This paper argues that a minimal notion of function and a notion of normal-proper function are used in explaining how bodies and brains operate. Neither is Cummins’ notion, as originally defined, and yet his is often taken to be the clearly relevant notion for such an explanatory context. This paper also explains how adverting to normal-proper functions, even if these are selected functions, can play a significant scientific role in the operational explanations of complex systems that physiologists and neurophysiologists provide, (...) despite a lack of relevant causal efficacy on the part of such functions. (shrink)

Two versions of global supervenience have recently been distinguished from each other. I introduce a third version, which is more likely what people had in mind all along. However, I argue that one of the three versions is equivalent to strong supervenience in every sense that matters, and that neither of the other two versions counts as a genuine determination relation. I conclude that global supervenience has little metaphysically distinctive value.

This chapter contains section titles: Introduction Response Functions Information and Singular Causation The Functions of Sensory Representations The Contents of Sensory Representations: The Problem of Error The Contents of Sensory Representation: The Distality Problem.

Typically, a less fundamental theory, or structure, emerging from a more fundamental one is an example of synchronic emergence. A model emerging from a prior model upon which it nevertheless depends is an example of diachronic emergence. The case of spacetime emergent from quantum gravity and quantum cosmology challenges these two conceptions of emergence. Here, I propose two more-general conceptions of emergence, analogous to the synchronic and diachronic ones, but which are potentially applicable to the case of emergent spacetime: an (...) inter-level, hierarchical conception, and an intra-level, ‘flat’ conception. I then explore whether, and how, these ideas may be applicable in the case of several putative examples of relativistic spacetime emergent from the non-spatiotemporal structures described by different approaches to quantum gravity, and of spacetime emergent from a non-spatiotemporal ‘big bang’ state according to different examples of quantum cosmology. (shrink)

To date, research into socially responsible investment (SRI), and in particular the socially responsible investment funds industry, has focused on whether investing in SRI assets has any differential impact on investor returns. Prior findings generally suggest that, on a risk-adjusted basis, there is no difference in performance between SRI and conventional funds. This result has led to questions about whether SRI funds are really any different from conventional funds. This paper examines whether the portfolio allocation across industry sectors and the (...) stock-picking ability of SRI managers are different when compared to conventional fund managers. The study finds that SRI funds exhibit different industry betas consistent with different portfolio positions, but that these differences vary from year to year. It is also found that there is little difference in stock-picking ability between the two groups of fund managers. (shrink)

While standard histories of Western political thought represent women’s rights as an offshoot of the earlier movement for the equal rights of men, this essay argues that the eighteenth-century push for democracy and equal rights was grounded in arguments first used to defend women’s right to moral and religious self-determination, based on their rational and spiritual equality with men. In tandem with the rise of critiques of absolute monarchy, ideal marriage, which had previously involved lordship and subjection, was transformed into (...) an equal companionate relationship based on inclination and affection. The essay argues that the transformation, by the time of the American and French revolutions, of neo-Roman republicanism—which had been aristocratic and oligarchic—into egalitarian, democratic republicanism had been mediated by the extension of arguments, widely distributed in the literature criticizing the slavery of marriage, into a general critique of slavery and support for the equal rights of men. (shrink)

The disappearance of Catharine Macaulay’s eighteenth-century defense of the doctrines that justified the seventeeth-century republican parliament, has served to obscure an important strand of enlightenment faith, that was active in the lead up to the American and French Revolutions, and that also played a significant role in the history of feminism. This faith was made up of two intertwined strands, ‘Christian eudaimonism’ and ‘rational altruism’. Dominant contemporary accounts of the origins of republicanism and democratic theory during the eighteenth-century have excluded (...) serious consideration of Macaulay’s writing. Bringing her works into the mix, both poses difficulties for certain genealogies of the political thought of the period, and tends to favour a once popular view, which emphasized the centrality of Locke. Nevertheless, the Locke whose influence is found in Macaulay’s writing is not the possessive individualist, or rational egoist, that he and other liberals have been represented as being, but rather a rational altruist, whose political philosophy is grounded in natural law and harks back to Milton. This same philosophy provides the philosophical foundations for Wollstonecraft’s two most significant political texts, the Vindication of the Rights of Men and Vindcation of the Rights of Woman. (shrink)

