Peter Singer has argued that we should not proceed with a hypothetical life-extension drug, based on a scenario in which developing the drug would fail to achieve the greatest sum of happiness over time. However, this is the wrong test. If we ask, more simply, which policy would be more benevolent, we reach a different conclusion from Singer’s: even given his scenario, development of the drug should go ahead. Singer’s rigorous utilitarian position pushes him in the direction of an implausible (...) “total view” utilitarianism when it encounters the problems presented by certain thought experiments. A more pluralistic account of the nature of morality promises to solve these problems, and in this case it reaches a benevolent recommendation on life-extension technology. (shrink)

La vista rappresenta il nostro legame più importante con il mondo. C’è un chiaro nesso tra questo fatto e l’importanza che nella terminologia filosofica tradizionale hanno da sempre le metafore incentrate sul senso della vista rispetto alla conoscenza. Nel XIX secolo alla grande varietà di concetti ottici come ‘teoria’, ‘evidenza’, ‘intuizione’, ‘illuminismo’ si è aggiunta la nozione di ‘Weltanshauung’ che sta ad indicare una concezione complessiva del mondo, radicata in un determinato punto di vista, individuale o collettivo che sia. Queste (...) ‘Weltanschauungen’, in quanto sistemi metafisici privati, attestano la decadenza della metafisica che ebbe inizio dopo l’idealismo, la cui conseguenza sono il prospettivismo e il relativismo. Nel frattempo anche le ‘Weltanschauungen’ sono andate in rovina; ne è chiaro sintomo il fatto che il termine stesso è diventato obsoleto. Non sembra più possibile per noi tratteggiare una ‘immagine’ del mondo come tutto.Vision is our most important connection to the world. There is an accordance between this fact and the importance of the metaphors about the sense of sight for the traditional philosophical terminology with respect to cognition. During the 19th century the large variety of optical concepts such as ‘theory’, ‘evidence’ ‘intuition’, ‘enlightenment’ etc. was completed by the notion of ‘Weltanschauung’ which means a conception of the world as a whole from a certain point of view in relation to individuals as well as to a collectivity. These ‘Weltanschauungen’ as private metaphysical systems demonstrate the decay of Metaphysics which took place in general after Idealism, followed by the problems of Perspectivism and Relativism. In the meantime even the ‘Weltanschauungen’ fell into ruin; this is indicated by the term itself which came to be obsolete. It seems no longer possible for us to delineate a ‘picture’ of the world as a whole. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 12, Page 41-42, December 2011.

Totalism is the view that one distribution of well-being is better than another just in case the one contains a greater sum of well-being than the other. Many philosophers, following Parfit, reject totalism on the grounds that it entails the repugnant conclusion: that, for any number of excellent lives, there is some number of lives that are barely worth living whose existence would be better. This paper develops a theory of welfare aggregation—the lexical-threshold view—that allows totalism to avoid (...) the repugnant conclusion, as well as its analogues involving suffering populations and the lengths of individual lives. The theory is grounded in some independently plausible views about the structure of well-being, identifies a new source of incommensurability in population ethics, and avoids some of the implausibly extreme consequences of other lexical views, without violating the intuitive separability of lives. (shrink)

The thesis presented here focuses on the concept of totality in the work of the contemporary cultural critic Fredric Jameson (1934–). By totality, we mean how the human heart enables the human body, but without the body, the heart has no part concerning the whole; they are mutually dependent. This work shall argue that totality is the allegorical figuration framing Jameson’s political critiques of modernity in The Political Unconscious (1981) and Postmodernism (1991). The postmodern world today as an absent totality (...) represents the contradiction in Jameson: We live in a complex world despite its unrepresentability. Whilst studies of early Jameson have interpreted his works through postmodernity and cognitive mapping, their unsubstantiation of Jameson’s later totality has resulted in not being able to explicate Jameson’s view of the a-historicity of postmodernity. Part One shall examine Jameson’s readings of Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, demonstrating that Hegel’s critique of Kant concerning the boundary of knowledge includes its overcoming and that Hegelian totality is not closed, permitting Jameson to represent the world as an open totality. Part Two shall argue that Jameson’s reading of the works of Karl Marx and the Marxist tradition of Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin reinforces totality in their writing styles, which allows Jameson to glimpse totality through writing. Part Three shall argue that totality in Jameson’s interpretation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1796) is at work and that Friedrich Schlegel’s novel Lucinde (1799) elucidates a counterpoint to totality which can be used to understand non-dialectical thinkers which Jameson examines such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. Part Four shall argue that Jameson’s reading of these thinkers is justified in critiquing their productive misreadings of totality as closed, informing their political quietism, thereby re-politicising totality as an allegory. (shrink)

