We examine schoolchildren’s reasoning with spatial relations, such as ‘is to the left of’. Our aims are to obtain a more precise account of the effect of working memory on reasoning, a more detaile...

For forty years, acclaimed photographer and native Minnesotan Tom Arndt has been documenting the faces of Minnesota with unparalleled skill and candor. In Home, Arndt presents what he calls "a poem to my home state" through a series of poignant and compelling photographs that highlight the unique character of Minnesota. From Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis to Main Street in Willmar, from carnival workers at the state fair to drag racing fans in Anoka, and from small town street dances to the (...) sidewalks of Minneapolis, Home captures everyday life in the North Star State. By allowing people's lives to speak for themselves, Arndts photographs reveal the often forgotten moments that build common bridges across a diverse and ever-changing state. Enriched with more than 100 photographs, along with a personal and insightful preface by the author and a foreword by Garrison Keillor, Home is a landmark testimony to the people and culture of Minnesota. Arndt approaches his subjects - he would call them neighbors - with honesty, empathy, and humanity, and what emerges is a portrait of Minnesota that is at once achingly familiar and surprisingly new. (shrink)

3500 word interview with Tom Cochrane discussing his philosophical background, the nature of aesthetic value, the benefits of art, and aestheticism.

This article develops an unconventional perspective on the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill in at least four areas. First, it is shown that both authors conceived of utility as irreducibly multi-dimensional, and that Bentham in particular was very much aware of the ambiguity that multi-dimensionality imposes upon optimal choice under the greatest happiness principle. Secondly, I argue that any attribution of intrinsic worth to any form of human behaviour violates the first principles of Bentham's and Mill's utilitarianism, and that this (...) renders both authors immune to the claim by G. E. Moore that they committed a ‘naturalistic fallacy’. Thirdly, in light of these contentions, I find no flaw in Mill's ‘proof of utility’. Fourthly, I use the notion of intrapersonal utility weights to provide an interpretation of Mill's qualitative hedonism that is entirely consistent with his value monism. (shrink)

More than twenty years after its original publication, _The Case for Animal Rights _is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

The principal thesis in this book is that bioethics emerged—in the 1960s through the 1980s—under the influence of philosophers who claimed to have universally valid principles that could steer medicine and research to the solution of ethical problems, including even those arising at the bedside of patients. Tom Koch contends that these philosophers and their allied bioethicists “stole medicine” and its traditional values, substituting a philosophical discourse generally inaccessible to the average person. Philosophers thereby refashioned medical ethics in accordance with (...) their vision of a morally and intellectually robust new field. Koch maintains that philosophers have failed to deliver on their promises and that .. (shrink)

Kant's claim that modality is a 'category' provides an approach to modality to be contrasted with Lewis's reductive analysis. Lewis's position is unsatisfactory, since it depends on an inherently modal conception of a world. This suggests that modality is 'primitive'; and the Kantian position is a prima facie plausible position of this kind, which is filled out by considering the relationship between modality and inference. This provides a context for comparing the Kantian position with Wright's non-cognitivist 'conventionalism'. Wright's position is (...) vulnerable to the type of argument used against ethical non-cognitivism, and the Kantian position is further confirmed by Blackburn's acknowledgment that modality is 'antinaturalistic to its core'. The position is further elaborated to show that it can accommodate the famous Kripkean categories of the empirically necessary and the contingent a priori, and finally defended against the criticisms used by Quine against Carnap. (shrink)

David Hume; Enactivism; Cognitive Science; Phenomenology; Philosophy of mind.

The concept of rights is now so dominant in the language of politics that it is becoming difficult to identify its use with any particular approach to the solution of social problems or to gain a clear picture of its significance, its advantages and its disadvantages as a way of conceptualizing and resolving contentious political issues. None the less there is a perceptible shift towards an emphasis on rights in contemporary politics which many welcome and encourage and others question and (...) even reject, a shift which is matched in jurisprudence by the renewed stress which many theorists place on rights as a basic legal concept despite recurrent problems associated with the concept as a tool for legal analysis and moral justification. Conflicting theories of legal rights are canvassed and this in turn feeds into the debate concerning the reality or significance of non-legal rights, for the process of law reform is often presented as a matter of giving legal embodiment to the rights which various interested categories of people are asserted to possess already. (shrink)

A response to Kavita Shah's article Selecting Barrenness.

We take rights to be fundamental to everyday life. Rights are also controversial and hotly debated both in theory and practice. Where do rights come from? Are they invented or discovered? What sort of rights are there and who is entitled to them? In this comprehensive introduction, Tom Campbell introduces and critically examines the key philosophical debates about rights. The first part of the book covers historical and contemporary theories of rights, including the origin and variety of rights and standard (...) justifications of them. He considers challenges to rights from philosophers such as Bentham, Burke and Marx. He also examines different theories of rights, such as natural law, social contract, utilitarian and communitarian theories of rights and the philosophers and political theorists associated with them, such as John Stuart Mill, John Rawls, Robert Nozick and Michael Sandel. The second part of the book explores the role of rights-promoting institutions and critically assesses legal rights and international human rights, including the United Nations. The final part of the book examines how philosophies of rights can be applied to freedom of speech, issues of social welfare and the question of self-determination for certain groups or peoples. _Rights: A Critical Introduction_ is essential reading for anyone new to the subject of rights and any student of political philosophy, politics and law. (shrink)

Heyman's target article contributes to our understanding of addictions by offering solutions to several paradoxes and by recognizing the stable nature of addictive behavior. Previous classical and operant conditioning models have emphasized molecular processes, such as acquisition and extinction, and have failed to address the aggregate effects of long-term exposure to the contingencies of drug and alcohol use.

