Recently, there has been an increased interest in folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility from both philosophers and psychologists. We aim to extend our understanding of folk intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility using an individual differences approach. Building off previous research suggesting that there are systematic differences in folks’ philosophically relevant intuitions, we present new data indicating that the personality trait extraversion predicts, to a significant extent, those who have compatibilist versus incompatibilist intuitions. We argue that identifying groups (...) of people who have specific and diverse intuitions about freedom and moral responsibility offers the possibility for theoretical advancement in philosophy and psychology, and may in part explain why some perennial philosophical debates have proven intractable. (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)

We study the lattice of extensions of four-valued Belnap–Dunn logic, called super-Belnap logics by analogy with superintuitionistic logics. We describe the global structure of this lattice by splitting it into several subintervals, and prove some new completeness theorems for super-Belnap logics. The crucial technical tool for this purpose will be the so-called antiaxiomatic (or explosive) part operator. The antiaxiomatic (or explosive) extensions of Belnap–Dunn logic turn out to be of particular interest owing to their connection to graph theory: the lattice (...) of finitary antiaxiomatic extensions of Belnap–Dunn logic is isomorphic to the lattice of upsets in the homomorphism order on finite graphs (with loops allowed). In particular, there is a continuum of finitary super-Belnap logics. Moreover, a non-finitary super-Belnap logic can be constructed with the help of this isomorphism. As algebraic corollaries we obtain the existence of a continuum of antivarieties of De Morgan algebras and the existence of a prevariety of De Morgan algebras which is not a quasivariety. (shrink)

In this paper I formulate Minimal Requirements for Candidate Predictions in quantum field theories, inspired by viewing the standard model as an effective field theory. I then survey standard effective field theory regularization procedures, to see if the vacuum expectation value of energy density ) is a quantity that meets these requirements. The verdict is negative, leading to the conclusion that \ is not a physically significant quantity in the standard model. Rigorous extensions of flat space quantum field theory eliminate (...) \ from their conceptual framework, indicating that it lacks physical significance in the framework of quantum field theory more broadly. This result has consequences for problems in cosmology and quantum gravity, as it suggests that the correct solution to the cosmological constant problem involves a revision of the vacuum concept within quantum field theory. (shrink)

Romantic love is a phenomenon of immense interest to the general public as well as to scholars in several disciplines. It is known to be present in almost all human societies and has been studied from a number of perspectives. In this integrative review, we bring together what is known about romantic love using Tinbergen’s “four questions” framework originating from evolutionary biology. Under the first question, related to mechanisms, we show that it is caused by social, psychological mate choice, genetic, (...) neural, and endocrine mechanisms. The mechanisms regulating psychopathology, cognitive biases, and animal models provide further insights into the mechanisms that regulate romantic love. Under the second question, related to development, we show that romantic love exists across the human lifespan in both sexes. We summarize what is known about its development and the internal and external factors that influence it. We consider cross-cultural perspectives and raise the issue of evolutionary mismatch. Under the third question, related to function, we discuss the fitness-relevant benefits and costs of romantic love with reference to mate choice, courtship, sex, and pair-bonding. We outline three possible selective pressures and contend that romantic love is a suite of adaptions and by-products. Under the fourth question, related to phylogeny, we summarize theories of romantic love’s evolutionary history and show that romantic love probably evolved in concert with pair-bonds in our recent ancestors. We describe the mammalian antecedents to romantic love and the contribution of genes and culture to the expression of modern romantic love. We advance four potential scenarios for the evolution of romantic love. We conclude by summarizing what Tinbergen’s four questions tell us, highlighting outstanding questions as avenues of potential future research, and suggesting a novel ethologically informed working definition to accommodate the multi-faceted understanding of romantic love advanced in this review. (shrink)