Critical-set views avoid the Repugnant Conclusion by subtracting some constant from the welfare score of each life in a population. These views are thus sensitive to facts about biographical identity: identity between lives. In this paper, I argue that questions of biographical identity give us reason to reject critical-set views and embrace the total view. I end with a practical implication. If we shift our credences towards the total view, we should also shift our efforts towards (...) ensuring that humanity survives for the long term. (shrink)

When in 2001 Earth Liberation Front activists drove metal spikes into hundreds of trees in Gifford Pinchot National Forest, they were protesting the sale of a section of the old-growth forest to a timber company. But ELF's communiqu on the action went beyond the radical group's customary brief. Drawing connections between the harms facing the myriad animals who make their home in the trees and the struggles for social justice among ordinary human beings resisting exclusion and marginalization, the dispatch declared, (...) "all oppression is linked, just as we are all linked," and decried the "patriarchal nightmare" in the form of "techno-industrial global capitalism." In Total Liberation, David Naguib Pellow takes up this claim and makes sense of the often tense and violent relationships among humans, ecosystems, and nonhuman animal species, expanding our understanding of inequality and activists' uncompromising efforts to oppose it. Grounded in interviews with more than one hundred activists, on-the-spot fieldwork, and analyses of thousands of pages of documents, websites, journals, and zines, Total Liberation reveals the ways in which radical environmental and animal rights movements challenge inequity through a vision they call "total liberation." In its encounters with such infamous activists as scott crow, Tre Arrow, Lauren Regan, Rod Coronado, and Gina Lynn, the book offers a close-up, insider's view of one of the most important--and feared--social movements of our day. At the same time, it shows how and why the U.S. justice system plays to that fear, applying to these movements measures generally reserved for "jihadists"--with disturbing implications for civil liberties and constitutional freedom. How do the adherents of "total liberation" fight oppression and seek justice for humans, nonhumans, and ecosystems alike? And how is this pursuit shaped by the politics of anarchism and anticapitalism? In his answers, Pellow provides crucial in-depth insight into the origins and social significance of the earth and animal liberation movements and their increasingly common and compelling critique of inequality as a threat to life and a dream of a future characterized by social and ecological justice for all. (shrink)

Savulescu and Cameron supported selectively locking down the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic on two grounds: first, that preserving total lockdown would entail levelling down and, second, that levelling down is wrong. Their first assumption has been thoroughly addressed, but more can be said about their wider antiegalitarian point that levelling down is simply wrong. Egalitarians are not defenceless against the levelling-down objection. Even though some consider it the most serious challenge to supporters of equality, egalitarianism possesses sound reasons (...) to assert, not only that something valuable is preserved when we level down, but also that preserving it may be, in certain circumstances, preferable to pursuing other fundamental moral goals. Although troublesome from a well-being maximising standpoint, levelling down ensures that healthcare policy reflects a commitment with the idea that people are equal in moral worth. That commitment is important enough to trump certain improvements in individual well-being. In the case of pandemic lockdowns, not all the interests protected by free movement are as fundamental as to pursue them at the cost of equality. Savulescu and Cameron’s framework is so reliant on the view that levelling down is wrong that it fails to account for the valuable loss that having the elderly suffer alone represents. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel account of how to determine the intrinsic value of possible worlds. Section 1 argues that a highly intuitive and widely accepted account leads to undesirable consequences. Section 2 takes the first of two steps towards a novel account by clarifying and defending a view about value-contribution that is based on some of W. D. Ross’ claims about the value of pleasure. Section 3 takes the second step by clarifying and defending a view about (...) value-suppression that is based on Ross’ claims about the interplay between prima-facie duties. Section 4 states and defends the account that I call Rossian Totalism. According to this account, the atoms of intrinsic value within a world only sometimes contribute their intrinsic value to the value of that world. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo analiza, en discusión con Joaquín García-Huidobro y Alejandro Miranda, la conveniencia de utilizar en moral sexual el argumento de la facultad pervertida, conforme al cual sería inmoral frustrar el fin natural de las facultades reproductivas. Según García-Huidobro y Miranda este argumento sólo puede utilizarse desde el “principio de totalidad”, pues su uso aislado llevaría a los absurdos denunciados por la New Natural Law Theory. Con vistas a una reconsideración de este argumento, se demuestra la importancia de considerar (...) la ética en su carácter tópico o contextual. Así, es en el ámbito de la templanza y de las inclinaciones sexuales donde el AFP cobra un papel normativo; en cambio, el “principio de totalidad” entra en juego cuando se está considerando el problema del límite de las intervenciones médicas.This paper focuses on the adequacy of using the so-called perverted faculty argument within the context of sexual morality. According to this argument, frustrating the reproductive faculty would be immoral. Professors García-Huidobro and Miranda think that this argument can be appropriately used only within the framework of the principle of totality. They argue that an unqualified use of the PFA would lead to the absurdities pointed out by the New Natural Law Theory. In order to see the PFA in a new light we demonstrate the importance of respecting the dialectical or contextual nature of Ethics. Thus, regarding temperance, and especially sexual inclinations, the PFA has a clear normative role. The principle of totality, instead, must be used when considering the problem of the moral limits of medical interventions. (shrink)

