The paper explores the main competing interpretations of Aristotle's view of the relation between happiness and external goods in the Nicomachean Ethics. On the basis of a careful analysis of what Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics (and other works such as the Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, etc.) it is argued that it is likely that Aristotle takes at least some external goods to be actual constituents of happiness provided that (1) they are accompanied by virtuous activity and (2) the (...) agent enjoying and using those external goods does so in ways compatible with the continuous aim of acting virtuously. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1. Molding the institutions of governance: theories of state formation and the contingency of sovereignty in fragile polities; 2. Imposing states: foreign rivalries, local collaboration, and state form in peripheral polities; 3. Feudalizing the Chinese polity, 1893-1922: assessing the adequacy of alternative takes on state-reorganization; 4. External influence and China's feudalization, 1893-1922: opportunity costs and patterns of foreign intervention; 5. The evolution of foreign involvement in China, 1923-52: rising opportunity costs and convergent approaches to intervention; 6. (...) How intervention remade the Chinese state, 1923-52: foreign sponsorship and the building of sovereign China; 7. Creating Indonesia, 1893-1952: major power rivalry and the making of sovereign statehood; 8. Siam stands apart, 1893-1952: external intervention and rise of a sovereign Thai state; 9. Domesticating international relations, externalizing comparative politics: foreign intervention and the state in world politics. (shrink)

I argue that much current thinking on externalities—at least among “lay political economists” (but even, on occasion, among professional economists)—is saddled with two analytical errors. The first is what I call coextensivism: the conflation of public goods and externalities. The second error is what I call externality profligacy: the conflation of economic and “social” externalities. The principal dangers presented by these two “dogmas on externalities” are that, while in their grips, we are under-disposed to seek negotiated, (...) market-based solutions (of a broadly Coasean nature) to challenges posed by economic externalities, and over-disposed to seek coercive, state-based solutions (of a broadly Pigouvian nature) to challenges posed by social externalities. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics 1.8, Aristotle seems to argue that certain external goods are needed for happiness because, in the first place, they are needed for virtuous activity. This has puzzled scholars. After all, it seems possible for a virtuous agent to exercise her virtuous character even under conditions of extreme hardship or deprivation. Indeed, it is natural to think these are precisely the conditions under which one's virtue shines through most clearly. Why then does Aristotle think that a wide range (...) of external goods is required for virtuous activity, and therefore, for happiness? -/- I argue that there is good sense to be made of Aristotle's stance on external goods. Specifically, I explain how, on this view, a range of external goods is required for the full exercise of virtue, and I show that it is only this full exercise that is constitutive of eudaimonia. Drawing on passages in Politics 7.13 and Nicomachean Ethics 3.1, I develop and defend a distinction between the "mere" exercise of virtue, and the full or complete exercise of virtue. I argue that, for Aristotle, the distinguishing feature of this distinction is the value of the virtuous action's ends. An action that fully expresses virtue aims at an end that is unqualifiedly good, while an action that merely exercises virtue does not. I argue that the external goods Aristotle mentions in NE 1.8 are necessary for performing actions with unqualifiedly good ends, and so necessary for the complete exercise of virtue. In addition to providing a more satisfactory account than existing proposals of the role of external goods in Aristotelian happiness, my interpretation has two additional upshots. First, it brings to light an under-appreciated and independently compelling feature of Aristotle's ethical thought: the value of virtuous actions depends in part on the value of the ends they aim to realize. Second, it finds in Aristotle a distinct and powerful way of thinking about the badness of certain kinds of misfortune and deprivation: they are bad in part because they prevent us from fully realizing our capacity for moral agency, from fully engaging with value in the world. (shrink)

In this paper I will draw attention to an important route to external world skepticism, which I will call confidence skepticism. I will argue that we can defang confidence skepticism (though not a meeker ‘argument from might’ which has got some attention in the 20th century literature on external world skepticism) by adopting a partially psychologistic answer to the problem of priors. And I will argue that certain recent work in the epistemology of mathematics and logic provides independent support for (...) such psychologism. (shrink)

Francesco Guala once wrote that ‘The problem of extrapolation is a minor scandal in the philosophy of science’. This paper agrees with the statement, but for reasons different from Guala’s. The scandal is not, or not any longer, that the problem has been ignored in the philosophy of science. The scandal is that framing the problem as one of external validity encourages poor evidential reasoning. The aim of this paper is to propose an alternative—an alternative which constitutes much better evidential (...) reasoning about target systems of interest, and which makes do without consideration of external validity. (shrink)

Crude externalist theory of content is realistic and teleologically minded. On its basis, predicate notation can render the content's structure. Davidson's views concerning content are able to refine this theory. They are sophisticated externalist by being based on the implicit rejection of the two claims: the plausibility of the organismenvironment dualism and the utility of epistemic intermediaries. It might be well impossible to defend a plausible version of extemalism without such a kind of refmement.