I draw on my experiences of passing as non-disabled to explain how a disabled person can hide his disability, why he might do so, and what costs and risks he and others might face along the way. Passing as non-disabled can bring greater social acceptance and inclusion in joint-projects, an enhanced sense of belonging, pride and of self-worth, and an easier time forming and maintaining personal relationships. Yet hiding one’s disability can also undermine some of these same values when doing (...) so, for example, prevents someone from living up to normal social expectations or from sharing important aspects of himself with others. Hiding a disability can also interfere with a person’s self-respect, self-acceptance, integrity, and self-development. Although the chapter does not take a stand on whether hiding a disability is, overall, prudent, wise or morally justified, it draws out some lessons about disability from why someone might want to hide it. (shrink)

Science and technology have been integral issues of development cooperation for more than sixty years. Contrary to early efforts’ transfer of established technologies from the West to developing countries, contemporary technology aspirations increasingly articulate and practice the Global South as a live laboratory for technological experimentation. This approach is especially furthered by a group of private foundations and philanthrocapitalists whose endeavors in developing countries are, like their companies, shaped by logics of the individual, the market, and of societal progress through (...) technological innovation and experimentation. This article draws upon critical intellectual thought about the political and social ramifications of technology to reflect on the renascent role of technology in development cooperation. It traces the discourses and practices of philanthrocapitalist organizations, in particular the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to understand how their experimentalist technology aspirations influence human life and relations in the Global South. This article argues that this newfound focus on technology in development cooperation may challenge the essence of democracy, reduce participation, and have undesirable consequences for populations in the Global South. (shrink)

Although it is argued that social justice is a core concern for the discipline, nursing has not generally played a leadership role in the responses to many of the greatest social problems of our time. These include the accelerated rate of climate change, pandemic threats, systemic racism, growing health and social inequities, and the regulation of new technologies to ensure an equitable future ‘for all.’ In nursing codes of ethics, administration, education, policies, and practice, social justice is often claimed to (...) be a core value, yet it is rarely contextualized by philosophical or theoretical underpinnings. It appears that nurses’ commitment to social justice may stem more from a penchant for ‘doing good’ than an attempt to explore, understand, and enact what is meant by social justice from an ontological, epistemological, and methodological perspective. We contend that the dominance of a human science perspective in nursing contributes to a narrow definition of health and relegates many issues central to social justice to the margins of nurses’ care. In this article, we explore how the focus on ‘the human’ in the human science perspective may not only be limiting the capacity of nurses to develop strategies to adequately address social injustice, but in some instances, direct nurses to contribute to their very reproduction. We suggest that a critical interrogation of this human‐centric hegemony can identify avenues of rupture and introduce posthumanism as an additional philosophical perspective for consideration to help bridge the human‐social divide. (shrink)

We show that if among the tested hypotheses the number of true hypotheses is not equal to the number of false hypotheses, then Neyman-Pearson theory of testing hypotheses does not warrant minimal epistemic reliability (the feature of driving to true conclusions more often than to false ones). We also argue that N-P does not protect from the possible negative effects of the pragmatic value-laden unequal setting of error probabilities on N-P’s epistemic reliability. Most importantly, we argue that in the case (...) of a negative impact no methodological adjustment is available to neutralize it, so in such cases the discussed pragmatic-value-ladenness of N-P inevitably compromises the goal of attaining truth. (shrink)

In On the People’s Terms, Philip Pettit incorporates the Sieyèsian notion of constituent power into his constitutional theory of non-domination. In this article, I argue that Emmanuel Sieyès’s understanding of liberty precludes such an appropriation. While a republican, his conceptualisation of liberty in the face of commercial society stood apart from theories of civic vigilance, preferring instead to disentangle individuals from politics and maximise what he understood to be their non-political freedoms. Sieyès saw that liberty was heightened through relations of (...) representation and commercial dependency. This conception of liberty was pivotal to the identity of the nation, and so allowed Sieyès to assess forms of collective injustice committed by the French nobility. It also provided the normative foundation of his theory of constituent power. For Sieyès, constituent power guarded against legislative excess in a decidedly minimal sense, intending instead to separate citizens from the political sphere so they were not burdened with ongoing participation or public vigilance. (shrink)

