This article focuses on Court of Appeal sentencing practice in cases of marital and relationship rape. In particular, it examines the sentencing principle set out in the case of Berry in which it was stated that cases of marital and relationship rape sometimes involve less 'violation' and 'defilement' than cases of stranger rape and consequently are given reduced sentences. This article argues against such an approach on the basis that it is poorly reasoned and lacks support from the research literature (...) on rape trauma. In addition, a statistical analysis of Court of Appeal sentencing appeals indicates that the Berry principle is seriously undermining the Billam sentencing guidelines for rape. An analysis of appellate decisions in the USA indicates a very different attitude to the seriousness of marital and relationship rape based upon a willingness of the appellate judges to utilize research evidence in their decisions. (shrink)

In contrast to embryo donation, the permissibility of 2PN cell donation is highly controversial in Germany. This article is based on there being a legal loophole with respect to 2PN cell donation, which results from an inconsistency within the Embryo Protection Act on the normative status of 2PN cells. Following that thesis, the article argues that, on the basis of the normative criterion totipotency (i.e. the capacity to develop into a born human being), 2PN cells should also be considered human (...) embryos within the meaning of the Act and thereby be protected by that Act in the same way as embryos. However, the normative assumption that 2PN cells should already be endowed with human dignity and the right to life has absurd consequences. Moreover, the consistent continuation of the Embryo Protection Act, as well as of the underlying ethical position or argumentation (i.e. the potentiality argument), leads to the even more absurd consequence of having to place every human somatic cell under the protection of human dignity and the right to life. As totipotency or the developmental potential therefore cannot delimit entities considered worthy of protection (i.e. human embryos) from entities considered not worthy of protection (i.e. 2PN cells, gametes, hESC, hiPSC and human somatic cells), it is not a suitable normative criterion. As a paradigmatic case, 2PN cell donation demonstrates that by retaining this normative criterion the now obsolete German Embryo Protection (Act) ultimately undermines itself. (shrink)

In the static field configuration, a spatially-Variable Speed of Light (VSL) scalar gravity model with Lorentz-Poincaré interpretation was shown to reproduce the phenomenology implied by the Schwarzschild metric. In the present development, we effectively cover configurations with source kinematics due to an induced sweep velocity field w. The scalar-vector model now provides a Hamiltonian description for particles and photons in full accordance with the first Post-Newtonian (1-PN) approximation of General Relativity Theory (GRT). This result requires the validity of Poincaré’s Principle (...) of Relativity, i.e. the unobservability of ‘preferred’ frame movement. Poincaré’s principle fixes the amplitude of the sweep velocity field of the moving source, or equivalently the ‘vector potential’ ξ of GRT (e.g.; S. Weinberg, Gravitation and cosmology, [1972]), and provides the correct 1-PN limit of GRT. The implementation of this principle requires acceleration transformations derived from gravitationally modified Lorentz transformations. A comparison with the acceleration transformation in GRT is done. The present scope of the model is limited to weak-field gravitation without retardation and with gravitating test particles. In conclusion the model’s merits in terms of a simpler space, time and gravitation ontology—in terms of a Lorentz-Poincaré-type interpretation—are explained (e.g. for ‘frame dragging’, ‘harmonic coordinate condition’). (shrink)

Originally published in 1985, this distinguished and constructive critique of modern culture introduced into our language a brand-new term, ‘PN’, standing for ‘psychic nutrition’, which at the time promised to become a household expression. Drawing on his first-hand knowledge of oriental civilizations; on discoveries of Jung, especially his concept of psychic energy; on the ideas of the cultural anthropologists; and not least on the New Science implicit in microphysics and microbiology, E.W.F. Tomlin, whose philosophical books have been translated into several (...) languages, shows how the human psyche requires its own kind of nourishment just as urgently as the body needs food. In the industrial societies of the West, this need has often been ignored. Reformers, in their earnest though sometimes inept endeavours to create a better world, have too often exposed us to the dangers of psychic starvation and the noxious effects of what may be called ‘neg-PN’. Here lie the roots of violence and the lack of direction so conspicuously afflicting modern man and woman. Examples of PN, positive and negative, are given, lending the book an immediacy and practical character often lacking in studies of this kind. In the new scientific approach here adopted, the divisions between matter and life, and life and mind, are discarded, and the old conflict between science and religion shown to belong to an out-of-date world view. The result is a radical reappraisal of the nature and function of religion and art, the two great psychic forces in history. Indeed, the present crisis is shown to originate in the psychic sphere rather than in the political and economic order. Deeply felt and elegantly written, yet not lacking in wit and humour, the book ends with some concrete ideas on how a more balanced culture may be achieved. (shrink)

