This paper critiques the new mechanistic explanatory program on grounds that, even when applied to the kinds of examples that it was originally designed to treat, it does not distinguish correct explanations from those that blunder. First, I offer a systematization of the explanatory account, one according to which explanations are mechanistic models that satisfy three desiderata: they must 1) represent causal relations, 2) describe the proper parts, and 3) depict the system at the right ‘level.’ Second, I argue that (...) even the most developed attempts to fulfill these desiderata fall short by failing to appropriately constrain explanatorily apt mechanistic models. -/- *This paper used to be called "The Emperor's New Mechanisms". (shrink)

Discussion about a dignified death has almost exclusively been applied to palliative care and people dying of cancer. As populations are getting older in the western world and living with chronic illnesses affecting their everyday lives, it is relevant to broaden the definition of palliative care to include other groups of people. The aim of the study was to explore the views on dignity at the end of life of 12 elderly people living in two nursing homes in Sweden. A (...) hermeneutic approach was used to interpret the material, which was gathered during semi-structured interviews. A total of 39 interviews were transcribed. The analysis revealed three themes: (1) the unrecognizable body; (2) fragility and dependency; and (3) inner strength and a sense of coherence. (shrink)

Seth Shabo has presented a new argument that attempts to codify familiar worries about indeterminism, luck, and control. His ‘Assimilation Argument’ contends that libertarians cannot distinguish overtly randomized outcomes from exercises of free will. Shabo claims that the argument possesses advantages over the Mind Argument and Rollback Argument, which also purport to establish that indeterminism is incompatible with free will. I argue first that the Assimilation Argument presents no new challenges over and above those presented by the Rollback Argument, and (...) second that the Rollback Argument itself neither presents a deep challenge to, nor raises the cost of, accepting libertarianism. (shrink)

The formal sciences - mathematical as opposed to natural sciences, such as operations research, statistics, theoretical computer science, systems engineering - appear to have achieved mathematically provable knowledge directly about the real world. It is argued that this appearance is correct.

Defends the cosmological argument for the existence of God against Hume's criticisms. Hume objects that since a cause is before its effect, an eternal succession has no cause; but that would rule of by fiat the possibility of God's creating the world from eternity. Hume argues that once a cause is given for each of a collection of objects, there is not need to posit a cause of the whole collection; but that is to assume the universe to be a (...) heap of things arbitrarily grouped rather than a whole arbitrarily divided. (shrink)

:It is often claimed that libertarianism offers an unattractive conception of free will and moral responsibility because it renders free agency inexplicable and irrational. This essay aims, first, to show that the soundness of these objections turns on more basic disagreements concerning the ideals of free agency and, second, to develop and motivate a truly libertarian conception of the ideals of free agency. The central contention of the essay is that the heart of libertarians’ ideal of free agency is the (...) ideal of agential fundamentality. (shrink)

A point charge accelerating under the influence of an external force emits electromagnetic radiation that reduces the increase in its mechanical energy. This causes a reduction in the particle's acceleration. We derive the decrease in acceleration due to radiation reaction for a particle accelerating parallel to its velocity, and show that it has a negligible effect.

In The Healer's Power, Howard Brody placed the concept of power at the heart of medicine's moral discourse. Struck by the absence of “power” in the prevailing vocabulary of medical ethics, yet aware of peripheral allusions to power in the writings of some medical ethicists, he intuited the importance of power from the silence surrounding it. He formulated the problem of the healer's power and its responsible use as “the central ethical problem in medicine.” Through the prism of power he (...) refracted a wide range of ethical problems, from informed consent to truth-telling, from confidentiality to futility, from the physician's fantasies to the physician's virtues. At times this prism shed new light on old problems, enabling us to see from an unexpected angle the elements of which the problem was composed. At other times it exposed issues of ethical significance that had been neglected in the bioethics literature. (shrink)

It is common to think that, in making choices for others, we should consider their values. But do the current interests of people with dementia ever depend on what they used to value? Or do their interests depend solely on what matters to them from now on? Two approaches are especially prominent in the philosophical literature. Some believe that the capacity to value or significantly care about things bestows a certain standing on the person’s present perspective, making it inappropriate to (...) appeal to her former values until the person no longer has this capacity. Others hold that a person’s past attitudes can never affect what is good for him now. On the “Revision Model” I defend, we should ordinarily recognize a person’s current values as authoritative in defining a person’s interests, because these represent his most up-to-date revision of his earlier views. However, if a person has lost the ability to comprehend his former values, then we cannot treat his current perspective as a genuine revision, since he is not answerable for the fact that his values have changed. Having never truly revised those former values, we should recognize their enduring relevance in defining his interests, insofar as they remain relevant to his life. This, however, is consistent with recognizing that the person’s interests may also depend on some of his current values and concerns as well. (shrink)

We show that van Lambalgen's Theorem fails with respect to recursive randomness and Schnorr randomness for some real in every high degree and provide a full characterization of the Turing degrees for which van Lambalgen's Theorem can fail with respect to Kurtz randomness. However, we also show that there is a recursively random real that is not Martin-Löf random for which van Lambalgen's Theorem holds with respect to recursive randomness.

Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum have argued that a theory of free will that appeals to a powers-based ontology is incompatible with causal determinism. This is a surprising conclusion since much recent work on the intersection of the metaphysics of powers and free will has consisted of attempts to defend compatibilism by appealing to a powers-based ontology. In response I show that their argument turns on an equivocation of ‘all events are necessitated’.

The essential idea of Leibniz’s Theodicy was little understood in his time but has become one of the organizing themes of modern mathematics. There are many phenomena that are possible locally but for purely mathematical reasons impossible globally. For example, it is possible to build a spiral staircase that is rising at any given point, but it is impossible to build one that is rising at all points and comes back to where it started. The necessity is mathematically provable, so (...) not subject to exception by divine power. Leibniz’s Theodicy argues that God could improve the universe locally in many ways, but not globally. This paper defends Leibniz, giving positive reasons for believing that there are so many necessary interconnections between goods and evils that God is faced with a choice like the classic Trolley case, where all of the scenarios that could be chosen upfront contain evils, but some more than others. Local changes for the better seem easy to imagine, but a proper understanding of global constraints undermines the initial impression that they can be done without global cost. The paper concludes by explaining how the context of the Leibnizian argument makes it reasonable to pursue the issue of whether there are no worlds better than this one. (shrink)

We study the acceleration and collisions of rigid bodies in special relativity. After a brief historical review, we give a physical definition of the term ‘rigid body’ in relativistic straight line motion. We show that the definition of ‘rigid body’ in relativity differs from the usual classical definition, so there is no difficulty in dealing with rigid bodies in relativistic motion. We then describe The motion of a rigid body undergoing constant acceleration to a given velocity.The acceleration of a rigid (...) body due to an applied impulse.Collisions between rigid bodies. (shrink)

Human life and death should be defined biologically. It is important not to conflate the definition of death with the criteria for when it has occurred. What is distinctively "human" from a scientific or normative perspective has nothing to do with what makes humans alive or dead. We are biological organisms, despite the fact that what is meaningful about human life is not defined in biological terms. Consequently, as in the rest of the realm of living beings, human beings die (...) when they no longer function biologically as organisms. In contrast, a determination of exactly when death has occurred, required to serve various social purposes, combines social and normative considerations with biological facts. (shrink)

Structures for mission have been under review as a result of many factors. In particular have been the widening influences of globalisation, and to a lesser degree, glocalisation. Various models of leadership praxis and structures have been proposed along the way. As Christianity moved farther away from the Christendom model of centralised control to other models of structure and leadership, other paradigms have been proposed along the way. However, one possibility, called the concept of polycentrism, has not been considered with (...) any significant effort. In order to understand polycentrism, this research covered a literature review of seven spheres: (1) the urbanised-economic context; (2) political-ideological associations; (3) globalglocal socio-cultural situations; (4) organisational-leadership contexts; (5) missional movements; (6) the global church; and (7) the journey of the mission agency called the Wycliffe Global Alliance. The application of the concept of polycentrism to the specific context of the Wycliffe Global Alliance has enabled conclusions about the relevance of polycentrism in mission structures that are part of the missio Dei. The study concluded that polycentrism was a very helpful methodology that understood and resolved the inherent tensions and influences brought about by globalisation upon structures in God’s mission. The implications shaped what leadership communities look like in terms of values and ideals because of the benefits of polycentrism. Through polycentrism, there has been a deliberate movement away from established centres of power, so that leadership occurred among and with others, while creatively learning together in community.Keywords: Polycentrism, globalisaiton, glocalisation, mission leadership, global church. (shrink)

What is 'praxis'? How do we study theology from its perspective? These are the main questions which this book seeks to answer.

