When I classify Fluffy as a cat, I appear to do so out of an appreciation of a prior metaphysical fact, namely, that she has a nature or essence common to creatures we classify as cats. Locke turns this picture on its head. Our actual practices of naming and sorting individuals into kinds proceed according to ideas in the mind. As Locke puts it, species (kinds) are ‘the Workmanship of the Understanding,’ not the workmanship of nature, because their essences consist (...) in abstract ideas, or ‘nominal essences,’ we make. Many take Locke to mean that the observable similarities and differences between things leave it undetermined how we are to group and distinguish them, so that classification is, and must be, a matter of convention. And while Locke never denies that individuals have real essences, it is argued that knowledge of them would not reveal natural boundaries, either. On this influential reading, nature does not draw boundaries between kinds, and she makes this fact apparent to us. I argue that Locke’s claim that nature does not determine the ‘Boundaries of the Species of Things’ should be understood as the claim that nature does not draw the variable boundaries set out in the nominal essences we make. Differences in our nominal essences reflect differences in speakers’ knowledge of external ‘standards,’ which we latch on to by way of their ‘leading’ qualities, which present the mind with a limited number of unique and highly salient bases for classification. On my reading, nature may very well draw boundaries of her own. (shrink)

It is often claimed that classification, on Locke’s view, proceeds by attending to similarities between things, and it is widely argued that nothing about the sensible similarities between things determines how we are to sort them, in which case sorting substances at the phenomenal level must be arbitrary. However, acquaintance with the “internal” or hidden qualities of substances might yet reveal objective boundaries. Citing what I refer to as the Watch passage in Locke’s Essay (henceforth Watches), many commentators claim that (...) classification at the microphysical level must also be arbitrary. They conclude that sorting is arbitrary at any level of description. I refer to this as the standard reading of Locke on classification. In this paper I argue that Locke does not claim that sorting is arbitrary, either at the phenomenal level, or at the microphysical level. First, Locke does not claim in Watches that sorting is arbitrary at the microphysical level. The existence or nonexistence of objective boundaries at the microphysical level is not Watches’ topic and the passage is in fact silent on that question. Here, the standard reading mistakes a claim about the nature of the task of locating “specific differences” for a claim about the nature of the task of classification. This diagnosis proves instructive, for I argue that a similar conflation underwrites the standard reading’s claim that sorting at the phenomenal level must be arbitrary. Far from arbitrarily choosing how to sort things in terms of their phenomenal similarities, Locke thought that the mind simply follows nature’s lead. This characterization of the mind’s activity, I go on to argue, accords well with Locke’s claim that species are the workmanship of the understanding. (shrink)

I argue that Locke’s various descriptions of real essence pick out one and the same thing, namely a nature that can be ascribed to many things, and in terms of which we can get matters of classification right or wrong. On my reading, Locke does not attack real essences of the sort that are the essences of real species, but rather the presumption that a sorting according to our species concepts and their names is a sorting of things according to (...) their real essences. And the lesson of Locke’s empirical argument against that presumption, I argue, is that our species concepts often function more like higher taxa, grouping together things that knowledge of their real essences would distinguish into distinct lowest species. (shrink)

I argue for an interpretation of Hume on which our confused notions of causal necessity find their model in Hume's notion of logical necessity: our minds react in similar ways to constant conjunctions, on the one hand, and genuine cases of inseparability between ideas, on the other, in light of which we mistakenly place relations of necessitation between objects we call cause and effect. I argue that my account provides a more satisfying explanation of the mismatch between the feeling that (...) provides our true idea of necessary connection and the confused notions of necessary connection held by philosophers and the vulgar. (shrink)