Moral responsibility and morality lie at the heart of how we view the world. In our daily life, we feel responsibility-related emotions: gratitude, pride, love, forgiveness, resentment, indignation, and shame. We love those who freely and reciprocally love us. Also, we feel that people act rightly or wrongly, make the world better or worse, and are virtuous or vicious. These policies are central to our justifying how we see the world and treat others. In this book, I argue that (...) our views on these matters, except love, are false. (shrink)

In this essay I argue that Kant remained committed to the necessity and fundamental importance of education throughout his career. Like Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90), Kant holds that a ‘total transformation’ of schools is necessary, and he holds this view not only in the 1770s but in his later years as well. In building my case I try to refute two recent opposing interpretations – Reinhard Brandt’s position that Kant’s early ‘education enthusiasm’ was later replaced by a politics (...) enthusiasm, and Manfred Kuehn’s view that the increasing importance of autonomy in Kant’s mature ethics leads him to de-emphasize education. (shrink)

The story of Huayan Buddhism intertwines in many ways with many other more well‐known forms of Buddhist thought. The Buddhist concepts of upāya or “skillful means,” prajnapti from Yogācāra and paramārtha satya from Madhyamaka, justify a range of pragmatic propositions, which represent a healthy way of viewing the world. Upāya refers to the diagnostic and prescriptive skill of a buddha or bodhisattva, who is ostensibly able to discern a particular person's problem and recommend a helpful strategy for solving it. This (...) is a completely contextual approach, though, because different problems lead to different strategies. The metaphysics underlying Huayan's philosophy of totality is based on the central Buddhist model of interdependent causality known as prātityasamutpāda. (shrink)

The development and international diffusion of total quality management as a normative theory are examined. It is shown that the main concepts associated with TQM contain an implicit Darwinist view of society made up only of institutions struggling to survive against increasingly ruthless competition. It is also shown that their development was the result of a process in which universities, large corporations, and government interacted to develop a response to the increasingly serious economic challenge that Japan presented to (...) the United States from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. The TQM paradigm was taken up by U.S. multinational corporations and the leading business and management schools of the United States and disseminated throughout the world. It is concluded that TQM has an ideological dimension designed to help diffuse to private and public service institutions throughout the world the dominant U.S. view of society and economy at the end of the twentieth century. (shrink)

The War Inside is a groundbreaking history of the contribution of British psychoanalysis to the making of social democracy, childhood, and the family during World War II and the postwar reconstruction. Psychoanalysts informed understandings not only of individuals, but also of broader political questions. By asserting a link between a real 'war outside' and an emotional 'war inside', psychoanalysts contributed to an increased state responsibility for citizens' mental health. They made understanding children and the mother-child relationship key to the successful (...) creation of a democratic citizenry. Using rich archival sources, the book revises the common view of psychoanalysis as an elite discipline by taking it out of the clinic and into the war nursery, the juvenile court, the state welfare committee, and the children's hospital. It traces the work of the second generation of psychoanalysts after Freud in response to total war and explores its broad postwar effects on British society. (shrink)

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON AND PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATIONS for the recent dissolution of the communist empire and for the failure of Marxist ideology is expressed in the view that communism was the political system in countries which had not yet reached the industrial age. Marxism was imposed on countries which could not be receptive to it and its goals.

We consider the classical concept of time of permanence and observe that its quantum equivalent is described by a bona fide self-adjoint operator. Its interpretation, by means of the spectral theorem, reveals that we have to abandon not only the idea that quantum entities would be characterizable in terms of spatial trajectories but, more generally, that they would possess the very attribute of spatiality. Consequently, a permanence time shouldn’t be interpreted as a “time” in quantum mechanics, but as a measure (...) of the total availability of a quantum entity in participating to a process of creation of a spatial localization. (shrink)

