Sincere Apologies: The Importance of the Offender’s Guilt Feelings This paper discusses the meaning and the importance of emotions, in particular the sincere guilt feelings of the offender. It is argued that the emotion of guilt reveals important information about the offender’s values and normative position. In the remainder of the paper, special consideration is awarded to the argument concerning ritual apologies, which might contain value even when insincere. This argument is rejected, on two grounds: 1. if the apology ritual (...) does not aim for sincere guilt feelings, then the use of the symbol of apology is not fitting; and 2. if the apology ritual does aim for sincere guilt, then an insincere apology devalues the sincere expression. (shrink)

Models as Mediators discusses the ways in which models function in modern science, particularly in the fields of physics and economics. Models play a variety of roles in the sciences: they are used in the development, exploration and application of theories and in measurement methods. They also provide instruments for using scientific concepts and principles to intervene in the world. The editors provide a framework which covers the construction and function of scientific models, and explore the ways in which they (...) enable us to learn about both theories and the world. The contributors to the volume offer their own individual theoretical perspectives to cover a wide range of examples of modelling, from physics, economics and chemistry. These papers provide ideal case-study material for understanding both the concepts and typical elements of modelling, using analytical approaches from the philosophy and history of science. (shrink)

This is a book symposium on Steffen Borge’s The Philosophy of Football. It has contributions from William Morgan, Murray Smith and Brian Weatherson with replies from Borge.

ABSTRACTThe notion of immunity to error through misidentification has played a central role in discussions of first-person thought. It seems like a way of making precise the idea of thinking about oneself ‘as subject’. Asking whether bodily first-person judgments can be IEM is a way of asking whether one can think about oneself simultaneously as a subject and as a bodily thing. The majority view is that one cannot. I rebut that view, arguing that on all the notions of IEM (...) that have so far been successfully defined, bodily first-person judgments can be IEM. (shrink)

The provocative paper by John Forrester ‘If p, Then What? Thinking in Cases’ (1996) opened up the question of case thinking as a separate mode of reasoning in the sciences. Case-based reasoning is certainly endemic across a number of sciences, but it has looked different according to where it has been found. This article investigates this mode of science – namely thinking in cases – by questioning the different interpretations of ‘If p?’ and exploring the different interpretative responses of what (...) follows in ‘Then What?’. The aim is to characterize how ‘reasoning in, within, with, and from cases’ forms a mode of scientific investigation for single cases, for runs of cases, and for comparative cases, drawing on materials from a range of different fields in which case-based reasoning appears. (shrink)

There has long been interest in why languages are shaped the way they are, and in the relationship between sign language and gesture. In sign languages, entity classifiers are handshapes that encode how objects move, how they are located relative to one another, and how multiple objects of the same type are distributed in space. Previous studies have shown that hearing adults who are asked to use only manual gestures to describe how objects move in space will use gestures that (...) bear some similarities to classifiers. We investigated how accurately hearing adults, who had been learning British Sign Language for 1–3 years, produce and comprehend classifiers in locative and distributive constructions. In a production task, learners of BSL knew that they could use their hands to represent objects, but they had difficulty choosing the same, conventionalized, handshapes as native signers. They were, however, highly accurate at encoding location and orientation information. Learners therefore show the same pattern found in sign-naïve gesturers. In contrast, handshape, orientation, and location were comprehended with equal accuracy, and testing a group of sign-naïve adults showed that they too were able to understand classifiers with higher than chance accuracy. We conclude that adult learners of BSL bring their visuo-spatial knowledge and gestural abilities to the tasks of understanding and producing constructions that contain entity classifiers. We speculate that investigating the time course of adult sign language acquisition might shed light on how gesture became conventionalized during the genesis of sign languages. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this essay, I set out key aspects of Nicholas’ Rescher’s Metaphysical Perspectives. I illustrate the tenor and value of the text based on extended analysis of: Chapter 1, on fundamental...

Conclusions reached using common sense reasoning from a set of premises are often subsequently revised when additional premises are added. Because we do not always accept previous conclusions in light of subsequent information, common sense reasoning is said to be nonmonotonic. But in the standard formal systems usually studied by logicians, if a conclusion follows from a set of premises, that same conclusion still follows no matter how the premise set is augmented; that is, the consequence relations of standard logics (...) are monotonic. Much recent research in AI has been devoted to the attempt to develop nonmonotonic logics. After some motivational material, we give four formal proofs that there can be no nonmonotonic consequence relation that is characterized by universal constraints on rational belief structures. In other words, a nonmonotonic consequence relation that corresponds to universal principles of rational belief is impossible. We show that the nonmonotonicity of common sense reasoning is a function of the way we use logic, not a function of the logic we use. We give several examples of how nonmonotonic reasoning systems may be based on monotonic logics. (shrink)

The usual semantics for the modal systems T, S4, and S5 assumes that the set of possible worlds contains at least one member. Recently versions of these modal systems have been developed in which this assumption is dropped. The systems discussed here are obtained by slightly weakening the liberated versions of T and S4. The semantics does not assume the existence of possible worlds, and the accessibility relation between worlds is only required to be quasi-reflexive instead of reflexive. Completeness and (...) independence results are established. (shrink)

