Frank Furedi argues that the traditional terms "left" and "right" as applied to politics, have been both distorted and proved inadequate by a number of ...

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

In this article, I consider an important challenge to the popular theory of scientific inference commonly known as ‘inference to the best explanation’, one that has received scant attention.1 1 The problem is that there exists a wide array of rival models of explanation, thus leaving IBE objectionably indeterminate. First, I briefly introduce IBE. Then, I motivate the problem and offer three potential solutions, the most plausible of which is to adopt a kind of pluralism about the rival models of (...) explanation. However, I argue that how ranking explanations on this pluralistic account of IBE remains obscure and pluralism leads to contradictory results. In light of these objections, I attempt to dissolve the problem by showing why IBE does not require a ‘model’ of explanation and by giving an account of what explanation consists in within the context of IBE. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that in a certain sense evidence is normative. Neither a bit of evidence nor the fact that it is evidence for a certain proposition is a normative fact, but it is still the case that evidence provides normative reason for belief. An argument for the main thesis will be presented. It will rely on evidentialist norms of belief and a Broomean conception of normative reasons. Two important objections will be discussed, one from A. Steglich-Petersen on (...) whether having evidence is sufficient for having a normative reason for belief and another one from S. Street. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine Cicero’s oft-neglected De Divinatione, a dialogue investigating the legitimacy of the practice of divination. First, I offer a novel analysis of the main arguments for divination given by Quintus, highlighting the fact that he employs two logically distinct argument forms. Next, I turn to the first of the main arguments against divination given by Marcus. Here I show, with the help of modern probabilistic tools, that Marcus’ skeptical response is far from the decisive, proto-naturalistic assault (...) on superstition that it is sometimes portrayed to be. Then, I offer an extended analysis of the second of the main arguments against divination given by Marcus. Inspired by Marcus’ second main argument, I formulate, explicate, and defend a substantive principle of scientific methodology that I call the “Ciceronian Causal-Nomological Requirement” (CCR). Roughly, this principle states that causal knowledge is essential for relying on correlations in predictive inference. Although I go on to argue that Marcus’ application of the CCR in his debate with Quintus is dialectically inadequate, I conclude that De Divinatione deserves its place in Cicero’s philosophical corpus, and that ultimately, its significance for the history and philosophy of science ought to be recognized. (shrink)

Nearly a decade ago, Ingrid Robeyns formulated a distributive justice doctrine known as economic limitarianism. This article posits that Robeyns’ limitarianism is a politically plausible, practically feasible and morally justifiable doctrine. The doctrine effectively addresses concerns regarding incentives, efficacy and unequal opportunities. The article identifies a problem of scope or extensity, which it refers to as an asymmetric argument. The article proposes that this issue can be resolved by fully extending limitarianism to non-democratic states. This extension is justified by the (...) relationship between surplus money and political inequality, which can be explained through various avenues, including causal and constitutive explanations, structural injustice and systemic causation. While this list of avenues is not exhaustive, it is representative of the possible avenues that can be explored. Fully extending the doctrine to non-democratic states would enhance its robustness. (shrink)

The common cause principle states that correlations have prior common causes which screen off those correlations. I argue that the common cause principle is false in many circumstances, some of which are very general. I then suggest that more restricted versions of the common cause principle might hold, and I prove such a restricted version.

Space, Time, and Stuff is an attempt to show that physics is geometry: that the fundamental structure of the physical world is purely geometrical structure. Along the way, he examines some non-standard views about the structure of spacetime and its inhabitants, including the idea that space and time are pointless, the idea that quantum mechanics is a completely local theory, the idea that antiparticles are just particles travelling back in time, and the idea that time has no structure whatsoever. The (...) main thrust of the book, however, is that there are good reasons to believe that spaces other than spacetime exist, and that it is the existence of these additional spaces that allows one to reduce all of physics to geometry. Philosophy, and metaphysics in particular, plays an important role here: the assumption that the fundamental laws of physics are simple in terms of the fundamental physical properties and relations is pivotal."--P. [4] of cover. (shrink)

Introduction -- The Complexity of Resource Curse -- Resource Curse as a Complex Case of Global Justice -- General Theory of Global Justice -- The Robustness of the General Theory -- Conclusion.

