The article reviews some analyses of temporal language in logical approaches to natural language semantics. It considers some asymmetries between past and future, manifested in language, which motivate the “standard view” of the non-reversibility of time and the persistence of the past. It concludes with a puzzle about the changing past which challenges the standard view.

The article reviews some analyses of temporal language in logical approaches to natural language semantics. It considers some asymmetries between past and future, manifested in language, which motivate the “standard view” of the non-reversibility of time and the persistence of the past. It concludes with a puzzle about the changing past which challenges the standard view.

Given reductionism about people, personal persistence must fundamentally consist in some kind of impersonal continuity relation. Typically, these continuity relations can hold from one to many. And, if they can, the analysis of personal persistence must include a non-branching clause to avoid non-transitive identities or multiple occupancy. It is far from obvious, however, what form this clause should take. This paper argues that previous accounts are inadequate and develops a new proposal.

I claim that, if persisting objects have temporal parts, then there are non-supervenient relations between those temporal parts. These are relations which are not determined by intrinsic properties of the temporal parts. I use the Kripke-Armstrong 'rotating homogeneous disc' argument in order to establish this claim, and in doing so I defend and develop that argument. This involves a discussion of instantaneous velocity, and of the causes and effects of rotation. Finally, I compare alternative responses to the rotating disc argument, (...) and consider the implications of my arguments for the doctrines of Humean Supervenience and unrestricted mereology. (shrink)

Philippe Huneman has recently questioned the widespread application of mechanistic models of scientific explanation based on the existence of structural explanations, i.e. explanations that account for the phenomenon to be explained in virtue of the mathematical properties of the system where the phenomenon obtains, rather than in terms of the mechanisms that causally produce the phenomenon. Structural explanations are very diverse, including cases like explanations in terms of bowtie structures, in terms of the topological properties of the system, or in (...) terms of equilibrium. The role of mathematics in bowtie structured systems and in topologically constrained systems has recently been examined in different papers. However, the specific role that mathematical properties play in equilibrium explanations requires further examination, as different authors defend different interpretations, some of them closer to the new-mechanistic approach than to the structural model advocated by Huneman. In this paper, we cover this gap by investigating the explanatory role that mathematics play in Blaser and Kirschner’s nested equilibrium model of the stability of persistent long-term human-microbe associations. We argue that their model is explanatory because: i) it provides a mathematical structure in the form of a set of differential equations that together satisfy an ESS; ii) that the nested nature of the ESSs makes the explanation of host-microbe persistent associations robust to any perturbation; iii) that this is so because the properties of the ESS directly mirror the properties of the biological system in a non-causal way. The combination of these three theses make equilibrium explanations look more similar to structural explanations than to causal-mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

We have compelling extra-philosophical reasons for caring about identity, parthood, and location. For example, we desire ceteris paribus that nothing every part of which is very near to our location be very near to the location of something dangerous, evil, or otherwise unpleasant. This essay argues that such considerations are relevant to certain first-order metaphysical debates, namely, the debates over immanent universals and tropes and endurantism and perdurantism, respectively. As a consequence, even the non-specialist has a reason to care about (...) the metaphysics of properties and persistence. (shrink)

The key concept in Kant’s aesthetics is “aesthetic reflective judgment,” a critique of which is found in Part 1 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). It is a critique inasmuch as Kant unravels previous assumptions regarding aesthetic perception. For Kant, the comparative edge of a “judgment” implicates communicability, which in turn gives it a public face; yet “reflection” points to autonomy, and the “aesthetic” shifts the emphasis away from objective properties to the subjective response evoked by the (...) object. Contrary to the view he had inherited, Kant did not treat aesthetic judgments as confused perceptions or inferior cognitions, but rather put them in a category of their own. For Kant, aesthetic reflective judgments implicated not only the processes involved in understanding the empirical world but also the processes involved in ascribing ideas or meaning to experience (which go beyond what is given in perception/cognition). This “going beyond cognition” may have been referred to by Kant as non-cognitive, but it is conditioned on a way of cognizing the object. Kant describes the features of such judgments in the Analytic of the Beautiful before addressing their possibility in subtle ways throughout the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments. Kant’s critique gives rise to three apparent dichotomies: immediate intuition and prior learning; autonomy and communicability; and non-cognitive response and aesthetic ideas. An interpretation of Kant’s theory can be deemed correct to the degree that it succeeds in showing that the contradictions are only apparent. I will argue that the resulting positive account of Kant’s aesthetic theory offers an understanding of aesthetic reflective judgment that is quite different from the standard formalism that the critics of formalism usually target and by which they misrepresent Kant’s aesthetic theory. When I refer to Kant’s formalism, then, I mean something quite different by this than what is meant by “standard formalism.” The latter is the representation given Kant’s formalism by its contemporary critics and is the typical account of formalism found in the art theory and philosophy of art literature, as will be demonstrated. (shrink)