Davidson has argued that the phenomenon of malapropism shows that languages thought of as social entities cannot be prior in the account of communication. This may be taken to imply that Dummett's belief, that language is prior in the account of thought, cannot be retained. This paper criticises the argument that takes Davidson from malapropism to the denial of the priority of language in the account of communication. It argues, against Davidson, that the distinction between word meaning and what speakers (...) mean by words, used by Davidson to account for metaphor, suffices to account for malapropism. The reasons for the failure of Davidson's argument are used to throw light on what is meant by the priority of language over thought, and to argue that the priority thesis is ambiguous. (shrink)

Argues that like more conservative feminist writers, Gabrielle Suchon and Mary Astell, writing earlier in the Eighteenth Century, Macaulay's concept of liberty is closely tied to virtue and involves free self government according to reason. Unlike these earlier writers from this concept of liberty she deduces the rationality of democratic republican government. Thus the grounds on which she builds her republicanism involve a very different concept of rational self interest to that usually assumed to ground social contract theory. For virtue (...) and the genuine self interest of rational beings are taken to coincide. (shrink)

The translation of both ‘bedeuten’ and ‘Bedeutung’ in Frege's works remains sufficiently problematic that some contemporary authors prefer to leave these words untranslated. Here a case is made for returning to Russell's initial choice of ‘to indicate’ and ‘indication’ as better alternatives than the more usual ‘meaning’, ‘reference’, or ‘denotation’. It is argued that this choice has the philosophical payoff that Frege's controversial doctrines concerning the semantic values of sentences and predicative expressions are rendered far more comprehensible by it, and (...) that this translational strategy fulfills the desiderata of offering a translation which is acceptable both before and after Frege introduced the distinction between sense and reference or, as this paper would have it, between the sense of an expression and what it indicates. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Aristotle's account of sexual difference in Generation of Animals, arguing that Aristotle conceives of the production of males as the result of a successful teleological process, while he sees the production of females as due to material forces that defeat the norms of nature. My suggestion is that Aristotle endorses what I call the "degrees of perfection" model. I challenge Devin Henry's attempt to argue that Aristotle explains sex determination exclusively with reference to material necessity (...) (in particular, levels of "vital heat" in the male semen), for Aristotle's notion of "sufficient" or "deficient" vital heat is itself teleological. If, as Aristotle is aware, male and female embryos appear with approximately equal frequency in most species, how, in light of Physics II, can he conceive of the former as in accordance with nature, and the latter as somehow contrary to nature? My proposal is that Aristotle's notion of what happens usually (ως επì τò πoλυ) is bifurcated: the usual need not be more frequent. (shrink)

Ecological feminism is a feminism which attempts to unite the demands of the women's movement with those of the ecological movement. Ecofeminists often appeal to “ecology” in support of their claims, particularly claims about the importance of feminism to environmentalism. What is missing from the literature is any sustained attempt to show respects in which ecological feminism and the science of ecology are engaged in complementary, mutually supportive projects. In this paper we attempt to do that by showing ten important (...) similarities which establish the need for and benefits of on-going dialogue between ecofeminists and ecosystem ecologists. (shrink)

The assessment of pragmatic skills in a foreign or second language (L2) is usually investigated with regard to language learners, but rarely with regard to non-native language instructors, who are simultaneously teachers and (advanced) learners of the L2. With regard to English as the target language, this is a true research gap, as nonnative English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) constitute the majority of English teachers world-wide (Kamhi-Stein 2016). Addressing this research gap, this paper presents a modified replication of Bardovi-Harlig and Dörnyei’s (1998) (...) renowned study on grammatical vs. pragmatic awareness, carried out with non-NEST candidates. While the original study asked the participants for a global indication of (in)appropriateness/ (in)correctness and to rate its severity, the participants in the present study were asked to identify the nature of the violation and to suggest a repair. Inspired by Pfingsthorn and Flöck (2017), the data was analyzed by means of Signal Detection Theory with regard to Hits, Misses, False Alarms and Correct Rejections to gain more detailed insights into the participants’ metalinguistic perceptions. In addition, the study investigated the rate of successful repairs, showing that correct problem identification cannot necessarily be equated with adequate repair abilities. Implications for research, language teaching and language teacher education are derived. (shrink)

