Whereas several commentators have held that Kant’s argument for the postulate of private right fails insofar as it begs the question, I argue here that this criticism misses the mark. Critics have...

Courts and jurors sometimes refuse to assign liability to defendants on the basis of statistics alone, despite their apparent reliability. I argue that this refusal is best understood as a recognition of defendants’ right to security. Understood as a robust good in Philip Pettit’s sense, security requires that someone risking harm to others’ protected interests adopt a disposition of concern that controls against wrongfully harming them. Since trials risk harm, the state must adopt such a disposition. Statistics leave open the (...) possibility of innocence and so wrongful harm in a way that the state cannot ignore; if it does use such statistics, it makes defendants wrongfully insecure. This explanation of the problem of bare statistical evidence is especially apt because security grounds the right to a fair trial and judicial procedural rights more generally. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by David Hume. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

The manifest appearance of function and purpose in living systems is responsible for the prevalence of apparently teleological explanations of organismic structure and behavior in biology. Although the attribution of function and purpose to living systems is an ancient practice, teleological notions are largely considered ineliminable from modern biological sciences, such as evolutionary biology, genetics, medicine, ethology, and psychiatry, because they play an important explanatory role. Historical and recent examples of teleological claims include the following: The chief function of the (...) heart is the transmission and pumping of the blood through the arteries to the extremities of the body. (Harvey 1616 [1928: 49]) The Predator Detection hypothesis remains the strongest candidate for the function of stotting [by gazelles]. (Caro 1986: 663) The geographic range of human malaria is much wider than the range of the sickle-cell gene. As it happens, other antimalarial genes take over the protective function of the sickle-cell gene in … other warm parts. (Diamond 1994: 83) Despite the substantial amount of data we now have on theropod dinosaurs, more information is necessary in order to determine the likelihood that early feathers served an adaptive function in visual display as opposed to other proposed adaptive functions such as thermoregulation. (Dimond et al. 2011: 62) The ubiquity of claims such as these raises the question: how should apparently teleological notions in biology be understood? Most post-Darwinian approaches attempt to naturalize teleology in biology, in opposition to nineteenth-century viewpoints which grounded it theologically. Nevertheless, biologists and philosophers have continued to question the legitimacy of teleological notions in biology. For instance, Ernst Mayr (1988), identified four reasons why teleological notions remain controversial in biology, namely that they are: vitalistic (positing some special ‘life-force’); requiring backwards causation (because goal-directed explanations seem to use future outcomes to explain present traits); incompatible with mechanistic explanation (because of 1 and 2); mentalistic (attributing the action of mind where there is none). A fifth complaint is that they are not empirically testable (Allen & Bekoff 1995). The current philosophical literature offers both Darwinian and non-Darwinian accounts of teleology in biology that aim to avoid these concerns. In this article, we hope to bring some clarity to the contemporary debates over the role of teleological notions in biology by sketching a taxonomy of the various accounts of biological function on offer (see Allen & Bekoff 1995 for a more comprehensive taxonomy that forms the basis of this presentation). We primarily focus on naturalistic accounts of biological function, since this is where we see the most lively and productive current debates (see, e.g., Garson 2016 for an extended survey). We also briefly discuss the notion of goal-directedness in section 2. (shrink)

Advocates have sought to prove that underdetermination obtains because all theories have empirical equivalents. But algorithms for generating empirical equivalents simply exchange underdetermination for familiar philosophical chestnuts, while the few convincing examples of empirical equivalents will not support the desired sweeping conclusions. Nonetheless, underdetermination does not depend on empirical equivalents: our warrant for current theories is equally undermined by presently unconceived alternatives as well-confirmed merely by the existing evidence, so long as this transient predicament recurs for each theory and body (...) of evidence we consider. The historical record supports the claim that this recurrent, transient underdetermination predicament is our own. (shrink)

When we ask what natural kinds are, there are two different things we might have in mind. The first, which I’ll call the taxonomy question, is what distinguishes a category which is a natural kind from an arbitrary class. The second, which I’ll call the ontology question, is what manner of stuff there is that realizes the category. Many philosophers have systematically conflated the two questions. The confusion is exhibited both by essentialists and by philosophers who pose their accounts in (...) terms of similarity. It also leads to misreading philosophers who do make the distinction. Distinguishing the questions allows for a more subtle understanding of both natural kinds and their underlying metaphysics. (shrink)