Many philosophers hypothesize that our concept of personal identity is partly constituted by the one-person-one-place rule, which states that a person can only be in one place at a time. This hypothesis has been assumed by the most influential contemporary work on personal identity. In this paper, we report a series of studies testing whether the hypothesis is true. In these studies, people consistently judged that the same person existed in two different places at the same time. This result undermines (...) some widely held philosophical assumptions, supports others, and fits well with recent discoveries on identity judgments about inanimate objects and non-human animals. (shrink)

The ‘friends of temporal parts’ and their opponents disagree about how things persist through time. The former, who hold what is sometimes called a ‘4D’ theory of persistence, typically claim that all objects that last for any period of time are spread out through time in the same way that spatially extended objects are spread out through space — a different part for each region that the object fills. David Lewis calls this manner of persisting ‘perdurance’. The opposing, ‘3D’ (...) theory has it that at least some objects do not persist in this manner; they ‘endure’ through time by ‘being wholly present at more than one time’.1 A related dispute pits ‘presentists’ against ‘non-presentists’. Presentists hold that the only things that really exist are those that exist now, at the present moment; and nonpresentists believe in something like a ‘block-universe’ in which non-simultaneous objects and events nevertheless co-exist (in a tenseless or non-temporal sense). Of late, the relations between these four positions have come under considerable scrutiny.2 As Ned Markosian has pointed out, it would be surprising if commitment to a perdurance or endurance theory of persistence automatically foreclosed one’s options in the presentism—non-presentism debate. But, says Markosian, that is just what the standard formulations of the perdurance and endurance theories imply.3 David Lewis has set the terms of the debate; in his usage, someone who thinks that all persisting objects endure would be said to hold the following. (shrink)

Modal Plenitude—the view that, for every empirically adequate modal profile, there is an object whose modal profile it is—is held to be consistent with each of endurantist and perdurantist (three- and four-dimensionalist) views of persistence. Here I show that, because “endurer” and “perdurer” are two substantially different kinds of entity, compossible with each other and consistent with empirical data, Modal Plenitude actually entails a third view about persistence that I call “Persistence Egalitarianism.” In every non-empty spacetime region (...) there are two persisting objects: one that endures through the temporal dimension of that region, and another that perdures through the region. Additionally, if the argument from anthropocentrism makes a strong case for Modal Plenitude, then an equally strong and parallel case supports Persistence Egalitarianism. I close with the meta-semantic consequences of persistence egalitarianism for ordinary object talk. (shrink)

The quantum symmetrization procedure that is used to handle systems of identical quantum particles brings into question whether the elementary constituents of matter, such as electrons, have the fundamental characteristics of persistence and reidentifiability that are attributed to classical particles. However, we presently lack a coherent conception of matter composed of entities that do not possess one or both of these fundamental characteristics. We also lack a clear a priori understanding of why systems of identical particles (as opposed to (...) non-identical particles) require special mathematical treatment, and this only in the quantum mechanical (as opposed to classical mechanical) setting. -/- Here, on the basis of a conceptual analysis of a recent mathematical reconstruction of the quantum symmetrization procedure, we argue that the need for the symmetrization procedure originates in the confluence of identicality and the active nature of the quantum measurement process. We propose a conception in which detection-events are ontologically primary, while the notion of individually persistent object is relegated to merely one way of bringing order to these events. On this basis, we outline a new interpretation of the symmetrization procedure which gives a new physical interpretation to the indices in symmetrized states and to non-symmetric measurement operators. (shrink)

We propose a framework for analyzing the development, operation and failure to survive of all things, living, non-living or organized groupings. This framework is a sequence of developments that improve survival capability. Framework processes range from origination of any entity/system, to the development of increased survival capability and development of life-forms and organizations that use intelligence. This work deals with a series of developmental changes that arise from the uncovering of emergent properties. The framework is intended to be general, but (...) we see a potential to apply it to scientific topics such as the exploration of the origin of life or the search for life beyond Earth, and to understand some biological issues in evolution and symbiosis, and also to apply to social systems that do not seem to be operating well, to determine their problems and correct them. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show that contextualism cannot adequately handle all versions of ‘The Lottery Paradox.” Although the application of contextualist rules is meant to vindicate the intuitive distinction between cases of knowledge and non-knowledge, it fails to do so when applied to certain versions of “The Lottery Paradox.” In making my argument, I first briefly explain why this issue should be of central importance for contextualism. I then review Lewis’ contextualism before offering my argument that the lottery paradox persists (...) on all contextualist accounts. Although I argue that the contextualist does not fare well, hope nevertheless remains. For, on Lewis’ behalf, I offer what I take to be the best solution for the contextualist and argue that once this solution is adopted, contextualism will be in a better position to handle the lottery paradox than any other substantive epistemological theory. (shrink)

