To understand how compliance develops both in everyday and corporate environments, it is crucial to understand how different mechanisms work together to shape individuals’ (non)compliant behavior. Existing compliance studies typically focus on a subset of theories (i.e., rational choice theories, social theories, legitimacy theories, capacity theories, and opportunity theories) to understand how key variables from one or several of these theories shape individual compliance. The present study provides a first integrated understanding of compliance, rooted in complexity science, in which key (...) elements from these theories are considered simultaneously, and their relations to compliance and each other are explored using network analysis. This approach is developed by analyzing online survey data (_N_ = 562) about compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures. Traditional regression analysis shows that elements from nearly all major compliance theories (except for social theories) are associated with compliance. The network analysis revealed groupings and interconnections of variables that did not track the existing compliance theories and point to a complexity overlooked in existing compliance research. These findings demonstrate a fundamentally different perspective on compliance, which moves away from traditional narrow, non-network approaches. Instead, they showcase a complexity science understanding of compliance, in which compliance is understood as a network of interacting variables derived from different theories that interact with compliance. This points to a new research agenda that is oriented on mapping compliance networks, and testing and modelling how regulatory and management interventions interact with each other and compliance within such networks. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that metaphysical modal claims are to be evaluated with respect to a single domain of possible worlds: a claim is metaphysically necessary just in case it is true in every possible world, and metaphysically possible just in case it is true in some possible world. We argue that the standard understanding is incorrect; rather, whether a given claim is metaphysically necessary or possible is relative to which world is indicatively actual. We motivate our view by attention (...) to discussions in Salmon 1989 and Fine 2005, in which various data are taken to support rejecting the transitivity of accessibility and modal monism ; we argue that relativized metaphysical modality can accommodate these data compatible with both standard modal logic and modal monism. Noting an analogy with two-dimensional semantics, we argue that metaphysical modality has a complex structure, reflecting what is counterfactually possible, relative to each indicatively actual world. In arguing for the need for relativization, we are broadly on the same side as Crossley and Humberstone and Davies and Humberstone ; our contribution here is, first, to offer distinctively metaphysical reasons for relativization, and second, to show that relativization can be incorporated in ways minimally departing from standard modal logic. (shrink)

Precision testing of the quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the standard model provides some of the most secure knowledge in the history of physics. These tests can also be used to constrain and search for new physics going beyond the standard model. We examine the evidential structure of relationships between theoretical predictions from QED, precision measurements of these phenomena, and the indirect determination of the fine structure constant. We argue that "pure QED" is no longer sufficient to predict the electron's (...) anomalous magnetic moment, and that standard model effects are needed. The details relevant to low-energy QED are robust against future theory change. (shrink)

Some left-nested indicative conditionals are hard to interpret while others seem fine. Some proponents of the view that indicative conditionals have No Truth Values (NTV) use their view to explain why some left-nestings are hard to interpret: the embedded conditional does not express the truth conditions needed by the embedding conditional. Left-nestings that seem fine are then explained away as cases of ad hoc, pragmatic interpretation. We challenge this explanation. The standard reasons for NTV about indicative conditionals (triviality (...) results, Gibbardian standoffs, etc.) extend naturally to NTV about biconditionals. So NTVers about conditionals should also be NTVers about biconditionals. But biconditionals embed much more freely than conditionals. If NTV explains why some left-nested conditionals are hard to interpret, why do biconditionals embed successfully in the very contexts where conditionals do not embed? (shrink)

This dissertation develops, justifies, and examines the jurisprudential implications of a non-monotonic theory of common law legal reasoning. Legal rules seem to have exceptions but identifying all of them is difficult. This hinders attempts to formalize legal rules using classical logics. Non-monotonic logics allow defeasible inference, permitting rules that hold generally but can be defeated in the presence of exceptions. This ameliorates the problem of characterizing all exceptions to a rule, because exceptions can be added piecemeal while the rule remains. (...) The first portion of the dissertation rebuts a prominent criticism leveled at a large class of theories of legal reasoning that includes my theory. The charge is that no coherent theory can recognize both the difference between distinguishing and overruling, and the constraint of precedent. The critics argue that is more important than and that can only be explained by monotonic legal rules. Drawing on cognitive psychology as well as legal theory, I show that coherent theories, such as my own, can accommodate both and. The second chapter provides motivation for understanding precedential constraint in terms of non-monotonic default rules and introduces my positive theory, which elaborates on John Horty's work in treating legal rules as prioritized defaults involving reasons. I motivate and implement a relaxation of Horty's restrictions on the form of rules to allow a more fine-grained characterization of precedent. Finally, I explore the relationship between these relaxations and the concept of precedent. The final section explains how my theory fits into the traditional jurisprudential ecosystem. I demonstrate that, contrary to assertions in the legal theory literature, this non-monotonic approach is entirely compatible with positivism's commitment to extracting rules from authoritative legal sources, namely court opinions. I also suggest how it might be attractive to law and economics theorists, pragmatists, and followers of Dworkin. (shrink)

