Standard animalists are committed to a stringent form of restricted composition, thereby denying the existence of brains, hands, and other proper parts of an organism . One reason for positing this near-nihilistic ontology comes from various challenges to animalism such as the Thinking Parts Argument, the Unity Argument, and the Argument from the Problem of the Many. In this paper, I show that these putatively distinct arguments are all instances of a more general problem, which I call the ‘Too Many (...) Candidates Problem’ . Given my formulation of the problem, it is evident that standard animalists are mistaken in believing that restricting composition is the only solution. I show that there is another option for solving the TMC. The advantage of such a position, which I call ‘unrestricted animalism’, is that it is compatible with unrestricted composition and the existence of brains and other proper parts of an organism. I conclude by sketching several strategies one can take regarding this latter solution to the TMC. (shrink)

We think of modern liberalism as the novel product of a world reinvented on a secular basis after 1945. In The Theology of Liberalism, one of the country's most important political theorists argues that we could hardly be more wrong. Eric Nelson contends that the tradition of liberal political philosophy founded by John Rawls is, however unwittingly, the product of ancient theological debates about justice and evil. Once we understand this, he suggests, we can recognize the deep incoherence of (...) various forms of liberal political philosophy that have emerged in Rawls's wake.--. (shrink)

This paper explores some connections between competing conceptions of scientific laws on the one hand, and a problem in the foundations of statistical mechanics on the other. I examine two proposals for understanding the time asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomenal: David Albert's recent proposal and a proposal that I outline based on Hans Reichenbach's “branch systems”. I sketch an argument against the former, and mount a defense of the latter by showing how to accommodate statistical mechanics to recent developments in the (...) philosophy of scientific laws. (shrink)

Recently, Stephan Blatti has argued that a deprivationist view (DV) of death’s harm is incomplete, and he presents a view such that the kind of distinctive harm that death brings to an individual involves the restriction of that individual’s autonomy.2 Not only does death deprivation-harm us, but it also restriction-harms us. Let us label such an account—one that includes both deprivation and restriction as comprising death’s harm—as a ‘deprivationist-restrictionist view’ (or ‘DRV’). Blatti favors DRV because it avoids several worries that (...) beset DV. In this paper, I present several objections to DRV; in particular, I raise some problems for the claim that death restriction-harms us and show that even DRV does not avoid the worries of DV—so there is no reason to prefer DRV over DV. (shrink)

Philip Kitcher has proposed a theory of explanation based on the notion of unification. Despite the genuine interest and power of the theory, I argue here that the theory suffers from a fatal deficiency: It is intrinsically unable to account for the asymmetric structure of explanation, and thus ultimately falls prey to a problem similar to the one which beset Hempel's D-N model. I conclude that Kitcher is wrong to claim that one can settle the issue of an argument's explanatory (...) force merely on the basis of considerations about the unifying power of the argument pattern the argument instantiates. (shrink)

Standard microbial evolutionary ontology is organized according to a nested hierarchy of entities at various levels of biological organization. It typically detects and defines these entities in relation to the most stable aspects of evolutionary processes, by identifying lineages evolving by a process of vertical inheritance from an ancestral entity. However, recent advances in microbiology indicate that such an ontology has important limitations. The various dynamics detected within microbiological systems reveal that a focus on the most stable entities (or features (...) of entities) over time inevitably underestimates the extent and nature of microbial diversity. These dynamics are not the outcome of the process of vertical descent alone. Other processes, often involving causal interactions between entities from distinct levels of biological organisation, or operating at different time scales, are responsible not only for the destabilisation of pre-existing entities, but also for the emergence and stabilisation of novel entities in the microbial world. In this article we consider microbial entities as more or less stabilised functional wholes, and sketch a network-based ontology that can represent a diverse set of processes including, for example, as well as phylogenetic relations, interactions that stabilise or destabilise the interacting entities, spatial relations, ecological connections, and genetic exchanges. We use this pluralistic framework for evaluating (i) the existing ontological assumptions in evolution (e.g. whether currently recognized entities are adequate for understanding the causes of change and stabilisation in the microbial world), and (ii) for identifying hidden ontological kinds, essentially invisible from within a more limited perspective. We propose to recognize additional classes of entities that provide new insights into the structure of the microbial world, namely “processually equivalent” entities, “processually versatile” entities, and “stabilized” entities. (shrink)

