Suppose that two competing norms, N1 and N2, can be identified such that a given person’s response can be interpreted as correct according to N1 but incorrect according to N2. Which of these two norms, if any, should one use to interpret such a response? In this paper we seek to address this fundamental problem by studying individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their case judgments and reflective attitudes. To investigate (...) the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task. As a case study, we identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals (N1) versus Inferentialism (N2) and investigate to what extent internally consistent competence models can be reconstructed for the participants on this basis. After extensive empirical investigations, an apparent reasoning error with and-to-if inferences was found in one of these two groups. The implications of this case study for debates on the proper role of normative considerations in psychology are discussed. (shrink)

In this manuscript we study individual variation in the interpretation of conditionals by establishing individual profiles of the participants based on their behavioral responses and reflective attitudes. To investigate the participants’ reflective attitudes we introduce a new experimental paradigm called the Scorekeeping Task, and a Bayesian mixture model tailored to analyze the data. The goal is thereby to identify the participants who follow the Suppositional Theory of conditionals and Inferentialism and to investigate their performance on the uncertain and-to-if inference task.

This Article discusses a triangle of forces that affect the activity of small-medium enterprises. These forces are: limited liability, shareholder guarantees, and bankruptcy. Limited liability encourages entrepreneurship by reducing the personal risks shareholders are exposed to as a result of business failure. However, the limited liability shield creates the potential moral hazard of overinvestment. That is, the entrepreneur may involve the corporation in overly risky projects. To combat this risk, the lending practice requires entrepreneurs to sign a personal guarantee for (...) corporate debt. The guarantee serves as a bonding device that forces the entrepreneur to internalize the costs of the corporate activity. This Article first argues that while personal guarantees can serve this economic goal, the lending industry demands them excessively and they are overused. The overuse of guarantees unnecessarily subjects good corporate borrowers as well as bad ones to this practice and causes underinvestment. The third force of the triangle, a discharge of the shareholder’s debts in bankruptcy, may balance this inefficiency. It potentially softens the effect of the guarantee and thus requires the lender to further gather borrowerspecific information at the lending stage. Unfortunately, personal bankruptcy is underused by individual debtors mainly because of the stigma it implies. To rebalance the triangle, this Article proposes to encourage the shareholder’s partial relief of the guarantee through an amicable procedure. I call this procedure Velvet Bankruptcy. Velvet Bankruptcy would first procedurally consolidate the private collection from the shareholder-guarantor with the pending corporate bankruptcy case, by authorizing the court to extend the automatic stay to protect the shareholder-guarantor. To the extent the court is convinced that the collection would render the shareholder insolvent, it could reduce the guarantor’s liability. This would effectively constitute discharge without officially declaring the shareholder bankrupt. (shrink)

Researchers have explored important questions about employees’ prosocial motivation to impact others through their work and about employees’ engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Studies show that job seekers are attracted to CSR-engaged employers, but little is known about whether and why prospective employees are attracted by job roles that allow them to have positive social impact. We used prosocial motivation theory to develop hypotheses about processes through which a greater desire for social impact in work is associated with (...) being predisposed to it (due to trait-like prosocial motivation), being exposed to the possibility of it (through CSR-related educational choices), and both in partially mediated sequence. Analyses of data from 187 prospective employees provided support for most hypotheses. Our findings inform new directions for research on CSR and recruitment, the CSR education literature, and recruitment practices that leverage prospective employees’ desire for social impact through performing their regular work. (shrink)

In several recent experiments we have found that the eyes are often captured by the appearance of a sudden onset in a display, even though subjects intend to move their eyes elsewhere. Very brief fixations are made on the abrupt onset before the eyes complete their intended movement to the previously defined target. These results indicate concurrent programming of a voluntary saccade to the defined saccade target and an involuntary saccade to the sudden onset. This is inconsistent with the idea (...) that a single salience map determines the location of a saccade in a winner-take-all fashion. Other results indicate that subjects attend to more than one location in a display during saccade preparation, contrary to the claim that covert attentional scanning plays no role in saccade generation. (shrink)

