Cross-cultural studies have revealed broad quantitative associations between subsistence practice and demographic parameters for preindustrial populations. One explanation is that variationin the availability of suitable weaning foods influenced the frequency and duration of breastfeeding and thus the length of interbirth intervals and the probability of child survival (the “weaning food availability” hypothesis). We examine the available data on weaning age variation in preindustrial populations and report results of a cross-cultural test of the predictions that weaning occurred earlier in agricultural and (...) pastoral populations because dairy and cereal production increased the availability of easily digestible, nutrientrich foods appropriate for weaning. We found that, contrary to predictions, supplementation with liquid foods other than breast milk was delayed in agricultural populations relative to less agriculturally dependent ones and complementary feeding with solid foods was delayed in pastoral populations relative to those less dependent on herding. Although the duration of breastfeeding was longer in populations dependent on hunting, there was no qualitative evidence that such populations lacked foods appropriate for weaning. The patterns observed suggest that the relationships between demography and subsistence observed among preindustrial societies cannot be explained by the “weaning food availability” hypothesis. We discuss the implications for understanding the mechanisms underlying prehistoric human demography, subsistence shifts, allocation to parenting and mating effort, and the evolutionary implications of tradeoffs between diet and disease. (shrink)

“The Vegan Viewer in the Circum-Polar World” examines, in unprecedented detail, The Diana and Chase in the Arctic, a canvas by the little-known, early-nineteenth-century marine painter, James Wheldon, part of a local Hull School of painters focused upon depictions of Arctic whaling. The chapter contextualizes the iconography and materiality of the canvas within a broader discussion of the humanimal tragedy of Victorian whale hunting, as conceptualized, for the first time, by a specifically ethical vegan viewer, pondering not only how (...) various animals are represented in the image, but might have contributed to its painting in the first place. The chapter concludes by pondering questions of violence: what kinds we, as vegans, must tolerate, and which we might find ourselves drawn to. (shrink)

In Thomas Metzinger, Conscious Experience, Schoningh Verlag. 1995. [ online ].

Accounts of scientific explanation disagree about what’s required for a cause, law, or other fact to be a reason why an event occurs. In short, they disagree about the conditions for explanatory relevance. Nonetheless, most accounts presuppose that claims about explanatory relevance play a descriptive role in tracking reality. By rejecting the need for this descriptivist assumption, I develop an expressivist account of explanatory relevance and explanation: to judge that an answer is explanatory is to express an attitude of _being (...) for being satisfied by that answer_. I show how expressivism vindicates ordinary scientific discourse about explanation, including claims about the objectivity and mind-independence of explanations. By avoiding commitment to ontic relevance relations, I rehabilitate an irrealist conception of explanation. (shrink)

The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP), making the ability to do otherwise a necessary condition for moral responsibility, is supposed by Harry Frankfurt, John Fischer, and others to succumb to a peculiar kind of counterexample. The paper reviews the main problems with the counterexample that have surfaced over the years, and shows how most can be addressed within the terms of the current debate. But one problem seems ineliminable: because Frankfurt''s example relies on a counterfactual intervener to preclude alternatives to (...) the person''s action, it is not possible for it to preclude all alternatives (intervention that is contingent upon a trigger cannot bring it about that the trigger never occurred). This makes it possible for the determined PAPist to maintain that some pre-intervention deviation is always available to ground moral responsibility. In reply, the critic of PAP can examine all the candidate deviations and argue their irrelevance to moral responsibility (a daunting prospect); or the critic can dispense with counterfactual intervention altogether. The paper pursues the second of these strategies, developing three examples of noncounterfactual intervention in which (i) the agent has no alternatives (and a fortiori no morally relevant alternatives), yet (ii) there is just as much reason to think that the agent is morally responsible as there was in Frankfurt''s original example. The new counterexamples do suffer from one liability, but this is insufficient in the end to repair PAP''s conceptual connection between moral responsibility and alternate possibilities. (shrink)

The use of deception and dishonesty is widely accepted as a fact of life in policing. This paper thus defends a counterintuitive claim: Good faith is a normative foundation for the police as a political institution. Good faith is a core value of contracts, and policing is contractual in nature both broadly (as a matter of social contract theory) and narrowly (in regard to concrete encounters between law enforcement officers and the public). Given the centrality of good faith to policing, (...) dishonesty and deception on par with fraud are justified only as a narrowly circumscribed investigative tool that is constrained by institutional commitments to the fair distribution of security and the rule of law. The practical upshot is the preclusion of most dishonest and deceptive police tactics on par with fraud, leading to an institution that is less proactive and more reactive. (shrink)