In spring 2020, COVID-19 and the ensuing social distancing and stay-at-home orders instigated abrupt changes to employment and educational infrastructure, leading to uncertainty, concern, and stress among United States college students. The media consumption patterns of this and other social groups across the globe were affected, with early evidence suggesting viewers were seeking both pandemic-themed media and reassuring, familiar content. A general increase in media consumption, and increased consumption of specific types of content, may have been due to media use (...) for coping strategies. This paper examines the relationship between the stress and anxiety of university students and their strategic use of media for coping during initial social distancing periods in March-April 2020 using data from a cross-sectional survey. We examine links between specific types of media use with psychological well-being concepts, and examine the moderating roles of traits (hope, optimism, and resilience) as buffers against negative relationships between stress and anxiety and psychological well-being. Our findings indicate that stress was linked to more hedonic and less eudaimonic media use, as well as more avoidant and escapist media-based coping. Anxiety, on the other hand, was linked to more media use in general, specifically more eudaimonic media use and a full range of media-based coping strategies. In turn, escapist media was linked to negative affect, while reframing media and eudaimonic media were linked to positive affect. Avoidant coping was tied to poorer mental health, and humor coping was tied to better mental health. Hedonic and need-satisfying media use were linked to more flourishing. Hope, optimism, and resilience were all predictive of media use, with the latter two traits moderating responses to stress and anxiety. The findings give a nuanced portrait of college students’ media use during a pandemic-induced shutdown, showing that media use is closely intertwined with well-being in both adaptive and maladaptive patterns. (shrink)

Pediatric residents experience ethical dilemmas and moral distress during training. Few studies have identified meaningful methods in reducing moral distress in pediatric trainees. The authors aimed to determine how residents perceive ethics case discussions, whether such a program affects trainee ethics knowledge and perceived moral distress, and if residents’ perceived moral distress changes before, during, and after a discussion series. Participants included pediatric residents in a single residency program. Five separate 1-hour sessions were presented over a 5-month period. Each session (...) consisted of a case presentation by a resident developed under the guidance of an ethicist. Multidisciplinary services and content experts were present during sessions. Baseline, postsession, and final surveys were distributed to resident attendees. Open-ended responses were recorded. When comparing baseline and final responses, the only significance was increased preparedness to navigate ethical decisions (p = 0.004). A 10.2% decline was observed in perceived moral distress. An increase in ethics knowledge was observed. Residents favored case-based, multidisciplinary discussions. Residents desire more sessions, time for small-group discussions, and legal insight. Satisfaction was high with 90.7% of respondents feeling better prepared to address ethical concerns. Pediatric trainees desire case-based ethics training that incorporates small-group discussions and insight from multidisciplinary topic experts. (shrink)

How do we teach for human dignity in a context where life is, generally speaking, not treated as precious? How do we carve spaces for humanity amidst inhumane contexts? In this paper, five experienced teachers share how they work from the cracks to expand spaces for human dignity in their schools. They write and act as teacher-philosophers, dually considering it means to teach for human dignity and practically speaking how it can be done.

In his new book the eminent Kant scholar Henry Allison provides an innovative and comprehensive interpretation of Kant's concept of freedom. The author analyzes the concept and discusses the role it plays in Kant's moral philosophy and psychology. He also considers in full detail the critical literature on the subject from Kant's own time to the present day. In the first part Professor Allison argues that at the centre of the Critique of Pure Reason there is the foundation (...) for a coherent general theory of rational agency. The second part employs this account of rational agency as a key to understanding Kant's concept of moral agency and associated moral psychology. The third part focuses on Kant's attempt to ground both moral law and freedom in the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason. This is a major contribution to the interpretation of Kant which will be of special interest to scholars and graduate students of Kant's moral theory. (shrink)

This book constitutes one of the most important contributions to recent Kant scholarship. In it, one of the pre-eminent interpreters of Kant, Henry Allison, offers a comprehensive, systematic, and philosophically astute account of all aspects of Kant's views on aesthetics. The first part of the book analyses Kant's conception of reflective judgment and its connections with both empirical knowledge and judgments of taste. The second and third parts treat two questions that Allison insists must be kept distinct: the (...) normativity of pure judgments of taste, and the moral and systematic significance of taste. The fourth part considers two important topics often neglected in the study of Kant's aesthetics: his conceptions of fine art, and the sublime. (shrink)