This, the 21st volume in the Library of Living Philosophers, is more than Sir Alfred Ayer's final word on the philosophical issues that preoccupied him for more than sixty years; the list of contributors is a roll-call of some of the greatest living figures in philosophy, each expertly addressing a key problem arising in Ayer's work. Most of the critical papers are answered directly and in detail by Sir Alfred-he completed his replies to 21 of the 24 papers before his (...) death. Contributors include: A. J. Ayer, Evandro Agazzi, James Campbell, David S. Clarke, Michael Dummett, Elizabeth Eames, John Foster, Dimitri Ginev, Paul Gochet, Martin Hollis, Ted Honderich, Tscha Hung, Peter Kivy, Arne Naess, D. J. O'Connor, Desiree Park, David Pears, Azarya Polikarov, Hilary Putnam, Francisco Miró, Quesada C., A. Anthony Quinton, Emanuele Riverso, Ernest Sosa, T. L. S. Sprigge, Barry Stroud, and David Wiggins. (shrink)

The twenty-sixth volume in the highly acclaimed Library of Living Philosophers series is devoted to the work of British philosopher of logic and metaphysician, P. F. Strawson. Following the Library of Living Philosophers series format, the volume contains an intellectual autobiography, twenty critical and descriptive essays by leading philosophers from around the world, Strawson's replies to the essays, and a bibliography of Strawson's works. Born in 1919, Strawson was a leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy. He is the author of (...) the early and extremely influential paper "On Referring" in which he criticized Russell's theory of definite descriptions. His most influential book, Individuals, helped to raise the status of metaphysics as a philosophical enterprise. Themes first addressed in this book continued to be of concern to him in his later work, including the possibility of objective knowledge, the subject-predicate distinction, the ontological status of persons, and the problem of individuation. Contributors to the book include: Ruth Garrett Millikan, Susan Haack, E. M. Adams, Panayot Butchvarov, Richard Behling, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Tadeusz Szubka, David Frederick Haight, Joseph S. Wu, Andrew G. Black, David Pears, Robert Boyd, Hilary Putnam, Paul F. Snowdon, Arindam Chakrabarti, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Ernest Sosa, Chung-M. Tse, John R. Searle, P. F. Strawson. (shrink)

This paper discusses the connection between epistemic virtues and chemistry in the eighteenth century Dutch Republic. It does so in two ways. First, it presents the virtue epistemology of three Dutch university professors and natural philosophers: Herman Boerhaave, Petrus van Musschenbroek, and Johannes David Hahn. It shows how their criticism of a priori philosophy and their defence of experimental natural philosophy is connected to a specific virtue epistemology. Four epistemic virtues are central for these authors: intellectual patience, diligence (...) and humility, and impartiality. This virtue epistemology informs their presentation of chemistry as an exemplary discipline. The practice of chemistry instils these key epistemic virtues in its practitioners. Second, the article shows how these epistemic virtues also play a role in later debates regarding the reception of Lavoisier’s work in the Dutch Republic. This article hopes to provide an example of what Ian Kidd has called a ‘deep conception of epistemic vice [and virtue]’. It also argues for the fruitfulness of applying a virtue epistemic framework to the study of the Chemical Revolution. (shrink)

The present paper investigates why logical empiricists remained silent about one of the most philosophy-laden matters of theoretical physics of their day, the principle of least action (PLA). In the two decades around 1900, the PLA enjoyed a remarkable renaissance as a formal unification of mechanics, electrodynamics, thermodynamics, and relativity theory. Taking Ernst Mach's historico-critical stance, it could be liberated from much of its physico-theological dross. Variational calculus, the mathematical discipline on which the PLA was based, obtained a new rigorous (...) basis. These three developments prompted Max Planck to consider the PLA as formal embodiment of his convergent realist methodology. Typically rejecting ontological reductionism, David Hilbert took the PLA as the key concept in his axiomatizations of physical theories. It served one of the main goals of the axiomatic method: ''deepening the foundations.'' Although Moritz Schlick was a student of Planck's, and Hans Hahn and Philipp Frank enjoyed close ties to Gottingen, the PLA became a veritable Shibboleth to them. Rather than being worried by its historical connections with teleology and determinism, they erroneously identified Hilbert's axiomatic method tout court with Planck's metaphysical realism. Logical empiricists' strict containment policy against metaphysics required so strict a separation between physics and mathematics to exclude even those features of the PLA and the axiomatic method not tainted with metaphysics. (shrink)

In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. Thus, (...) causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation. (shrink)