Imperatives cannot be true, but they can be obeyed or binding: `Surrender!' is obeyed if you surrender and is binding if you have a reason to surrender. A pure declarative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are declaratives — is valid exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is true if the conjunction of its premisses is true; similarly, I suggest, a pure imperative argument — whose premisses and conclusion are imperatives — is obedience-valid (alternatively: bindingness-valid) exactly if, necessarily, its conclusion is (...) obeyed (alternatively: binding) if the conjunction of its premisses is. I argue that there are two kinds of bindingness, and that a vacillation between two corresponding variants of bindingness-validity largely explains conflicting intuitions concerning the validity of some pure imperative arguments. I prove that for each of those two variants of bindingness-validity there is an equivalent variant of obedience-validity. Finally, I address alternative accounts of pure imperative inference. (shrink)

The accepted narrative treats John Stuart Mill’s Kinds as the historical prototype for our natural kinds, but Mill actually employs two separate notions: Kinds and natural groups. Considering these, along with the accounts of Mill’s nineteenth-century interlocutors, forces us to recognize two distinct questions. First, what marks a natural kind as worthy of inclusion in taxonomy? Second, what exists in the world that makes a category meet that criterion? Mill’s two notions offer separate answers to the two questions: natural groups (...) for taxonomy and Kinds for ontology. This distinction is ignored in many contemporary debates about natural kinds and is obscured by the standard narrative that treats our natural kinds just as a development of Mill’s Kinds. (shrink)

Some scientific realists suggest that scientific communities have improved in their ability to discover alternative theoretical possibilities and that the problem of unconceived alternatives therefore poses a less significant threat to contemporary scientific communities than it did to their historical predecessors. I first argue that the most profound and fundamental historical transformations of the scientific enterprise have actually increased rather than decreased our vulnerability to the problem. I then argue that whether we are troubled by even the prospect of increasing (...) theoretical conservatism in science should depend on the position we occupy in the ongoing debate concerning scientific realism itself. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to provide a case against certain claims made by modal skeptics with a specific application to the debate about whether conceivability is the right notion to employ in justifying the move from some state of affairs being conceivable to its being metaphysically possible. Does conceivability provide adequate, defeasible grounds for inferring metaphysical possibility? If not, is there a better approach that employs a replacement for conceivability? I argue that conceivability should be abandoned in favor (...) of rational intuitions understood in a way I hope to make clear and precise. To accomplish this purpose, I begin by examing the general way conceivability has been related to metaphysical possibility and opt for a replacement for conceivability. Next, I make clear and precise what I mean by that replacement—rational intuitions. Third, I present three representative accounts of modal knowledge offered by Timothy O’Connor, George Bealer, and Edmund Husserl. O’Connor’s account is externalist, Bealer’s is a hybrid between an internalist and externalist view, and Husserl’s is a purely internalist perspective. While all three are plausible perspectives, I will criticize and reject the first two accounts and argue that Husserl’s way out of modal skepticism is successful. I conclude that Husserl’s employment of rational intuition made precise by his notions of eidetic and categorial intuition, provides a rigorous, fruitful way to ground modal knowledge in general, and de re and de dicto possibility in particular. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceived stressors and coping behaviours in student nurses on a pre-registration programme of study. Stress in student nurses has been identified with decreased emotional well-being and poor academic achievement. The significance of stress and coping behaviours in students during training has implications for education and practice. Design/methodology/approach The present study recruited 87 pre-registration student nurses in a cross-sectional design. Bivariate and multivariate analyses assessed the differences in field and year of study (...) and the students’ perceived stress and coping behaviours. Findings The findings showed that stress is a significant issue in nurse training. Fifty-three per cent of the participants had levels higher than the mean. Interestingly, the present study found that high-perceived stress was associated with avoidance behaviours. The most common type of perceived stress and ranked by highest factor were from written assignments and a lack of professional skills and knowledge. Their peer group and everyday life activities were shown as potential ways of coping with stressors. Thus, it seems reasonable to focus support on decreasing avoidant and enhancing stress-reducing behaviours. Practical implications Psychological stress and coping behaviours must be considered together, as perceived stress is bound by the ability to ameliorate stress by managing helpful and unhelpful behaviours. Originality/value The findings may suggest that a potential benefit could come from the provision of helpful strategies such as peer group support and reduction of avoidant behaviours. Also, there seems to be a need for greater mental health literacy in dealing with stress during training. (shrink)