On the Total Principle, the best state of affairs (ceteris paribus) is the one with the greatest net sum of welfare value. Parfit rejects this principle, because he believes that it implies the Repugnant Conclusion, the conclusion that for any large population of people, all with lives well worth living, there will be some much larger population whose existence would be better, even though its members all have lives that are only barely worth living. Recently, however, a number of (...) philosophers have suggested that the Total Principle does not imply the Repugnant Conclusion provided that a certain axiological view (namely, the ‘Discontinuity View’) is correct. Nevertheless, as I point out, there are three different versions of the Repugnant Conclusion, and it appears that the Total Principle will imply two of the three even if the Discontinuity View is correct. I then go on to argue that one of the two remaining versions turns out not to be repugnant after all. Second, I argue that the last remaining version is not, as it turns out, implied by the Total Principle. Thus, my arguments show that the Total Principle has no repugnant implications. (shrink)

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

Wolfhart Pannenberg's eschatological ontology has been criticised for undermining the goodness and reality of finite creaturely differentiation. Drawing on David Bentley Hart's recent ontological proposal, this article explores the critique of Pannenberg's ontology, and offers a defence of Pannenberg's depiction of the relationship between difference and totality, especially as it is presented in his 1988 work, Metaphysics and the Idea of God. In this work, Pannenberg articulates a structured relationship between difference and totality in which individual finite particularities are preserved (...) and affirmed within a coherent semantic whole. Creaturely differences are not sublated or eliminated in the eschatological totality, but they are integrated into a harmonious totality of meaning. This view of the semantic function of totality can be further clarified by drawing an analogy between Pannenberg's ontological vision and Robert W. Jenson's model of the eschatological consummation as a narrative conclusion to the drama of finite reality. (shrink)

This paper is a response to John Schellenberg’s paper, “Skeptical Theism and Skeptical Atheism,” in which he raises objections to theistic belief that are supposed to cause special trouble for skeptical theists. In section I, I provide some clarificatory comments concerning skeptical theism. In section II, I evaluate an atheistic argument that Schellenberg finds particularly impressive. In section III, I examine the view Schellenberg calls ‘total evidence skepticism’ and consider its bearing on theistic belief. In the final section (...) I consider whether Schellenberg is right in thinking that skeptical theism commits one to total evidence skepticism and to some of the other skeptical theses he proposes. (shrink)

Since Circular 34 from the Ministry of Science and Technology of Vietnam required the head of the national project to have project results published in ISI/Scopus journals in 2014, the field of economics has been dominating the number of nationally-funded projects in social sciences and humanities. However, there has been no scientometric study that focuses on the difference in productivity among fields in Vietnam. Thus, harnessing the power of the SSHPA database, a comprehensive dataset of 1,564 Vietnamese authors (854 males, (...) 705 females) with 2,410 publications in the 2008 – 2018 period was extracted and analyzed. Various factors were considered including age, gender, new authors, leading authors, co-authorship, and Impact Factor. The findings suggest a high level of contribution from authors at the age of 40 – 44 in economics (858 publications) in a 12-years period, which is equivalent to the social medicine total output, and two times more than the total output of the education. Moreover, the presence and reinforcement of male researchers are still dominating in Economics and other fields, with the only exception of education. Despite the rapid rise in the number of Vietnamese lead authors, gender disparity among disciplines is an issue. Contrary to the strong international collaboration-oriented tendency in social medicine, economics, and other fields, educational authors are not open to international collaborating. Finally, most of the publications in economics belong to the group with JIF from 0 to 2, in contrast with the high number of social medicine publications with JIF from 2 to 5, which suggesting the field of economics is fulfilling the quantity, but still, need more quality publications. (shrink)

The view that a possible world is an existing abstract object implies that all nonexistent possible individuals have a principle of individuation in terms of existing objects, properties, and relations. However, some individuals of this kind are totally out of this world both in the subjective sense that nobody in this world can pick them out, and in the ontological sense that they would neither be created by assembling or arranging existing bits of matter nor otherwise be generated by (...) existing items. The only acceptable principle of individuation for such nonexistent possibles is that they are individuated by their unexemplified haecceities. (shrink)

The purpose of this survey was to gather individual’s attitudes and feelings towards privacy and the selling of data. A total (N) of 1,107 people responded to the survey. -/- Across continents, age, gender, and levels of education, people overwhelmingly think privacy is important. An impressive 82% of respondents deem privacy extremely or very important, and only 1% deem privacy unimportant. Similarly, 88% of participants either agree or strongly agree with the statement that ‘violations to the right to privacy (...) are one of the most important dangers that citizens face in the digital age.’ The great majority of respondents (92%) report having experienced at least one privacy breach. -/- People’s first concern when losing privacy is the possibility that their personal data might be used to steal money from them. Interestingly, in second place in the ranking of concerns, people report being concerned about privacy because ‘Privacy is a good in itself, above and beyond the consequences it may have.’ -/- People tend to feel that they cannot trust companies and institutions to protect their privacy and use their personal data in responsible ways. The majority of people believe that governments should not be allowed to collect everyone’s personal data. Privacy is thought to be a right that should not have to be paid for. (shrink)

