People may have open minds on whether a life-extending drug or technology is going to be developed before their sixties and may strongly desire that development. Do they therefore hope that it occurs? Do they hope for it in the substantive sense of “pinning their hopes” on the development? No, they do not. Hoping for a prospect in that sense certainly presupposes having an open mind on whether it will occur and having a desire for its occurrence. But, more crucially, (...) it means investing the prospect with a characteristic, galvanizing, and orientating role: it involves setting aside doubts about the possible nonoccurrence of the prospect and acting accordingly. This article offers a characterization of hope in that substantive sense and argues both that it can be rational and that it is ubiquitous. (shrink)

Do noncombatants in warfare receive immunity because of their subjective or objective characteristics? Can a noncombatant be ‘weaponized’, and if so, how does this weaponization change the noncombatant's moral status as protected from direct attack? The purpose of this article is to analyze the moral issues that arise when noncombatants are made into weapons, specifically as delivery systems for biological weaponry. Examining such a tactic, I go on to explore how the problems that arise from ‘weaponized’ noncombatants illustrate deeper problems (...) in the theorization of noncombatant status. (shrink)

This volume contains eighteen papers, three with new postscripts, that were written over the past 35 years. Five of the papers have not been previously published. Together they provide a comprehensive account of modal reality—the realm of possible worlds—from a Humean perspective, with excursions into neighboring topics in metaphysics. Part 1 sketches an account of reality as a whole, both the mathematical and the modal, defending a form of plenitudinous realism: every consistent proposition is true of some portion of reality. (...) Part 2 presents and defends a realist theory of concrete possible worlds with an absolute ontological distinction between the actual and the merely possible. Part 3 presents and defends a Humean account of modal plenitude, formulating and endorsing principles of recombination, of plenitude of possible structures, and of plenitude of alien contents. Part 4 applies the Humean account to truthmaking, mereology, spacetime, and quantities. I argue that holding fast to Humean strictures leads to views that differ in radical ways from those put forth by contemporary metaphysicians. (shrink)

The following is a foundationalist exercise based upon a single observation or postulate distinguishing one’s knowledge of information versus one’s knowledge of one’s former unknowing of that information. This postulate is titled the “principle of implicit ignorance.” Utilizing this postulate, several theorems are constructed including the equivalence to Hume’s thesis regarding the absence of knowledge of a necessary connection. The postulate is then negated, demonstrating equivalence to Kant’s thesis regarding the presence of synthetic a priori statements. The final result is (...) a single general epistemic postulate that brokers between the two respective positions. Because both systems are the result of this general principle, rejecting the results of one system necessarily forces one into the contrary position. (shrink)

This paper examines two seemingly contradictory views of piety found in Plato’s Euthryphro and Crito. Using the Socratic dialogues for evidence of what Socrates actually believed and to piece together a Socratic account of piety, it seems that his argument in favor of remaining in prison is inconsistent with his own beliefs. The paper concludes that Socrates ought not to have thought it was impious to escape from prison.

In this chapter, I evaluate various conceptions of distance. Of the two most prominent, one takes distance relations to be intrinsic, the other extrinsic. I recommend pluralism: different conceptions can peacefully coexist as long as each holds sway over a distinct region of logical space. But when one asks which conception holds sway at the actual world, one conception stands out. It is the conception of distance embodied in differential geometry, what I call the Gaussian conception. On this conception, all (...) fundamental facts about distance are “local” facts.” But there is a problem: the Gaussian conception, notwithstanding its mathematical and physical credentials, appears metaphysically suspicious on Humean grounds. In the final section, I suggest that the Gaussian conception can be given a sound metaphysical footing in terms of non-standard analysis. (shrink)

