A theory is presented to explain how accurate, single-joint movements are controlled. The theory applies to movements across different distances, with different inertial loads, toward targets of different widths over a wide range of experimentally manipulated velocities. The theory is based on three propositions. (1) Movements are planned according to “strategies” of which there are at least two: a speed-insensitive (SI) and a speed-sensitive (SS) one. (2) These strategies can be equated with sets of rules for performing diverse movement tasks. (...) The choice between SI and SS depends on whether movement speed and/or movement time (and hence appropriate muscle forces) must be constrained to meet task requirements. (3) The electromyogram can be interpreted as a low-pass filtered version of the controlling signal to the motoneuron pools. This controlling signal can be modelled as a rectangular excitation pulse in which modulation occurs in either pulse amplitude or pulse width. Movements to different distances and with loads are controlled by the SI strategy, which modulates pulse width. Movements in which speed must be explicitly regulated are controlled by the SS strategy, which modulates pulse amplitude. The distinction between the two movement strategies reconciles many apparent conflicts in the motor control literature. (shrink)

Recent discussion of Scanlon's account of value, which analyses the value of X in terms of agents' reasons for having certain pro-attitudes or contra-attitudes towards X, has generated the problem (WKR problem): this is the problem, for the buck-passing view, of being able to acknowledge that there may be good reasons for attributing final value to X that have nothing to do with the final value that X actually possesses. I briefly review some of the existing solutions offered to the (...) WKR problem, including those by Philip Stratton-Lake and Jonas Olson, and offer a new, better one, which accommodates all the relevant cases presented in the literature. (shrink)

At one point Rawls thought that “a normalization of interests attributed to the parties” is “common to social contract doctrines.” Normalization has a great appeal: once we specify the normalized perspective, we can generate strong and definite principles of justice. Public reasoning is restricted to those who reason from the eligible, normalized, perspective; those who fall outside the “normal” are to be dismissed as unreasonable, unjust, or illiberal. As Rawls’s political liberalism project developed he increasingly relaxed his normalization assumptions, allowing (...) room for not only different conceptions of the good, but of justice. This paper explores the post-Rawlsian movement in public reason to maximally relax, or even abandon, normalizing assumptions, drawing on a maximal diversity of normative perspectives in public justification. The public reason project is at a critical juncture. Are we to look back, defending Rawls’s substantive conclusions by devising new defenses of normalization, circling the wagons around the cherished two principles? Or are we to seek to fulfill the promise of public reason as providing a common public and moral world in the midst of diversity? (shrink)

In this book Professor Holton continues his analysis of how modem science works and what its influences are on our world, with particular emphasis on the role of the thematic elements - those often unconscious presuppositions that guide scientific work to success or failure. The foundation of the book is provided by the author's research on the work of Albert Einstein, which is then contrasted with other styles of research in the advancement of science. The author deals directly with the (...) often unforeseen consequences of the progress of contemporary science, detailing its fruits as well as its burdens. The many questions examined in this work range over a broad spectrum of areas that command the attention of all readers with an interest in understanding the development of modem science. (shrink)

Samkhya is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, system of classical Indian philosophy. This book traces its history from the third or fourth century B. C. up through the twentieth century. The Encyclopedia as a whole will present the substance of the various Indian systems of thought to philosophers unable to read the Sanskrit and having difficulty in finding their way about in the translations (where such exist). This volume includes a lengthy introduction by Gerald James Larson, (...) which discusses the history of Samkhya and its philosophical contours overall. The remainder of the book includes summaries in English of all extant Sanskrit texts of the system. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

In this article, we examine how affect influences judgment and thought, but also how thought transforms affect. The general thesis is that the nature and impact of affective reactions depends largely on their objects. We view affect as a representation of value, and its consequences as dependent on its object or what it is about. Within a review of relevant literature and a discussion of the nature of emotion, we focus on the role of the object of affect in governing (...) both the nature of emotional reactions and the impact of affect and emotion on cognition and action. Although emotion is always about the here and now, the capacity for abstract thought means that the human here and now includes imagination as well as perception. Indeed, the hopes and fears that dominate human lives often involve things only imagined. (shrink)

It is natural to oppose morality and self-interest; it is customary also to oppose morality to interests as such, an inclination encouraged by Kantian tradition. However, if “interest” is understood simply as what moves a person to do this rather than that, then – if persons ever actually are good and do what is right – there must be moral interests. Bradley, in posing the “Why should I be moral?” question, raises Kant-inspired objections to the possibility of moral interests qua (...) particular, conditional causes. The paper argues that these objections can be met if (a) one distinguishes between what makes something right and what makes something right happen, and (b) doing what is right is intrinsic to a person’s interests and not merely a means to ulterior ends. The requisite completeness of rational morality is shown to exclude pluralistic approaches. Given rational monism, people can find intrinsic advantage in morality’s justifiability, cooperativeness and communality. (shrink)

Republican liberty, as recently defended by Philip Pettit and Quentin Skinner, characterises liberty in terms of the absence of domination, instead of, or in addition to, the absence of interference, as favoured by Berlin-style negative liberty. This article considers several claims made on behalf of republican liberty, particularly in Pettit's and Skinner's recent writings, and finds them wanting. No relevant moral or political concern expressed by republicans, it will be contended here, fails to be accommodated by negative liberty.