SummaryStarting with Descartes, epistemology has been almost entirely based on first person knowledge. We must begin, according to the usual story, with what is most certain: knowledge of our own sensations and thoughts. In one way or another we then progress, if we can, to knowledge of an objective external world. There is then the final, tenuous, step to knowledge of other minds.In this paper I argue for a total revision of this picture. All propositional thought, whether positive or skeptical, (...) whether of the inner or of the outer, requires possession of the concept of objective truth, and this concept is accessible only to those creatures in communication with others. Third person knowledge – knowledge of other minds – is thus conceptually basic. But such knowledge is impossible without knowledge of a shared world of objects in a shared time and space. Thus the acquisition of knowledge is not based on a progression from the subjective to the objective; it emerges holistically, and is interpersonal from the start. (shrink)

Curry’s paradox is well known. The original version employed a conditional connective, and is not forthcoming if the conditional does not satisfy contraction. A newer version uses a validity predicate, instead of a conditional, and is not forthcoming if validity does not satisfy structural contraction. But there is a variation of the paradox which uses “external validity”. And since external validity contracts, one might expect the appropriate version of the Curry paradox to be inescapable. In this paper we show that (...) this is not the case. We consider two ways of formalising the notion of external validity, and show that in both of these the paradox is not forthcoming without the appropriate forms of contraction. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: the agent has constant access to the resource; the information in the resource is directly available; retrieved information is automatically endorsed; information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, but (...) the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Williams's Analysis of Internal Reasons Williams's Claim that All Reasons are Internal Reasons McDowell's Analysis of External Reasons.

The paper aims at investigating external factors influencing organizational corporate social responsibility -related decision making. Two theoretical perspectives—stakeholder theory and institutional theory—have been applied to compile a list of external factors that might affect a company's CSR choices. As a result, a framework built on the government-related, society-related, and business-related groups of external factors is being suggested. This framework is used in the paper to answer to what extent do different external factors influence CSR-related decisions in large Danish companies and (...) how has that influence changed over the years. The research takes a qualitative approach and is designed as a multiple-case study. Empirically, the paper relies on data collected from semi-structured interviews with CSR specialists and managers and presents a dynamic perspective on the pressure exercised by the external factors on CSR decisions and choices. (shrink)

We seem to directly perceive external things. But can we? According to the time‐lag argument, we cannot. What we directly perceive happens now. There is a time‐lag between our perceptions and the external things we seem to directly perceive; these external things happen in the past; thus, what we directly perceive must be something else, for example, sense‐data, and we can only at best indirectly perceive other things. This paper examines the time‐lag argument given contemporary metaphysics. I argue that this (...) argument is not as compelling as it may initially seem. First, it denies that what we directly perceive can ever be what it seems to be; second, it conflicts with the current physical conception of time, relativity theory. This latter point leads to a more general one: the argument's force depends on a particular metaphysical conception on time, presentism, which is controversial in contemporary metaphysics of time. Given the alternative conception, eternalism, the argument is much less compelling. The overall argument of this paper, then, is that, if one wishes to hold that we directly perceive external things, we should subscribe to the latter view of time, i.e., eternalism. (shrink)

I defend an ontological distinction between three kinds of relation: internal,external and grounded relations. Even though, as we shall see, this trichotomy is basic, it is not found in influential contemporary metaphysics. Specifically, the widespread tendency, exemplified notably by David Armstrong, of not recognizing grounded relations as distinct from external relations, can be shown to be mistaken. I propose a definition of each of the three kinds of relation. Of vital importance to the parsimony of metaphysics, I also argue that (...) only external relations are ontologically fundamental. (shrink)

