The persistence of doping in professional sports—either by individuals on an isolated basis and by whole teams as part of a systematic doping programme—means that professional sport today is rarely if ever untainted. There are financial incentives in place that incentivise doping and there are data that show that doping is often a systematic, organised enterprise. The main question to be answered today in professional sports is whether doping’s repressive anti-doping policies do not have greater negative consequences for society. Whilst (...) some have suggested legitimising safe doping under medical control, in this paper, I argue that doing so will do little to prevent clandestine use of dangerous performance-enhancing substances, and suggest an alternative solution to lifting the ban on doping, i.e. starting from extending liability for doping in sport beyond athletes to those holding power and authority over athletes, to changing winning incentives for doping, to making sport sustainable in the longer time by devising ways of providing athletes with a steady income which is not linked to record breaking or sponsorships. (shrink)

A central goal of typological research is to characterize linguistic features in terms of both their functional role and their fit to social and cognitive systems. One long-standing puzzle concerns why certain languages employ grammatical gender. In an information theoretic analysis of German noun classification, Dye, Milin, Futrell, and Ramscar enumerated a number of important processing advantages gender confers. Yet this raises a further puzzle: If gender systems are so beneficial to processing, what does this mean for languages that make (...) do without them? Here, we compare the communicative function of gender marking in German to that of prenominal adjectives in English, finding that despite their differences, both systems act to efficiently smooth information over discourse, making nouns more equally predictable in context. We examine why evolutionary pressures may favor one system over another and discuss the implications for compositional accounts of meaning and Gricean principles of communication. (shrink)

The main argument given for relevant alternatives theories of knowledge has been that they answer scepticism about the external world. I will argue that relevant alternatives also solve two other problems that have been much discussed in recent years, a) the bootstrapping problem and b) the apparent conflict between semantic externalism and armchair self-knowledge. Furthermore, I will argue that scepticism and Mooreanism can be embedded within the relevant alternatives framework.

Heidegger accuses ontotheologies of reducing God to a mere object of intelligibility, and thereby falsifying them, and in doing so distracting attention from or forgetting the ground of Being as unconcealment in the Lichtung. Conventional theistic responses to Heidegger’s ontotheological challenges proceed by offering analogy, speech-act theorising or negative theology as solutions. Yet these conventional solutions, however suitable as responses to Heidegger’s Die ontotheologische Verfassung der Metaphysik version of the ontotheological problem, still fall foul of Heidegger’s more profound (...) characterisation of ontotheology in his treatise Seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus. Therein Heidegger characterises ontotheology as a metaphysics that posits a first-causal ground of Being combining together an essentia and an existentia. This article presents an alternative family of metaphysical schemes that instead develop their metaphysical ‘theology’ in a non-naive epistemological context, and indeed maintain that God cannot be cognised by us because we cannot reconcile the whatness and the that-ness of God in one coherent thought. God is thus unintelligible, and though able to be signified, cannot be reduced thereby to an object of cognition, and is not posited at the expense of considering the ground of Being as the encounter in Lichtung with Being. The two examples of such disrupted cognition accounts of a non-ontheological metaphysics are from the medieval Franciscan John Duns Scotus and the British Idealist Francis Herbert Bradley. The paper ends with a discussion of the characteristic ‘disrupted cognition’ as a movement between two concepts that are unreconcilable within thought, without being contradictories or contraries, and explores the differences between theological and philosophical employments of ‘disrupted cognition’. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 54-56, August 2011.