The debate on love's reasons ignores unrequited love, which—I argue—can be as genuine and as valuable as reciprocated love. I start by showing that the relationship view of love cannot account for either the reasons or the value of unrequited love. I then present the simple property view, an alternative to the relationship view that is beset with its own problems. In order to solve these problems, I present a more sophisticated version of the property view that integrates ideas from (...) different property theorists in the love literature. However, even this more sophisticated property view falls short in accounting for unrequited love's reasons. In response, I develop a new version of the property view that I call the experiential view. On this view, we love a person not only in virtue of properties shaped by and experienced in a reciprocal loving relationship, but also in virtue of perspectival properties, whose value can be properly assessed also outside of a reciprocal loving relationship. The experiential view is the only view that can account not only for reciprocated love's reasons, but also for unrequited love's reasons. (shrink)

In a time when worlds, communities and subjects are increasingly presented as ‘vulnerable’, much remains to be said about the distinctly feminine shapes of ‘vulnerability’; weakness, softness, permeability, a sense of being affected, imprinted upon, or entered and shattered. While this presumed vulnerability of the feminine body has often been the basis of feminist sexual politics, feminist goals of autonomy often presume an internal and external undoing of vulnerability as such. Drawing on ethnographic research with queer femmes and building on (...) Sara Ahmed’s (2004a) idea that vulnerability is a ‘particular kind of bodily relation to the world’, this experimental article challenges the popularised idea that to queer femininity requires action, intention, agency and strength. Extending the work of femme authors Dorothy Allison and Ann Cvetkovich, the article considers the cracks in such femme politics, and focuses on how femme feelings of vulnerability take shape and figure in movements, and become what sticks between femme bodies of flesh and knowledge. Attending to the sensuous canvas of skin, to high-heeled movement and desire for both sex and sisterhood, these are notes on the work of affect in what is here called femmebodiment towards a somatechnical understanding of femininity. (shrink)

The axiomatic presentation of modal systems and the standard formulations of natural deduction and sequent calculus for modal logic are reviewed, together with the difficulties that emerge with these approaches. Generalizations of standard proof systems are then presented. These include, among others, display calculi, hypersequents, and labelled systems, with the latter surveyed from a closer perspective.

I present and develop the view that omissions are de re possibilities of actual events. Omissions do not literally fail to occur; rather, they possibly occur. An omission is a tripartite metaphysical entity composed of an actual event, a possible event, and a contextually specified counterpart relation between them. This view resolves ontological, causal, and semantic puzzles about omissions, and also accounts for important data about moral responsibility for outcomes resulting from omissions.

A way is found to add axioms to sequent calculi that maintains the eliminability of cut, through the representation of axioms as rules of inference of a suitable form. By this method, the structural analysis of proofs is extended from pure logic to free-variable theories, covering all classical theories, and a wide class of constructive theories. All results are proved for systems in which also the rules of weakening and contraction can be eliminated. Applications include a system of predicate logic (...) with equality in which also cuts on the equality axioms are eliminated. (shrink)

Geometric theories are presented as contraction- and cut-free systems of sequent calculi with mathematical rules following a prescribed rule-scheme that extends the scheme given in Negri and von Plato. Examples include cut-free calculi for Robinson arithmetic and real closed fields. As an immediate consequence of cut elimination, it is shown that if a geometric implication is classically derivable from a geometric theory then it is intuitionistically derivable.