The purpose of this study was to investigate external whistleblowers’ experiences of workplace bullying by superiors and colleagues, and to analyze how the bullying was influenced by factors such as the support they received from government or NGOs, and whether colleagues understood the reasons for the whistleblower’s actions. For bullying by colleagues, we also examined to what extent this was influenced by superiors’ behavior towards the whistleblower. We reviewed the relevant literature on workplace bullying and whistleblowers’ experiences of negative or (...) retaliatory actions and developed three hypotheses, which we tested using data gathered from Korean external whistleblowers. Results revealed that external whistleblowers experienced work-related bullying by superiors and social relation-related and person-related bullying by colleagues more frequently, and found it more distressing, than other types of workplace bullying. Superiors’ bullying was a dominant factor affecting bullying by colleagues. Colleagues’ understanding of the reason for the whistleblower’s actions was significant in reducing bullying frequency while support from government and NGOs was not significant in reducing it. Based on these findings, practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this commentary on Berwick and Chomsky's “Why Only Us,” I discuss three key points. I first offer a brief critique of their scholarship, notably their often unjustified dismissal of previous thinking about language evolution. But my main focus concerns two arguments central to the book's thesis: the irrelevance of externalization to language evolution and the discontinuity between human conceptual representations and those of other animals. I argue against both stances, using cognitive data from nonhuman species to show that externalization (...) is not irrelevant to understanding the biology of language, and that many human conceptual structures have clear animal homologs. (shrink)

Using the theoretical perspective of market stakeholders, we analyze the impact of external innovations from upstream enterprises, downstream enterprises, and competitors on the exports of private enterprises. By using data from the China Industrial Enterprises Database, we find that external innovations from upstream suppliers, downstream customers and horizontal competitors show positive impacts on the export propensity, intensity and scale for private enterprises. The results of a heterogeneity analysis indicate that the positive relationships between the external innovations of stakeholders and the (...) exports of private enterprises are stable in different factor-intensive industries. In addition, while the exports of private enterprises are positively correlated with their external innovations in the eastern and central regions, this relationship is not significant in the western region. Further, the mechanism analysis confirms that enterprise innovation played an important mediating role for the external innovations of stakeholders to promote the exports of private enterprises. This study provides useful policy implications for enhancing the export competitiveness of private enterprises. (shrink)

Externalities are an important concept in economic theories of market failure, aiming to justify state regulation of the economy. This article explores the concept of externalities from a philosophical perspective. It criticizes the utilitarian nature of economic analyses of externalities, showing how they cannot take into account values like freedom and justice. It then develops the analogy between the concept of externalities and the 'harm principle' in political philosophy. It argues that the harm principle points to (...) the need for a theory of basic interests to judge when a harm is imposed. Similarly, externality analyses should use such a theory of basic interests as the basis for judgments about legitimate state intervention. This proposal is defended against objections, and illustrated with a case study of the US Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Care Act, which shows how the judicial reasoning implicitly interprets externalities in terms of basic interests. (shrink)

The hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) claims that the cognitive processes that materially realise thinking are sometimes partially constituted by entities that are located external to an agent’s body in its local envi- ronment. We show how proponents of HEC need not claim that an agent must have a central nervous system, or physically instantiate processes organised in such a way as to play a causal role equivalent to that of the brain if that agent is to be capable of (...) cognition. Focusing on the case of spatial memory, we make our argument by taking a close look at the striking example of Physarum Polycephalum plasmodium (i.e., slime mould) which uses self- produced non-living extracellular slime trails to navigate its environment. We will argue that the use of exter- nalized spatial memory by basal organisms like Physarum is an example of extended cognition. Moreover, it is a possible evolutionary precursor to the use of internal spatial memory and recall in animals thus demonstrating how extended cognition may have emerged early in evolutionary history. (shrink)

External freedom is the central good protected in Kant's legal and political philosophy. But external freedom is perplexing, being at once freedom of spatio-temporal movement and a form of noumenal or 'intelligible' freedom. Moreover, it turns out that identifying impairments to external freedom nearly always involves recourse to an elaborated system of positive law, which seems to compromise external freedom's status as a prior, organizing good. Drawing heavily on Kant's understanding of the role of empirical 'anthropological' information in constructing a (...) Doctrine of Right, or Rechtslehre, this essay offers an interpretation of external freedom that makes sense of its simultaneous spatio-temporality, dependence on positive law, intelligibility (or 'noumenality'), and a priority. The essay suggests that this account of Kantian external freedom has implications both for politics and for the metaphysics of everyday objects and institutions. (shrink)

Externality games are studied in Grafe et al. (1998, Math. Methods Op. Res. 48, 71). We define a generalization of this class of games and show, using the methodology in Izquierdo and Rafels (1996, 2001, Working paper, Univ Barcelona; Games Econ. Behav. 36, 174), some properties of the new class of generalized externality games. They include, among others, the algebraic structure of the game, convexity, and their implications for the study of cooperative solutions. Also the proportional rule is characterized for (...) this class of games. (shrink)