En este texto, presento a Lamarck, como un autor que debe ser considerado, no solo como uno de fundadores de la biología, sino uno de los precursores del positivismo. Se examinarán nociones de “fuerza vital”, organización, “plan de la naturaleza”, “sentimiento interior” y hábito, pilares de su teoría de la transformación. Esta teoría fusiona el determinismo inherente al “plan de la naturaleza” (PN) con el papel más flexible del “sentimiento interior” (SI) y el hábito en la modificación. Es así como, (...) Lamarck defendió un holismo materialista que justifica la imagen de una naturaleza que, al organizar la materia, da lugar a la generación espontánea de seres vivos simples que a lo largo del tiempo se transforman incrementando los grados de organización, culminando con la aparición del hombre. Idea que Comte extrapoló para justificar un progreso social atado a la aparición de las ciencias positivas. Este trabajo también evalúa la crítica de Comte a Lamarck acerca del papel del medioambiente, cuyo potencial de cambio estaría limitado por “la existencia de “obstáculos interiores” a la modificación, superados en los humanos mediante la emergencia de la sociedad. Ambos autores estuvieron influenciados por François Quesnay, quien propugnaba una sociedad regida por una ética basada en una ley natural biológica. Pero, mientras Lamarck anticipaba el riesgo de la autoextinción humana, Comte consideraba que el verdadero progreso se lograría al convertir esa ley natural en fundamento de una nueva religión secular. (shrink)

Personalised nutrition (PN) has emerged over the past twenty years as a promising area of research in the postgenomic era and has been popularized as the new big thing out of molecular biology. Advocates of PN claim that previous approaches to nutrition sought general and universal guidance that applied to all people. In contrast, they contend that PN operates with the principle that “one size does not fit all” when it comes to dietary guidance. While the molecular mechanisms studied within (...) PN are new, the notion of a personal dietary regime guided by medical advice has a much longer history that can be traced back to Galen’s “On Food and Diet” or Ibn Sina’s (westernized as Avicenna) “Canon of Medicine”. Yet this history is either wholly ignored or misleadingly appropriated by PN proponents. This (mis)use of history, we argue helps to sustain the hype of the novelty of the proposed field and potential commodification of molecular advice that undermines longer histories of food management in premodern and non-Western cultures. Moreover, it elides how the longer history of nutritional advice always happened in a heavily moralized, gendered, and racialized context deeply entwined with collective technologies of power, not just individual advice. This article aims at offering a wider appreciation of this longer history to nuance the hype and exceptionalism surrounding contemporary claims. (shrink)

I present a cumulative case for the thesis that we only know propositions that are certain for us. I argue that this thesis can easily explain the truth of eight plausible claims about knowledge: -/- (1) There is a qualitative difference between knowledge and non-knowledge. (2) Knowledge is valuable in a way that non-knowledge is not. (3) Subjects in Gettier cases do not have knowledge. (4) If S knows that P, P is part of S’s evidence. (5) If S knows (...) that P, ~P is epistemically impossible for S. (6) If S knows that P, S can rationally act as if P. (7) If S knows that P, S can rationally stop inquiring whether P. (8) If S knows each of {P1, P2, … Pn}, and competently deduces Q from these propositions, S knows that Q. -/- I then argue that the skeptical costs of this thesis are outweighed by its explanatory power. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind, both in the conceptual analysis tradition and in the empirical informed school, have been implicitly neglecting the potential conceptual role of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS) in understanding sensory and perceptual states. Instead, the philosophical as well as the neuroscientific literature has been assuming that it is the Central Nervous System (CNS) alone, and more exactly the brain, that should prima facie be taken as conceptually and empirically crucial for a philosophical analysis of such states This is (...) the first monograph that focuses on the PNS and its constitutive role in sensory states, including pain, mechanoception, proprioception, tactile perception, and so forth. -/- The author argues that the brain-centeredness of current philosophy of mind is a prejudice, and proposes a series of original ways in which classic puzzles in the philosophy of mind can be solved once the hypothesis that PNS is a constitutive element of mental states is taken seriously. The author calls this “the Peripheral Mind Hypothesis”, and employs it in a vast range of issues, such as functionalism, physicalism, mental content, embodiment, as well as some issues in neuroethics. -/- Making equal use of conceptual analysis, empirical data from neuroscience, first-person phenomenological data, and philosophical speculation, this work offers a fresh look at, and novel solutions to many philosophical problems. (shrink)