Though Arthur Prior is now best known for his founding of modern temporal logic and hybrid logic, much of his early philosophical career was devoted to history of logic and historical logic. This interest laid the foundations for both of his ground-breaking innovations in the 1950s and 1960s. Because of the important rôle played by Prior's research in ancient and medieval logic in his development of temporal and hybrid logic, any student of Prior, temporal logic, or hybrid logic should be (...) familiar with the medieval logicians and their work. In this article we give an overview of Prior's work in ancient and medieval logic. (shrink)

Charles Darwin's curiosity had a remarkable childlike enthusiasm driven by an almost compulsive appetite for a constant process of discovery, which he never satiated despite his many voyages. He would puzzle about the smallest things, from the wonders of barnacles to the different shapes, colours and textures of the beetles which he obsessively collected, from flowers and stems to birds, music and language, and would dedicate years to understanding the potential significance of everything he saw. Darwin's findings and theories relied (...) heavily on that same curiosity, on seeking and answering questions, however long these would take to clarify. His son Francis Darwin often recalls how "he would ask himself 'now what do you want to say' and his answer written down would often disentangle the confusion". In fact, "disentangling confusions" seems to have been the driving force behind Darwin's scientific pursuits, as he was struck with bewilderment when contemplating the luxuriousness of life. It was also the impetus for this book. The true implications of Darwin's legacy remain as controversial to the critics of our time as they were to his contemporaries. Darwin's impact within and beyond the biological sciences is both daunting and exhilarating, and attests to the need for an interdisciplinary approach by remaining a challenge to many scholars in the most diverse fields. The recent revival of his theories has opened a Pandora's box of different theoretical studies that are particularly receptive to exploring new and exciting angles of research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kant's Critique of Berkeley HENRY E. ALLISON THE CLAIMTHAT KANT'S IDEALISM,or at least certain strands of it, is essentially identical to that of Berkeley has a long and distinguished history. It was first voiced by several of Kant's contemporaries such as Mendelssohn, Herder, Hamann, Pistorius and Eberhard who attacked the alleged subjectivism of the Critique of Pure Reason. 1 This viewpoint found its sharpest contemporary expression in the (...) notorious Garve-Feder review to which Kant responded at length in the Prolegomena. In subsequent times it has been championed by Schopenhauer, and most nineteenth century German commentators on the relation between the two philosophers. 2 In addition, it has been, and continues to be, the prevailing view of the vast majority of British writers on Kant, including, with significant qualifications, Norman Kemp Smith. 3 This tradition continues despite the fact that Kant specifically, and in no uncertain terms, repudiated this identification in the Prolegomena and the second edition of the Critique. In both works he responds to the charges of subjectivism, and in so doing distinguishes his position from that of Berkeley, who in the eighteenth century was commonly regarded as a solipsist and denier of the "external world." 4 In contra-distinction to Kant's own critical or transcendental idealism, which explains the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge within the realm of possible experience, Berkeley is characterized as a "dogmatic" or "visionary idealist." He is judged guilty of "degrading bodies to mere illusion" (B69), of regarding things in space as "merely imaginary entities" (B274), and of holding with all "genuine idealists" that: "all knowledge through the senses and experience is i Cf. Hans Vaihinger, Commentar zu Kant's Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (Stuttgart, Berlin, Leipzig, 1892), II, 494-505. Cf. Friederich Fredericks, Der Phainomenale Idealisraus Berkeley's und Kant's (Berlin, 1871); Robert Zimmerman, "Ober Kant's Widerlegung des Idealismus yon Berkeley" (Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, Philox.-hist. Kl.), LXVIII (1871); Gustav Dieckert, tiber dos Verhiiltnis des Berkeleyschen ldealismus zu Kantischen Vernun]tkritik (Konitz, 1888). Tiffs is a consequence of the general British tendency to view Kant in phenomenalist terms. A typical recent example is found in P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London, 1966). Kemp Smith in his Commentary to Kant's Critique o[ Pure Reason (2nd ed., rev., 1923) takes greaZ pains to distinguish between the subjectivist strand in Kant's thought, which is essentially identical to Berkeley's position, and the genuine critical doctrine which stands side by side with it in the text. 9 Cf. I-I.M. Bracken, The Early Reception of Berkeley's Materialism 1710-1733, rev. ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965). [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY nothing but sheer illusion, and only in the ideas of pure understanding is there truth" (374). 5 One of the chief reasons for the continuation of the Kant-Berkeley tradition is that these, and similar statements about Berkeley, which we find in these works and in Kant's correspondenc e with Beck, have not been taken very seriously by Kant's critics. They are usually dismissed as obvious misinterpretations, due to Kant's ignorance of Berkeley's actual writings, and of his reliance upon distorted second and third hand accounts of Berkeley's thought such as is to be found in Beattie. Furthermore, this view is often supported by the philological reflection that Kant did not read English, and that Berkeley's writings were not yet available in German translation. 6 The philological argument, however, loses much of its force when we consider that there was indeed a German translation of Berkeley's Dialogues, which although apparently unknown to nineteenth century scholars, was readily accessible to Kant. This is to be found, together with a translation of Collier's Clavis Universalis and critical analyses, in a work by the professor of philosophy at Rostock, Johann Christian Eschenbach, entitled: Samlung der vornehmsten Schri[tsteller die die tFirklichkeit ihres eignen K~rpers und der ganzen Ki~rperwelt leugnen (Rostock, 1756). Furthermore, in addition to this work, which was probably known to Kant, there is Berkeley's important Latin work, De Motu (1721), as well as French translations of many of... (shrink)

