We present interpretation‐based processing—a theory of sentence processing that builds a syntactic and a semantic representation for a sentence and assigns an interpretation to the sentence as soon as possible. That interpretation can further participate in comprehension and in lexical processing and is vital for relating the sentence to the prior discourse. Our theory offers a unified account of the processing of literal sentences, metaphoric sentences, and sentences containing semantic illusions. It also explains how text can prime lexical access. We (...) show that word literality is a matter of degree and that the speed and quality of comprehension depend both on how similar words are to their antecedents in the preceding text and how salient the sentence is with respect to the preceding text. Interpretation‐based processing also reconciles superficially contradictory findings about the difference in processing times for metaphors and literals. The theory has been implemented in ACT‐R [Anderson and Lebiere, The Atomic Components of Thought, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Mahwah, NJ, 1998]. (shrink)

In The Value Gap, Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is argued, as (...) against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

In this paper a formalized logic of propositions, PA1, is presented. It is proven consistent and its relationships to traditional logic, to PM ([15]), to subjunctive (including contrary-to-fact) implication and to the “paradoxes” of material and strict implication are developed. Apart from any intrinsic merit it possesses, its chief significance lies in demonstrating the feasibility of a general logic containing theprinciple of subjunctive contrariety, i.e., the principle that ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be true’ and ‘Ifpwere true thenqwould be false’ are incompatible.

I defend Kant’s definition of analyticity in terms of concept “containment”, which has engendered widespread scepticism. Kant deployed a clear, technical notion of containment based on ideas standard within traditional logic, notably genus/species hierarchies formed via logical division. Kant’s analytic/synthetic distinction thereby undermines the logico-metaphysical system of Christian Wolff, showing that the Wolffian paradigm lacks the expressive power even to represent essential knowledge, including elementary mathematics, and so cannot provide an adequate system of philosophy. The results clarify the extent to (...) which analyticity sensu Kant can illuminate the problem of a priori knowledge generally. (shrink)

First published in 1981, this collection of essays was taken from Peters' larger work, Psychology and Ethical Development in order to provide a more focused volume on moral education for students. Peters' background in both psychology and philosophy makes the work distinctive, which is evident from the first two essays alone: 'Freud's theory of Moral Development in Relation to that of Piaget' and 'Moral Education and the Psychology of Character'. He also displays balance in his acceptance that reason and feeling (...) are both of great importance where the subject of moral education is concerned. Although written some time ago, the book discusses issues which are still of considerable interest and importance today. (shrink)

This essay is one of ten contributions to a special editorial feature in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.2, in which authors were invited to address the following questions: What is the future of Nietzsche studies? What are the most pressing questions its scholars should address? What texts and issues demand our urgent attention? And as we turn to these issues, what methodological and interpretive principles should guide us? The editorship hopes this collection will provide a starting point for discussions (...) about the most fruitful directions for Nietzsche scholarship to take and the most promising avenues for building on the best recent work. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s perspectivism has received restricted and unrestricted interpretations. The latter take the cognitive effects of ‘perspectives’ to be pervasive and general; the former argue they are restricted to special subject matters, have limited effects, or are not essentially cognitive at all. I argue on textual grounds that Nietzsche was committed to the unrestricted view. Comparison to A.W. Moore’s treatment of perspectival representation in Points of View illuminates both the nature of perspectivism and key arguments needed to defend it. Nietzschean perspectivism (...) must deny the very possibility of absolute representations (sensu Moore), and to do so, it must block a form of argument that promises to integrate perspectival representations into progressively less restricted, and ultimately absolute, representations of the world. Such arguments depend on a strong assumption about the unity of the independent world, which Moore accepts and Nietzsche denies. Nietzsche’s pluralism about perspectives thereby turns out to rely on pluralism about the world, which shapes his understanding of us as essentially bounded cognitive agents. Nietzsche holds that the longing for absolute representation manifest in Moore, Leibniz, and many other philosophers, which aspires to overcome the limitations of perspective, amounts to ascetic self-denial about our cognitive condition. (shrink)