The metaphor of space/place has always been crucial to theological discourse. Throughout its history, theology has expressed itself in spatial images correlative to its concomitant culture. The phenomenon of globalization makes possible a revolution in the concept of space/place. It is this transformation which we seek to examine in order to bear out some methodological consequences for theological reflection. This article consists in three parts. First, we explore the notions of space in two contemporary theorists of globalization – Anthony Giddens (...) and David Harvey. We have seen that both Giddens’ “empty spaces” and Harvey’s “compression of time and space”, even as they partly describe the present-day global situation, are also deficient if only considered individually. In a second step, we propose to integrate into the analytical framework Raymond Williams’ concept of “placeable social identities” as establishing a complementary relationship between Giddens and Harvey. In this powerful spatial metaphor, Williams has argued for the primacy of real “placeable” communities of peoples where meaning is constantly constructed and negociated. His assertion of identifiable settlements and rooted communal identities is an antidote to the often ideological talk of the high-speed movement and constantly shifting identities in globalization. But these are not nostalgic identities since in their borders, they constantly reshape their own meanings and valuations as they interact with contemporary global challenges. In a third move, we examine two spatial views of the church , two ways of doing theology) as response to globalization: Milbank’s “enclave” and Schreiter’s “World Church”. While Milbank’s discourse of the “difference” of the Christian traditions echoes the postmodern sensibilities of a globalized world, his concept of the Church as “enclave” also reminds us of a reactionary persecuted Church which hides behind its mantle the rhetoric of universalism characteristic of an isolated minority. Schreiter’s “World Church” is much more open; but his concern for “universality” and “catholicity” almost erases the asymmetry and disruption which the global culture has done to Two-Thirds of the world population. Beyond Milbank and Schreiter , we conclude by suggesting that Williams’ placeable social identities may thus provide a metaphor for theorizing spatiality in a global world that would be consistent with liberative theological methodology. (shrink)

Plochmann and Robinson closely analyze this great dialogue in the first two-thirds of their book, turning in the final four chapters to a broader discussion of its unity, sweep, and philosophic implications.

The problem of physician-assisted death, assisted suicide and active euthanasia, has been debated predominantly in the ethically familiar vocabulary of rights, duties, and consequences. Patient autonomy and the right to die with dignity vie with the duty of physicians to heal, but not to kill, and the specter of “the slippery slope” from voluntary euthanasia as a last resort for patients suffering from terminal illness to PAD on demand and mercy killing of “hopeless” incompetent patients. Another dimension of the debate (...) over PAD concerns the evaluative question of what constitutes a good death. At stake are Issues of character and virtue in the face of death and dying and their Implications for legitimizing the practice of PAD. Critics of PAD argue that “natural” death in the context of comfort care, as provided by hospice programs, is the good death. In contrast, PAD amounts to an easy way out, an evasion of the ultimate human challenge and task of dying. Because hospice care is clearly preferable to PAD, the former should be encouraged and the latter remain prohibited. (shrink)

Defends the arguments for the irredicibility of dispositions to categorical properties in "Are dispositions reducible to categorical properties?" (Philosophical Quarterly 36, 1986) against the criticisms of D.M. Armstrong (Philosophical Quarterly 38, 1988).

A textbook on proof in mathematics, inspired by an Aristotelian point of view on mathematics and proof. The book expounds the traditional view of proof as deduction of theorems from evident premises via obviously valid steps. It deals with the proof of "all" statements, "some" statements, multiple quantifiers and mathematical induction.

Let me tell you what philosophy is about, then about how Sydney does it in its own special way. Does life have a meaning, and if so what is it? What can I be certain of, and how should I act when I am not certain? Why are the established truths of my tribe better than the primitive superstitions of your tribe? Why should I do as I’m told? Those are questions it’s easy to avoid, in the rush to acquire (...) goods and prestige. Even for many of a more serious outlook, they are questions easy to dismiss with excuses like “it’s all a matter of opinion” or “let’s get on with practical matters” or “they’re too hard”. They are questions that may be ignored, but they do not go away. They’re philosophical questions. There’s a right way to approach them – you read the writings of the classical and recent philosophers and consider carefully their arguments back and forth. There are many wrong ways to approach them, such as choosing at random among the ideas your parents or friends or gurus have, or ideas that feel good. Or you can just not bother. Sydney has a certain reputation for superficiality in this regard. A character in David Williamson’s Emerald City says “No-one in Sydney ever wastes time debating the meaning of life — it’s getting yourself a water frontage”, says If you have a Writers Festival or a conference on Happiness in Sydney, you don’t normally expect philosophers to be invited. Caroline Jones’ radio series, ‘The Search for Meaning’. (shrink)

An early version of the work on mathematics as the science of structure that appeared later as An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics (2014).

The manipulation argument poses a significant challenge for any adequate compatibilist theory of agency. The argument maintains that there is no relevant difference between actions or pro‐attitudes that are induced by nefarious neurosurgeons, God, or (and this is the important point) natural causes. Therefore, if manipulation is thought to undermine moral responsibility, then so also ought causal determinism. In this paper, I will attempt to bolster the plausibility of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's semicompatibilist theory of moral responsibility by (...) demonstrating how their account provides a distinctive line of response to three important types of manipulation. (shrink)

Robots, as well as software agents, can be of use in biology as implementations of a theory rather than as simulations of specific real world target systems. Such implementations generate hypotheses rather than representing them. Their behavior is not predicted, but rather observed, and is not expected to duplicate that of a target system. Scientific knowledge is gained through the testing of generated hypotheses.