Tom Stoneham offers a clear and detailed study of Berkeley's metaphysics and epistemology, as presented in his classic work Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, originally published in 1713 and still widely studied. Stoneham shows that Berkeley is an important and systematic philosopher whose work is still of relevance to philosophers today.

Many individuals have miserable work lives, in which they must toil away at mind-numbing yet exhausting tasks for hours on end, being ordered about by their superiors, perhaps with few guarantees that this source of income will persist for very long. However, this is only half of the story: what is centrally important is that many of those who endure these conditions are denied a fair wage in return for the burdens that they bear. In this article, I reflect on (...) the significance of this fact in order to argue for the evaporation thesis. This thesis holds that individuals’ claims to particular employment-related protections from their government disappear as their earnings increase. In the course of defending this position, I explore the moral difference an employee's wage offer makes to the work conditions that we can expect her to accept, including why there are limits to the role that cash can play here. (shrink)

Bioethics claimed to offer a set of generally applicable, universally accepted guidelines that would simplify complex situations. In Thieves of Virtue, Tom Koch argues that bioethics has failed to deliver on its promises.

Tom Regan argues that human beings and some non-human animals have moral rights because they are “subjects of lives,” that is, roughly, conscious, sentient beings with an experiential welfare. A prominent critic, Carl Cohen, objects: he argues that only moral agents have rights and so animals, since they are not moral agents, lack rights. An objection to Cohen’s argument is that his theory of rights seems to imply that human beings who are not moral agents have no moral rights, but (...) since these human beings have rights, his theory of rights is false, and so he fails to show that animals lack rights. Cohen responds that this objection fails because human beings who are not moral agents nevertheless are the “kind” of beings who are moral agents and so have rights, but animals are not that “kind” of being and so lack rights. Regan argues that Cohen’s “kind” arguments fail: they fail to explain why human beings who are not moral agents have rights and they fail to show that animals lack rights. Since Cohen’s “kind” arguments are influential, I review and critique Regan’s objections . I offer suggestions for stronger responses to arguments like Cohen’s. (shrink)

Research findings on addiction are contradictory. According to biographical records and widely used diagnostic manuals, addicts use drugs compulsively, meaning that drug use is out of control and independent of its aversive consequences. This account is supported by studies that show significant heritabilities for alcoholism and other addictions and by laboratory experiments in which repeated administration of addictive drugs caused changes in neural substrates associated with reward. Epidemiological and experimental data, however, show that the consequences of drug consumption can significantly (...) modify drug intake in addicts. The disease model can account for the compulsive features of addiction, but not occasions in which price and punishment reduced drug consumption in addicts. Conversely, learning models of addiction can account for the influence of price and punishment, but not compulsive drug taking. The occasion for this target article is that recent developments in behavioral choice theory resolve the apparent contradictions in the addiction literature. The basic argument includes the following four statements: First, repeated consumption of an addictive drug decreases its future value and the future value of competing activities. Second, the frequency of an activity is a function of its relative (not absolute) value. This implies that an activity that reduces the values of competing behaviors can increase in frequency even if its own value also declines. Third, a recent experiment (Heyman & Tanz 1995) shows that the effective reinforcement contingencies are relative to a frame of reference, and this frame of reference can change so as to favor optimal or suboptimal choice. Fourth, if the frame of reference is local, reinforcement contingencies will favor excessive drug use, but if the frame of reference is global, the reinforcement contingencies will favor controlled drug use. The transition from a global to a local frame of reference explains relapse and other compulsive features of addiction. (shrink)

Essays raise and discuss moral questions concerning euthanasia, suicide, war, capital punishment, abortion, famine relief, and the environment.

Tom Campbell is well known for his distinctive contributions to legal and political philosophy over three decades. In emphasising the moral and political importance of taking a positivist approach to law and rights, he has challenged current academic orthodoxies and made a powerful case for regaining and retaining democratic control over the content and development of human rights. This collection of his essays reaches back to his pioneering work on socialist rights in the 1980s and forward from his seminal book, (...) The Legal Theory of Ethical Positivism (1996). An introductory essay provides an historical overview of Professor Campbell's work and argues for the continuing importance of 'democratic positivism' at a time when it is again becoming clear that courts are ineffective protectors of human rights. (shrink)

Tom Sparrow shows how, in the 21st century, speculative realism aims to do what phenomenology could not: provide a philosophical method that disengages the human-centred approach to metaphysics in order to chronicle the complex realm of nonhuman reality. -/- Through a focused reading of the methodological statements and metaphysical commitments of key phenomenologists and speculative realists, Sparrow shows how speculative realism is replacing phenomenology as the beacon of realism in contemporary Continental philosophy.