Autism has been defined as a disorder of social cognition, interaction and communication where ritualistic, repetitive behaviors are commonly observed. But how should we understand the behavioral and cognitive differences that have been the main focus of so much autism research? Can high-level cognitive processes and behaviors be identified as the core issues people with autism face, or do these characteristics perhaps often rather reflect individual attempts to cope with underlying physiological issues? Much research presented in this volume will point (...) to the latter possibility, i.e. that people on the autism spectrum cope with issues at much lower physiological levels pertaining not only to Central Nervous Systems (CNS) function, but also to peripheral and autonomic systems (PNS, ANS) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013). The question that we pursue in this chapter is what might be fruitful ways of gaining objective measures of the large-scale systemic and heterogeneous effects of early atypical neurodevelopment; how to track their evolution over time and how to identify critical changes along the continuum of human development and aging. We suggest that the study of movement variability—very broadly conceived as including all minute fluctuations in bodily rhythms and their rates of change over time (coined micro-movements (Figure 1A-B) (Torres, Brincker, et al. 2013))—offers a uniquely valuable and entirely objectively quantifiable lens to better assess, understand and track not only autism but cognitive development and degeneration in general. This chapter presents the rationale firstly behind this focus on micro-movements and secondly behind the choice of specific kinds of data collection and statistical metrics as tools of analysis (Figure 1C). In brief the proposal is that the micro-movements (defined in Part I – Chapter 1), obtained using various time scales applied to different physiological data-types (Figure 1), contain information about layered influences and temporal adaptations, transformations and integrations across anatomically semi-independent subsystems that crosstalk and interact. Further, the notion of sensorimotor re-afference is used to highlight the fact that these layered micro-motions are sensed and that this sensory feedback plays a crucial role in the generation and control of movements in the first place. In other words, the measurements of various motoric and rhythmic variations provide an access point not only to the “motor systems”, but also access to much broader central and peripheral sensorimotor and regulatory systems. Lastly, we posit that this new lens can also be used to capture influences from systems of multiple entry points or collaborative control and regulation, such as those that emerge during dyadic social interactions. (shrink)

‘‘Post-normal science’’ has received much attention in recent years, but like many iconic concepts, it has attracted differing conceptualizations, applications, and implications, ranging from being a ‘‘cure-all’’ for democratic deficit to the key to achieving more sustainable futures. This editorial article introduces a Special Issue that takes stock of research on PNS and critically explores how such research may develop. Through reviewing the history and evolution of PNS, the authors seek to clarify the extant definitions, conceptualizations, and uses of PNS. (...) The authors identify five broad areas of research on, or using, PNS which have developed over four decades. Their analysis suggests that the 1990s represent a symbolic watershed in the use of PNS terminology, when the concept was further developed and applied to highly complicated issues such as climate change. The authors particularly distinguish between uses of PNS as a normative prescription and as a practical method. Through this classification, they set out gaps and research questions arising. They then briefly summarize the Special Issue articles and consider their relationship to each other and the research questions raised by their analysis. They conclude by considering what the articles in this issue suggest for future theory building in PNS and related scholarship. (shrink)

Most scientific models are not physical objects, and this raises important questions. What sort of entity are models, what is truth in a model, and how do we learn about models? In this paper I argue that models share important aspects in common with literary fiction, and that therefore theories of fiction can be brought to bear on these questions. In particular, I argue that the pretence theory as developed by Walton (1990, Mimesis as make-believe: on the foundations of the (...) representational arts. Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA) has the resources to answer these questions. I introduce this account, outline the answers that it offers, and develop a general picture of scientific modelling based on it. (shrink)