Ever since Sen criticized the notion of internal consistency of choice, there exists a widespread perception that the standard rationalizability approach to the theory of choice has difficulties in coping with the existence of external norms. We introduce a concept of norm-conditional rationalizability and show that external norms can be made compatible with the methods underlying the traditional rationalizability approach. To do so, we characterize norm-conditional rationalizability by means of suitable modifications of revealed preference axioms that are well established in (...) the theory of rational choice on general domains as analysed in contributions by Richter and Hansson, for example. We compare our approach to alternative suggestions that have appeared in response to Sen's criticisms, and we discuss its links to Sen's notion of self-imposed choice constraints. (shrink)

Pigovian policy is developed in economic theory as an efficient resolution to externality problems. The use of this type of policy to resolve real-world externality problems, including climate change in the form of carbon taxes, assumes that the Pigovian policy result derived in theory holds in the real world. By examining the bridging conditions from theory to the real world, I argue that this assumption holds only in an ambiguously defined subset of externalities. It is thus unclear when Pigovian (...) policy could be coherently applied, which is problematic given its widespread use in critical policy contexts. (shrink)

We face reality presented with the data of conscious experience and nothing else. The project of early modern philosophy was to build a complete theory of the world from this starting point, with no cheating. Crucial to this starting point is the data of conscious sensory experience – sense data. Attempts to avoid this project often argue that the very idea of sense data is confused. But the sense-data way of talking, the sense-data language, can be freed from every blemish (...) using ideas from contemporary metaontology. We can adopt a sense-data framework that vindicates the traditional claims of sense-data theories and leads to plausible theories of perception and color. We can, we should, and in a sense, we must. Yet when we do, we face the traditional problem of external world skepticism, head-on. The real challenge of skepticism is forced upon us; it cannot honestly be avoided using externalist tricks, burden of proof shifting, or other razzle dazzle. But the challenge can be met: we are rational to posit the external world as the best explanation of the many synchronic and diachronic patterns over our sense-data. This paper argues for all of these points and ends with a plea for analytic empiricism – a traditional sense-data version of empiricism that uses all of the tools of analytic philosophy while avoiding the more questionable doctrines of the Vienna Circle (phenomenalism, verificationism). Analytic empiricism is our last best hope for completing the great philosophical project of early modern philosophy. (shrink)

In the chapter on Observing Reason in the Phenomenology, as well as in §368 of the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel deals with the life sciences of his time. There, he labels the methodology of its representatives, namely zoology and comparative anatomy, as external teleology. In this paper I want to show that by doing so he is actually discussing a general kind of functionalism. Thereby, I want to highlight a line of thought in Hegel's texts which represents a productive reading (...) of external teleology contrary to a destructive reading on which scholars have mainly focussed. (shrink)

We show that externalization is a feature not only of moral judgment, but also of value judgment in general. It follows that the evolution of externalization was not specific to moral judgment. Second, we argue that value judgments cannot be decoupled from the level of motivations and preferences, which, in the moral case, rely on intersubjective bonds and claims.

Abstract: In this article I consider Bernard Williams's argument against the possibility of external reasons for action and his claim that the only reasons for action are therefore internal. Williams's argument appeals to David Hume's claim that reason is the slave of the passions, and to the idea that reasons are capable of motivating the agent who has them. I consider two responses to Williams's argument, by John McDowell and by Stephen Finlay. McDowell claims that even if Hume is right, (...) there might nevertheless be external reasons. Finlay also claims that external reasons exist but, rejecting the connection between reasons and motivation, claims that they don't matter—that is, aren't motivationally significant for the agent whose reasons they are. Although I reject aspects of McDowell's and Finlay's arguments, I argue that external reasons do exist and in particular that any agent has an external reason to satisfy the preconditions of his or her agency. (shrink)

This chapter examines the role of law in European Union (EU) external relations from two perspectives. First, it examines the EU as a rule‐based (international) actor Law and focuses mainly on EU law‐ governs both the extent of the European Union's external powers and their exercise, the constitutional foundations of EU external relations and the legal principles that govern external action. Second the chapter turns to the European Union's characteristic use of law as an instrument and objective of its foreign (...) policy, the European Union as a promoter of a rule‐based international order. The role of the Parliament in the conclusion of international treaties, which are often regulatory or quasi‐legislative in character, brings to the final theme of this contribution: the role played by law as both an instrument and a goal of EU foreign policy. (shrink)