I explore the logic of ground. I first develop a logic of weak ground. This logic strengthens the logic of weak ground presented by Fine in his ‘Guide to Ground.’ This logic, I argue, generates many plausible principles which Fine’s system leaves out. I then derive from this a logic of strict ground. I argue that there is a strong abductive case for adopting this logic. It’s elegant, parsimonious and explanatorily powerful. Yet, so I suggest, adopting it has (...) important consequences. First, it means we should think of ground as a type of identity. Second, it means we should reject much of Fine’s logic of strict ground. I also show how the logic I develop connects to other systems in the literature. It is definitionally equivalent both to Angell’s logic of analytic containment and to Correia’s system G. (shrink)

Several presidents have created bioethics councils to advise their administrations on the importance, meaning and possible implementation or regulation of rapidly developing biomedical technologies. From 2001 to 2005, the President's Council on Bioethics, created by President George W. Bush, was under the leadership of Leon Kass. The Kass Council, as it was known, undertook what Adam Briggle describes as a more rich understanding of its task than that of previous councils. The council sought to understand what it means to (...) advance human flourishing at the intersection of philosophy, politics, science, and technology within a democratic society. Briggle's survey of the history of U.S. public bioethics and advisory bioethics commissions, followed by an analysis of what constitutes a "rich" bioethics, forms the first part of the book. The second part treats the Kass Council as a case study of a federal institution that offered public, ethical advice within a highly polarized context, with the attendant charges of inappropriate politicization and policy irrelevance. The conclusion synthesizes the author's findings into a story about the possible relationships between philosophy and policy making. "Adam Briggle has written a rich and sympathetic account of the President's Council on Bioethics led by Leon Kass. It puts in historical context the efforts of this council to move beyond the limited 'instrumentalist' approaches to bioethics taken by earlier commissions, toward a more philosophically serious effort to deliberate on the human goods put in play by modern biomedicine. In the process it answers many of the charges of politicization and corrects the record concerning the council's work." --_Francis Fukuyama, The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies_ "What an eloquent, humane, and wise book. Briggle discovers an imperfect yet fascinating effort to bring the world of biomedical research into the domain of public philosophy. His scholarship and generosity make clear that a democratic society need not be morally shackled to the realm of the possible that science is constantly expanding." --_Daniel Sarewitz, Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, Arizona State University _ "This is the most persuasive and thoughtful reconstruction of the Kass Council's goals and rationale that I have seen. Adam Briggle's account of the notion of a 'richer' bioethics is comprehensive an well-reasoned." --_Jonathan D. Moreno, University of Pennsylvania _ "Adam Briggle has written a fine book on a complex, controversial topic. He shows the wisdom of the approach to bioethics taken by the Kass Council, sets right the unfair and often nasty attacks on the council and Kass himself, and offers a perceptive and wide-ranging look at the terrain of ethics." --_Daniel Callahan, The Hastings Center _. (shrink)

Are there, in addition to the various actual objects that make up the world, various possible objects? Are there merely possible people, for example, or merely possible electrons, or even merely possible kinds? We certainly talk as if there were such things. Given a particular sperm and egg, I may wonder whether that particular child which would result from their union would have blue eyes. But if the sperm and egg are never in fact brought together, then there is no (...) actual object that my thought is about. Or again, in the semantics for modal logic we presuppose an ontology of possibilia twice over. For first, we countenance various possible worlds, in addition to the actual world; and second, each of these worlds is taken to be endowed with its own domain of objects. These will be the actual objects of the world in question, but they need not be actual simpliciter, i.e., actual objects of our world. What are we to make of such discourse? There are four options: (i) the discourse is taken to be unintelligible; (ii) it is taken to be intelligible but nonfactual, i.e. as not in the business of stating facts; (iii) it is taken to be factual but reducible to discourse involving no reference to possibilia; (iv) it is taken to be both factual and irreducible. These options range from a full-blooded form of actualism at one extreme to a full-blooded form of possibilism at the other. The two intermediate positions are possibilist in that they accept the intelligibility of possibilist discourse but actualist in that they attempt to dispense with its prima facie commitment to possibilia. All four positions have found advocates in the literature. Quine, in his less irenic moments, favours option (i); Forbes advocates option (ii), at least for certain parts of possibilist discourse; many philosophers, including Adams and myself, opt for (iii); while Lewis and Stalnaker have endorsed versions of (iv), that differ in how full-blooded they take the possible objects to be.. (shrink)