Adam Smith is rediscovered every few generations by philosophers surprised by his subtlety, originality, and relevance. Smith’s status as mythical father of economic science and his role as canonical defender of free trade is secure within economics, but few philosophers have been more often misrepresented and underestimated. Because he is well known as an advocate of commercial society, many scholars, public intellectuals, commentators, and journalists are happy to implicate him automatically in its successes and failures, or to enlist him in (...) one side or another of the various ideological battles surrounding the utility and dangers of market economics. This book is an accessible and engaging introduction to Smith’s most important contributions to philosophy. Beginning with an introductory chapter on Smith’s life, writings and readings, Eric Schliesser locates Smith in his immediate social and philosophical context. Later chapters analyse key concepts in his core moral, political and metaphysical theories, before turning to Smith's contribution to areas of ongoing philosophical interest, especially philosophy of science, and the metaphysics of mind and self. Schliesser concludes by summarising Smith's complicated legacy in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, and explores how Smith is being 're-discovered' in contemporary moral philosophy. (shrink)

Relationships between children and parents pervade the Star Wars saga, especially if people include surrogate parents. Anakin's relationship with his mother, Shmi, in the prequels impacts his trajectory toward the dark side. In The Mandalorian, Mando's role as a surrogate father to Grogu transforms them into a “Clan of Two”. But the most significant parent‐child relationship in the saga may be the one between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Confucius's teachings highlight the importance of benevolence, social order, and ritual propriety (...) among other virtues and values. This chapter shows that understanding Luke's surrender to Vader in terms of Confucian filial piety makes sense of how Luke is able to overcome the allure of the dark side and become a Jedi. Confucius's Analects has a moral framework called “exemplarism”. This is the idea that moral knowledge and practice do not start with principles, rules, duties, consequences, or character traits. (shrink)

This paper addresses the alleged tension between the kind of strong apophaticism endorsed by Maimonides and his view of worshiping God. After considering some extant resolutions to this problem, I offer a proposal that utilizes the role of silence and imitative activity in Maimonides. While this solution may not have been one that Maimonides would have offered, I argue that Maimonides had conceptual resources for offering a promising solution within his theological framework.

Governments have been slow to address climate change. If non-governmental agents share a responsibility in light of the slow pace of government action then it is a collective responsibility. I examine three models of collective responsibility, especially Iris Young's social connection model, and assess their value for identifying a collective, among all emitters, that can share responsibility. These models can help us better understand both the growth of the movement to divest from fossil fuels and the nature of responsibility for (...) collective action problems. Universities and colleges share a responsibility because they occupy similar positions of, among other things, power and privilege. (shrink)

Carroll Izard completed his dissertation in 1952, beginning a career spanning more than six decades that coincided with clinical psychology maturing as a profession, and the birth of clinical science and cognitive neuroscience. Izard’s focus on discrete emotions as evolved systems that organize information, prepare responses, and shape the development of personality and relationships persisted through his career, despite “emotions” often being overshadowed by psychodynamic, behavioral, or cognitive perspectives. His theoretical work anticipated and now integrates contemporary neuroscience and relational perspectives. (...) Exploration of discrete emotions has kept lines of inquiry open that enrich our understanding of psychopathology. Izard also embraced clinical science, combining basic research with effectiveness studies addressing the unmet need for mental health services via emotion-focused interventions. (shrink)

Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving special consideration to conflicted self-deception as an (...) alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed. (shrink)

This book considers how observations about the past influence future behaviour, as expressed in language. Focusing on information gathered from speech and other evidence sources, the author offers a model of how judgements about reliability can be made, and how such judgements factor into how people treat information they acquire via those sources.