Science frequently gives us multiple, compatible ways of solving the same problem or formulating the same theory. These compatible formulations change our understanding of the world, despite providing the same explanations. According to what I call "conceptualism," reformulations change our understanding by clarifying the epistemic structure of theories. I illustrate conceptualism by analyzing a typical example of symmetry-based reformulation in chemical physics. This case study poses a problem for "explanationism," the rival thesis that differences in understanding require ontic explanatory differences. (...) To defend conceptualism, I consider how prominent accounts of explanation might accommodate this case study. I argue that either they do not succeed, or they generate a skeptical challenge. (shrink)

I claim that there is pro tanto moral reason for parents to not raise their child on a vegan diet because a vegan diet bears a risk of harm to both the physical and the social well-being of children. After giving the empirical evidence from nutrition science and sociology that supports this claim, I turn to the question of how vegan parents should take this moral reason into account. Since many different moral frameworks have been used to argue for veganism, (...) this is a complex question. I suggest that, on some of these moral frameworks, the moral reason that some parents have for not raising their child on a vegan diet on account of this risk is plausibly as strong as the reason they have for raising their child on a vegan diet. In other words, the moral reason I outline is weighty enough to justify some vegan parents in plausibly finding it permissible to not raise their child on a vegan diet. (shrink)

Memory, funerals, and the communion of the saints: growing old and practices of remembering / M. Therese Lysaught -- God bends over backward to accommodate humankind...while the Civil Rights Acts and the Americans with Disabilities Act require [only] minimum effort / Mary Jo Iozzio -- Radical solidarity: migration as challenge ofr contemporary Christian ethics / Kristin E. Heyer -- Catholic lesbian feminist theology / Mary E. Hunt -- Theology of whose body? Sexual conplementarity, intersex conditions, and La Virgen de (...) Guadalupe / Katie M. Grimes -- Social conscience and politics in the United States of America: reflections / Mary Jo Bane -- Pope Francis, women, and the church for the poor / Lisa A. Fullam -- Floodwaters and the ticking clock: the systematic oppression and stigmatization of poor, single mothers in American and Christian theological responses / Julie A. Mavity Maddalena --What causes inequity? / Dean Baker -- Engaging the U.S. Bishops' pastoral on crime and criminal justice: from atomism to community justice / Robert DeFina and Lance Hannon -- Reconstructing the moral claim of racially unjust mass incarceration / Alison Benders -- The systemic erasure of the Black/dark-skinned body in Catholic ethics / Bryan Massingale -- Anti-blackness and white supremacy in the making of American Catholicism / M. Shawn Copeland -- White privilege / Charles E. Curran -- The Black Lives Matter Movement: justice and health equity / Michael P. Jaycox -- Mujerista theology: a challenge to traditional theology / Ada María Isasi-Díaz -- Faith of our mothers; Catholic womanist God-talk / Diana L. Hayes. (shrink)

Reformulating a scientific theory often leads to a significantly different way of understanding the world. Nevertheless, accounts of both theoretical equivalence and scientific understanding have neglected this important aspect of scientific theorizing. This essay provides a positive account of how reformulation changes our understanding. My account simultaneously addresses a serious challenge facing existing accounts of scientific understanding. These accounts have failed to characterize understanding in a way that goes beyond the epistemology of scientific explanation. By focusing on cases in which (...) we have differences in understanding without differences in explanation, I show that understanding does not reduce to explanation. (shrink)

Over the past two decades, the promotion of collaborative partnerships involving researchers from low and middle income countries with those from high income countries has been a major development in global health research. Ideally, these partnerships would lead to more equitable collaboration including the sharing of research responsibilities and rewards. While collaborative partnership initiatives have shown promise and attracted growing interest, there has been little scholarly debate regarding the fair distribution of authorship credit within these partnerships.