Moral values in healthcare range widely between interest groups and are principally subjective. Disagreements diminish dialogue and marginalize alternative viewpoints. Extremely premature births exemplify how discord becomes unproductive when conflicts of interest, cultural misunderstanding, constrained evidence review, and peculiar hierarchy compete without the balance of objective standards of reason. Accepting uncertainty, distributing risk fairly, and humbly acknowledging therapeutic limits are honorable traits, not relativism, and especially crucial in our world of constrained resources. We think dialogics engender a mutual understanding that: (...) i) transitions beliefs beyond bias, ii) moves conflict toward pragmatism (i.e., the truth of any position is verified by subsequent experience), and iii) recognizes value pluralism (i.e., human values are irreducibly diverse, conflicting, and ultimately incommensurable). This article provides a clear and useful Point-Counterpoint of extreme prematurity controversies, an objective neurodevelopmental outcomes table, and a dialogics exemplar to cultivate shared empathetic comprehension, not to create sides from which to choose. It is our goal to bridge the understanding gap within and between physicians and bioethicists. Dialogics accept competing relational interests as human nature, recognizing that ultimate solutions satisfactory to all are illusory, because every choice has downside. Nurturing a collective consciousness via dialogics and pragmatism is congenial to integrating objective evidence review and subjective moral-cultural sentiments, and is that rarest of ethical constructs, a means and an end. (shrink)

Originally published in 1969. This book explains what is wrong with the traditional methodology of "inductive" reasoning and shows that the alternative scheme of reasoning associated with Whewell, Pierce and Popper can give the scientist a useful insight into the way he thinks.

Recent reports and papers on chimeric research highlight the promise of chimeric models of human neuropsychiatric disorders to ameliorate human suffering due to autism spectrum disorders, depression, and schizophrenia. These calls, however, typically do not acknowledge, much less address, criticisms of model creation and validation, or concerns about scientific conduct more generally. The ethical justification for the use of nonhuman animals in research depends on the production of benefits to humans based on such research. But the assessment and production of (...) benefits are highly uncertain and rife with both practical and conceptual challenges. This essay provides a general framework for classifying the benefits of biomedical research and then focuses on two factors that directly impact—and threaten—the production of knowledge in research that models neuropsychiatric disorders. (shrink)

Westworld is a television series on HBO (2016–present), based on a movie of the same name by Michael Crichton. The plot of the show is wide-reaching. The first season shows us an adult theme park where android “hosts” serve the wealthy “guests.” Seasons two and three show the attempt of the hosts to escape this servitude, and then, in a twist, help humans do the same outside of the parks. This chapter links all three seasons of Westworld to theories of (...) colonization. First, it explores the types of colonialism as they pertain to Westworld. Then it looks at the various scopes of colonization in Westworld – the colonization of space, time, and psychic space. Next, it explores the psychology of colonizers and the colonized as it pertains to the show. Lastly, it explores possible forms of liberation from colonization that the show has to offer. (shrink)

"Resilience in the academic setting has been named as academic resilience and been defined as an increased probability of academic success despite stressful events and conditions" [Mitchell, 2021] p1474 based on the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS‐30) [Cassidy, 2016].

The role of animals in the realm of sport is the focus of this special issue which delves into the nuanced intersections of sport, animals, and ethics. For millennia, humans have forged multifacete...