As algorithms pervade numerous facets of daily life, they are incorporated into systems for increasingly diverse purposes. These systems’ results are often interpreted differently by the designers who created them than by the lay persons who interact with them. This paper offers a proposal for human-centered algorithm design, which incorporates human and social interpretations into the design process for algorithmically based systems. It articulates three specific strategies for doing so: theoretical, participatory, and speculative. Drawing on the author’s work designing and (...) deploying multiple related systems, the paper provides a detailed example of using a theoretical approach. It also discusses findings pertinent to participatory and speculative design approaches. The paper addresses both strengths and challenges for each strategy in helping to center the process of designing algorithmically based systems around humans. (shrink)

We introduce and study a PDL-style logic for reasoning about protocols, or plans, under imperfect information. Our paper touches on a number of issues surrounding the relationship between an agent’s abilities, available choices, and information in an interactive situation. The main question we address is under what circumstances can the agent commit to a protocol or plan, and what can she achieve by doing so?

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived from (...) a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources. (shrink)

The importance of _naturalization_—the establishment of species introduced into foreign places—to the early development of Darwin’s theory of evolution deserves historical attention. Introduced and invasive European species presented Darwin with interpretive challenges during his service as naturalist on the HMS _Beagle_. Species naturalization and invasive species strained the geologist Charles Lyell’s creationist view of the organic world, a view which Darwin adopted during the voyage of the _Beagle_ but came to question afterward. I suggest that these phenomena primed Darwin to (...) question the “stability of species.” I then examine the role of introduced and invasive species in Darwin’s early theorizing and negotiation with Lyell’s ideas, recorded in his post-voyage “transmutation notebooks.” Therein, the subject was an inflection point in his contention with Lyell’s views and moreover, his theorizing on invasive species occasioned some of his earliest inklings of natural selection. Finally, I examine how naturalization was crucial to Lyell’s own eventual conversion to evolutionism. I conclude with brief reflections on the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Darwin’s reasoning, his intellectual relationship to Lyell, and the historical context that shaped his theory. (shrink)

This is the second paper in a two-part series introducing logics for reasoning about the dynamics of knowledge and beliefs. Part I introduced different logical systems that can be used to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of a group of agents. In this second paper, I show how to adapt these logical systems to reason about the knowledge and beliefs of a group of agents during the course of a social interaction or rational inquiry. Inference, communication and observation are (...) typical examples of informative events, which have been subjected to a logical analysis. The main goal of this article is to introduce the key conceptual and technical issues that drive much of the research in this area. (shrink)

In this paper I develop a theory of contrastive why questions that establishes under what conditions it is sensible to ask "why p rather than q?". p and q must be outcomes of a single type of causal process.

I aim to show that one way of testing the mettle of a theory of scientific explanation is to inquire what that theory entails about the status of brute facts. Here I consider the nature of brute facts, and survey several contemporary accounts of explanation vis a vis this subject. One problem with these accounts is that they seem to entail that brute facts represent a gap in scientific understanding. I argue that brute facts are non-mysterious and indeed are even (...) explainable by the lights of Salmon's ontic conception of explanation. The plausibility of various models of explanation, I suggest, depends to some extent on the tendency of their proponents to focus on certain examples of explananda - I ponder brute facts qua explananda here as a way of helping us to recognize this dependency. (shrink)

In an earlier paper, we appealed to various empirical studies to make the case that the unconscious mind is capable of robust self-deception. Paul Doody has challenged our interpretations of that empirical evidence. In this reply we defend our interpretations, arguing that the unconscious is engaged in strategic and flexible goal pursuit.