I explicate and defend a non-standard theory of persistence, which I calltransdurantism. In short, transdurantism is the view is that objects persist by being temporally extended simples. Transdurantism is sometime misrepresented as a version of endurantism. Other times, transdurantism is misrepresented as a version of perdurantism. But I argue transdurantism must be disambiguated from perdurantism and endurantism—when endurantism, perdurantism, and transdurantism are properly construed, transdurantism stands apart from the other theories of persistence and we can better understand the (...) distinct burdens they each bear. I also argue that the transdurantist is capable of handling several key problems found in the persistence literature at least as well as her rivals, but she does face her own unique challenges. (shrink)

The persistent educational challenges that fractions pose call for developing novel instructional methods to better prepare students for fraction learning. Here, we examined the effects of a 24-session, Cuisenaire rod intervention on a building block for symbolic fraction knowledge, continuous and discrete non-symbolic proportional reasoning, in children who have yet to receive fraction instruction. Participants were 34 second-graders who attended the intervention (intervention group) and 15 children who did not participate in any sessions (control group). As attendance at the intervention (...) sessions was irregular (median = 15.6 sessions, range = 1–24), we specifically examined the effect of the number of sessions completed on their non-symbolic proportional reasoning. Our results showed that children who attended a larger number of sessions increased their ability to compare non-symbolic continuous proportions. However, contrary to our expectations, they also decreased their ability to compare misleading discretized proportions. In contrast, children in the Control group did not show any change in their performance. These results provide further evidence on the malleability of non-symbolic continuous proportional reasoning and highlight the rigidity of counting knowledge interference on discrete proportional reasoning. (shrink)

This article shows that introducing the positive comparative relation parity only helps one block so‐called “Spectrum Arguments” in order to avoid their unsavoury implications if one specifies parity in a specific way with respect to its persistence. The article illustrates how parity must both admit of persistency and be weakly non‐persistent for parity to block Spectrum Arguments, and identifies some consequences of that discovery for the general debate on Spectrum Arguments, value theory and comparability problems.

Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes, and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...) what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self which is imagined either as moving through time, or as being stationary, with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist, with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

The main theme of this thesis is time travel; time travel cases—both from relativistic physics and science fiction—provide or highlight deep problems for certain positions in contemporary debates about the metaphysical nature of time and of how material objects persist through time. This thesis explores the implications of these discussions; more specifically, I draw attention to some of the interesting things we can learn about presentism and endurantism from discussions of time travel cases that have been raised recently in the (...) literature. In the end, I argue in favour of what I consider a non-standard theory of persistence, which I call transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. (shrink)

(Updated 5/23/24) This unpublished paper, which readers should feel free to cite, is posted primarily for the historical record. In recent work that has, deservedly, received some attention, Paul R. Daniels presents and defends a non-standard theory of persistence that he dubs transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. This is exactly what I do in work dating back to Spring 2004. (This work includes this version of this paper, as well as later version that was (...) presented to the University of Rochester's Philosophy Department in 2005.) While this might be a total coincidence, I doubt that it is, especially given that 'transdurantism' appears as a name for a theory of persistence associated with me in at least two places in the literature, one of which includes a citation of this paper. The paper begins with a discussion of what I call 'locative relations' (the relations borne by material objects to the regions of space and time they occupy), which draws relevant distinctions that others have failed to draw. The results of this discussion are then used in constructing spatial analogues for the three established theories of persistence--endurantism, perdurantism, and exdurantism--as well as for transdurantism. Next, these four views concerning persistence are explicitly formulated and a defense of their formulation is offered. Finally, transdurantism's advantages and disadvantages relative to the other theories are discussed. The main goal of the paper is to challenge the trichotomy between the established theories by arguing that transdurantism is also a viable view concerning persistence through time. [Note: Befitting its status as a historical document, with the exception of some light editing to fix typos that might impede understanding, no changes have been made to the paper.]. (shrink)

Under the eternalist hypothesis that objects or events exist temporally, but independently of being present two different views of persistence are on the market: Persisting objects endure if they are multiply located in time, and persisting objects perdure if they are singly located by having numerically different temporal parts. In the framework of the special theory of relativity, the metaphysics of persistence is confronted with peculiar difficulties. Things persist by being “wholly present” at more than one time; but (...) what are times within a temporally non-separated spacetime? Things persist by having different temporal parts at different times; but what are the temporal parts of a four-dimensional object in Minkowski spacetime? Recently, several authors have argued that SR favours perdurantism over its endurantist rival. In this paper, I intend to show that the purported arguments are only those against endurantism. The first simply fails, but the second, more convincing one, is such that with a similar strategy we should argue against perdurantism as well: Enduring and perduring entities are hence both in conflict with SR which undermines the eternalist hypothesis. (shrink)

Under the eternalist hypothesis that objects or events exist temporally, but independently of being present two different views of persistence are on the market: Persisting objects endure if they are multiply located in time, and persisting objects perdure if they are singly located by having numerically different temporal parts. In the framework of the special theory of relativity, the metaphysics of persistence is confronted with peculiar difficulties. Things persist by being “wholly present” at more than one time; but (...) what are times within a temporally non-separated spacetime? Things persist by having different temporal parts at different times; but what are the temporal parts of a four-dimensional object in Minkowski spacetime? Recently, several authors have argued that SR favours perdurantism over its endurantist rival. In this paper, I intend to show that the purported arguments are only those against endurantism. The first simply fails, but the second, more convincing one, is such that with a similar strategy we should argue against perdurantism as well: Enduring and perduring entities are hence both in conflict with SR which undermines the eternalist hypothesis. (shrink)