In a series of influential papers, John McDowell has argued that the rule‐following considerations explored in Wittgenstein’s later work provide support for a particularist form of moral objectivity. The article distinguishes three such arguments in McDowell’s writings, labelled the Anthropocentricism Argument, the Shapelessness Argument, and the Anti‐Humean Argument, respectively, and the author disputes the effectiveness of each of them. As far as these metaethical debates are concerned, the article concludes that the rule‐following considerations leave everything in their place.

Das Volksmärchen L’Arbre du Bœuf vom Typ ATU 511 [Ein-, Zwei-, Dreiäuglein] ist nach P. Delarue und M.-L. Tenèze das einzige französische Märchen, welches dem Subtyp AT 511 A [Kleiner Roter Ochse] angehört. L’Arbre du Bœuf ist darüber hinaus aufgrund einiger Motive besonders interessant, weil sie vermutlich aus archaischen Glaubensvorstellungen stammen: So ist die mystische „Reise zur Sonne“ ein bestimmendes Thema, welches seinen Ursprung im indoeuropäischen Mythos findet. Der Weltbaum als Axis Mundi und die Seelenbrücke sind Verbindungen zwischen dem Dies- (...) und Jenseits, die der Märchenheld ebenso wie der Schamane bei seiner ekstatischen Reise in die lichte Himmelswelt benutzt. Magische Tier- und Helferwesen treten im Zaubermärchen auf und sind integrale Bestandteile schamanistischer Glaubenswelten. Wenn im Märchen auf oder aus dem geopferten Ochsen als heiliges Tier der Weltbaum sprießt, so findet dieses Sujet Entsprechungen in urtümlichen Kosmogonien. Damit ideell verwandt ist vielleicht das Motiv vom „Tierhorn als Weltbaum“, welches sich in archaischen kosmologischen Vorstellungen findet und sich von da her womöglich ebenso in die Märchenwelten eingemischt hat. Le conte populaire L’Arbre du Bœuf du type ATU 511 [Un Œil, Deux Yeux, Trois Yeux] d’après P. Delarue et M.-L. Tenèze est le seul conte de fées français appartenant au sous-type AT 511 A [Petit Bœuf Rouge]. En outre, L’Arbre du Bœuf est particulièrement intéressant en raison de certains motifs probablement issus de croyances archaïques : Le « voyage mystique au soleil » est un thème déterminant qui tire son origine du mythe indo-européen. L’Arbre du Monde en tant qu’Axis Mundi et le pont d’autre monde sont des liens entre l’ici et l’au-delà, que le héros de conte et le chaman utilisent dans leur voyage extatique dans le ciel lumineux. Les animaux magiques et les êtres auxiliaires apparaissent dans le conte de fées et font partie intégrante du monde de croyances chamaniques. Tout comme dans le conte de fées, l’Arbre du Monde pousse sur ou bien du bœuf sacrifié et sacré, ce motif trouve des correspondances dans les anciennes cosmogonies. Le motif de la « corne animale en tant qu’Arbre du Monde » est peut-être associé à ce concept mythique. Il se trouve dans les conceptions cosmologiques archaïques et s’est mêlé de là au monde des contes de fées. The folk tale L’Arbre du Bœuf of the type ATU 511 [One Eye, Two Eyes, Three Eyes] is according to P. Delarue and M.-L. Tenèze the only French fairy tale that belongs to the subtype AT 511 A [Little Red Ox]. In addition, L’Arbre du Bœuf is particularly interesting due to some of the motifs that probably stem from archaic beliefs: The mystical “journey to the sun” is a determining theme, which finds its origin in the Indo-European myth. The World Tree as Axis Mundi and the Soul Bridge are connections between this world and the hereafter which are harnessed by the fairy tale hero as well as the shaman in his ecstatic journey into the bright world of heaven. Magical animals and helping entities appear in the fairy tale and are fundamental parts of shamanistic beliefs. The World Tree as it sprouts on or out of the sacrificed and sacred ox finds its equivalent in ancient cosmogonies. Perhaps ideally related to this is the motif of the “animal horn as the World Tree”, which is present in archaic cosmological conceptions and has possibly interfered with the fairytale worlds as well. (shrink)