What is life and what does it mean to be in the living political universe of entitiness without rhyme or reason? Flappy exudate, a bag in a bag, corpuscles of corporeality, worms (or flesh tubes) with appendages, even the cult of first involution – these are our body pods and the hunger and thirst of being-in. How can the situation of anatomical form be analysed without the illusion of instrumentalized reflection? Perhaps by amalgamating the categories and their issues. The issuance (...) of taxonomy is the actual fine muck of excrement, which every brick of ordered life leaks as exudence and decay. Deep thoughts leave a mucal snail trail of what was tabular-seeming about our bodily situation, our environs, our friends, our experiments and our nourishment. Especially in this current age of 露 露 and 娜娜 (Lulu and Nana), our first officially public transgenic kindred, the question becomes, ‘who are these free-living divergences and what does it mean to be the uber-ding beyond geoengineering’s capabilities?’. (shrink)

John Beck's fine study of the representation of the postwar American West, analyzes the cultural impact of the secret state's establishment of its arsenals, proving grounds and waste disposal sites after the Manhattan Project. The giant Southwest Defense Complex is registered, with acute and telling political energy, in texts by Cormac MacCarthy, Leslie Marmon Silko, Bradford Morrow and Don DeLillo, as a brute invisible energy field at the edges of national experience. This is one of the best studies of (...) the military-industrial complex on record, typified by sharp close reading, blistering and theoretically wise readings, and a sure-footed grasp of difficult and evasive histories and strategies of deception. Beck sketches relations between toxic waste disposal, repressive anti-marginal politics, Cold War megadeath and atomic culture with an eloquence and passion controlled by a cool theoretical head. The review article argues that Beck's study is a major contribution to the analysis of the artificial state of emergency instituted by the AEC and Pentagon deep within the United States. (shrink)