From the author of Wittgenstein's Poker and Would You Kill the Fat Man?, the story of an extraordinary group of philosophers during a dark chapter in Europe's history On June 22, 1936, the philosopher Moritz Schlick was on his way to deliver a lecture at the University of Vienna when Johann Nelböck, a deranged former student of Schlick's, shot him dead on the university steps. Some Austrian newspapers defended the madman, while Nelböck himself argued in court that his onetime teacher (...) had promoted a treacherous Jewish philosophy. David Edmonds traces the rise and fall of the Vienna Circle—an influential group of brilliant thinkers led by Schlick—and of a philosophical movement that sought to do away with metaphysics and pseudoscience in a city darkened by fascism, anti-Semitism, and unreason. The Vienna Circle's members included Otto Neurath, Rudolf Carnap, and the eccentric logician Kurt Gödel. On its fringes were two other philosophical titans of the twentieth century, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper. The Circle championed the philosophy of logical empiricism, which held that only two types of propositions have cognitive meaning, those that can be verified through experience and those that are analytically true. For a time, it was the most fashionable movement in philosophy. Yet by the outbreak of World War II, Schlick's group had disbanded and almost all its members had fled. Edmonds reveals why the Austro-fascists and the Nazis saw their philosophy as such a threat. The Murder of Professor Schlick paints an unforgettable portrait of the Vienna Circle and its members while weaving an enthralling narrative set against the backdrop of economic catastrophe and rising extremism in Hitler's Europe. (shrink)

One of the most innovative and brilliant philosophers of his generation, but largely neglected until he was brought to public attention by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon presents a challenge to nearly every category and method of traditional philosophy. Psychic and Collective Individuation is undoubtedly Simondon's most important work and its influence, clearly felt in Stiegler and DeLanda, has continued to grow. David Scott provides the first full introduction to this work, which will inspire as well as instruct philosophers working (...) in Continental thought, philosophy of science, social theory and political philosophy. (shrink)

• If we always see b after a, we are justified in thinking b will follow a the next time we see a. • “A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance” (74).

In this new textbook two Catholic ethicists with extensive teaching experience present a moral theology based on vision. David Matzko McCarthy and James M. Donohue draw widely from the Western philosophical tradition while integrating biblical and theological themes in order to explore such fundamental questions as What is good? The fourteen chapters in Moral Vision are short and thematic. Substantive study questions engage with primary texts and encourage students to apply theory to everyday life and common human experiences. The (...) book is accessibly written and flexible enough to fit into any undergraduate or seminary course on ethics. (shrink)

This book uses different perspectives on argumentation to show how we create arguments, test them, attack and defend them, and deploy them effectively to justify beliefs and influence others. David Zarefsky uses a range of contemporary examples to show how arguments work and how they can be put together, beginning with simple individual arguments, and proceeding to the construction and analysis of complex cases incorporating different structures. Special attention is given to evaluating evidence and reasoning, the building blocks of (...) argumentation. Zarefsky provides clear guidelines and tests for different kinds of arguments, as well as exercises that show student readers how to apply theories to arguments in everyday and public life. His comprehensive and integrated approach toward argumentation theory and practice will help readers to become more adept at critically examining everyday arguments as well as constructing arguments that will convince others. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in Cambridge in 1951. He studied engineering, first in Berlin and then in Manchester, and he soon began to ask himself philosophical questions about the foundations of mathematics. What are numbers? What sort of truth does a mathematical equation possess? What is the force of proof in pure mathematics? In order to find the answers to such questions, he went to Cambridge in 1911 to work with Russell, who had just (...) produced in collaboration with Whitehead (1861-1947) Principia Mathematica (1910-1913), a monumental treatise which bases mathematics on logic. But on what is logic based? Wittgenstein's attempt to answer this question convinced Russell that he was a genius. During the 1914-8 war he served in the Austrian army and in spare moments continued the work on the foundations of logic which he had begun in 1912. His war-time journal, Notebook s 1914-16 (1961), reveals the development of his ideas more clearly that the final version, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, which he published in the early 1920s. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking book David Roberts sets out to demonstrate the centrality of the total work of art to European modernism since the French Revolution.