We present Prior's discussion of a puzzle about valditity found in the writings of the fourteenth-century French logician Jean Buridan and show how Prior's study of this puzzle may have provided the conceptual inspiration for his development of hybrid logic.

This paper throws some light on the nature of argumentation, its use and advantages, within the setting of doctor–patient interaction. It claims that argumentation can be used by doctors to offer patients reasons that work as ontological conditions for enhancing the decision making process, as well as to preserve the institutional nature of their relationship with patients. In support of these claims, selected arguments from real-life interactions are presented in the second part of the paper, and analysed by means of (...) a model of argumentation borrowed from classical rhetoric, and refined according to the modern orientation of the pragma-dialectic approach. (shrink)

There are several lessons that can already be drawn from the current research programs on strong AI and building conscious machines, even if they arguably have not produced fruits yet. The first one is that functionalist approaches to consciousness do not account for the key importance of subjective experience and can be easily confounded by the way in which algorithms work and succeed. Authenticity and emergence are key concepts that can be useful in discerning valid approaches versus invalid ones and (...) can clarify instances where algorithms are considered conscious, such as Sophia or LaMDA. Subjectivity and embeddedness become key notions that should also lead us to re-examine the ethics of decision delegation. In addition, the focus on subjective experience shifts what is relevant in our understanding of ourselves as human beings and as an image of God, namely, in de-emphasizing intellectuality in favor of experience and contemplation over action. (shrink)

Several commentators have argued that Husserl's phenomenological project is compromised or even destroyed by Wittgenstein's critical inquiries into our use of psychological concepts. In contrast to oppositional interpretations, this paper explicates certain crucial connections between Husserl's phenomenology and Wittgenstein's late thinking—shared views that concern the embodied nature of selfhood and our relations to other selves. In line with certain recent contributions, I argue that there are important similarities between Husserl's analysis of these phenomena and Wittgenstein's remarks on our use of (...) language and that these connections, when noticed and explicated, can help us avoid simplified, barren contrasts and get clear about our actual philosophical alternatives. (shrink)

A constructive definition of the continuum based on formal topology is given and its basic properties studied. A natural notion of Cauchy sequence is introduced and Cauchy completeness is proved. Other results include elementary proofs of the Baire and Cantor theorems. From a classical standpoint, formal reals are seen to be equivalent to the usual reals. Lastly, the relation of real numbers as a formal space to other approaches to constructive real numbers is determined.

Ensure learners truly understand all the essential TOK foundations and provide a practical learning scaffold to confidently progress them onto higher order thinking. Comprehensively supporting the TOK course book and mapped to the 2013 syllabus, this focused guide distils the big TOK ideas and builds student confidence right from the start.