The present paper—taking the example of the English translation of the Hungarian Civil Code of 2013—aims to give an overview on the legal and terminology-related challenges and pitfalls that might occur during the process of translating a civil code with civil law traditions into the language of the common law world. An attempt is made to categorise terminology-related conceptual problems and elaborate how the different types of translation methods could be applied; moreover, how a kind of legal-linguistic checks-and-balances can be (...) achieved through the well-dosed combination, having also the ratio of similarities to differences of legal concepts behind the respective terms in mind. Legal translators must act beyond the role of a simple translator: they must be comparatists, being aware of the legal origin of the relevant concepts and using the methods of comparative private law and translation studies at the same time, since both law and language are system-bound and are heavily influenced by the cultural and social environment. The authors strive to identify the significance of those problems from the perspective of how language-related aspects can perform some fine-tuning on the comparative methodology and findings, whether they are barriers only or provide also an opportunity to verify or refute prima facie comparative results. Comparative law—no doubt—supports legal translation, but their relationship is reciprocal: legal-linguistic subjects and problems emerging in the course of legal translation supply valuable feedback and further sources of inspiration. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It's Not Always Just a RashAdam BossertI looked at the emergency department track board and saw a patient waiting for a provider who was "roomed" in a hallway stretcher with a chief complaint of a rash. I briefly considered his ultimate disposition, "He's probably fine. He can't be that sick if he was triaged as safe for the hallway." I was tired and close to the end of (...) an overnight shift and thought he would be a quick turnaround, likely discharged, since rashes are typically benign. I walked over to his stretcher after a quick chart biopsy that highlighted his mildly increased heart [End Page 24] rate on arrival as well as his history of polysubstance use and homelessness."Hey doc, I don't feel so good.""I'm sorry to hear that. What's specifically bothering you?""I am itching all over with these bumps. My skin is red, and I also think I'm withdrawing since I have body aches and chills."The interview continued.I discovered his last heroin use was approximately eight hours prior to arrival. I thought he was an ideal candidate for buprenorphine since he was actively withdrawing. I was recently licensed to prescribe this medication and excited to use my license for the first time. He declined the suggestion, however, preferring methadone instead. Buprenorphine can precipitate withdrawal if not given long enough after opioid use or if an incorrect dose is given; thus, many patients are hesitant to take it. He also stated he was predominantly here for his rash and did not want rehabilitation placement. I ordered our initiation methadone dose as well as a screening COVID-19 test and a urine drug screen test, which are both needed for rehabilitation placement in case he changed his mind.His rash was highly suspicious for scabies. He was covered with red bumps that spared only his face, some in linear distributions, and was actively scratching his arms and legs during the interview. I prefer oral ivermectin over topical permethrin for the homeless population simply for ease of administration, lower cost, and increased compliance. He received ivermectin for his scabies and knew he could return to the emergency department for a repeat dose if he was unable to fill a prescription.What happened next is, in my experience, an all-too-common scenario.The patient told me that the methadone is "doing nothing." I explained he could no longer take buprenorphine since he already received methadone, which only made him more frustrated. Unfortunately, I am restricted with the amount of methadone I can give in the emergency department, largely due to the drug's long half-life, and thus I was unable to give him more, let alone attempt titrating to his tolerance.Opioid withdrawal is not a life-threatening diagnosis; these patients are not typically admitted to the hospital. The management consists of initiating either methadone or buprenorphine, symptomatic treatment and then outpatient referral or rehabilitation placement. I explained the options to him, and he requested to be discharged since he was deferring rehabilitation. He was discharged. I was able to treat his rash but his chronic illness, opioid use disorder, was not controlled.I discharge a patient in opioid withdrawal or who has opioid use disorder almost every day, and I think most emergency medicine physicians would echo that statement. The disposition is not wrong from the perspective of the individual physician, but it feels like the system has failed these patients when I think of the frequency that they return and their baffling risk of overdose. The latter can be reduced by giving patients Narcan, the drug to reverse opioid overdose, upon discharge but this is just placing a bandage over the problem and not all emergency departments can fund this risk-reduction tool.I saw my patient's COVID-19 result return as I wrapped up my shift. It was positive. And, of course, he was in our department's hallway the whole time, only intermittently using his mask. I suddenly realized that while yes, he was withdrawing, he also may have had a symptomatic COVID-19 infection! I quickly reopened his chart, only to... (shrink)

Anthony Freeman's article on transpersonal psychology cited Jorge Ferrer's criticism that while the field claims to be non-dualistic or 'post-Cartesian' (no subject -object or mind-body split), it is nevertheless hopelessly dualistic. . .Freeman proposes a way of salvation for transpersonal psychology by invoking Daniel Dennettapos;s concept of heterophenomenology, which is a third-person investigation of someone elseapos;s first-person experience (as reported). . .Freeman's proposal is a fine demonstration of lateral thinking, calling upon atheist Dennett in support of transpersonal and religious (...) inquiry. Unfortunately, it is a solution analogous to searching for lost keys under the lamppost where the light is better. (shrink)

We investigate a recently devised polyhedral semantics for intermediate logics, in which formulas are interpreted in n-dimensional polyhedra. An intermediate logic is polyhedrally complete if it is complete with respect to some class of polyhedra. The first main result of this paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for the polyhedral completeness of a logic. This condition, which we call the Nerve Criterion, is expressed in terms of Alexandrov’s notion of the nerve of a poset. It affords a purely combinatorial (...) characterisation of polyhedrally complete logics. Using the Nerve Criterion we show, easily, that there are continuum many intermediate logics that are not polyhedrally complete but which have the finite model property. We also provide, at considerable combinatorial labour, a countably infinite class of logics axiomatised by the Jankov–Fine formulas of ‘starlike trees’ all of which are polyhedrally complete. The polyhedral completeness theorem for these ‘starlike logics’ is the second main result of this paper. (shrink)

Music teachers are often inclined to advocate the aesthetic value of music that is uncritically propagated by their conservatory training.1 Consequently, a host of misleading assumptions that music is a "fine" art that exists solely to promote aesthetic experience is simply taken for granted as the benefits of art and music education—thus ignoring the differences of purpose between school music and university-level training. Just offering routine musical activities and performances is thereby assumed to kindle students' aesthetic appreciation. Whether the (...) experiences provided have led to an enriched life of playing and enjoying... (shrink)

