There is a huge philosophical literature on scientific explanation, and no one seriously denies that the sciences explain in one way or another. But what about ontology? I will argue that ontological laws and ontological theories can explain. And I will point at the differences between ontological explanations and their scientific counterparts.

In a discussion of Parfit's Drops of Water case, Zach Barnett has recently proposed a novel argument against “No Small Improvement”; that is, the claim that a single drop of water cannot affect the magnitude of a thirsty person's suffering. We first show that Barnett's argument can be significantly strengthened, and also that the fundamental idea behind it yields a straightforward argument for the transitivity of equal suffering. We then suggest that defenders of No Small Improvement could reject a Pareto (...) principle that is presupposed in Barnett's argument and our developments of it. However, this does not save No Small Improvement, since there is a convincing argument against this claim that does not presuppose the Pareto principle. (shrink)

In cognitive science, long-term anticipation, such as when planning to do something next year, is typically seen as a form of ‘higher’ cognition, requiring a different account than the more basic activities that can be understood in terms of responsiveness to ‘affordances,’ i.e. to possibilities for action. Starting from architects that anticipate the possibility to make an architectural installation over the course of many months, in this paper we develop a process-based account of affordances that includes long-term anticipation within its (...) scope. We present a framework in which situations and their affordances unfold, and can be thought of as continuing a history of practices into a current situational activity. In this activity affordances invite skilled participants to act further. Via these invitations one situation develops into the other; an unfolding process that sets up the conditions for its own continuation. Central to our process account of affordances is the idea that engaged individuals can be responsive to the direction of the process to which their actions contribute. Anticipation, at any temporal scale, is then part and parcel of keeping attuned to the movement of the unfolding situations to which an individual contributes. We concretize our account by returning to the example of anticipation observed in architectural practice. This account of anticipation opens the door to considering a wide array of human activities traditionally characterized as ‘higher’ cognition in terms of engaging with affordances. (shrink)

The dissertation is centered around the Moral Virtuosity Project . The central task of the dissertation is to examine what other philosophers have had to say on this topic and ultimately to successfully complete this project. ;Chapter One is concerned exclusively with Aristotle's attempt to complete the Moral Virtuosity Project. I defend the view that Aristotle holds that each moral virtue is a disposition toward proper practical reasoning, action, and emotion within a certain sphere. I critically examine Aristotle's argument for (...) the unity of the virtues. I then try to point to some areas where Aristotle's views on moral virtue fail to correspond with our ordinary common sense views on moral virtue. ;Chapter Two has three main parts. First, I consider Immanuel Kant's attempt to complete the Moral Virtuosity Project. I develop an interpretation of Kant's views on this topic. Second, I take up the topic of the relationship between Aristotle's views on moral virtue and Kant's views on moral virtue. Third, I examine some objections to Kant's views on moral virtue. I conclude that Kant's account of moral virtue goes wrong because it is inextricably tied up with the concept of moral obligation. ;Chapter Three is devoted to critical discussions of contemporary attempts to complete the Moral Virtuosity Project. Authors whose views are discussed include: G. H. von Wright, Philippa Foot, Judith Thomson, Linda Zagzebski, and Thomas Hurka. I conclude that each view has serious problems. ;In Chapter Four I develop a novel account of moral virtue by appealing to the concept of admirability. Drawing on work on virtue by Michael Slote, I try to shed some light on the concept of admirability and distinguish the concept from related concepts. I then appeal to the concept of admirability to explicate the concept of a moral virtue, thus completing the Moral Virtuosity Project. I discuss a number of other topics, including "hard cases", excessive virtue, and two sorts of morally virtuous persons: the Good Hearted Hero and the Conflicted Hero. (shrink)

"In these essays, health care professionals, scholars, and members of the disability community debate the implications of prenatal testing for people with disabilitties and for parent-child relationships generally."--Cover.

According to moral error theory, there are no ethical facts. Error theorists often defend this view with the metaphysical argument from queerness. This argument purports to show that it is most reasonable to believe that ethical facts do not exist, because such facts are metaphysically queer and explanatorily redundant. This paper argues that even if we assume that ethical facts are metaphysically queer and explanatorily redundant, the argument from queerness does not warrant the rejection of ethical facts. It only shows (...) that it is most reasonable to refrain from believing that ethical facts exist. The argument from queerness therefore merely supports metaethical scepticism: that is, it merely supports agnosticism about the existence of ethical facts. This is cause for optimism, because metaethical scepticism is less of a threat to our moral practice than moral error theory. (shrink)