New modes of environmental regulation are said to have transcended the public/private divide. These new regulatory schemes - referred to as non-coercive orderings, self-regulation, co-regulation, metaregulation and social regulation - set aside the formal nature of the regulating entity, the regulated entity, and the tools of regulation. Instead of asking whether the means, objects and formulators of the regulation are public or private, the focus lies on the substance and effectiveness of the regulation in mitigating environmental harms. In this Article (...) we argue that despite these claims, often advanced by new governance proponents, the public/private divide in in fact alive and well, informing and impacting the ways in which various regulatory schemes are justified and legitimated. We exemplify this argument through an analysis of the role of three entities in international environmental regulation: the state, local governments, and civil society entities. This Article then suggests three consequences of the persistence of the public/private dichotomy and its denial: it produces a “tilt” towards the private; it tends to hide conflicts and disagreements, projecting an image of a frictionless world; and it prevents an imagination of a different world that transcends the structure of social life embedded in it. (shrink)

The theorizing of utopia is a persistent theme throughout several generations of the French continental tradition, and alongside the process theory of Alfred North Whitehead to a large degree recuperates the concept of utopia from its supposed dismissal by Marx and his intellectual descendants. Most recently, attention to the notion of plasticity, popularized by Catherine Malabou, extends speculation on utopian possibility. Compelled to answer to Marx’s denigration of utopia as fantasy, the tendency was to compensate for the absence of a (...) programmatic politics by stressing what is “useful” about utopian dreaming, and therefore where or how exactly a utopian text reveals or creates political drive, or motivates political action. In this essay, I argue that theorists have overlooked the use of utopia as not only the reproduction of difference, or what Malabou calls positive plasticity, but also as, therefore, a disruption; Malabou might prefer the term accident here. Tracing the concept of plasticity from Roland Barthes to Malabou, with a nod at Miguel Abensour, this essay teases out the links between a contemporary notion of plasticity to argue, simply put, that utopia is plastic. This plasticity of the concept ensures its political force. These links, obscured in the essay “Plastic,” Barthes makes only later in his writing. But for Malabou, plasticity underlies a principle of futurity and/as generativity, such that new forms, new meanings, new concepts emerge through difference. Utopia’s horizons of potentiality depend on difference, and on non-achievement. Finally, I argue that the persistence of utopia as a form of thinking is the most important, and political, effect of utopian plasticity. (shrink)

This paper analyzes a non-temporal interpretation of the adverb sempre “always” in European Portuguese and Italian, in which the adverb expresses persistence of the truth of a proposition over time and displays specific contextual constraints (TP-sempre). Despite an overlap in the contexts in which TP-sempre may occur in both languages, we provide data showing that its distribution is not exactly the same in European Portuguese and Italian. In view of these data, we propose that TP-sempre is a modal operator (...) of confirmation in both languages, but that it is more restricted in Italian in that it has a plan presupposition only in this language. (shrink)

On the issue of abortion, Ireland and Poland have been among the most conservative countries in Europe. Their legal and cultural approaches to this issue have been deeply influenced by the institution of the Catholic Church and its purported role as a defender of an authentic national identity. However, their political climates for abortion reform are increasingly divergent: Ireland has liberalised its abortion law substantially since 2018, while Poland is moving towards further criminalisation with the repeated introduction of restrictive laws (...) in parliament. Both have seen active pro-choice movements who mobilise for reform and widespread non-compliance with their restrictive abortion laws, but the policy impact of these trends varies significantly. What accounts for this difference? This article draws on comparative analysis of Ireland and Poland to assess their divergent trajectories on abortion reform, arguing that the most significant driver of change between the two is the disparity in influence of the Catholic Church on politics and policymaking. (shrink)

In this thesis I will defend a Reductionist criterion of personal identity, and show that that criterion supports certain commonsense claims about the morality and rationality of special concern and about the morality of the distribution of goods among persons. ;In Chapter 1 , I will introduce the problem of personal identity across time. We will see that a plausible theory of personal identity supports and motivates the commonsense claim that we should be specially concerned about our future selves and (...) intimates. ;In Chapter 2 , I will argue that we should reject a Non-Reductionist theory of personal identity. Non-Reductionism is unable to provide a coherent account of why persons persist through certain changes and not others, thereby committing us to a general skepticism about personal identity. Therefore, we should conclude that persons are not separately existing entities. ;In Chapter 3 , I present certain cases that suggest that we should reject our initial intuition that persons can swap bodies. I then consider whether we should accept the claim that it is not our identity that matters in our survival, and suggest that Reductionists can continue to claim that identity matters. ;In Chapter 4 , I defend the commonsense view of special concern. I claim that this commonsense view can be motivated and supported by the plausible Reductionist criteria discussed in Chapter 3. I show that the commonsense conception is more plausible than the Impersonalist view that tries to ground special concern in terms of impersonal values. ;In Chapter 5 , I show that Parfit's view of personal identity and what matters actually supports a moral theory in which the relationships in which persons stand to one another have intrinsic significance, rather than supporting the person-neutral theory of Utilitarianism. (shrink)