This paper argues that non-cognitivism about moral judgements is compatible with moral realism. In order to reveal the possibility, and plausibility, of this hitherto under-explored position in metaethics, it surveys a series of four increasingly fine-grained formulations of the distinction between cognitivism and non-cognitivism. It argues that all but the last of these distinctions should be rejected, on the grounds that they lead advocates of non-cognitivism away from what initially motivated them to advocate non-cognitivism in the first place. One (...) significant pay-off of this reconceived formulation of the cognitivism/non-cognitivism distinction is that it reveals what it would take to properly appreciate the place of virtue ethics in contemporary metaethical debates. (shrink)

Background and objectives: Developmental coordination disorder is a neurodevelopmental motor disorder occurring in 5-6% of school-aged children. It is suggested that children with DCD show deficits in motor learning. Transcranial direct current stimulation enhances motor learning in adults and children but is unstudied in DCD. We aimed to investigate if tDCS, paired with motor skill training, facilitates motor learning in a pediatric sample with DCD.Methods: Twenty-eight children with diagnosed DCD were randomized and placed into a treatment or sham group. Anodal (...) tDCS was applied in conjunction with fine manual training over 5 consecutive days. Children's motor functioning was assessed with the Purdue Pegboard Test and Jebsen-Taylor Hand Function Test at baseline, post-intervention and 6 weeks following intervention. Group differences in rates of motor learning and skill transfer/retention were examined using linear mixed modeling and repeated measures ANOVAs, respectively.Results: There were no serious adverse events or drop-outs and procedures were well-tolerated. Independent of group, all participants demonstrated improved motor scores over the 5 training days [F, p < 0.001, 95% CI ], with no skill decay observed at retention. There was no interaction between intervention group and day [F, p = 0.086, 95% CI ].Conclusion: Children with DCD demonstrate motor learning with long-term retention of acquired skill. Motor cortex tDCS did not enhance motor learning as seen in other populations. Before conclusions of tDCS efficacy can be drawn, additional carefully designed trials with reproducible results are required.Clinical Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT03453983. (shrink)

Adam Smith’s formal legacy to posterity consisted of meticulously revised editions of his two published works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; long-standing plans for treatises on Jurisprudence, Rhetoric, and the Fine Arts were abandoned on the grounds that there was no time to complete them. This chapter discusses Smith oeuvre as component parts of an unrealized plan to develop a Science of Man on experimental principles. Smith’s introduction to this grand projet as a (...) student is explored and the influence of Hutcheson and Hume is emphasized as is the fact that Smith developed both the published and unpublished components of his Science of Man simultaneously. The question of the meaning Smith attached to ‘science’ is a continuing theme of the chapter. (shrink)

The so-called ‘Adams’ Thesis’ is often understood as the claim that the assertibility of an indicative conditional equals the corresponding conditional probability—schematically: $${({\rm AT})}\qquad\qquad\quad As(A\rightarrow B)=P({B|A}),{\rm provided}\quad P(A)\neq 0.$$ The Thesis is taken by many to be a touchstone of any theorizing about indicative conditionals. Yet it is unclear exactly what the Thesis is . I suggest some precise statements of it. I then rebut a number of arguments that have been given in its favor. Finally, I offer a new (...) argument against it. I appeal to an old triviality result of mine against ‘Stalnaker’s Thesis’ that the probability of a conditional equals the corresponding conditional probability. I showed that for all finite-ranged probability functions, there are strictly more distinct values of conditional probabilities than there are distinct values of probabilities of conditionals, so they cannot all be paired up as Stalnaker’s Thesis promises. Conditional probabilities are too fine-grained to coincide with probabilities of conditionals across the board. If the assertibilities of conditionals are to coincide with conditional probabilities across the board, then assertibilities must be finer-grained than probabilities. I contend that this is implausible—it is surely the other way round. I generalize this argument to other interpretations of ‘ As ’, including ‘acceptability’ and ‘assentability’. I find it hard to see how any such figure of merit for conditionals can systematically align with the corresponding conditional probabilities. (shrink)