For Merleau-Ponty,consciousness in skillful coping is a matter of prereflective ‘I can’ and not explicit ‘I think that.’ The body unifies many domain-specific capacities. There exists a direct link between the perceived possibilities for action in the situation (‘affordances’) and the organism’s capacities. From Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions it is clear that in a flow of skillful actions, the leading ‘I can’ may change from moment to moment without explicit deliberation. How these transitions occur, however, is less clear. Given that Merleau-Ponty suggested (...) that a better understanding of the self-organization of brain and behavior is important, I will re-read his descriptions of skillful coping in the light of recent ideas on neurodynamics. Affective processes play a crucial role in evaluating the motivational significance of objects and contribute to the individual’s prereflective responsiveness to relevant affordances. (shrink)

An energy condition, in the context of a wide class of spacetime theories, is, crudely speaking, a relation one demands the stress-energy tensor of matter satisfy in order to try to capture the idea that "energy should be positive". The remarkable fact I will discuss in this paper is that such simple, general, almost trivial seeming propositions have profound and far-reaching import for our understanding of the structure of relativistic spacetimes. It is therefore especially surprising when one also learns that (...) we have no clear understanding of the nature of these conditions, what theoretical status they have with respect to fundamental physics, what epistemic status they may have, when we should and should not expect them to be satisfied, and even in many cases how they and their consequences should be interpreted physically. Or so I shall argue, by a detailed analysis of the technical and conceptual character of all the standard conditions used in physics today, including examination of their consequences and the circumstances in which they are believed to be violated. (shrink)

We address some frequently encountered criticisms of Radical Embodied/Enactive Cognition. Contrary to the claims that the position is too radical, or not sufficiently so, we claim REC is just radical enough.

I argue that silence is replete with aesthetic character and that it can be a rewarding object of aesthetic appreciation, assessment, and appraisal. The appreciation of silence might initially seem impossible, for, it might seem, there is nothing there to behold. Taking up this challenge, I attempt to dispel the sense of paradox. I contend that, despite our never actually experiencing absolute silence, there is much to enjoy in the silences that we do experience. I go on to argue that (...) proper appreciation of silence is a two-way street, involving quiet on the outside and stillness on the inside. I conclude by offering some suggestions for how to make the aesthetic appreciation of silence part of a flourishing life. (shrink)

Criticism may degenerate into quibbling or nitpicking. How can discussants keep quibblers under control? In the paper we investigate cases in which a battle about words replaces a discussion of the matters that are actually at issue as well as cases in which a battle about minor objections replaces a discussion of the major issues. We survey some lines of discussion dealing with these situations in profiles of dialogue.

All accounts of causality that presuppose the propagation or transfer or some physical stuff to be an essential part of the causal relation rely for the force of their causal claims on a principle of conservation for that stuff. General Relativity does not permit the rigorous formulation of appropriate conservation principles. Consequently, in so far as General Relativity is considered and fundamental physical theory, such accounts of causality cannot be considered fundamental. The continued use of such accounts of causality ought (...) not be proscribed, but justification is due from those who would use them. (shrink)

It is hardly news to readers of this collection that in bioethics there has been a long-standing debate between people who can seem to be arguing "for" disability and people who can seem to be arguing "against" it. Those who have argued for have often been disability scholars and those who have argued against have often been philosophers of a utilitarian bent. At least since the mid 2000s, some disability scholars and some philosophers of a utilitarian bent have sought to (...) move beyond that debate, but achieving that aim is harder than it sounds. In this essay, I want to take two... (shrink)

Can you be brave if you’re afraid? Why do we “know better” and do things anyway? What makes a family? Philosophers have wrestled with such questions for centuries. They are also the stuff of playground debates. Ethics for the Very Young uses the perplexities of young children’s lives to spark philosophical dialogue. Its lessons scaffold discussion through executive function games (Telephone, Red Light Green Light), dialogic reading of picture books and Reggio Emilia’s art-based inquiry. In the process, children develop skills (...) of dialogue and critical thinking through increased selective attention, self-control, cognitive flexibility and perspective taking. While the elements of this method are familiar, they are here fused into an organic whole grounded in the history of philosophy and defended by current work in developmental psychology. Building on Wartenberg’s Big Ideas for Little Kids, the present curriculum uses a series of 23 picture books to frame discussions of character, bravery, self-control, friendship, the greater good, respect and care. Its goal is not to “teach morals” but to help children articulate and develop their own perspectives through dialogue with each other. Each lesson presents teachers’ reflections on how this exploration of life's enduring questions transformed their school’s culture. (shrink)