This paper considers pick-the-winners contests as a simple method for harnessing the wisdom of crowds to produce probability forecasts. Pick-the-winners contests are those in which players pick the outcomes of selected future binary events with a prize going to the player with the most correct picks. In contrast to soliciting probability forecasts from experts, this paper shows that competition among players is to be encouraged because it improves the accuracy of the resulting crowd probability forecasts. This improvement comes because the (...) competition not only discourages the overbetting of favorites that occurs if prizes are awarded based on absolute performance, but also helps mitigate the public knowledge bias that occurs if everyone reports truthfully. In addition to the theoretical arguments, the paper analyzes picks from 6 years of pick-the-winners contests involving hundreds of players and 1037 college lacrosse games to find that the crowd proportions outperformed two benchmark sets of probabilities. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show Kant’s importance for the formal distinction between descriptive natural history and a developmental history of nature that entered natural history discussions in the late eighteenth century. It is argued that he developed this distinction initially upon Buffon’s distinctions of ‘abstract’ and ‘physical’ truths, and applied these initially in his distinction of ‘varieties’ from ‘races’ in anthropology. In the 1770s, Kant appears to have given theoretical preference to the ‘history’ of nature [Naturgeschichte] over ‘description’ of nature (...) [Naturbeschreibung]. Following Kant’s confrontations with Johann Herder and Georg Forster in the late 1780s, Kant weakened the epistemic status of the ‘history of nature’ and gave theoretical preference to ‘description of nature’. As a result, Kant’s successors, such as Goethe, could draw from Kant either a justification for a developmental history of nature, or, as this paper argues, a warrant from the critical philosophy for denying the validity of the developmental history of nature as anything more than a ‘regulative’ idea of reason. (shrink)

Phillip Ferreira - Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T.H. Green - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 369-370 David O. Brink. Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003. Pp. xiv + 139. Cloth, $27.50. The British idealists have not fared well during the past century. Still, there has been in recent years a renewed interest in the (...) movement's principal figures: F. H. Bradley and T. H. Green. And, while Bradley's polemical style has found a wider audience, Green's work—especially his Principles of Political Obligation—appears to have had the steadier following. Lesser known than Green's political writing, though, is his longer and more difficult Prolegomena to Ethics. And David O. .. (shrink)

Terrorism, torture, and the problems of evil -- Diabolical evil, searching for Satan -- Philosophies of evil -- Communities of fear -- The enemy within -- Bad seeds -- The character of evil -- Facing the Holocaust -- Twenty-first-century mythologies.

Modal sentences of the form "every F might be G" and "some F must be G" have a threefold ambiguity. in addition to the familiar readings "de dicto" and "de re", there is a third reading on which they are examples of the "plural de re": they attribute a modal property to the F's plurally in a way that cannot in general be reduced to an attribution of modal properties to the individual F's. The plural "de re" readings of modal (...) sentences cannot be captured within standard quantified modal logic. I consider various strategies for extending standard quantified modal logic so as to provide analyses of the readings in question. I argue that the ambiguity in question is associated with the scope of the general term 'F'; and that plural quantifiers can be introduced for purposes of representing the scope of a general term. Moreover, plural quantifiers provide the only fully adequate solution that keeps within the framework of quantified modal logic. (shrink)

This article explores in greater depth the historiographical traditions concerning Herennius Pontius, a Samnite wisdom-practitioner who is said by the Peripatetic Aristoxenus of Tarentum to have been an interlocutor of the philosophers Archytas of Tarentum and Plato of Athens. Specifically, it argues that extant speeches attributed to Herennius Pontius in the writings of Cassius Dio and Appian preserve a philosophy of “extreme proportional benefaction” among unequals. Greek theories of ethics among unequals such as those of Aristotle and Archytas of Tarentum, (...) which aim for moderation, can be distinguished from that attributed to Herennius Pontius, which is circumstantial and stipulates extreme responses to extremes. Romans, in particular Appius Claudius Caecus and Sulla, celebrate and espouse proverbial wisdom strikingly similar to the theory of “extreme proportional benefaction” associated with Herennius Pontius, and in contrast to Greek ethics of moderation. Such comparisons suggest that starting in the late fourth century BCE, Romans and Samnites may have held shared ideological principles, as defined against Greek cultural paradigms. (shrink)

This article discusses whether a sense of humor is a political virtue. It argues that a sense of humor is conducive to the central political virtues. We must first, however, delineate different types of humor (benevolent or malicious) and the different political virtues (sociability, prudence, and justice) to which they correspond. Generally speaking, a sense of humor is politically virtuous when it encourages good will toward fellow citizens, an awareness of the limits of power, and a tendency not to take (...) oneself too seriously or when it condemns moral or intellectual vice. An analysis of President Donald Trumps deeply flawed sense of humor is used to ground this account. (shrink)