The Upanishads reveal that in the beginning, nothing existed: “This was but non-existence in the beginning. That became existence. That became ready to be manifest”. (Chandogya Upanishad 3.15.1) The creation began from this state of non-existence or nonduality, a state comparable to (0). One can add any number of zeros to (0), but there will be nothing except a big (0) because (0) is a neutral number. If we take (0) as Nirguna Brahman (God without any form and attributes), then (...) from where and how did the universe come into existence? -/- The neutral power (0) cannot produce anything without having an element of duality in it. Although Nirguna Brahman is neutral, it has a positive, negative, and neutral pole, constituting its Prakriti or nature. Prakriti has three latent Gunas (modes or qualities): Satva, Rajas, and Tamas. They are related to Gyana Shakti (the power of knowledge) Sankalpa Shakti (the power of ideation), and Kriya Shakti (the power of action). Science says that Atom is the basic element from which the universe evolved. The Atom has three nuclei- electron, pluton, and neutron. The Satva, Rajas, and Tamas in Indian spirituality are nothing but the mystical names for the nuclei of an atom. -/- According to Bhagavata Purana, Prakriti is also constituted of the elements of Time, Karma (action/destiny) and Swabhava (innate nature). Time disturbs the equilibrium of Gunas. From the aspect of Karma is produced an entity called Mahat, in the form of intelligence. Mahat is dominated by Satva and Rajas. From Mahat manifests the next evolute dominated by Tamas with three predominant qualities – Dravya (substance), Kriya (action), as well as intelligence. It forms to become the Ego principle (Ahamkara). -/- Ahamkara has three modes – Satvic, Rajasic and Tamasic. Satvic is Jnana oriented, Rajasic action-oriented and Tamasic Dravya (substance) oriented. From the Tamasic Ahankara, five gross elements are produced (ether, air, fire, water, and earth - Akash, Vayu, Agni, Jal and Prithvi). From the Satvic Ahamkara, guardian deities (the sun and moon, deities of sense organs, and organs of action) and from Rajasic Ahamkara, ten senses (Indriyas), five senses of perception, five organs of action, the faculties of intellect and Prana (life breath) are produced. -/- Bhagavata says that since these energies, elements, and faculties remained disassociated, they were combined to form a Cosmic Egg. The egg floats in the primal waters for a thousand years. Then God enters this Cosmic Egg and manifests himself as the Cosmic Purusha. He is the first nucleus, the God particle equivalent to the number (1) which is the embodiment of everything in the universe. The concept of creation and dissolution in Hinduism can be compared to the waves in an ocean that appear and disappear incessantly. The Manvantaras are such successive episodes of creation emerging from the Cosmic Person, the Manu who is embodied God-Consciousness, God himself. These episodes of creation are measured in Hinduism in terms of Manvantaras, the epochs of Manus. -/- Manu is the ‘First-Born’ (1) of God, the Cosmic Purusha from whom the world has originated. This Cosmic Person (Purusha) has been described as having fourteen biospheres (heavens) that are inhabited by various life forms in the order of evolution of consciousness. If we begin from the human biosphere (Bhuloka), there are ten astral biospheres that a man must transcend to attain liberation or Mukti from the cycle of births and deaths. -/- The number (1) produces the primary numbers up to (9) through the transmutation of the creational energies and qualities. The process can be related to the descent and cyclical evolution of (1) through ten spiritual stages, finally merging with the nondual (0). The number (10) marks the merger of (1) with (0). The Hindu worldview is that all life forms in an episode of creation must evolve to become one with the non-dual state (0) to attain liberation from the cycle of births and deaths in a cyclical process. -/- . (shrink)

Gender-affirming healthcare interventions are medical or surgical interventions that aim to allow trans and non-binary people to better affirm their gender identity. It has been argued that rights to GAH must be grounded in either a right to be cured of or mitigate an illness—gender dysphoria—or in harm prevention, given the high rates of depression and suicide among trans and non-binary people. However, these grounds of a right to GAH conflict with the prevalent view among theorists, institutions and activists that (...) trans and non-binary people do not have a mental illness and that one can be trans and entitled to GAH without being depressed or suicidal. This paper challenges the orthodoxy that a right to GAH must be grounded in either of these ways and instead argues for a right to GAH grounded in a right to live and act with integrity. The standard view, which this paper explains, is that our rights to live and act with integrity ground a right to religious accommodation in many cases such as a right to not be denied social security due to one’s refusal to work a job on a holy day. This paper argues that if our rights to live and act with integrity can ground prima facie rights to religious accommodation, our rights to live and act with integrity ground prima facie rights to GAH. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Normativism is the view that logic provides rules for correct reasoning. Some influential critics of normativism, such as Gilbert Harman, claim that logical rules provide reasoners with bad or misleading standards. Others, such as Gillian Russell, claim that logic is a descriptive subject and thus cannot, given Hume’s law, provide rules for reasoning. We think these critics are mistaken. Our aim in this paper is to defend normativism by sketching an alternative way of thinking about the normative force of logical (...) rules. On our view, logical rules are best characterized, in a broadly Rossian manner, as intellectual prima facie duties; i.e., they provide standards for evaluating reasoning and reasoners that are universal and authoritative, but not absolute. This position accommodates the inherent normativity of logic, contra Russell, while circumventing the challenges to normativism raised by Harman. (shrink)

