Die Studie stellt dar, dass ein vernünftig Handelnder gemäß der kantischen Moral- und politschen Philosophie auf die öffentliche-rechtliche Forderung reagieren kann. Die kantische Trichotomie des öffentlichen Rechts zeigt, dass die kantische Moral - und politische Philosophie eine mögliche Grundlage für die Lösung internationaler Probleme bildet.

Contextualists and Subject Sensitive Invariantists often cite the knowledge norm of assertion as part of their argument. They claim that the knowledge norms in conjunction with our intuitions about when a subject is properly asserting in low or high stakes contexts provides strong evidence that what counts as knowledge depends on practical factors. In this paper, I present new data to suggest they are mistaken in the way they think about cases involving high and low stakes and I show how (...) insensitive invariantists can explain the data. I exploit recent work done on the distinction between flouting a norm and being blamed for that violation to formulate a rigorous theory of rational expected blameworthiness that allows insensitive invariantists to explain the data cited. (shrink)

Low-wage migrant workers in Singapore are legally entitled to healthcare provided by their employers and supported by private insurance, separate from the national UHC (universal health coverage) system. In practice, they face multiple barriers to access. In this article, we describe this policy-practice gap from the perspective of HealthServe, a non-profit organisation that assists low-wage migrant workers. We outline the healthcare financing system for migrant workers, describe commonly encountered barriers, and comment on their implications for the global UHC movement’s key (...) ethical concepts of fairness, equity, and solidarity. (shrink)

Studies have suggested that visually presented words are obligatorily decomposed into constituents that could be mapped to language representations. The present study aims to elucidate how orthographic processing of one constituent affects the other and vice versa during a word recognition task. Chinese orthographic system has characters representing syllables and meanings instead of suffixation roles, and the majority of Chinese characters are phonograms that can be further decomposed into phonetic radical and semantic radical. We propose that semantic radical combinability indexed (...) by semantic radicals and the effect of phonological consistency indexed by phonetic radicals would interact with each other during the reading of Chinese phonograms. Twenty-six right-handed native Chinese speakers were recruited to the study. Participants were presented with phonograms divided into four conditions following their semantic radical combinability and phonological consistency. EEG signals were recorded throughout the covert naming task. Our results show that there is an interaction effect between phonological consistency and semantic radical combinability on the right hemisphere N170 activity while reading phonograms. Semantic radical combinability influenced the right hemisphere N170 during the process of low-consistency character reading but not high-consistency character reading. On the other hand, the left hemisphere N170 revealed a more significant activity during reading high-consistency characters and was not affected by radical combinability. In addition, while low-consistency characters revealed a larger P200 than high-consistency characters, the semantic radical combinability effect on P200 was only significant when participants were reading high-consistency characters but not low-consistency characters. These results provide new information about how ERPs are involved in word recognition within the context of interaction among orthographic and phonological dimensions. (shrink)

Working memory performance affects children’s learning. This study examined objective, subjective, and physiological cognitive load while children completed a spatial working memory complex span task. Frist, 80 Taiwanese 11-year-olds who participated in Experiment 1 confirmed the suitability of the materials. Then, 72 Taiwanese 11-year-olds were assigned to high and low complexity groups to participate in Experiment 2 to test the study hypothesis. Children had to recall at the end of a dual-task list and answer two questions regarding the difficulty and (...) mental effort involved in processing and storage. Their pupil diameters were recorded using an eye-tracker. Two-way mixed ANOVA found that the processing requirements and memory load reduced storage and aggravated the subjective CL of storage; the subjective CL of processing was higher under highly complex conditions. Stepwise regression analysis indicated that subjective CL of processing predicted memory performance in low CL conditions, and physiological CL of processing predicted it in high CL conditions. (shrink)