In a series of articles and books published in the 1970s, David Hull (1935–2010) and Michael Ruse (1940–) proposed interpretations of the relation between nineteenth-century British philosophy of science, on the one hand, and the views and methods of Charles Darwin, on the other, that were incompatible or at least in strong interpretive tension with one another. According to Hull, John Herschel’s and William Whewell’s philosophies of science were logically incompatible with Darwin’s revolutionary theory. According to Ruse, however, Darwin discovered (...) and developed his theory through direct adherence to those philosophies. Here, I reconstruct Hull’s and Ruse’s interpretations of the Herschel-Whewell-Darwin relationship and then, drawing on Hull’s and Ruse’s published record and archival correspondence in the years 1968–76—particularly regarding reduction, laws, and species—I offer an explanation for their differences, namely, their different orientations to logical empiricism. (shrink)

Modernity is marked by the separation of ethics from aesthetics, and both are thought to be detached from issues of truth. Overall I argue that this is a secular rubric that can be successfully challenged by a Christian ontology. This paper first historicises this situation, asking how this scenario came about. In this regard Immanuel Kant is identified as the prime cause of the modern separation of truth-telling from acting well and aesthetic discernment. Adorno's attempt to escape the Kantian legacy (...) by focusing on asethetic judgement is then considered; it is subsequently argued that Adorno's hopes can only be realised by a Christian ontology that can provide an account of unalienated judgement. Finally, the ontology that would allow such a discernment is sketched out as well as a phenomenological and aesthetic outline of how we might know this state of affairs. (shrink)

This paper is a critical study of Kant’s antinomy of saving faith. In the first section, I sketch aspects of Kant’s philosophical account of sin and atonement that help explain why he finds saving faith problematic from the moral point of view. I proceed in the next section to give a detailed exposition of Kant’s remarkable antinomy and of his proposal for resolving it theoretically. In the third and final section, I argue that alternative ways of resolving the antimony both (...) respond to the deepest of Kant’s moral concerns and comport better with the traditional Christian conviction that saving faith can have for its object the historical individual Jesus Christ. (shrink)

This concise, accessible text provides a thorough introduction to quantum computing - an exciting emergent field at the interface of the computer, engineering, mathematical and physical sciences. Aimed at advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in these disciplines, the text is technically detailed and is clearly illustrated throughout with diagrams and exercises. Some prior knowledge of linear algebra is assumed, including vector spaces and inner products. However, prior familiarity with topics such as quantum mechanics and computational complexity is not required.

Immediately upon the death of Plato in 347 BCE, philosophers in the Academy began to circulate stories involving his encounters with wisdom practitioners from Persia. This article examines the history of Greek perceptions of Persian wisdom and argues that the presence of foreign wisdom practitioners in the history of Greek philosophy has been undervalued since Diogenes Laertius.

The study of word meanings promises important insights into the nature of the human mind by revealing what people find to be most cognitively significant in their experience. However, as we learn more about the semantics of various languages, we are faced with an interesting problem. Different languages seem to be telling us different stories about the mind. For example, important distinctions made in one language are not necessarily made in others. What are we to make of these cross-linguistic differences? (...) How do they arise? Are they created by purely linguistic processes operating over the course of language evolution? Or do they reflect fundamental differences in thought? In this sea of differences, are there any semantic universals? Which categories might be given by the genes, which by culture, and which by language? And what might the cross-linguistic similarities and differences contribute to our understanding of conceptual and linguistic development? The kinds of mapping principles, structures, and processes that link language and non-linguistic knowledge must accommodate not just one language but the rich diversity that has been uncovered. The integration of knowledge and methodologies necessary for real progress in answering these questions has happened only recently, as experimental approaches have been applied to the cross-linguistic study of word meaning. In Words and the Mind, Barbara Malt and Phillip Wolff present evidence from the leading researchers who are carrying out this empirical work on topics as diverse as spatial relations, events, emotion terms, motion events, objects, body-part terms, causation, color categories, and relational categories. By bringing them together, Malt and Wolff highlight some of the most exciting cross-linguistic and cross-cultural work on the language-thought interface, from a broad array of fields including linguistics, anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Their results provide some answers to these questions and new perspectives on the issues surrounding them. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the theory that holes are immaterial objects faces an objection that has traditionally been thought to be the principal difficulty with its main rival, which construes holes as material parts of material objects. Consequently, one of the principal advantages of identifying holes with immaterial objects is illusory: its apparent ease of accounting for truths about number of holes. I argue that in spite of this we should not think of holes as material parts of (...) material objects. This is because the theory that holes are properties does not face the same difficulties as either of these theories that construe holes as objects of some sort. (shrink)