Like many governments in this COVID-19 pandemic, the Nigerian government imposed a lockdown on the country. As a consequence of the lockdown, many businesses shutdown and effectively had no source of revenue. Yet, without receiving any bailout or palliatives from the government, these businesses are required to meet their tax obligations to the government. Bearing in mind that this time (COVID-19 era) is different, one wonders what is required of businesses in view of the taxation problem and the social contract (...) between the businesspersons and the government. In view of social contract obligations, in this COVID-19 pandemic should businesses pay tax to a government that seems to have delegitimised itself by its exploitative actions in terms of taxation and delinquent omission in terms of the provision of public goods and social services? The Nigerian government at all tiers (federal, state and local) seldom respect the essence of taxation. Therefore, businesses often pay tax for nothing. For many businesses, as far as taxation is concerned, to pay or not to pay? that is the question. This article is aimed at teasing out this taxation problem that may or may not be a moral dilemma. In view of certain ethical considerations, this article shows why in spite of social contract obligations, there is no consensus or canonical agreement on whether, as law-abiding citizens and juridical persons (legal entities), businesspersons and businesses ought to or ought not to pay tax to the Nigerian government in this COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Moral puzzles about actions which bring about very small or what are said to be imperceptible harms or benefits for each of a large number of people are well known. Less well known is an argument by Warren Quinn that standard theories of rationality can lead an agent to end up torturing himself or herself in a completely foreseeable way, and that this shows that standard theories of rationality need to be revised. We show where Quinn's argument goes wrong, and (...) apply this to the moral puzzles. (shrink)

Traces the history of human beliefs concerning the nature of the universe and offers profiles of the scientists most responsible for our current understanding of the universe and its origins.

The frame model, originating in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, has recently been applied to change-phenomena traditionally studied within history and philosophy of science. Its application purpose is to account for episodes of conceptual dynamics in the empirical sciences suggestive of incommensurability as evidenced by “ruptures” in the symbolic forms of historically successive empirical theories with similar classes of applications. This article reviews the frame model and traces its development from the feature list model. Drawing on extant literature, examples of (...) frame-reconstructed taxonomic change are presented. This occurs for purposes of comparison with an alternative tool, conceptual spaces. The main claim is that conceptual spaces save the merits of the frame model and provide a powerful model for conceptual change in scientific knowledge, since distinctions arising in measurement theory are native to the model. It is suggested how incommensurability as incomparability of theoretical frameworks might be avoided. Moreover, as nontranslatability of worldviews, it need not to be treated as a genuine problem of conceptual representation. The status of laws vis à vis their dimensional bases as well as diachronic similarity measures are discussed. (shrink)

The two envelope paradox can be dissolved by looking closely at the connection between conditional and unconditional expectation and by being careful when summing an infinite series of positive and negative terms. The two envelope paradox is not another St. Petersburg paradox and that one does not need to ban talk of infinite expectation values in order to dissolve it. The article ends by posing a new puzzle to do with infinite expectations.

The frequencies with which photons pass through half-silvered mirrors in the forward direction of time is always approximately 1/2, whereas the frequencies with which photons pass through mirrors in the backward direction in time can be highly time-dependent. I argue that whether one should infer from this time-asymmetric phenomenon that time has an objective direction will depend on one's interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Books 8-10 and sections of books 11-16 of the Zhuangzi anthology represent an important and underappreciated contribution to Warring States ethical and political philosophy, known as “primitivism.” This article offers a general introduction to Zhuangist primitivism. It focuses on primitivism’s exploration and development of a normative conception of human nature, particularly xing 性, as well as primitivism’s subsequent rejection of the elaborate moral, social, political, and cultural artifices championed by their philosophical opponents, chiefly the Ruists and the Mohists. After a (...) brief introduction to Zhuangist primitivism and the limited scholarship on them, I divide this discussion into three parts pertaining to the primitivists’ three distinct approaches to and uses of human nature, which in turn serve as the basis for primitivist ethics and political thought. (shrink)