Adam Smith was a philosopher before he ever wrote about economics, yet until now there has never been a philosophical commentary on the Wealth of Nations . Samuel Fleischacker suggests that Smith's vastly influential treatise on economics can be better understood if placed in the light of his epistemology, philosophy of science, and moral theory. He lays out the relevance of these aspects of Smith's thought to specific themes in the Wealth of Nations , arguing, among other things, that (...) Smith regards social science as an extension of common sense rather than as a discipline to be approached mathematically, that he has moral as well as pragmatic reasons for approving of capitalism, and that he has an unusually strong belief in human equality that leads him to anticipate, if not quite endorse, the modern doctrine of distributive justice. Fleischacker also places Smith's views in relation to the work of his contemporaries, especially his teacher Francis Hutcheson and friend David Hume, and draws out consequences of Smith's thought for present-day political and philosophical debates. The Companion is divided into five general sections, which can be read independently of one another. It contains an index that points to commentary on specific passages in Wealth of Nations . Written in an approachable style befitting Smith's own clear yet finely honed rhetoric, it is intended for professional philosophers and political economists as well as those coming to Smith for the first time. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophical foundations of Adam Smith's concept of authority, focusing on its connections to ‘admiration' and the ‘love of systems'. Its primary objective is to analyse how Smith integrates moral, epistemological, and aesthetic principles into his political philosophy to explain the subordination conferred by wealth, which he identifies as the most effective form of authority. Drawing on the Wealth of Nations, Lectures on Jurisprudence, and Theory of Moral Sentiments, the article argues that Smith sees authority as (...) rooted in human tendencies to admire systems that harmonize and explain phenomena while evoking beauty and coherence. Furthermore, this admiration includes social and political arrangements. As a result, political systems that ‘promote happiness’ are admired for their practical benefits and their ability to evoke a sense of beauty: like finely crafted machines, they inspire admiration through their elegance and order. (shrink)

I taught for 8 years at a moderate evangelical liberal arts college. At one faculty meeting the topic turned to the challenge of dealing with controversial topics in the classroom, a pressing question given that many of our students came from extremely conservative backgrounds. One faculty member commented that he and his colleagues in the sciences avoided problems by never using the word “evolution” in the classroom. A number of us from the humanities immediately expressed shock and dismay. In response, (...) our colleague reassured us that science faculty were indeed teaching evolution, but they had learned they could be spared student resistance and parental phone calls by replacing the word “evolution” with “development.”I was reminded of this while reading Adam Shapiro’s fine book, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools. Central to Trying Biology is the argument that the Scopes Trial was not the inevitable result of an eternal con .. (shrink)

The Doomsday argument purports to show that the risk of the human species going extinct soon has been systematically underestimated. This argument has something in common with controversial forms of reasoning in other areas, including: game theoretic problems with imperfect recall, the methodology of cosmology, the epistemology of indexical belief, and the debate over so-called fine-tuning arguments for the design hypothesis. The common denominator is a certain premiss: the Self-Sampling Assumption. We present two strands of argument in favor of (...) this assumption. Through a series of thought experiments we then investigate some bizarre prima facie consequences – backward causation, psychic powers, and an apparent conflict with the Principal Principle. (shrink)

This paper traces the course of Prior’s struggles with the concepts and phenomena of modality, and the reasoning that led him to his own rather peculiar modal logic Q. I find myself in almost complete agreement with Prior’s intuitions and the arguments that rest upon them. However, I argue that those intuitions do not of themselves lead to Q, but that one must also accept a certain picture of what it is for a proposition to be possible. That picture. though, (...) is not inevitable. Rather, implicit in Prior’s own account is an alternative picture that has already appeared in various guises, most prominently in the work of Adams, Fine, Deutsch, and Almog. I, too, will opt for this alternative, though I will spell it out rather differently than these philosophers. I will then show that, starting with the alternative picture, Prior’s intuitions can lead instead to a much happier and more standard quantified modal logic than Q. The last section of the paper is devoted to the formal development of the logic and its metatheory. (shrink)

Kit Fine and Robert Adams have independently introduced a distinction between two ways in which a proposition might be true with respect to a world. A proposition is true at a world if it correctly represents the world. A proposition is true in a world, if it exists in that world and correctly represents it. In this paper, I clarify this distinction between outer and inner truth, defend it against recent charges of unintelligibly and argue that outer truth tracks (...) counterfactual possibility while inner truth tracks counter-actual possibility. This connection allows us to clarify the relationship between possibility, possible actuality and the thesis of serious actualism, which is the thesis that nothing could have had a property without existing. I show that this undermines serious actualists' scruples against reading sentences like `Even if Socrates had not existed, he might have' as expressing true and genuinely de re propositions about Socrates. More generally, the connection I draw provides the serious actualist with a justification for treating actually existing but contingent objects differently from how he treats merely possible objects. (shrink)

