This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Some communitarians about personhood hold that human communities are metaphysically antecedent to individual persons, and that personhood comes in degrees, and that one becomes a person through ethical maturation within a community. I offer a new communitarianism that also endorses those claims. It is based partly on certain African accounts of the person—primarily Menkiti’s account—and partly on Mark Johnston’s extraordinary argument that extremely good persons are literally at one with the human community itself. The theory’s concept of the person is (...) a novel understanding of the social self. I argue that the account helps to solve three puzzles to do with communitarian conceptions of personhood. One puzzle is about understanding the individual person as an individual. Another relates to the alleged metaphysical priority of communities over persons. And a third is a problem for the view that personhood is graded. (shrink)

Economic policy evaluations require social welfare functions for variable-size populations. Two important candidates are critical-level generalized utilitarianism (CLGU) and rank-discounted critical-level generalized utilitarianism, which was recently characterized by Asheim and Zuber (2014) (AZ). AZ introduce a novel axiom, existence of egalitarian equivalence (EEE). First, we show that, under some uncontroversial criteria for a plausible social welfare relation, EEE suffices to rule out the Repugnant Conclusion of population ethics (without AZ’s other novel axioms). Second, we provide a new characterization of CLGU: (...) AZ’s set of axioms is equivalent to CLGU when EEE is replaced by the axiom same-number independence. (shrink)

Variable-Value axiologies avoid Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion while satisfying some weak instances of the Mere Addition principle. We apply calibration methods to two leading members of the family of Variable-Value views conditional upon: first, a very weak instance of Mere Addition and, second, some plausible empirical assumptions about the size and welfare of the intertemporal world population. We find that such facts calibrate these two Variable-Value views to be nearly totalist, and therefore imply conclusions that should seem repugnant to anyone who (...) opposes Total Utilitarianism only due to the Repugnant Conclusion. (shrink)

Whenever we read any philosophical work dealing with the nature of qualities, the status of universals, or similar problems, we find continual references to colour; redness and blueness meet us on every page. Even Whitehead, whose obscurity is, at least in part, due to his avoidance of particular instances, condescends to cite colours as examples of “eternal objects” and other cases will occur at once to every reader.

The Knowability Paradox purports to show that the controversial but not patently absurd hypothesis that all truths are knowable entails the implausible conclusion that all truths are known. The notoriety of this argument owes to the negative light it appears to cast on the view that there can be no verification-transcendent truths. We argue that it is overly simplistic to formalize the views of contemporary verificationists like Dummett, Prawitz or Martin-Löf using the sort of propositional modal operators which are employed (...) in the original derivation of the Paradox. Instead we propose that the central tenet of verificationism is most accurately formulated as follows: if φ is true, then there exists a proof of φ Building on the work of Artemov (Bull Symb Log 7(1): 1-36, 2001), a system of explicit modal logic with proof quantifiers is introduced to reason about such statements. When the original reasoning of the Paradox is developed in this setting, we reach not a contradiction, but rather the conclusion that there must exist non-constructed proofs. This outcome is evaluated relative to the controversy between Dummett and Prawitz about proof existence and bivalence. (shrink)

This book provides practical and research-based chapters that offer greater clarity about the particular kinds of teacher reflection that matter and avoids talking about teacher reflection generically, which implies that all kinds of reflection are of equal value.

This paper accepts as given that business students want to get ahead. It criticizes business schools for their failure to reduce the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead. Because of this failure business school graduates carry negative ideas, attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis social responsibility from business schools into the business world. Recommendations are made for increasing the social responsibility of business schools.