Many festivals use animals in the name of continuing traditions and religious acts of historical and cultural relevance, as well as for tourist entertainment; however, the welfare of these animals has been overlooked in favor of maintaining cultural identity or making economic profits. The criticism of animal-based festivals has been growing along with the increased public awareness of animal rights. However, this change in public perception has not yet been translated into actual government policies in Korea. This study addresses the (...) unethical practices and challenges regarding animal welfare at festivals from the perspective of visitors to understand the public perception of the need for institutional and regulatory interventions to improve the treatment of animals at festivals. An online survey (N = 1000) is conducted to examine the public perception of animals and animal welfare at festivals and how strongly online survey participants support organizer- and state-level actions to protect the welfare of festival animals. Logistic regression analyses identify gender, pet ownership, pro-animal attitude, visiting experience, sensitivity to criticism regarding animal issues, and perception of animal welfare at festivals as significant predictors of online survey participants’ support for actions ensuring the welfare of animals used in festivals. Our findings also suggest that people sympathize with the need to enhance animal welfare but have low levels of sensitivity to the maltreatment of animals at festivals, indicating the existence of cognitive dissonance. Establishing guidelines and regulations for improving animal welfare can help festivals use animals in a more sustainable way and make visitors rethink and re-establish human–animal relationships. (shrink)

Prior research suggests that most people perceive themselves to be more altruistic than the average population, an observation known as the better-than-average (BTA) effect. Understanding the BTA effect carries significant public health implications, as self-perceived altruism is closely related to altruistic behaviors, which plays a significant role in individual and societal well-being. However, little is known about whether subpopulations with specific sociodemographic profiles are more likely to hold BTA altruistic self-perceptions, making it difficult to design targeted programs based on multiple (...) sociodemographic characteristics to promote altruistic behaviors. This study addresses this gap by identifying the sociodemographic profiles of populations who are more likely to exhibit BTA effects on trait altruism. Data were derived from a representative sample of Hong Kong citizens (n= 1,185) in the 2017 Hong Kong Altruism Survey. A latent class analysis was performed using four domains of sociodemographic characteristics: sex, age, religion, and socioeconomic status. Multivariate multinomial logistic regressions were conducted to examine associations between class membership, BTA effect, and altruistic behaviors. The results yielded four classes of sociodemographic profiles. Middle-aged, Christian/Catholic, highly educated, and high-income individuals (Class 4, 17.8%) were most likely to exhibit BTA effects and behave altruistically; Class 3 (14.0%) were older, male, no/other religious belief, low education, and least likely to exhibit BTA effects and behave altruistically. Findings improve the understanding of the sociodemographic profiles of people showing BTA effects and facilitate targeted policy development to effectively promote altruism. (shrink)

This article studies how financial investors respond to firms' corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in terms of their investing behaviors, and how such behaviors change contingent on an event that provokes their attention and concerns to CSR. Using the melamine contamination incident in China as a natural experiment, it is found that neither the individual investors' nor the institutional investors' behaviors are influenced by firms' CSR performance before the incident. Nevertheless, in the post-event period, institutional investors' behaviors are significantly influenced (...) by firms' CSR performance that exceeds a certain threshold. Furthermore, such an effect diminishes for a better CSR performance. In comparison, the authors do not find any effects of CSR performance on individual investors, either before the event or after the event. Finally, firms' performance and investors' behaviors jointly affect firms' stock returns after the event but not before the event. This article reconciles the mixed findings in the literature on the effect of firms' CSR performance on their financial performance by showing that such an effect exists in a contingent manner. Furthermore, the authors show that a too low or a too high CSR performance could lead to undesirable responses from investors. Therefore, managers should pay attention to optimizing firms' CSR activities. (shrink)

BackgroundThe therapeutic effect of deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) for Parkinson's disease (PD) is related to the modulation of pathological neural activities, particularly the synchronization in the β band (13–35 Hz). However, whether the local β activity in the STN region can directly predict the stimulation outcome remains unclear.ObjectiveWe tested the hypothesis that low-β (13–20 Hz) and/or high-β (20–35 Hz) band activities recorded from the STN region can predict DBS efficacy.MethodsLocal field potentials (LFPs) were recorded in (...) 26 patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery in the subthalamic nucleus area. Recordings were made after the implantation of the DBS electrode prior to its connection to a stimulator. The maximum normalized powers in the theta (4–7 Hz), alpha (7–13 Hz), low-β (13–20 Hz), high-β (20–35 Hz), and low-γ (40–55 Hz) subbands in the postoperatively recorded LFP were correlated with the stimulation-induced improvement in contralateral tremor or bradykinesia–rigidity. The distance between the contact selected for stimulation and the contact with the maximum subband power was correlated with the stimulation efficacy. Following the identification of the potential predictors by the significant correlations, a multiple regression analysis was performed to evaluate their effect on the outcome.ResultsThe maximum high-β power was positively correlated with bradykinesia–rigidity improvement (rs = 0.549, p < 0.0001). The distance to the contact with maximum high-β power was negatively correlated with bradykinesia–rigidity improvement (rs = −0.452, p < 0.001). No significant correlation was observed with low-β power. The maximum high-β power and the distance to the contact with maximum high-β power were both significant predictors for bradykinesia–rigidity improvement in the multiple regression analysis, explaining 37.4% of the variance altogether. Tremor improvement was not significantly correlated with any frequency.ConclusionHigh-β oscillations, but not low-β oscillations, recorded from the STN region with the DBS lead can inform stimulation-induced improvement in contralateral bradykinesia–rigidity in patients with PD. High-β oscillations can help refine electrode targeting and inform contact selection for DBS therapy. (shrink)