..". An important reminder that we are called to live our faith in our work, ... keeping Christ at the top of one's priorities, regardless of the demands of the workplace."--- J. David Karam, president, Wendy's International, Inc. ..". Both practical and inspiring!"--- Tom Monaghan, founder, Domino's Pizza, Inc., and Ave Maria University "Too many Christians treat ambition and success as if they're four-letter words.... For a Catholic in business, they can be touchstones of sanctification."--- Scott Hahn, Ph.D., (...) professor of biblical theology, Franciscan University of Steubenville ..". A hallmark for personal excellence.... [It] provides the motivation, the means, and the message needed for anyone looking to make a true difference in our world."--- Lisa M. Hendey, founder and editor of CatholicMom.com and author of A Book of Saints for Catholic Moms. (shrink)

Evolution is frequently concentrated in bursts of rapid morphological change and speciation followed by long‐term stasis. We propose that this pattern of punctuated equilibria results from an evolutionary tug‐of‐war between host genomes and transposable elements (TEs) mediated through the epigenome. According to this hypothesis, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms (RNA interference, DNA methylation and histone modifications) maintain stasis by suppressing TE mobilization. However, physiological stress, induced by climate change or invasion of new habitats, disrupts epigenetic regulation and unleashes TEs. With their capacity (...) to drive non‐adaptive host evolution, mobilized TEs can restructure the genome and displace populations from adaptive peaks, thus providing an escape from stasis and generating genetic innovations required for rapid diversification. This “epi‐transposon hypothesis” can not only explain macroevolutionary tempo and mode, but may also resolve other long‐standing controversies, such as Wright's shifting balance theory, Mayr's peripheral isolates model, and McClintock's view of genome restructuring as an adaptive response to challenge. (shrink)

The last one hundred years has seen unimaginable technological progress transforming every aspect of human life. Yet we seem unable to shake a profound unease with the direction of modern technology and its ideological siblings, global capitalism and massive consumption. Philosophers such as Marcuse, Borgmann and especially Heidegger, have developed important analyses of technological society, however in this book David Lewin argues that their ideas have remained limited either by their secular context, or by the narrow conception of religion (...) that they do allow. This study guides the reader along the newly formed paths of the philosophy of technology, arguing that where those paths come to an abrupt end, a religious discourse is needed to articulate the ultimate concerns that drive technological action. It calls for a meditation on the central insight of many religious traditions that, in an ultimate sense, we 'know not what we do.' To acknowledge that we know not what we do is the first step towards a theology of technology that draws upon insights from the mystical theological tradition, as well as from recent developments in the continental philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The Addresses to the German Nation is one of Fichte's best-known works. It is also his most controversial work because of its nationalist elements. In this book, David James places this text and its nationalism within the context provided by Fichte's philosophical, educational and moral project of creating a community governed by pure practical reason, in which his own foundational philosophical science or Wissenschaftslehre could achieve general recognition. Rather than marking a break in Fichte's philosophy, the Addresses to the (...) German Nation and some lesser-known texts from the same period are shown to develop themes already present in his earlier writings. The themes discussed include the opposition between idealism and dogmatism, the role of Fichte's 'popular' lectures and writings in leading individuals to the standpoint of idealism, the view of history demanded by idealism and the role of the state in history. (shrink)

Ethical consumerism -- Caveat emptor -- The consumer as causal agent -- The consumer as complicit participant -- Toward a practical consumer ethic.

In this book, I offer an account of intentional action. The book has two main parts: in the first part, I discuss and criticize the currently prevailing account of intentional action—the Causal Theory of Action (CTA)—and, in the second part, I offer my alternative account. The CTA proposes essentially two conditions for something that you do to be an intentional action: (1) what you do is represented by your intention (or other mental attitudes), and (2) it is caused by your (...) intention. Against the CTA, I argue that, since it conceives of representation and causality as essentially separate conditions, it cannot explain why, when someone acts intentionally, it is not a mere accident that both conditions are jointly satisfied: i.e., that the intention causes the movement it represents. The CTA’s inability to rule out such accidentality is, as I argue further, the deeper source of the notorious problem of deviant causation. Given this diagnosis, I claim that the key for a satisfactory account of intentional action is to conceive of the essential unity of representation and causality in intentional action. Doing so, I suggest, requires understanding a distinctive sort of causality at work in intentional action. Following the work of G.E.M. Anscombe, I argue that what is distinctive of the sort of causal-explanatory connection captured in action explanations like “S is doing A because she intends to do B” is that it is essentially known by the acting subject. In the final sections of the book, I then develop and defend a conception of the sort of self-knowledge involved in intentional action. (shrink)