Like his contemporary, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams claimed that visualization is essential for creating fine art photography. But, unlike Weston, he believed that a print from a negative is like a performance from a score. In his analogy, a photographer’s visualization is like a musician’s composition: once it has been set down in a ‘score’, it can be expressively rendered by different performers, making it possible to create and critically appreciate ‘performances’ with different qualities. I argue that this music-photography (...) analogy makes Adams’s conception of photographic visualization more fruitful than Weston’s alternative. However, while I agree with Adams that a print is analogous to a performance, I criticize his idea that a negative is like a score. I argue that he holds a traditional, single-stage conception of photography, which led him to overlook a key distinction between undeveloped film and the developed negative. The multi-stage account of photography that I defend not only remedies this problem but also shows how Adams’s proposal can be fully realized in digital photography. Most significantly, it invites theorists and practitioners to expand the music-photography analogy by considering wider varieties of music—not only performances from a score. (shrink)

This fine book is a comprehensive and careful survey of the current situation in the methodology of economics. It is directed primarily at economists and students of economics. Indeed, the economist who reads it with the care it deserves will have a better grip on matters of methodology in economics than most philosophers of science, but philosophers and historians of science will also find the work rewarding and interesting. Though a few examples may be beyond the economically untutored reader, (...) they are not essential to the exposition, and other examples are accessible and enlightening: the brief discussions of Paul Samuelson's revealed preference approach and Julie Nelson's criticism of Gary Becker's work on economics of the family are good instances. Chapter 2, “The Methodological Tradition in Economics,” is a calm and brief introduction to its subject.Until quite recently practicing scientists, economists among them, and philosophers of science presupposed several strong theses about science and knowledge: that all genuine knowledge is scientific; that the objects of this knowledge are eternal and free of context; that all knowledge and all science is one, unified at least by a common scientific method; that, though not infallible, this method is progressive—it approaches truth as a limit—and operates in independence of the nonscientific beliefs and values of its practitioners. These principles cannot be presupposed today. Those who would accept any of them must be ready to meet serious criticisms. The import of this contemporary Methodenstreit as it affects economics is the dominant theme of Reflection without Rules. The reader is left with the conviction that the science of economics and the study of its methodology are inseparable and that it was only dedicated and myopic attachment to The Legend that kept this messy business at bay. Nor can there be any return to the age of innocent division of labor—economists to economics, philosophers to methodology.There are too many topics treated in the book even to list in a brief review. There are calm and clear accounts of Thomas Kuhn's work; of logical positivism ; of the deep effects of the collapse of The Legend on Walrasian equilibrium models; of Daniel Hausman's work on the nature of economics; of the strong program, which strives to reduce scientific activity to the effects of the social interests of scientists; of Alvin Goldman's reliabilism and social epistemology ; and of the important differences between pre‐ and post‐Legend views of science and knowledge.The question of values in science arises for economics in a special and pointed way, for economics studies many sorts of values. It also, at least since Adam Smith, deals in the unintended collective consequences of individual intentional actions. Economics evidently consists in the largely unintended consequences of the intentional actions of individual economists, and, once The Legend is discredited, economics is seen to navigate the very currents that it studies. This opens the door to the virtuous possibility of self‐criticism in tune with the strong naturalism of contemporary epistemology.It is not the least virtue of Reflection without Rules that its author wears his impressive erudition gracefully and well. The book is sophisticated and at the same time naive in the best sense. It will fortunately be the standard reference for work in the methodology of economics for some time to come. (shrink)

In the Typic chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant aims to enable moral judgment by means of the law of nature, which serves as the ‘type’, or formal analogue, of moral law. The present monograph is the first comprehensive study of this key text. It provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, situates it within Kant’s ethics and his theory of symbolic representation, and critically engages with the relevant secondary literature.

