: Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on materialism than had previously been (...) recognized by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

Studies of Chinese dialectical materialism have long neglected the important philosophical dimension of Hegelian thought and its influence on Chinese Marxism. This essay examines the work of Zhang Shiying of Beijing University, whose studies of Hegel's works on dialectical logic in the 1950s sought to clarify the nature of Hegel's speculative dialectic and its relation to dialectical materialism. Like Lenin before him, Zhang believed that Hegel's works on logic offered a more profound reflection on materialism than had previously been recognized (...) by Marxist critics of German idealism. Zhang's sensitive reading of both Hegel's Science of Logic and the Encyclopedia Logic highlights the problem of the speculative dialectic and negativity. Examined here is Zhang's analysis of the Hegelian dialectic in light of contemporary accounts of the role of Hegelian negativity in poststructuralist thought. (shrink)

Fundamental movement skill proficiency does not develop solely due to maturation, but also via diverse perceptual-motor experiences across childhood. Practicing gymnastics has been shown to improve postural control. The purpose of the present study was to examine potential changes to postural control of children following a course of educational gymnastics. Two groups of children both completed 20 × 45-min physical education lessons; one group completed educational gymnastics lessons in school delivered by a professional coach, the other group completed their typical (...) PE classes. Unipedal balancing performance was assessed by calculating the percentage of successful trials made. Postural sway dynamics were explored by calculating center-of-pressure sample entropy, 95% ellipse sway area and sway velocity. Measurements were taken before the lessons began and immediately after the lessons were completed. The gymnastics group performed better than the typical PE group at unipedal balancing. Females outperformed males in both groups. Males made different changes to postural control compared to females across 3 months. Educational gymnastics enabled children in a critical period of development to make more rapid improvements to postural performance and control. Novel movement experiences, like those offered by educational gymnastics, may have a positive influence on postural control and importantly, physical literacy. Future work should examine how sex effects the development of postural control strategies in young children. (shrink)

This article explores the neglected idea of fate in Simmel’s thought. It examines the specific definition of fate present in Simmel’s writings and the relation of this definition to tragic drama. The argument operates under the assumption that tragic drama represents the ‘natural habitat’ for the exploration and expression of the fate problematic. In this context, it is argued that Simmel’s rediscovery of the relevance of fate emphasizes the modernity of tragedy. The article explores Simmel’s translation of fate from drama (...) and philosophy into sociology, but into a sociology replete with a distinctly existential and metaphysical consciousness. It is argued that Simmel’s application of fate to modern social life constitutes a sociologization of fate, but that rather than involving a reduction of fate to society, this sociologization actually involves a form of re-enchantment of the social through life. In relation to this sociologization and building on the argument of Peter Baehr, it is argued that the concept of fate is uniquely endowed with a capacity to encourage a sense of pathos conducive to the development of a reflexive and critical sense of collective social responsibility and of shared future. In this regard, the article examines Simmel’s engagement with Naturalist tragedy and the transition from ancient to modern drama. Throughout, it is argued that the experience of modernity, where ‘all that is solid melts into air’, is conducive to a rediscovery of the relevance of fate and tragedy. (shrink)

Intuition—spontaneous, nondeliberative assessment—has long been indispensable in theoretical and practical philosophy alike. Recent research by psychologists and experimental philosophers has challenged our understanding of the nature and authority of moral intuitions by tracing them to “fast,” “automatic,” “button-pushing” responses of the affective system. This view of the affective system contrasts with a growing body of research in affective neuroscience which suggests that it is instead a flexible learning system that generates and updates a multidimensional evaluative landscape to guide decision (...) and action. With this latter view in mind, I revisit some of the classic hypothetical scenarios used in experimental moral psychology. (shrink)

On any given night cable TV news will tell us how polarized American politics is: Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Canada. But in fact, writes Peter Wenz in _Beyond Red and Blue_, Americans do not divide neatly into two ideological camps of red/blue, Republican/Democrat, right/left. In real life, as Wenz shows, different ideologies can converge on certain issues; people from the right and left can support the same policy for different reasons. Thus, for example, libertarian-leaning Republicans can (...) oppose the Patriot Act's encroachment on personal freedom and social conservatives can support gay marriage on the grounds that it strengthens the institution of marriage. Wenz maps out twelve political philosophies--ranging from theocracy and free-market conservatism to feminism and cosmopolitanism--on which Americans draw when taking political positions. He then turns his focus to some of America's most controversial issues and shows how ideologically diverse coalitions can emerge on such hot-button topics as extending life by artificial means, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, affirmative action, abortion, same-sex marriage, health care, immigration, and globalization. Awareness of these twelve political philosophies, Wenz argues, can help activists enlist allies, citizens better understand politics and elections, and all of us define our own political identities. (shrink)

