Shoebox), and are thereby wasted as potential resources. (...) Moreover, neither of these sets of tools provides a suitable user interface for people who simply want to browse or find words in a dictionary. We set out to design a dictionary 'template', written in software that was easy (and fun!) for people to use, and that maintained a consistent relationship among the information in the dictionary. (shrink)