An overwhelming majority of business travelers are now members of frequent flier programs operated by the airline industry. This article addresses relevant ethical issues, particularly employee perceptions of ethical issues, in such programs. A structured questionnaire technique, supported by personal interviews, was used to gather insights into frequent flier practices and attitudes. A fundamental conclusion of the research is that (1) significant ethical dilemmas are posed by frequent flier programs, (2) employees and employers generally choose to ignore these ethical dilemmas, (...) and (3) employee perception of the ethical issues in frequent flier programs is not significantly influenced by employee attributes such as education level, salary, organizational position, age or sex. Recommendations are offered to reduce the inherent ethical dilemmas in frequent flier programs. (shrink)

Previous research in North America has supported the view that male involvement in committed, romantic relationships is associated with lower testosterone (T) levels. Here, we test the prediction that undergraduate men involved in committed, romantic relationships (paired) will have lower T levels than men not involved in such relationships (unpaired). Further, we also test whether these differences are more apparent in samples collected later, rather than earlier, in the day. For this study, 107 undergraduate men filled out a questionnaire and (...) collected one saliva sample (from which a subject’s T level was measured) at various times across the day. As in previous studies, men involved in committed, romantic relationships had lower salivary T levels, though only during later times of the day. Furthermore, additional analysis of the variation among unpaired subjects indicated that men without prior relationship experience had lower T levels than experienced men. Finally, while paired men as a group had lower T levels than unpaired men, those men at the earliest stage (less than six months) of a current relationship had higher T levels than unpaired men as well as men in longer-term relationships. These results suggest that variation in male testosterone levels may reflect differential behavioral allocation to mating effort. (shrink)

The object of this article is not to criticize Professor Watson's psychology, still less his physiology; neither do I wish to attempt a fundamental metaphysical criticism, such as that contained in Professor Lloyd Morgan's article in the April number of the Journal, but it appears to me that a purely logical criticism, admitting Professor Watson's facts and observations, and assuming his mechanistic point of view, may be a useful preliminary to such wider and more fundamental inquiry.

The author elaborates on the discussion of probability of keynes and urmson. He fills out the details of urmson's two senses of 'probable'. (staff).

This dissertation addresses a variety of foundational issues pertaining to the notion of algorithm employed in mathematics and computer science. In these settings, an algorithm is taken to be an effective mathematical procedure for solving a previously stated mathematical problem. Procedures of this sort comprise the notional subject matter of the subfield of computer science known as algorithmic analysis. In this context, algorithms are referred to via proper names of which computational properties are directly predicated )). Moreover, many formal results (...) are traditionally stated by explicitly quantifying over algorithms. These observations motivate the view that algorithms are themselves abstract mathematical objects -- a view I refer to as algorithmic realism. The status of this view is clearly related to that of Church's Thesis -- i.e. the claim that a function is computable by an algorithm just in case it is partial recursive. But whereas Church's Thesis is widely accepted on the basis of several well-known mathematical analyses of algorithmic computability, there is presently no consensus on how we can uniformly identify individual algorithms with mathematical objects. In the first chapter of this work, I attempt to illustrate the theoretical significance of algorithmic realism. I suggest that this view is not only of foundational significance to computer science, but also worth highlighting due to the role algorithms play in the fixation of mathematical knowledge and their relationship to intensional entities such as propositions and properties. Chapter Two presents a formal framework for reducing computational discourse to mathematical discourse modeled on contemporary discussion of mathematical nominalism. Chapter Three is centered on a case study intended to illustrate the technical exigencies involved with defending algorithmic realism. Chapter Four explores various ways in which algorithms might be identified with models of computation. And finally, Chapter Five argues that no such identification can uniformly satisfy all statements of algorithmic identity and non-identity affirmed by computational practice. I suggest that the technical crux of algorithmic realism lies in the necessity of reducing recursive specifications of algorithms to iterative models of computation in a manner which preserves algorithmic identity. (shrink)

Based on the deontological ethical perspective and concepts from blame psychology such as the defensive attribution hypothesis and culpable control, it is argued that people are predisposed to blame a transportation company when it is involved in an accident. This was tested in a scenario of an airline accident of uncertain cause, finding that respondents blamed the airline the most among a list of five blamable entities (pilots, mechanics-maintenance-inspectors, the weather, ground crew-air traffic control, and airline). Additionally, based on the (...) virtue theory of ethics and the moral character perspective of blame psychology, it was hypothesized that manipulation of the virtue of the airline (mercenary versus altruistic) would result in less blame assigned to the altruistic airline in a quasi-experiment where the other factor was outcome of the accident (safe landing with a few injuries versus crash with many fatalities). However, the two factors significantly interacted in an unexpected way. The mercenary airline suffering a crash was blamed less than the altruistic airline that crashed, while the mercenary airline that safely landed was blamed more than the altruistic airline that safely landed. The managerial implications of blame bias toward the company are addressed. (shrink)