On any given night cable TV news will tell us how polarized American politics is: Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Canada. But in fact, writes Peter Wenz in _Beyond Red and Blue_, Americans do not divide neatly into two ideological camps of red/blue, Republican/Democrat, right/left. In real life, as Wenz shows, different ideologies can converge on certain issues; people from the right and left can support the same policy for different reasons. Thus, for example, libertarian-leaning Republicans can (...) oppose the Patriot Act's encroachment on personal freedom and social conservatives can support gay marriage on the grounds that it strengthens the institution of marriage. Wenz maps out twelve political philosophies--ranging from theocracy and free-market conservatism to feminism and cosmopolitanism--on which Americans draw when taking political positions. He then turns his focus to some of America's most controversial issues and shows how ideologically diverse coalitions can emerge on such hot-button topics as extending life by artificial means, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, affirmative action, abortion, same-sex marriage, health care, immigration, and globalization. Awareness of these twelve political philosophies, Wenz argues, can help activists enlist allies, citizens better understand politics and elections, and all of us define our own political identities. (shrink)

Our ability to rapidly distinguish new from already stored information is important for behavior and decision making, but the underlying processes remain unclear. Here, we tested the hypothesis that contextual cues lead to a preselection of information and, therefore, faster recognition. Specifically, on the basis of previous modeling work, we hypothesized that recognition time depends on the amount of relevant content stored in long-term memory, i.e., set size, and we explored possible age-related changes of this relationship in older humans. In (...) our paradigm, subjects learned by heart four different word lists written in different colors. On the day of testing, a color cue indicated with a probability of 50% that a subsequent word might be from the corresponding list or from a list of new words. The old/new status of the word had to be distinguished via button press. As a main finding, we can show in a sample of n = 49 subjects, including 26 younger and 23 older humans, that response times increased linearly and logarithmically as a function of set size in both age groups. Conversely, corrected hit rates decreased as a function of set size with no statistically significant differences between both age groups. As such, our findings provide empirical evidence that contextual information can lead to a preselection of relevant information stored in long-term memory to promote efficient recognition, possibly by cyclical top-down and bottom-up processing. (shrink)

Tendencies of approach and avoidance seem to be a universal characteristic of humans. Specifically, individuals are faster in avoiding than in approaching negative stimuli and they are faster in approaching than in avoiding positive stimuli. The existence of this automatic approach-avoidance bias has been demonstrated in many studies. Furthermore, this bias is thought to play a key role in psychiatric disorders like drug addiction and phobias. However, its mechanisms are far from clear. Theories of embodied cognition postulate that the nature (...) of gestures plays a key role in this process. To shed light on the role of the involved gesture we employed a 2 × 2 factorial design with two types of stimuli. Participants had either to approach positive and avoid negative stimuli or to avoid positive stimuli and approach negative stimuli. Further, they responded either with a joystick or a button press on a response pad. Participants reacted faster in congruent conditions, i.e., avoiding negative stimuli and approaching positive stimuli, than in incongruent conditions. This replicates the known approach and avoidance bias. However, direct analysis of the button press condition revealed no reaction time advantage for congruent trials compared to incongruent trials. In contrast, in the joystick condition participants were significantly faster performing congruent reactions than incongruent reactions. This interaction, a significant reaction time advantage, when the response is enacted by moving a joystick towards or away from the body provides evidence that approach-avoidance tendencies have a crucial bodily component. (shrink)