We propose a new integrative framework of external time monitoring in prospective memory (PM) tasks and its relation with performance. Starting from existing empirical regularities and our theoretical analysis, the framework predicts that external monitoring in PM tasks comprises a first stage of loose monitoring to keep track of the passage of time, and a subsequent stage of finer-grained monitoring, based on interval reduction, to meet the PM deadline. Following our framework, we predicted and observed in three different datasets (N (...) = 375): (1) a marked increase in external monitoring frequency in the final part of the period of the PM task, well captured by a proportional rate exponential growth function; (2) a positive association between individual compliance with this monitoring pattern and PM performance; (3) a positive relation between monitoring frequency in the time window immediately preceding the PM deadline and PM performance at the individual level; and (4) good individual compliance with an interval reduction pattern in external monitoring, especially in the time window closer to the PM deadline. These results support the proposed integrative framework, which has the potential to foster future research on external monitoring in PM and in other fields of cognitive science. (shrink)

In this volume, Sorin Sabou explores the dependency of happiness on external goods in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Sabou defends the following thesis: the dependency of happiness on external goods, in EN, is interpreted in the light of its political self-sufficiency, and in the light of our political humanity; this dependency is of three kinds: (1) enhancing-instrumental, (2) constitutive, and (3) subsistent.

External freedom is the central good protected in Kant's legal and political philosophy. But external freedom is perplexing, being at once freedom of spatio‐temporal movement and a form of noumenal or ‘intelligible’freedom. Moreover, it turns out that identifying impairments to external freedom nearly always involves recourse to an elaborated system of positive law, which seems to compromise external freedom's status as a prior, organizing good. Drawing heavily on Kant's understanding of the role of empirical ‘anthropological’information in constructing a Doctrine of (...) Right, or Rechtslehre, this essay offers an interpretation of external freedom that makes sense of its simultaneous spatio‐temporality, dependence on positive law, intelligibility (or ‘noumenality’), and a priority. The essay suggests that this account of Kantian external freedom has implications both for politics and for the metaphysics of everyday objects and institutions. (shrink)

Computational properties, it is standardly assumed, are to be sharply distinguished from semantic properties. Specifically, while it is standardly assumed that the semantic properties of a cognitive system are externally or non-individualistically individuated, computational properties are supposed to be individualistic and internal. Yet some philosophers (e.g., Tyler Burge) argue that content impacts computation, and further, that environmental factors impact computation. Oron Shagrir has recently argued for these theses in a novel way, and gave them novel interpretations. In this paper I (...) present a conception of computation in cognitive science that takes Shagrir's conception as its starting point, but further develops it in various directions and strengthens it. I argue that the explanatory role of computational properties emerges from the idea that syntactical properties and the relevant external factors presented by cognitive systems compose wide computational properties. I also elaborate upon the notion of content that is in play, and argue that it is contents of the kind that are ascribed by transparent interpretations of content ascriptions that impact computation. This fact enables the thesis that external factors impact computation to rebuff the challenge which concerns the claim that psychology must be individualistic. (shrink)

Cinematic motion is, I argue, a genuine and intrinsic property of some cinematic works and not just a matter of how things look to us. It is an event—an item's change of position—happening prior and external to our sensory responses to movies. I therefore defend against common-sense illusionism a minority opinion within cinema studies: that movie viewing normally occasions veridical perceptions of a kind of objective displacement. I also dispute another version of anti-illusionist realism about cinematic motion, the implication that (...) cinematic motion, like colour, is a response-dependent property. The impression of motion, I contend, is not produced by the visual system's operations. It is a sensory representation of a physical property of a particular type of external object. (shrink)

In [4] the lattice of all subvarieties of the variety G n Ex defined by so called externally compatible identities of Abelian groups together with the identity x n ≈ y n , for any n ∈ N and n ≥ 1 was described. In that paper classes of models of the type (2,1) where considered. It appears that diagrams of lattices of subvariaties defined by externally compatible identities satisfied in a given equational theory depend on the language of the (...) considered class of algebras. A question was asked to what extent the diagram of the lattice of subvarieties of the variety defined by externally compatible identities of a given variety will depend on changing the type of algebras. In general case, the answer to this question seems to be very complicated. In this paper we describe the variety of Abelian groups of exponent p·q, where p,q are different primes of type (2,1,0). (shrink)