The Schwarzschild solution (Schwarzschild, 1915/16) to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity (GTR) is accepted in theoretical physics as the unique solution to GTR for a central-mass system. In this paper I propose an alternative solution to GTR, and argue it is both logically consistent and empirically realistic as a theory of gravity. This solution is here called K-gravity. The introduction explains the basic concept. The central sections go through the technical detail, defining the basic solution for the geometric tensor, (...) the Christoffel symbols, Ricci tensor, Ricci scalar, Einstein tensor, stress-energy tensor and density-pressure for the system. The density is integrated, and some consistency properties are demonstrated. A notable feature is the disappearance of the event horizon singularity, i.e. there are no black holes. So far this is for a single central mass. A generalization of the solution for multiple masses is then proposed. This is required to support K-gravity as a viable general interpretation of gravity. Then the question of empirical tests is discussed. It is argued that current observational data is almost but not quite sufficient to verify or falsify K-gravity. The Pioneer spacecraft trajectory data is of particular interest, as this is capable of providing a test; but the data (which originally showed anomalies that match K-gravity) is now uncertain. A new and very practical experiment is proposed to settle the matter. This would provide a novel test of GTR, and a novel test of the cause of the Pioneer anomalies. In conclusion, K-gravity has extensive ramifications for gravitational physics and for the philosophy of GTR and space-time. (shrink)

We start by considering the Alternate Strike (AS) scheme, a real-life arbitration scheme where two parties select an arbitrator by alternately crossing off at each round one name from a given panel of arbitrators. We find out that the AS scheme is not invariant to “bad” alternatives. We then consider another alternating-move scheme, the Voting by Alternating Offers and Vetoes (VAOV) scheme, which is invariant to bad alternatives. We fully characterize the subgame perfect equilibrium outcome sets of these above two (...) schemes in terms of the rankings of the parties over the alternatives only. We also identify some of the typical equilibria of these above two schemes. We then analyze two additional alternating-move schemes in which players’ current proposals have to either honor or enhance their previous proposals. We show that the first scheme’s equilibrium outcome set coincides with that of the AS scheme, and the equilibrium outcome set of the second scheme coincides with that of the VAOV scheme. Finally, it turns out that all schemes’ equilibrium outcome sets converge to the Equal Area solution’s outcome of cooperative bargaining problem, if the alternatives are distributed uniformly over the comprehensive utility possibility set and as the number of alternatives tends to infinity. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C72. (shrink)

Modern corporations have been widely accused of promoting values of managerial autonomy that can result in managerial waste and opportunistic behaviour, leading organizational theorists to suggest the adoption of alternative organizational forms that should normatively and structurally limit such autonomy. However, this mixed-methods study of an alternative organizational form — income trusts (1995—2005)— finds that income trusts were also characterized by excessive managerial autonomy. Managers strategically used the income trust form in discretionary ways such as by providing little (...) information on important decisions to external parties, limiting investors' right to oppose managerial actions and retaining firm earnings to a great extent. Thus, the article concludes that alternative organizational forms do not necessarily promote an ethical business culture since they are unable to overcome deeply institutionalized values of managerial autonomy. (shrink)

Contrary to Singer's view, Kuper asserts that there is no "royal road" to poverty relief, but intersecting roads that may take us to a place without poverty. Drawing on the works of Rawls and Marx, Kuper examines how an effective political philosophy of this kind might be developed.

In recent years, there are a number of proposals to consider collision-based soliton computer based on certain chemical reactions, namely Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, which leads to soliton solutions of coupled Nonlinear Schroedinger equations. They are called Manakov System. But it seems to us that such a soliton computer model can also be based on solitary wave solution of Maxwell-Dirac equation, which reduces to Choquard equation. And soliton solution of Choquard equation has been investigated by many researchers, therefore it seems more (...) profound from physics perspective. However, we consider both schemes of soliton computer are equally possible. More researches are needed to verify our proposition. (shrink)

In hisStudy of War, Q. Wright considered a model for the probability of warP during a period ofn crises, and proposed the equationP=1– n, wherep is the probability of war escalating at each individual crisis. This probability measure was formally derived recently by Cioffi -Revilla, using the general theory of political reliability and an interpretation of the n-crises problem as a branching process. Two new, alternate solutions are presented here, one using D. Bernoulli''s St. Petersburg Paradox as an analogue, (...) the other based on the logic of conditional probabilities. Analysis shows that, while Wright''s solution is robust with regard to the general overall behavior ofp andn, some significant qualitative and quantitative differences emerge from the alternative solutions. In particular,P converges to 1 only in a special case and not generally. (shrink)