We argue that Hamiltonian mechanics is more fundamental than Lagrangian mechanics. Our argument provides a non-metaphysical strategy for privileging one formulation of a theory over another: ceteris paribus, a more general formulation is more fundamental. We illustrate this criterion through a novel interpretation of classical mechanics, based on three physical conditions. Two of these conditions suffice for recovering Hamiltonian mechanics. A third condition is necessary for Lagrangian mechanics. Hence, Lagrangian systems are a proper subset of Hamiltonian systems. Finally, we provide (...) a geometric interpretation of the principle of stationary action and rebut arguments for privileging Lagrangian mechanics. (shrink)

The sixth IPCC report states that a proper conception of climate justice that can address the complexity of the phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change as a whole requires considering not only one but rather three dimensions of justice today: redistributive, procedural, and recognition dimensions. In this article, my focus is on exploring the latter dimension, drawing special attention to climate policies addressing cultural-identity issues. In the first section, I illustrate how climate policies can be connected to discriminatory practices against minority (...) cultures and their identities. To do so, I take the struggles of Black movements against environmental racism and the struggles of Indigenous peoples against a colonialist cultural heritage as case studies. In the second section, I look into the most advanced normative model to address the dimension of recognition, its advantages, and how it addresses the so-called ‘institutionalization of cultural patterns’ in climate policies: the Nancy Fraser model. Finally, in the third section, I investigate an aspect that remains open. It concerns the matter of how to use institutional authority to ‘deinstitutionalize’ non-ecological cultural patterns, while respecting pluralism and avoiding falling into the risks of institutional paternalism. (shrink)

The paper argues that ‘All varieties of gratitude are only overall fitting when targeted towards agents,’ for instance that any variety of gratitude for the beautiful sunset is only overall fitting if a supernatural agent such as God exists. The first premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ For this premise, intuitive judgments are offered. The second premise is that ‘Prepositional gratitude is the paradigmatic variety of gratitude.’ For this premise, an aspect of the (...) common consent of philosophers about gratitude is noted and the metaphysical basicness of prepositional gratitude is argued for. This gives the intermediate conclusion that ‘The paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ The fourth premise is that ‘If the paradigmatic variety of gratitude is overall fitting only when targeted towards agents, then all varieties of gratitude are overall fitting only when targeted towards agents.’ To supply the conditional of this premise, the Paradigmatic Fittingness Principle is offered, which states that ‘Paradigmatic emotions set the fittingness conditions for their non-paradigmatic varieties.’ This principle is argued for by noting that it vindicates some popular and plausible intuitive judgements and gives an error theory of why one might think that gratitude could be fittingly targeted towards non-agents, and by suggesting the absence of any other plausible source of fittingness conditions for non-paradigmatic emotions. (shrink)

‘Prince, lovelier than the flashing star’, says the Poet Laureate to his Emperor; ‘Leda would rather have produced thee than Castor, Thetis than Achilles; Delos prefers thee to Apollo, Lydia to Bacchus.’ Then follows a passage describing the effect on nature of the Emperor's going out to hunt: ‘the beasts will gladly fall to your spear, the lion will be proud to die at your sacred hand. Venus scorns Adonis returned to life, Diana Hippolytus’.

RESUMO O objetivo deste trabalho é indicar como a exploração estilística de Margaret Cavendish responde às particularidades do conceito de natureza dela, por exemplo, a tese de que a natureza é uma matéria viva, infinita, mutável e heterogênea. Primeiramente, mostrarei o modo pelo qual a autora está presente em seus escritos, como ela escreve de uma perspectiva de primeira pessoa sobre sua própria experiência e de quem ela é. Resumirei brevemente sua biografia e o contexto no qual ela praticou filosofia. (...) Dado que suas escolhas de estilo são bastante numerosas, apresentarei somente algumas poucas, entre as peculiaridades estilísticas dela. Em segundo lugar, desenvolverei uma visão geral do seu conceito de natureza, ao contrário do proposto pelas teorias mecanicistas de seu tempo. Esclarecerei que tal conceito é expresso adequadamente pela diversidade estilística à qual Cavendish se volta em suas investigações. ABSTRACT This paper aims at indicating how Margaret Cavendish's stylistic exploration answer to the particularities of her concept of nature, i.e. the thesis that nature is live, infinite, changing and heterogeneous matter. I will first show the way in which the author is present in her writings, as she writes from a first person perspective about her own experience and from who she is. I will briefly summarise her biography and the context in which she practiced philosophy. Given that her stylistic choices are quite numerous, I will only present a few of her stylistic particularities. Secondly, I will develop the general outline of her concept of nature, as opposed to the one proposed by the mechanistic theories of her time. I will make it clear that said concept is adequately expressed in the stylistic diversity to which Cavendish turns in her investigations. (shrink)