In this article I will argue first that if ignorance poses a problem for valid consent in medical contexts then framing effects do too, and second that the problem posed by framing effects can be solved by eliminating those effects. My position is thus a mean between two mistaken extremes. At one mistaken extreme, framing effects are so trivial that they never impinge on the moral force of consent. This is as mistaken as thinking that ignorance is so trivial that (...) it never impinges on the moral force of consent. At the other mistaken extreme, framing effects are so serious that their existence shows that consent has no independent moral force. This is as mistaken as the idea that ignorance is so serious that its existence shows that consent has no independent moral force. I will argue that, instead of endorsing either of these mistaken extreme views, we should instead endorse a moderate view according to which framing effects sometimes pose a serious challenge for the validity of consent, just as ignorance does, but one which we can solve by eliminating the effect, just as we can solve the problem of ignorance by eliminating it. (shrink)

Individuals who become ill as a result of personal lifestyle choices often shift the monetary costs of their healthcare needs to the taxpaying public or to fellow members of a private insurance pool. Some argue that policies permitting such cost shifting are unfair. Arguments for this view may seem to draw support from luck egalitarian accounts of distributive justice. This essay argues that the luck egalitarian framework provides no such support. To allocate healthcare costs on the basis of personal responsibility (...) would arbitrarily and publicly burden socially detectable risk-takers while undetectable risk-takers continue to get a free ride. That problem is unavoidable even on the assumption that distributive institutions outside the healthcare sector are fully just. In actual, farfrom-just societies, imposing personal liability for the costs of voluntary risk taking would be wrong for an additional reason. Doing so would tend to magnify existing distributive injustices. These conclusions draw attention to two common ‘moral fallacies of the second best’ that can arise when applying ideal normative theory to matters of institutional design and in real-world policy contexts. (shrink)

We present an axiomatic model of preferences over menus that is motivated by three assumptions. First, the decision maker is uncertain ex ante (i.e., at the time of choosing a menu) about her ex post (i.e., at the time of choosing an option within her chosen menu) preferences over options, and she anticipates that this subjective uncertainty will not resolve before the ex post stage. Second, she is averse to ex post indecisiveness (i.e., to having to choose between options that (...) she cannot rank with certainty). Third, when evaluating a menu she discards options that are dominated (i.e., inferior to another option whatever her ex post preferences may be) and restricts attention to the undominated ones. Under these assumptions, the decision maker has a preference for commitment in the sense of preferring menus with fewer undominated alternatives. We derive a representation in which the decision maker’s uncertainty about her ex post preferences is captured by means of a subjective state space, which in turn determines which options are undominated in a given menu, and in which the decision maker fears, whenever indecisive, to choose an option that will turn out to be the worst (undominated) one according to the realization of her ex post preferences. (shrink)

Translated Felicia McCarren. Stanford: Stanford UP and Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995 (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics series). Pages: xxiii + 161. Pb: 0 8047 2385 0; 10.95. Hb: 0 8047 2376 I; 25.00. Originally published in French as Musica Ficta (Figures de Wagner). Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1991.

Children and individuals with developmental disabilities compared to typical participants are disadvantaged not only by virtue of being vulnerable to risks inherent in research participation but also by the higher likelihood of exclusion from research altogether. Current regulatory and ethical guidelines although necessary for their protection do not sufficiently ensure fair distributive justice. Yet, in view of disproportionately higher burdens of co-occurring physical and mental disorders in individuals with DD, they are better positioned to benefit from research by equitable participation. (...) Greater elucidation of this ethical dilemma is called for by researchers, institutional review boards, and funding agencies to urgently redress the imbalance. This article discusses many of the regulatory principles to ensure better research participation of children and individuals with DD: human rights, validity, distributive justice, beneficence/nonmaleficence, and autonomy. (shrink)

Volume 6 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin offers the first translation of the full German text of Anamnesis published in 1966.

Offers a history of the philosophy of time and a comparison of the ways of conceiving the temporal, concentrating on European philosophy and its impact the connection between time and money in Western civilization.

Academic dishonesty occurs at alarming rates in higher education. In the present study, we examined predictors of academic cheating behaviors, and beliefs in the acceptability of cheating, in disliked courses at two large universities, using structural equation modeling. Perceived mastery and extrinsic goal structures were related to beliefs about cheating but not cheating behaviors. Beliefs in the acceptability of cheating were more likely to be endorsed in math and science courses. College students were more likely to cheat and to believe (...) in the acceptability of cheating when they reported a high need for sensation. (shrink)