In 'Perceptual Entitlement' (PPR 2003), Tyler Burge argues that on his teleological reliabilist account of perceptual warrant, warrant will persist in non-normal conditions, even radical skeptical scenarios like demon worlds. This paper explains why Burge's explanation falls short. But if we distinguish two grades of warrant, we can explain, in proper functionalist, teleological reliabilist terms, why warrant should persist in demon worlds. A normally functioning belief-forming process confers warrant in all worlds, provided it is reliable in normal conditions when functioning (...) normally. The first grade requires normal functioning. The second grade also requires being situated in normal conditions. (shrink)

This article assesses the relative merits of the “reversal of fortune” thesis, according to which the most politically and economically advanced polities of the precolonial era were subject to institutional reversal by European colonial powers, and the “persistence of fortune” view, according to which early advantages in state formation persisted throughout and beyond the colonial era. Discussing the respective arguments, the article offers a synthesis: the effect of early state formation on development trajectories was subject to a threshold condition. (...) Non-European states at the highest levels of precolonial political centralization were able to resist European encroachment and engage in defensive modernization, whereas states closest to, yet just below, this threshold were the most attractive targets for colonial exploitation. Since the onset of decolonization, however, such polities have been among the first to regain independence and world patterns of state capacity are increasingly reverting to those of the precolonial era. (shrink)

Plato in the Laws proposes a simulation of nearly ideal conditions regarding the experts’ persuasion and observes that even in these circumstances some citizens will not agree with the epistemic authorities. In this paper, such situations are labelled as exhibiting persistent dissent. Plato maintains that persistent dissenters lack the virtue of sōphrosynē, but its meaning is notoriously difficult to decipher. This paper offers to examine the role of sōphrosynē in tackling persistent dissent in light of Plato’s reflections on civic participation. (...) This angle will not only uncover the epistemic aspect of sōphrosynē that lays the groundwork for persuasion, but it will also give a less optimistic assessment of the civic theory of the Laws, whilst simultaneously widening our own understanding of the range of disagreements between the experts and the non-experts and the difficulties in removing them. (shrink)

Empirical evidence suggests that a majority of people believe that time robustly passes and that many also report that it seems to them, in experience, as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists deny that time robustly passes, and many contemporary non-dynamists—deflationists—even deny that it seems to us as though time robustly passes. Non-dynamists, then, face the dual challenge of explaining why people have such beliefs and make such reports about their experiences. Several philosophers have suggested the stable-self explanation, according to which (...) what partly explains one or both of the explananda is that people believe themselves to have a stable persisting self that is imagined either as moving through time or as being stationary with time moving around it. This paper empirically investigates this explanation. We found, however, no evidential support for the stable-self explanation, leaving the non-dynamist but also, we will argue, the dynamist with an extant explanatory challenge. (shrink)

According to the “received view” the disagreement between endurantism and perdurantism is ontological and concerns the existence of temporal parts of continuants. In a recent paper, argues that the ontological conception of these theories does not address the crucial point: explaining the way things persist. According to Wasserman, perdurantism is not just the view that things have temporal parts; it is the view that things persist by having temporal parts. Moreover, in the last decade an alternative understanding of the dispute (...) between endurantism and perdurantism, the so called “locative turn”, has lead to an understanding of these two theories as concerning crucially locational rather than mereological notions. Our main aim in this paper is to bring together those two revisionary approaches to the received view, and show how they can enrich each other and open up further dimension of the debate. Finally in the last section we focus on some of the non-standard accounts of persistence and location that arise from this approach, such as “autonomism of persistence and location” and “reverse locational endurantism/perdurantism”. (shrink)

Some recent philosophical debate about persistence has focussed on an argument against perdurantism that discusses rotating perfectly homogeneous discs. The argument has been mostly discussed by metaphysicians, though it appeals to ideas from classical mechanics, especially about rotation. In contrast, I assess the RDA from the perspective of the philosophy of physics. After introducing the argument and emphasizing the relevance of physics, I review some metaphysicians' replies to the argument, especially those by Callender, Lewis, Robinson and Sider. Thereafter, I (...) argue for three main conclusions. They all arise from the fact, emphasized in Section 2, that classical mechanics is both more subtle, and more problematic, than philosophers generally realize. The first conclusion is that the RDA can be formulated more strongly than is usually recognized: it is not necessary to ``imagine away'' the dynamical effects of rotation. The second is that in general relativity, the RDA fails because of frame-dragging. The third is that even setting aside general relativity, the strong formulation of the RDA can after all be defeated. Namely, by the perdurantist taking objects in classical mechanics to have only temporally extended, i.e. non-instantaneous, temporal parts: which immediately blocks the RDA. Admittedly, this version of perdurantism defines persistence in a weaker sense of `definition' than pointilliste versions that aim to define persistence assuming only instantaneous temporal parts. But I argue that temporally extended temporal parts: can do the jobs within the endurantism- perdurantism debate that the perdurantist wants temporal parts to do; and are supported by both classical and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