Embodiment approaches to cognition and emotion have put forth the idea that the way we think and talk about affective events often recruits spatial information that stems, to some extent, from our bodily experiences. For example, metaphorical expressions such as “being someone’s right hand” or “leaving something bad behind” convey affectivity associated with the lateral and sagittal dimensions of space. Action tendencies associated with affect such as the directional fluency of hand movements (dominant right hand-side – positive; non-dominant left hand-side (...) – negative) and approach-avoidance behaviors (forward – positive; backwards – negative) might be mechanisms supporting such associations. Against this background, experimental research has investigated whether positive and negative words are freely allocated into space (e.g., close or far from one’s body) or resonate with congruent (vs. incongruent) predefined manual actions usually performed by joysticks or button presses (e.g., positive - right; negative - left, or vice versa). However, to date, it is unclear how the processing of affective concepts resonate with directional actions of the whole body that are performed freely within a context enabling lateral and sagittal movements simultaneously. Accordingly, 67 right-handed participants were to freely step on an 8-response pad (front, back, right, left, front-right, front-left, back-right, or back-left) after being presented in front of them valence-laden personal life-events submitted before the task (e.g., words or sentences such as “graduation” or “birth of a child”). The most revealing finding of this study indicates that approach-avoidance behaviors and space-valence associations across laterality are interwoven during whole body step actions: Positive events induced steps highly biased to front-right whereas negative events induced steps highly biased to back-left. (shrink)

Universals are putative objects like wisdom, morality, redness, etc. Although we believe in properties (which, we argue, are not a kind of object), we do not believe in universals. However, a number of ordinary, natural language constructions seem to commit us to their existence. In this paper, we provide a fictionalist theory of universals, which allows us to speak as if universals existed, whilst denying that any really do.

Philosophy and model theory frequently meet one another. Philosophy and Model Theory aims to understand their interactions -/- Model theory is used in every ‘theoretical’ branch of analytic philosophy: in philosophy of mathematics, in philosophy of science, in philosophy of language, in philosophical logic, and in metaphysics. But these wide-ranging appeals to model theory have created a highly fragmented literature. On the one hand, many philosophically significant mathematical results are found only in mathematics textbooks: these are aimed squarely at mathematicians; (...) they typically presuppose that the reader has a significant background in mathematics; and little clue is given as to their philosophical significance. On the other hand, the philosophical applications of these results are then scattered across disconnected pockets of papers, separated by decades or more. -/- The first aim of Philosophy and Model Theory, then, is to consider the philosophical uses of model theory. On a technical level, we try to show how philosophically significant results connect to one another, and also to state the best version of a result for philosophical purposes. On a philosophical level, we show how similar dialectical situations arise repeatedly, across fragmented debates in varied philosophical areas. -/- The second aim of Philosophy and Model Theory, though, is to consider the philosophy of model theory. Model theory itself is rarely taken as the subject matter of philosophising (contrast this, say, with the philosophy of biology, or the philosophy of set theory). But model theory is a beautiful part of pure mathematics, and worthy of philosophical study in its own right. (shrink)

Consider a variant of the usual story about the iterative conception of sets. As usual, at every stage, you find all the (bland) sets of objects which you found earlier. But you also find the result of tapping any earlier-found object with any magic wand (from a given stock of magic wands). -/- By varying the number and behaviour of the wands, we can flesh out this idea in many different ways. This paper's main Theorem is that any loosely constructive (...) way of fleshing out this idea is synonymous with a ZF-like theory. -/- This Theorem has rich applications; it realizes John Conway's (1976) Mathematicians' Liberation Movement; and it connects with a lovely idea due to Alonzo Church (1974). (shrink)

Hilary Putnam once suggested that “the actual existence of sets as ‘intangible objects’ suffers… from a generalization of a problem first pointed out by Paul Benacerraf… are sets a kind of function or are functions a sort of set?” Sadly, he did not elaborate; my aim, here, is to do so on his behalf. There are well-known methods for treating sets as functions and functions as sets. But these do not raise any obvious philosophical or foundational puzzles. For that, we (...) first need to provide a full-fledged function theory. I supply such a theory: it axiomatizes the iterative notion of function in exactly the same sense that ZF axiomatizes the iterative notion of set. Indeed, this function theory is synonymous with ZF. It might seem that set theory and function theory present us with rival foundations for mathematics, since they postulate different ontologies. But appearances are deceptive. Set theory and function theory provide the very same judicial foundation for mathematics. They do not supply rival metaphysical foundations; indeed, if they supply metaphysical foundations at all, then they supply the very same metaphysical foundations. (shrink)