‘What distinguishes science from all other human endeavours is that the accounts of the world that our best, mature sciences deliver are strongly supported by evidence and this evidence gives us the strongest reason to believe them.’ That anyway is what is said at the beginning of the advertisement for a conference on induction at a celebrated British seat of learning in 2007. It shows how much critical rationalists still have to do to make known the message of Logik der (...) Forschung concerning what empirical evidence is able to do and what it does. (shrink)

In “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson argues that the “profound opposition” between the objective and reactive stances is quite compatible with our rationally retaining the latter as important elements in a recognizably human life. Unless he can establish this, he has no hope of establishing his version of compatibilism in the free will debate. But, because objectivity is associated so intimately with the rationally conducted explanation of action, it is not clear how the opposition of these stances is compatible (...) with the rationality of the reactive attitudes. More to the point, it is not clear how an intellectual activity like shifting from the reactive to the objective stance can dispel reactive attitudes without thereby also rationally disqualifying them. I solve this puzzle by drawing on the idea that one cognitive component of emotions is the rationally optional “shift of attention.” a feature which in turn helps to explain a lot about the role reactive emotions can play in the fixation of belief. (shrink)

Hand's End offers a new philosophy of technology as the fundamental way in which humans experience and define nature―the tool as humanity extended. Rothenberg examines human inventions from the water wheel to the nuclear bomb and discusses theories of technology in the thought of philosophers including Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Marx, Heidegger, Spinoza, Mumford, and McLuhan.

PurposeThis purpose of this paper is to identify principal stakeholders and needs in e‐inclusion, with particular reference to senior citizens, determining to what extent those needs are being met or could be met by other stakeholders. It considers inclusive stakeholder organisational structures that could address unmet needs.Design/methodology/approachAlthough the European Commission, Member States, local authorities, industry, and researchers have called for greater collaboration and partnerships among stakeholders to overcome the so‐called digital divides, little attention has been giv]en to the form of (...) collaboration. Reviewing various policy‐oriented documents, this paper compiles a list of principal stakeholders and their e‐inclusion needs, reviews existing multi‐stakeholder undertakings and partnership structures as candidates for addressing needs not already met.FindingsMany important e‐inclusion needs are not addressed by any multi‐stakeholder undertaking. Some structured collaboration or partnership should address those needs. A new structure should not merely represent all interested stakeholders, but involve them in decision‐making processes.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a conceptual paper, constrained by length from producing a detailed list of needs. Similarly, although the paper identifies 12 different stakeholder categories, some could be further segmented.Practical implicationsFurther research and analysis could be undertaken sourcing each identified need, perhaps adding others and further segmenting stakeholder categories.Originality/valueThe paper is of value to stakeholders involved or interested in e‐inclusion efforts. It uses a novel, straight‐forward, approach for identifying stakeholders and needs, who can meet those needs and who is addressing those needs. (shrink)

This study is based on a critique of Western medicine derived from the proposition that any system of medicine must necessarily embody a mysterious quality. What is meant by mystery is an all encompassing element of indeterminancy and so of uncertainty in both the theory and practice of medicine.

Recent decades have seen a significant increase in physicians participating in international short-term missions to regions with limited or no access to health care by virtue of natural disaster or lack of resources. Recent publications in the ethics literature have explored the potential of these missions for unintentional harm to the intended beneficiaries. Less has been discussed about how to respond when harm actually occurs. The authors review the ethical issues raised by short-term medical and humanitarian missions and the literature (...) on responding to unintended error to provide guidelines for avoiding harm to the intended beneficiaries of missions and an appropriate response when harm occurs. Two cases demonstrating an analysis and response to unintended harm are presented. (shrink)

David Lewis' objection to a generic theory of modality which he calls ‘magical ersatzism’ is that its linchpin, a relation he calls ‘selection’, must be either an internal or an external relation, and that this is unintelligible either way. But the problem he points out with classifying selection as internal is really just an instance of the general problem of how we manage to grasp underdetermined predicates, is not peculiar to magical ersatzism, and is amenable to some familiar solutions. (...) He provides no compelling grounds for thinking that classifying selection as external is unintelligible, and his argument has a false presupposition. I conclude that magical ersatzism is still a viable option in the metaphysics of modality. (shrink)