Uwe Steinhoff’s The Ethics of War and the Force of Law contains an extended critique of ‘moral fundamentalism’, or the project of uncovering an individualist ‘deep morality’ of war governed by the same moral principles and rules that govern ordinary moral life, as well as a more positive account of war that depicts it as a social practice. Much of Steinhoff’s account is indebted to a series of claims involving the standing to blame, reciprocity, and the necessity and proportionality conditions (...) on self-defence. On all these claims, Steinhoff is open to challenge. First, he is arguably over-dependent on ‘standing to blame’ considerations. Second, his commitment to reciprocity is under-explained. Third, the necessity condition does not clearly explain how conventional elements explain the formation of defensive standards. Fourth, there are problems in explaining how the distinct defensive conventions adopted by distinct communities can actually be made to get on to the same page when these communities go to war with each other. (shrink)

I believe most acts of human procreation are immoral, and I believe this despite also believing in the truth of moral particularism. In this paper I explain why. I argue that procreative acts possess numerous features that, in other contexts, seem typically to operate with negative moral valences. Other things being equal this gives us reason to believe they will operate negatively in the context of procreative acts as well. However, most people’s intuitions represent procreative acts to be morally permissible (...) in most circumstances. Given moral particularism, this would normally be good evidence that procreative acts are indeed morally permissible and that the features that operate negatively elsewhere, simply do not do so in the context of procreative acts in particular. But I argue that we have no good reason to think our intuitions about the ethics of human procreation are accurate. Our most reliable source of insight into the ethics human procreative acts are not our intuitions those acts themselves, but our intuitions about the typical moral valences of the features such acts possess. If that is correct, then acts of human procreation are most likely wrong. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Database of Classical Bibliography ed. by Dee. L. ClaymanGerald A. PressDee. L. Clayman, editor. The Database of Classical Bibliography. CD-ROM and manual. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997. Pp. xvi + 120. $85 (individual); $340-2400 (institutional).L ’Annee Philologique (APh) has long been one of the most important scholarly resources for students of the history of ancient philosophy. Even though in print form it contains errors and omissions, has become (...) of unwieldy size, and does not appear promptly enough for up-to-date research, there is no other single source of such international comprehensiveness. It is far more inclusive in many respects than The Philosopher’s Index.The Database of Classical Bibliography (DCB) is a long-term project sponsored by the N.E.H., the American Philological Association and others to make the full contents of APh accessible from a CD-ROM either from individual PCs or on a local network. Unlike the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the DCB CD-ROM comes with its own search software (DCB CompLex) on the disk. This software is set up both for IBM and MAC machines, installs quickly, and operates extremely well. The manual gives clear instructions both for general use and for detailed search strategies. CompLex enables the user to search DCD in many different ways; e.g., by ancient or modern authors and works, by titles, publisher, place of publication, year of publication, journal, modern language, or series name, as well as by APh volumes, years, page numbers, rubrics, and topics. It can also search by any word in a modern language (i.e., in Roman characters) or for words in a Greek index. And CompLex enables one to perform more complex searches utilizing wildcards and Boolean operators in a user-friendly form.DCB Version 2, containing Volumes 45–60 (1974–1989), fulfills the editor’s initial commitment to make a new release available each year with the addition of three to five years, since it includes four years of APh (1973–74 and 1988–89) not on Version 1. Also new in Version 2 is a French interface and manual.DCB has faults, however. It repeats mistakes that appeared in the print version of APh and contains other mistakes that did not originate in APh. Many were noted in reviews of Version 1, but this should not be surprising in a work of such magnitude as either APh or DCB. What is perhaps disturbing is that errors noted in Version 1 have not been corrected in Version 2, though it would not seem difficult to make use of the information provided by careful reviewers.Nevertheless, DCB is a terrific scholarly tool. No college or university library should be without it. [End Page 619]Gerald A. PressHunter CollegeCopyright © 1998 Journal of the History of Philosophy, Inc... (shrink)

Does human nature possess normative significance? If so, what is it and what implications does it have for biotechnology? This essay critically examines three answers to these questions. One answer focuses on human nature as the ground of natural goods or goods dependent on human nature, another answer finds normative significance in the indeterminacy or malleability of human nature, and a third answer treats human nature as a natural sign of divine grace. Kathryn Tanner, who offers the second answer, and (...) Karl Barth, who offers the third, deny that nature has normative status in itself, apart from grace, but differ over the relation of grace to human nature as created. While indebted to Tanner, this essay favors Barth’s view as best suited to a Christian ethics of biotechnology. (shrink)