Can mystics intuit something of what modern physicists calculate? And if so, how? The question of the relation between the classical mysticisms and modern science is approached in Part I in terms of the multiple forms and definitions of 'truth value'. Intuition/epiphany, pragmatism, coherence, and correspondence are considered as forms of truth that have also been proposed for unitive mystical experience. Since 'correspondence' or 'representation' has been the definition at the core of modern science, it in particular is approached by (...) combining Lakoff and Johnson on the roots of all abstract knowledge in physical metaphor and Gibson on the ecological array of perception as the template from which such metaphors must be drawn. A series of similarities between the maximally inclusive metaphors underlying unitive mystical experience and cosmological physics, as abstracted from an ecological array already resonant with multiple levels of physical reality, suggests a basis for the correspondence between these otherwise distinct cognitive domains. Part II extends this approach to widely posited cross cultural values of spiritual or mystical realization, in terms of gratitude, compassion, faith, and inner freedom. When fully embodied as forms of personal conduct, these are also ultimately derivable from the openness and flow patternings of the ecological array itself. The possibility that the more abstract spiritual values of the major world mysticisms exemplify not only revelatory and pragmatic forms of truth, but are also broadly correspondent with both the principles of immediate concrete perception and modern physics, may eventually allow a contemporary re- formulation of the microcosm-macrocosm unities basic to traditional cultures. (shrink)

Health professionals are involved in humanitarian assistance and development work in many regions of the world. They participate in primary health care, immunization campaigns, clinic- and hospital-based care, rehabilitation and feeding programs. In the course of this work, clinicians are frequently exposed to complex ethical issues. This paper examines how health workers experience ethics in the course of humanitarian assistance and development work. A qualitative study was conducted to consider this question. Five core themes emerged from the data, including: tension (...) between respecting local customs and imposing values; obstacles to providing adequate care; differing understandings of health and illness; questions of identity for health workers; and issues of trust and distrust. Recommendations are made for organizational strategies that could help aid agencies support and equip their staff as they respond to ethical issues. (shrink)

This is a contribution to an Author Meets Critics special issue on John Martin Fischer's _Our Fate: Essays on God and Free Will_.

