Despite apparent political concern and action—often fuelled by high-profile cases and campaigns—legislative and institutional responses to image-based sexual abuse in the UK have been ad hoc, piecemeal and inconsistent. In practice, victim-survivors are being consistently failed: by the law, by the police and criminal justice system, by traditional and social media, website operators, and by their employers, universities and schools. Drawing on data from the first multi-jurisdictional study of the nature and harms of, and legal/policy responses to, image-based sexual abuse, (...) this article argues for a new joined-up approach that supports victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse to ‘reclaim control’. It argues for a comprehensive, multi-layered, multi-institutional and multi-agency response, led by a government- and industry-funded online or e-safety organisation, which not only recognises the diversity of victim-survivor experiences and the intersection of image-based sexual abuse with other forms of sexual and gender-based violence and discrimination, but which also enables victim-survivors to reclaim control within and beyond the criminal justice system. (shrink)

I hope I have convinced the reader that DR theory offers at least some exciting potential when applied to the semantics of belief reports. It differs considerably from other approaches, and it makes intuitively acceptable predictions that other theories do not. The theory also provides a novel approach to the semantics of other propsitional attitude reports. Further, DR theory enables one to approach the topic of anaphora within belief and other propositional attitude contexts in a novel way, thus combining the (...) semantics developed here with one of the theory's original motivations (Kamp, 1981a). However, these are unfortunately topics that I must reserve for another time. (shrink)

Fundamentismus und Skeptizismus-Anarchismus sind zwei entgegengesetzte Positionen in der traditionellen Erkenntnistheorie und in der modernen Wissenschaftstheorie. Zwischen ihnen gibt es einen dritten Standpunkt, den Evolutionismus. Beispiele sind zwei neuere Arbeiten von Putnam und Stegmüller . Im Gegensatz zum logisch-statischen Fundamentismus berücksichtigt der Evolutionismus auch dynamische und naturalistische Ansätze. Stegmüller folgend entlehnen wir in der vorliegenden Untersuchung aus der Sprachphilosophie pragmatische Gesichtspunkte, um die logische Syntax und Semantik, die Werkzeuge des Fundamentismus, zu ersetzen. Wir zeigen die Kraft der Pragmatik bei der (...) Behandlung von Problemen wie Erkenntniswachstum, Begriffswechsel, Theorien- und Bedeutungsdynamik, wissenschaftliche Entdeckung und besonders beim Problem der Inkommensurabilität. Unser nicht-fundamentistischer Vorschlag ist ein heuristisches Modell, das auf der modernen genetischen Theorie basiert. (shrink)

Philosophy Lab: An Experiential Approach to Conceptual Analysis gives students the skills and strategies needed to do philosophical work in the Analytic tradition. They are presented with a step-by-step method for performing a preliminary conceptual analysis and practice examples to apply the method to standard philosophical problems. Students are introduced to the work of great thinkers including Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Wittgenstein, and Ryle. These works are complemented by contemporary empirical findings concerning perception, desire, emotion, moral intuition, and other basic elements (...) of explicit intentional cognition. Each chapter features primary source material, commentary, and activity instructions. The activities are designed to allow students to experience each mode of cognition in relative isolation, and then to see how they combine and interrelate in more complex contexts. Finally, students use the template model of conceptual analysis to explore the material. They identify and isolate the concept to be analyzed, determine whether it is simple or complex, and if complex, identify the constituent parts of the concept. Specific topics covered include causal power, sex and marriage, compassion, ambition, justice, and death. Through presentation and modeling the book not only enables student to do conceptual analysis with precision, it helps them understand and interpret philosophical issues. Philosophy Lab is a comprehensive, carefully designed text for first courses in philosophy. It may be used with first-year undergraduate students, advanced high-school students, or adult learners. Asher Walden holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion from Drew University. Dr. Walden is currently an adjunct lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. (shrink)

The main result is that for sets ${S \subseteq \omega + 1}$ , the following are equivalent: The shuffle sum σ(S) is computable.The set S is a limit infimum set, i.e., there is a total computable function g(x, t) such that ${f(x) = \lim inf_t g(x, t)}$ enumerates S.The set S is a limitwise monotonic set relative to 0′, i.e., there is a total 0′-computable function ${\tilde{g}(x, t)}$ satisfying ${\tilde{g}(x, t) \leq \tilde{g}(x, t+1)}$ such that ${{\tilde{f}(x) = \lim_t \tilde{g}(x, t)}}$ (...) enumerates S.Other results discuss the relationship between these sets and the ${\Sigma^0_3}$ sets. (shrink)

Marx himself would have agreed with such a practical approach to the criticism of his method..... He was led to this position, I believe, by his conviction that a scientific background was urgently needed by the practical politician.