Tracing Walter Benjamin's convergences with, and divergences from, influential German theorist Carl Schmitt, this edited collection places his thinking in the context of broader 20th century political philosophy of his time, and examines the question of whether Benjamin presents the possibility for a distinctive political theology, mapping the coordinates of this question without collapsing the tensions internal to Benjamin's thought. This volume brings together a host of multifaceted contributions that explore why Benjamin has been a fertile source for thinking about (...) political theology and the possibilities that this new perspective brings to light. (shrink)

This book is a history of modern European philosophy, focusing on the great philosophers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, from Descartes through Nietzsche, all of whom develop comprehensive systems of thought. Such a history can be seen as telling a story (indeed, the very word "story" comes from the Latin word historia). It has been traditionally understood since ancient times that a good story has a beginning, an end, and a middle that reasonably moves us from the beginning (...) to its end. Although it may seem a bit artificial, we can think of the history of modern European philosophy as beginning in the 1620s, when Descartes was writing his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and ending in 1900, with the death of Nietzsche. In some ways, the development from the former to the latter is a process of intellectual radicalization. Yet a focus that persists through this process is an emphasis on the individual thinker as the subject of experience, belief, knowledge, and action. (shrink)

The problem of punishment -- Punishment as crime prevention -- Can retributive punishment be justified? -- The mixed theory of punishment -- Retribution and revenge -- What is the purpose of retribution? -- Making sense of honor -- Is punishment justified?

A continuoxis t- norm is a continuous map * from [0, 1]² into [0,1] such that is a commutative totally ordered monoid. Since the natural ordering on [0,1] is a complete lattice ordering, each continuous t-norm induces naturally a residuation → and becomes a commutative naturally ordered residuated monoid, also called a hoop. The variety of basic hoops is precisely the variety generated by all algebras, where * is a continuous t-norm. In this paper we investigate the structure of the (...) variety of basic hoops and some of its subvarieties. In particular we provide a complete description of the finite subdirectly irreducible basic hoops, and we show that the variety of basic hoops is generated as a quasivariety by its finite algebras. We extend these results to Hájek's BL-algebras, and we give an alternative proof of the fact that the variety of BL-algebras is generated by all algebras arising from continuous t-norms on [ 0,1] and their residua. The last part of the paper is devoted to the investigation of the subreducts of BL- algebras, of Gödel algebras and of product algebras. (shrink)

_From the Introduction:_ "Stoic philosophy, of which Epictetus (c. a.d. 50–130) is a representative, began as a recognizable movement around 300 b.c. Its founder was Zeno of Cytium (not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who discovered the famous paradoxes). He was born in Cyprus about 336 b.c., but all of his philosophical activity took place in Athens. For more than 500 years Stoicism was one of the most influential and fruitful philosophical movements in the Graeco-Roman world. The works (...) of the earlier Stoics survive only in fragmentary quotations from other authors, but from the Renaissance until well into the nineteenth century, Stoic ethical thought was one of the most important ancient influences on European ethics, particularly because of the descriptions of it by Cicero, through surviving works by the Stoics Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and also Epictetus--and also because of the effect that it had had in antiquity, and continued to have into the nineteenth century, on Christian ethical views. Nowadays an undergraduate or graduate student learning about ancient philosophy in a university course may well hear only about Plato and Aristotle, along perhaps with the presocratics; but in the history of Western thought and education this situation is somewhat atypical, and in most periods a comparable student would have learned as much or more about Stoicism, as well as two other major ancient philosophical movements, Epicureanism and Scepticism. In spite of this lack of explicit acquaintance with Stoic philosophers and their works, however, most students will recognize in Epictetus various ideas that are familiar through their effects on other thinkers, notably Spinoza, in our intellectual tradition.". (shrink)

Social evolution theory conventionally takes an externalist explanatory stance, treating observed cooperation as explanandum and the positive assortment of cooperative behaviour as explanans. We ask how the circumstances bringing about this positive assortment arose in the first place. Rather than merely push the explanatory problem back a step, we move from an externalist to an interactionist explanatory stance, in the spirit of Lewontin and the Niche Construction theorists. We develop a theory of ‘social niche construction’ in which we consider biological (...) entities to be both the subject and object of their own social evolution. Some important cases of the evolution of cooperation have the side-effect of causing changes in the hierarchical level at which the evolutionary process acts. This is because the traits that act to align the fitness interests of particles in a collective can also act to diminish the extent to which those particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance, while augmenting the extent to which collectives of such particles are bearers of heritable fitness variance. In this way, we can explain upward transitions in the hierarchical level at which the Darwinian machine operates in terms of particle-level selection, even though the outcome of the process is a collective-level selection regime. Our theory avoids the logical and metaphysical paradoxes faced by other attempts to explain evolutionary transitions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Criteria Used for the Concept of the Universal Some Conceptual Barriers to Early Grasp of the Universal Empedocles: Formulae for Compounds; Biological Forms; Type‐Identities across Cycles Philolaus: Genus, Species, and the Relation to Particulars Democritus: An Infinity of Atomic Types, Atomic Tokens Comments by Democritus on the Universal Democritus and Aristotle: Origins of the Type–Token Distinction Democritus and Plato Bibliography.