This literature review of professionalism was prepared by San Jose State University graduate student Marianne Allison as a research committee project of the Mass Communication and Society Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The project was prepared under the guidance of Professor Diana Stover Tillinghast. It reviews the literature on two approaches to professionalism in general and of the professionalism of journalists in particular: the ?structural?functionalist approach?; and the ?power approach.?; Traditional and recent discussions of the (...) nature of professionalism in occupational sociology are presented. Studies of the professionalism of journalists both in the United States and cross?culturally are critiqued. The paper suggests several areas of fruitful research, and contains an extensive bibliography. (shrink)

Explores the nature and significance of Petrarch’s indebtedness to Dante in the Rime sparse.

Recently logic has shifted emphasis from static systems developed for purely theoretical reasons to dynamic systems designed for application to real world situations. The emphasis on the applied aspects of logic and reasoning means that logic has become a pragmatic tool, to be judged against the backdrop of a particular application. This shift in emphasis is, however, not new. A similar shift towards “interactive logic” occurred in the high Middle Ages. We provide a number of different examples of “interactive logic” (...) in the Middle Ages, all species of the disputation game obligatio. These games display a recognition of the importance of interaction in logical contexts and the way that interactive logic differs from single-agent inference. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of the concluding myth of the Phaedo in the context of the dialogue as a whole, arguing that the myth's exploration of the relationship between action, condition of soul and form of life provides valuable information about Plato's conception of the kind of political environment necessary for human flourishing. It identifies three features of the myth essential to this exploration: its self-critical construction of the perspective of the makers of this myth, its focus on the (...) conditions under which violent deeds are committed and its envisaging of the form of human community necessary for the expiation of such deeds. El artículo examina el papel del mito final del Fedón dentro del contexto de la totalidad del diálogo y argumenta que la exploración que hace el mito de la relación entre acción, condición del alma y forma de vida brinda importante información acerca de la concepción platónica del tipo de entorno político que favorece el florecimiento del ser humano. Identifica tres rasgos del mito que son esenciales para dicha exploración: su construcción autocrítica de la perspectiva de los creadores del mito, su enfoque en las condiciones en las que se cometen actos violentos y su visión de una forma de comunidad humana necesaria para la expiación de tales actos. (shrink)

China is rising. As China ascends in power, it is likely that ?Western? administrators ? American and European, in particular ? will find that they must interact with Chinese administrators more and more. In this article, I offer readers a brief glimpse into Chinese administrative ethics through an investigation of two forms of Chinese philosophy ? Confucianism and Taoism. In addition to reviewing these philosophies, I derive some consequences for a public service ethic that lies between the East and the (...) West. In particular, this article includes some recommendations for the managerial implications of these two philosophies in the context of increased political and administrative connections between the West and China. (shrink)

This book aims to introduce the Armenian version of Philo's writings also to those scholars not acquainted with Armenian Studies. The subject is approached from different perspectives - historical, hermeneutical, philological, linguistic - with special attention given to the reception of Philo in Armenian Christianity.

In an essay examining Hannah Arendt's approach to public memory, rhetorical scholar Stephen H. Browne notes that "to remember is thus not simply to turn backward; it is itself a type of action that steadies us in the face of an unknown and unpredictable future" (2004, 60). The act of remembering connects the rememberer to both the past and the future. As scholars such as Benedict Anderson, John Bodnar, and John Gillis have pointed out, remembering also connects human beings to (...) their contemporaries and "imagined communities" by establishing a common narrative and space for identification. In many cases, action itself provides the material from which memories are formed—an individual from the past betrayed his .. (shrink)

Temporal logic as a modern discipline is separate from classical logic; it is seen as an addition or expansion of the more basic propositional and predicate logics. This approach is in contrast with logic in the Middle Ages, which was primarily intended as a tool for the analysis of natural language. Because all natural language sentences have tensed verbs, medieval logic is inherently a temporal logic. This fact is most clearly exemplified in medieval theories of supposition. As a case study, (...) we look at the supposition theory of Lambert of Lagny, extracting from it a temporal logic and providing a formalization of that logic. (shrink)

This volume provides an integrated and wide-ranging set of primary-source readings on the relationship between moral values and economic activity, as articulated by some of the leading figures in Western civilization.