In birds and frogs, species pairs retain the capacity to produce viable hybrids for tens of millions of years, an order of magnitude longer than mammals. What accounts for these differences in relative rates of pre- and postzygotic isolation? We propose that reproductive mode is a critically important but previously overlooked factor in the speciation process. Viviparity creates a post-fertilization arena for genomic conflicts absent in egg-laying species. With viviparity, conflict can arise between: mothers and embryos; sibling embryos in the (...) womb, and maternal and paternal genomes within individual embryos. Such intra- and intergenomic conflicts result in perpetual antagonistic coevolution, thereby accelerating interpopulation postzygotic isolation. In addition, by generating intrapopulation genetic incompatibility, viviparity-driven conflict favors polyandry and limits the potential for precopulatory divergence. Mammalian diversification is characterized by rapid evolution of incompatible feto-maternal interactions, asymmetrical postzygotic isolation, disproportionate effects of genomically-imprinted genes, and “F2 hybrid enhancement.” The viviparity-driven conflict hypothesis provides a parsimonious explanation for these patterns in mammalian evolution. BioEssays 22:938–946, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

A treatise of human nature, book 3: Of morale; preceded by selections from book 2: Of the passions.--An enquiry concerning the principles of morals.--Essays, moral and political; selections.

I am becoming increasingly disturbed by the lack of under standing of science revealed by politicians, industrialists and the general public. I am also concerned about the widespread mis use of the word "scientific" which is more and more being used in situations where it is quite inappropriate. As a result, in some circumstances gross overestimates are made as to what science can do. In other circumstances the real power of science is foolishly underestimated and the contributions which it can (...) make are squandered. Science is God is an attempt to explain just what is meant by the scientific approach and to define more closoJ. y what the word "scientific" indicates. It is deliberately brief and controversial because I want it to be read. In fact, the material dealt with in each single chapter really deserves a whole book to itself. In the future I hope that I may be able to give to each subject such full treatment. Meanwhile I hope that this book will stimulate discussion about science and will increase understanding of it. DAVID F. (shrink)

David Berlinski, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, writes about three profound mysteries: the existence of the human mind, the existence and diversity of living creatures, and the existence of matter. His other books include: The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, Newton's Gift, and A Tour of the Calculus.

We usually withhold attributions of moral responsibility when a person acts on preferences that are induced without her consent by other people by means of conditioning, post-hypnotic suggestion, neurological fiddling and similar techniques. However, this is not generally the case when a person induces preferences in herself by the process of character building. However, the distinction between non-responsibility and responsibility for preferences does not map neatly onto the distinction between psychological induction by other and by self. Sometimes responsibility-grounding freedom of (...) action and autonomy of will re compromised when a person induces preferences in herself by adaptive preference-formation, the mechanism that sets up the cry of “sour grapes.” They can also be compromised when a person intentionally undertakes a strategy of self-abnegating resignation to oppressive necessity. It remains unclear, nonetheless, how the unfreedom and heteronomy of preferences calibrated to the merely feasible contrasts with the freedom and autonomy of planned preferences-changes guided by the person’s own values in projects of character building. (shrink)

Exploring the relationship between conceptions of nature and (largely American) legal thought and practice, this study focuses on the politics and pragmatics of "nature talk"--as expressed in extra-legal disputes as well as different forms of legal discourse. Topics include the forces of nature, endangered species, animal experiments and bestiality. David Delaney demonstrates throughout that nearly any analysis of "nature" entails an interpretation of the essence of "humanity.".

Nothing can kill a promising research program in ethics more quickly than a plausible argument to the effect that it is committed to a morally repellent consequence. It is especially troubling when a theory one favors is jeopardized in this way. I have this worry about Harry Frankfurt's theory of free will, autonomous agency and moral responsibility, for there is a very plausible argument to the effect that aspects of his view commit him to a version of the late Stoic (...) thesis that acting freely is a matter of ‘making do,’ that is, of bringing oneself to be motivated to act in accordance with the feasible, so that personal liberation can be achieved by resigning and adapting oneself to necessity. In this paper I try to determine whether the theory does in fact commit Frankfurt (and adherents like me) to this result and, if so, what can be done to prevent it. (shrink)

In Truth Without Paradox, David Johnson purports to solve several of the traditional problems of metaphysics, pertaining to truth, logic, similitude, morality, and God.