There are cases such as climate change where the cumulative effects of the actions of several agents lead to grave harm but where no individual agent can make a perceptible difference for the better or worse. According to Derek Parfit, dealing with such imperceptible difference cases requires substantial changes to the way we think about morality. In On What Matters, Parfit builds on Kantian Ethics to address the problem of imperceptible differences, but the transformation that Kant's theory undergoes in his (...) hands is radical. I argue that Parfit's changes to Kant's theory are not only unnecessary but also detrimental to making sense of the ethical dimensions of action in collective contexts. Building on the notion of imperfect duties, I offer an alternative solution to the problem of imperceptible difference cases that remains closer to Kant's original theory and avoids the difficulties of Parfit's approach. (shrink)

The zone of latent solutions hypothesis provides an alternative approach to explaining cultural patterns in primates and many other animals. According to the ZLS hypothesis, non-human great ape cultures consist largely or solely of latent solutions. The current competing hypothesis for ape culture argues instead that at least some of their behavioural or artefact forms are copied through specific social learning mechanisms and that their forms may depend on copying. In contrast, the ape ZLS hypothesis does not (...) require these forms to be copied. Instead, it suggests that several social learning mechanisms help determine the frequency of these behaviours and artefacts within connected individuals. The ZLS hypothesis thus suggests that increases and stabilisations of a particular behaviour’s or artefact’s frequency can derive from socially-mediated form reinnovations. Therefore, and while genes and ecology play important roles as well, according to the ape ZLS hypothesis, apes typically acquire the forms of their behaviours and artefacts individually, but are usually socially induced to do so. The ZLS approach is often criticized—perhaps also because it challenges the current null hypothesis, which instead assumes a requirement of form-copying social learning mechanisms to explain many ape behavioural forms. However, as the ZLS hypothesis is a new approach, with less accumulated literature compared to the current null hypothesis, some confusion is to be expected. Here, we clarify the ZLS approach—also in relation to other competing hypotheses—and address misconceptions and objections. We believe that these clarifications will provide researchers with a coherent theoretical approach and an experimental methodology to examine the necessity of form-copying variants of social learning in apes, humans and other species. (shrink)

The Revision Theory of Truth has been challenged in A. M. Yaqūb's recent book The Liar Speaks the Truth. Yaqūb suggests some non-trivial changes in the original theory - changing the limit rule - to avoid certain artifacts. In this paper it is shown that the proposed changes are not sufficient, i.e., Yaqūb's system also produces artifacts. An alternative solution is proposed and the relation between it and Yaqūb's solution is explored.

This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the (...) notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms. (shrink)

This article discusses the logic of the Epimenides Paradox using a graphical representation of the logical operators involved. The graphical representation of the Logical Operators is the one used in digital electronics. This method of investigation is very effective in revealing the hidden error in the reasoning that leads to the contradiction. The article explains the vicious circle that the mind goes through when trying to analyze the Paradox. Finally, the article proposes a solution of the Paradox with final conclusions (...) that are not paradoxical but simply counterintuitive. The endless deduction is generated by subsequent evaluations that take place on different levels. In its evaluation the Mind alternates a level of logical evaluation with a level of semantic evaluation. (shrink)

Natural language conditionals seem to be subject to three logical requirements: they invalidate Antecedent Strengthening, they validate so-called Simplification of Disjunctive Antecedents, and they allow for the replacement of logically equivalent clauses in antecedent position. Unfortunately, these requirements are jointly inconsistent. Conservative solutions to the puzzle drop Simplification, treating it as a pragmatic inference. I show that pragmatic accounts of Simplification fail, and develop a truthmaker semantics for conditionals that captures all the relevant data. Differently from existing truthmaker semantics, (...) my semantics extends, rather than replaces, standard possible worlds semantics. The main innovation is the notion of a truthmaker in play: this notion is cognitive, rather than metaphysical, and can be defined in a purely syntactic way. (shrink)