A woman and a man desire to come together stirred by the primal fire of Kama and the man deposits his egg in the womb of the woman. This egg develops into a human undergoing nine or ten months of evolution. This process is the microscopic replication of the method evolved by God to create the universe. Rigveda (10.121) mentions Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Egg as the source of the creation of the universe. It is said that God, wishing to create (...) the world, produced an egg as big as the cosmos. God meditated for a thousand years sitting inside the egg and when the egg burst, the Lord himself was born out of the egg as the Progenitor of the universe (“He made Himself by Himself.”, Taitiriya Upanishad: 2.7.1). The Rishis called the Egg Brahmanda (the Cosmic Egg), and the Progenitor Manu. Scientists have discovered that the universe has an oval shape. Like the nine months of the evolution of the human egg, the Cosmic Egg also undergoes nine stages of evolution before it gets dissolved during what we call ‘Maha Pralaya’. The Puranas mention that Brahmanda has 14 biospheres, seven nether and seven upper inhabited by different types of souls. If we count from the human world, there are ten dimensions of consciousness. Rishis called these astral biospheres Mandalas/Lokas with different wavelengths and colours. Sri Karunakara Guru referred to them as Avasthas, or spiritual stages. The Buddhists and Hindu esoteric sects such as the Theosophical Society explain these levels of the Absolute in terms of Physical plane, Astral plane, Mental plane, Buddhic plane, Atmic plane, Anupadaka plane, Adi plane and Shiv and Shakti. These Avasthas are related to the expanding consciousness reaching up to the core of the Cosmic Egg, the Paramatma. Like a spider which creates a web around it sitting in the centre, and withdraws it in the end, Paramatma creates and withdraws webbed multi-dimensional universes. Nobody can say when it started and when it will end as it is a beginningless and endless process. (shrink)

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to the shutdown of society and created sudden and long-lasting changes in teaching practices, forcing many nursing students to study remotely at home. These students’ relatedness with their teachers and peers has been limited and mainly online. Several studies have indicated that students’ emotional states and mental health have been negatively affected by the pandemic, representing a serious challenge for many countries. Because they use only digital tools, online students have perceived a decline in teacher (...) and peer support. Likewise, these students have reported feelings of sadness, loneliness, anxiety, and stress, affecting their learning and competence development.AimsTo investigate the associations between peer support, teacher support, emotional state, and perceived competence in nursing students during the pandemic.MethodsThis cross-sectional study collected quantitative survey data from 329 nursing students at a large university in Norway. Structural equation modeling was used to test seven associations among peer support, teacher support, emotional state, and perceived competence.ResultsTeacher support had a significant direct effect on perceived competence, while peer support almost had a significant direct effect. However, the emotional state was directly affected by peer support and had a direct impact on perceived competence. Hence, teacher and peer support is important to nursing students’ perceived competence.ConclusionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, both peer and teacher support can significantly support students’ competence development. Therefore, students should utilize the support of their teachers and peers in a structured manner to bolster their competence development. (shrink)

Anyone, today, with even a slight interest in the methodology of science will be aware of the heated debate which has raged in regard to the thesis of the logical symmetry between explanation and prediction, which is entailed by the hypotheticodeductive account of scientific theory. The symmetry thesis, which received its classical exposition in a well-known article by Hempel and Oppenheim [2], has been subject to a steadily growing criticism by several eminent thinkers. My intention, in this article, is to (...) argue that the current reaction to the Hempel-Oppenheim position, as exemplified by Professors Hanson, Scriven, et al., represents a retrograde movement in the philosophy of science, which, as the number of its converts grows, could undermine the progress, which has been accomplished in the broad tradition that extends from Mach and Poincaré through the Vienna Circle to the present day. Specifically, it is my contention that the aforementioned reaction is symptomatic of a contemporary trend in the direction of irrationalism which, of all branches of philosophy, the philosophy of science should seek to dispel rather than to foster. For the sake of brevity, I propose to focus my remarks wholly on the original widely read article of Hanson on this subject [1]. That I single out this particular source should not be taken to belie the admiration I hold for the masterful scholarship of its author. (shrink)