The view that a possible world is an existing abstract object implies that all nonexistent possible individuals have a principle of individuation in terms of existing objects, properties, and relations. However, some individuals of this kind are totally out of this world both in the subjective sense that nobody in this world can pick them out, and in the ontological sense that they would neither be created by assembling or arranging existing bits of matter nor otherwise be generated by (...) existing items. The only acceptable principle of individuation for such nonexistent possibles is that they are individuated by their unexemplified haecceities. (shrink)

The view that a possible world is an existing abstract object implies that all nonexistent possible individuals have a principle of individuation in terms of existing objects, properties, and relations. However, some individuals of this kind are totally out of this world both in the subjective sense that nobody in this world can pick them out, and in the ontological sense that they would neither be created by assembling or arranging existing bits of matter nor otherwise be generated by (...) existing items. The only acceptable principle of individuation for such nonexistent possibles is that they are individuated by their unexemplified haecceities. (shrink)

In both editions of the Critique of Pure Reason, and in the Prolegomena, the table of the logical functions of the understanding in judgments lists under “quantity of judgments”: universal, particular, and singular; and the table of categories lists under “categories of quantity”: unity, plurality, and totality. As Kant regarded the forms of judgments as giving “the clue” to the derivation of categories and held that the two lists are “in complete agreement”, one would conclude from the tables that the (...) category of unity is derived from the universal form of judgment and the category of totality from the singular form. But this view of the derivations seems wrong. As a universal judgment pertains to all objects of a given sort and a singular judgment pertains to but one object, one would expect unity to be derived from the singular and totality from the universal form of judgment. That this second view of the derivations is what Kant really intended seems confirmed by the fact that at several places in his writings, including a passage in the Critique and one in the Prolegomena, when he is speaking of quantitative determinations, he explicitly associates the singular judgment with unity. But if this second view is what he intended, one wonders why he failed to correct the order in the tables in the Prolegomena and in the second edition of the Critique. Is this failure merely, as Jonathan Bennett has suggested, “a slip”? (shrink)

The scope of this study is the early phase of Husserl's philosophy, from On the Concept of Number and Philosophy of Arithmetic through the Logical Investigations. Like others who have studied this period, Cooper-Wiele wants to trace the development of themes understood to play a central role in Husserl's mature, phenomenological philosophy. Of central concern to him is the emergence of Husserl's transcendental point of view, which Cooper-Wiele characterizes as "a conquest of spatio-temporal phenomena," "the dissolution of the threat" (...) to certainty and teleology posed by the assumption that causal reality is an ultimate philosophical category. The "key" to the early development of transcendental phenomenology is said to be Husserl's study of the mental act of collecting--or, as the author prefers, the "totalizing act.". (shrink)

Nurses in Ghana believe that training, practise, practitioner and policy reforms are required for total nursing profession reform to be effective. Their views for role reformation in the nursing profession, which is currently needed, are not only academic but also clinically relevant in the pursuit of health equity and quality nursing care. We explored and described nurses’ views on their roles in the profession using data collected from 24 professional nurses in three regional hospitals in Ghana. Using an inductive (...) descriptive qualitative design, data were gathered and analysed using a qualitative content analysis to describe the views of the nurses. Four major themes, namely practise reforms, practitioner reforms, training reforms and policy reforms have emerged in relation to role reformation in the nursing profession. Three strategic areas, practitioner attitudes, new training modalities and policy realignment, must be reviewed and remodelled for better positioning of the nursing profession before its entire role reformation. (shrink)

The present study is the first to empirically test a hierarchical, positive-oriented model of self and its relationship to the second language (L2) achievement motivation, and compare it in three different cultural contexts of Japan, U.S. and Taiwan. Based on the L2 self model (Lake, 2016), three levels of constructs were developed: Global Self (i.e., Flourishing, Curiosity, and Hope); Positive L2 domain self (i.e., interested-in-L2 self, harmonious passion for L2 learning, and mastery L2 goal orientation); and L2 Motivational Variables (i.e., (...) reading, speaking and listening self-efficacy). A total of 667 students participated in this study, including 181 first-year college students in Japan, 159 high school students in Taiwan, and 327 college students in the U.S. All the participants were learning a L2 in school. Results showed that the measures of positive global self, L2 domain self, and L2 motivational self all had a stronger relationship within their respective levels, and progressively weaker relationships as level of generality/specificity became more distal. Furthermore, the relationships among measures varied in the differing cultural contexts with the Japan-based student participants relatively lower on all measures. (shrink)