The subject of this essay is the classical problem of induction, which is sometimes attributed to David Hume and called “the Humean Problem of Induction.” Here, I examine a certain sort of Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem, which appeals to the concept of natural kinds in its response to the inductive skeptic. This position is most notably represented by Howard Sankey and Marc Lange. The purpose of this paper is partly destructive and partly constructive. I raise two questions. The first (...) is: Are the natural kind solutions to the problem successful? The first thesis of this paper is that they are not, and I will show how and why they fail. And the second question I raise here is: Is there nonetheless some alternative Neo-Aristotelian solution to the problem which is successful and can overcome the shortcomings endemic to the Sankey-Lange account? The second thesis is that there is, and I’ll attempt to sketch one. My stance here may be summarized by saying that, while I agree with Sankey and Lange that the problem of induction can be adequately resolved, and while I am on the whole sympathetic with the Aristotelian spirit of their account, I am, for all that, dissatisfied with the letter of them. Nothing short of a more thoroughgoing Aristotelianism about the epistemology of induction will do. (shrink)

Subject-scientific and solution-focused approaches share several critical concerns with regard to mainstream psychological concepts and therapeutic practices. Also, the alternatives presented have certain obvious similarities, such as 1) respecting subjective experience and everyday practices, 2) accentuating cooperation and 3) articulating possibilities. The articulation of the societal mediatedness of human experience and action has not, however, been an important theme in solution-focused therapy. Whereas it is justifiable to leave the societal mediation unarticulated in conversations with some clients, it is clear from (...) a subject-scientific perspective that it is necessary for a therapist to seek to comprehend the societal both in her own action and experiences as well as in those of the client. In this article I describe a way of getting a subject-scientific hold of the societal in the everyday living of clients through typical solution-focused practices. I begin by outlining a subject-scientific approach to personality and psychological research. Subject-scientific research is articulated in a way that accentuates the concept of fabric of grounds as a central figure in the architecture of research into subjective experience. This articulation is then conjoined – as a guiding principle – with a description of solution-focused practice. Finally, I will indicate ways of utilizing the knowledge that is being created in solution-focused subject-scientific case study research. (shrink)

This paper concerns periodic solutions of a class of equations that model gene regulatory networks. Unlike the vast majority of previous studies, it is not assumed that all decay rates are identical. To handle this more general situation, we rely on monotonicity properties of these systems. Under an alternative assumption, it is shown that a classical fixed point theorem for monotone, concave operators can be applied to these systems. The required assumption is expressed in geometrical terms as an (...) alignment condition on so-called focal points . As an application, we show the existence and uniqueness of a stable periodic orbit for negative feedback loop systems in dimension 3 or more, and of a unique stable equilibrium point in dimension 2. This extends a theorem of Snoussi, which showed the existence of these orbits only. (shrink)

The idea of the uniformity of nature, as a solution to the problem of induction, has at least two contemporary versions: natural kinds and natural necessity. Then there are at least three alternative ontological ideas addressing the problem of induction. In this paper, I articulate how these ideas are used to justify the practice of inductive inference, and compare them, in terms of their applicability, to see whether each of them is preferred in addressing the problem of induction. Given (...) the variety of contexts in which inductive inferences are made, from natural science to social science and to everyday thinking, I suggest that no singular idea is absolutely preferred, and a proper strategy is probably to welcome the plurality of ideas helpful to induction, and to take pragmatic considerations into account, in order to judge in every single case. (shrink)