Recently, Bohr’s complementarity principle was assessed in setups involving delayed choices. These works argued in favor of a reformulation of the aforementioned principle so as to account for situations in which a quantum system would simultaneously behave as wave and particle. Here we defend a framework that, supported by well-known experimental results and consistent with the decoherence paradigm, allows us to interpret complementarity in terms of correlations between the system and an informer. Our proposal offers formal definition and operational interpretation (...) for the dual behavior in terms of both nonlocal resources and the couple work-information. Most importantly, our results provide a generalized information-based trade-off for the wave–particle duality and a causal interpretation for delayed-choice experiments. (shrink)

We discuss five kinds of representations of rationales and provide a formal account of how they can alter disputation. The formal model of disputation is derived from recent work in argument. The five kinds of rationales are compilation rationales, which can be represented without assuming domain-knowledge (such as utilities) beyond that normally required for argument. The principal thesis is that such rationales can be analyzed in a framework of argument not too different from what AI already has. The result is (...) a formal understanding of rationales, a partial taxonomy, and a foundation for computer programs that represent and reason with rationales.The five kinds of rationales are as follows: (c)ompression and (s)pecialization, which yield rules, and (d)isputation, which yields a decision. These are modeled as potentially changing the focus of the dispute. Then there are (f)it, a rationale for rules, and (r)esolution, a rationale for decisions. These cannot be modeled as simply; they force disputation to a meta-level, at least temporarily. (shrink)

R.I.G. Hughes presents a series of eight philosophical essays on the theoretical practices of physics. The first two essays examine these practices as they appear in physicists' treatises (e.g. Newton's Principia and Opticks ) and journal articles (by Einstein, Bohm and Pines, Aharonov and Bohm). By treating these publications as texts, Hughes casts the philosopher of science in the role of critic. This premise guides the following 6 essays which deal with various concerns of philosophy of physics such as laws, (...) disunities, models and representation, computer simulation, explanation, and the discourse of physics. (shrink)

In Aristophanes’ Clouds, Socrates vents his frustration at his new pupil Strepsiades’ inability to see the eponymous chorus with the line ‘You would see them unless you have drops of rheum in your eyes as big as gourds (κολοκύνταις).’ This line is problematic, because gourds relate to eyesight in no obvious way. However, Aristophanes might have ended the verse by referring to Socrates’ initiation of Strepsiades sixty-five lines earlier by a liberal sprinkling of barley, and written ‘or you're blear-eyed with (...) barley-groats (οὐλοχύταισι)’. If some reader added κρομ(μ)ύοις ‘with onions’ to his text as a more universally valid explanation for an eye-affliction, a later scribe might have thought this an attempted correction, and substituted κολοκύνταις, which is both metrically correct and palaeographically closer to οὐλοχύταισι than is κρομ(μ)ύοις. (shrink)

In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of a robust sampled-data H ∞ load frequency control scheme for power systems with randomly occurring time-varying delays. By using the input-delay technique, the sampled-data LFC model is reformulated as a continuous time-delay representation. Then, Bernoulli-distributed white noise sequences are used to describe randomly occurring time-varying delays in the sampled-data LFC model. Some less conservative conditions are achieved by utilizing the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional and employing Jensen inequality and reciprocal convex combination lemma to ensure (...) the considered power system has mean-square asymptotic stability under the designed control scheme. The derived results are based on linear matrix inequalities that can readily be solved using the MATLAB LMI toolbox. The criteria obtained are used to analyze the upper bounds for time delays, and a comparison study to validate the efficacy of the presented method is presented. (shrink)

R S Peters; Education and the Educated Man, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 4, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 5–20, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.