Deliberative democracy entails a commitment to deciding political questions on their merits. To that end, people engage in an exchange of reasons in a shared endeavour to arrive at the right answer or the best judgement they can make in the circumstances. Of course, in practice a shared judgement may be impossible to reach. Yet while compromise may seem a natural way of dealing with the disagreement that deliberation leaves unresolved – for example, some deliberative theorists argue that a willingness (...) to compromise manifests respect for the considered views of others, even as we continue to disagree with them – the relationship between deliberation and compromise is not as straightforward as one might think. To explain why, this paper contrasts conflicts of judgement with conflicts of preference, interest and value to show why greater attention needs to be paid to the character of the decision to be made. (shrink)

This paper refines the game theoretic analysis of conversations in Asher et al. by adding epistemic concepts to make explicit the intuitive idea that conversationalists typically conceive of conversational strategies in a situation of imperfect information. This ‘epistemic’ turn has important ramifications for linguistic analysis, and we illustrate our approach with a detailed treatment of linguistic examples.

In this important book, Thomas R. Flynn reinterprets and evaluates Sartre's social and political philosophy, arguing that the existential ethics of Sartre's ...

Michel Foucault surveyed the history of Western philosophy in terms of the Delphic ‘Know thyself’ and the Socratic ‘care of the self’. The former generates academic philosophy as we know it today whereas the latter conceives of philosophy as a ‘way of life’. At issue are competing notions of ‘truth’ and the philosophical relevance of the discursive/nondiscursive domains. Comparing this account with a similar but distinct reading of the same Greek texts by Greco-Roman historian Pierre Hadot, I underscore the ‘existentialist’ (...) tenor of this distinction and assess the challenges and liabilities of pursuing philosophy as a ‘way of life’. (shrink)

Recently there has been a renewed interest in the ethical value of literature. However, how exactly does literature contribute to our ethical understanding? In Literature, Ethics, and the Emotions, Kenneth Asher argues that literary scholars should locate this question in the long and various history of moral philosophy. On the basis of his own reading of this history, Asher contends for the centrality of emotions in our ethical lives and shows how literature - novels, poetry, and drama - (...) can each contribute to crucial emotional understanding. Individual chapters on T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, and George Bernard Shaw give detailed analyses of how this contribution takes shape even in modernist authors who try to reconfigure the very nature of the self. (shrink)

Linear combinations of “elements of reality,” as defined by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, may not be themselves “elements of reality.” There are questions which can be formulated (and unambiguously answered) in the ordinary language of experimental physics, but cannot be represented in the mathematical framework of quantum theory in a nontrivial way.

It is tempting to invoke organismal selection as perpetually optimizing the function of any given gene. However, natural selection can drive genic functional change without improvement of biochemical activity, even to the extinction of gene activity. Detrimental mutations can creep in owing to linkage with other selectively favored loci. Selection can promote functional degradation, irrespective of genetic drift, when adaptation occurs by loss of gene function. Even stabilizing selection on a trait can lead to divergence of the underlying molecular constituents. (...) Selfish genetic elements can also proliferate independent of any functional benefits to the host genome. Here we review the logic and evidence for these diverse processes acting in genome evolution. This collection of distinct evolutionary phenomena – while operating through easily understandable mechanisms – all contribute to the seemingly counterintuitive notion that maintenance or improvement of a gene's biochemical function sometimes do not determine its evolutionary fate. (shrink)