The aim of this work is to demarcate, develop, and defend the commitments and consequences of metaethical minimalism. Very roughly, this is the position that a commitment to objective moral truths does not require any accompanying ontological commitments. While there are few, if any, who call themselves “metaethical minimalists”, I endeavor to uncover existing articulations of metaethical minimalism which have been presented under different names, attempting to identify the common ground between them. As I interpret the position, all metaethical minimalists (...) are committed to the same positive pair of claims (what I call the Objectivity Thesis): “a) Moral truths are strongly mind-independent; b) there are moral truths.” Taken by itself, however, this pair of claims is not sufficient for differentiating their view from the moral realist’s. Consequently, the minimalist must also articulate that which they are denying about the non-minimalist approach, or what I call the “negative ontological thesis”. I offer my own version of this negative thesis and argue for its dialectical advantages. -/- In Chapters 3 and 4, I focus my attention on attacks on the viability of metaethical minimalism in the form of two “challenges” that aim to problematize a commitment to objective moral truths absent any accompanying ontological commitment. The big-picture takeaway from these chapters is that minimalism can defend itself by playing to the dialectical advantage I find for it in Chapter 2 as well as by being creative about minimalist constructions/reworkings of plausible principles/lines of reasoning that seem to contradict it. -/- The temptation to embrace quietism is strong among minimalists, but in Chapters 5, 6, and 7 I aim to show that there is a positive alternative available for the minimalist interested in developing a full picture of their position. Chapter 5 is aimed at providing an adequate understanding of the distinction between the objects of purely normative thoughts and objects of thoughts about reality. Building on this are Chapters 6 and 7, which argue in favor of an account of the relationship between emotion and evaluative knowledge that is consistent with metaethical minimalism. (shrink)

Plato’s often-quoted statement in the Phaedrus that we should “cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints” (265e) has become an influential metaphor in discussions of natural kinds and natural properties. In this essay, I investigate the source domain of the metaphor, the joints of the animal body, to determine if these joints are indeed “natural”—meaning that there exists a single, non-disjunctive account of joint-hood applicable to the osteological world. By examining animal joints from the perspective (...) of both the butcher and the biologist, I argue that there is no single natural division of the body into component skeletal parts. I conclude by considering what impact this result should have on our understanding of natural kinds and on the metaphors we use to describe them. (shrink)

Plato’s Socrates says in the Phaedrus that we should “cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might” (265e). In the Statesman Plato’s interlocutors make the similar suggestion that kinds should be divided from one another “limb by limb, like a sacrificial animal” (287c). This jointing metaphor is often used to illustrate the divisibility of the natural world into objective kinds or natural categories—such as (...) into particles like electrons, species, such as Homo sapiens, or even into sociological kinds like care-giver or psychological ones like fear. It has been thought that by dividing the world at its joints, we can lay bare the natural kinds; when we fail to so divide we splinter the world’s kinds like an incompetent butcher. In accordance with the metaphor, each bone in the animal body is likened to a category of things in the natural world. The claim that there is one natural set of joints at which we can physically separate the parts of the animal parallels the claim that there is a unique set of natural categories into which we should partition objects into species. Some, such as David Hull, say that this metaphor is “apt” (Hull 1989, 153) and others, like Ian Hacking, that it is “unsavory rubbish” (Hacking 1991, 111). Philip Kitcher is equally critical, writing that: “Plato gave us a vivid metaphor, suggesting that our classificatory task is like that of carving a beast at its joints. But that is just metaphor. I find it hard to give substance to the notion that nature is a beast with joints or that it comes with neat fenceposts that our scientific language must respect.”. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on probable opinion. It analyzes the use of the concept of probabilities in law and moral theology, and describes the Anglican writers' use of the probabilities to defend the Christian doctrine. The chapter also considers the relevant work of Thomas Hobbes and highlights the importance of John Graunt's founding of statistics in terms of obtaining inference from quantitative data.

We report new data from a survey of loneliness in Australia during the Covid-19 lockdowns of 2020–21, in order to identify those age groups most at risk of increased loneliness. Counter-intuitively, proportionately fewer elderly Australians experienced increased loneliness as a result of lockdowns, as compared with 44% of those aged 19–29 and 31% of those aged 40–49. To explain this pattern, we investigated how lockdowns disturbed the complex connections between types of place affordance and the age-specific cultural scripts that normally (...) give rise to a sense of belonging. For younger age groups, such scripts demand their identification with future orientations and a sense of belonging tied to the more distant and wide-ranging places of career advance, meeting, play, and pleasure that lockdown inhibited. By contrast, older retired cohorts were more inclined to frame their sense of belonging in the past through the maintenance of community connections and closer place-bonds of their locality, cultural places of memory and return that they were more happily confined to during lockdowns. (shrink)