Background: Burnout is a stress-induced syndrome considered to be closely related to work. Although social support could relief burnout syndrome, its effect on learning burnout in medical students remains unclear. The objectives of the study are to evaluate the association between learning burnout and social support in Chinese medical students.Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was distributed to students who participated in online learning in a medical college in Wuhan during the COVID-19 epidemic. We used the Lian version of the Maslach (...) Burnout Inventory to assess learning burnout and the Social Support Rating Scale to assess social support. Chi-square tests were used to analyze factors associated with burnout. Independent t-test and multiple logistic regression were explored to analyze the relationship between social support and burnout.Results: A total of 684 students have completed the survey, of which 315 met standard criteria for learning burnout. Multiple logistic regression analysis has revealed that seniors, low family income and low social support were significant predictors of learning burnout. After adjusting for the grade and family income, there was a significant and relevant association between social support and learning burnout.Conclusions: Learning burnout was highly prevalent in medical students at our college. Senior students and low family income might be risk factors for learning burnout. Social support, especially subjective support and utilization of support might play a protective role in reducing the risk of learning burnout. (shrink)

Using Reidenbach and Robin’s Multidimensional Ethics Scale, this study designs three scenarios related to academic dishonesty dilemmas to explore students’ moral philosophies, behavioral intentions, and ethical judgments and further examines whether students with different individual factors have differences in the above variables. A total of 605 students from two areas, Taiwan and Mainland China, participated in this study. The results indicated that Taiwanese students had stricter moral equity, relativism, and contractualism philosophies in the duplicate submission scenario than Mainland China students. (...) They also had stricter moral equity and relativism philosophies in the incomplete citation scenario. Similarly, relatively harsh relativism and contractualism philosophies accompanied by a low level of willingness to be a perpetrator in the failure to cite research published in other countries scenario were found. In addition, females applied relatively harsh moral equity and utilitarianism to all scenarios, reporting that they and their peers were less likely to engage in all AD activities. Graduates had a stricter egoism attitude toward duplicate submission and had stricter moral equity, relativism, and contractualism philosophies toward the behavior of incomplete citation. Graduate students also had strict moral equity, relativism, egoism, and contractualism beliefs in the failure to cite the foreign research scenario. Finally, regression analysis showed that moral equity, contractualism, and self-behavioral intention are significant predictors of students’ ethical evaluations in the three scenarios. (shrink)

Online reading is developing at an increasingly rapid rate, but the debate concerning whether learning is more effective when using hypertexts than when using traditional linear texts is still persistent. In addition, several researchers stated that online reading comprehension always starts with a question, but little empirical evidence has been gathered to investigate this claim. This study used eye-tracking technology and retrospective think aloud technique to examine online reading behaviors of fifth-graders ( N = 50). The participants were asked to (...) read four texts on the website. The present study employed a three-way mixed design: 2 (reading ability: high vs. low) × 2 (reading goals: with vs. without) × 2 (text types: hypertext vs. linear text). The dependent variables were eye-movement indices and the frequencies of using online reading strategy. The results show that fifth-graders, irrespective of their reading ability, found it difficult to navigate the non-linear structure of hypertexts when searching for and integrating information. When they read with goals, they adjusted their reading speed and the focus of their attention. Their offline reading ability also influenced their online reading performance. These results suggest that online reading skills and strategies have to be taught in order to enhance the online reading abilities of elementary-school students. (shrink)