One of the basic assumptions about André Bazin's theory of cinema has been that his idea of realism stands in direct opposition to modernism. In this article, I further develop a revised account of Bazin's realism that I have offered elsewhere, which rethinks the basic assumptions of ontology and realism in his work. This brings Bazin into a surprising affinity with tenets of high modernism. From this position, a re-examination of his engagement with the films of Orson Welles not only (...) shows Bazin to be wrestling with those issues in his criticism but also provides a way to rethink a number of positions in film theory that have historically been associated with a stringently reflexive modernism. (shrink)

In a new book-length treatment, Tara Smith, who has written extensively on the intersections of Objectivist philosophy and law, explains how judicial review, a feature of non-Objectivist jurisprudence, should function in a truly Objectivist legal system. Divided into two halves, Judicial Review in an Objective Legal System first sets forth what Objectivism is and how Objectivists understand law. Of particular importance in this regard, Smith stresses, is the written constitution, which Smith, following the logical premises of Objectivism, calls “bedrock legal (...) authority.” In the second half of the book, Smith moves to narrower considerations of judicial review proper. Smith’s first task in those sections is to critique the “failures” of “the reigning accounts” to understand judicial review. After dispensing with the various mistaken versions of judicial review as she sees them, Smith defines Objectivist judicial review before providing a handful of examples of how such a process might work in “contemporary conditions.”. (shrink)

The question I want to pursue here is one that I have lifted from Harry Frankfurt’s recent surprising best-selling book, On Bullshit, in which he asks why there is so much bullshit today in Western cultures like the U. S. The scope of Frankfurt’s charge was deliberately broad. It’s not just that people bullshit about how much money they make or how important their jobs are, but that public discourse about just any topic of consequence in American culture is filled (...) with, one is even tempted to say consists of, such unseemly speech. Such is the case, I want to claim here, about public discourse about sport in the print and visual media, in everyday life, and even, as I will shortly comment upon, in so-called academic and civic forums. So I don’t think it is a stretch at all, nor do I believe Frankfurtwould regard it as such, to include sport among the topics about which bullshit abounds. He might, however, quibble with my claim that the preponderance of bullshit in and outside of sport circles has mainly to do with the incursion of the market into most of the social practices that people hold dear in our culture. This despite the fact that Frankfurt does recognize that one primary reason why bullshit dominates so much of our contemporary discourse is that people are frequently called upon to speak about things that exceed their grasp, their knowledge of the subject. What he seems not to appreciate in this regard, however, is that one especially important reason why people’s grasp of what they say and do leaves much to be desired is because more often than not it is market actors that are doing all the talking here, whether the topic be sports, or politics, or even science. And the reason they are doing all the talking is the same reason they are mostly responsible for what actually goes on in these disparate spheres, namely, they hold and control the purse strings. So I’m persuaded, more than Frankfurt apparently is, that it is because the money-changers dominate sports, as I have insinuated they dominate most everything else, that what gets said in and about sports is mostly bullshit. Convincing you that I’m right about this will be my aim today, and that’s no bullshit, I think. (shrink)

For Newman the Roman Catholic, the Oratorian way of life resonated with his experience as a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford: the Oratory was a place of stability that provided an opportunity for scholarship. This article examines three aspects of the Oratorian idea of scholarship: the spiritual formation of the intellect; the role of the laity in a Catholic university; and the importance of personal influence inevangelization—educational ideals that are as fundamentally important today as they were in Newman’s time.

In Process and Reality Professor A. N. Whitehead formulates a Cosmology which embodies a resolute attempt to combine in one philosophical synthesis a scientific account of Concrescence with a metaphysical explanation thereof in terms of Creativity.

The SAGE Encyclopedia of Criminal Psychology will be a modern, interdisciplinary resource aimed at students and professionals interested in the intersection of psychology (e.g., social, forensic, clinical), criminal justice, sociology, and criminology. The interdisciplinary study of human behavior in legal contexts includes numerous topics on criminal behavior, criminal justice policies and legal process, crime detection and prevention, eyewitness identification, prison life, offender assessment and rehabilitation, risk assessment and management, offender mental health, community reintegration, and juvenile offending. The study of these (...) topics has been increasing continually since the late 1800s, with people trained in many legal professions such as policing, social work, law, academia, mental health, and corrections. This will be a comprehensive work that will provide the most current empirical information on those topics of greatest concern to students who desire to work in these fields. This encyclopedia is a unique reference work that looks at criminal behavior primarily through a scientific lens. With over 500 entries the book brings together top empirically driven researchers and clinicians across multiple fields—psychology, criminology, social work, and sociology—to explore the field. (shrink)

This book details the history of the concept of the beautiful, starting with a distinction between the 'warm' metaphysics of beauty and the 'cold' one modeled on Plato's Janus-faced relationship to beauty, and ending with a fragmented yet hopeful vision propagated by the likes of Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Adorno. The most important intellectual figures to write about beauty in Western metaphysics and in the post-metaphysical age are examined in this book.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 4, April 2022.