Drones deployed to monitor endangered species often crash. These crashes teach us that using drones for conservation is a contingent practice ensnaring humans, technologies, and animals. This article advances a crash theory in which pilots, conservation drones, and endangered megafauna are relata, or related actants, that intra-act, cocreating each other and a mutually constituted phenomena. These phenomena are entangled, with either reciprocal dependencies or erosive entrapments. The crashing of conservation drones and endangered species requires an ethics of care, repair, or (...) reworlding. Diffractions, disruptions that expose difference, result from crashes and reveal the precarious manner by which technologies, laws, and discourses bring nature and culture together. To support crash theory, this article presents three ethnographic cases. A drone crash in the United Kingdom near white rhinoceroses while building machine learning training data exhibits the involvement of the electromagnetic spectrum; the threat of crashes in the Pacific Northwest near Puget Sound orcas discloses the impacts of drone laws; and drone crashes in Sri Lanka among Asian elephants presents the problems of technoliberal ideals around programming natural worlds. Throughout the article, a methodology is developed, parallelism, which attends to the material similarities in lateral phenomena. (shrink)

This article seeks to challenge the regnant liberal orthodoxy that human rights are the highest and most important of our social virtues. It questions the individualist assumptions of such universa...

Smilansky notes that wrongdoers seem to lack any entitlement to complain about being treated in the ways that they have treated others. However, it also seems impermissible to treat agents in certain ways, and this impermissibility would give wrongdoers who are themselves wronged grounds for complaint. This article solves this apparent paradox by arguing that what is at issue is not the right simply to make complaints, but the right to have one's demands respected. Agents must accept the authority of (...) others to make second-personal demands on them before they can expect others to treat their own demands as legitimate. Wrongdoers’ previous wrongdoing shows they do not treat others’ demands as authoritative. However, as they are still beings with dignity, which acts as a source of moral reasons for others, wronging them remains impermissible. (shrink)

The paper aims at an analysis of the concept of landscape, offering an ontological approach. Our claim is that such a perspective is hardly ever assumed in philosophical aesthetics, even if theories of landscape appreciation are in fact based on tacit ontological assumptions. We argue that having an explicit ontology of landscapes is important, for aesthetic theories of their appreciation are often attacked in terms of the problems caused by their tacit ontologies. Therefore, we sketch an “Experience Ontology” that serves (...) as an alternative to the ontologies implied in the two best known aesthetic approaches to landscapes. We contend that a landscape should not be conceived of as an object or view but as a way of experiencing one’s surroundings, and we argue that our theory is not only free from the shortcomings of the two dominant theories but that it also corresponds better to everyday intuitions. (shrink)

Donnellan makes a convincing case for two distinct uses ofdefinite descriptions. But does the difference between the usesreflects an ambiguity in the semantics of descriptions? This paperapplies a linguistic test for ambiguity to argue that the differencebetween the uses is not semantically significant.

Andy Egan has recently presented a prominent objection to causal decision theory. However, in this paper, I argue that this objection fails if CDT’s proponent accepts the plausible view that decision-theoretic options are intentions. This result both provides a defence of CDT against a prominent objection and highlights the importance of resolving the nature of decision-theoretic options.