As one of the basic manufacturing industries in China, injection molding industry is faced with the problems of low degree of informatization and intelligence, resulting in low production efficiency and high costs. It is urgent to integrate deeply with new generation of information technology to achieve transformation and upgrade. In this paper, an integrative industrial Internet architecture of “integration of intelligent equipment, intelligent production lines, intelligent workshops, intelligent factories, and intelligent formats” was described. The injection molding intelligent control system, the (...) production management, control platform based on the MES system, and other key technologies were researched. Also, the smart factory architecture based on digital twin was established, and the implementation method of the smart factory digital twin system was elaborated. The feasibility and effectiveness of the method had been verified through the industrial application, which provided the technical supports for the injection molding industrial Internet system. Finally, the intelligent manufacturing industrial Internet cloud platform for injection molding industry was prospected. (shrink)

This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will--a "two-way" power which ...

Jonathan Lowe argues that metaphysics should be restored to a central position in philosophy, as the most fundamental form of inquiry, whose findings underpin those of all other disciplines. He portrays metaphysics as charting the possibilities of existence, by identifying the categories of being and the relations between them. He sets out his own original metaphysical system, within which he seeks to answer many of the deepest questions in philosophy. 'a very rich book... deserves to be read carefully by (...) anyone interested in any of the many subjects he discusses.' Katherine Hawley, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe, a prominent figure in contemporary metaphysics, sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system which recognizes four fundamental categories of beings: substantial and non-substantial particulars and substantial and non-substantial universals. Lowe argues that this system has an explanatory power which is unrivalled by more parsimonious theories and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows that it provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified account (...) of causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, thus constituting a full metaphysical foundation for natural science. (shrink)

Causal closure arguments against interactionist dualism are currently popular amongst physicalists. Such an argument appeals to some principles of the causal closure of the physical, together with certain other premises, to conclude that at least some mental events are identical with physical events. However, it is crucial to the success of any such argument that the physical causal closure principle to which it appeals is neither too strong nor too weak by certain standards. In this paper, it is argued that (...) various forms of naturalistic dualism, of an emergentist character, are consistent with the strongest physical causal closure principles that can plausibly be advocated. (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that metaphysics, conceived as an inquiry into the ultimate nature of mind-independent reality, is a rationally indispensable intellectual discipline, with the a priori science of formal ontology at its heart. It is maintained that formal ontology, properly understood, is not a mere exercise in conceptual analysis, because its primary objective is a normative one, being nothing less than the attempt to grasp adequately the essences of things, both actual and possible, with a view to (...) understanding as far as we can the fundamental structure of reality as a whole. Accordingly, it is urged, the deliverances of formal ontology have a modal and epistemic status akin to those of other a priori sciences, such as mathematics and logic, rather than constituting rivals to the claims of the empirical sciences, such as physics. (shrink)

Non‐Cartesian substance dualism is a position in the philosophy of mind concerning the nature of the mind‐body relation or, more exactly, the person‐body relation. Whereas Cartesian substance dualism takes subjects of experience to be necessarily immaterial and indeed nonphysical substances, non‐Cartesian substance dualism does not insist on this. This distinctive feature of non‐Cartesian substance dualism gives it certain advantages over Cartesian dualism, without compelling it to forfeit any of the intuitive appeal that attaches to its more traditional rival. In this (...) chapter, the author's own view is that the self is indeed a simple substance. The simplicity of the self goes some way toward explaining its unity, including the unity of consciousness that characterizes its normal condition. A divided consciousness is in principle consistent with self‐identity: what is not consistent with this is a radical disunity of beliefs and values, manifested in a radical inconsistency of thought and action. (shrink)

From the 1980s onwards, the Roslin Institute and its predecessor organizations faced budget cuts, organizational upheaval and considerable insecurity. Over the next few decades, it was transformed by the introduction of molecular biology and transgenic research, but remained a hub of animal geneticists conducting research aimed at the livestock-breeding industry. This paper explores how these animal geneticists embraced genomics in response to the many-faceted precarity that the Roslin Institute faced, establishing it as a global centre for pig genomics research through (...) forging and leading the Pig Gene Mapping Project (PiGMaP); developing and hosting resources, such as a database for genetic linkage data; and producing associated statistical and software tools to analyse the data. The Roslin Institute leveraged these resources to play a key role in further international collaborations as a hedge against precarity. This adoption of genomics was strategically useful, as it took advantage of policy shifts at the national and European levels towards funding research with biotechnological potential. As genomics constitutes a set of infrastructures and resources with manifold uses, the development of capabilities in this domain also helped Roslin to diversify as a response to precarity. (shrink)