The analysis of 'mixed acts' in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1 has led scholars to attribute a theory of 'dirty hands' and 'impossible oughts' to Aristode. Michael Stocker argues that Aristode recognizes particular acts that are simultaneously 'right, even obligatory', but nevertheless 'wrong, shameful and the like'. And Martha Nussbaum commends Aristotle for not sympathizing 'with those who, in politics or in private affairs, would so shrink from blame and from unacceptable action that they would be unable to take a necessary (...) decision for the best'. In this paper I reexamine Aristotle's analysis of putatively 'mixed acts' in Nicomachean Ethics III, 1, maintaining that Aristode denies that there are acts that are (i) voluntary under the circumstances, (ii) right, all things considered, under the circumstances, but nevertheless (iii) shameful or wrong for moral or prudential reasons under the circumstances. The paper defends this interpretation with reference to Aristode's discussion of shame in EN IV, 9 and Rhetoric II, 6, as well as his overall meta-ethical commitment to a position I call 'mitigated circumstantial relativism'. By focusing on Aristotle's analysis of putatively 'mixed acts', we come closer to a true appreciation of Aristode's ethical theory, even though 'mixed act' is not, I argue, a category in Aristode's considered ontology of action. (shrink)

This volume brings together all the available letters between historian Catharine Macaulay and a number of eighteenth-century luminaries, including George Washington, David Hume, and Mary Wollstonecraft. It includes an extended introduction by the editor which offers unique insights into Macaulay's life and the thinking of her friends and correspondents.

The obesity epidemic among children and adolescents in the United States continues to worsen. The most recent analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey showed that the prevalence of overweight among children and adolescents – defined as a Body Mass Index at or above the 95th percentile on gender-specific BMI-for-age growth charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – increased significantly between 1999-2000 and 2003-2004. Over this period, the prevalence of overweight among children (...) and adolescents aged 2-19 increased 23% – from 13.9% to 17.1%. In 2003-2004, 18.8% of children aged 6-11 and 17.4% of adolescents aged 12-19 were overweight. Roughly comparable proportions of each age group were considered to be at risk of becoming overweight. (shrink)

This open access edited book provides new thinking on scientific identity formation. It thoroughly interrogates the concepts of community and identity, including both historical and contemporaneous analyses of several scientific fields. Chapters examine whether, and how, today’s scientific identities and communities are subject to fundamental changes, reacting to tangible shifts in research funding as well as more intangible transformations in our society’s understanding and expectations of technoscience. In so doing, this book reinvigorates the concept of scientific community. Readers will discover (...) empirical analyses of newly emerging fields such as synthetic biology, systems biology and nanotechnology, and accounts of the evolution of theoretical conceptions of scientific identity and community. With inspiring examples of technoscientific identity work and community constellations, along with thought-provoking hypotheses and discussion, the work has a broad appeal. Those involved in science governance will benefit particularly from this book, and it has much to offer those in scholarly fields including sociology of science, science studies, philosophy of science and history of science, as well as teachers of science and scientists themselves. (shrink)

Traces women's defence of their moral and spiritual equality with men, from the works of Christine de Pizan, through Marguerite of Navarre, Madeleine de Scudéry, Arcangela Tarabotti, to Mary Astell and Mary Wollstonecraft, arguing that although she appears not to have been aware of these precursors, the arguments they developed paved the way for her feminism.