Monothematic delusions are delusions whose contents pertain to a single subject matter. Examples include Capgras delusion, the delusion that a loved one has been replaced by an impostor, and Cotard delusion, the delusion that one is dead or does not exist. Two-factor accounts of such delusions hold that they are the result of both an experiential deficit, for instance flattened affect, coupled with an aberrant cognitive response to that deficit. In this paper we develop a new expressivist two-factor account of (...) delusion. In contrast to existing endorsement and explanationist accounts, which treat delusions as either explanations or endorsements of the contents of these disordered experiences, we hold that delusional beliefs have an expressive function: they characterize, in impressionistic terms, what the subject’s experience is like for them. We show how our account improves upon existing two-factor views in explaining the central features of monothematic delusions, in particular the way in which delusional subjects fall short of the ideal of rationality. (shrink)

"[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."—Karsten Harries, _The New York Times Book Review_ With _The Presence of Myth_, Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of culture which (...) extends to all realms of human intercourse—intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional.... [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."—_Anglican Theological Review_. (shrink)

In: M. Carrier, D. Howard & J. Kourany (eds), Science and the Social: Knowledge, Epistemic Demands, and Social Values, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press (im Erscheinen).

On the standard conception of risk, the degree to which an event is risky is the function of the probability of that event. Recently, Duncan Pritchard has challenged this view, proposing instead a modal account on which risk is conceived of in terms of modal ordering (2015). On this account, the degree of risk for any given event is a function of its modal distance from the actual world, not its likelihood. Pritchard's main motivation for this is that the probabilistic (...) account cannot always explain our judgements about risk. In certain cases, equally probable events are not judged to be equally risky. Here I will argue that Pritchard's account succumbs to a similar problem. Put simply, there are cases in which judgements about risk decouple from both probability and modal ordering. Thus, if we want a theory of risk that can explain our judgements about risk, neither the probabilistic nor modal account is successful. (shrink)

This handbook presents, in an unassuming format, an account of Philo's achievements.

Kartezjanizm i antykartezjanizm locke’owskiej koncepcji tożsamości osobowej Niniejszy artykuł koncentruje się na zależnościach pomiędzy Locke’owskim i kartezjańskim pojmowaniem tożsamości osobowej. Wbrew częstym odczytaniom, różnica pomiędzy nimi nie daje się sprowadzić do prostego przeciwstawienia substancjalizmu i empiryzmu. Locke nie rezygnuje ze stanowiska substancjalistycznego, jednakże rozgranicza dwie sfery — naturalnego, bazującego na doświadczeniu poznania oraz filozoficznych spekulacji, w których stara się przedstawić racjonalną i zgodną ze swym programem epistemologicznym interpretację dogmatów religijnych. Krytyka Locke’a dotyczy możliwości istnienia rzeczy myślącej jako substancji istniejącej niezależnie (...) od ciała, natomiast rozbudowaniu w stosunku do filozofii kartezjańskiej ulega opis różnicowania się doświadczenia i ludzkiej subiektywności, zaś pojęcie tożsamości osobowej zyskuje eksplikację na czterech uzupełniających się poziomach: psychologicznym, biologicznym, społeczno-prawnym i religijnym. (shrink)

Research necessarily entails the close interrelation of concepts and arguments, including solutions to a range of meta-questions, whether acknowledged explicitly or not. Despite this, few detailed accounts currently exist that support researchers to develop their complex conceptual architectures, especially in critical realist spheres. Indeed, many published accounts often omit much of this ‘messiness’ that sits behind, yet is foundational to, research projects. Those accounts that do seek to portray how/why researchers have made decisions (e.g. about connections between research philosophy, methodology, (...) methods, theory and empirical evidence) tend to focus on one set of meta-questions, or occasionally on the relationships between two sets, at a time. Therefore, this paper presents a flexible framework – supported by specific examples from studies – that we hope will be useful in supporting researchers from all traditions, but especially critical realists, to carefully think through and develop more holistic connections in their conceptual architecture. (shrink)

In the contemporary fear of death literature, few if any discuss what implications insights from the philosophical literature on emotions might have for arguments about the fear of death’s rationality. I remedy that here. I discuss two types of arguments to conclusions about the fear of death’s rationality. One type is Badness Arguments. The other is Epicurean Arguments. Both argument types have contradictory conclusions. Both employ different conditional claims as their crucial premise. And both presuppose that there is some relation (...) between the fear of death’s rationality and the value of death. I argue these arguments share another feature: they are unsound. This is because the crucial premise of each argument type is false given some plausible analyses of the several conceptions of emotional rationality found in the fear of death literature, analyses that themselves follow from several ubiquitous assumptions about the nature of emotions. (shrink)

Today more than ever Marxism is profoundly in need of a full and precise modern reappraisal. In his belief that this may only be accomplished along with an examination of the "humanistic" young Marx, Adam Schaff presents in this volume an illumination of the thinker's early work and its relationship to the world-shaking economic philosophy that stemmed from it.