The long creative career of Aleksei Fedorovich Losev touches on many different spheres, currents, and traditions of world thought. The greater part of this manifold variety is divided between two major domains of culture: philosophy and classical philology, the study of antiquity. But such a division was by no means an insurmountable barrier for Losev. These two domains were linked together by many threads in his world view and in his work. One of the principal links running through the (...) whole of his creative career was the idea or intuition of total-unity [vseedinstvo], which has occupied both philosophers and investigators of antiquity. That this idea came to Losev was far from accidental. Total-unity is one of the dominant intuitions and pervasive themes of Russian religious-philosophical thought. It is at the center of the most important stage of the latter's development, the stage of the metaphysics of total-unity, with which Losev was intimately associated. And one cannot avoid it even now, either in the study of Losev's legacy or in broader reflections on the paths of Russian thought. (shrink)

(Updated 5/23/24) This unpublished paper, which readers should feel free to cite, is posted primarily for the historical record. In recent work that has, deservedly, received some attention, Paul R. Daniels presents and defends a non-standard theory of persistence that he dubs transdurantism, according to which persisting objects are temporally extended simples. This is exactly what I do in work dating back to Spring 2004. (This work includes this version of this paper, as well as later version that was presented (...) to the University of Rochester's Philosophy Department in 2005.) While this might be a total coincidence, I doubt that it is, especially given that 'transdurantism' appears as a name for a theory of persistence associated with me in at least two places in the literature, one of which includes a citation of this paper. The paper begins with a discussion of what I call 'locative relations' (the relations borne by material objects to the regions of space and time they occupy), which draws relevant distinctions that others have failed to draw. The results of this discussion are then used in constructing spatial analogues for the three established theories of persistence--endurantism, perdurantism, and exdurantism--as well as for transdurantism. Next, these four views concerning persistence are explicitly formulated and a defense of their formulation is offered. Finally, transdurantism's advantages and disadvantages relative to the other theories are discussed. The main goal of the paper is to challenge the trichotomy between the established theories by arguing that transdurantism is also a viable view concerning persistence through time. [Note: Befitting its status as a historical document, with the exception of some light editing to fix typos that might impede understanding, no changes have been made to the paper.]. (shrink)

Novel methods such as mass‐spectrometry enable a view of the proteomes of cells in unprecedented detail. Recently, these efforts have culminated in quantitative measurements of the number of copies per cell for most expressed proteins in organisms ranging from bacteria to mammalian cells. Here, we estimate the expected total number of proteins per unit of cell volume using known parameters related to the composition of cells such as the fraction of cell mass that is protein, and the average (...) protein length. Using simple arguments, we estimate a range of 2–4 million proteins per cubic micron (i.e. 1 fL) in bacteria, yeast, and mammalian cells. Interestingly, we find that measured values that are reported for fission yeast and mammalian cells are often about 3–10 times lower. We discuss this apparent discrepancy and how to use the estimate as benchmark to recalibrate proteome‐wide quantitative censuses or to revisit assumptions about cell composition. (shrink)

My main claim is that, contrary to the assumptions of mainstream literature, epistemic religious diversity is not a matter of an abstract comparison among the belief systems of different religions or denominations; rather, it is a relation arising from the epistemic encounter among individuals who adhere to different doxastic groups. Particularly, while epistemic symmetry inclines to treat our doxastic opponents as peers, epistemic peerhood is not the starting point of doctrinal comparisons, but the potential outcome of the epistemic process of (...) the construal of shared evidence. A key point in my approach is that such a process is anecdotally constituted. My working plan is the following. In the first section I will introduce the challenge of religious diversity. In the next section, I will distinguish between two characterisations of the relation among seminal claims of doxastic groups, namely, beliefs which stand in a competing relation and beliefs which are merely alternative. I will provide a degree view of this distinction. The subsequent section consists in a overview of the outcomes from the epistemology of disagreement. In the fourth section, I will provide two basic motivations in support of TE. Finally, I will conclude by sketching how TE motivates the assumption of a schema for handling religious disagreements which I name anecdotal pluralism. (shrink)