The idea of the social contract has typically been seen in political theory as legitimating the exercise of governmental power and creating the moral basis for political order. Mark Button wants to draw our attention to an equally crucial, but seldom emphasized, role for the social contract: its educative function in cultivating the habits and virtues that citizens need to fulfill the promises that the social contract represents. In this book, he retells the story of social contract theory as (...) developed by some of its major proponents—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls—highlighting this constructive feature of the theory in order to show that not only do citizens make the social contract, but the social contract also makes citizens. Button’s interest in recovering this theme from past political theory is not merely historical, however. He means to resurrect our concern for it so that we can better understand the political-institutional and cultural-ethical conditions necessary for balancing individual freedom and common citizenship in our modern world of moral pluralism. Drawing on the history of public reason, Button shows how political justification continues to depend upon an ethics of character formation and why this matters for citizens today. (shrink)

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

Standard Type Theory, STT, tells us that b^n(a^m) is well-formed iff n=m+1. However, Linnebo and Rayo have advocated the use of Cumulative Type Theory, CTT, has more relaxed type-restrictions: according to CTT, b^β(a^α) is well-formed iff β > α. In this paper, we set ourselves against CTT. We begin our case by arguing against Linnebo and Rayo’s claim that CTT sheds new philosophical light on set theory. We then argue that, while CTT ’s type-restrictions are unjustifiable, the type-restrictions imposed by (...) STT are justified by a Fregean semantics. What is more, this Fregean semantics provides us with a principled way to resist Linnebo and Rayo’s Semantic Argument for CTT. We end by examining an alternative approach to cumulative types due to Florio and Jones; we argue that their theory is best seen as a misleadingly formulated version of STT. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

Tim Button explores the relationship between words and world; between semantics and scepticism. -/- A certain kind of philosopher – the external realist – worries that appearances might be radically deceptive. For example, she allows that we might all be brains in vats, stimulated by an infernal machine. But anyone who entertains the possibility of radical deception must also entertain a further worry: that all of our thoughts are totally contentless. That worry is just incoherent. -/- We cannot, then, (...) be external realists, who worry about the possibility of radical deception. Equally, however, we cannot be internal realists, who reject all possibility of deception. We must position ourselves somewhere between internal realism and external realism, but we cannot hope to say exactly where. We must be realists, for what that is worth, and realists within limits. -/- In establishing these claims, The Limits of Realism critically explores and develops several themes from Hilary Putnam’s work: the model-theoretic arguments; the connection between truth and justification; the brain-in-vat argument; semantic externalism; and conceptual relativity. The book establishes the continued significance of these topics for all philosophers interested in mind, logic, language, or the possibility of metaphysics. (shrink)

We propose a solution to the problem of logical omniscience in what we take to be its fundamental version: as concerning arbitrary agents and the knowledge attitude per se. Our logic of knowledge is a spin-off from a general theory of thick content, whereby the content of a sentence has two components: an intension, taking care of truth conditions; and a topic, taking care of subject matter. We present a list of plausible logical validities and invalidities for the logic of (...) knowledge per se for arbitrary agents, and isolate three explanatory factors for them: the topic-sensitivity of content; the fragmentation of knowledge states; the defeasibility of knowledge acquisition. We then present a novel dynamic epistemic logic that yields precisely the desired validities and invalidities, for which we provide expressivity and completeness results. We contrast this with related systems and address possible objections. (shrink)

A judgement analysis of people's social inferences of attitudes and ability was conducted. University students were asked to infer the liberalness ( N = 60; Study 1) or intelligence ( N = 40; Study 2) of targets seen in pictures. Multiple regression analyses revealed that attractiveness was the most important cue for predicting inferences of liberalness, while an ethnic cue (i.e., being Asian) was the most important cue for judgements about intelligence. Results also showed that a single-cue model was less (...) susceptible to overfitting, but significantly less accurate than a multiple-cue model in predicting participant's intelligence judgements. Although the multiple regression models suffered a degree of overfitting, cross validation showed that they continued to have significant predictive value when applied to new data. Furthermore, a “random partner” method (comparing each participant's own regression equation with that of another, randomly selected, participant) provided evidence of significant idiosyncratic variation in the way intelligence judgements were made. (shrink)