The All or Nothing Problem is a paradox developed in recent debates about effective altruism. One argues that the paradox can be resolved by rejecting some of its claims in favor of parallel conditional claims. Another contends that the correct solution to the paradox is to reject a wrong bridge principle that is assumed in it. A third draws a distinction between two moral realms, and suggests that the paradox is only of limited relevance to some assertion of effective altruism (...) because it may not exist in certain moral realm. In this article, I argue that those solutions to the All or Nothing Problem is unsatisfactory, and propose an alternative solution. Firstly, I challenge their reasons for a claim in the paradox. Secondly, I propose a holist deontological solution to the All or Nothing Problem. Finally, in order to understand the true nature of the problem, I carry out an analysis of the underlying causes of its more general form. (shrink)

The so‐called problem of irrelevant conjunction has been seen as a serious challenge for theories of confirmation. It involves the consequences of conjoining irrelevant statements to a hypothesis that is confirmed by some piece of evidence. Following Hawthorne and Fitelson, we reconstruct the problem with reference to Bayesian confirmation theory. Then we extend it to the case of conjoining irrelevant statements to a hypothesis that is dis confirmed by some piece of evidence. As a consequence, we obtain and formally present (...) a novel and more troublesome problem of irrelevant conjunction. We conclude by indicating a possible solution based on a measure‐sensitive approach and by critically discussing a major alternative way to address the problem. *Received December 2008; revised August 2009. †To contact the authors, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Turin, via Sant'Ottavio 20, 10124 Turin, Italy; e‐mail: [email protected] ; [email protected] or [email protected]. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders Rubinstein's alternating-offer bargaining game with complete information. We define rationalizability and trembling- hand rationalizability (THR) for multi-stage games with observed actions. We show that rationalizability does not exclude perpetual disagreement or delay, but that THR implies a unique solution. Moreover, this unique solution is the unique subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). Also, we reconsider an extension of Rubinstein's game where a smallest money unit is introduced: THR rules out the non-uniqueness of SPE in some particular case. Finally, we (...) investigate the assumption of boundedly rational players. Perpetual disagreement is excluded, but not delay. Furthermore, we cannot use the asymmetric Nash bargaining solution as an approximation of the alternating-offer bargaining model once the players are boundedly rational ones. (shrink)

Alternative agricultural systems, like organic and local agriculture, are becoming increasingly important in Europe to the detriment of conventional methods. As a matter of fact, sustainable agriculture, which started as a niche sector, has been able to conquer a significant share of the European agro-food market. Institutional promotion along with increasing consumer demand has allowed for the development of different agricultural models, from the farm to the fork, with an increasing focus on the ethical issues associated with the agro-food (...) production system. For instance, the organic agriculture agro-food chain is based on four principles, namely health, ecology, fairness and care with the goal of competing in the global agro-food market while respecting the environment, livestock, producers, and consumers. Within these themes, the seed market represents an extremely complex part of the whole picture. The present paper analyses the historical evolution of the seed sector by identifying the main issues related to sustainable agricultural systems and protection of biodiversity. It follows the identification of different seed markets based on different farm types. The two aspects are then discussed and matched in order to identify the main issues characterizing the sector. A review of possible solutions to those problems, taking into account their ethics, is also provided. (shrink)

In a recent Philosophy of Science article Gerhard Schurz proposes meta-inductivistic prediction strategies as a new approach to Hume's. This comment examines the limitations of Schurz's approach. It can be proven that the meta-inductivist approach does not work any more if the meta-inductivists have to face an infinite number of alternative predictors. With his limitation it remains doubtful whether the meta-inductivist can provide a full solution to the problem of induction.

On a widely shared assumption, our mental states supervene on our microphysical properties – that is, microphysical supervenience is true. When this thesis is combined with the apparent truism that human persons have proper parts, a grave difficulty arises: what prevents some of these proper parts from being themselves thinkers as well? How can I know that I am a human person and not a smaller thinker enclosed in a human person? Most solutions to this puzzle make radical, if (...) not absurd, claims. Recently, however, Michael Burke and Howard Robinson proposed conservative solutions that, according to them, do not have such undesired consequences. This paper argues that the conservative solutions tacitly assume at least one of the radical ones, and therefore they provide no alternative to the extreme solutions. (shrink)