The family of a patient who is unconscious and respirator-dependent has made a decision to discontinue medical treatment. The patient had signed a donor card. The family wants to respect this decision, and agrees to non-heart-beating organ donation. Consequently, as the patient is weaned from the ventilator, he is prepped for organ explantation. Two minutes after the patient goes into cardiac arrest, he is declared dead and the transplant team arrives to begin organ procurement. At the time retrieval begins, it (...) is not certain that the patient's brain is dead or that cardiac function cannot be restored. Procurement follows uneventfully, and two transplantable kidneys are retrieved.Many people now consider such cases of non-heart-beating organ donation to be ethically permissible. However, widespread disagreement persists as to how such practices are to be justified and whether such practices are compatible with the Uniform Declaration of Death Act. In this paper, I argue that non-heart-beating organ donation can be ethically justified, that in the justified cases the patients are in fact dead, and that the early declarations of death required for such donation do comply with the UDDA. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a version of universalism that is non-mereological. Broadly speaking, non-mereological universalism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set of objects and times, there is a persisting object which, at each of those times, will be constituted by those of the objects that exist at that time. I consider two general versions of non-mereological universalism, one which takes basic simples to be enduring objects, and the other which takes simples to be instantaneous objects. This yields (...) three versions of endurantism, of which I ultimately defend the version I call universalist endurantism. Universalist endurantism is the thesis that (i) for any arbitrary set S of instantaneous simples that exist at the same instant, there exists a fusion of the members of S, and (ii) for any arbitrary set S* of instantaneous fusions each of which exist at a different instant, there exists an enduring object O that is constituted by those fusions at those instants. Universalist endurantism is ‘non-mereological’ in that the relation that holds between instantaneous fusions and persisting objects is not the part/whole relation, but rather, is the relation of constitution, thus allowing that the persisting objects are three rather than four dimensional. I argue that universalist endurantism not only has the various benefits of mereological universalism in allowing vagueness to be explicated as semantic indeterminacy, but in addition allows the endurantist to hold that some properties are genuinely intrinsic and are exemplified simpliciter. (shrink)

Studies suggest that the majority of gender diverse children (up to 84%) revert to the gender congruent with the sex assigned at birth when they reach puberty. These children are now known in the literature as ‘desisters’. Those who continue in the path of gender transition are known as ‘persisters’. Based on the high desistence rates, some advise being cautious in allowing young children to present in their affirmed gender. The worry is that social transition may make it difficult for (...) children to de-transition and thus increase the odds of later unnecessary medical transition. If this is true, allowing social transition may result in an outright violation of one of the most fundamental moral imperatives that doctors have: first do no harm. This paper suggests that this is not the case. Studies on desistence should inform clinical decisions but not in the way summarised here. There is no evidence that social transition per se leads to unnecessary medical transition; so should a child persist, those who have enabled social transition should not be held responsible for unnecessary bodily harm. Social transition should be viewed as a tool to find out what is the right trajectory for the particular child. Desistence is one possible outcome. A clinician or parent who has supported social transition for a child who later desists will have not violated, but acted in respect of the moral principle of non-maleficence, if the choice made appeared likely to minimise the child’s overall suffering and to maximise overall the child’s welfare at the time it was made. (shrink)

We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle case (the “trolley problem”) and a version of the Tversky & Kahneman “Asian disease” scenario. Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider “different variants of the (...) scenario or different ways of describing the case”. Nor were framing and order effects lower among participants reporting familiarity with the trolley problem or with loss-aversion framing effects, nor among those reporting having had a stable opinion on the issues before participating the experiment, nor among those reporting expertise on the very issues in question. Thus, for these scenario types, neither framing effects nor order effects appear to be reduced even by high levels of academic expertise. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a version of universalism that is non-mereological. Broadly speaking, non-mereological universalism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set of objects and times, there is a persisting object which, at each of those times, will be constituted by those of the objects that exist at that time. I consider two general versions of non-mereological universalism, one which takes basic simples to be enduring objects, and the other which takes simples to be instantaneous objects. This yields (...) three versions of endurantism, of which I ultimately defend the version I call universalist endurantism. Universalist endurantism is the thesis that for any arbitrary set S of instantaneous simples that exist at the same instant, there exists a fusion of the members of S, and for any arbitrary set S* of instantaneous fusions each of which exist at a different instant, there exists an enduring object O that is constituted by those fusions at those instants. Universalist endurantism is ‘non-mereological’ in that the relation that holds between instantaneous fusions and persisting objects is not the part/whole relation, but rather, is the relation of constitution, thus allowing that the persisting objects are three rather than four dimensional. I argue that universalist endurantism not only has the various benefits of mereological universalism in allowing vagueness to be explicated as semantic indeterminacy, but in addition allows the endurantist to hold that some properties are genuinely intrinsic and are exemplified simpliciter. (shrink)