In “Models and Reality” (1980), Putnam sketched a version of his internal realism as it might arise in the philosophy of mathematics. Here, I will develop that sketch. By combining Putnam’s model-theoretic arguments with Dummett’s reflections on Gödelian incompleteness, we arrive at (what I call) the Skolem-Gödel Antinomy. In brief: our mathematical concepts are perfectly precise; however, these perfectly precise mathematical concepts are manifested and acquired via a formal theory, which is understood in terms of a computable system of proof, (...) and hence is incomplete. Whilst this might initially seem strange, I show how internal categoricity results for arithmetic and set theory allow us to face up to this Antinomy. This also allows us to understand why “Models are not lost noumenal waifs looking for someone to name them,” but “constructions within our theory itself,” with “names from birth.”. (shrink)

Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

Amie Thomasson and Eli Hirsch have both attempted to deflate metaphysics, by combining Carnapian ideas with an appeal to ordinary language. My main aim in this paper is to critique such deflationary appeals to ordinary language. Focussing on Thomasson, I draw two very general conclusions. First: ordinary language is a wildly complicated phenomenon. Its implicit ontological commitments can only be tackled by invoking a context principle; but this will mean that ordinary language ontology is not a trivial enterprise. Second: ordinary (...) language often points in different directions simultaneously, so that a wide variety of existence questions cannot be deflated merely by appealing to ordinary language. (shrink)

What is ethics? Where do moral standards come from? Are they based on emotions, reason, or some innate sense of right and wrong? For many scientists, the key lies entirely in biology---especially in Darwinian theories of evolution and self-preservation. But if evolution is a struggle for survival, why are we still capable of altruism? In his classic study The Expanding Circle, Peter Singer argues that altruism began as a genetically based drive to protect one's kin and community members but (...) has developed into a consciously chosen ethic with an expanding circle of moral concern. Drawing on philosophy and evolutionary psychology, he demonstrates that human ethics cannot be explained by biology alone. Rather, it is our capacity for reasoning that makes moral progress possible. In a new afterword, Singer takes stock of his argument in light or recent research on the evolution of morality.--Publisher's description. (shrink)

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Introduction These essays have been written over a period of about ten years and have already been published separately in various places. ...

Do men and women perceive cybercrime types differently? This article draws on the distinction between socio-economic and psychosocial cybercrime proposed by Lazarus (2019) to investigate whether men and women hold different perceptions of digital crimes across these two dimensions. Informed by the synergy between feminist theory and the Tripartite Cybercrime Framework (TCF), our survey examined respondents’ differential perceptions of socio-economic cybercrime (online fraud) and psychosocial cybercrime (cyberbullying, revenge porn, cyberstalking, online harassment) among men and women in the United Kingdom. The (...) results revealed that women considered psychosocial cybercrime worse than men. Conversely, we found no differences between men and women with regard to socio-economic cybercrime. The article concludes that psychosocial cybercrimes are more gendered than socio-economic cybercrime, suggesting problems with the meaning of ‘cyber-enabled crimes’, and substantiating the synergy between the TCF and feminist perspectives. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

The following bare-bones story introduces the idea of a cumulative hierarchy of pure sets: 'Sets are arranged in stages. Every set is found at some stage. At any stage S: for any sets found before S, we find a set whose members are exactly those sets. We find nothing else at S.' Surprisingly, this story already guarantees that the sets are arranged in well-ordered levels, and suffices for quasi-categoricity. I show this by presenting Level Theory, a simplification of set theories (...) due to Scott, Montague, Derrick, and Potter. (shrink)

First published in 1987. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How do tweets reflect the long-standing disparities between the northern and southern regions of Nigeria? This study presents a qualitative analysis of Twitter users' responses (n = 101,518) to the tweets of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) regarding the production and prosecution of cybercrime. The article uses postcolonial perspectives to shed light on the legacies of British colonial efforts in Nigeria, such as the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates in 1914. The results revealed significant discrepancies between (...) Nigeria's northern and southern regions regarding cybercriminal arrest, conviction, and sentencing. Specifically, the results showed that the EFCC's criminalization of Southerners differs substantially from that of Northerners. The contemporary manifestation of inequalities concerning the production and prosecution of cybercrime on Twitter reflects long-standing contestations (e.g., economic, political, cultural, geological) between the northern and southern parts of Nigerian society. Therefore, since the North-South divide in present-day Nigeria originated from British colonization, colonialism is the base that shaped the superstructure comprising political, religious, historical, geological (e.g., crude oil), and economic factors. In turn, the article spotlights that regional differences in educational attainment, originating from differing experiences of Christianization and colonization, interact with regional disparities in the production of cybercrime. More research is required to better understand how these contextual disparities in society interact with the production and prosecution of cybercrime, given that Nigerian cybercriminals defraud victims all over the world. (shrink)