The two-electron atom is the simplest nontrivial quantum system not amenable to exact solutions. Today, its relevance in the development of quantum mechanics and its pedagogical value within the realm of atomic physics are widely recognized. In this work, an historical review of the known different methods and results devised to study such a problem is presented, with an emphasis to the calculations of the ground state energy of helium. Then we discuss several, related, unpublished results obtained around the (...) same years by Ettore Majorana, which remained unknown till recent times. Among them a general variant of the variational method appears to be particularly interesting, even for current research in atomic and nuclear physics: it takes directly into account, already in the trial wavefunction, the action of the full Hamiltonian operator of a given quantum system. Further relevant contributions, specialized to the two-electron problem, include the introduction of the remarkable concept of an effective nuclear charge different for the two electrons (thus generalizing previous known results) and an application of the perturbative method, where the atomic number Z was treated effectively as a continuous variable. Finally a survey of results, relevant mainly for pedagogical reasons, is given; in particular we focus on simple broad range estimates of the helium ionization potential, obtained by suitable choices for the wavefunction, as well as on a simple alternative to Hylleraas’ method, which led Majorana to first order calculations comparable in accuracy with well-known order 11 results derived, in turn, by Hylleraas. (shrink)

In this article we provide an in-depth description of a new model of informed consent called ‘meta consent’ and consider its practical implementation. We explore justifications for preferring meta consent over alternative models of consent as a solution to the problem of secondary use of health data for research. We finally argue that meta consent strikes an appropriate balance between enabling valuable research and protecting the individual.

In this paper I will provide a hylomorphic critique of Jeff McMahan’s “An Alternative to Brain Death.” I will evaluate three puzzles—the dicephalus, the braintransplant, and the split-brain phenomenon—proposed by McMahan which allow him to deny that a human being is identical to an organism. I will contend thatMcMahan’s solution entails counterintuitive consequences that pose problems to organ transplant cases. A Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics not only avoids these unwelcome consequences and provides solutions to the three puzzles but in (...) doing so allows for an alternative definition of death. Since McMahan has constructed his definition of death around his own metaphysics, alternative metaphysics, in this case a hylomorphic metaphysics, allow for an alternative definition of death. (shrink)

Gardeners, poets, lovers, and philosophers are all interested in the redness of roses; but only philosophers wonder how it is that two different roses can share the same property. Are red things red because they resemble each other? Or do they resemble each other because they are red? Since the 1970s philosophers have tended to favour the latter view, and held that a satisfactory account of properties must involve the postulation of either universals or tropes. But Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra revives the (...) dormant alternative theory of resemblance nominalism, showing first that it can withstand the attacks of such eminent opponents as Goodman and Armstrong, and then that there are reasons to prefer it to its rival theories. The clarity and rigour of his arguments will challenge metaphysicians to rethink their views on properties. (shrink)

According to Humeanism about the laws, the laws of nature are nothing over and above certain kinds of regularities about particular facts. Humeanism has often been accused of circularity: according to scientific practice laws often explain their instances, but on the Humean view they also reduce to the mosaic, which includes those instances. In this paper I formulate the circularity problem in a way that avoids a number of controversial assumptions routinely taken for granted in the literature, and against which (...) many extant responses are therefore ineffective. I then propose a solution that denies the alleged Humean commitment that laws are explained by their instances. The solution satisfies three desiderata that other solutions don’t: it provides independent motivation against the idea that Humean laws are explained by their instances; it specifies the sense in which Humean laws are nonetheless “nothing over and above” their instances; and it gives an alternative account of what does explain the laws, if not their instances. This solution, I will argue, is not only the simplest but also the oldest one: it appeals only to tools and theses whose first appearance predates the earliest statements of the circularity problem itself. (shrink)