Even the most ardent defenders of a legal right to freedom of the press are likely to regard this right as having limitations; but how precisely the right should be limited is a matter of considerable disagreement. This issue is at least partly moral in character: it concerns the moral acceptability of laws which regulate or protect the activities of members of the press. I propose here to address this moral issue, and to do so within the broader framework of (...) considering whether establishing a legal right to freedom of the press—regardless of how it might be limited—is justifiable on moral grounds. In pursuing this investigation, I will devote special attention to familiar claims about the relation between press rights on the one hand, and “the people's right to know” on the other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXI, Number 1, April 1995, pp. 47-55 Hume as Dualist and Anti-Dualist PHILLIP D. CUMMINS Lome Falkenstein's recognition in "Hume and Reid on the Simplicity of the Soul" of the importance of the section of A Treatise of Human Nature entitled "Of the immateriality of the soul" is as praiseworthy as it is uncommon. His suggestion that Reid's intentionalist account of representation was motivated by (...) his desire to save the doctrine of the immaterial self from Hume's demolition of it in "Of the immateriality of the soul," though not proven, is highly provocative. Although I am going to offer a somewhat different reading of "Of the immateriality of the soul" and thereby imply that Falkenstein did not sufficiently appreciate Hume's version of mental-physical dualism, I regard his paper as both informative and insightful and consider my proposed corrections fully compatible with most, if not all, of his substantive claims. Let me begin by contrasting two questions relating to mental-physical dualism. One is whether mental states or properties are irreducibly different from physical states or properties. Materialists generally acknowledge that there is an apparent, putative, or presumed difference between them, only to argue one way or another that the only genuine properties are material ones. Defenders of what I shall call Minimal Mental/Physical Dualism insist that the distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of properties remains at even the deepest levels of metaphysical analysis. One version of the second question is: Are there any immaterial beings? This question really concerns individual subjects, the items to which states or properties are assigned; it asks: do any individual subjects have only mental properties? To answer "yes" is to Phillip D. Cummins is at the Department of Philosophy, 269 English Philosophy Building, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1408 USA. e-mail: phillip[email protected] 48 Phillip D. Cummins hold what I shall call Strong Mental/Physical Dualism. Its opponents either answer "no" or take an agnostic stance. The two questions are not completely unrelated.1 As Descartes argued in the Sixth Meditation, an irreducible difference between mental and physical properties guarantees at least the metaphysical possibility of a disembodied mind.2 Despite this, an affirmative answer to the first question does not secure an affirmative answer to the second question. Minimal Mental/Physical Dualism does not entail Strong Mental/Physical Dualism. If it is possible for the same individual subject to have both mental and physical properties, it may be the case that whenever an individual subject has a mental property it also has a physical property.3 Consequently, an obvious strategy for establishing Strong Mental/ Physical Dualism is defending the impossibility of an individual subject's having both mental and physical properties, that is, arguing that the two kinds of properties are essentially incompatible with one another. Call this the Incompatible Properties Thesis. If it can be secured, to discover an individual with a mental property is virtually to discover an immaterial thing. Descartes utilized this strategy, also in the Sixth Meditation, where he wrote, The first observation I make at this point is that there is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very nature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, or myself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something quite single and complete. Although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, I recognize that if a foot or arm or any other part of the body is cut off, nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind. As for the faculties of willing, of understanding, of sensory perception and so on, these cannot be termed parts of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, and understands and has sensory perceptions. By contrast, there is no corporeal or extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and this very fact makes me... (shrink)

In the twenty-fourth aporia of Theophrastus' Metaphysics, there appears an important, if ‘bafflingly elliptical’, ascription to Plato and the ‘Pythagoreans’ of a theory of reduction to the first principles via ‘imitation’. Very little attention has been paid to the idea of Platonic and ‘Pythagorean’ reduction through the operation of ‘imitation’ as presented by Theophrastus in his Metaphysics. This article interrogates the concepts of ‘reduction’ and ‘imitation’ as described in the extant fragments of Theophrastus’ writings – with special attention to his (...) Metaphysics – in an attempt to make sense of how, precisely, Theophrastus characterizes the metaphysical systems of Plato and the ‘Pythagoreans’. A fuller examination of Aporia 24 produces important new understandings of the nature of the Early Academy in the mid fourth century B.C.E. Specifically, by ascribing the concept of reduction via ‘imitation’ to Plato and the ‘Pythagoreans’, Theophrastus is actually describing theories about the structure of the universe held by an important Platonist competitor and the contemporary head of the Academy in Athens, Xenocrates of Chalcedon (396/5–314/13 B.C.E.), who (a) took it upon himself to establish a Platonic doctrine that could be associated with his master’s writings and (b) coordinated that doctrine with the philosophical precepts of the Pythagoreans. As a consequence, we are prompted to question Aristotle’s famous ascription of a theory of ‘imitation’ to the metaphysics of the genuine contemporary or recently deceased Pythagoreans (such as Philolaus of Croton or Archytas of Tarentum) and consider how Xenocrates’ writings on Plato and the ‘Pythagoreans’ might be informing both Theophrastus’ and Aristotle’s descriptions of the Platonic and Pythagorean philosophical system(s). (shrink)