Theologians and philosophers remain rather indecisive about the notion of desecularisation. I suggest that desecularisation should be considered relevant insofar as it interacts with other notions belonging to contemporary thought, namely: radical secularisation, desacralisation, deconstruction, and dis-enclosure. I argue that desecularisation can be understood as belonging to the same movement as the one marked by deconstruction and dis-enclosure. Staging this interaction will yield the following: the necessity of secularising secularisation itself, the importance of differentiating between secularisation and desacralisation, the rightful (...) belonging of desecularisation to the events of deconstruction and dis-enclosure at the “end” of metaphysics, and the need to rewind the ideological abuse of secularisation. (shrink)

In Section 1, I rehearse some arguments for the claim that morality should be ``action-guiding'', and try to state the conditions under which a moral theory is in fact action-guiding. I conclude that only agents who are cognitively and conatively ``ideal'' are in general able to use a moral theory as a guide to action. In Sections 2 and 3, I discuss whether moral ``actualism'' implies that morality cannot be action-guiding even for ideal agents. If actualism is true, an ideal (...) agent will know about her own future actions. Since such foreknowledge is often thought to be incompatible with deliberation, and since action-guidance presupposes the possibility of deliberation, there is an apparent difficulty in combining actualism with the requirement of action-guidance. In opposition to an argument by Jan Österberg, I try to show that actualism and action-guidance are in fact compatible. (shrink)

Om människan någon gång kommer att få förmågan att skapa nya livsformer, hur kommer det att påverka livets värde? Detta är en fråga som kan vara en källa till oro när man diskuterar konstgjort liv, men är oron befogad? I ett försök att svara på den frågan kommer jag att gå igenom några möjliga skäl till varför förmågan att skapa konstgjort liv skulle hota livets värde, och se om de verkligen ger oss skäl att oroa oss.

Provability, Computability and Reflection.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual (...) Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

What drives a politician? The standard answer in political philosophy is Hobbes’ power, strongly supported by Max Weber. However, the emergence of the Putin regime in Russia forces us to theorize the role of economic motivation as looting. We find it in all dictatorships, e.g., Burma. The giant financial economy enhances the private prospects of looting, especially in closed societies.

I årtusenden har människan försökt definiera livet – hur levande djur och växter skiljer sig från död materia. Problemet är dock att livet är mångfacetterat, och varje regel har sitt undantag. Vi försöker möta kommande utmaningar med nya livsformer, genom att lyfta fram en ny definition av liv.

When they want to discredit the political relevance of Deleuze's thought, Hallward considers counter-effectuation as a ‘redemptive gesture’, and Rancière describes Deleuze's history of cinema as a ‘history of redemption’. Each time, redemption refers pejoratively to a break ‘out of this world’ and a form of apolitical passivity, in an attempt to reduce Deleuze to be a mere ‘spiritual’ thinker, simply renewing ‘that “Oriental intuition” which Hegel found at work in Spinoza's philosophy’. But is it all that simple? How should (...) we envisage the relationship between creativity and redemption, politics and passivity in Deleuze's work? And in what way does that concern Deleuze's philosophy connection to the Non-West, and namely China? (shrink)

Alvin Plantinga has famously argued that naturalism is self-defeating. Plantinga's argument is, at its heart, an argument from analogy. Plantinga presents various epistemic situations and claims of each that (i) a person in such a situation has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs, and (ii) a reflective naturalist is in a relevantly similar situation. I present various epistemic situations and claim of each that a person in such a situation does not have an undefeated defeater for each of (...) his beliefs. I further claim that at least some of these situations are more relevantly like the situation faced by the reflective naturalist than any of the situations Plantinga describes. Therefore, Plantinga's argument fails to establish that the reflective naturalist has an undefeated defeater for each of his beliefs and hence fails to establish that naturalism is self-defeating. (shrink)

As in the United States, the Dutch conversation about assisted suicide emerged primarily in the context of cancer. At least in that context, before acceding to a request for assistance in dying, caregivers must be sure that the person has made a voluntary and carefully considered request, and that her suffering is unbearable and without prospect of improvement. The Dutch have recently been trying to use those criteria in the context of Alzheimer's disease. Given the wave of Alzheimer's cases poised (...) to crash onto wealthy countries, along with emerging technology to detect the disease process before symptoms appear, we should be grateful to the Dutch for that attempt. As a newcomer to this discussion, however, I was struck that those criteria may have a somewhat odd result. A patient with Alzheimer's disease can easily meet the conditions in the early stage of the disease, when one usually has the mental capacity to request assistance in dying and to make the case that one's existential suffering is unbearable. If one is in the late stage, though, it can be much harder to get such assistance because one does not have that capacity. (shrink)