Public opinion can affect the adoption of genome editing technologies. In food production, genome editing can be applied to a wide range of applications, in different species and with different purposes. This study analyzed how the public responds to five different applications of genome editing, varying the species involved and the proposed purpose of the modification. Three of the applications described the introduction of disease resistance within different species, and two targeted product quality and quantity in cattle. Online surveys in (...) Canada, the US, Austria, Germany and Italy were carried out with a total sample size of 3698 participants. Using a between-subject design, participants were confronted with one of the five applications and asked to decide whether they considered it right or wrong. Perceived risks, benefits, and the perception of the technology as tampering with nature were surveyed and were complemented with socio-demographics and a measure of the participants’ moral foundations. In all countries, participants evaluated the application of disease resistance in humans as most right to do, followed by disease resistance in plants, and then in animals, and considered changes in product quality and quantity in cattle as least right to do. However, US and Italian participants were generally more positive toward all scenarios, and German and Austrian participants more negative. Cluster analyses identified four groups of participants: ‘strong supporters’ who saw only benefits and little risks, ‘slight supporters’ who perceived risks and valued benefits, ‘neutrals’ who showed no pronounced opinion, and ‘opponents’ who perceived higher risks and lower benefits. This research contributes to understanding public response to applications of genome editing, revealing differences that can help guide decisions related to adoption of these technologies. (shrink)

Three remarks, which are sometimes made about Freud's distiction between Ego and Id are discussed: 1. This distinction would have no analogy in other psychological concepts. 2. The essence of the "I" would be misjudged here. 3. It would be the rest of an atomising psychology, not yet arriving at the modern views of totality. Although the common parlance concerning psychic "parts" has indeed analogies in the old atomistic-psychological conceptions, these instances, as well as the conflicting drives are and have (...) been always considered in psychoanalysis as expressions of which the person himself is the subject. Especially the concept "Id" must be looked at as equivalent to the biological total, to the concept: Person-Stern. The concept I or Ego, as a special structure of "figure" within this whole, means no split-off part, but is equivalent to what is called elsewhere "durchstrukturiertes Unterganze". Freud entitles a certain intern organisation with the word "Ich". He that thinks the essence of "the" I herewith misjudged, confuses word and concept -- the word I contains a lot of equivocations. That there are conflicts within the person is a basic matter of fact, which is not to be pushed aside in favour of totalitarian dogmatics, this conflict must be expressed in our terminology in some way or other. Terms, by way of comparison borrowed from material situations cannot always be avoided, and need not give any inconvenience, provided reflecting over the import of the terms is practised sufficiently. (shrink)

Responding to the increasingly influential role of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy in recent years, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance, critically engages with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the main goal of totalitarianism was total domination; namely, the virtual eradication of human legality, morality, individuality, and plurality. This attempt, in her view, was most fully realized in the concentration camps, which served as the major "laboratories" for the regime. (...) While Arendt focused on the perpetrators' logic and drive, Michal Aharony examines the perspectives and experiences of the victims and their ability to resist such an experiment. The first book-length study to juxtapose Arendt's concept of total domination with actual testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this book calls for methodological pluralism and the integration of the voices and narratives of the actors in the construction of political concepts and theoretical systems. To achieve this, Aharony engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals and writers who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Additionally, she analyzes the oral testimonies of survivors who are largely unknown, drawing from interviews conducted in Israel and in the U.S., as well as from videotaped interviews from archives around the world. Revealing various manifestations of unarmed resistance in the camps, this study demonstrates the persistence of morality and free agency even under the most extreme and de-humanizing conditions, while cautiously suggesting that absolute domination is never as absolute as it claims or wishes to be. Scholars of political philosophy, political science, history, and Holocaust studies will find this an original and compelling book. (shrink)

Wolfhart Pannenberg's eschatological ontology has been criticised for undermining the goodness and reality of finite creaturely differentiation. Drawing on David Bentley Hart's recent ontological proposal, this article explores the critique of Pannenberg's ontology, and offers a defence of Pannenberg's depiction of the relationship between difference and totality, especially as it is presented in his 1988 work, Metaphysics and the Idea of God. In this work, Pannenberg articulates a structured relationship between difference and totality in which individual finite particularities are preserved (...) and affirmed within a coherent semantic whole. Creaturely differences are not sublated or eliminated in the eschatological totality, but they are integrated into a harmonious totality of meaning. This view of the semantic function of totality can be further clarified by drawing an analogy between Pannenberg's ontological vision and Robert W. Jenson's model of the eschatological consummation as a narrative conclusion to the drama of finite reality. (shrink)

There is wide agreement that background infrastructure is unconsciously applied and is not formally representable, but views diverge as to whether this sort of skill should be considered knowledge in the proper sense. In this paper I attempt to show that background infrastructure is a type of skilled knowledge which serves as a precondition for the mind to be about things in the world. Contrary to the common understanding that background is primarily mechanical, the view presented here affirms that (...) it as a totality of knowing taken up by the body and converted into an implicit ‘know-how’. It appears as a mode of mind’s ‘enworldment’, as well as an organ of potentiality. (shrink)