What is the relation between entailment and reasons for belief? In this paper, I discuss several answers to this question, and I argue that these answers all face problems. I then propose the following answer: for all propositions p1,...,pn and q, if the conjunction of p1,..., and pn entails q, then there is a reason against a person's both believing that p1,..., and that pn and believing the negation of q. I argue that this answer avoids the problems that the (...) other answers to this question face, and that it does not face any other problems either. I end by showing what the relation between deductive logic, reasons for belief and reasoning is if this answer is correct. (shrink)

The peripheral nervous system has classically been separated into a somatic division composed of both afferent and efferent pathways and an autonomic division containing only efferents. J. N. Langley, who codified this asymmetrical plan at the beginning of the twentieth century, considered different afferents, including visceral ones, as candidates for inclusion in his concept of the “autonomic nervous system”, but he finally excluded all candidates for lack of any distinguishing histological markers. Langley's classification has been enormously influential in shaping modern (...) ideas about both the structure and the function of the PNS. We survey recent information about the PNS and argue that many of the sensory neurons designated as “visceral” and “somatic” are in fact part of a histologically distinct group of afferents concerned primarily autonomic function. These afferents have traditionally been known as “small dark” neurons or B-neurons. In this target article we outline an association between autonomic and B-neurons based on ontogeny, cell phenotype, and functional relations, grouping them together as part of a common reflex system involved in homeostasis. This more parsimonious classification of the PNS, made possible by the identification of a group of afferents associated primarily with the ANS, avoids a number of confusions produced by the classical orientation. It may also have practical implications for an understanding of nociception, homeostatic reflexes, and the evolution of the nervous system. (shrink)

In general, a system S (that may be a company, association, institution, society, country, etc.) is formed by sub-systems Si { or P(S), the powerset of S }, and each sub-system Si is formed by sub-sub-systems Sij { or P(P(S)) = P2(S) } and so on. That’s why the n-th PowerSet of a Set S { defined recursively and denoted by Pn(S) = P(Pn-1(S) } was introduced, to better describes the organization of people, beings, objects etc. in our real world. (...) The n-th PowerSet was used in defining the SuperHyperOperation, SuperHyperAxiom, and their corresponding Neutrosophic SuperHyperOperation, Neutrosophic SuperHyperAxiom in order to build the SuperHyperAlgebra and Neutrosophic SuperHyperAlgebra. In general, in any field of knowledge, one in fact encounters SuperHyperStructures. Also, six new types of topologies have been introduced in the last years (2019-2022), such as: Refined Neutrosophic Topology, Refined Neutrosophic Crisp Topology, NeutroTopology, AntiTopology, SuperHyperTopology, and Neutrosophic SuperHyperTopology. (shrink)

One widely held view of prenatal screening is that its foremost aim is, or should be, to enable reproductive choice; this is the Pure Choice view. The article critiques this position by comparing it with an alternative: Public Health Pluralism. It is argued that there are good reasons to prefer the latter, including the following. Public Health Pluralism does not, as is often supposed, render PNS more vulnerable to eugenics-objections. The Pure Choice view, if followed through to its logical conclusions, (...) may have unpalatable implications, such as extending choice well beyond health screening. Any sensible version of Public Health Pluralism will be capable of taking on board the moral seriousness of abortion and will advocate, where practicable, alternative means of reducing the prevalence of disease and disability. Public Health Pluralism is at least as well-equipped as the Pure Choice model to deal with autonomy and consent issues. (shrink)

Post-normal science is presented by its proponents as a new way of doing science that deals with uncertainties, value diversity or antagonism, and high decision stakes and urgency, with the ultimate goal of remedying the pathologies of the global industrial system for which, according to Funtowicz and Ravetz, existing science forms the basis. The authors critically examine whether PNS can fulfill this claim in the light of empirical and theoretical work on politics and policy making. The authors credit PNS as (...) an innovative frontrunner in raising important issues regarding the limited problem-solving capacity of ‘‘normal science’’ and ‘‘professional consultancy.’’ Yet, the authors notice that PNS lacks important considerations about the governance of problems and aspects of participatory and deliberative democracy. PNS in effect implies that methodological ‘‘ratiocination’’ would prevail over political deliberation and democratic interaction and that merely changing scientific input in public policy making would have the power to change its outcomes. This scientistic hubris can be traced back to PNS’s origin in concerned scientists’ activism, which in effect accessed the political arena through the scientific entrance. The authors conclude that the art of politics needs to come back into the discussion on environmental problems if societal change is to occur. (shrink)