According to German theorists historicism was the result of a dynamization of the static world-view of the Enlightenment. According to contemporary Anglo-Saxon theorists historicism resulted from a de-rhetoricization of Enlightenment historical writing. It is argued that, contrary to appearances, these two views do not exclude but support each other. This can be explained if the account of change implicit in Enlightenment historical writing is compared to that suggested by historicism and, more specifically, by the historicist notion of the "historical idea." (...) Aspects of the contemporary debate about the nature and the task of historical writing can be clarified from the perspective of the differences between Enlightenment and historicist historical writing. (shrink)

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the U.S. Department of Justice presents the full text of the report entitled "Animal Abuse and Youth Violence," by Frank R. Ascione that was published in September 2001. Ascione discusses psychiatric, psychological, and criminal research linking animal abuse to violence perpetrated by juveniles and adults. The report covers the definition of animal abuse, the prevalence of cruelty to animals by children and adolescents, animal abuse and violent offending, animal abuse (...) and conduct disorder, motivations that may cause animal abuse by children and adolescents, and the etiology of animal abuse. (shrink)

Realism has a significant place in the history of film theory. The claim that film is essentially a realistic art form has been employed to justify the art-status of films as well as the distinctness of film as a form. André Bazin and others once used realist ontologies of film to try to establish realist teleologies and universal critical standards. I briefly sketch this history before considering the prospects for various versions of realism: Bazin’s, as well as Kendall Walton’s and (...) Gregory Currie’s less ambitious but more plausible accounts. I argue that these theories, though they are the best cases we have for realism, are not adequate ontologies of film. However, while prior realist philosophers and critics were wrong to think that realism can provide a critical standard for all films, realism is nonetheless a praiseworthy filmic achievement - one that the opponent of ontological realism should not dismiss. (shrink)

The present article seeks to provide an overview of the general characteristics of the cultural and scientific climate in the Duchy of Urbino. Three of the Duchy’s milieus seem to have been particularly important for scholars who were engaged in the study of mathematics: the so-called “School of Urbino”, the environment of the court, and the world of the technicians and engineers. While the Urbino School has already been the object of previous studies, the other two milieus and their effect (...) on the mathematicians’ work have been rather neglected and are, consequently, addressed here. The paper’s final section presents some documents that attest the importance of Renaissance scholars’ interaction with these environments to their actual scientific activity, taking the case of Guidobaldo dal Monte as an example. (shrink)

Die Publizistik hat erfolgreich ihre Auffassung durchgesetzt, dass „die Diskussion einer wie auch immer gearteten ‚Zeitschriftentheorie‘“ „wenig ergiebig“ sei, woraus sich auch der schmale, auf die Inhaltsanalyse beschränkte Werkzeugkasten der Zeitschriftenforschung erklärt (dazu historisch fundierte Ergänzungsvorschläge unter Abschnitt 9 und 10). Nach einer Einführung in die Zeitschrift Die Kreatur (Abschnitt 1) scheint es deshalb nötig, das theoretische Objekt – Voraussetzung jeglicher Forschungspraxis – ‚Zeitschriften‘ vorab in aller gebotenen Kürze (Abschnitt 2–4) historisch-systematisch zu skizzieren. Die Kreatur kann dann als eine der (...) Zeitschriften im Rahmen zeitgenössischer Format-Optionen (Abschnitt 5–8) in Netzwerken wie dem um Walter Benjamin situiert werden (Abschnitt 11–13). (shrink)

In this criticism of Mitrović argument about realism it is pointed out 1): that Mitrović is unaware of how the medieval debate between realists and nominalists about the existence of universals complicates his position, 2) similarly, he is unaware of how the debate on the so-called ‘essentially contested concepts’ (W.B. Gallie) complicates his position, 3) when taking up the issue of holism and individualism he mistakenly assumes that what has been said about it in the context of the social sciences (...) can also be applied to the writing of history, 4) the debate on the legal person or corporation since Innocent IV further complicates the issue. Finally, I explain why and how one can be a realist in philosophy of history, though on the basis of arguments entirely different from those proposed by Mitrović. (shrink)