The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as (...) justification or understanding, are distinctively valuable. We will call the general question of why knowledge is valuable the value problem. (shrink)

It remains at best controversial to claim, non-figuratively, that plants are cognitive agents. At the same time, it is taken as trivially true that many animals are cognitive agents, arguably through an implicit or explicit appeal to natural science. Yet, any given definition of cognition implicates at least some further processes, such as perception, action, memory, and learning, which must be observed either behaviorally, psychologically, neuronally, or otherwise physiologically. Crucially, however, for such observations to be intelligible, they must be counted (...) as evidence for some model. These models in turn point to homologies of physiology and behavior that facilitate the attribution of cognition to some non-human animals. But, if one is dealing with a model of animal cognition, it is tautological that only animals can provide evidence, and absurd to claim that plants can. The more substantive claim that, given a general model of cognition, only animals but not plants can provide evidence, must be evaluated on its merits. As evidence mounts that plants meet established criteria of cognition, from physiology to behavior, they continue to be denied entry into the cognitive club. We trace this exclusionary tendency back to Aristotle, and attempt to counter it by drawing on the philosophy of modelling and a range of findings from plant science. Our argument illustrates how a difference in degree between plant and animals is typically mistaken for a difference in kind. (shrink)

Grounded in what Alan Wertheimer terms the nonworseness claim, it is thought by some philosophers that what will be referred to herein as better-than-permissible acts —acts that, if undertaken, would make another or others better off than they would be were an alternative but morally permissible act to be undertaken—are necessarily morally permissible. What, other than a bout of irrationality, it may be thought, would lead one to hold that an act (such as outsourcing production to a sweatshop in a (...) developing country) that produces more benefits for others than an act that is itself morally permissible (such as not doing business in the developing country at all) with respect to those same others, is not morally permissible? In this article, I argue that each of the two groups of philosophers that are most likely to accept the nonworseness claim—consequentialists and non-consequentialists—have reason to reject it, and thereby also have reason to reject the belief that better-than-permissible acts are necessarily morally permissible. (shrink)

I take as my starting point the evident fact that people are capable of modifying their beliefs in response to reasons in the course of deliberation. This fact is sufficient to make notions such as responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness applicable to people with regard to their beliefs. If a state is such, and one is such, that one is capable of determining it through one’s best evaluations of reasons in the course of deliberation, then even if it isn’t under one’s (...) voluntary control, it is attributable to one as something for which one is appropriately held accountable. There is thus conceptual space for the possibility of one’s conducting oneself poorly or well with regard to it, and accordingly for the application of praise or criticism. And there is room for an evaluation of whether one has conducted oneself responsibly or irresponsibly – that is, whether one has proceeded in a way that takes proper account of the considerations which one reasonably could have been expected to take account of, or not. (shrink)

This article considers the relevance of time theory for Beck's theory of reflexive modernization and vice versa. It focuses in particular on discontinuity in the context of continuity, on decontextualization, naturalization and responsibility as key concerns of both perspectives on the industrial way of life. It makes explicit the temporal underpinnings of that cultural form with respect to five Cs: the creation of time to human design (C1), the commodification of time (C2), the compression of time (C3), the control of (...) time (C4) and the colonization of time (C5). It concludes that explicit concern with temporal relations shows reflexive modernization in action and facilitates improved knowledge for deliberative change. (shrink)