What kind of knowledge is medical knowledge? Can medicine be explained scientifically? Is disease a scientific concept, or do explanations of disease depend on values? What is ‘evidence-based’ medicine? Are advances in neuroscience bringing us closer to a scientific understanding of the mind? The nature of medicine raises fundamental questions about explanation, causation, knowledge and ontology – questions that are central to philosophy as well as medicine. In this book Paul R. Thompson and Ross E. G. Upshur introduce the fundamental (...) issues in philosophy of medicine for those coming to the subject for the first time. They introduce and explain the following key topics: Understanding the physician-patient relationship: the phenomenology of the medical encounter. Models and theories in biology and medicine: what role do theories play in medicine? Are they similar to scientific theories? Randomised controlled trials: can scientific experiments be replicated in clinical medicine? What are the philosophical criticisms levelled at RCTs? The concept of evidence in medical research: what do we mean by ‘Evidence-based medicine?’ Should all medicine be based on evidence? Causation in medicine What do advances in neuroscience reveal about the relationship between mind and body? Defining health and disease: are explanations of disease objective or do they depend on values? Evolutionary medicine: what is the role of evolutionary biology in understanding medicine? Is it relevant? Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include debates about smoking and cancer, the use of placebos in randomised controlled trials and controversies about research into the causes of HIV and autism. This is an indispendable introduction to those teaching philosophy of medicine and philosophy of science. (shrink)

R K Elliott; Education, Love of One’s Subject, and the Love of Truth, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 8, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 135–153, https:/.

"The chief business of twentieth-century philosophy” is “to reckon with twentieth-century history," claimed R. G. Collingwood. In this remarkable collection of essays, Frank Ankersmit demonstrates the prescience of that remark and goes a long way toward meeting its challenge. Responding to the work of Hayden White, Arthur Danto, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, he examines such issues as the difference between historical representation and artistic expression, the status of metaphor in historical description, and the relation of postmodernism to historicism. Ankersmit's fluent grasp (...) of European thought and his ability to incorporate concepts from literary theory, art history, the philosophy of science, and political thought into his analyses assure that this collection will interest readers throughout the humanities. (shrink)

R T Allen; ‘Because I Say So!’ Some Limitations Upon the Rationalisation of Authority, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Page.

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I defend sport as a hobby in contrast to sport as a ‘mutual quest for excellence through challenge’. With the assistance of ideas found in the novel Don Quixote, I rai...

In Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God, R. Zachary Manis examines in detail the several facets of the problem of hell, considers the reasons why the usual responses to the problem are unsatisfying, and suggests how an adequate solution to the problem can be constructed.

R K Elliott; Aestheticism, Imagination and Schooling: a reply to Ruby Meager, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 33–42.

R K Elliott; The Concept of Development: A Reply to Professor Hamlyn, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 40–48, https://d.

R K Elliott; The Concept of Development: A Reply to Professor Hamlyn, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 9, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 40–48, https://d.

This book is a timely new interpretation of the moral and political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Staying close to Hobbes's text and working from a careful examination of the actual substance of the account of natural law, R.E. Ewin argues that Hobbes well understood the importance of moral behavior to civilized society. This interpretation stands as a much-needed corrective to readings of Hobbes that emphasize the rationally calculated, self-interested nature of human behavior. It poses a significant challenge to currently fashionable (...) game theoretic reconstructions of Hobbesian logic. It is generally agreed that Hobbes applied what he took to be a geometrical method to political theory. But, as Ewin forcefully argues, modern readers have misconstrued Hobbes's geometric method, and this has led to a series of misunderstandings of Hobbes's view of the relationship between politics and morality. Important implications of Ewin's reading are that Hobbes never thought that "the war of each against all" was an empirical possibility for citizens; that his political theory actually presupposes moral agency; and that Hobbes's account of natural law forces us to the conclusion that Hobbes was a virtue theorist. This major contribution to Hobbes studies will be praised and criticized, welcomed and challenged, but it cannot be ignored. All philosophers, political theorists, and historians of ideas dealing with Hobbes will need to take account of it. (shrink)

R T Allen; Rational Autonomy: the destruction of freedom, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 16, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 199–207, https://doi.org/10.