Post-Normal Science as a theory links epistemology and governance. It not only focuses on problem situations where facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent, but also tries to develop epistemic approaches that allow for sound scientific answers. The following article addresses major epistemological challenges within a typical ‘‘wicked-problem situation’’, i.e., risk assessment of emerging technologies. Such challenges include epistemological problems intrinsic to the task of proving the absence of risk, problems related to the multi-sited production of (...) evidence and the multitude of epistemic cultures involved, the incompatibility of the various implicit objectives and the complex actor-constellations, that shape not only the way scientific knowledge is translated into action, but also which kind of knowledge is produced and which experts are listened to. To illustrate and discuss these characteristics, the article draws on an empirical study of risk research in the fields of agri-biotechnology and telecommunication technology in Germany. It concludes that although some aspects of PNS are already part of current epistemic practices in these fields, a state of ‘‘functional post-normality’’ depends upon a meaningful co-evolution between post-normal science and post-normal governance that has not yet been achieved. (shrink)

The characteristic sequence of hypergraphs Pn:n<ω associated to a formula φ, introduced in Malliaris [5], is defined by Pn=i≤nφ. We continue the study of characteristic sequences, showing that graph-theoretic techniques, notably Szemerédi’s celebrated regularity lemma, can be naturally applied to the study of model-theoretic complexity via the characteristic sequence. Specifically, we relate classification-theoretic properties of φ and of the Pn to density between components in Szemerédi-regular decompositions of graphs in the characteristic sequence. In addition, we use Szemerédi regularity to calibrate (...) model-theoretic notions of independence by describing the depth of independence of a constellation of sets and showing that certain failures of depth imply Shelah’s strong order property SOP3; this sheds light on the interplay of independence and order in unstable theories. (shrink)

Russell’s type theory has been the standard property theory for years, relying on rigid type distinctions at the grammatical level to circumvent the paradoxes of predication. In recent years it has been convincingly argued by Bealer, Cochiarella, Turner and others that many linguistic and ontological data are best accounted for by using a type-free property theory. In the spirit of exploring alternatives and “to have as many opportunities as possible for theory comparison”, this paper presents another type-free property theory, to (...) be called P*, intended for applications in Montague-style natural language semantics and formal ontology. The theory is philosophically grounded on Gupta’s and Belnap’s revision theory of definitions and its basic idea is viewing predication (exemplification) as a ‘circular concept’ that can be captured by circular definitions. The paper has the following fourteen sections: (1) Introduction; (2) Formal type-free property theory; (3) Applying RTD [revision theory of definitions] to exemplification; (4) The system P*; (5) Some features of P*; (6) A comparison with Turner’s system; (7) Entailment and P*; (8) P* and natural language semantics; (9) Noun phrases; (10) The need for type-freedom in semantics; (11) Arithmetic in P*; (12) Arithmetic in PN*; (13) Complexity of P*; (14) Conclusion, and acknowledgments. (shrink)

Art therapy encourages the use of art materials to express feelings and thoughts in a supportive environment. Art materials differ in fluidity and are postulated to thus differentially enhance emotional response (the more fluid the material the more emotion). Yet, to the best of our knowledge, this assumption has not been empirically tested. The current study aimed to examine the emotional and physiological responses to art making with different art materials. We were particularly interested in vagal activity, indexed by heart (...) rate variability (HRV), because of its association with numerous health related outcomes. In this study, fifty adults (mean age 33 ± 10.27 years, 52% males) participated in a repeated measures experiment, in which they were requested to draw with three art materials (order randomized) differing in their level of fluidity (pencil, oil-pastels and gouache paint) intermittent with periods of music. We measured the emotional response to art making with each material using a self-report measure and matrices of HRV using a wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) device. We calculated two indices of HRV, one indicative of parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity, and one indicative of sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity. Art making with gouache paint and oil pastels resulted in improved positive mood, while pencil did not. Art making explained approximately 35% of the variability in parasympathetic reactivity, which may indicate changes in emotional regulation processes during the art-making task. Yet, fluidity was not sufficient to explain the reaction to art-making. Surprisingly, the largest suppression of PNS and augmentation of the SNS occurred during art-making with oil-pastels and not with Gouache. Moreover, PNS and SNS reactivity to oil-pastels were related to emotional valance, which may point to emotional engagement. We can conclude that art-making with oil-pastels, first created in Japan in 1924 to increase self-expression of students, results in a unique emotional and physiological responses. These findings might be explained by the enhanced tactile experience of art-making with oil-pastels along with their relative fluidity, triggering an arousal pattern. Further studies that take the format and presentation of the materials as well as the content of the artwork, into account, are needed. (shrink)