I first propose to distinguish between two kinds of external validity inferences, predictive and explanatory. I then argue that we have a satisfactory answer to the question of the conditions under which predictive external validity inferences are good. If this claim is correct, then it has two immediate consequences: First, some external validity inferences are deductive, contrary to what is commonly assumed. Second, Steel’s requirement that an account of external validity inference break what he calls the ‘Extrapolator’s Circle’ is misplaced, (...) at least when it comes to predictive external validity inferences. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 3, pp 147 - 172 The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu has seldom been considered in conjunction with the problem of external-world skepticism despite the fact that his text, _Twenty Verses_, presents arguments from ignorance based on dreams. In this article, an epistemological phenomenalist interpretation of Vasubandhu is supported in opposition to a metaphysical idealist interpretation. On either interpretation, Vasubandhu gives an invitation to the problem of external-world skepticism, although his final conclusion is closer to skepticism (...) on the epistemological phenomenalist interpretation. The article ends with reflections on what light Vasubandhu might shed on the issue of whether skepticism is a natural problem in epistemology as well as why, despite Vasubandhu, the skeptical problem was not a central issue in the later Indian tradition. (shrink)

Why do people create extra representations to help them make sense of situations, diagrams, illustrations, instructions and problems? The obvious explanation— external representations save internal memory and com- putation—is only part of the story. I discuss seven ways external representations enhance cognitive power: they change the cost structure of the inferential landscape; they provide a structure that can serve as a shareable object of thought; they create persistent referents; they facilitate re- representation; they are often a more natural representation of (...) structure than mental representations; they facilitate the computation of more explicit encoding of information; they enable the construction of arbitrarily complex structure; and they lower the cost of controlling thought—they help coordinate thought. Jointly, these functions allow people to think more powerfully with external representations than without. They allow us to think the previously unthinkable. (shrink)

This paper provides an inferentialist account of model-based understanding by combining a counterfactual account of explanation and an inferentialist account of representation with a view of modeling as extended cognition. This account makes it understandable how the manipulation of surrogate systems like models can provide genuinely new empirical understanding about the world. Similarly, the account provides an answer to the question how models, that always incorporate assumptions that are literally untrue of the model target, can still provide factive explanations. Finally, (...) the paper shows how the contrastive counterfactual theory of explanation can provide tools for assessing the explanatory power of models. (shrink)

I argue alongside some other scholars that there is a plausible reading of Spinoza’s philosophy of suicide which holds both of the following tenets: first, that suicides occur because of external conditions, and second, that there are at least some suicides which are rational. These two tenets require special attention because they seem to be the source of significant tension. For Spinoza, if one’s cognitions are to be the most adequate, they must be “disposed internally” (E2p29s/G II 114), or determined (...) more from one’s own mental nature than from “fortuitous encounters” with other things (E2p29s/G II 114). It may seem there is a conflict, then, in saying both that there are rational suicides in the Spinozist framework, and that suicides must always be a result of external conditions: it seems a suicide simply cannot be rational if it is the result of external conditions. But this tension, it will be shown, can be dissolved. Once this tension is dealt with, I offer some brief closing arguments. I explain how this reading of Spinoza’s philosophy of suicide can satisfy a call for new suicide research which avoids forms of over-individualism and epistemic injustice, and which encourages us to abolish oppressive conditions that lead to rational suicides. (shrink)

We study the one-seller/two-buyer bargaining problem with negative identity-dependent externalities with an alternating offer bargaining model in which new owners of the object have the opportunity of resale. We identify the generically unique subgame perfect equilibrium outcome. The resale opportunity increases the competition among the buyers and therefore benefits the seller. When competition between buyers is very fierce, the seller may prefer to respond to bids rather than to propose an offer herself: a first-mover disadvantage.

Prior research has demonstrated that antisocial behavior, substance-use disorders, and personality dimensions of aggression and impulsivity are indicators of a highly heritable underlying dimension of risk, labeled externalizing. Other work has shown that individual trait constructs within this psychopathology spectrum are associated with reduced self-monitoring, as reflected by amplitude of the error-related negativity (ERN) brain response. In this study of undergraduate subjects, reduced ERN amplitude was associated with higher scores on a self-report measure of the broad externalizing construct that links (...) these various indicators. In addition, the ERN was associated with a response-locked increase in anterior theta (4–7 Hz) oscillation; like the ERN, this theta response to errors was reduced among high-externalizing individuals. These findings suggest that neurobiologically based deficits in endogenous action monitoring may underlie generalized risk for an array of impulse-control problems. (shrink)