On dit souvent que, tandis que la biologie de l'évolution utilise un concept étiologique de fonction (la fonction d'un trait biologique n'est autre que son effet sélectionné), la physiologie prend appui sur un autre concept de fonction, celui de rôle causal. Cependant, un examen plus attentif montre que le concept non normatif de rôle causal n'est pas ce dont la physiologie générale ou la neurophysiologie ont besoin. Ces disciplines font un large usage de notions comme celles de bon fonctionnement, de (...) fonctionnement normal, de fonctionnement perturbé ou de trouble fonctionnel. Il semble ainsi qu'un concept normatif comme le concept étiologique n'est pas seulement utile dans le contexte d'explications téléologiques ou évolutionnistes, mais aussi dans celui d'explications mécanistes ou opérationnelles telles qu'elles sont couramment proposées par la physiologie. La différence entre types d'explication n'est pas une différence entre deux concepts de fonction. En particulier, l'analyse physiologique serait une tâche impossible si elle devait prendre en compte toutes les relations causales à l'intérieur de l'organisation fonctionnelle de chaque système biologique. Pour résoudre ce problème, la physiologie doit être une analyse du fonctionnement normal du système, quelle que soit la part d'idéalisation nécessaire. La notion de bon fonctionnement, conçu comme le produit de l'histoire évolutive, nous aide en particulier à comprendre pourquoi les systèmes qui fonctionnent bien se ressemblent, et pourquoi les systèmes qui dysfonctionnent peuvent le faire de tant de façons différentes. It is often claimed that although evolutionary biology uses an etiological concept of function (according to etiological theory, the function of a biological feature is its selected effect), physiology relies on a different concept of function, the causal role concept. However, upon closer scrutiny, it appears that the non-normative causal role concept is not what is needed by physiology or neurophysiology. These disciplines make a wide use of normative notions like proper functioning, normal functioning, impaired functioning, or functional disorders. In this case, it seems that a normative concept like the etiological concept is not only useful in the context of teleological or evolutionary explanations, but also in the context of mechanical or operational explanations as they are routinely offered by physiology. The difference between types of explanations is not a difference between two kinds of concepts of function. In particular, physiological analysis would be an impossible task if it had to take into account all causal links within the functional organization of each biological system. To solve this problem, physiology has to be the analysis of the proper or normal functioning of the system, even if normal functioning is usually obtained through a process of idealization. The notion of proper functioning, conceived as the product of evolutionary history, helps us understand, among other things, why properly functioning systems tend to be similar, and why malfunctioning systems may differ in so many different ways. (shrink)

This is a volatile time for health insurance policy. Medicare and Medicaid are in turmoil, as is the private health insurance market. Public and private health insurance costs constitute eighty percent of healthcare spending in the United States. Public health professionals depend on the insurance system to behave in ways that are responsive to public health in prevention and crisis management.Seventy-five percent of the American population, excluding the elderly, has coverage through the private health insurance system. Ninety percent of this (...) group receives their insurance through employer-sponsored programs, and the remaining ten percent buy their own coverage. Approximately ten percent of the non-elderly population has insurance through a government program, and fifteen percent of the non-elderly population, almost forty-one million Americans, is uninsured. (shrink)

Nursing homes and other institutionsdesigned for persons with impairments are not,in fact, designed for persons with impairments.They are typically designed for theimpairments, not the persons, and therebybecome a part of the problem by reinforcingphysical and cultural manifestations of theimpairments. In the essay that follows, Idescribe an architectural design project inwhich students were asked to make changes to anexisting nursing home for the persons who livedthere. This requires not only becoming familiarwith the spaces, but with the personsthemselves and designing space to (...) helparticulate their voices and being. (shrink)

This paper argues that Dummett’s interpretation of the relationship between Frege’s anti-psychologism and Wittgenstein’s doctrine that meaning is use results in a misreading of Frege. It points out that anti-mentalism is a form of anti-psychologism, but that mentalism is not the only version of psycholgism. Thus, while Frege and Wittgenstein are united in their opposition to mentalism, they are not equally opposed to psychologism, and from Frege’s point of view, the doctrine that meaning is use could also imply a version (...) of psychologism. It then offers a realist and externalist reading of Frege’s understanding of concepts, which is more in line with what Frege intended by anti-psychologism. (shrink)

Systemic Constellation Work is a rapidly growing experiential healing process that is being embraced by a variety of helping professionals, both traditional and alternative, worldwide. This book explores the history, principles and methodology of this approach, and offers a detailed comparison with psychodrama - the original mind-body therapy - explaining how each method can enhance the other. Constellation work is based on the notion that people are connected by unseen energetic forces and suggests that the psychological, traumatic and survival experiences (...) of our ancestors are genetically passed forward to the next generation and may live within us. Using insightful case studies from a variety of client groups, this book shows how Systemic Constellation Work can expand the possibilities of psychodrama techniques, and can be successfully integrated with psychodramatic enactment, guided imagery, ritual, concretization and other methods of healing and personal growth. This book will be essential reading for students and practitioners of psychodrama and Constellation work, as well as counselors, mental health professionals, experiential therapists, creative and expressive arts therapists and alternative practitioners looking to widen their knowledge of mind-body therapies. (shrink)