The study of the feeling of knowing may have implications for some of the metatheoretical issues concerning consciousness and control. Assuming a distinction between information-based and experience-based metacognitive judgments, it is argued that the sheer phenomenological experience of knowing (''noetic feeling'') occupies a unique role in mediating between implicit-automatic processes, on the one hand, and explicit-controlled processes, on the other. Rather than reflecting direct access to memory traces, noetic feelings are based on inferential heuristics that operate implicitly and unintentionally. Once (...) such heuristics give rise to a conscious feeling that feeling can then affect controlled action. Examination of the cues that affect noetic feelings suggest that not only do these feelings inform controlled action, but they are also informed by feedback from the outcome of that action. (shrink)

Recent research has filled many gaps about Caenorhabditis natural history, simultaneously exposing how much remains to be discovered. This awareness now provides means of connecting ecological and evolutionary theory with diverse biological patterns within and among species in terms of adaptation, sexual selection, breeding systems, speciation, and other phenomena. Moreover, the heralded laboratory tractability of C. elegans, and Caenorhabditis species generally, provides a powerful case study for experimental hypothesis testing about evolutionary and ecological processes to levels of detail unparalleled by (...) most study systems. Here, I synthesize pertinent theory with what we know and suspect about Caenorhabditis natural history for salient features of biodiversity, phenotypes, population dynamics, and interactions within and between species. I identify topics of pressing concern to advance Caenorhabditis biology and to study general evolutionary processes, including the key opportunities to tackle problems in dispersal dynamics, competition, and the dimensionality of niche space. (shrink)

The future of ethics -- Minds and related matters -- On transition -- The colors of life -- The far future -- At the limits of the conceivable -- Loose ends and final thoughts.

Comparisons have been made between the tobacco industry’s historic tactics in defending their products with the responses of some key actors in the sports world to head injuries. Both, it is said, have deployed deceptive marketing and advertising techniques to entice youth to engage with a subjective pleasure-producing product that has undeniable short- and long-term health detriments. Unlike what is called euphemistically, ‘Big Tobacco’, however, the National Football League (NFL) has evaded legal restrictions on the promotion of an inherently dangerous (...) product that targets youth. By contrast, in 1997, the Federal Trade Commission charged tobacco company R.J. Reynolds with violating federal law by using a cartoon character, Joe Camel, to allure children under age 18. The NFL has partnered with Nickelodeon to produce programs such as NFL Rush Zone and NFL Slimetime that target youth by using cartoon mascots, bright colors, 3D iconography, and other child-friendly symbols. In addition to fostering positive associations between tackle football and cartoons, these broadcasts have explicitly minimized the risks of tackling. For example, one NFL Playoffs on Nickelodeon announcer equated a forceful head collision with a scrape of the knee that a child might experience during school recess. The NFL’s marketing strategies deflect public attention away from the risks of repetitive head collisions, concussions, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), portraying football as an appealing activity. The ongoing connections between the NFL and youth-oriented television programming raise crucial questions about how risk is communicated in a sport with inherent dangers of long-term cognitive damage. As long as tackle football is portrayed alongside beloved cartoon characters such as Spongebob Squarepants, impressionable children are likely to form undilutedly positive perceptions of the NFL and ignore the substantial risks of repeated, full-body collisions when enchanted by brightly-colored slime, animated bubbles, and goofy dance moves. (shrink)

Since the early 1970s, internal power sharing has remained central to the attempt to reach a political settlement on the constitutional structures for governing Northern Ireland. Even in the face o...

Although the idea of the public interest features prominently in many accounts of deliberative democracy, the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest is rarely spelt out with any degree of precision. In this article, I identify and defend one particular way of framing this relationship. I begin by arguing that people can deliberate about the public interest only if the public interest is, in principle, identifiable independently of their deliberations. Of course, some pluralists claim that the public interest (...) is an implausible idea, which casts doubt on the idea that there might be something for people to deliberate about. Yet while, following Brian Barry, we can get around this problem by defining the public interest as an interest in which everyone shares qua member of the public, what still needs to be explained is why people should be prepared to privilege this particular capacity. I argue that the account of political equality with which deliberative democracy is bound up offers a compelling explanation of this sort, even if it also gives rise to some difficult questions of feasibility. I conclude by considering the charge that any political scheme that framed the relationship between deliberative democracy and the public interest in this way would be undesirable. (shrink)