To save antirealism from Fitch's Paradox, Tennant has proposed to restrict the scope of the antirealist principle that all truths are knowable to truths that can be consistently assumed to be known. Although the proposal solves the paradox, it has been accused of doing so in an ad hoc manner. This paper argues that, first, for all Tennant has shown, the accusation is just; second, a restriction of the antirealist principle apparently weaker than Tennat's yields a non-ad hoc solution to (...) Fitch's Paradox; and third, the alternative is only apparently weaker than, and even provably equivalent to, Tennant's. It is thereby shown that the latter is not ad hoc after all. (shrink)

In this paper I will provide a hylomorphic critique of Jeff McMahan’s “An Alternative to Brain Death.” I will evaluate three puzzles—the dicephalus, the braintransplant, and the split-brain phenomenon—proposed by McMahan which allow him to deny that a human being is identical to an organism. I will contend thatMcMahan’s solution entails counterintuitive consequences that pose problems to organ transplant cases. A Thomistic hylomorphic metaphysics not only avoids these unwelcome consequences and provides solutions to the three puzzles but in (...) doing so allows for an alternative definition of death. Since McMahan has constructed his definition of death around his own metaphysics, alternative metaphysics, in this case a hylomorphic metaphysics, allow for an alternative definition of death. (shrink)

This article answers the question raised by the special issue of this journal in a positive way: managerial practices do need philosophy. In particular, it argues for a more concrete claim: managerial practices have needed philosophy in the past to develop some important intellectual tools, and today they still need to be open to the continuous conceptual and methodological innovations introduced by competing philosophical research programmes, because loyalty to just one favourite philosophical paradigm can hinder the ability of managerial practices (...) to express their full potential, whereas openness to philosophical innovation can help managers keep their conceptual tools up to their tasks. The authors argue for this thesis in concreto: they discuss a specific branch of managerial practice—marketing—and illustrate that a preeminent form thereof, i.e. Experiential Marketing, has needed philosophy, and still needs it nowadays, in order to achieve its goals and overcome certain problems. They also point out that Experiential Marketing needs to renew and integrate some of its philosophical assumptions and conceptual tools in the light of innovations brought about by a recent philosophical turn. In particular, the authors argue that philosophy has provided essential conceptual tools for the articulation of the notions of experience and authenticity used in Experiential Marketing; they claim that the excessive reliance of Experiential Marketing upon a problematic and somewhat outdated ontology produces paradoxes with important repercussions upon managerial practice; and they show that those problems can be overcome by integrating and partially renewing its assumptions and conceptual tools, in the light of a fresher philosophical framework. Shortcomings and solutions are discussed with reference to a specific case study: Venice as an experientially rewarding and authentic tourist destination during the Covid19 crisis, but also as a World Heritage property whose management entails difficult choices. The fruitfulness of the paradigm revision is shown also by integrating the conceptual toolkit of Experiential Marketing with three relatively new notions, deriving from a new realist framework: independence, attrition and perception. (shrink)

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism, naturalism, and fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which (...) they are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem. (shrink)

So, C. I don’t know that T. Premises 1 and 2 are both plausible. However, C seems false—I do seem to know that there is a tree before me. AI presents a puzzle because its two plausible premises yield a conclusion whose negation is plausible. And no matter whether we accept or reject AI, we find that we must give up something plausible—either premise 1, premise 2, or the negation of C. But which of these should we give up? I (...) call this question the skeptical puzzle.1 Recently, Mark Heller2 has argued that we can solve the skeptical puzzle by giving up premise 2. I argue, however, that Heller does not adequately respond to an objection to his proposed solution. I go on to argue that we can solve the skeptical puzzle by giving up premise 1. (shrink)