Siblings ought to treat one another specially – in other words, siblings qua siblings ought to treat one another in ways that they need not treat others. This paper offers a theory of why this is the case. The paper begins with some intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another and some other normative features of siblinghood. I then review three potential theories of why siblings ought to treat one another specially, adapted from the literature on filial (...) piety: the gratitude theory, the friendship theory, and the special goods theory. In each case, these theories fail to explain some of the intuitive judgments about how siblings ought to treat one another. The paper then proposes a familial belonging theory. The institution of the family has certain goals, which impose normative demands on family members. I suggest that one such family goal is that every member feel familial belonging towards every other member, a goal which grounds the ways in which siblings ought to treat one another specially. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse InscriptionsJane Bailey ThigpenCourtney, E[dward], ed. Musa Lapidaria: A Selection of Latin Verse Inscriptions. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995. Pp. x 1 457. 4 maps. Cloth, $41.95; paper, $27.95. (American Classical Studies, 36)Latin verse inscriptions have often been mined for philological, metrical, grammatical, and socio-historical data, but neglected as poetry worthy of study in and of itself. This oversight limits literary study to (...) the generally upper-class, cultured milieu of literary texts. Epigraphical verse, in contrast, allows the study of material from all levels of society and expertise—from highly literary to barely literate. Musa Lapidaria shows how rewarding in-depth literary study of epigraphical material can be. Although the book was written with graduate students and young professors in mind, it can also be read profitably (and enjoyably) by preparatory-level teachers and advanced undergraduates.Of the nearly twenty-three hundred inscriptions collected by Buecheler and Lommatsch in the Carmina Latina Epigraphica (the verse complement to CIL), most are highly formulaic and lack individuality and intrinsic literary worth. A few of these poems, however, are creative endeavors. In Musa Lapidaria, E. Courtney has picked some of the best from CLE and added thirty-four choice specimens from other epigraphical sources. He translates his collection of 204 inscriptions into literal but elegant prose and adds a commentary which provides bibliography for each inscription as well as a line-by-line analysis of significant linguistic, metrical, literary and historical features. As the commentary is written for literary non-specialists rather than epigraphers, the author only briefly describes the physical characteristics of inscriptions and archaeological features when pertinent and includes no pictures.The collection spans the centuries, running from the early Republic to a [End Page 152] fifth-century inscription on the Golden Gate of Constantinople. Although Courtney includes many inscriptions from late antiquity, he refrains from including those which are openly Christian. Republican inscriptions include Saturnian verse, the Scipio epitaphs, and a few other notable epitaphs. Imperial inscriptions are organized by topic: 1) emperors and notables, matters of state and public buildings; 2) baths and springs, private buildings, works of art, and furniture; 3) literary, educational, and philosophical connections; 4) inns, travel, and tourism; 5) erotic; 6) municipal politics and institutions; 7) games, public performances and performers; 8) trades and professions; 9) religion (mostly Hercules, Hermes, Aesculapius, Athena, the Vestals, Silvanus, and Priapus, hunt trophies to Liber Pater or Diana, and examples of late syncretism); 10) epitaphs, including several for horses and dogs.The resulting melange is a colorful, earthy slice of life. The reader encounters, among other things: graffiti from the pyramids, dinner etiquette from Pompeii, poetic complaints about the lack of chamber pots at an inn, a hash of elegiac “door-poem” cliches actually written on a door, an ad for a snake charmer, a clay theatre ticket, a braggart soldier who could have stepped off the Plautine stage, and lurid descriptions of peculiar deaths—including an accident with a play javelin à la Antiphon and an attack by witches.The inscriptions themselves show a broad range of literary styles and expertise. The offering of Republican verse runs from the austere, well-wrought dignity of upper-class Saturnian and elegiac epitaphs to the chatty wit of a Saturnian dedication by a collegium of cooks, who, as Courtney says, “know their Plautus, and play up to their traditional comic type-casting as pretentious boasters” (205) but are less competent in their handling of meter. The Imperial material runs from the coarse wit and vulgar Latin of obscene Pompeiian graffiti to the highly polished, elusive style of a second-century North African epitaph (199A) which spends most of its 110 verses describing the three-storey mausoleum—complete with weathercock—which it adorned. (If anyone wants to read the longest extant Latin epitaph, this is it.) Five epitaphs are bi-lingual (Greek/Latin): 112, 159, 160, 170b, 180. Courtney omits the famous epitaph of Allia Potestas because it has already received a thorough commentary by N. Horsfall, ZPE 61 (1985) 251.The commentary deals with all of this disparate material thoroughly and well, and is particularly informative regarding material... (shrink)

In their paper “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” , George Graham and Terence Horgan argue, contrary to a widespread view, that the socalled Knowledge Argument may after all pose a problem for certain materialist accounts of perceptual experience. I propose a reply to Graham and Horgan on the materialist’s behalf, making use of a distinction between knowing what it’s like to see something F and knowing how F things look.

This article expands upon the notion of ideology as a material phenomenon, usually in the form of institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices. It draws on Herbert Marcuse and related thinkers to conceptualize technological solutions to environmental problems as materialized ideological responses to social-ecological contradictions, which, by concealing these contradictions, reproduce existing social conditions. This article outlines a method of technology assessment as ideology critique that draws attention to: (1) the social determinants of the given technology; (2) whether the technology conceals or masks (...) social-ecological contradictions; (3) whether the technology reproduces existing social conditions; and (4) whether the technology may be used for more rational or emancipatory ends in different social conditions. The examples of solar geoengineering and agricultural biotechnology are examined and it is found that, in each case, these technological solutions conceal social-ecological contradictions and support the current economic system and those benefiting from it, while precluding other alternatives. (shrink)

