Williams claims that the only particular moral truths, and perhaps the only moral truths of any kind, are nonobjective, i.e., culture-bound. For Lovibond we have moral truths when an assertion-condition is satisfied, and that is determined by the voice of the relevant moral authority as embodied in the institutions of the sittlich morality. According to MacIntyre one must speak from within a living tradition for which there can be no external rational grounding. However, if my criticisms of traditional philosophical ethics (...) are sound, such relativist and historicist views are unjustified, and the project of seeking a rationally grounded morality is perfectly in order. (shrink)

There is currently intense interest in the question of the source of our presumed knowledge of truths concerning what is, or is not, metaphysically possible or necessary. Some philosophers locate this source in our capacities to conceive or imagine various actual or non-actual states of affairs, but this approach is open to certain familiar and seemingly powerful objections. A different and ostensibly more promising approach has been developed by Timothy Williamson, according to which our capacity for modal knowledge is just (...) an extension, or by-product, of our general capacity to acquire knowledge of true counterfactual conditionals — a capacity that we deploy ubiquitously in everyday life. Williamson’s account crucially involves a thesis to the effect that modal truths can be explained in terms of counterfactual truths. In this paper, I query Williamson’s account on a number of points, including this thesis. My positive proposal, which owes a debt to the work of Kit Fine on modality and essence, appeals instead to our capacity to grasp essences, understood in a neo-Aristotelian fashion, according to which essences are expressed by ‘real definitions’. (shrink)

s div class="title" a terTwo Notions of Being: Entity and Essence s /div a ter - Volume 62 - E. J. Lowe.

The relations between reason, motivation and value present problems which, though ancient, remain intractable. If values are objective and rational how can they move us and if they are dependent on our contingent desires how can they be rational? E. J. Bond makes a bold attack on this dilemma. The widespread view among philosophers today is that judgements contain an irreducible element of personal commitment. To this Professor Bond proposes an account of values as objective and value judgements as true (...) or false, employing a distinction between grounding and motivating reasons to establish their connection with action. He defines and tests his position against a number of recent theories, providing in the process forceful criticism of Williams, Wiggins, Foot, Narveson and Nagel, among others. A distinctive contribution to the subject, it will stimulate interest and worthwhile debate among philosophers, while also serving as an introduction to this vital topic. (shrink)

Following the lead of Gustav Bergmann ( 1967 ), if not his precise terminology, ontologies are sometimes divided into those that are ‘relational’ and those that are ‘constituent’ (Wolterstorff 1970 ). Substance ontologies in the Aristotelian tradition are commonly thought of as being constituent ontologies, because they typically espouse the hylemorphic dualism of Aristotle ’s Metaphysics – a doctrine according to which an individual substance is always a combination of matter and form. But an alternative approach drawing more on the (...) fourfold ontological scheme of Aristotle’s Categories is not committed to this doctrine and may regard individual (or ‘primary’) substances as having no constituent structure, their only possible complexity residing in their possession, in some cases, of a multiplicity of substantial parts. However, as we shall see, this does not imply that such an ontology falls instead into the relational camp: for although it invokes, in addition to the category of individual substance, also those of substantial kind (‘secondary’ substance), attribute, and mode (or ‘individual accident’), it need not and arguably should not take there to be external relations between entities in the different categories. On this view, truths of exemplification and instantiation, such as ‘Dobbin is white’ and ‘Dobbin is a horse’, do not need relational truthmakers. Hence, it can be maintained that there are no such relations as ‘exemplification’ and ‘instantiation’, at most only certain relational truths of exemplification and instantiation – truths whose logical form is relational. Th is being so, I shall argue, such an ontology cannot fairly be classified as a ‘relational’ one. (shrink)

Strategic games require reasoning about other people’s and one’s own beliefs or intentions. Although they have clear commonalities with psychological tests of theory of mind, they are not clearly related to theory of mind tests for children between 9 and 10 years of age “Flobbe et al. J Logic Language Inform 17(4):417–442 (2008)”. We studied children’s (5–12 years of age) individual differences in how they played a strategic game by analyzing the strategies that they applied in a zero, first, and (...) second-order reasoning task. For the zero-order task, we found two subgroups with different accuracy levels. For the first-order task, subgroups of children applied different suboptimal strategies or an optimal strategy. For the second-order task only suboptimal strategies were present. Strategy use for all tasks was related to age. The 5- and 6-year old children were additionally tested on theory of mind understanding and executive functioning. Strategy-use in these children was related to working memory, but not to theory of mind after correction for age, verbal ability and general IQ. (shrink)

If it is true, as suggested by Sir Michael Marmot and other researchers, that status impacts health and therefore accounts for some of the social gradient in health, then it seems to be the case that it would be possible to bring about more equality in health by equalizing status. The purpose of this article is to analyze this suggestion. First, we suggest a working definition of what status precisely is. Second, following a luck egalitarian approach to distributive justice, we (...) consider whether and to which extent individuals are responsible themselves for their position in a status hierarchy. Third, we consider the contours of a difficult question, namely which political measures are feasible in order to reduce health-affective inequalities in status and fourth, whether or to what extent such measures are legitimate. We argue that on the basis of these considerations, we have at least some prima facie reasons to counter (at least some) status inequalities in order to equalize health. (shrink)

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in disruption of work and other social activities of so many people. Some were forced to stay at home and many decided to stay at home for fear of being infected with the virus. This phenomenon brought different reactions and even mental stress to many people. However, there were people who turned this kind of tragedy into creative work. This paper discusses the experiences and insights of known plant lovers in Digos City, Davao del Sur (...) Philippines. Digos City is one of the heavily affected places during the series of earthquakes that jolted Davao del Sur last year. While people are still recovering, COVID-19 added an additional burden to the residents. In this paper, we argue that their decision to focus on gardening was not only to fight boredom and to divert their attention during lockdown but this was their way of maintaining their well-being by participating in the on-going work of creation and recreation and to rise from the tragedy. We further argue that it might be good that this creative work will go beyond home gardening and beyond pots and slowly extend to creative work for environmental protection and preservation through more active engagements into reforestation activities. (shrink)

Lorazepam has been repeatedly shown to induce memory impairments. The effects of this benzodiazepine on the processes involved in the strategic regulation of memory accuracy have not as yet been explored. An experimental procedure that delineates the role of monitoring and control processes was used. Fifteen lorazepam and 15 placebo subjects were examined using a semantic memory task that combined both a forced- and a free-report option and a no-incentive and an incentive condition. Memory accuracy was lower in the lorazepam (...) than in the placebo group. Lorazepam impaired control sensitivity (the extent to which volunteering of answers is affected by the confidence judgments). While the absolute aspect of monitoring was impaired (calibration scores), both the discriminative aspect (the ability to distinguish between correct and incorrect answers) and the response criterion setting (the confidence threshold set for volunteering a report) were spared. The pharmacological dissociation between monitoring effectiveness and control sensitivity indicates that these two components involve distinct processes. (shrink)

Locke on Human Understanding, is a comprehensive introduction to John Locke's major work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Locke's Essay remains a key work in many philosophical fields, notably in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophies of mind and language. In addition, Locke is often referred to as the first English empiricist. Knowledge of this influential work and figure is essential to Enlightenment thought. E. J. Lowe's approach enables students to effectively study the Essay by placing Locke's life and works in (...) their intellectual and historical context. The book provides a critical examination of the leading themes in the Essay , illuminating the main lines in Locke's thinking. Such topics include innate ideas, perception, primary and secondary qualities, personal identity, free will, action and language. Finally, E. J. Lowe examines the comtemporary work being done on this highly influential English philosopher. (shrink)