This paper examines the French erudite scholar Théodore Godefroy's (1580-1649) service to Cardinal Richelieu as a commercial expert. Using manuscripts that reveal his reading, connections and intellectual methods, it shows how Godefroy used his connections in the Parisian lettered circles and a politicized group within the Republic of Letters to gather commercial information, and used the techniques of juridical scholarship to organize his collection. His papers suggest that historians must look beyond a narrow canon of "mercantilist" works to understand seventeenth (...) century debates about the governance of commerce, to a broader context of debates about law, history, and sovereignty. (shrink)

Résumé L’identification de l’étendue de l’appareil psychique et sa temporalité, initiée par Freud avec ses deux topiques, a été complétée par le recours de Lacan à la topologie des surfaces et des nœuds. Les réseaux en deux dimensions des signifiants se combinent avec une temporalité ternaire pour déterminer le sujet de l’inconscient, divisé telle la coupure d’une bande de Moebius. À ce sujet, sans substance, il manque l’Un pour le désigner ; l’objet cause de désir et le nom propre peuvent (...) y suppléer. (shrink)

Empirical Logic and Public Debate supplies a large number of previously unpublished papers that together make up a survey of recent developments in the field of empirical logic. It contains theoretical contributions, some of a more formal and some of an informal nature, as well as numerous contemporary and historical case studies. The book will therefore be attractive both to those who wish to focus upon the theory and practice of discussion, debate, arguing, and argument, as well as to those (...) readers who are primarily interested in applications to a particular field, such as ethics, political philosophy, feminist philosophy, or the history of philosophy. (shrink)

This book offers inter alia a systematic investigation of the actual argumentative strategy of Socratic conversation and explorations of Socratic and Platonic morality including an examination ofeudaimonia and the mental conception of health in the Republic as self-control, with a view to the relation of individual health/happiness to social order. The essays cover a period from 1968 to 2012. Some of them are now published for the first time. Self-motion in the later dialogues involves tripartition and tripartition in turn involves (...) embodiment. The Philebus psychology too anticipates Aristotle. The Forms of the Timaeus are patterns, but the two-world picture is abandoned: there is one world constituted by Forms and Place. The Epinomis is arguably genuine. More generally, denying that Plato develops, e.g. exegetically and psychologically, is absurd. There are too many contradictions in the Corpus. The dialogues are artistic wholes and the author's message must be interpreted accordingly: hence in a sense every character is Plato's mouthpiece. Aristotle's idea of the human good or quality of life as optimal mental activity according to the special human capabilities is the root of the modern selfactualization projects. Panaetius (free reason) and Posidonius (science) mark the end of the older Stoa's hard-core materialism and the beginning of a new more 'modern' era. -/- . (shrink)

This compact and innovative book tackles one of the central issues in drug policy: the lack of a coherent conceptual structure for thinking about drugs. Drugs generally fall into one of seven categories: prescription, over the counter, alternative medicine, common-use drugs like alcohol, tobacco and caffeine; religious-use, sports enhancement; and of course illegal street drugs like cocaine and marijuana. Our thinking and policies varies wildly from one to the other, with inconsistencies that derive more from cultural and social values than (...) from medical or scientific facts. Penalties exist for steroid use, while herbal remedies or cold medication are legal. Native Americans may legally use peyote, but others may not. Penalties may vary for using different forms of the same drug, such as crack vs. powder cocaine. Herbal remedies are unregulated by the FDA; but medical marijuana is illegal in most states. Battin and her contributors lay a foundation for a wiser drug policy by promoting consistency and coherency in the discussion of drug issues and by encouraging a unique dialogue across disciplines. The contributors are an interdisciplinary group of scholars mostly based at the University of Utah, and include a pharmacologist, a psychiatrist, a toxicologist, a trial court judge, a law professor, an attorney, a diatary specialist, a physician, a health expert on substance abuse, and Battin herself who is a philosopher. They consider questions like the historical development of current policy and the rationales for it; scientific views on how drugs actually cause harm; how to define the key notions of harm and addiction; and ways in which drug policy can be made more consistent. They conclude with an examination of the implications of a consistent policy for various disciplines and society generally. The book is written accessibly with little need for expert knowledge, and will appeal to a diverse audience of philosophers, bioethicists, clinicians, policy makers, law enforcement, legal scholars and practitioners, social workers, and general readers, as well as to students in areas like pharmacy, medicine, law, nursing, sociology, social work, psychology, and bioethics. (shrink)

GENERALIZED RECUBION THEORY II © North-Holland Publishing Company (1978) MONOTONE QUANTIFIERS AND ADMISSIBLE SETS Ion Barwise University of Wisconsin ...