‘Medically unexplained symptoms’, through the lens of the biopsychosocial model, are understood in mainstream psy disciplines and related literature as a primarily psychosocial phenomenon perpetuated by ‘dysfunctional’ psychology on the part of people labelled with such. Biopsychosocial discourse and practice in this field, underpinned by little empirical foundation and lacking theoretical coherency, are associated with harms sustained by people labelled with MUS. Yet, little attention is paid to the psychology of social actors and institutions whose practice and policy derives from (...) biopsychosocial theorising, or whose vested interests produce such theorising. This article contends that lack of reflexivity among psy practitioners and other social actors on individual, institutional and structural levels furthers biopsychosocial hegemony and contributes to harms. Non-reflexive behaviour on the part of practitioners within clinical and ‘therapeutic’ encounters and on the part of social actors within institutions and broader power structures is examined, and possible psychological underpinnings of non-reflexivity are explored. Notably, the concept of gain, drawn from dominant discourse around MUS, is applied broadly to explore what might be gained from eschewing reflexivity and from adhering to biopsychosocial narratives. Implications for practice, supervision, training and research are discussed, notably highlighting a need for critical reflexivity in all domains. (shrink)

This paper offers a theory of filial piety on which piety is the ethical virtue that responds to the action of person-creating. Piety is the virtue of a creature qua creature. I begin by identifying the action of person-creating as the action of a parent. I then offer some points from the philosophy of action to delineate the action of person-creating. Next, I explain the metaphysical states that this action gives rise to and their value. Parent and child fall in (...) the category of relatives, discussed by Aristotle in his Categories. More specifically, Aristotle says that parent and child are relatives as creator and created. Agreeing with but going beyond Aristotle, I show how parent and child are creator and created as paradigm and image. A pious child is one who images their paradigm well. A child does this by participating in and perfecting the person-creating action of their parent, that is, by being a good person. I argue for the theory’s acceptance on the grounds that it better explains common intuitive judgments about filial piety than do the gratitude theory and the special goods theory (the two most influential and plausible competing theories of filial piety in the philosophical literature). (shrink)

Mammalian sex chromosomes exhibit marked sexual dimorphism in behavior during gametogenesis. During oogenesis, the X chromosomes pair and participate in unrestricted recombination; both are transcriptionally active. However, during spermatogenesis the X and Y chromosomes experience spatial restriction of pairing and recombination, are transcriptionally inactive, and form a chromatin domain that is markedly different from that of the autosomes. Thus the male germ cell has to contend with the potential loss of X‐encoded gene products, and it appears that coping strategies have (...) evolved. Genetic control of sex‐chromosome inactivation during spermatogenesis does not involve pairing or the presence of the Y chromosome or an intact X chromosome, and may therefore be under exogenous control by the gonad. Sex‐chromosome reactivation during oogenesis and inactivation during spermatogenesis probably reflect specific meiotic events such as recombination. Understanding these phenomena may help explain other sex‐related differences in genetic recombination. (shrink)

La Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios, en su misión de aportar a la transformación de las realidades sociales, plantea en su enfoque educativo la estrategia que procura articular la teoría con la práctica —praxeología—. Por ello, la investigación formativa es un planteamiento que viabiliza que tanto estudiantes y docentes vivan y sientan realmente el conocimiento y que, a su vez, articulen e incidan en las comunidades. A este respecto, presentaremos una experiencia que da cuenta del enfoque praxeológico. La intención de (...) Uniminuto es, entonces, que el conocimiento transforme y genere reflexiones y acciones de cara a las necesidades de los contextos. La universidad de hoy no puede ni debe sustraerse a una mirada sobre el territorio, sus problemáticas y potencialidades, por tanto, estudiantes y docentes deben constituirse en conectores de espacios académicos con la realidad social. (shrink)

Brian Ellis has argued that the assigning of forces is, in the final analysis, a matter of convention. This conclusion is backed by the premises (1) that forces and force-effects are necessary and sufficient for each other, and (2) that the classification of some state of affairs as a force-effect is at least partly conventional. We argue that the first premise is false, that the second premise is ambiguous as between several senses of "conventional," and finally that he has not (...) established that force-effects are conventional in the sense required for the conclusion he wishes to draw. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of some experimental data for views that identify colors with objective physical properties such as reflectance profiles. Those who reject objectivist views often argue from the existence of intersubjective differences in color categorization ; but objectivists have managed to stand their ground by identifying colors with sets or ranges of reflectances individuated by the ways in which they stimulate the visual system. In the interest of moving the debate forward, I provide a new kind of (...) evidence against objectivism. Results of a psycholinguistic experiment reveal hysteresis and enhanced contrast in ordinary speakers’ applications of vague terms. These dynamical patterns are purely psychological and give rise to intra-subjective variation in subjects’ applications of vague predicates; in particular, in the case of color predicates, nothing in the stimulus configuration or the illuminant undergoes any change, the only variable being the order in which stimuli are judged. I hypothesize that these order effects are necessary if vague words are to be applicable to values on dimensions, like color, that admit of continuous change. To the extent that this hypothesis is correct, it suggests that if colors are the properties named by ordinary color predicates, and ordinary color predicates are vague, and the application of vague predicates exhibits the order effects found in the experiment, colours cannot be physical or otherwise objective in nature. (shrink)