Background: Patient autonomy has been promoted as the most important principle to guide difficult clinical decisions. To examine whether practising physicians indeed value patient autonomy above other considerations, physicians were asked to weight patient autonomy against three other criteria that often influence doctors’ decisions. Associations between physicians’ religious characteristics and their weighting of the criteria were also examined. Methods: Mailed survey in 2007 of a stratified random sample of 1000 US primary care physicians, selected from the American Medical Association masterfile. (...) Physicians were asked how much weight should be given to the following: (1) the patient’s expressed wishes and values, (2) the physician’s own judgment about what is in the patient’s best interest, (3) standards and recommendations from professional medical bodies and (4) moral guidelines from religious traditions. Results: Response rate 51% (446/879). Half of physicians (55%) gave the patient’s expressed wishes and values “the highest possible weight”. In comparative analysis, 40% gave patient wishes more weight than the other three factors, and 13% ranked patient wishes behind some other factor. Religious doctors tended to give less weight to the patient’s expressed wishes. For example, 47% of doctors with high intrinsic religious motivation gave patient wishes the “highest possible weight”, versus 67% of those with low (OR 0.5; 95% CI 0.3 to 0.8). Conclusions: Doctors believe patient wishes and values are important, but other considerations are often equally or more important. This suggests that patient autonomy does not guide physicians’ decisions as much as is often recommended in the ethics literature. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:What Emotional Responding Is to Blame It Might Not Be to ResponsibilityR. J. R. Blair (bio)Keywordsblame, responsibility, emotional responses, psychopathyIn this interesting paper, Levy argues that by failing the moral/conventional distinction task (Blair 1995), individuals with psychopathy show a fundamental inability to categorize moral harms and as such their moral responsibility for their actions is reduced. He argues that, although we might still wish to incarcerate such individuals to (...) prevent them inflicting further harm on others, we should be less enthusiastic to blame them for their actions.In many respects, I agree with much of Levy's treatise. I certainly do not regard ascriptions of blame as useful in my own work with this population. I believe that our goal should be to fully understand the nature of their emotional deficit to be able to treat it similarly to other researchers who work to treat other emotional disorders. To me, Levy's argument appears sound.However, I offer three considerations and raise questions within these considerations that might further the debate. First, not all rules involve care-based emotional responses to victims. As Levy notes, this is the origin of the moral/conventional distinction. The problem here is that we do consider someone responsible if they break a conventional transgression. The student talking in class is generally considered blameworthy for this action as long as they knew that the rule of not talking during the lesson applied to that classroom. Yet, there is no victim and no care-based emotional response. Here, the only thing necessary to ascribe blame and responsibility is that the individual knew that a rule exists. Given this holds for conventional transgressions, why must we necessarily make a special case, with respect to responsibility, for moral transgressions?I believe that Levy is fully aware of this concern. He specifically makes reference to moral responsibility and writes that:the kind and degree of wrongness, and therefore blame, which attaches to infringements of the rules [against double parking or line-jumping] is very different, and usually much less significant, than the kind and degree attaching to moral wrongs. For psychopaths, all offences are merely conventional, and therefore—from their point of view—none of them are all that serious.(2007, p. 132)But the danger here is that issues of blame and responsibility may become highly relativistic and hinge on the strength of the emotional reaction. This is a problem because, although we might judge someone as more blameworthy if he intentionally [End Page 149] runs over five people rather than one, do we really consider that there is a distinction in moral responsibility between these two cases? If not, might not responsibility relate to factual knowledge of the existence of the rule against the transgression rather than the emotional response to the transgression?Second, there is considerable debate regarding whether psychopathy represents a taxon or a continuum (e.g., Vasey et al. 2005; Edens et al. 2006). Assuming it does represent a continuum, then we have an additional concern. How little of an emotional response to the transgression reduces one's moral responsibility and blame? Is it only the very reduced (although usually not absent) levels of emotional response that are shown by individuals with psychopathy? Or should we consider moral responsibility and blame proportional to the level of the emotional response? If this latter option is adopted, then what should we do about individuals who show heightened emotional responses, for example, patients with specific anxiety disorders (Rauch, Shin, and Wright 2003)? There are already some data that inhibited children (a developmental precursor to some anxiety disorders; Kagan and Snidman 1999) show heightened conscience development (Asendorpf and Nunner-Winkler 1992). If such children commit moral transgressions, should we regard them as more morally responsible and more blameworthy than regular folks?Third, the issue of intention received little attention in this paper. I have been considered to show a similar lack of attention to intention in the past (Nichols 2002) and, moreover, in some respects the issue was of limited concern given Levy's main goals. However, I mention it because so much of whether we consider someone responsible for their actions and... (shrink)