This article assesses the relevance today of two different kinds of Marxism : traditional, “classical” or determinist Marxism and non-traditional or overdeterminist Marxism. These two Marxisms are compared and contrasted to show how and why they yield different notions of socialism and communism, class, the place of economics in Marxism, causation, and epistemology. The authors explain why the overdeterminist version is preferred to the determinist and what this choice suggests about a new Marxian politics for the 21st century. The latter (...) aims to yield a society with a new kind of economic freedom for workers : one in they collectively receive and distribute the gross profits they produce. (shrink)

This essay examines the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska as sharing key similarities with modern feminist practice in science. Szymborska’s poetry invites such an analysis because of its interest in anthropology and the natural sciences, and because of its preoccupation with the creation, limitations, and effects of knowledge. I argue that Szymborska’s privileging of uncertainty, of the personal, the particular, and the ‘insignificant’, as well as her process- and question-oriented method of creating meaning aligns her with feminist science. Szymborska’s poetry explores (...) such key feminist ideals as contextualization of all knowledge, relationship of equality and unity of scientist and subject (expert and non-expert), coexistence of contradictions, and an emphasis on process and questioning rather than on knowledge and findings. Wislawa Szymborska practises in poetry the very same decentring of the patriarchal standards of expertise, objectivity, and absolute truth that is taking place in feminist science. (shrink)

This article introduces the notion of the directedness of a process, which underlies event causation as well as the persistence of things. Using this notion it investigates what happens in typical cases of active event causation. Causes never necessitate their effects because even non- probabilistic causes can be counteracted.

We analyze the “Logical fallacies and reasonable debates in invasion biology: a response to Guiaşu and Tindale” article by Frank et al., and also discuss this work in the context of recent intense debates in invasion biology, and reactions by leading invasion biologists to critics of aspects of their field. While we acknowledge the attempt by Frank et al., at least in the second half of their paper, to take into account more diverse points of view about non-native species and (...) their complex roles in ecosystems, we also find the accusations of misrepresenting invasion biology, for instance by “cherry-picking” and “constructing ‘straw people’”, directed at the Guiaşu and Tindale study to be unwarranted. Despite the sometimes harsh responses by leading invasion biologists to critics of their field, we believe that persistent and fundamental problems remain in invasion biology, and we discuss some of these problems in this article. Failing to recognize these problems, and simply dismissing or minimizing legitimate criticisms, will not advance the cause, or enhance the general appeal, of invasion biology and will prevent meaningful progress in understanding the multiple contributions non-native species can bring to various ecosystems worldwide. We recommend taking a more open-minded and pragmatic approach towards non-native species and the novel ecosystems they are an integral part of. (shrink)

The fifth text-revised iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) defines paraphilia as “any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners”. Paraphilic disorders specifically denote a paraphilia that is “currently causing distress or impairment to the individual or a paraphilia whose satisfaction has entailed personal harm, or risk of harm, to others”. A diagnosis of paraphilic disorder either demands the personal (...) distress and/or impairment of function that is caused by the atypical sexual urges and fantasies to be present, or the status of non-consent of the other person that these sexual fantasies and urges are directed towards when acted upon by the patient. This paper discusses how consent not only becomes the standard for permissible and legal sexual activity with other persons, but also, when the diagnostic criteria are taken at face-value, for sexual pathology in the DSM-5-TR when the patient acts on their sexual urges. After a close investigation of various possible interpretations of the element of non-consensuality in the diagnostic criteria for paraphilic disorders, this paper concludes that the DSM-5-TR does not offer a clarifying explanation on how mental health professionals should under-stand its approach to diagnosing paraphilic disorders, leaving us with an ambiguous, unclear and unsettled conceptualisation of what it would mean to fulfil its diagnostic criteria. (shrink)

How do we inferentially unify separately acquired empirical information into a single comprehensive picture of the lives of persistent particulars? This paper argues that hidden in such inferences is a Fregean puzzle that can only be solved by individuating our demonstratives thoughts in terms of object-dependent Fregean Senses. I begin by characterizing some constraints on a non-skeptical account of our inferential unification of empirical information. I then go on to show that traditional Fregean views of Sense cannot explain the rationality (...) of such inferences; the consequence of which would be widespread skepticism concerning fundamental aspects of our empirical worldview. I show how the theory of object-dependent Senses can account for the rationality of the puzzling inferences. Lastly, I consider the alternative that we abandon a Fregean explanation of the rationality of inferences. While not fully dismissing that option, I briefly raise, what I take to be, a daunting challenge that uniquely faces non-Fregean views of rational inference. (shrink)