The present study was aimed at gaining a broad opinion regarding bioethical reasoning amongst student fraternity. These students had been admitted to medical schools after completion of their high school . Ethnically all the students were of Indian origin though they belonged to a diverse socio-economic-cultural background. The mean age of students was 18 years and a total of 125 first year medical students were questioned in 1998 , using the questionnaire designed by Macer with some modifications. The observations (...) revealed the fact that even though fair amount of awareness regarding the wide perspectives of bioethics did prevail amongst many, yet some sense of ignorance was reflected as well. However, the respondents were divided on various sensitive issues like cloning, in vitro fertilisation etc. The results suggest enforcement of both individual and collective efforts to arouse the consciousness of students regarding bioethics and application of bioethical decision making to dilemmas posed by science and technology. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice is injustice to a person qua knower. In one form of this phenomenon a speaker’s testimony is denied credence in a way that wrongs them. I argue that the received definition of this testimonial injustice relies too heavily on epistemic criteria that cannot explain why the moral concept of injustice should be invoked. I give an account of the nature of the wrong of epistemic injustice that has it depend not on the accuracy of judgments that are used (...) or made in the process of deciding whether to listen to or trust a speaker, but on whether the basis of the decision about a speaker is their reliability or their identity, and the account explains why the latter is a moral wrong. A key difference between the two accounts is how they classify the use of true statistical generalizations connecting identity and reliability. The received view implies that this cannot be an injustice, while the view proposed here implies that it can. As such the new view appears to imply a conflict between moral and epistemic obligations: it is morally wrong to use true statistical generalizations in certain contexts, yet they are part of our evidence, and we are epistemically obligated to take all of our evidence into account. I reconcile these two thoughts without adopting the currently popular view that a belief’s being morally wrong makes it epistemically unjustified, and I argue that following the principle of total evidence encourages epistemic justice rather than thwarting it. (shrink)

In this study, we sought to obtain detailed opinion on some of the practical issues that might arise should physician-assisted suicide (PAS) ever be legalized in the UK. We carried out an anonymous postal questionnaire of medical students, junior and senior doctors working at an acute hospital trust, over a three-week period. A total of 435 questionnaires were distributed and we had an overall return rate of 34%. We found that opinions changed very little as doctors progressed from medical (...) school through to senior clinical positions. Overall, there was neutral opinion on whether PAS should be legalized. There was strong support for a multidisciplinary approach to the process and the involvement of the coroner. An opt-out clause for physicians who did not want to be involved in assisted suicide also received strong support. (shrink)

I. Analytic interpretation of Descartes' argument for a substantial distinction between mind and body works within a framework of assumptions – which is broadly Aristotelian – concerning the character of the Cartesian categories of substance, essence, and mode. Relying on a series of texts concerning the mind/body distinction which is usually passed over by interpreters, I will develop and draw out the implications of a different – a Platonic – view of these categories.

This research sets out to study and compare the effects of story watching on television and story listening by an elder on children’s cognitive skills, specifically in building up their vocabulary and comprehension. A total of two hundred children aged between 7 to 12 years from low socio-economic background were selected through matching. They were divided into two different groups based on the medium they were exposed to, either oral or visual. The study took place in laboratories set at (...) four different schools in Karachi, Pakistan. Ten stories were told to the half children, while the other group watched 10 animated episodes having same content for 10 consecutive weeks. Children’s perception and vocabulary skills were evaluated through questionnaires, which were filled out after each story. Results affirmed the hypothesis that story listening is more effective than cartoon watching in terms of cognitive learning. The study is beneficial for various disciplines of social sciences including psychology, sociology, education and mass communication. (shrink)

The paper begins by examining the original Turing Test (2T) and Searle’s antithetical Chinese Room Argument, which is intended to refute the 2T in particular, as well as any formal or abstract procedural theory of the mind in general. In the ensuing dispute between Searle and his own critics, I argue that Searle’s ‘internalist’ strategy is unable to deflect Dennett’s combined robotic-systems reply and the allied Total Turing Test (3T). Many would hold that the 3T marks the culmination of (...) the dialectic and, in principle, constitutes a fully adequate empirical standard for judging that an artifact is intelligent on a par with human beings. However, the paper carries the debate forward by arguing that the sociolinguistic factors highlighted in externalist views in the philosophy of language indicate the need for a fundamental shift in perspective in a Truly Total Turing Test (4T). It’s not enough to focus on Dennett’s individual robot viewed as a system; instead, we need to focus on an ongoing system of such artifacts. Hence a 4T should evaluate the general category of cognitive organization under investigation, rather than the performance of single specimens. From this comprehensive standpoint, the question is not whether an individual instance could simulate intelligent behavior within the context of a pre-existing sociolinguistic culture developed by the human cognitive type. Instead the key issue is whether the artificial cognitive type itself is capable of producing a comparable sociolinguistic medium. (shrink)