I provide a brief précis of Aaron Zimmerman’s book, Belief: A Pragmatic Picture, then explore two possible problems for the view. The first concerns whether the account of belief can successfully intervene in the debate between those who hold emotions are partly constituted by evaluative beliefs and those who deny this. The second concerns whether the view can explain that distinctive form of white ignorance that is manifest in an unwillingness to draw relatively obvious action-guiding beliefs from widely shared information. (...) Thinking about cases of this kind raises the question of whether Zimmerman’s account is problematically individualist, because of downplaying the importance of converging on an account of belief given the role of belief attribution in a suite of critical practices that are essential to communities of inquiry. If we, collectively, must commit to converging on an account of belief, but different accounts serve the interests of different groups, then the meta-level thesis that we should choose an account on pragmatic grounds raises the question of whose interests such an account should serve. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Metaphysics is the forum for the best new work in this flourishing field. Much of the most interesting work in philosophy today is metaphysical in character: this series is a much-needed focus for it.

In this comment I want to clarify five topics. The first topic concerns the importance of looking back at the very principles of the foundations of Western society. The second comment argues for the original position of Latour within the field of (social) constructivism. In the third comment, I argue that Haraway adds to the science-politics discussion by elaborating her philosophy beyond dichotomy. In the fourth comment, I argue that the terms ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ are central philosophical concepts which should (...) be retained. Finally I will make the connection between ‘what’ is represented and ‘how’ to represent it. (shrink)

Yih, Uusberg, Qian, and Gross proposed an appraisal approach to help conceptualize five different states that researchers have used as neutral control conditions. This approach has the poten...

GILLETT K. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 197–207From ‘part of ’ to ‘partnership’: the changing relationship between nurse education and the National Health ServiceWorldwide, many countries have moved towards incorporating nurse education into the higher education sector and this inevitably has implications for the relationship between nurse education providers and local health service providers. This study explores the changes to the relationship in the UK between nurse education providers and the UK National Health Service over the past 20 years and demonstrates (...) how two political ideologies have been central to those changes. The two ideologies of interest are the introduction of internal markets to the National Health Service by the Conservative government at the end of the 1980s and the New Labour response to the fragmentation of public services caused by Conservative neoliberal policy, which was to introduce the notion of ‘partnership working’. This study reviews the wider debate around partnership policy and applies that debate to evaluate the way that nurse education providers and the National Health Service are working in partnership to provide clinical practice placements for nursing students. (shrink)

Der Beitrag nimmt die Kontroverse zwischen Jürgen Habermas' Nachmetaphysisches Denken und Dieter Henrichs Replik Was ist Metaphysik - was Moderne? auf und diskutiert deren unterschiedliche Prämissen. Nach einem kurzem Blick auf die Geschichte der Metaphysik und auf ihre Kritik seit der Antike bis in die Gegenwart wird erkennbar, daß eine Bedrohung der Metaphysik niemals von seiten des vermittelten Wissens kommt, mag es sich um das notwendige wissenschaftliche oder um das kontingente historische Wissen handeln, sondern allenfalls von seiten des unmittelbaren Wissens. (...) Dieses letztere in seinen diversen Möglichkeiten: 1. als Wissen des Konkreten bzw. "wildes Denken", 2. als ästhetische Erfahrung, 3. als praktisch-pragmatisches Wissen gilt es daher zu überprüfen. Es wird gezeigt, daß selbst im Falle der Bedrohung der Metaphysik von dieser Seite es nicht zu deren Absetzung kommt, da die genannten Bereiche allenfalls die Grundlage denkender Auseinandersetzung bilden, nicht aber deren Substitut. (shrink)

No existe propiamente en Kant una teoría de la autoconciencia, pero sí hay elementos para ella, aunque problemáticos, por oscilar entre el pasado cartesiano y el desarrollo idealista posterior. Tales elementos hacen parte de la explicación emprendida por Kant, de un sistema del conocimiento objetivo. La estructura de la autoconciencia es la de una autorrelación pensante: comprensiva, yoica o egológica, espontáneamente activa y libre, y autorreflexiva. La referencia objetiva de la autoconciencia orienta la problemática filosófica crítica original de Kant hacia (...) la filosofía-idealista. (shrink)