This is a critique of Timothy Hsiao’s ‘A Moral Defense of Trophy Hunting.’ I argue that Hsiao’s arguments on pain, consciousness, behavior, cruelty, and necessity all fail. More importantly, I argue against his broader conclusion that non-human animals ‘do not have any inherent moral significance.’ My conclusion is that Hsiao’s moral defense of trophy hunting fails.

Supercommentary on Tantravārtika of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, exegesis on Mīmāṃsābhāṣya of Śabarasvāmī, classical commentary on Mīmāṃsāsūtra by Jaimini.

Bernard Mandeville construiu sua obra-prima de dois volumes, A fábula das abelhas, em torno de um poema largamente ignorado originalmente publicado em 1705, sua "A colmeia resmungona". Esse poema tenta proporcionar o contexto literário para a escolha feita por Mandeville da metáfora apiana. Examinamos exemplos antigos e modernos de teoria social e política informados e articulados por referência à organização e estrutura dos apiários e seus habitantes. A consideração desse contexto, conforme argumentamos, demonstra de uma nova maneira o caráter subversivo (...) de “A colmeia resmungona” e suas iterações subsequentes como A fábula das abelhas. Mandeville vira do avesso as suposições desgastadas pelo tempo sobre a harmonia natural das colmeias, sua relação com a sociedade humana, e o papel da fala e da razão em seu florescimento. (shrink)

Las narrativas que han afirmado la relación de la modernidad con lo Occidental, así como aquellas que han tratado de descentralizar el centro de lo moderno coinciden en un aspecto primordial: ver la modernidad como un producto de Occidente. Lo que está en cuestión, entonces, es pensar si se puede hallar una manera de teorizar la cuestión de la modernidad que la relocalice en un contexto mundial, y al mismo tiempo, permita a ese contexto complejizar, en lugar de simplemente revertir, (...) la lógica narrativa de la modernización. En este sentido, una de las cuestiones que se proponen revisar es la manera en la que se da la interacción entre Occidente y el no-Occidente para poder asumir la escenificación que define lo moderno en la diferencia constitutiva de su espacialidad y su representación. (shrink)

I am a big fan of the Second Essay in Nietzsche's GM. I find it mysteriously rich rather than embarrassingly incoherent. The Rise of Politics and Morality in Nietzsche's Genealogy is the first full-length study of this essay and, as such, is a welcome addition to the scholarship. Metzger's book makes several valuable contributions to the discussion of the Second Essay, but the overall argument of the book is hampered by two main issues: First, Metzger's central argument seems to be (...) that the Second Essay details the morally creative expression of the will to power in bad conscience, but it is not sufficiently nuanced on the meaning or scope of either the will to power or morality. And second, Metzger's... (shrink)

Standard defences of preservationism, and of the intrinsic value of nature more generally, are vulnerable to at least three objections. The first of these comes from social constructivism, the second from the claim that it is incoherent to argue that nature is both 'other' and something with which we can feel unity, whilst the third links defences of nature to authoritarian objectivism and dangerously misanthropic normative dichotomies which set pure nature against impure humanity. I argue that all these objections may (...) be answered by recasting the relationship between man and nature into a tripartite spectrum of ontological form between nature and artifact, with the key question being the extent to which nature has been humanised in accordance with certain modes of strongly instrumental rationality, these in turn being defined by reference to the split between abstract reason and natural feeling which was exacerbated by specific elements in the Enlightenment period. This new model may grant normative force by linking external nature to a broader conception of human psychological wellbeing than that offered by the quantitatively orientated models of human rationality and agency. (shrink)

In their article, Crutchfield and Redinger (2024) outline the conditions that they have identified as situations in which it is ethically permissible to use chemical restraints, defined as medicati...