A fascinating exploration of the nature of consciousness This engaging and readable book provides an introduction to consciousness that does justice both to the science and to the philosophy of consciousness, that is, the mechanics of the mind and the experience of awareness. The book opens with a general discussion of the brain and of consciousness itself. Then, exploring the areas of brain science most likely to illuminate the basis of awareness, Zeman focuses on the science of sleep and waking (...) and on the science of vision. He describes healthy states and disorders--epilepsy, narcolepsy, blindsight and hallucinations after stroke--that provide insights into the capacity for consciousness and into its contents. And he tracks the evolution of the brain, the human species, and human culture and surveys the main current scientific theories of awareness, pioneering attempts to explain how the brain gives rise to experience. Zeman concludes by examining philosophical arguments about the nature of consciousness. A practicing neurologist, he animates his text with examples from the behavioral and neurological disorders of his patients and from the expanding mental worlds of young children, including his own. His book is an accessible and enlightening explanation of why we are conscious. (shrink)

In this article, I suggest that an open mind wholly unburdened by preconceptions and prejudgments is a mistaken ideal. Not only is it unrealistic; it deprives us of context and background knowledge relevant to judging well. I begin with two cases that show how the ideal of the “prejudice-free” mind, though appealing, may end up thwarting good judgment: blind assessment and “blank-slate” jury selection. I then trace the prejudice-free ideal to the Enlightenment, exposing its roots in the subject-object worldview. Drawing (...) on Heidegger, I suggest that the subject-object worldview is misguided and that all judgment involves a prior understanding of the matter we judge. To have an open mind, paradoxically, is to have a stake in defending a prior understanding, to be possessed of an understanding of the good that one wishes to promote. I then draw out the implications of this view for how we might make sense of cultural differences,... (shrink)

Argumentation Frameworks provide a fruitful basis for exploring issues of defeasible reasoning. Their power largely derives from the abstract nature of the arguments within the framework, where arguments are atomic nodes in an undifferentiated relation of attack. This abstraction conceals different senses of argument, namely a single-step reason to a claim, a series of reasoning steps to a single claim, and reasoning steps for and against a claim. Concrete instantiations encounter difficulties and complexities as a result of conflating these senses. (...) To distinguish them, we provide an approach to instantiating AFs in which the nodes are restricted to literals and rules, encoding the underlying theory directly. Arguments in these senses emerge from this framework as distinctive structures of nodes and paths. As a consequence of the approach, we reduce the effort of computing argumentation extensions, which is in contrast to other approaches. Our framework retains the theoretical and computational bene.. (shrink)

Industrial drug design methodology has undergone remarkable changes in the recent history. Up to the 1970s, the screening of large numbers of randomly selected substances in biological test system was often a crucial step in the development of novel drugs. From the early 1980s, such ‘blind’ screening was increasingly rejected by many pharmaceutical researchers and gave way to ‘rational drug design’, a method that grounds the design of new drugs on a detailed mechanistic understanding of the drug action. Surprisingly, however, (...) the chance-based method of random screening returned to center stage of industrial drug development in the 1990s in the form of ‘high-throughput screening’ (HTS). I will argue in this paper that this to-and-fro in the prominence of random screening comes with fundamental changes in the epistemic significance of chance experiments in pharmaceutical development. While up to the 1970s, random screening used to be chosen as an empirical search strategy primarily because suffi- cient knowledge of the mechanistic basis of drug action was lacking, it has turned with high-throughput screening into an experimental method that employs chance variation and testing to illuminate this mechanistic basis. As a consequence, research into the underlying mechanisms of drug action and the development of new drugs have become closely integrated. The rise of HTS therefore not only shows how chance experiments have assumed a new epistemic role in drug development. It also allows for a detailed study of the much debated emergence of a new relationship between scientific understanding and the development of technological artifacts. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘canalization’ ‐ the genetic capacity to buffer developmental pathways against mutational or environmental perturbations ‐ was first characterized in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Despite enormous subsequent progress in understanding the nature of the genetic material and the molecular basis of gene expression, there have been few attempts to interpret the classical work on canalization in molecular genetic terms. Some recent findings, however, bear on one form of canalization, ‘genetic canalization’, the stabilization of development against mutational (...) effects. These data indicate that co‐expressed paralogous genes can function as mutual ‘back‐up’ elements in developmental processes. Paralogues, however, are far from the only basis of canalization: other genetic sources can be readily envisaged and some of these are described here. The evolutionary questions about genetic canalization and the mechanistic questions about developmental instability that still need to be addressed are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

The author offers a comprehensive interpretation of Aquinas's claim that the human intellect is immaterial and assessment of his arguments on behalf of this claim, also positioning Aquinas's thought alongside recent work in hylomorphic metaphysics and philosophy of mind.