This paper reviews six attempts to give cooperative solutions to Prisoners Dilemmas: symmetry (agents are in identical situations, so should choose the same way, so should both choose cooperation because that’s better for each), mechanism (each agent should delegate the decision to a machine which will choose cooperation for them provided the other does likewise), inducement (the agents should make a side bet which pays off only upon both cooperating), resolution (each agent should resolve to cooperate, then act on (...) the resolution), alternative principle (rationality requires not dominance reasoning and so defecting, but constrained maximization or resolution compliance or “sophisticated” choosing, and so cooperation), and preference revision (each agent should acquire conditional preferences to cooperate, then cooperate provided the other agent has acquired similar preferences). It distinguishes one-stage from two-stage games, as well as endogenously available solutions (ones available to agents in the circumstances of the game merely due to the nature of rationality) from solutions requiring exogenous devices. It contrasts Edward McClennen’s endogenous solution, which is some combination of resolution and alternative principle solution, with David Gauthier’s endogenous alternative principle solution. It argues that all have problems, ones best solved by the endogenous preference revision solution defended by Duncan MacIntosh. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit cannot find a theory of well-being that solves the Non-Identity Problem, the Repugnant Conclusion, the Absurd Conclusion, and all forms of the Mere Addition Paradox. I describe a “Quasi-Maximizing” theory that solves them. This theory includes (i) the denial that being better than is transitive and (ii) the “Conflation Principle,” according to which alternative B is hedonically better than alternative C if it would be better for someone to have all the B-experiences. (...) (i) entails that Quasi-Maximization is not a maximizing theory, but (ii) ensures that its evaluations will often coincide with such theories. (shrink)

This thesis is an attempt to investigate the relation between the views of Wittgenstein as presented by Kripke and Donald Davidson on meaning and linguistic understanding. Kripke’s Wittgenstein, via his sceptical argument, argues that there is no fact about which rule a speaker is following in using a linguistic expression. Now, if one urges that meaning something by a word is essentially a matter of following one rule rather than another, the sceptical argument leads to the radical sceptical conclusion that (...) there is no such thing as meaning anything by any word. According to the solution Kripke’s Wittgenstein proposes, we must instead concentrate on the ordinary practice of meaning-attribution, that is, on the conditions under which we can justifiably ascribe meaning to each other and the utility such a practice has in our life. Davidson has also argued that following rules is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining success in the practice of meaning something by an utterance. According to his alternative view of meaning, a speaker’s success in this practice is fundamentally a matter of his utterance being successfully interpreted by an interpreter in the way the speaker intended. On the basis of these remarks, Davidson raises objections to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument and solution. In this thesis, I will argue that Davidson has failed to fully grasp the essentially sceptical nature of the argument and solution proposed by Kripke’s Wittgenstein. I will argue that as a result of this Davidson’s objections and his alternative solution to Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s sceptical argument are mistaken. These criticisms are pursued via an investigation of Davidson’s problematic reading of Quine’s sceptical arguments for the thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. Having criticized Davidson’s actual response to Kripke’s Wittgenstein, I will claim that Davidson’s best option for resisting the sceptical problem is to adopt a form of non-reductionism about meaning. Claudine Verheggen’s recent claim that Davidson’s use of the notion of triangulation will help to establish non-reductionism will be argued to be a failure. I will urge that the main obstacle in defending a non-reductionist view is the problem of accounting for the nature of self-knowledge of meaning and understanding. After discussing Davidson’s account of self-knowledge and Crispin Wright’s objection to this account, I will argue that, although Wright’s objection is ultimately unsuccessful, Davidson’s account fails for other reasons. Finally, I tentatively suggest that the resources for an alternative response to the sceptical problem can possibly be extracted from Davidson’s account of intending, which has some features suggestive of a judgement-dependent account of meaning and intention. (shrink)

Traditionally, skeptics as well as their opponents have agreed that in order to know that p one must be able, by some preferred means, to rule out all the alternatives to p. Recently, however, some philosophers have attempted to avert skepticism not (merely) by weakening the preferred means but rather by articulating a subset of the alternatives to p — the so-called relevant alternatives — and insisting that knowledge that p requires only that we be able (by the preferred means) (...) to rule out members of the set. In this paper I argue that a precise formulation of this new approach reveals it inadequate as a solution to skepticism. (shrink)