Imagine a two-person distributive case in which Ernest's choices yield X and Bertie's choices yield X + Y, producing an income gap between them of Y. Neither Ernest nor Bertie is responsible for this gap of Y, since neither of them has any control over what the other agent chooses. This is what Susan Hurley calls the “Boring Problem” for luck egalitarianism. Contrary to Hurley's relatively dismissive treatment of it, it is contended that the Boring Problem poses a deep problem (...) for standard luck egalitarianism. To counter it, luck egalitarianism needs to be recast as a baseline-relative theory. This new version of luck egalitarianism is then put to work against some significant problems that have been encountered by luck egalitarianism: Saul Smilansky's “Paradox of the Baseline,” the “Partiality Worry,” and the “Pluralism Worry.” But baseline-relative luck egalitarianism is not without problems of its own. (shrink)

In this article, I appeal to the phenomenon of moral hazard in order to explain how at least some of the inequalities permitted by Luck Egalitarianism can be given an alternative, more plausible grounding than that which is supplied by Luck Egalitarianism. This alternative grounding robs Luck Egalitarianism of a potentially significant source of intuitive support whilst enabling conditional welfare policies to survive the attacks on them made by Elizabeth Anderson, Jonathan Wolff, and others.

According to Saul Smilansky's ‘Paradox of Beneficial Retirement’, many serving members of professions may have decisive integrity-based reasons for retiring immediately. The Paradox of Beneficial Retirement holds that a below-par performance in one's job does not require any outright incompetence, but may take a purely relational form, in which a good performance is not good enough if it would be improved upon by someone else who would be appointed instead. It is argued, in response, that jobs in the sectors Smilansky (...) mentions are not merely positions to optimize the goals of the profession, but are professional careers in which there is the possibility of security and personal fulfilment. The article also explores connections between Smilansky's argument and G. A. Cohen's anti-incentives argument against Rawls. It is suggested that both thinkers underappreciate the relationship between personal reasons and institutional reasons. (shrink)

Most people think that Ukrainian violent resistance to the Russian invasion is morally justified, even if it turns out to be costly: it can’t be straightforwardly impermissible to resist aggression. But this verdict can be questioned. This essay looks at the ‘reasonable prospect of success’ condition in just war theory and the ‘problem of bloodless invasion’ to see whether they present the Ukrainian resistance with justificatory headaches. It is concluded that there is no principled barrier to Ukraine’s resistance, but that (...) civilian and combatant casualties must be taken into consideration. The essay also engages with the more general question of how philosophizing can help us to think about war. On this score, philosophy can help precisely for the reasons that are often the subject of complaint: it keeps a cool head, and it appeals to abstract principles. (shrink)

Problems with the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics date back to attempts by Max Born, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, as well as many others in the 1920s to continue to employ the classical concept of a particle in the context of the quantum world. The experimental observations at the time and the assumption that the classical concept of a particle was to be preserved have led to an enormous literature on the foundations of quantum mechanics and a great deal of (...) confusion then and now among non-physicists and students in any field that involves quantum theory. It is the historical approach to the teaching of quantum mechanics that is at the root of the problem. Spacetime is the arena within which quantum mechanical phenomena take place. For this reason, several Appendices are devoted to the nature of spacetime as well as to topics that can help us understand it such as vacuum fluctuations, the Unruh effect and Hawking radiation. Because of the success of quantum mechanical calculations, those who wish to understand the foundations of the theory are often given the apocryphal advice, "just ignore the issue and calculate". It is hoped that this book will help dispel some of the dismay, frustration, and confusion among those who refuse to take to heart this admonition. (shrink)

This article is a response to criticisms of my book on Karl Marx’s Theory of History which were made by four authors in last December’s number of Analyse & Kritik. After clarifying (section 2) an ambiguity in an argument for historical materialism which is presented in the book, I contend (3-5), against objections raised by Philippe Van Parijs, that historical materialism is consistent only if it explains production relations functionally, by reference to their propensity to develop the productive forces. Next (...) (6-8) I address and rebut the views of Wal Suchting and Milton Fisk, who both think that the role of class struggle in historical materialism is larger than the one I assign to it. Finally (9-12) I try to vindicate the doctrine of base and superstructure proposed in my book against the skepticism of Steven Lukes. (shrink)

The increased interest in exorcisms and demonology should be moderated by a proper understanding of the relationship between psychology and spirituality. There is an important link between psychological aberrations and possession, but too often and too quickly, a person’s mental health is dismissed or overlooked in favor of a diagnosis of demonic possession. The Church’s ritual of exorcism can be properly used only after psychological discernment, episcopal approval, and personal assent. Most priests are not prepared for the role of exorcist (...) and should spend their time more effectively addressing pastoral needs. The belief in demons is part of biblical witness and Catholic history. At the same time, we must avoid any tendency toward redemption by exorcism. (shrink)

Harrison and Tanner argue that having children is morally wrong.