No-futurists ('growing block theorists') hold that that the past and the present are real, but that the future is not. The present moment is therefore privileged: it is the last moment of time. Craig Bourne (2002) and David Braddon-Mitchell (2004) have argued that this position is unmotivated, since the privilege of presentness comes apart from the indexicality of 'this moment'. I respond that no-futurists should treat 'x is real-as-of y' as a nonsymmetric relation. Then different moments are real-as-of different times. (...) This reunites privilege with indexicality, but entails that no-futurists must believe in ineliminably tensed facts. (shrink)

This article surveys recent literature by Parsons, McGee, Shapiro and others on the significance of categoricity arguments in the philosophy of mathematics. After discussing whether categoricity arguments are sufficient to secure reference to mathematical structures up to isomorphism, we assess what exactly is achieved by recent ‘internal’ renditions of the famous categoricity arguments for arithmetic and set theory.

Tallant (2007) has challenged my recent defence of no-futurism (Button 2006), but he does not discuss the key to that defence: that no-futurism's primitive relation 'x is real-as-of y' is not symmetric. I therefore answer Tallant's challenge in the same way as I originally defended no-futurism. I also clarify no-futurism by rejecting a common mis-characterisation of the growing-block theorist. By supplying a semantics for no-futurists, I demonstrate that no-futurism faces no sceptical challenges. I conclude by considering the problem of (...) how to interpret the relation 'x is real-as-of y'. -/- (NB: A correction to this article appears in Analysis 68.1.). (shrink)

Keränen (2001) raises an argument against realistic (ante rem) structuralism: where a mathematical structure has a non-trivial automorphism, distinct indiscernible positions within the structure cannot be shown to be non-identical using only the properties and relations of that structure. Ladyman (2005) responds by allowing our identity criterion to include 'irreflexive two-place relations'. I note that this does not solve the problem for structures with indistinguishable positions, i.e. positions that have all the same properties as each other and exactly the same (...) relations to all objects (including themselves). I conclude that realistic structuralists must compromise and treat some structures eliminativistically. (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

This article is about the manifestations of similarities between two seemingly distinct groups of Nigerians: cybercriminals and politicians. Which linguistic strategies do Twitter users use to express their opinions on cybercriminals and politicians? The study undertakes a qualitative analysis of ‘engaged’ tweets of an elite law enforcement agency in West Africa. We analyzed and coded over 100,000 ‘engaged’ tweets based on a component of mechanisms of moral disengagement (i.e., advantageous comparison), a linguistic device. The results reveal how respondents defend the (...) actions of online fraudsters (“the deviant group”) by strategically comparing them to the wrongful acts of corrupt politicians (“the respectable group”). Similarly, the results show how respondents positioned this linguistic strategy to compare “the powerless group” (online fraudsters) and “the powerful group” (politicians) in society. Indeed, tweet responses suggest that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) generally looks downwards for culprits (i.e., online fraudsters) while ignoring fraudulent politicians. We conclude that the process by which some actions are interpreted as a crime compared to others is a moral enterprise. (shrink)

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions righly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. But what if democratic decisions fail to track what (...) there is most reason to do? What if a democratically elected government fails to take measures necessary to protect its population from threats related to climate change? Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. Grounds for Political Legitmacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. It then develops the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy and discusses its implications for legitimate political decision-making. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens. (shrink)

Tennenbaum's Theorem yields an elegant characterisation of the standard model of arithmetic. Several authors have recently claimed that this result has important philosophical consequences: in particular, it offers us a way of responding to model-theoretic worries about how we manage to grasp the standard model. We disagree. If there ever was such a problem about how we come to grasp the standard model, then Tennenbaum's Theorem does not help. We show this by examining a parallel argument, from a simpler model-theoretic (...) result. (shrink)