Across the UK, there has been an increase in anti-abortion activism outside abortion clinics. The activism deployed includes explicitly religious activities such as ‘prayerful witnessing’ and ‘pavement counselling’, which aim to discourage women from entering clinics. This article stems from a wider ethnographic study of public activism over abortion to determine what claims about motherhood are being made within these debates. Two arguments are presented. First, how women’s role as mothers is central and essentialised in anti-abortion discourses, with the body (...) of the mother often disappearing as activists seek to erode the distinction between a foetus and a baby by constructing pregnancy as a foetal environment. Motherhood is constructed as ‘natural’ and sacred, therefore abortion must be damaging because it destroys women’s ‘natural’ position. Second, the article argues that although the activists’ arguments are always religiously framed, their activism takes place in a largely secular context, meaning that they have to find ways of appealing to secular audiences. This leads to a complex interrelationship between secular and religious discourses, where theological viewpoints sit alongside ‘scientific’ claims to buttress activists’ views. This article explores how the presence and absence of mothers within activists’ narratives is due to the tensions between religiously based understandings of motherhood, and the need to appeal to a secular audience. (shrink)

Background: Alexithymia is a personality trait which is characterized by an inability to identify and describe conscious emotions of oneself and others.Aim: The present study aimed to determine whether various measures of mental health, interoception, psychological flexibility, and self-as-context, predicted through linear associations alexithymia as an outcome. This also included relevant mediators and non-linear predictors identified for particular sub-groups of participants through cluster analyses of an Artificial Neural Network output.Methodology: Two hundred and thirty participants completed an online survey which included (...) the following questionnaires: Toronto alexithymia scale; Acceptance and Action Questionnaire 2 ; Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale 21 ; Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness ; and the Self-as-Context scale. A stepwise backwards linear regression and mediation analysis were performed, as well as a cluster analysis of the non-linear ANN upper hidden layer output.Results: Higher levels of alexithymia were associated with increased psychological inflexibility, lower positive affect scores, and lower interoception for the subscales of “not distracting” and “attention regulation.” SAC mediated the relation between emotional regulation and total alexithymia. The ANNs accounted for more of the variance than the linear regressions, and were able to identify complex and varied patterns within the participant subgroupings.Conclusion: The findings were discussed within the context of developing a SAC processed-based therapeutic model for alexithymia, where it is suggested that alexithymia is a complex and multi-faceted condition, which requires a similarly complex, and process-based approach to accurately diagnose and treat this condition. (shrink)

We investigate the possibility of arguing for or against the philosophical position that mathematics is an _epistemic exception_ on the basis of agreement data from the mathematical peer review process and argue that Cohen’s \(\kappa \), the standard agreement measure used for inter-rater agreement, is unable to detect epistemic exceptionality from peer review data.

Three different concepts of matter are identified: matter as what a thing is immediately made of, matter as stuff of a certain kind, and matter in the (dubious) sense of material ‘substratum’. The doctrine of hylomorphism, which regards every individual concrete thing as being ‘combination’ of matter and form, is challenged. Instead it is urged that we do well to identify an individual concrete thing with its own particular ‘substantial form’. The notions of form and matter, far from being correlative, (...) are relatively independent. There is nothing absurd in the notion of form without matter. Matter provides neither a principle of individuation nor a criterion of identity for individual concrete things: their form alone provides both. Finally, a substance ontology which admits also the existence of particular qualities, or tropes, is to be preferred both to a substance ontology which denies the existence of tropes and to a pure trope ontology. (shrink)

Substantial change occurs when a persisting object of some kind either begins or ceases to exist. Typically, this happens when one or more persisting objects of another kind or kinds are subjected to appropriate varieties of qualitative or relational change, as when the particles composing a lump of bronze are rearranged so as to create a statue. However, such transformations also seem to result, very often, in cases of spatiotemporal coincidence, in which two numerically distinct objects of different kinds exist (...) in exactly the same place at the same time, such as a statue and a lump of bronze. Various attempts to resist this way of describing the results of such transformations are examined and found wanting and objections to the possibility of cases of spatiotemporal coincidence are rebutted. (shrink)

Maddy's notion of restrictiveness has many problematic aspects, one of them being that it is almost impossible to show that a theory is not restrictive. In this note the author addresses a crucial question of Martin Goldstern (Vienna) and points to some directions of future research.