The four experiments presented support Boyer's theory that counterintuitive concepts have transmission advantages that account for the commonness and ease of communicating many non-natural cultural concepts. In Experiment 1, 48 American college students recalled expectation-violating items from culturally unfamiliar folk stories better than more mundane items in the stories. In Experiment 2, 52 American college students in a modified serial reproduction task transmitted expectation-violating items in a written narrative more successfully than bizarre or common items. In Experiments 3 and 4, (...) these findings were replicated with orally presented and transmitted stimuli, and found to persist even after three months. To sum, concepts with single expectation-violating features were more successfully transmitted than concepts that were entirely congruent with category-level expectations, even if they were highly unusual or bizarre. This transmission advantage for counterintuitive concepts may explain, in part, why such concepts are so prevalent across cultures and so readily spread. (shrink)

The so-called Buddhist momentarists, such as Dharmakīrti and his followers, defend the momentariness of all things. However, with equal force they also defend the persistence of all things, not just within a single lifetime but over an indefinite cycle of rebirth. Naturally, they have an interesting theory of persistence, according to which things persist without being self-identical over time. The theory is best presented in the Lokāyatāparīkṣā chapter of Śāntarakṣita’s Tattvasaṃgraha and Kamalaśīla’s Paṅjikā, as they clearly articulate the (...) criteria of persistence without identity. The purpose of this paper is to formulate a Buddhist theory of persistence through the analysis of these texts. Here is the basic formula: Things persist as series, which is constituted by momentary entities that are causally related as upādāna and upādeya. Upādāna causal relation is demarcated from other causal relations by the principle of changeability with temporal restriction, and the principle adopts further qualifications to accommodate complex cases and personal persistence. I have addressed a problem that contemporary physicalism might pose a threat to the Buddhist account of personal persistence, and argued that the problem can be evaded by regarding persons as psycho-physical entities rather than strictly non-physical. In its general outlook, the Buddhist theory of persistence is close to Theodore Sider’s stage theory in that persistence is a matter of distinct individuals standing in a special causal relationship. As regards personal persistence, the Buddhist has a stricter condition than Parfit’s IDM thesis, which states that psychological connectedness with any cause is what matters for survival. The Buddhist would say it is moral connectedness with a special cause called upādāna. (shrink)

Building upon a non-standard understanding of evolutionary process focusing on variation and persistence, I will argue that communities and ecosystems can evolve by natural selection as emergent individuals. Evolutionary biology has relied ever increasingly on the modeling of population dynamics. Most have taken for granted that we all agree on what is a population. Recent work has reexamined this perceived consensus. I will argue that there are good reasons to restrict the term “population” to collections of monophyletically related replicators (...) and interactors, which explains why many existing models in population biology exclude by definition many genuine evolving biological individuals such as communities and ecosystems. By studying a case of community evolution (a symbiotic termite–fungus community), we will see that it is variation that is important to evolutionary processes, not populations. Variation within a population is only one of many types of variation that can lead to evolution by natural selection. The upshot of focusing on variation is that cases of community and ecosystem adaptive change become tractable in evolutionary terms. I will show that complex emergent individuals such as communities and ecosystems cannot be fully accommodated by conventional population/reproduction models but can be accommodated by variation/persistence models. (shrink)

Lactase persistence/persistent (LP), the ability to express the lactase enzyme in adults, is one of the most strongly selected phenotypes in humans. It is encoded by at least five genetic variants that have rapidly become widespread in various human populations. The underlying selective mechanism is not clear however, because dairy products in general are well tolerated in adults, even by lactase non‐persistence/persistent (LNP) individuals. Cultural adaptations to milk consumption, notably fermentation and transformation, which can provide most of the (...) energy (protein, fat) to both LP and LNP individuals without any associated cost seem to have been common in ancient societies. Here, we propose that selection for LP occurred through increased glucose/galactose (energy) from fresh milk intake in early childhood, a crucial period for growth. At the age of weaning indeed, lactase activity has already begun to decline in LNP individuals so the gain in energy from fresh milk by LP children represents a major fitness increase. (shrink)

Some theories in the philosophy of time combine a commitment to the existence of non-present regions of spacetime with the view that there is a perspective-independent present time. We call such theories 4D A-theories. There is a well-known objection to 4D A-theories, as follows: 4D A-theories entail that the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present. But if the vast majority of subjects across time believe falsely that they are present, we do not know that (...) we are present. We call this the Epistemic Objection to 4D A-theories. In this paper we do two things: first, we describe and assess a number of different versions of the Epistemic Objection. We argue that there is only one version of the objection—the version due to Russell that we call the Safety Argument—that does not rely on implausible epistemic principles which entail radical scepticism. Second, we raise objections to the main strategies adopted by 4D A-theorists in response to the Safety Argument. We conclude that the Epistemic Objection—in the form of the Safety Argument—remains a threat to 4D A-theories. (shrink)