Motivated by Hoff and Stiglitz’s :753–763, 2004) theory, we examine empirically how the creation of “rules of the game” affect the behavior of economic agents in a transition economy. Using a sample of Chinese state-owned enterprises in which controlling ownership was transferred to private acquirers between 1994 and 2006, we find that the post-privatization performance of firms depends on institutional factors. Before 2003, we observe severe post-privatization tunneling behaviors by acquirers and worse PPP. However, from 2003, when the State issued (...) regulations against tunneling and strengthened enforcement, the incidence of tunneling behaviors declined, and PPP improved. We find that better implementation of ownership transfer and longer prior experience of private acquirers are key factors that contribute to the improvement. (shrink)

Im Medizin- und Care-Diskurs zielt die Frage, wie mit Patientinnen zu kommunizieren sei, oft auf eine normativ-ethische Ebene. Dementgegen soll hier eine eher auf die epistemologische Ebene gerichtete Untersuchung der Gesprächssituation in der Diagnosestellung geleistet werden. Die Erörterung verläuft entlang der existenziellen Philosophien von Gabriel Marcel und Martin Buber. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es drei Ebenen gibt, die das Arztgespräch bestimmen. Auf der ersten Ebene befindet sich die meist asymmetrische sachliche Kommunikationssituation über medizinische und biochemische Zusammenhänge. Hier tritt die Ärztin (...) als Expertin auf. Als zweite Ebene kann man die existenziell-dialogische Situation der Begegnung zweier Menschen ausmachen. Hier besteht eine völlige Symmetrie, da die Begegnung bei Buber und Marcel nicht an besondere Einrichtungen, wie zum Beispiel Fürsorge, gebunden ist. Die dritte Ebene kehrt das ‚Machtverhältnis‘ – so man diesen Begriff nutzen will – um: Die Patientin hat, indem sie sich in einer Grenzsituation befindet, einen Wissens- und Handlungsraum, der dem der Ärztin überlegen ist. Als Betroffene kann sie beispielsweise eine mögliche Therapie ablehnen, während die Ärztin eine indizierte Therapie nicht verweigern darf. Die genaueren Lektüren Marcels und Bubers lassen weiterhin deutlich werden, wie tiefgreifend die Vorbehalte der Dialogphilosophie gegenüber Institutionen und deren Normen sind. Die Idee des informierten Einverständnisses, welche die medizinethische Debatte dominiert, erweist sich aus Bubers Perspektive als brüchig, wo affektive Innerlichkeit lediglich ein Spiegel der äußerlichen Einrichtungen ist. Der Begriff der Hoffnung wird schließlich herangezogen, um den besonderen Handlungsraum der Ärztin aus der Perspektive der Dialogphilosophie zu konkretisieren. (shrink)

This article describes the important structural characteristics of a recently developed game-theoretic model of deterrence, summarizes the major deductions drown from it, and discusses its implications for both the theory of deterrence and the current strategic relationship of the superpowers. The model shows that a credible threat and a power advantage are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for stable deterrence. It also suggests that, even under ideal conditions, deterrence is an intricate and fundamentally fragile relationship that rests, ultimately, upon the (...) preferences and perceptions of key decision-makers rather than upon the nature and composition of each side’s strategic arsenal. (shrink)

O'Keeffe, Frank A recent report tabled in the Victorian Parliament has proposed that the Victorian Crimes Act 1958 be amended, allowing Victoria to become the only Australian state where euthanasia would be legal. Against this proposed legislation, this article contends the suggested amendments pose a threat to the fiduciary obligations that medical professionals owe to their patients. Moreover, that the parliamentary recommendation poses a considerable risk to the sick and dying, while creating tension within existing, currently overburdened, palliative care (...) services. Any reforms that seek to treat dying patients in a more holistic manner, incorporating their emotional equilibrium, will instead make further provision for expanding the provision of palliative care services. (shrink)