A self or person does not appear to be identifiable with his or her organic body, nor with any part of it, such as the brain; and yet selves seem to be agents, capable of bringing about physical events as causal consequences of certain of their conscious mental states. How is this possible in a universe in which, it appears, every physical event has a sufficient cause which is wholly physical? The answer is that this is possible if a certain (...) kind of naturalistic dualism is true, according to which the conscious mental states of selves, although not identifiable with physical states of their brains, are emergent effects of prior physical causes. Moreover, mental causation on this model promises to explain certain aspects of physical behaviour which may appear arbitrary and coincidental from a purely physical point of view. (shrink)

A highly contentious issue in recent philosophy of logic has been the question of whether there can be contingently true identity statements. In this paper I want to investigate a possible loop-hole in the standard argument of the necessitarians (i.e., those who maintain that any true identity statement is necessarily true).

Inequalities of social goods between gender, racial, or other groups call out for explanation. Such inequalities might be explained by socialization and discrimination. But historically some have attributed these inequalities to biological differences between social groups. Such explanations are highly controversial: on the one hand, they have a very troubling racist and sexist history, but on the other hand, they are empirical claims, and so it seems inappropriate to rule them out a priori. I propose that the appropriate epistemic attitude (...) toward biological explanations of social inequalities is a general but defeasible skepticism. I then turn to the appropriate moral attitude, arguing that when such explanations are inadequately supported, they are offensive. (shrink)

‘Water is H2O’ is one of the most frequently cited sentences in analytic philosophy, thanks to the seminal work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam in the 1970s on the semantics of natural kind terms. Both of these philosophers owe an intellectual debt to the empiricist metaphysics of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, while disagreeing profoundly with Locke about the reality of natural kinds. Locke employs an intriguing example involving water to support his view that kinds (or ‘species’), such (...) as water and gold, are the workmanship of the human mind. This is the point of his story about a winter visitor to England from Jamaica, who is astonished to find that the water in his basin has turned solid overnight, and proceeds to call it ‘hardened water’. Locke criticizes this judgement, maintaining that it is more consonant with common sense to regard water and ice as different kinds of substance. Putnam, by implication, disagrees. Deploying his imaginary example of Twin Earth—a distant planet where a watery-looking substance, XYZ, rather than H2O, fills the oceans and rivers—he maintains that common sense supports the judgement that XYZ and H2O, despite their superficial similarity, are not the same kind of substance, precisely because their molecular compositions are different. Here it will be argued that both views are mistaken, but that, in this dispute, Locke has more right on his side than his modern opponents do. (shrink)

This paper examines Aquinas's theory of dualist mental causation, that is, his theory of how human beings can efficiently cause changes in their bodies in virtue of two non-physical mental states of theirs, specifically an act of the intellect and an act of the will. It is first shown that Aquinas's hylomorphism does not lie at the heart of this theory. Rather, a relation that he calls “contact of power” (tactus virtutis) does. The remainder of the paper then investigates the (...) nature of this relation. Since Aquinas discusses key marks of it by contrasting it with physical contact, the paper focuses on this contrast. It is argued that, for Aquinas, the human soul stands in a relation of contact of power to the body or, more precisely, a certain part of the body when it causes a change in it and is holenmerically co-located with it. (shrink)

We provide a list of open problems in the research area of generalised Baire spaces, compiled with the help of the participants of two workshops held in Amsterdam (2014) and Hamburg (2015).

If metaphysics is centrally concerned with charting the domain of the possible, the only coherent account of the ground of metaphysical possibility and of our capacity for modal knowledge is to be found in a version of essentialism: a version that I call serious essentialism, to distinguish it from certain other views which may superficially appear very similar to it but which, in fact, differ from it fundamentally in certain crucial respects. This version of essentialism eschews any appeal whatever to (...) the notion of possible worlds in its account of the nature and ground of metaphysical possibility, for reasons that which I shall endeavour to explain and justify in this paper. (shrink)