The events surrounding COVID-19, combined with the mandatory quarantines widely imposed in Asia and Europe since the virus outbreak, have reignited discussion of the balance between individual rights and liberties and public health during epidemics and pandemics. This article analyses this issue from the perspectives of precaution and necessity. There is a difficult relationship between these two seemingly opposite principles, both of which are frequently invoked in this domain. Although the precautionary principle encourages the use of quarantines, including mandatory quarantines, (...) and associated restrictive measures, the principle of necessity puts a break on such measures. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals once again the different interrelations between these two principles. However, the alleged conflict between the PN and the PP is based on a superficial analysis. The relation between these two principles is far more complex, as this article will demonstrate. (shrink)

Let L be a commutative residuated lattice and let f : Lk → L a function. We give a necessary and sufficient condition for f to be compatible with respect to every congruence on L. We use this characterization of compatible functions in order to prove that the variety of commutative residuated lattices is locally affine complete. Then, we find conditions on a not necessarily polynomial function P(x, y) in L that imply that the function x ↦ min{y є L (...) | P(x, y) ⪯ y} is compatible when defined. In particular, Pn(x, y) = yn → x, for natural number n, defines a family, Sn, of compatible functions on some commutative residuated lattices. We show through examples that S1> and S2, defined respectively from P1 and P2, are independent as operations over this variety; i.e. neither S1 is definable as a polynomial in the language of L enriched with S2 nor S2 in that enriched with S1. (shrink)

A consistent claim from governments around the world during the Coronavirus pandemic has been that they were following the science. This raises the question, central to this paper, of what and whose knowledge is or should be sought, which is being side-lined through the choice of particular framings and discourses, and with what consequences for the creation and implementation of evidence-based policy to tackle wicked problems. Through the lens of Fricker’s epistemic injustice, I problematise the expertise that has guided the (...) COVID-19 response as epistemically narrow and argue that counteracting a monolithic culture of expertise requires tackling the structural inequalities in the systems of knowledge production to diversify the social and epistemological foundations of science. Drawing on Post-normal Science (PNS) theory, I suggest that the expertise needed to respond to the challenges of a post-COVID world is one that embraces greater pluralism, avoids groupthink, challenges the accepted orthodoxy and helps us revert old models and rigid path dependencies that so often neglect the lived realities and demands of those left behind. This can only be realised by overcoming epistemic injustice and embracing epistemic democracy in the practice of evidence-based policy. (shrink)

A number of prominent metaphysicians have recently defended a set of ideas which I will call ‘essentialist plenitude.’ Very roughly, and to a first approximation, essentialist plenitude says that wherever there is an object with properties P1, …, Pn there is in fact a plenitude of coincident objects that differ only in the distribution of essentiality and accidentality across P1, …, Pn (§1). The main purpose of this paper is to arouse the suspicion that essentialist plenitude may have far-reaching consequences (...) for the semantics of proper names. More specifically, I will argue that neither descriptivist nor causal theories of proper names work in a plenitude setting (§2). I will close by suggesting that our use of proper names may be thoroughly infected by semantic indecision about which among many coincident objects is referred to (§3). (shrink)

The problem of multi-peer disagreement concerns the reasonable response to a situation in which you believe P1 … Pn and disagree with a group of ‘epistemic peers’ of yours, who believe ∼P1 … ∼Pn, respectively. However, the problem of multi-peer disagreement is a variant on the preface paradox; because of this the problem poses no challenge to the so-called ‘steadfast view’ in the epistemology of disagreement, on which it is sometimes reasonable to believe P in the face of peer disagreement (...) about P. After some terminology is defined (§1), Peter van Inwagen's challenge to the steadfast view will be presented (§2). The preface paradox will then be presented and diagnosed (§3), and it will be argued that van Inwagen's challenge relies on the same principle that generates the preface paradox (§4). The reasonable response to multi-peer disagreement will be discussed (§5), and an objection addressed (§6). (shrink)