Psychology training programs emphasize competencies like professional behavior, interpersonal skills, and emotional intelligence. Some students, known as students with problems of professional competence (SPPC), struggle in these areas. This study explored SPPC characteristics and educator experiences in managing them through semi-structured interviews with twelve Australian psychology educators. Thematic analysis revealed that SPPC often struggle with professional attitudes, feedback integration, reflective skills, and mental health, placing demands on resources and contributing to educator stress. The role of educators as gatekeepers, assessors, and (...) evaluators also raises concerns about maintaining ethical standards. Findings highlight the need for better understanding, support, and strategies for managing SPPC to uphold ethical standards. (shrink)

The Repugnant Conclusion served an important purpose in catalyzing and inspiring the pioneering stage of population ethics research. We believe, however, that the Repugnant Conclusion now receives too much focus. Avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion should no longer be the central goal driving population ethics research, despite its importance to the fundamental accomplishments of the existing literature.

There is currently great controversy over the contribution antimicrobial use in animal agriculture has made to antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic bacteria with negative consequences for human health. In light of this, the approval process for antimicrobials used in US animal agriculture, known as New Animal Drug Application or NADA, is currently being revised by the federal government. We explore the public deliberations over the development of these new policies focusing our attention on the interaction between pharmaceutical companies and the U.S. (...) Food and Drug Administration. What appears to be an antagonistic public discourse is examined in terms of its ability to simultaneously legitimate the roles of the Food and Drug Administration as the official arbiter of policy on antimicrobial use in animal agriculture and as a protector of the public welfare, as well as the role of pharmaceutical companies as the producers of safe and effective products necessary for the protection of public well-being. (shrink)

To what degree can language be acquired from linguistic input alone? This question has vexed scholars for millennia and is still a major focus of debate in the cognitive science of language. The complexity of human language has hampered progress because studies of language–especially those involving computational modeling–have only been able to deal with small fragments of our linguistic skills. We suggest that the most recent generation of Large Language Models (LLMs) might finally provide the computational tools to determine empirically (...) how much of the human language ability can be acquired from linguistic experience. LLMs are sophisticated deep learning architectures trained on vast amounts of natural language data, enabling them to perform an impressive range of linguistic tasks. We argue that, despite their clear semantic and pragmatic limitations, LLMs have already demonstrated that human-like grammatical language can be acquired without the need for a built-in grammar. Thus, while there is still much to learn about how humans acquire and use language, LLMs provide full-fledged computational models for cognitive scientists to empirically evaluate just how far statistical learning might take us in explaining the full complexity of human language. (shrink)

The psychological cost on emotional well-being due to the collateral damage brought about by COVID-19 in accessing oncological services for breast cancer diagnosis and treatment has been documented by recent studies in the United Kingdom. The current study set out to examine the effect of delays to scheduled oncology services on emotional and cognitive vulnerability in women with a breast cancer diagnosis in Iran, one of the very first countries to be heavily impacted by COVID-19. One hundred thirty-nine women with (...) a diagnosis of primary breast cancer answered a series of online questionnaires to assess the current state of rumination, worry, and cognitive vulnerability as well as the emotional impact of COVID-19 on their mental health. Results indicated that delays in accessing oncology services significantly increased COVID related emotional vulnerability. Regression analyses revealed that after controlling for the effects of sociodemographic and clinical variables, women’s COVID related emotional vulnerability explained higher levels of ruminative response and chronic worry as well as poorer cognitive function. This study is the first in Iran to demonstrate that the effects of COVID-19 on emotional health amongst women affected by breast cancer can exaggerate anxiety and depressive related symptoms increasing risks for clinical levels of these disorders. Our findings call for an urgent need to address these risks using targeted interventions exercising resilience. (shrink)