Darwin's art collection : the prints, drawings, and photographs Darwin collected in the 1860s and 70s -- Illustrations and illusion : strategies Darwin used in illustrating his books -- Art, experience, and observation : Darwin's knowledge of art history and use of illustration in his books -- Darwin and the passions : how passion manuals informed Darwin's research -- Photography and evolution meet : connections between photography and biology in the 1860s -- Method to their madness : how photography in (...) mental hospitals influenced Darwin -- Laughing and crying : Darwin's quest for pictures of expressive babies -- Darwin's eyes and ears : the artists who guided Darwin's search for pictures -- Darwin's art photographer : Oscar Rejlander, Darwin's favorite photographer -- Rejlander's performances : posing for Darwin's pictures -- Alice, eugenics, and the spirit world : the aftermath of Darwin's experiments. (shrink)

Abstract. The modern concept of the inner self containing a private inner world has ancient philosophical and religious roots. These begin with Plato's intelligible world of ideas. In Plotinus, the intelligible world becomes the inner world of the divine Mind and its ideas, which the soul sees by turning “into the inside.” Augustine made the inner world into something merely human, not a world of divine ideas, so that the soul seeking for God must turn in, then up: entering into (...) itself and then looking above itself at the intelligible light of God. In modernity, “ideas” become the immediate object of every act of mental perception, the essential inner objects of the mind's eye. Locke makes the inner space inescapably private, excluding the divine inner light. Postmodern attempts to reconceive the relation of mind and world, rejecting the modern conception of a private inner self, will need to deal with lingering Platonist intuitions about the immediacy of the mind's vision. (shrink)

The influence of surrealism and Philippe Soupault on William Carlos Williams' poetry.

An attempt to clarify how the problem of absolute time and the problem of absolute motion relate to one another, especially with respect to causal attributions involving time and motion.

Chang-Rae Lee’s 2014 novel On Such a Full Sea uses the genre of speculative fiction to reflect on longstanding healthcare debates in the United States that have recently crystalized around the Affordable Care Act. The novel imagines the political economy of healthcare in a future America devastated by environmental illness. What kind of care is available and to whom? Who provides it? Who pays for it? What about distribution and access? The different healthcare systems governing each of three geo-social zones (...) in Lee's future society represent exaggerated versions of the scenarios participants in the ACA debate claim their opponents’ health policies would produce. The essay argues that Lee’s novel ultimately favors a version of universal government-funded care over a system based on supposed free-market principles, even as the novel also tries to make room for conservative Americans’ fears about the specter of so-called “socialized medicine.” More broadly, the essay contends that the health humanities should devote more attention to literary and artistic engagements with healthcare as a system: a complex set of financial models, public and private institutions, government policies, and actors whose roles range well beyond patient and care provider. (shrink)

Shame is a puzzling emotion. On the one hand, to feel ashamed is to feel badly about oneself; but on the other hand, it also seems to be a response to the way the subject is perceived by other people. So whose standards is the subject worried about falling short of, his own or those of an audience? I begin by arguing that it is the audience's standards that matter, and then present a theory of shame according to which shame (...) is a response to the subject's perception that he is not thought of in the way he intrinsically values himself for being thought of by someone else. Then I go on to suggest some refinements to this basic view. First, the subject of shame is primarily concerned about his audience's attitudes toward him, not what they believe about him. And second, there may be one particular attitude which he values himself for inspiring. There is no very perspicuous term for this attitude, so I call it ‘proto-respect’ – the attitude a social animal directs toward those it regards as valuable allies or bad enemies. (shrink)