Teaching ethics poses a dilemma for professors of business. First, they have little or no formal training in ethics. Second, they have established ethical values that they may not want to impose upon their students. What is needed is a well-recognized, yet non-sectarian model to facilitate the clarification of ethical questions. Gestalt theory offers such a framework. Four Gestalt principles facilitate ethical clarification and another four Gestalt principles anesthetize ethical clarification. This article examines each principle, illustrates that principle through current (...) business examples, and offers exercises for developing each principle. (shrink)

In September 2004 a local authority council commissioned the University of Dundee to undertake a small evaluation of a pilot social work post set up in 2003 and located in the palliative care team of the local Health Trust. The evaluation was to enable decisions to be made regarding the continuation and establishment of this specialist post into the financial year beginning 2005 and beyond. The university was asked to consult clients of the social worker, their relatives and relatives of (...) clients who had died, and the staff in the palliative care team as well as staff in the Adult and Older People's Services of the local authority. The evaluation was eventually completed in March 2006 but the expected date of completion by the local authority had been March 2005. The delay was caused almost entirely by the impact of the National Health Service (NHS) research ethics process. (shrink)

This paper argues that it cannot be fitting to blame God. I show that divine immutability, even on a weak conception, implies that God's ethical character cannot change. I then argue that blame aims at a change in the ethical character of the one blamed. This claim is directly intuitive, explains a wide set of intuitions about when blame is unfitting, and is implied by most of the theories blame offered in the philosophical literature. Since blame targeted at God aims (...) to change God's ethical character, an impossibility, such blame is not fitting. I then draw on this conclusion to sketch a new theodicy. I argue that a necessary condition on being blameworthy is that one can be blamed under some possible condition. So, God cannot be blameworthy. Further, I argue that if someone cannot be blameworthy, then they cannot do wrong. Wrong actions tend to make us blameworthy, but since God cannot be blameworthy nothing can tend to make him blameworthy – God cannot do wrong. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that Platonic Forms are angels. I make this identification by claiming that Platonic Forms have the characteristics of angels, in particular, that Platonic Forms are alive. I offer four arguments for this claim. First, it seems that engaging in self-directed action is a sufficient condition for being alive. The Forms are, as teleological activities, self-directed actions. Second, bodies receive their being from their Forms, and some bodies are essentially alive. Third, in the Good, all (...) the types of goodness, including life, are identical. The Forms are appearances of the Good. Fourth, since the Good imparts as much goodness as it can, the Forms are alive unless there is some bar to their being alive. There are good reasons to think that there is no such bar. I then show that ethical vices do not give body to human form, but give body to other forms—those that are evil angels. Lastly, I provide a survey of the relationships that various religious traditions posit between ethical vice and the demonic. (shrink)

According to Chandra Mohanty, there is no apolitical academy; academic and scholarly practices are in themselves political, insofar as they are inscribed in power and validation relations, which answer to and have effects upon the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist structures to which they belong. In the case of philosophical writing, this means that the forms that regulate writing, that is, what determines how one must write in different contexts, are expressive of the power structures within philosophical academia. These power structures (...) are upheld through time because of, among many other factors, the rendering invisible of the diversity of places of enunciation belonging to those who write and think in philosophy, and of the universalization of the privileges associated with said places of enunciation. In this article, I propose a way of writing letters that appeals to grammatical persons and their relation to the authors of the texts. Through this writing practice it is possible to make explicit the places of enunciation from which we write philosophy. This enables, first, making visible the privileges and oppressions of those writing philosophy; and second, generating small spaces of resistance and transformation of the oppressive power relations within the philosophical academy. (shrink)